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#the fallen king and the king of the freaks
tartarusknight · 1 year
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The Fallen King and the King of the Freaks | Part 1
Ao3 Link | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16
Steve didn't have the heart to tell the kids about how Billy didn't back off after Max's threat. Not when they seemed to look up to him for some reason. So, instead, he stayed out of Billy's way as much as he could. But it seemed like the man was hunting him down. It got to the point that Steve dropped basketball.
Steve got used to being slammed into lockers and taunts from the people he used to friends with. So what if he wasn't top dog anymore? So what if he didn't have any friends his own age? So what if Nancy dumped him (ripped his heart out and stomped on it with bullshit)? So what if Billy left bruises on his body with well time jabs and kicks? Steve was an adult he could handle this...
However, as he was shoved into the janitors closet and hearing the lock click behind him, he thought maybe it was getting worse. He slammed his shoulder to the door but it didn't budge and he heard Billy's stupid laughter outside. "Enjoy your alone time, princess," Billy taunted.
Steve slid to the ground and tried not to panic. He wasn't going to freak out just because it's dark and he doesn't have anything to protect himself. He really wasn't going to. He wasn't that much of a loser that he was scared of the dark.
Then he started to cry. He normally was a silent crier, but normally, he wasn't struggling to breathe. He curled around himself and tried not to think of creatures with mouths that took up their entire head and opened like flower petals. Really, he was trying. But Steve just couldn't focus.
There was a soft voice outside the door that shook him from his isolation. "Hey man, you alright?" A dude questioned, and Steve tried to focus so he could answer. "Imma pick the lock, just gimme a minute. I've got ya," the voice was smooth, and Steve squeezed his eyes shut. He didn't really want to be seen at the moment, but he wanted out more.
The door clicked, and Steve crawled back so it could open. Eddie Munson was crouched there, a few things in his hands that he probably used to pick the lock. The known drug dealer looked frozen in shock at the sight of Steve, and Steve basically plowed into him to get out of the room quickly.
His brain was fried, and he really wanted to cling to Munson and let the calm voice focus him. Instead, he backed off and pressed his back to the wall, hanging his head between his thighs. "Thanks," he mumbled and hid his tear stained face from the other.
"Uh, it's um, not a problem... Usually, I'm helping others after you pick on them, though," Eddie's voice wasn't as soft as it had been. It made Steve wince and curl up tighter on himself. Of course, Munson would hate him...
"Never shoved anyone in janitor closets before," he said instead.
"Ahh, lockers then."
Steve shook his head, "You could really hurt someone doing that. What if no one found them? Or if they passed out or something?" He pointed out and finally looked up at the other boy. Eddie was just staring at him like he's never seen Steve before. "I never wanted to hurt anyone," Steve breathed out, but it came out more snappish than he meant it to.
"Right... so how come King Steve was shoved into the closet?" Eddie questioned and Steve looked away from him. "Did you sleep with someone's girl-"
"Jesus man, I get it! You hate me but can you fucking stop? Not everything that happens to me is my fault, okay?" Steve snapped, and Eddie flinched back. "Fuck, stop acting like I'll hurt you, Jesus. Billy's just an asshole who needs a punching bag, okay? And he learned that he can take he down, okay?" He gestured to the slowly healing bruises on his face.
Eddie was staring at him, "why you?"
Steve scoffed, "cause he can't take it out on his sister anymore? Cause he's an asshole with mommy issues? Or maybe just because he knows I won't fight back! I don't know, I'm not in his brain! I don't know what he thinks when he trips me in the hallway or throws a ball at my head in the gym!"
Eddie blinks and gets up to his feet, but then he holds out his hand in offering. "Come on, man." Steve takes it and lets Eddie pull him to his feet. He's still a little shaky, but he manages to stay on his feet. "I've been known to adopt lost sheep," he's guided away towards the exit and he's so shocked he doesn't fight it.
"Thought you hated me," He points out.
Eddie laughs, "eh, you can just buy me dinner." Eddie pauses for a moment, but Steve is already nodding. It makes Eddie grin, and he throws an arm around his shoulder. "Welcome to the land of the outcasts. Here I'm the king." He gestures to the group of people smoking by one of the picnic benches outside.
"You'll lose a few cool-dude points if you're seen with us," Eddie smiles like it's funny but Steve just feels bad. These were the people he never stood up for. These were the people he never looked at, just ignored.
Steve smiles and looks at Eddie, "you inviting me into the Munson cult?"
Eddie's grin goes sharp, "You gotta earn that. I'm offering you a starting point."
Steve thinks about how lonely he's been and how kind Eddie's voice had been. "So, how do I climb up the ladder? My only skills are giving rides, basketball, and hair."
"Don't forget the Harrington charm," Eddie grins and it's kinder. "Show us yourself, and we'll see from there." He whispers before turning to the group of people.
"Gentlemen, we have a traveler from the halls of royalty! He's come to bless us with his presence!" Eddie's voice is filled with so much emotion. Steve almost misses the way the group tenses up.
Steve might have a while to go before they trust them. But he thinks maybe it could be worth it. Especially as Eddie looks back at him with a smile that makes Steve's stomach flip. "Uh, hey," he smiles awkwardly, wiggling his fingers in greeting.
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beastking-golion · 1 year
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I could be the most fucked up Sidestep in existence, but there is no way in hell I'm going to mistreat the Rat King.
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steddierecs · 8 months
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The Fallen King and the King of the Freak by Knight_of_Tartarus
Word count: 111,214 (incomplete) / 38/? Rating: Not Rated Trigger and content warnings: eating disorder, parental abuse, sexual harassment,
Summary: Steve has to deal with the fallout of Season 2.
New nightmares, losing Nancy, kids who he's willing to die for, and Billy's new hatred towards him. He went from the top to the bottom in the school and he doesn't know how bad it is until Eddie Munson is the one that steps in to help him. And maybe he wants the help and maybe even some friends.
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sp0o0kylights · 5 months
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Steve Harrington was wearing a Hellfire t-shirt.
It was far too tight on him, the name of the club stretched wide over his chest. The sleeves dug into his biceps, making them pop even more than they usually did, and that was before he crossed his arms. 
Worse?
It was short.
Which meant the damn shirt was constantly riding up to give everyone a nice show of the smattering of hair that trailed down past the band of Harrington's jeans. 
The same hair that Eddie was determinedly not looking at. 
“Henderson, a moment?” He crooked a finger, a smile on his face that was more feral than welcoming. 
Rather than cower or even acknowledge that Eddie was two seconds away from murder, Dustin just gave him a gummy grin, all too pleased with himself and his scheme. 
“Sure Eddie. Steve, don't just stand there, go help set the booth up!” Dustin gestured to Hellfire’s sad little table, crammed all the way in the back of the gym. 
