#first love

Pairing: Steve Harrington x female reader

Summary: You want a moment of Steve Harrington being the protective boyfriend? Here you go.

Warings: rude ex-boyfriend. violence. protective Steve.

_______________

The parking lot of Hawkins High is almost empty, the afternoon sun low and blinding off the windshields. You stand beside Steve’s car, arms folded tight around yourself, glancing toward the school doors for the third time in a minute. 

Where is Steve? 

That’s when you hear a voice you’d hoped never have to hear again.

„Well, look at you.“ 

Your stomach drops. You turn and see him walking toward you - your ex boyfriend, smug and irritated, hands shoved into his jacket like he owns the place. 

„I told you not to talk to me,“ you say, trying to keep your voice steady. 

He scoffs. „Yeah? And I told you not to hang out with some dumb jock in a hair commercial.“ 

You stiffen. „Go away.“ 

„Or what?“ He sneers, stepping closer. „You gonna cry? Run to Steve and have him save you?“

He gets too close. You step back - and bump into the car. 

„Stop,“ you whisper. 

„God, you’re pathetic,“ he spits. „You’ve been dating him for two weeks and you already think you’re too good for me.“ 

He shoves you. Hard enough that your back hits the car door, the metal clanging. Tears spring to your eyes, fear rushing in fast and hot. 

„Don’t touch me,“ you say, voice shaking. 

„Or what?“ He mocks again. 

„Or you’ll answer to me.“ Steve voice cuts through the air like a blade. 

Your ex turns away from you to face him. Steve is standing a few steps away, backpack slung over one shoulder, eyes dark and furious. He takes in the scene in half a second - your pressed against his car, your ex too close, your face pale and wet with tears. 

„Back. Away. From. Her,“ Steve says slow and deadly. 

Your ex laughs. „Oh look, Ken Doll showed up.“ 

Steve doesn’t even hesitate. He drops his bag and shoves the guy hard in the chest, sending him stumbling back. „You don’t get to talk to her. You don’t get to touch her. You don’t get to even look at her.“ 

The guy swings. Steve ducks it easily and shoves him again - this time harder - pinning him against another car. 

„You ever come near her again,“ Steve growls, fist twisted in the guy’s jacket, „I won’t stop with this.“ 

He lets go with a rough push, sending the guy staggering back. He mutters something angry but backs off, pride wounded, before storming away. 

Steve doesn’t even watch him go. He turns immediately to you. „Hey-hey- are you okay?“ 

You nod shakily, tears spilling over now it’s safe. „I-I’m sorry - he just…“ 

Steve pulls you into his arms without thinking, holding you tight against his chest. „Don’t apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong.“ 

You press your face into his jacket, still trembling. „He dented your car…“

Steve glances at the scuffed door, then back at you. „I don’t care about that,“ he says firmly. „It’s a car. I was worried about you.“ 

You sniffle. „But you love this thing.“ 

„I love you,“ Steve says softly, cupping your face and wiping your tears away with his thumbs. „And you’re safe. That’s all that matters.“ 

You smile up to him. 

„Besides, now you left an imprint on it so I like it even more“, he jokes with a boyish grin. 

You let out a shaky laugh through your tears. „You’re such an idiot.“ 

„Yeah,“ he smiles gently. „But I’m your idiot.“ 

He kisses your forehead, slow and careful, before guiding you into the passenger seat. As he closes the door, he adds quietly, „No one ever gets to hurt you. Not on my watch.“

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Thanks for reading! All interactions are highly appreciated

It was so worth it...

I needed some warmth after last episode. It was just as heartwrenching as in the manga... Roland or Lorand? I don't know. I actually love Roland more.

So I decided to continue in my "what if" scenario... With a sweet first meeting on the street.

Pairings neteyam x omatikaya!female reader

Context: Reader returns back in time before Neteyam hurt her to the point of oblivion. In the past, the reader pines over Neteyam and does everything for him, only to find out he likes someone else and gets hurt. Now, knowing what will happen, she tries to move away from Neteyam — but fate is cruel and keeps pairing them together. Will this love hit or will it be another miss?

Author: I've been thinking of creating this type of story but forgot at someone point. So basically here neteyam hurts reader so much, reader dies while fighting because in their perspective fate is cruel. And then when they opened their eyes, the turned back in time, back before she liked him. So around age 12.

