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atinylittlepain · 3 months

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Clementines

college!steve harrington x f!oc

part of the girl boy universe

a/n | thank you to darling orange peel anon, there's no warnings on this one, just a lot of love :')

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2005

“Steve, can you peel this for me?”

“Yeah, let me see.” Young knees, small knees, smeared with dirt and an errant band-aid, bend and curve right next to his, sitting down close on the porch step. Late in the day, the sun starting to drip and falter, warm orange melt that’s washing the backyard in syrupy light, the summer heat starting to cool.

“What’s this about you calling me Steve, huh?” He tries to ask it casual, hands making careful work of the clementine she gave to him, because he knows she likes it when he peels it all in one spiraling go. Mom doesn’t do it like you do, and yes, maybe he likes that a little too much.

“That’s your name.”

“Well, yeah, but I’m dad too. Always gonna be dad to you, babe.” Her eyes are watching his hands, a quiet mmmmokay, though it’s clear she’s a little more invested in the final flourish of the peel, all in one go.

“Thank you, Steve.” He tries hard not to sigh at that.

“Gonna share with me?”

“I guess.” With all the brass and bluster of an uptight heiress humoring a plebe, though she still offers him a segment, still sitting so close that her elbow is hooked over his knee. They sit in an easy silence for a while, the scent of citrus lingering and mixing with sunscreen, sun-worn after a day outside, lulling in a faint haze of cicada song and shimmering heat. Maybe a little delirious from the sweet simmer, he could swear they’re being joined by angels, a halo of fierce setting sun around them as they tromp through the tall grass toward the porch.

“Daddy, look what I found!” Sometimes still unsure on her legs, bumbling and brashing and the younger of their pair. She looks just like Andy when she’s excited, he thinks, same smile, same eyes, holding out a small palmful of rocks to show him. Lately, he has gotten very good at getting excited about rocks, oohing and awing, squinting up to Andy, knowing smiles passed between them. They got Violet a rock tumbler at the start of the summer and she seems to find something every day to put in it, lining her polished treasures up on the windowsill in her room.

“Nice finds, babe, this one is really pretty.” There’s a brief squabble when the older of the pair plucks one of the rocks out of the younger’s hands, little whine, little snit that they’re quick to soothe and smooth. Andy sits down on the other side of him on the steps, presses a quick kiss to the corner of his jaw before producing another clementine from the pocket of her overalls, an easy enough distraction, if you ask nicely daddy’ll peel it for you, Vi. And then the sweetest, smallest, daddy, peel it for me, please, somewhere between question and command, and he’s never saying no to that, not ever. And so Violet stands with small hands on his knees, watching rapt as he makes easy work of the peel, something he already knows he’s going to miss, someday, older, and no longer believing in this easy magic. Andy reaches behind him in the meanwhile, gentle palm between Margot’s shoulder blades and you alright over there? And when Margot answers with an easy yeah, mom, Steve scoffs, just a little dramatic as he hands Violet her clementine, perfectly peeled.

“Oh, so she gets to be mom, but I’m Steve? How you wound me.” Already embarrassing, but he’ll still take it when Margot groans, rolls her eyes, looks like Andy then too, with an ugh, dad. Already too cool for him and yes, if anyone’s asking, he’s dreading the high school years.

“Will you peel one for me, baby?”

“Do you have an endless supply of clementines in your pockets, or are you just happy to see me?”

“I’m afraid this is my last one, but I’ll share it with you.”

“Well, in that case.” As he’s peeling the third and final clementine, Violet offers the last segment of hers to Margot, a simple enough exchange that still makes his heart swoop in a lovely way, the both of them taking off afterward to go look for caterpillars, one of their few shared passions.

He and Andy watch their girls roam the backyard as they share the last of the fruit, hands brushing hands, quiet and sweet. Three coiled peels are slumped next to him on the step, all perfect, all in one go. And at first, he isn’t sure what she’s doing, taking his hand in hers, though it clicks, quick, when she places his palm over her stomach, a nervous smile jumping in the corners of her mouth.

“Really?”

“I think so, took a test this morning.”

“Oh honey.” Wonder, perfect, preening wonder, and he’s already surging toward her to press a kiss dissolving in laughter to her lips, Andy breathing out a haughty we’ve got to stop, two was insane enough, but three? We’re goners, baby and not meaning it, at all, because they’re both smiling so big and nothing but warm, fingers still stained and scented with citrus, whispering love, whispering wonder to each other.