Jeff and Gareth both reacted to the suggestion like a rabid squirrel had been set upon them, nervously inching towards the other side of the booth as Harrington sighed and--shockingly--did as he was told.
‘What,’ Eddie thought angrily, ‘in the everloving fuck.’
“Do you guys mind if I set this down on the table?” Eddie heard Harrington ask as he stormed away, Dustin on his heel. 
They wandered just around the corner, out of sight and hopefully, out of the fallen king’s hearing range.
Eddie wasn't sure if Harrington would try and white knight the very much deserved dressing down he was about to give. 
Didn’t want to chance it, considering the downright weird relationship he had with Hellfire's freshmen.
(While he’d heard many a tale at his table regarding King Steve since the newest recruits had joined Hellfire, most of them dissolved into arguments without ever really going anywhere.
 Best anyone could figure out was that Dustin and Lucas had a bad case of hero worship, while Mike owned a begrudging amount of respect that hailed from a series of misadventures. 
The very same misadventures that, despite all protests to the contrary, was clearly some sort of babysitting gig for Harrington.) 
Either way, plenty of the King’s court would have loved to take this opportunity to fuck with Hellfire.
Given that Henderson was absolutely too old to require a babysitter at fourteen, Eddie would bet his lunch money that was what Steve was here to do.
Something the club couldn’t afford since they were forever and always two seconds away from being stripped of club status and banned from school grounds. 
“I would love to know what went through that all A’s brain of yours when I said,” Eddie whirled on Dustin when they were firmly in the clear, voice low and furious.  “no Henderson, do not invite King Steve to help, he is an invading force and would ruin our peaceful kingdom!?”
He clasped his hands behind his back before leaning into Dustin’s face. “Because clearly whatever you heard wasn’t that.” 
To Eddie’s continued frustration and confusion, Dustin did not treat this like the threat it was. 
None of the freshmen had ever truly treated Eddie like a threat--had somehow skipped that part of the usual onboarding ritual entirely.
Eddie, town freak and drug dealer, who had cultivated his looks and craziness to such a degree that most everyone steered clear, wasn’t used to it. 
Everyone had been afraid of him at some point in this shitty school. Jeff, Gareth, hell even half the staff--and that the dorky trio of fourteen year old's clearly thought this all was play-acting made his eye twitch.
Even if it was--maybe, sometimes--welcome. 
“I know what you said, but I’m telling you I’m right.” Dustin argued immediately, and oh God, he was using that tone again. 
A hand went up into the space between them and Eddie groaned aloud, knowing what was coming.
“First,” Dustin ticked a finger up, “Hellfire really needs the money. Even thirty dollars would get us new figures, but more than that, if we don’t fundraise, we can’t go to Gen Con!” 
Dustin's eyes bored into Eddie’s, full of fire and conviction
“Yes,” Eddie said through gritted teeth, “but--”
“Second!” Dustin cut him off, and God the little shit even threw him a look while he did it, like Eddie was the one being ridiculous here!
“We had to fight just to get our table! Principal Higgins was in algebra today practically begging the mathletes to show up, but then tried to tell us we couldn't be here? That’s messed up!” 
As if denying them a spot to fundraise was the worst thing that asshole had ever done.
Eddie sighed, breath blasting out of his mouth like a dragon’s. 
“Because people think we’re freaks and satanists, Henderson. You don’t typically invite freaks and satanists to the school’s annual Holiday Bazaar. Especially not when all the local moms are paying to hawk their bullshit crafts and tupperware!” 
It was more than that of course. The Hawkins High Holiday Bazaar was a tradition spanning several years now. Starting in the gym and spilling clear into the parking lot, everyone from local artists to even some local shops came to host a small table for the day, thus growing the event from a small school fundraiser to a Hawkins' “must-do.” 
Half the fucking town was here to sell, and the other half was here to shop, which meant Principle Higgins had wanted Hellfire banned from the fucking premise. 
Eddie had been forced to pull out one of his trump cards he’d been saving--blackmail on Higgins that related to the man’s not--so--legal addiction to Percocet that he relied on Reefer Rick for. 
(And bless Rick, that hadn’t been the only tidbit he’d shared with Eddie about Higgins. That information, however, Eddie needed just so the asshat wouldn’t give him the boot from school entirely.) 
The only reason Eddie had pulled it out to secure their rightful spot, was because of Gen Con. 
It was Hellfire's White Whale, their grand adventure, and this was going to be his year to take his friends on one last epic quest to make memories of a lifetime surrounded by people who understood them.
Come hell or high water, Eddie was going to Gen Con--but being able to fundraise by selling wares and baked goods at the stupid Holiday Bazaar would go a long way to help.
Even if he had to listen to the band repeatedly play ear-bleeding renditions of Christmas songs.
“All the clubs get to have a table, and we’re a club!” Dustin continued, like it was that simple. “But you know, I get it. We look scary.” 
He gestured down to his own Hellfire shirt, before gesturing towards Eddie’s entire outfit.
Like Eddie didn't know what he looked like, let alone that he'd made this outfit specifically to scare people away from him.
(And maybe add some rockstar flair to this dinky little hick town.)
“You know who doesn’t look scary?”
Dustin held out his hands and swiveled his body like he was presenting a prize instead of gesturing in the vague direction of; 
“Steve!”
Eddie’s left eye twitched.
‘You can't kill him, you need his character for the campaign.’ He told himself firmly, even if he envisioned strangling Dustin like a chicken.
Cartoon squawking and all. 
“The King isn’t going to help us fundraise, Dustin.” Eddie said, in an effort to break down why Harrington couldn't be here. “He's just going to cause us problems that we can’t afford to have.” 
So many problems, half of which Eddie couldn't think of because if he did, he'd start spiraling.
“Really? Because as you keep saying, Steve used to be the King. People love him, Eddie! Mom’s love him.”
Eddie had pulled himself black up to his proper height a while ago, and now rocked back on his heels while he ran a hand down his face.
There was no getting through to Henderson when he was like this. 
Not unless Eddie really lost it, and it was practically club lore that he only lost it when someone missed an important game. 
One cannot keep a herd of sheep if their flock is terrified of them, after all. 
(“Perhaps you’re just a giant fucking softie.” Tiff, one of Hellfire’s graduating members, told him once. “Honestly dude, I bet you throw up stuffing.”
“Shut up Tiffany, your choker is on backwards again.” He'd spat back, completely offended and not at all trying to distract from how true that was.) 
“We can’t be satanic if Steve’s the one selling cookies!” Dustin finished doggedly. 
“We’re not even selling cookies--that’s not the point!”” Eddie shook his head, hair flying. He was not going to be sidetracked, he wasn’t!
 “Harrington is going to end up siding with all the moms about how we’re all wasting time with D&D, if he even spends the whole time at the table. Is that what you want?” 
