#{ steve }

The boys had come to Steve desperate for his help and not the sort that required a drive down to the old range and a bat wedged with nails. It was the sort of help where they needed King Steve, the Steve that made Skull rock the place.

They needed his help with girls.

Steve dragged a chair from the kitchen island over, sitting himself down and leaning over to the boys. "Okay, so you like these girls. El and Max?"

Mike and Lucas nodded while Dustin cracked open his can of pringles he'd brought along for the ride.

"You want them to be your girlfriends, well, you've come to the right guy," Steve ran a hand through his hair, Mike and Lucas watching him do it. "I've got a few moves that can help you but you have to do exactly as I say. Got it?"

They nodded.

There was a crunch for Dustin that momentarily threw Steve off his game.

You had been painting your nails when the insistent knocking broke you from your careful task. It was a Saturday, the day where you weren't supposed to be bugged for anything- unless it was Steve but even then your boyfriend always called ahead.

You opened the door to find Max, El and Will.

"Hey?"

"Hi," they all greeted and promptly flooded in.

They took themselves to your family kitchen, sounding like they were making themselves at home. You were just thankful your family worked on weekends. You didn't want to have to explain why teenagers felt they were allowed to let themselves in.

"Do you have any ice cream?" asked Max.

"And any syrups?"

You found the three raiding the cupboards and the freezer, El pulling down bowls and getting spoons. "Why?"

Max pulled out the tubs you had. "Because we need your help."

"My help?" typically every time the kids came for help it wasn't an ice cream situation. It was a kill or be killed kind.

"It's the boys," Said Will.

El looked to you sheepishly but you sighed in relief and helped them find whatever they needed.

Because if the boys went to Steve Harrington, the master of dating then the girls went to you. The very one that retired Steve from his old 'playboy' ways and had him happily settled, besotted even.

"What do you need help with?"

"So you want to ask the girls out, okay, easy enough, right?" Steve asked them, having Mike and Lucas and Dustin in a line like they were army cadets.

"Yeah," said Lucas and Mike.

"No!" Steve snapped. "Wrong, not easy. One wrong move and they'll be laughing at you, friend-zoning you."

"Friend-zone?" Asked Lucas like even the Upside down was a preferable place to be then that dreaded zone.

"Yeah," said Steve, dramatically. "I've been there myself, not a good place to be."

They watched as he settled back on his stool, lost in some sort of memory.

He sighed to himself, shaking his head. "Alright look, I don't tell many people this story so if it gets out, I'll know it was one of you three and I'll make your lives hell, understand?"

They nodded.

Steve rested his hands on the tops of his thighs. "I too have been friend zoned, it's not a good look."

"You?" asked Lucas.

"What did you do? How did you get out of it?" asked Mike.

"Well, I pitied myself for an evening, I had to make these mistakes so you boys won't have to. But yeah. I moped. It hadn't gone how I planned but I knew y/n would be at a party that night-"

"Wait-" interrupted Dustin with a cheeky grin. "Y/N friend zoned you?"

Steve looked at him, not a trace of amusement on his face as he re-countered the faithful night. "Yeah, now do you want my help or not?"

Dustin blushed. "Sorry."

"Listen, I moped, I despaired but then it hit me, it didn't have to be that way. So I got in my car, drove to the party-"

"Who's?" asked Mike.

"Stacey's."

"Stacey M or Stacey V?"

Steve frowned at him. "Does it matter? Anyway- I marched in there, ignoring everyone that said hi, I only had my sights on her."

"Then what did you do?" asked Lucas.

Steve wet his lips as he remembered the night he first kissed you, telling you his earlier confession that you pinned down to just being 'great friends' wasn't what he was going for. He stood up, for effect. "I found her on the stairs, she looked miserable to be there but she clocked eyes on me the same moment I did. So I made my way up, pushing past everyone, wrapped my arm around her waist and I kissed her."

He was still proud himself for that kiss, and the ones that only got better along the way.