Past:

There is an old saying among the Omatikaya — that Eywa does not give more love than the heart can hold. The tsaheylu, the bond, the sacred thread between all living things. I used to believe that. You used to think it was the most beautiful truth on all of Pandora.

Now I think it is the cruelest lie ever spoken into the roots of Kelutral.Because what Eywa never warned me about was this: you could give and give and give until there was nothing left — until the hollow of your chest became an echo chamber — and still, still, the one you had given everything to would look right through you.

They called us the Wonder Twins.

Neteyam and you. You and Neteyam. Two names that had been tangled together since childhood, since the day he had pulled you out of the river current when you were both too small and too reckless, since the day you had thrown yourself between him and a palulukan with nothing but a sharpened stick and the most foolish courage the forest had ever seen. You had saved each other. You had been each other's uturu — shelter, shadow, safe place. That was what you told yourself. That was the story you wore like a second skin.

The others had a different name for it. They called you master and dog. And you, idiot that you were, let that name sit in the air like smoke, never sharp enough to cut through it, because Neteyam — beautiful, beloved Neteyam — never said a word against it. Never once.

You saw the red flag. You saw it clearly, the way you see a ikran circling before a storm. You saw it and you smiled and you looked the other way, because that is what people do when love has made a fool of them. You put on your rose-tinted glasses and you called it loyalty and you called it friendship and you refused — absolutely refused — to call it what it was.

"You loved him. Quietly. Completely. The way the forest loves rain — desperately, even when the rain does not notice the forest at all."

Everyone knew. Every Omatikaya who glanced your way, every child who saw you trail after Neteyam with his forgotten water skin or his mended bow, every elder who watched you laugh too loudly at his jokes and go quiet when another girl spoke his name. Everyone knew.

Everyone except him. Or perhaps that, too, was a lie you told yourself.

It was your friendversary — the word was ridiculous, you had invented it at twelve years old and now at seventeen it still stuck, the way all embarrassing traditions stick. Every year on this day, without fail: a picnic at the ridge overlooking the bioluminescent valley, the one that glowed violet and gold at dusk. Every year you brought the food. Every year he brought the stories. Every year the two of you stayed until Pandora's sky turned the color of Eywa's light and you almost, almost said what was sitting like a stone behind your teeth.

You had spent three days preparing this one.

Three days gathering hamgukxo fruit, smoking the meat the way he liked it, weaving a small mat from pxorna' leaves the way your mother had taught you. You had even braided small blue atokirina' seeds into the wrapping — seeds of Eywa, for luck, for meaning, for all the things you could not say out loud.

You waited at the ridge. You waited as the sky shifted from gold to violet. You waited as the valley below erupted into its nightly glow, a thousand lights beneath you like stars had fallen and decided to stay.

You waited until it was night. He was not coming. The walk back through the forest was the loneliest thing you had ever done. You held the basket against your chest like it was something broken. The atokirina' seeds had already begun to lose their glow, the way all hopeful things do when the moment passes.

And then you heard it. Laughter. His laughter — that easy, open sound, the one you had memorized without meaning to, the one that had lived rent-free in the center of your chest for years. You turned, and there he was at the edge of the village path, standing beneath a low-hanging branch strung with communal lights, and he was glowing with it, with whatever was being said, with whoever was saying it.

She was beautiful. Of course she was. Tall, with the kind of stillness that made her look carved from the Kelutral itself. Her name was Säre, and she was everything delicate and lovely, and she was looking at Neteyam like he was something worth looking at.

And he — he was looking back. Something in you went very quiet. Then something else took over, something hot and blinding and entirely outside of your control, because before you had finished the thought you were already moving, already crossing the distance between you in long strides, and then your hand had connected with his shoulder in a sharp slap — not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to mean something.

You ghosted me.

My voice came out strange. Too flat. Too careful. I could feel the tears threatening at the back of my throat, which only made me angrier, because i refused — i refused — to cry in front of Säre, in front of anyone, in front of him.

Neteyam blinked. The easy smile faltered. He looked at me, then at the basket still clutched to my chest, and you watched the moment of recognition cross his face — slow, sluggish, arriving the way all inconvenient things arrive, far too late.