He stuck out a ringed finger, poking at Dustin’s chest.
“Every single person who comes by our table has to be convinced D&D is a writing and math based game. Good for the mind and souls of growing, impressionable children. A game that got a bad rep because of  a few silly images.” 
A pitch he and Tiff had come up with during the third or fourth time they had to convince an adult that no, just because their shirts had a dragon on it, didn’t mean they were summoning demons in the drama room. 
“Harrington can’t do that because Harrington doesn’t even know how to play!” 
This Eddie punctuated by throwing his hands in the air. 
Given the startled look of the mother-daughter duo passing him by, clearly was louder than he’d intended--but screw it!
He was right!
Hellfire was in a precarious position to both fundraise and do a little damage control among the slightly smarter members of this shithole small town, and Harrington rolling his eyes and gossiping about how stupid it was would hinder that.
“Okay, first of all, Steve’s played D&D with me and he didn’t even kill his character.” Dustin said it like he was unveiling a smoking gun and not lying through his ass--which Eddie would absolutely be calling him on the second he was done talking. 
Because King Steve? Play D&D?
'Ha!'
“And he’s not gonna say shit because we--me, and Lucas and even Mike!--asked him to help, and he helps when its serious. I know you have some weird grudge with him, but I’m telling you Eddie he’s our golden ticket to Gen Con!” 
“You’re killing me. You are standing here, acting as a friend, when you are bringing a-- a dark force into the midst our of mission--” Eddie hissed, because he was losing the fucking fight and he knew it.
Dustin Henderson was not a man easily swayed. 
Had never been, even when the odds were stacked against him (and Grant and Gareth were howling in his ear.) 
The set of his shoulders and the glint of the little shithead’s eye meant Eddie wouldn’t be able to use him to oust Harrington--if he even could get him out without the dick causing a massive scene anyway. 
As always when outgunned, Eddie flipped to dramatics.
“Betrayed! By my own chosen heir no less!” He moaned, pressing the back of his hand over his eyes as Dustin scoffed.
"Don’t be so dramatic! Steve will help, I promise! Just don’t be a dick to him.” 
 Conversation apparently over, Dustin turned around to head back to the table
Snidely, he added over his shoulder: “Plus we’ve all caught on to the heir thing Eddie. You tell everyone that so they do what you want.” 
The dick.
“You’re too fucking smart for your own good. I’m gonna start feeding you paint chips to bring that IQ down.” Eddie muttered angrily as Dustin went back to their little table.
He gave himself a moment to get his shit together and stomp a foot like a child when Dustin was around the corner and thus couldn’t witness it, before following his wayward sheep back.
Could only pray to any deity listening that Henderson’s meddling didn’t blow up in Hellfire’s face.
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lazerswordweilder · 1 month
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There’s a prompt I’ve heard from at least two seperate people, Danny gets adopted by the Waynes as a meta and the power suppression cuff hurts.
Okay, I need to sleep so let’s do this fast. No matter what anyone at Wayne Manor did, all Danny would do for the first day would be trying to get the cuff off, no one understood why, by the second day they got worried, a civilian shouldn’t go this long without food.
By the third day Danny realises he’s going to have a serious problem if he doesn’t act soon, he gets Bruces attention (this is the first ‘sane’ thing he’s done since he arrived so Bruce agrees to talk happily). Bruce doesn’t expect Danny to make him swear that nothing is recording this, that no one will hear what Danny says here, Bruce is concerned but not normal enough to see too much of an issue in this, so he agrees. Danny says this ‘I’m not human. I’m pretending to be a meta because the genocide of my entire species is legal and I’m too weak to fight the hunters right now.’ that alone was enough for Bruce to freak out, Danny really didn’t have to keep talking ‘My powers don’t work anywhere near the way a metas would, I don’t know why the cuff is working but you need to get it off. The powers are a part of me, they’re connected to my core, and the cuffs are hurting my core. I’ll die for good if you keep this on, it’s luck I’ve survived this long with the cuff on.’ Bruce decided to just unlock the cuff at this point, and immediately realised Danny was right.
For the first time that feral panic in his eyes was gone, he floated into the air, legs morphing into a tail, and immediately looks so much more comfortable than he had- again since Bruce had met him. He looked healthier and he seemed to- no, he was glowing. He took a deep breath in and the air he breathed out was icy and cold, Bruce had been told Dannt seemed to have some ice powers. The powers were obviously part of him.
‘First things first, legal genocide of your entire species? Was that a lie to get me to take the cuff off?’ Bruce asked hopefully, Danny actually laughed, revealing fangs
‘I wish- I’d love that to be true.’ Danny said
For just a slip second something else flashed across Dannys face, pain and sadness, like a king carrying his kingdom, like a soldier carrying his fallen armies legacy.
‘Could you stop it?’ Danny asked, Bruce nodded quickly
‘I will stop it.’ Bruce promised, Danny relaxed, he sighed and he looked just a little lighter
‘They’re safe.’ he whispered, happiness and relief obvious on his face ‘My friad, my haunt, my kingdom.’ Danny muttered
‘Fraid? Haunt? Kingdom?’ Bruce asked
‘Oh, just our species terminology, the closest translations would be family and territory.’ Danny said
‘What about kingdom?’ Bruce asked
‘What? No I meant the normal definition for that, I became king after the whole Pariah incident last year.’ Danny said it casually, in a tone Bruce knew well, the classic: this is not normal and I’m deeply traumatised about it, let’s pretend it’s no big deal.
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hazbinwhoree · 3 months
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The Adam Masterlist
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A/N: Red = Smut
Constantly being updated
The Devil works hard but I work harder
Chapter Stories
Guardian Angel 1/3
Guardian Angel 2/3
Guardian Angel 3/3
Adam’s Sinner 1/3
Adam’s Sinner 2/3
Adam’s Sinner 3/3
Milk & Cookies 1/2
Milk & Cookies 2/2
The Third Wife 1/2
The Third Wife 2/2
Come Inside 1/2
Come Inside 2/2
Failed 3 For 3 1/2
Failed 3 For 3 2/2
Oneshots
Adam x F!Reader Smut
Jealousy, Jealousy
An Angel & An Overlord
Sensitive Wings
Fucking the Guitarist
Fallen Angel
Virginity
PTSD
Not Today
Shower Sex
Sharing (is Caring)
The Incident
Asmodeus’ Daughter
Hands
20 Years in Eternity
I Wanna Be Yours
Oxytocin
Stay With Me
Hangout or Hookup?
