i wish i could hug a cow

The ad had a cheerful, slightly crooked quality to it, like whoever made it had done it themselves on a budget. You liked that. You called.

It rang twice.

“Harrington Handyman, this is Steve.”

You opened your mouth and closed it again.

The voice was - well. It was a whole lot of voice. Low and easy, the kind that came with its own weight, like he had all the time in the world and was choosing to spend it on you. A little rough at the edges in a way that suggested it was probably even better first thing in the morning.

You swallowed, hard.

“Hello?” he said, and somehow that was worse.

“Hi,” you managed. “I have a - I need a - my faucet is dripping.”

You heard, rather than saw, the widening of Max’s eyes.

“Okay,” he said. Just that. Just okay, warm and understanding like you’d told him something genuinely interesting. “How long’s it been going?”

“Two days.”

A low whistle, almost sympathetic. “Yeah, that’ll drive you crazy. What’s the manufacturer, do you know? On the fixture.”

“I… no. It’s, um. Chrome. And round. Think it’s the original install.”

There was a pause that somehow did not feel like judgment. “That’s alright, I’ll figure it out when I get there. Are you in Hawkins?”

“Yes. On Maple. Number forty-two.”

“Perfect. I’ve got a job this morning but I can be there by two, two-thirty? Does that work?”

Two-thirty. You looked at your bathroom door. Forty-eight hours of dripping and the prospect of a couple more suddenly felt very manageable.

“That works,” you smiled. “That works great.”

“Great,” he said, and you could have sworn there was a smile in it. “See you then.”

He hung up.

You stood in your hallway holding the phone for probably fifteen seconds longer than was strictly necessary.

“Why didn’t you warn me about the voice?” You left the phone on the wall and stood in the living room doorway.

”What voice?” Max blinked up at you from the magazine she was busy pretending to read.

“Max. Come on.”

She bit her lip, trying and failing to hide the grin that threatened to explode across her face. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Maxine.”

“He’s just a person. With a voice. Like most people.”

“It’s not a normal voice and you know it. I genuinely wasn’t sure if I’d called the right number.”

“What other number would you have… oh my god, did you think you’d called a sex line?!”

“I didn’t think anything. I just. It was unexpected. He sounds like…” You stopped, because there was no good way to finish that sentence that didn’t commit you to something embarrassing. “He sounds like a voice.”

“God, it’s just Steve. Jesus.”

“Steve the handyman. Coming to service my faucet.”

“Uh huh. That’s what we’re calling it.” Max was quiet for a moment. You could hear her trying not to laugh. “What time is he coming over?”

“Two-thirty.”

“Cool. I’ll wait.”

“You will not.”

She planted herself on your couch with no intention to move, and you knew you were stuck with her until Steve the handyman’s arrival.

****************

She was still on your couch with another magazine and a look of elaborate innocence by the time the knock came at the door. You pointed at her and told her to stay quiet. She mimed locking her mouth and winked over the top of the magazine.

You opened the door.

And.

Well.

The voice, it turned out, had come attached to a person who had clearly been assembled with more than his fair share of the best parts in the man factory. He was tall, broad shouldered, and toned without being overly muscular. He was holding a red toolbox in one hand and had the other tucked in the pocket of his too-tight jeans, and he was looking at you with dark hazel eyes and a slight squint like the afternoon sun was in them. He had the kind of hair that looked like it had started the day with some intention and then given up, and he was - he was just standing there on your door step, like this was a normal thing, like people looked like this while holding toolboxes in Hawkins, Indiana on a random Thursday afternoon.

“Hey,” he said. The voice, in person. “You called about a dripping faucet?”

Behind you, you heard the extremely unsubtle sound of Max laughing into a cushion.

“Yes, yeah, hi,” you said, more flustered than you’d like. “Come in.”

He came in. He saw Max and his whole face shifted into something warmer and more familiar. “Mayfield. What are you doing here?”

“Moral support,” she grinned back at him.

“For the faucet?”

“No. Her.”

He looked at you, then back at Max, visibly uncertain whether he’d missed something. “Okay,” he said, and accepted this, and looked at you again. “Bathroom?”

“Down the hall,” you said.

He followed you. Max did not follow, but you felt her watching, and you knew for certain that she was grinning.