"Tongue?" asked Lucas.

Steve was surprised a second at his forwardness. "Yeah, duh. So my advice-" he levelled with them. "Take the lead, girls like it when you're in control. Have you guys tried anything yet? Like, asking them to go watch a film together or something?"

The three shared looks.

Mike spoke up first, swallowing back his nerves. "I asked El to the drive in cinema once, but then I remembered I don't have a car. Or drive."

Steve tried not to let his disappointment show. "Easy mistakes to make."

Lucas held up his hand like he was back in class. "I asked Max once if she was on her period?"

"Oh, Sinclair, tell me you didn't."

Lucas's face dropped, eyes widening in terror. "Is that bad?"

Steve threw his head into his hands. "Oh, Sinclair."

"Steve! Is it bad?!" he fell to his knees in front of him.

"It's bad," said Steve, nodding with a wince for his young friend and the misery he was going to face. "You're in the dog house. Not even the dog house, the kneel, the pound. You're being put down."

"How do I fix this?" asked Lucas, hands clutched up to Steve like begging to god. "Tell me Steve, how!"

"He didn't!" you gasped, dropping your spoon in the ice cream tub that laid between you all on your bed.

"Yeah!" said Max, re-counting the time Lucas had asked the dreaded- 'are you on your period or something?' "Has Steve ever asked you that?"

You chuckled at the very idea. "Oh no, no, no, no, Steve knows better."

"I wish Lucas did," grumbled Max.

"How'd you do it?" asked Will, speaking up.

You looked to him. "Do what?"

Will dropped his voice to a whisper like you were sharing a secret. "Get Steve to fall in love with you?"

You smiled to yourself, thinking about it.

All throughout high school Steve had been a tease but not just to you, to any and every girl in Hawkins High. It was like a test to him, how many could he have by the time he reached senior year. You were someone he could just never crack, you never gave into his ways and it started to catch his eye in the most infuriating ways.

By the time the both of you had been brought into this Upside down business Steve had changed, he cared in ways you hadn't thought possible for him. And when the King Steve persona was dropped you finally started giving into him and your own heart.

"Well it's easy really, to get a guy crazy about you," you said, leaning forward on your elbows, already lying down on your bed. "Give him a look, seem like your interested then look away. Drives guys nuts."

"Make them suffer," said Max.

You lifted your shoulder. "I guess, basically, yeah."

"What was your first kiss like?" asked El, eyes wide in wonder.

You grin broke into your cheeks, re-counting the awful party you'd gone to to make Steve jealous after shaming his pitiful attempt at asking you to be his girlfriend. After years of torture from playboy Harrington you needed him to see it wasn't going to be easy.

But he made it so when he turned up out of breath and hair damp from the rain outside. How his eyes were locked on yours as he pushed everyone out the way until he'd pulled you into a searing first kiss, a pull like magnets drawing you in together. It wasn't slow, it was a desperate plea, a last attempt.

By god, it worked.

"Woah," said El as you reencountered it all.

Will was grinning. "What do you even do after a kiss like that?"

"Oh c'mon," said Max with a playful roll of her eyes. "There's only one thing you can do after a kiss like that-"

"Max!" you lectured. "Don't be crude."

Only when El and Will were distracted over the chocolate ice cream did you catch her eyes and give her an approving nod that had her winking at you, a secret safe with her.

"So you chill out," said Lucas after more of Steve's teaching. "Hang out with the boys and act like you don't care."

Steve groaned, hands coming together in a loud clap. "Sinclair! Have you learnt nothing!"

Lucas gulped.

Steve took a calming breath and started again. "Okay, okay... you're not wrong. One way to drive girls crazy is to act like you don't care but more often then not it gets them angry and then they discard you. Learn from me, you take a chance, you tell them how you feel."

"How we feel?" asked Mike, confused by his own feelings.

"Yeah, you look her in the eyes and tell her how you feel," he said.