Inches
Father Adam
Too Far
You Catch More Flies With Honey
Tails
My Bandmate’s Sister
I Was In A Band
Consent King
Father of the Year
Panties Thief
Peak Orgasm
Short Oneshots
Moronsexual
Brat
Before It All Went Wrong
Made With Love
I Love You All The Same
Happy Birthday
Ugly
Niceness Ploy
Headcanons
General Adam Headcanons
General Adam Headcanons pt.2
Adam’s Sensitive Wings
Adam Comforting Reader
Protective Adam
Adam x Insecure Reader
420 with Adam
Gay Panic
Adam Receiving a Gift
Domestic Life
Platonic!Adam w/ Child!Reader
Crush
Platonic!Adam w/ Teen!Reader
Adam x Seraphim Reader
Low Sex Drive
Freak
Toys
Toys pt.2
Caught
Period Sex
Adam x Elysia!Reader
Consent is Key, Kids
Adam x Reader w/ a Bad Period
Adam x Affectionate Reader
No Touching Challenge
Drunk Adam Headcanons
Male Reader
Adam x Cocky M!Reader
Adam x Exorcist M!Reader
Adam x Innocent M!Reader
Extermination & Mistakes
Oblivious
Cocky Bastard
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tarot-archives · 17 days
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soldiers are outside the inn. it irks you to have your home surrounded by security. but then there’s laios, who’s putting his things in crates as he’s going to leave you for his golden castle. that’s right, a freaking castle. just a few days ago he was made king after conquering the dungeon. rumors were flying all around your inn. how he was a prince from a distant nation. how laios had supreme charisma and strength.
they don’t know him like how you do. laios is a ditz who gets distracted at his personal items, his memorabilia.
and you’re not usually one to call him things, but the soldiers were getting on your nerves. too much so that you’re calling him a nuisance. laios sits around in his chair, reading a book from his collection. he doesn’t have objective permanence whatsoever. or was this the hurt talking? as unrecognized loved tasted bitter in your tongue so you spout out words never mean. whatever it was, he needs to go. he should leave you, get married to some damn nobility, then let you rot by yourself!
you stomped all the way to his cabinet. you should pack his things so he could leave as soon as possible. the bag one of the shelf was too far to reach, your maximum tip toe height was barely getting there. but just as you were pulling on its string, laios shouts.
“look out!” he uses his body as a shield from the fallen object perched on the highest ledge. you were too startled to speak from the shock. yeah, shock from getting blunt force trauma, but also from how close laios is to you.
laios is quick. you didn’t even see him move, and now you have laios towering over you in a protective stance with one arm pulling you towards him. you didn’t even register that the soft surface your face was pulled in so intimately against was laios. the king leans away, gentle and cautious, as if you’re like a fragile dungeon artifact.
“are you alright?” his hands cup your cheek to check for any bumps or lacerations. “tell me where it hurts. i know basic healing magic.”
—thump-thump—
“will you take responsibility?” pushing all thoughts of embarrassment aside, you lean into the hand holding your cheek, “can you heal a broken heart laios?”
heat rised from his cheeks. he was about to reply, but the moment was cut short by his soldier knocking down on the door, wanting to know the well being of their king.
those damn soldiers…
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feralxsteddie · 1 year
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Blah blah blah something about Steve and Eddie going out on a date to the movies or smth, they're walking down the street and get stopped by a small group of former jocks Steve used to run with years ago
Something something they jeer and laugh at their fallen King, stooping so low as to associate himself with town trash ect- saying that Tommy knew he was right to dump Steve to the curb, he tried to continue to be his friend but then Steve had to go and turn freak on him and- and-
The mean girl just jumps right out of Steve's skin, he doesn't throw a punch or spit on their shoes . He turns to them, partially shielding Eddie with hands on his hips and signature "devil may fucking care" bored expression on his face.
'Tell Hagan that if he's dying to suck my dick as much as he's always wanted to, then to get in line, that goes for the rest of you too- congrats! We all peaked in highschool so you don't have any new fucking material.'
Then he smiles, does a little wave with a wiggle of his fingers, then continues walking off. Leaving a shocked but also thoroughly impressed Eddie behind to pick up his jaw and follow after him, not before flipping off the group that became frozen by Steve's whole ice queen bit. Because even after everything, Harrington might not be the king anymore, but he's still untouchable to the lesser characters of Hawkins.
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solarmorrigan · 5 months
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For the dialogue prompt, how about “What happened doesn’t change anything” for either Steddie or Newmann?
Thank you!
Hello hello hello I finally have something for you! I chose Steddie for this one, since I was on a roll. I hope this suits!
[post-S2 Steddie AU; CW: Outing, transphobia, some internalized transphobia; soft ending guaranteed, though]
-
When he sees Hagan meandering over towards them in the parking lot after school, his queen bee tagalong, Perkins, in tow, Eddie knows nothing good is going to follow. The way he feels Steve shift beside him says that he suspects much the same. The rest of the Hellfire guys, all gathered around Eddie’s van, talking and joking before heading home, have fallen silent.
It’s a small consolation that Hagan isn’t trailing Hargrove; since putting Steve in the hospital (briefly, Steve always interjects) last November, Hargrove has mostly given him—and the members of the Hellfire Club, once Steve had been taken into their fold—a fairly wide berth. Hagan, however, has had no compunctions about hassling Steve whenever he gets a bug up his ass about something, and he’s only become nastier since he started toadying for Hargrove.
So Eddie expects trouble, but he hadn’t expected–
Hagan starts small, crowing about how Steve has finally found his rightful place: among the freaks. Steve doesn’t give anything away, no displeasure, no anger, just bored indifference – the same mask he’s always hidden behind (the one Eddie had learned pretty quickly to see past, once he knew what to look for). But Hagan pushes.
“I guess the freaks already have a king,” Hagan snipes, cutting a glance at Eddie, “but I’m sure he needs a lady to rule by his side, right, Stevie?”
It seems like an unoriginal sort of dig—calling Steve a girl, how creative—except Steve goes pale. The mask slips, showing wide and frightened eyes for just a moment, but for Hagan, who’s known Steve for years, it’s long enough. He knows he’s hit something good.
“Do all your new little friends know, Stevie-boy? What makes you fit right in with them?” Hagan glances around the group, apparently enjoying the fact that if looks could kill, he’d be dead four times over. Then he leans in and practically spits at Steve, “Do they know that they got into your pants, you’d be less of a King Steve and more of a Queen Stacy?”
And that does it – shatters Steve’s mask so thoroughly that he actually takes a step back, staring at Hagan with a kind of disbelieving betrayal frozen on his face.
The full meaning of the words hits Eddie about three seconds before Hagan hits the side of the van, one of Eddie’s hands fisted in the front of his t-shirt and the other held firm at the base of his throat – not hurting, exactly, but heavily implying that he could.
Eddie doesn’t even have to reach for one of the many theatrical voices he uses to rile people up or cow them into submission; he’s so thoroughly taken by a type of rage he hasn’t let himself give into in a long time that his tone comes out perfectly threatening all on its own.