****************

He crouched in front of the sink, set his toolbox down, and got to work with the immediate, focused competence of someone who had done this several hundred times. His hands were big, but they worked delicately. He turned the faucet, listened to it, turned it back.

“Washer,” he said over his shoulder. “Easy fix.” He glanced up at you. “Ten minutes, maybe.”

You were leaning against the doorframe. You were doing this casually, you felt, with a completely normal amount of leaning. “Great.”

He opened the toolbox and started raking through the insides. “Have you lived here long? On Maple?”

You were staring at his hands as they searched through the tools. “Almost two years.”

“Maple’s a nice street.” He found what he was looking for, and turned back to the sink. “I grew up a few blocks over. Loch Nora.”

“Oh.” You knew leafy Loch Nora. Everyone did, at least by reputation; big houses set back from the road, the kind with circular driveways and sprinkler systems on timers. “Real nice over there.”

“Eh, it was alright.” He said it without weight, just factual, like he’d made his peace with it some time ago. He’d unscrewed something and was peering into the fixture now, and you watched his hands work without meaning to. They were careful hands, despite their size. He had a small scar across the back of his right one that you found yourself wondering about before you caught yourself doing it.

“Do you work in town?”

“Yeah, at the library. I used to commute in from Hartford City, before I found this place.”

He looked up at that. Not the quick, polite glance he’d been giving you, but an actual look, like you’d said something that caught him off guard in a way he didn’t mind. “No kidding. You’ve been in the library this whole time.”

“Yeah, for a little while now. Good way to get to know a town.” You leaned a little further into the doorframe, and shifted your weight. “I haven’t seen you in there, though.”

He made a small sound, somewhere between a laugh and an acknowledgment, then turned back to the sink. “I’ve been working through the same novel since nineteen ninety-one.”

“From the library?”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Technically…”

You did the math. “Two years of late fees. That’s going to be… wow.”

“Oh, for sure, probably why I haven’t brought it back in.” He didn’t sound especially worried about it. He was doing something to the fixture with a focus that should not have been as interesting to watch as it was.

“Put in a good word for me?” he said, after a moment. He glanced back at you over his shoulder, and there was something in it - not quite a smile, just the suggestion of one, easy and familiar the same way everything about him seemed to be.

You considered the faucet. The two days. The dripping.

“Get that thing to stop,” you said, “and I’ll wipe your record completely.”

The suggestion of a smile became an actual one. He turned back to the sink.

“Deal,” he said, and went back to work.

It was unfair, you thought, watching his hands move. It was genuinely unfair that he could just… exist, like this. Crouched on your bathroom floor fixing a faucet and making easy conversation and looking like that, apparently completely unaware of any of it. Just a man with a set of skills doing a job. It was making you feel slightly insane.

He replaced the washer. He reassembled the faucet. He turned the water back on, watched it run, and watched it not drip once he’d turned it off again.

“There you go,” he said, and stood up, and he was tall and perfect-haired again, right there in your small bathroom, and he was close enough that you got the full effect of him - warm and solid and smelling faintly like sawdust and something else underneath that, something that had no business being in a handyman context.

It made your mouth water.

“Thank you,” you said. You sounded normal. You were fairly sure you sounded normal.

“No problem.” He picked up the toolbox. “Should hold fine now. If it starts again within the month, call me back and I won’t charge you.”

“That’s a good policy.”

“I’ve had it come back and bite me before.” He said it ruefully, the ghost of some earlier, more harried version of himself in the words. “Better to just -” He shrugged. “Do it right.”

****************

He followed you back down the hall. Max was still on the couch, concentrating hard on the magazine and definitely not watching the two of you at all.

At the door, you paid him - cash, he’d said on the phone, or check - and he folded the bills into his back pocket with the ease of someone who did this every day.

“Thanks for calling,” he smiled at you from the door step.

“Thanks for coming,” you said.

He was already half-turned when something made him stop. He looked back at you, and there was something different in it now, something that hadn’t quite been there before, or had been there and you’d misread it.

“You free on Saturday?” he asked, squinting into the sun again.

You blinked. “Sorry?”