Dustin chuckled from where he sat watching, still with his pringles and a pillow in lap, getting himself cosy like he was watching his favourite disaster film. "Or get friendzoned."

Steve looked back to him with a pointed look. "I'll tell everyone about the Farrah Fawcett spray, huh, Henderson?"

Dustin's shoulders sank. "Sorry."

Steve returned his focus on Mike and Lucas. "Listen, El is a superhero but also she's new to this whole... life, thing, right?"

"Right," said Mike.

"So you want to be right with her, don't play mind games with someone who can literally see into your mind," he advised. He turned to Lucas. "And Max... well, Max is terrifying okay, she's had to grow up with Billy. She has to be terrifying, why mess her around. Give her something good."

Lucas clicked his fingers, understanding better. "Love."

"Sure, if you want, love," shrugged Steve. It was tough to remember sometimes these were a couple clueless fourteen year olds coming for his help.

Mike fell back onto the sofa, alerting them all. He didn't seem so sure of himself all of a sudden. "How do you know?" he mumbled.

"Know?"

Mike looked to Steve. "How do you know what Love is?"

Suddenly Steve remembered these were fourteen year olds, but maybe not so clueless. After all, they'd fought monsters, faced losing each other almost every day when they knew there was another dimension below their own. They lived fast when they knew they might not live at all.

"Well it's not always easy, but sometimes it is," said Steve, settling down next to Mike. "I knew I loved y/n when I had to go a day without her."

Mike looked up at him, the kind of way Steve imagined a little brother would look at him if he ever had one.

"She had to go out of town for a day, visiting some family and I genuinely didn't know what to do with myself," Steve laughed at the memory, of you calling him the night before saying you were heading out of town, your nana was sick. "All day I just waited for her to get back and it's not because I didn't have things to do. Heck, I had basketball practise, I had this barbeque my dad wanted me to go to. But I just wanted to tell her about it and I couldn't. That's when I realised I loved her. I'm pretty sure I'd loved her since I first met her, really but not being able to call or see her face, made it pretty obvious."

Mike listened and understood.

Love wasn't exactly pulsing in his house. Sure, he loved his family because he had to they were blood. But he'd never seen his dad offer to cook just because his mom said she was tired, but he could imagine Steve doing so for you without you even having to say the word.

"It's true you don't know what you have until you lose it," Steve added.

Mike knew then, just what love was.

"But Mike liked me in a dress," said El.

"Screw Mike!" said Max from where Will was painstakingly trying to paint her nails and to stop her moving.

"Yeah," he chuckled. "Screw Mike."

You had been looking in your wardrobe and boxes at the bottom that you had meant to take to Goodwill but never got around to. The girls were insistent that they could also ask the boys out, but they wanted to look right, jaw-dropping. "When was this?"

"When I snuck into school," said El simply. "He said I looked pretty good in a dress."

"Pretty good?" you checked.

El nodded and looked down to the jeans she wore, rolled up several times at the ankle and the checked shirt that looked like it once belonged to Jonathan. "And with different hair."

"Okay," you ditched the boxes and carefully guided El to your bed, the two of you sitting on the edge. "El, it doesn't matter what Mike likes you wearing. It matters what you like."

"What I like?" she asked, a small amount of confusion furrowed in her brows.

"Yeah. What you feel comfortable in. What you like. Hey, if that's jeans and a baggy shirt, wear the jeans and baggy shirts."

El fidgeted with her small hands in yours. "But what if, I want Mike to, like me?"

You squeezed her hands. She said everything in such a same tone, so simple as if the world was made to be that way. "Mike'll like you just the way you are. If he doesn't then we get rid of him."

"Get rid of him," nodded El.

You had the sudden idea what that meant to El, remembering just who you were talking to. You shook away that idea. "Okay, how do you like your hair? What do you like to do with it?"

El looked at the bits of her hair she could just about see. The curls expanding down to waves at her shoulder. "I like it... like this."