“If you ever repeat what you just said to another person, I will find out, and I will make your life a living hell,” he hisses.
Somewhere behind him, someone—it might be Jeff, though Eddie isn’t sure—clears their throat, and when Eddie tosses a glance over his shoulder, he finds the rest of Hellfire standing firm at his back (even tiny underclassman Gareth, with his arms crossed and the meanest look on his face the poor kid can muster).
“Ah, my apologies,” Eddie says as he faces front again, flashing a manic little grin, “we will find out. And we’ll ruin your life, Hagan. Same goes for your girlfriend.”
Perkins, who had been standing off to the side as the snickering peanut gallery right up until Eddie had pinned Hagan to the side of the van, makes a choked noise of offense that goes entirely ignored.
“Tell me you understand, Tommy-boy.” Eddie punctuates the command with a flex of his fingers near Hagan’s throat, until Hagan reluctantly nods, and Eddie releases him. “Glad we’re in agreement.”
Hagan and Perkins hightail it the other side of the parking lot, leaving them be with nothing more than a nasty look from Perkins, but no one is much in the mood to chat after that. No one really knows what to say – except Steve, who offers a quiet thanks to the rest of the guys and, having caught a ride in with Eddie that morning, then asks to be taken home.
Even with the radio playing quietly as Eddie drives, the atmosphere in the van feels silent and stifling.
Asking Steve if he’s alright feels like kind of a ridiculous move. Eddie wouldn’t be alright if he was in Steve’s position – hell, Eddie’s not alright. He’s pissed. But from the way Steve is sitting rigidly in the passenger seat, staring out the window like Eddie is driving him to his execution, Eddie’s anger—even on his behalf—isn’t what he needs right now.
Slowly, Eddie forces himself to let it go (for now, at least for now) and follow the familiar roads home.
It feels perfectly natural to simply head back to his place, where they’d been planning to go before that shitshow of a confrontation, though the surprise on Steve’s face when they pull up to the trailer says that he’d thought otherwise.
“You could’ve just taken me back to my house. I wouldn’t– I’d get it,” he says, and Eddie frowns at him.
“Did you want to go back to your house? We can hang out there if you want, I just figured…” Eddie tilts his head regarding him carefully. “You seem more comfortable here.”
Steve stares at him for a long moment, blank and uncertain, before he breaks back into motion with a shrug. “Okay,” he says, moving to get out of the van.
They head inside and nod a quick hello to Wayne, who looks like he’s just woken up in preparation for his shift, and then they go straight back to Eddie’s room. Eddie’s bag goes on the desk, but Steve’s goes by the door. Eddie sits down on the bed (admittedly one of the few places to sit, but also an invitation for Steve to come sit next to him) but Steve – Steve hesitates before leaning up against the wall, by the door with his bag, arms crossed and gaze cast towards the floor.
He looks ready to run at any moment, and Eddie sighs. This thing between them is new – so new that they’ve been afraid to put a label to it, dancing around each other uncertainly for months before sharing their first kiss barely a month ago. They’ve spent almost every available moment since with their hands on each other in some way or another, though Steve has been a bit skittish about moving past making out (Eddie had thought that maybe it was the unfamiliarity of being with another guy, but he thinks he might have a better understanding of the picture now).
Eddie doesn’t want to break things by pushing too hard, but somehow, he thinks leaving it unaddressed would be worse.
“Look, we don’t have to talk about it,” he says, watching Steve, though Steve still isn’t looking back, “but if you want to…”
Steve shrugs. “I wasn’t hiding it from you,” he says, finally glancing up at Eddie. “I mean, I was, but not– I was going to tell you.”
“You don’t owe me any kind of explanation,” Eddie says.
“You would’ve found out eventually, either way.” Steve lets out a sound that suggests he may have been trying to laugh. “But it was – I should’ve been the one to tell you. That was – that was mine to tell.”
A little bit of Eddie breaks as Steve’s voice does. He’s almost vibrating with the desire to hold and to reassure, to go over to where Steve is standing, still propped against the wall, practically curling in on himself (trying to make himself smaller), but he’s not sure how well it would be received. He tries words, instead.
“Steve, I’m so sorry–”
“That was the one thing,” Steve snaps, anger tearing across his tone, “the one thing Tommy would never touch, the one thing that was off limits, even he knew– and he just–” As quickly as it had come, the anger goes, taking Steve’s energy with it. He presses the heels of his palms into his eyes and lets his hands slide down to cover his face; when he speaks again, he sounds small. “I wasn’t ready.”
Eddie couldn’t keep himself from crossing the room if he’d tried – though isn’t trying, after that. He’s up off the bed and into Steve’s space before he’s even realized, and it’s probably only his proximity that allows him to hear what Steve says next.
“I’m not ready for things to change between us.”
“Steve,” Eddie says, low and careful, “what happened doesn’t change anything.”
Steve pulls his hands away from his face with a derisive little huff of a laugh. His cheeks are red and his eyes are bright; he’s not crying, but it looks like a near thing.
“It’s – like, I get it. You’re fully into guys, and I’m…” He waves his hands down at himself, sharp and frustrated. “Most people wouldn’t call me a real guy, if they knew.”
“Since when am I most people?” Eddie asks. “You say you’re a guy, you’re a real guy, fucking end of. Anyone who thinks otherwise can fuck off.”
Steve scoffs, rolling his eyes, clearly trying to hold back a much more emotional reaction, and Eddie chances resting his hands on Steve’s shoulders. Steve doesn’t move away, even eases a little into the touch when Eddie starts circling his thumbs at the skin right where his shirt collar ends.
“You don’t have to believe me right now,” Eddie says softly. “But I like you, Steve. I like you, andI’m gonna stick around and prove it to you.”
Something about the declaration makes Steve’s eyes snap right to Eddie’s, searching, anxious and cautiously hopeful, and Eddie lets him look. Whatever he’s after, maybe he finds it, because he uncurls from himself a little after that, just enough to lean in for a hesitant kiss that becomes much more certain when Eddie himself doesn’t hold back.
Eddie pulls Steve back over to the bed after that, poking and prodding him around until they’re both settled, Eddie’s back to the pillows and Steve’s back to Eddie’s chest (Steve’s never said as much, but Eddie’s gathered that this is one of his favorite positions to cuddle in; he doubts if Steve’s spent much time being the little spoon).
“Tell me something else,” Eddie says, once he’s got his arms wrapped securely around Steve’s waist.
“What?” Steve asks.
“Tell me something that you want me to know.” Eddie leans forward to press a kiss to Steve’s temple. “Anything.”
For a moment, Steve is quiet, thinking as he traces absent patterns over Eddie’s forearms. “I could tell you why I picked Steve,” he says finally.
“If you want to, I’d love to hear it,” Eddie says.