“There’s a diner on the road near Marion that just opened. It’s supposed to be good.” He said it steadily, like he’d been thinking about it for slightly longer than the last five seconds. “I figured I’d ask, maybe you’d want to come?”

Behind you, noisily, Max turned a page.

You looked at Steve Harrington, standing in your doorway with his toolbox and his voice and his complete, total obliviousness to the minor lust-fuelled crisis he’d caused in your bathroom for the last twenty minutes.

“Y-yeah,” you croaked through your suddenly dry throat. “I’m free. On Saturday.”

The smile came back, different this time, a little less easy. More like it meant something.

“Great. I’ll call you,” he said.

“You’ve got my number?”

“Caller ID on the business line. It helps.”

“It helps with business, or with dates?”

His grin was infectious. “Both, now.”

He went down the path to his truck, and waved once he got there. You closed the door before you could say anything else.

“You knew,” you said, a finger pointed in Max’s direction.

She was lazing sideways on your couch with her legs over the armrest, the picture of someone who had absolutely nothing to hide. The grin she was failing to suppress suggested otherwise. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“The voice, Max. You knew about the voice. You knew how I’d… react.”

“God, he’s just Steve.”

“Max -”

“He literally is. That’s the whole thing about him. He’s just Steve.” She said it like this settled the matter, like just Steve was a reasonable descriptor for whatever had just happened in your house that afternoon.

You stared at her. She inspected her thumbnail.

“How have you two never met, actually?” she said, after a moment, tilting her head. “You’ve been in Hawkins for two years? He grew up here. How is that even possible? How can you live in Hawkins and not know Steve? It makes no sense.”

“I don’t know, it just -”

“Are you sure? You’re absolutely sure you never crossed paths, not even once?”

“Believe me, I’d remember if I’d seen that ass before.”

Max pointed at you. “Don’t be gross. He’s like my pseudo big brother or something.”

“I’m not being gross, I’m being honest.”

“There’s overlap.” She swung her legs off the couch and sat up properly, and now she was grinning properly too, not even trying to hide it anymore. “So. Saturday. You have a date.”

You put your face in your hands.

****************

On Saturday morning, he called you at ten.

“Hey,” he said. “It’s Steve.”

“I know,” you said, which was true and also slightly more than you’d meant to give away. “Hi, Steve.”

The silence stretched, just a little. Not awkward. Just enough to mean something.

When he spoke again the smile was back in his voice, and this time you knew exactly what it looked like. “Can I pick you up at seven?”

You had been standing in your kitchen in your pyjamas eating toast. You were now somehow very aware of that fact, like he could see you through the phone line, like the voice alone was enough to make you feel slightly caught out.

“Seven works,” you said, voice squeaking slightly.

“Good - great, I mean. See you tonight.”

“See you tonight.”

The line clicked. You stood there a moment with the handset against your collarbone, looking at nothing in particular, and thought about the fact that you had eight hours to do something about your hair.

Then you called Max.

****************

The diner on Route 15 was small and warm and smelled like coffee and pie. Steve held the door. He asked what you liked to eat and really listened when you told him. He told you about the job he’d gone to after yours on Thursday - a furnace situation on the east side that turned out to be something much simpler than anyone expected - and he told it with a dry, almost self-deprecating sense of humour that made you laugh twice before the food even came.

He was, you realised - somewhere between the cheese sticks you’d shared and the burgers the waitress had brought out after - surprisingly easy to be with. The voice made more sense in person, made sense as part of someone who’d learned not to rush things, who’d maybe had a chapter or two before this one that had taught him the value of slowing down. There were edges to him you could sense without being able to see, things you didn’t know yet. None of them made you want to pull back.

He walked you to your door a little before eleven.

He stood close, closer than strictly necessary, and he was looking at you the way he’d looked at the faucet - careful and attentive, like he’d figured something out and was deciding what to do with the information.

“You good?” he asked. You caught the way the tip of his tongue flicked over his bottom lip.

“Very,” you answered.

He kissed you, and it was nothing like the easy, laid back manner he’d had all evening - or maybe it was exactly that, just turned toward something different. His hand found the side of your face, tilted it up, and he took his time with it the way he seemed to take his time with everything, slow and thorough, like he was fixing something and wanted to do it right.