"Then we leave it like that and I'm sure Mike will like that you like it," you tell her with a smile. "Tell you what, you and Max go look through the boxes, see if there's any clothes you like. Anything you do is yours."

Max and El shared a look of equal excitement. "Serious?"

You nodded.

The two girls jumped up from their places and grabbed armfuls of clothes, running to the bath room in fits of giggles.

It left Will alone with nail polish smudged on his fingers.

You smiled and dropped down next to him. "You know, painting nails doesn't just have to be for girls you know?"

Will nodded, but seemed shy. "I know."

"Have you seen Bowies nails? They're crazy."

You pulled out a magazine from somewhere littered on your bedroom floor, luckily finding one about Bowie and splaying it out on the bed. The two of you flicked through, smiling and pointing out the colours.

"What's your favourite colour?" you asked him, already lining out the polishes you had.

Will didn't hesitate in pointing out his favourite shade. "Blue."

You took the nail polish and grabbed his hand, laying it out but you hesitated before putting brush to canvas. "May I?"

Will took a deep breath, not a nervous one, not one that told you he was being forced into it. He just wanted to ready himself to remember the moment. "Yeah."

The movie theatre glowed with the latest pic.

Two care were pulled up on the side, a familiar BMW and your own. It had all been arranged, Steve calling at yours to hear the girls in the background and set the plan into action.

Steve found you helping the girls and Will out the car and smiled at you though you couldn't see the crease to his eyes that could only happen when one was as in love with someone as he was with you.

He turned around to face the three in the back. "Right, tell me again, what are you going to do? Go- Lucas."

Lucas straightened to attention, the flowers in his lap. "I am going to apologise to Max and say she looks beautiful. Then I'm gonna give her these flowers."

"Good, good, Wheeler?"

Mike cleared his throat. "I am not going to ignore my feelings and be true to myself, and let El know how I really feel."

"Yes!" Steve cheered. "Dustin? Your action?"

"Not to make fun of my friends or hold it against them if the girls laugh in their face," he recited. "I am going to watch the movie and buy snacks with the money you gave me."

"Yes!" Steve looked at all three of his prodigy's happy.

You settled the engine in your own car, looking at Max and El in the back while Will sat up front with you. "Ok, remember, be yourself, don't let the boys treat you like crap, and if they do, tell them."

"Got it!" said Max.

You held up a pointed finger. "But don't-"

"Purposely hurt their feelings, yeah we got it," said Max. "C'mon."

The four of you got out the car and you watched as Lucas and Mike waited outside the doors for them, Lucas holding a bouquet of flowers that you could tell were not from a gas station.

Will followed quietly after the girls, looking down to his painted nails and smiling at them every now and then.

You even noticed Mike seeing them to, saying how he liked them before he focused on El and Wil met Dustin inside.

Arms wrapped around your waist, tugging you into a familiar hard chest.

"Well hey beautiful," Steve mumbled into your ear, rocking you slightly.

You tilted back to see him. "Hey, yourself."

Steve smiled as he leant down and kissed you, slow and sweet, dragging his lips against yours to keep you in place just that little more longer. "Mmh, I missed you today."

You held onto his arms still wrapped around yours as you looked at where Mike held El's hands and Max was taking the flowers Lucas held up to her. "I was busy. It seems you were to?"

"Yeah. I taught them everything I know," he shrugged like it was nothing but you could feel the swell of his chest, telling you how proud he was.

"Well if they went to the Steve Harrington school of treating a girl I'm sure El and Max are in safe hands."

You turned in his arms, wrapping your own around his neck and bringing him down to you. Your bodies were flushed as his lips moved against yours, without daring to sweep his tongue in- not in front of the children at least.

Steve's arms slowly fell lover and lower until his hands gripped your hips bringing you closer. "Hey, so-" he mumbled against your lips, not wanting to part. "We've got a whole hour and thirty to kill before the kids want picking up. I know a spot, dark, secluded, perfect for us."