“It wasn’t because it was sort of close to my… old name. That was actually kind of a coincidence.” Steve lets his head fall back against Eddie’s shoulder, the tension that’s been wound through him for the last hour finally starting to ease. “Steven was my grandad’s name.”
“Yeah?” Eddie prompts softly.
“Yeah. My mom’s dad. I used to spend a lot of time over at his house when I was a kid. Before he died. I kind of got the feeling he liked me more than my parents did.” Eddie gives Steve a squeeze around the middle. “But he used to tell me all these stories about fighting in World War II. Probably not very age-appropriate, now that I think about it, but at the time I really ate it up.
“He didn’t really, like… glorify it, I don’t think? He just kind of told me what happened, good or bad, and whatever the story was, I always thought he sounded, y’know – strong and brave. And when I wanted to pick a new name…” Steve shrugs against Eddie. “I kind of hoped he wouldn’t mind sharing his with me.”
“Bet he’d be honored,” Eddie says, giving Steve another little squeeze.
“Some days I’m not so sure,” Steve says quietly.
“Well I am. I’ll just have to stick around and prove that to you, too,” Eddie says decisively.
Briefly, Steve’s hands tighten where they rest on Eddie’s arms. “I like the sound of that,” he says, and Eddie turns so he can press another kiss to the side of Steve’s head.
“Good,” he says. “Me too.”
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tartarusknight · 1 year
Text
The King of the Freaks | Pt 4
(Yes I am too lazy to keep writing that long title so it’s been changed from now on...)
Ao3 Link | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15
Eddie was kinda pissed as he stabbed at the food on his tray. "You sure they said we can't?" Gareth question, and he sounded just as Eddie felt.
"They said that we couldn't do this week," Eddie said again, and he glanced up as Steve moved to sit down next to Jeff. He was pulling something out of his backpack and it was the first time since that first time that Steve actually sat with them.
"What can't you guys do?" Steve questioned as he pulled out a container of cookies and slid them over to Jeff.
Jeff lit up even as the others looked confused. "We can't do Hellfire this week. Apparently, the drama club needs the drama room this week." Jeff explains, and Steve pauses.
His face makes a hundred micro expressions before he shrugs, "You could do it at my house. I don't really care." Steve states and moves to stand back up hit Jeff pulls him back down. "Uh, what?"
He looks confused, and it's unfair because it seems like the moment they should be confused. "Three questions. First I thought you had swimming? Second, why would you let us do it at your house? Most parents think we are a cult, and I doubt your parents would think differently. And lastly, what's up with the cookies?"
Steve looks a little embarrassed as he's forced to stay there. But he meets Eddie's gaze. "First, I do have swimming, but I don't care. Come over that night or another if you really care. Second, my parents are in either Beijing or Belgium right now, so they don't get an opinion. And the cookies are for Jeff because he helped me last weekend. He can share, or he doesn't have to, I don't care."
Eddie blinks, "you'd let us be at your house without you there?"
"Sure, why not. I doubt you'll trash the entire place. And even if you do, there's not much you could do I haven't seen before. I've had enough parties to get good at cleaning up." Steve states, and Eddie looks at the others, trying to see if they're just as confused.
"That's amazing, dude! How about we get pizza, since you'll host?" Jeff offers, and Steve gives them a tight smile. Eddie's not sure if it's because of the topic of food or the idea that they're going to take him up on the offer. 
Steve nods and it’s a little sharp, “Right. Yeah just let me know date and time.” He pauses and goes back to his bag. He pauses before he can pull whatever he’s grabbed before steeling himself. “Here, just in case I’m busy.” He drops a key onto the table and practically bolts from the table. 
Eddie waits for him to come back and take the key with a sike. But he doesn’t, instead Eddie sees him dodge Billy’s foot and escape out of the lunch room. “Here I thought we were adopting him.” Gareth mused and picked up the key. Jeff smacked him and took the key. “Hey!” Gareth complains. 
“Yeah, I’ve actually been to his house so...” Jeff points out.
That gets Eddie back up and moving, “yeah. About that, what the hell?”
Jeff laughs, “I helped him cook. He’s been struggling with meet lately and you know my sister.” Eddie nods because it does make sense but at the same time it makes zero sense. “I bumped into him at the store...” Jeff trails off, “I think we need to try harder.”
“Harder?” Eddie squeaked and his friends gave him a look that he really wished he didn’t know. 
Jeff doesn’t let that stop him though. “Well, I thought it was bad enough going from top dog to the new top dog’s chew toy but the guy is struggling. He only had condiments in his fridge even though he told me he was a good cook, which he is. Apparently he has no clue where his parents are at the moment. He had a guess but that was it. And! He has no clue when they’re coming back. I asked and he laughed it off saying maybe for Christmas. Christmas.”
“It’s not even Thanksgiving yet!” Grant states and Jeff nods. 
Gareth sighs, “I’ve been bothering him during my free period. Normally just working on shit next to him... but the dude is not okay. He squints when he reads like he can’t see it well. I’m pretty sure he’s been getting migraines since he fought with Billy. And I’m 80% sure he’s partially deaf in his left ear. Cause if I whisper on that side he never responds. But he will when I sit on his right.”
“He never eats lunch,” Eddie sighs. “He always tears his food apart to make it look like he’s eating. If his fridge is empty than he might not be eating that often.”
“Well shit,” Grant sighs. “But how do we help him without it being weird.”
Eddie presses his hands together under his chin to think. “Okay, so we stop with the subtle friendship and go for it. If we’re his best friends then maybe he’ll let us help him.”
“So operation make Steve Harrington friendship bracelets is ago.” Gareth grins and Jeff throws a grape at him. 
They already had access to the boy’s house. How hard could it be?
@zerokrox-bloglog @cyranyxx @adaed5 @the-redthreadd @lifeisnotsobadonceyoustopcaringceyoustopcaring @idontgetpaidenoughforthisshitorthisshit @failedstarsandgoldencloudsds @bisexualdisastersworldd @deadlydodoss @anythingyouwanttobee @nburkhardtt @bestwifehaverr @thehumblefigtreee @megzdoodlee @swimmingbirdrunningrockk @mightbeasleepp @bxlthazarar @autumnal-dawnn @chillichatss @nonbinary-eddie-munsonon @the-daydreamer-in-the-cornerner @eddie-munson-is-my-wifewife @a-little-unsteddiedie @sharingisntkaren @a-huge-nerdy-nerd @0o-queendean-o0 @beckkthewreck @vi-an-te @vampireinthesun @newtstabber @dinosareawesome2137  @spicemallow @hellomynameismoo  @luthienstormblessed @briceslayed @angeldreamsoffanfic @dbquills
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sleepythug · 2 months
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What are some movies that every aspiring cinephile should watch?