And, did he ever kiss you right.

When he finally pulled back you were holding the lapels of his denim jacket without entirely remembering deciding to do that.

“D’you want to come in?” you asked.

He looked at you for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

****************

He was, it turned out, exactly as competent at everything else as he was at fixing faucets.

He took his time with the jackets first, yours and then his, like there was no reason to rush any of it, like the night was long and he’d already decided how he wanted to spend it. It should have felt presumptuous, but with him it didn’t. It felt like the most natural thing in the world, the way everything with him seemed to.

His hands were the same as they’d been in the bathroom - certain, delicate - except now they were at your waist, your shoulders, the small of your back, exploring over your clothes with a quiet, focused attention that made your brain go briefly and completely blank.

“You’re staring,” he grinned, before leaning in to press his mouth to your collarbone.

“You’re right here, looking like…” you tried, gesturing over his body with your hands. “What else am I supposed to do?”

That earned you the smile. Not the easy one, not the professional one. The other one, the one that had appeared at your doorstep when you’d said yes to Saturday, except closer now and considerably more dangerous at this range.

He kissed your lips again, slower this time, one hand cradling the back of your head, fingers lost in your hair, and you stopped being clever about anything for a while after that.

You led him upstairs to your bedroom, and he was thorough about it. About all of it. You divested him of his clothes and guided him to lay back on your bed and he settled himself in the middle like he’d been there before. You undressed for him, took your time with it, slipped the light cotton dress you’d agonised over at your wardrobe that afternoon off your shoulders and down until it fell, pooling at your feet. He watched your every move, lower lip caught between his teeth when your bra joined your dress on the floor and your hands cupped your breasts, pressing them together, pinching your nipples between your fingers.

You watched him palm himself through his boxers as your thumbs hooked into the elastic of your underwear, pushing the scrap of lace over your hips and down to your thighs before it fell to your feet.

“Jesus, honey…”, he almost whined as you crawled up his legs, settling on his thighs and resting your hand over his, squeezing around his fingers to feel the thick ridge of his cock hidden beneath the blue cotton boxers.

“Patience,” you murmured, stroking your hand over him, pressing your fingertips into the damp spot forming.

He looked up at you through his lashes. “Easy for you to say.”

You smiled at him, and watched something shift in his expression - that careful attentiveness tipping into something with considerably more heat behind it. His hands found your hips, steadying, not pushing, just holding you there like you were something worth keeping still for a moment.

You leaned down and kissed him, and he made a low groan against your mouth that you felt in your core.

He rolled you over with an easy certainty, got an arm under you, settled his weight and then just… looked at you. Taking his time about it. You were beginning to think it was the thing he was best at, this easygoing quality, this absolute refusal to be rushed, and under the circumstances it was making you feel slightly desperate.

“Steve,” you whispered, pawing at his chest, drawing one leg up beside him.

“Yeah,” he said, like he already knew.

He hooked a hand under your knee and pulled it higher, opening you to him, and ground himself against you. Even through the fabric of his boxers you could feel the heat of him, the thick press of him that left you gasping.

“What do you need? C’mon, you can tell me…”. He drew back, just enough to look at you, his thumb stroking your thigh.

You slid a hand between your bodies, your fingertips brushing the elastic at his waist. “I need these to go.”

He grinned down at you, and shook his head gently. “What was it you said… ‘patience’, right?”

“That was… that was different,” you said.

“Was it?” He pressed his mouth to your jaw, your throat, and down, slow and teasing, like he had all the time in the world and your lack of patience was not his problem. You felt him smile against your skin. “Seems pretty similar from where I’m standing.”

“You’re not standing.”

“Figure of speech.”

You made a sound that was not entirely dignified. His mouth had found your nipple and was doing something that made it very difficult to form a counterargument. He sucked it into hardness, brushed his lips over the peak, and laved his tongue against it, peppering kisses around the swell of your breast before returning to suck and kiss at your nipple.

“Steve…”

“Mm?”

“I will never call you for a plumbing emergency again.”

He pulled back from your breast, reluctantly, and laughed. Then he pushed himself up on one hand and looked down at you, and the laugh faded into something quieter. He brushed your hair back from your face with his free hand, just once, just gently, and the tenderness of it caught you off guard after everything else.