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1991

“Here, let me, I have a trick for it.” They should be studying, really. Finals loom, just a few more weeks, but the slow creep of senioritis, coupled with a beautiful stretch of weather, is making this last sprint to the finish awfully difficult. It seems like just about everyone is out on the quad today, in various states of undress, tank tops and shorts and bare feet on sprawled-out blankets. Andy lays next to him on their respective patch of grass, on her stomach, bare feet poised and swinging in the air, with her head propped in her hand, eyebrows raising over the tops of her sunglasses. She rolls the clementine she had been picking at into his hand, shifting onto her side to watch him work at it.

“You know what Eddie told me?’’

“What?”

“He’s not wearing anything under his robe for graduation.”

“Jesus Christ, he’s telling everyone that.”

“I told him I support his endeavors.”

“Don’t encourage him, he’ll just up the ante, and I’d rather not deal with my parents getting flashed by one of my best friends.”

“He wouldn’t.”

“Knowing Eddie, I wouldn’t rule anything out.” She laughs, oh please, Steve, still watching his hands as he finishes his work, leaving the peel in one long spiral, a simple pleasure.

“Hmm, impressive, bet you show that trick to all the girls.” Waggle of her eyebrows, though her snark is softened by her offering half of the clementine back to him. He grins with a sweet sour slice held between his molars, squinting in the bright haze of sun and warmth.

“Only the ones I really like, honey.”

#steve harrington #steve harrington fanfic #steve harrington fluff #steve harrington ficlet #steve harrington au #girl boy #steve harrington imagine

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atinylittlepain · 3 months

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Me Too

college!steve harrington x f!oc

part of the girl boy series

18+ references to smut, idiots in love, emotional constipation, strep throat, lovey doveys in general

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“Hmm.”

“Hmm?”

“That’s kind of interesting, don’t you think?”

“The colors are nice.”

“Nice.”

“What? They are. And hey, Robin told me to tell you to stop putting your name down on every silent auction sheet. She said people are noticing that one Andy Broder is trying to sweep the whole show.”

“Oh please, Steve, I can’t help it. The sad student artists look at me with their sad student artist eyes and I feel bad if I don’t put my name down, sue me for having a heart.”

“Can you afford to have a heart?” She scoffs, a little tug back when he tries to take the wine glass out of her hand, though she relents, her smile simpering while he finishes off the last sip.

“I’m only getting things started. Ten dollars, tops. I doubt I’ll win any of the pieces.” He’s hoping she’s right, because he’s not sure how they’ll get even one of the pottery sets she bid on back to her place if she does win. Sets of plates and bowls and goblets, because apparently this semester’s pottery class was really, really into making goblets. Robin has a set of two bowls and two goblets up for auction. Steve put down twenty dollars on it, to which Robin scoffed and told him you don’t count, you’re family.

“I guess we’ll see if your logic works.” Maybe he’s being a little much, his hand curling around the plush of her waist, wrapped up in a dark knit dress that’s scattering his mind just a little, pulling her into his side and soft murmuring want another glass? And her humming no, long walk home and all, her palm smoothing out beneath his sternum, warm brown nail polish that he watched her put on in a curl on her couch. Maybe a little much when he tips his chin to press a kiss just beneath her ear, warm rasp of did I tell you how good you look? She sighs, laughs a little, how very male gaze of you, baby, but thank you, and that thank you is soft, slight, a secret that makes his heart feather and fret against his ribs for a breath.

He gets to be a little much now, because they’re official now, a thing now. Had the conversation last weekend and he nearly pulled his hair out working up the nerve to tell her yes, old fashioned, yes, he wants that old fashioned thing with her, wants to be hers, and wants her to be his. And her eyes had widened, a slight blanching, before he realized that he was making it sound like the ring and the dress and the suit thing, quick back pedal, not quite that, at least not yet. But he left the not yet part out. And she had smiled, softened, collected his wrists in her hands to stop him from tugging at his hair, her thumbs stroking the quick jump of pulse beneath his skin. Yes, she told him, she had been wanting the same thing too, with him. So yeah, he gets to be a little much, his palm lingering on the hilt of her spine as they walk around the gallery, both of them tucking into the other. And when she ends up winning three of the bowl, plate, goblet sets she bid on for a grand total of thirty dollars, they take turns hauling the recycled moving box full of ceramics, switching off at every block and laughing at themselves, breaths puffing out like curled smoke in the cold night air.