_____. I — irayo, I'm sorry, I forgot, I was busy show—

Busy.

The word fell out of my mouth like something dead.

You were busy. On our friendversary. You forgot. After three days — Neteyam, I spent three days on this — I was up there for hours. I sat on that ridge until the whole valley lit up and there was nobody there. There was nobody there and I sat there like a skxawng waiting for you —

My voice cracked on the last word. I hated it. I hated myself f for it. I pressed on.

I said I was sorry — it wasn't intentional, things just came up, time got away from me, Säre needed someone to show her the east trails and I was the closest —

She needed someone. And I needed my friend. And you chose —

It's not a competition, _____, you're being dramatic —

Dramatic. I'm being dramatic. Right. Because sitting alone on a cliff for four hours waiting for someone who didn't care enough to send even a word — not a word, Neteyam, not a runner, nothing — that's dramatic.

You could have left! No one forced you to wait!

You did. You and five years of this thing we built, this stupid, wonderful thing, this —

I stopped. I pressed my mouth shut. Because i was about to say it. I were about to say the words that had been living at the back of my teeth for years and the timing was wrong, everything was wrong, Säre was right there watching with wide careful eyes and i was shaking and i hated all of it.

This what? What are you even saying? You act like missing one afternoon is the end of the world —

It's not just one afternoon and you know that. It's been — it's every time, Neteyam. Every time something shinier comes along, I'm the one left standing in the rain. I'm always the one left standing.

A beat. He looked at me. Something shifted in his expression — something that might have been guilt, might have been pity, might have been something else entirely — and whatever it was, it made it worse.

_____ — you're my friend. But you can't — you can't act like you have some claim on all of my time. That's not what this is. That's not what we are.

I know exactly what we are. I've always known what we are.

Then act like it! Because right now you're acting like — like you think this is something else. Like you think I owe you something, i don't owe you anything because we are just friends, we aren't lovers, i am not yours, and I don't, _____, I don't owe you —

Don't.

What do you want from me? What is it that you actually want? Because you're standing here crying over a picnic and it's more than a picnic, I can see that, so what is it? What are you not saying? Do you not trust me? is that it?!

The silence between was enormous. It had weight. It had texture. It was the kind of silence that precedes something irreversible — the held breath before the wave breaks, before the arrow leaves the bow, before the world splits cleanly into before and after. I looked at him. Really looked. At the face i had memorized so thoroughly it lived behind my eyes, at the boy i had woven into every daydream for years, at the person who had somehow never once, not once, turned that same careful attention back toward you.

And then i told him. Not in words. i didn't have to. It was in my face, in the way my composure finally cracked, in the way i couldn't hold his gaze without everything showing. And Neteyam — Neteyam who was perceptive, Neteyam who read people like maps — Neteyam understood. And the thing that broke me was not cruelty. It was not anger. It was the way his face went careful and distant, the way i had watched him put a wall up brick by brick right in front of me.

_____. I don't — I don't feel that way about you. I never have. You're my tsmuke. My sister in everything but blood. That's what you are to me. That's what you've always been. You are my closest friend and i would do everything for you. But that's about it.

Sister. Sister.

And if you've been carrying this, then — then I'm sorry. I truly am. But I think you know, somewhere, that this was never going to be — I mean — look at you and look at me, _____. It's not like you're my — it's not like you could ever be my —

Stop.

I'm trying to be honest with you —

You're trying to make yourself feel better about saying something horrible. You know what? Don't. I understand. Loud and clear. I've understood for a long time.

_____ —

You know what they call me? When you're not around? When you're off showing Säre the east trails and forgetting about your tsmuke? They call me your dog. And the worst part — the worst part — is that they weren't wrong. I was just too stupid to see....

That's not fair —

None of this is fair! None of it! I have been there for you, Neteyam. Every single time. I carried you when you were sick, I covered for you when you were in trouble, I sat on that ridge tonight with Eywa-blessed food and seeds in the wrapping because I care about you, I have always cared about you, and you stood me up for someone you met three weeks ago —

That is not what happened —

Then what happened? Because from where I'm standing, it looks very simple. I matter less. I have always mattered less. And I just —

My voice gave out. I pressed the heel of my hand against my mouth. I would not cry. I would not.