“Yeah, you will.”

He kissed you once more, soft, and then he sat back on his heels and hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his boxers and took care of that particular problem, holding your gaze while he did it like he wanted to see your face. You swallowed.

He was - well. The voice had been a reasonable preview of the rest of him, as it turned out. All of him, long and deliciously thick, the head flushed a rosy pink, the slit glistening already.

He settled back over you, relaxed as ever, and whatever clever thing you’d been about to say next went completely out of your head.

He took his time, even then, adjusting your legs until you were spread open beneath him and he looked, his gaze lingering like he was drinking in the sight of you. His fingertips grazed over your inner thigh, teasing until he pressed the flat of his hand against your pussy. He held it there for a moment, feeling the warmth of you, before his thumb moved through your folds, gathering your arousal from your hole then moving up to circle it around your clit before he brought his thumb to his mouth and sucked it clean.

He shut his eyes and moaned.

“Okay… okay, gonna need a little more…”, was the only warning you got before he moved, arms slipping under your thighs and his face diving into your cunt. He lapped at you, dragging the tip of his tongue through your folds just like he’d done with his thumb, flicking over and over your clit until you gasped and arched against him. He pulled you tighter to him, his hands at your hips, one reaching around to press against your stomach, holding you in place. He flattened his tongue and dragged it over you, lapping up your slick arousal before it had a chance to leave your body, moaning into you as you bucked against his face. He took your lips between his, sucking on each one gently, before his tongue delved inside for more. His thumb returned, circling and pressing and flicking, finding the rhythm that made you press yourself into him.

He took his time, and then some.

”Steve… Steve…”, you keened, your climax rushing and rapid, ready to consume you.

He lifted his glistening face and replaced his tongue with two fingers, then three, plunging and pressing into you, the noise slick and sloppy while his thumb teased the hood of your clit, drawing it back before he quickened his thumb over it, making you cry out.

You were close, right on the edge, clenching around his fingers as he pressed deep inside.

“Come on, beautiful, you’re so close I can feel it…”. He lifted his gaze from his working hands to your flushed face and flashed a bright, enraptured smile. “Wanna feel you.”

That was all you needed. You felt every muscle contract and release as your pleasure crested, your head tipped back into the pillows while Steve worked you through your orgasm. You caught the tone of his voice, but not the words he was saying, just the sound of him enough to leave you reeling. You clenched your legs around his hands as you came down, holding him in place but effectively ceasing his movements, the overstimulation of it almost too much to bear. Slowly, he leaned back and withdrew his hands from you, and once again licked his fingers clean.

“God, you’re too much…”, you whispered, wrecked, reaching for him.

“Need me to stop? We can stop.” He looked so serious suddenly, even as you pulled on his wrist to draw him down to you.

You shook your head, and laced your fingers with his. “Don’t you dare.”

You reached over to your nightstand, pulling open the drawer, and grasped until you found one of the small foil packets from the box you’d bought on a whim the month before. You were careful, opening it slowly, pinching the tip and rolling it onto him, letting him adjust the condom until it was comfortable. He kissed you again, warm and eager, bracing himself on his forearm as he held himself against you.

“C’mon, Steve. I’m done being patient,” you whispered.

A smile illuminated his face. “God, I’m so glad you said that.”

The patience and restraint he’d demonstrated all evening fell away in a flash. He surged forward, pressing himself into you until his hips were flush with yours, until there was no further he could go. It burned, bright and hot and delicious, and you both sighed as your bodies adjusted to each other. He held himself in place for a moment, giving you the grace to adjust to his more than sizable intrusion, before he drew his cock back again. He snapped his hips forward, again, and back, again, finding a brisk deep rhythm that left you clinging to his broad shoulders.

He was everywhere.

Inside you, above you, his breath against your skin and beads of sweat falling from his brow to yours. He sighed your name as you tightened your legs around his waist and tilted your hips, dragged your nails down the muscular expanse of his back. He kept moving until a whim took him and he rolled onto his back, taking you with him, stretching his body out below you as you rode him, more than matching the pace he’d set. His thumb found your sensitive clit again and you gasped out his name, his other hand reaching up to tease a nipple.