“Eddie wouldn’t want a goblet, would he?”

“Actually, considering he takes his diet coke in a coffee mug, I think he’d probably be into it.”

“Great, he can have three of them.” They leave the box next to her front door, shrugging out of coats and shoes, intent on sleep after a late night that really shouldn’t have been a late night for either of them. Finals, the end of the semester, and it’s certainly feeling like it. He doesn’t mind though, all but setting up permanent shop with her in her apartment. Has a few hangers in her closet, and a drawer in her dresser, and Sylvia doesn’t even pay him any mind these days, padding right past him up to the box and sniffing a bit disinterestedly at a bowl.

No classes for the last week, just prep for exams and deadlines. They’ve spent the majority of their time in a quiet comfort on her couch studying and working on their respective coursework, only breaking for light touches and meals and the occasional walk amongst melting and refreezing snow.

All this time with her is making him a little giddy, a little greedy, already feeling an anticipatory ache for when he leaves on Friday with Eddie and Robin to drive back to Hawkins for the holidays. He had thought about it, he had, but he’d firmly decided it’d be too much to ask. Only just a thing, only just official, and he didn’t want to overstep, come on too strong, too bold. Learned that somewhere along the way, and he can’t remember whose bed he was warming when he did.

So he’ll go back to Hawkins, and Andy will go back to Boston, but not for another week because the less time I spend there, the better. He can understand that.

“What do you have tomorrow?”

“Oral exam for my global inequality class, and a paper to turn in for mental health policy. You?”

“Business policy and strategy paper, and a calc exam.”

“Hmm, better you than me, babe.” Steam starting to rise and fog in her bathroom and both of them stripped down to threadbare underwear, not trying to impress each other any more. She presses a quick kiss to the round of his shoulder and murmurs something that sounds like almost done into his skin. And he feels pathetic, pitiful over the fact that almost done makes his heart pinch and pull into a sort of nauseous swoop. It’s ridiculous, he knows, only a few weeks, he knows that too. But still, but still, he doesn’t want to be almost done.

Moving over and around each other in the bathroom, skin still damp from their shower, that oatmeal and chamomile soap she uses flooding his senses, and it feels like the most natural thing, like it has been like this all along. He lets his palm run up and down the track of her spine, feeling the notches through the thin fabric of her t-shirt while she sits up in bed, proofing her paper one final time, printed, with red pen poised. She won’t find anything to fix, he knows, worked hard on it all of yesterday and then they both trudged to the library to type up their respective work and print it out. And when she has decided that she is content with her work, she gets up and tucks it into a folder that she tucks into her bag. He watches the plush shake of her thighs, one-track mind and he’ll admit it, his hands finding bare skin when she comes back to bed, back to him. Curling close under the covers and maybe, maybe, he holds her a little closer, tucks his face into the stitching of her throat and breathes, and breathes to keep himself from saying words that wouldn’t be fair to say right now, not when he’s leaving tomorrow night.

They both sleep hard and late, and he’s pretty sure she meant to be up earlier, little snit, little snap when he wakes her up, her shoulders hiking up to her ears and she’s already out of bed and out of his hands before he can say anything. And he’s not sure what this is, a cool prickle of worry simmering and slipping up his spine as they both move through getting dressed, distant and silent and her hardly looking at him, and he doesn’t know what happened in the last twelve hours for her to change so much. Stress, he tells himself, she’s stressed, and frankly so is he, and they’re both tired, and they’re both running late, and that must be it.

“Are you gonna be around this afternoon?” She asks it light as air as she’s wrapping a scarf around her throat, more business associate than anything else and it almost makes him laugh.

“I, well, yeah, unless you don’t want me to be? But I’m leaving tonight, so.” The so feels lame even as he says it, maybe even a bit bitchy, her brows pulling together and then smoothing out all over again, unreadable.

“Okay, I know. So I’ll see you later then?” And there’s little room for an answer, already out the door, and ushering him out too, and he feels like he’s going to throw up even as his body does all the necessary things, down the stairs and out the door and it’s too late to say anything other than mmhmm because she’s already walking in the other direction to her exam that’s on that side of campus, away from his exam on this side of campus.

No, not how it went yesterday. Yesterday, he had almost been late to his accounting exam because they just couldn’t quite seem to let go of each other, slipping and skidding over icy sidewalks all wrapped up and laughing and whispering little luck to each other between kisses. Not like today, not how it went today. And maybe, he thinks, maybe this is just that thing that seems to happen to him every time. Maybe this is the getting tired of him. Maybe this is the leaving.