_____, listen to me, you're upset, you're not thinking —

I am the clearest I have been in years.

You're being irrational. I said I was sorry. What more do you want me to say? It's not like you're my girlfriend, _____. It's not like that would ever happen. I would never like you that way. I need you to understand that.

There it was. Clean and simple and final, the way only the truest wounds are. I would never like you that way.

I stood there for a moment, and the night sounds of Pandora continued around me — the soft bioluminescent hum of the ground, the distant call of something in the canopy, the world in its indifferent, beautiful fullness — and i felt it, the thing i had been holding together for years, crumble. Not with sound. Not with drama. Just quietly, like a structure finally admitting the damage that had always been there.

Kehe. I understand.

And then i walked away. And i kept walking.

The raid came before dawn. The sky-people and their machines, cutting through Pandora's atmosphere like blades through cloth, the sounds of ikran screaming and the crack of weapons fire and the voices of the clan rising in the old war-cry. I had been awake already — I had not slept — and when the alarm went through the village like a pulse through a root, I were already moving toward the weapons without thinking.

I had always been a good fighter. That, at least, had never been in question. The warrior who handed me myrbow did not look at my face. Just as well. I wasn't sure what was on it.

There is a kind of liberation in caring nothing for your own life. I moved through the battle like water — easy, inevitable, completely without fear.

I fought. I fought with everything I had, which was considerable, and I fought with nothing to lose, which made me dangerous. Around me, the Omatikaya were holding their own. I heard Neteyam's voice somewhere to my left calling orders, that same voice that had hours ago dismantled me piece by piece, and something in my chest went cold and clean.

I had stopped caring whether i came back from this. It was not a decision. It was an absence — the absence of the self-preservation that has to be fed by something worth preserving for. I stepped forward when others stepped back. I drew fire to myself when cover was needed. The machine — the hydraulic gun, ugly and enormous — swung toward me, and i watched it come, and thought, with perfect clarity: So this is how Eywa ends it.

I heard someone shout my name. Maybe Neteyam. Maybe no one. The sound was already very far away. The shot took in the chest.

The world went white. Then dark. Then the sensation of falling, not forward but inward, down through some impossible distance, through the whole weight of my body — through the love and the grief and the waiting and the wasted seeds in the picnic basket — and Eywa's network received me in its roots the way the earth receives everything in the end: without judgment, without hesitation, completely.

I thought, last of all: at least it's quiet now.

Then i opened your eyes. The light was wrong. Too soft. Too gold. Morning on Pandora, the particular color of it when the canopy is still thick and young and the whole world smells of wet earth and growing things. My hands — i looked at my hands — they were smaller.

The scar on my left forearm from the palulukan incident was gone. I sat up slowly, in a sleeping space you recognized. Your sleeping space, at twelve, before the family moved to the main side of the village. The sounds around me were the sounds of morning, of the clan waking, of children and adults and the distant rhythm of life.

I pressed my hand flat over my heart. It was beating. Steady and persistent and cruel in its continuity. Eywa.

I closed my eyes.

I knew exactly where i was. I knew exactly when. I knew what was ahead — the years of it, the long slow accumulation of a love that would eat me from the inside and leave me standing on a ridge alone in the dark — and i thought, with the bone-deep exhaustion of someone who has already lived through the ending: Not again.

But the morning was already moving. Pandora was already turning. Somewhere out there, twelve-year-old Neteyam was waking up with no idea what he had done, because he hadn't done it yet, and Eywa — Eywa who is supposed to be the mother of all things, who is supposed to balance and hold and sustain — had sent you back anyway. Perhaps as punishment. Perhaps as mercy. Perhaps, most unbearably, as a second chance.

I opened your eyes. I swung your legs over the side of the sleeping place .I pressed your feet against the warm living floor of the Kelutral and breathed. This time, will be different.

The village was waking up around me. Somewhere nearby, a familiar laugh rang out — easy and bright and completely unknowing, the laugh of a boy who had not yet learned what he would do to you, because in this timeline, he had not done it yet. I stood up. I did not look toward the sound. For the first time in what felt like a lifetime — and was, in all the ways that mattered — I looked the other way.