“Gonna come for me again, huh?” he grunted, brow furrowing as he snapped his hips up to meet yours.

You nodded, it was all you could do, your heartbeat thundering in your chest, your throat tight, the pleasure overwhelming you.

“Wanna… wanna feel you, Steve, wanna feel you come too…”

He hissed out a jesus, fuck as you rolled your hips against him and arched your back. You lifted yourself up and he grasped your hips, holding you in place as he looked down at you, the tip of his cock still inside. “Christ, you’re making a mess of me, I love it…”.

You chanced a glance down and caught the ring of white at the base of his cock, soaking into the thick thatch of hair there, and you whimpered, more turned on than you’d ever felt. He pulled you back down onto him and rolled you both onto your sides and the change in angle, in depth, in pace, made the breath catch in your throat. He hoisted your leg high against his side, his weight resting on his forearm as he leaned up, guiding himself deeper and deeper into you, slower now. He rocked into you over and over, barely pulling out, then rolled you onto your back again.

“I’m… m’not gonna last long”, he sighed, forehead against yours.

“That’s okay… that’s okay, wanna feel you…”

“Yeah?”

You nodded against him, and hummed in approval as you caught his lips with yours.

He settled down on his forearms, his hands at your face, thumbs grazing over your cheekbones as he quickened his pace again. He was relentless, snapping his hips hard and fast, your headboard hitting the wall with each rough thrust in. Your second orgasm snuck up on you in a sudden explosion, colours bursting behind your eyes as you squeezed them shut, gasping and arching up into him as wave upon wave of pleasure tore through you. You turned your head, just enough to kiss his wrist, and his thumb hooked in between your lips. You sucked, nipping your teeth against him, and that was enough to send him over the edge. He cried out your name with a rough, ragged moan, pushing his hips as hard as he could into yours, his whole body pulled tight as his cock twitched and pulsed inside you, spilling his release into the condom.

“Fuck… fuck… holy…”. The words spilled from his lips, the breath held in his chest, and only with his eventual exhale did he relax against you. He adjusted himself enough to lay his head on your chest, and you wrapped your arms around his shoulders, holding him in place. His scattered kisses over your breasts, teasing each nipple in turn until you squirmed beneath him, giggling at the sensation.

He said your name once, later, low and a little rough, like something he’d been holding onto since before he’d had reason to. You felt it more than heard it. Thought, somewhere in the back of your mind that was still capable of thought, that you owed Max a very serious apology for every time you’d rolled your eyes when she’d called him just Steve.

There was nothing just about any of this.

“Hey,” he murmured, eventually, lifting his heavy head enough to meet your eyes.

“Hey,” you said, offering him a shy smile.

His hand found yours, and held on, like there was nowhere else it needed to be.

“Can I ask you something?” you whispered, stroking your thumb over the back of his hand, following the scar you’d spotted on Thursday.

“Mm.”

“How long have you known Max?”

“Since high school. Why?”

“Did she call you before I did?”

He grinned, and dropped his forehead to your chest.

“She might have mentioned someone on Maple had a dripping faucet,” he said, carefully.

You lifted your head and looked down at him, tugging his hair until he looked up at you. He had the expression of a man who had just realised he’d said slightly more than he intended to.

“She set us up,” you stated, plainly.

“She… I mean, she said you might need help with something. I was in the area.” He seemed to be choosing his words. “I didn’t know it was going to - I wasn’t expecting anything like this. This isn’t what we do, just to be clear. I don’t ask her to scout out potential… dates, for me.” He looked at you, and the careful expression gave way to something more honest. “You opened the door and I thought, okay, Max was right.”

“Right about what?”

He smiled, slow and a little rueful. “That I should ask you out.”

You looked at him for a long moment. Then you let go of his hair, and wrapped your arms around his shoulders again, and held him close.

Downstairs, the faucet was silent. Fixed right, just like he’d promised. You watched him get up to dispose of the condom, then he came back to bed, and his head found your chest once more.

“Is this okay?”, he half-whispered, voice suddenly heavy with fatigue.

“This is very okay, Steve.” You scratched your nails against his scalp and felt him press into your touch in response.

You were going to have to do something very nice for Max. Or possibly something very annoying, depending on how you decided to play it.