He sits for his exam, turns in his paper, goes back to his apartment to pack a bag for home, and he’s grateful that neither Robin nor Eddie are around so that they can’t clock the strange fugue state he’s sifting through. But he still returns to her apartment, that want to feel whatever this wound is ache a little more. And plainly, he still wants to see her.

There’s no answer when he knocks on her door, calls out her name, her real name, and it feels weird in his mouth because these days she’s honey, sometimes baby, but always honey. And it feels weird too, using the key she gave him for the first time, but there’s an admitted pang of worry flickering in his chest because she should definitely be back by now.

He’s greeted with the curl of her back, tucked into herself on the couch and perfectly unmoving. She still has her coat on and he’s never seen her like this before. He kneels down next to the couch, rests his palm on her shoulder and runs a soft track down to her elbow and back up again. And this time it is honey, quiet and almost cracking with how he whispers it, though she stirs, makes a noise that he thinks sounds a little like Sylvia, mmm?

She turns to look at him, eyes held in dark shadows, a little red, a little weepy, and he has to resist the urge to brush the back of his hand over her forehead because he’s pretty sure he knows what this is, pretty sure he’d find a little too much heat beneath her skin.

“I thought you’d already left.” And yeah, definitely what this is, her voice somehow dissolving and splitting into a gravelly rasp since this morning. She winces a little with the sound.

“You really think I’d leave without coming to see you first?”

“I don’t know, I was a dick to you this morning.”

“Yeah, you kinda were.” She sits up, and he has to resist the urge to help her, his hands settling instead on her knees, and there’s a guilty tuck to her chin, the fan of her lashes dropped down to her cheeks. His thumbs rub circles into her joints, something soothing, coaxing.

“I’m sorry, Steve, I was being stupid.” Her coat has shrugged down to hook around her elbows, a little pitiful, her palm curling at her throat like she could feel the ache through her skin.

“You’re sick.”

“Well that’s a little uncalled for, I think.”

“No, I mean like, you’re not feeling well, are you?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I’m just tired, need to sleep exams off for a few days.” Her eyes close when he cups her cheek in his palm, little lean into the touch while his fingers creep up to her temple, and his suspicions are confirmed, a thick wash of heat.

“Have you taken anything?”

“I took some advil when I got home.”

“Did it help?” She shrugs, a little, while he’s already made a decision. He asks if he can use her phone, really quick, honey, and she shrugs again, already slipping back in between asleep and awake with her head tipped back on the couch cushion. He calls his apartment and Eddie picks up, tells him that he and Robin are going to have to leave without him because he’s needed here. Eddie makes a joke about Lord and Lady Harrington throwing a fit and Steve sighs, not really caring about that. He’ll deal with them when he has to. And then he’s back in front of the couch and coaxing Andy up despite her quiet protests because he’s pretty sure they need to go to Urgent Care. And they go to Urgent Care, and she’s apologizing the whole time and asking doesn’t he need to go? No, he says, not going anywhere.

Strep throat, and he’s not surprised, and they catch another cab to stop at the pharmacy for her antibiotics. She keeps saying that she doesn’t want him to catch it before he goes home and he has to laugh because honey, if you have it I definitely have it, just a matter of time before I go down. And by the time they get back to her apartment, she seems to have accepted that he’s staying with a sort of sheepish acquiescence, lets him boss her around a little into a shower and then into bed, meds taken with a glass of water and her socked feet slipping against his ankles. She says sorry again into his chest, quiet and small, and he asks her what she’s saying sorry for.

“You should be with your family.”

“Nah, I like being here better.”

“Even though I sound like I have smoker’s lung?”

“It’s kinda hot, actually.”

“Sure, okay.” The slightest laugh that’s more like a caught breath, and then a long enough span of silence for him to think that she’s fallen asleep, but then.

“I really am sorry about this morning.”

“You weren’t feeling well.”

“I mean, yeah, but, I guess I thought it’d be easier.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re gonna think this sounds dumb.”

“Not with that sexy smoker’s lung rasp I’m not.” Trying to lighten it, lift it, but she scoffs, Steve, serious, not kidding, her eyes unwavering, mouth tucked in the slightest frown, washed thin and pale in the slants of moonlight.