battleship potemkin (sergei eisenstein, 1926)
city lights (charlie chaplin, 1931)
M (fritz lang, 1931)
freaks (tod browning, 1932)
brief encounter (david lean, 1945)
out of the past (jacques tourneur, 1947)
the third man (carol reed, 1949)
late spring (yasijuro ozu, 1949)
kiss me deadly (robert aldrich, 1955)
a man escaped (robert bresson, 1956)
touch of evil (orson welles, 1958)
la dolce vita (federico fellini, 1960)
peeping tom (michael powell, 1960)
man who shot liberty valance (john ford, 1962)
the exterminating angel (luis buñuel, 1962)
shock corridor (samuel fuller, 1963)
kwaidan (masaki kobayashi, 1964)
dragon inn (king hu, 1967)
playtime (jacques tati, 1967)
once upon a time in the west (sergio leone, 1968)
two-lane blacktop (monte hellman, 1971)
aguirre, wrath of god (werner herzog, 1972)
touki bouki (djibril diop mambety, 1973)
the conversation (francis ford coppola, 1974)
the passenger (michelangelo antonioni, 1975)
nashville (robert altman, 1975)
the killing of a chinese bookie (john cassavetes, 1976)
mikey and nicky (elaine may, 1976)
sorcerer (william friedkin, 1977)
days of heaven (terrence malick, 1978)
blow out (brian de palma, 1981)
8 diagram pole fighter (lau kar-leung, 1984)
mishima: a life in four chapters (paul schrader, 1985)
tampopo (jūzō itami, 1985)
blue velvet (david lynch, 1986)
something wild (jonathan demme, 1986)
landscape in the mist (theo angelopoulos, 1988)
sonatine (takeshi kitano, 1993)
salaam cinema (mohsen makhmalbaf, 1995)
fallen angels (wong kar-wai, 1995)
taste of cherry (abbas kiarostami, 1997)
cure (kiyoshi kurosawa, 1997)
the thin red line (terrence malick, 1999)
beau travail (claire denis, 1999)
yi yi (edward yang, 2000)
all about lily chou chou (shunji iwai, 2001)
memories of murder (bong joon-ho, 2003)
dogville (lars von trier, 2003)
tropical malady (apichatpong weerasethakul, 2004)
silent light (carlos reygadas, 2007)
sparrow (johnnie to, 2008)
holy motors (leos carax, 2012)
phoenix (christian petzold, 2014)
personal shopper (oliver assayas, 2016)
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Ok ok so- genius idea. Jason X daughter of Persephone. It’d be so freaking cute tbh
kk love you/p coveyyyy
-✨ anon
⋆⭒˚.⋆ jason grace x daughter of persephone! reader hcs
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content: jason grace x daughter of persephone! reader hcs warning: none! author's note: i feel the need to clarify THIS IS NOT VLOGGING DAUGHTER OF PERSEPHONE THIS SOME OTHER GIRL OKAY??? DONT GET IT TWISTED YALL open ending bc im cruel hahaha this ones adorbs tho love love love
okay okay in jason defense, he had no idea it was your garden
bro just thought it was an orange tree
so, abusing his powers of flight to pick the best orange didn't seem like a problem until the branch of one of the tree smacked him upside the head
"excuse me? do i walk into your room and take the shiniest thing i can find?? i don't think so buddy," your fuming voice was heard as jason floated back down, rubbing the back of his head
"what-"
"thats! my! orange!" you repeated, wagging your finger at him, "scram! or ill sic nico on you like a rabid dog!"
jason walked off, confused but determined to learn more about the mysterious guardian of the orange tree
he came back the next day to find you glaring at him, arms crossed as he approached
"i figured you'd come back," you spoke as he stood before you, eyes squinted, "it's a lost cause, buddy, you're not getting that orange."
"alright, fair enough," jason shrugged, going to walk away.
you flubbed at his easy defeated, eyes trained on him as he walked away and your brows furrowed in confusion
he came back the next day, this time a book tucked on his arm
still, you stood guard, this time you were sitting at the base of the tree, balancing your dagger on your finger
it tumbled off as you looked up at jason, narrowing your eyes as your dagger stabbed itself into the ground
"back again?" you offered and jason just hummed, sitting down across from you and cracking his book open
he rested his cheek against his fist, his glasses slightly crooked, but you had the vague thought that it was endearing
"what? give up?" you taunted, but the malice was gone from your voice
"hmm? oh, no. playing the long game," jason replied, glancing up with a soft look before returning his gaze to his book.
you frowned, confused but allowed him to stay, his company strangely calming
everyday for a week, jason would join you under the orange tree
some days he brought his book, some days he brought cards and they played games together
you'd grown fond of jason in the time he'd been joining you under the orange tree
maybe even something more than fond of the son of jupiter
then one day, while you and jason were playing a game of 'go fish' a faint thud was heard
both your eyes looked over and there the orange was, having fallen from the tree
jason got up and grabbed it, presenting it to you with a proud smile
"i told you; i was playing the long game," he mused with a cheeky smile and you laughed, nodding your head in agreement
"alright, for those impressive tactics, you can keep the orange," you offered, flaring your hands dramatically
you felt a pit start to grow in your stomach at the thought of not seeing jason every day, as you figured he only visited to prove he could get the orange
you fully expected him to pack his cards and his orange and march away, never to be seen with you again
but, instead, he sat right back down and began peeling the orange
you stared at him, a smile twitching on your lips as he stayed with you
"it's your turn, ya know," jason spoke, glancing up at you with that soft smile again, jolting you into action as you asked if he had a king of hearts
"nah, but here," he replied before splitting the orange in half, holding it out to you
"oh, you don't have to! you waited so long-"
"i can't imagine sharing this with anyone else. please, take it," jason cut in, holding it out further to you
it was an offer you couldn't refuse, grasping your half of the fruit like it was the most precious of jewels
"thank you," you whispered and jason beamed you a smile
"any time."
"how about tomorrow? after breakfast? we could, uh, do something...together," you offered, keeping your eyes trained on the fruit in your lap as to avoid the emotions on his face
"y-yes, that, that sounds awesome. yes, please," jason breathed out, looking eyes with you as you looked up from your fruit
"cool."
"totally cool."
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sp0o0kylights · 11 months
Text
Someone on Twitter proposed Steve and Gareth as cousins whose family had a major falling out, and then someone else brought it up recently and long story short no idea who to credit the idea too bc you can’t search for SHIT on Twitter but it's theirs not mine. 
Anyway I wrote a lil thing as a warmup 
PART TWO
"Why don't you come sit with Hellfire?" Gareth asked, angrily leaned against the bathroom wall while Steve fixed his hair.
He'd tried not to cling since he entered high school. Tried to keep things on the downlow, least any gossipy mouths started running. 
It was so stupidly, needlessly, hard. 
 His cousin was only two years ahead of him but they'd spent the last year in different schools because of it. 