“You weren’t even gone yet, and I was already missing you, and I felt insane for it.” He’s silent, a thick heat curling in his chest and blooming up and up and up, only feeling a little like an asshole when she says his name like a question, her hand curling in the fabric of his t-shirt. He has to clear his throat before he speaks.

“It’s the same for me too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, except I wasn’t a dick about it.” Not serious, and she knows it, nose scrunched and a roll of her eyes.

“You can make it up to me by taking me to Urgent Care in about two days when I start sounding like you.”

“Yeah, I can do that.”

“You should sleep, honey.”

“So should you.” She tucks back into his chest, easy, and he just hopes she can’t hear the catch and jolt of his heartbeat, because it’s the same for her as it is for him.

They don’t leave her apartment for three days, and when they finally do, it is, as he predicted, so that they can take him to the Urgent Care for the exact same thing she had. And by the time he’s halfway finished with his round of antibiotics and she’s done with hers, and they’re both starting to feel like actual real people again, it’s December 24th, and it’s become very clear that neither one of them is going home for the holidays.

He calls his mom, and his voice is still hoarse enough that she’s only mildly disappointed he won’t be home to make his requisite appearance at the family Christmas party. Meanwhile, Andy can hardly hold in a laugh at oh Steven, it’s not one of those, you know, sexually transmitted things, is it? No, mom, it’s not, yes, mom, merry Christmas. Andy’s conversation with her dad is even shorter, even curter, something about shipping presents, and her sisters asking questions. The youngest of five, she told him, more afterthought than anything else. And when they’ve both hung up there’s a giddy realization of their shared freedom, smiling at each other in her kitchen, crowded around the receiver hooked next to her fridge.

“Are we bad people for doing that?” Trying to be cute in his lean against the fridge, taking the phone out of her hand and hanging it back up on the wall, but he can’t quite fight off the urge to cough first, tucking his face into his elbow before looking at her again, smiling small.

“We’re sick, honey. Our hands are tied, nothing we can do.”

“Right, uh-huh. In that case, what do you want to do for dinner, my darling invalid?”

And so there is no tree, and there are no presents, and there is no family this Christmas. They order takeout from a Chinese place a few blocks away, hot and sour soup and fried rice and crab rangoons that Steve offers one of to Sylvia, curled up on the arm of the couch where they have their holiday meal. She sniffs it, holds it briefly between her teeth, then spits it out on the carpet, though she seems to thank him for his consideration with a slow twine between his legs when he gets up to throw it away.

They don’t get out of bed until the middle of the afternoon on Christmas day, Andy coaxing both of them into a shower, and then into real clothes, and they leave her apartment as the sun is starting to set, catch the train going toward Navy Pier, and brave the cold to walk around beneath the blossoming lights display. Both a good and bad idea, they return with a kicked-up cough shared between them, rattling lungs, rattling ribs, warmed up and smoothed out with tea and buttered toast for dinner. They go back to bed full and content, and sleep off what remains of their sickness.

The rest of that liminal time before the new year is spent simply, sweetly. They do a deep clean of everything, haul all their laundry down to her complex’s basement, him in a pair of her sweats and his own t-shirt, and her in an old flannel and a pair of his basketball shorts that are only just a little obscene because they’re too tight, you and your slutty waist are trying to kill me, nonsense, no sense. Afterward, when there’s a stack of fresh and folded clothes on her newly made bed, and the apartment smells like lemon and cold air from the window they left cracked, she kisses him again, and again, and again, in the kitchen until they’re both slumping down onto the checkerboard linoleum, sweet want, sweet melt, left panting and giggling in the aftermath.

And when New Year’s Eve arrives, neither of them make it to midnight, dead to the world in a tangle on her couch, both of them still a little snotty, a little sleep-worn. He wakes up early in the first morning of 1991 with a stiff neck and pins and needles in his foot where he’s pretty sure Sylvia is sleeping. Andy, still asleep, with her leg slung over his and her shoulder tucked in beneath his, and he decides now would be the perfect time to try those words out. So he does, words that have only been offered to Robin, or Eddie when he’s really drunk, for many years. He whispers them like he’s getting away with something, and she doesn’t even stir, and he’s grateful for that as heat blooms and buoys in his chest.

The next time, he’ll say those words a little louder. He’s pretty sure she’ll say them back.

#steve harrington #steve harrington fanfic #steve harrington angst #steve harrington smut #steve harrington fluff #steve harrington au #steve harrington fanfiction #steve harrington fic #steve harrington series #girl boy

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