 That year, and the lack of Steve's presence in it, had grated. Now that he finally had Steve back, Gareth was loathe to play by the rules. 
"Sit with you and Eddie, "the freak" Munson? I'll pass." Steve said, but there was no bite in it. 
That, Gareth knew, was because Steve was  using Eddie as an excuse. 
"You'd like Eddie if you spent five minutes with him, King Steve." Gareth fired back on automatic. His fingers dug into his arms, as he resisted the urge to pace around the bathroom floor. 
Unspoken was all the shit that had taken place.
Steve and Nancy's breakup. The rumor mill in overdrive, first about how Jonathan Byers had taken creep shot photos of them, then about how he'd taken his shot with Nancy herself. 
The supposed cheating, the public fights, the crazy background of Jonathan's little brother being missing. 
Billy Hargrove beating Steve to a pulp. 
Now friendless, Steve had thoroughly fallen from his place at the tippy top of the social hierarchy and between his utter lack of friends and his shit tier parents, Gareth was concerned. 
"You do not want me to sit with you, Gary. I'd tell all your little friends that you're apart of the royal family." Steve turned, making an exaggerated face. "How's Munson feel about cozying up to a Prince?" 
"I'd technically be an Earl, Steve, not a prince." Gareth grumbled. 
He got an eye roll in response. "Somehow I don't think he'll care." 
"I do though." Gareth blurted out, absolutely thoughtless. 
Steve blinked at him. 
"What?" He said. 
In for a penny right?
 "I care." Gareth said, looking down and scuffing a shoe, making it squeak against the grimy tiles. "About you. You dick." 
"Wow Gary you almost sounded loving there."
For once, he ignored the jab. "I'm worried about you, man." He said it quietly, the painful truth pulled out of him almost by force. 
He knew better than anyone how few people Steve had. Knew how his dad was likely taking all the crap Steve had been involved in lately. 
Richard Harrington hadn't been the wedge that had separated his and Steve's mother, but the man hadn't done them any favors, either. 
His intolerance towards the working and lower classes, his demand for perfection, the way he looked down his nose not just on Gareth's parents but on his own wife and son…
Gareth's mom didn't tolerate it. 
Likewise, Stella Harrington didn't tolerate her sister ruining her shot at being a rich trophy wife. 
Both their sets of parents were dramatic and neither of them weren't anywhere near the concept of "good" but at least Gareth's weren't neglectful and abusive. 
Shitty absolutely, but he never worried about getting thrown out, or that his mom wouldn't acknowledge his birthday because he'd "complimented her outfit the wrong way." 
(”It's fine dude she just thought I called her ugly. It was a miscommunication. Dad said it's a good lesson about how women work."
"Casual reminder that your dad's an asshole and also how is telling your mom that she looked lovely in the sunlight telling her she's ugly?”
“It implied she wasn't lovely the rest of the time or some shit, I dunno man.”) 
The BMW was a shitty prize when compared what Steve had dealt with to receive it. 
"I'm okay." Steve said seriously. "It's almost the end of the year anyways. I can tough out having some extra alone time." 
"If you're sure…"
"Yeah man, I'm sure. Thanks though."
Then Steve pulled him into a hug and fuck their parents, who demanded they continued some stupid grudge. Gareth clung to him just as hard as he had at ten. Unsure if he'd ever be allowed to see Steve again.
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lovebugism · 1 year
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hi hello "love you on purpose" absolutely devasted me with it's cuteness and i cannot wait for part two!!!! 💗
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✶ ┄ LOVE YOU, ON PURPOSE (ii)
part one | part two
summary: steve can't seem to stay away from the local freaks. he's more surprised to find himself falling for one of them. you have trouble believing that someone like him could want you in the first place. he wants to prove to you that he's not king steve anymore. (18k)
pairing: steve harrington / eddie's bff!reader
tags: strangers to friends to lovers, mutual pining, idiots in love, slight angst, hurt to comfort (sorta), fem!reader TW smut 18+, lots of intimacy and affection and awkwardness, p in v sex, talks of insecurities, reader has an allison reynolds-esque transformation but with a better ending (outfit inspo x, x), probable typos
a/n: welp. here it is. the final part of this 30k+ word fic. it was very fun and very painful to write and i'm very glad it's finally done and out in the world! thanks for all the love on the first part btw reading all the feedback has easily been my favorite part of writing this <3 with that being said, get comfy, get a snack, and enjoy! xoxo
˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎ��˗
Falling over you is the news of the day.
If yearning had a shape, you’re pretty sure it’d look an awful lot like you. 
The clumsiest of humans, fresh into her adulthood but still feeling like a child most days. Soaking wet, born yesterday. A caterpillar weaving her cocoon and trying to figure out where she fits in the world. The girl who decides she belongs right next to this big, boisterous, multi-colored butterfly she couldn’t stand a year or more ago.
And Steve Harrington, he was… Well, he was the kind of poem people spend their entire lives trying to write. 
He was the perfect mixture of beauty and warmth, of mystery and obscurity — the line where the pink of a sunset meets the purple of a starry night. He was all of this rolled up into a twenty-something-year-old boy. A fumbling butterfly that’s getting used to his new wings.
Maybe if you were talented enough, you could write the thing yourself. There’s something powerful in knowing that you could compose some dainty requiem so much bigger than yourself. A beautiful thing that would stand the test of time because there would never be anything else like it. 
It wouldn’t be because of you, though. You passed Ms. O’Donnell’s English class by the skin of your teeth, so your writing leaves much to be desired. It would be your muse that would enamor the masses come the next several centuries, because there will never, ever be another Steve Harrington.
At the very core of this poem would read a universal truth: I have fallen in love with his enigmatic being, and now I’m dealing with the consequences.
Well, you’re trying to deal with them, at least. You’re not having a very easy go at it.
Most of the time, you feel like a thousand bricks have piled on top of you. The jagged edges scrape up your arms and press varying shades of purple into your skin. They crush you underneath their weight, but you don’t try too hard to climb out from under them. You couldn’t even if you wanted to.
You feel a little stuck underneath all the feelings you have for Steve. 
You’re not quite sure what to do with them all. They’re too heavy to lift; there’s too much of them to crawl out. It all leaves you feeling a bit trapped. 
It’s a good kind of trapped, though. 
Once the hurt passes, the weight starts to feel like you’re being swaddled in a blanket. Or a cocoon. 
As scared as it makes you, as overwhelmed as you feel, you don’t want this puppy-like adoration to end.
But sometimes, the scrapes sting more than they usually do. The scabs split and start to weep. The faded bruises turn purple again, then to blue and black, and they ache all over. They remind you that girls like you don’t end up with guys like Steve, and the harsh realization turns the comforting weight of being in love into feeling like you’re being buried alive.
Steve is a pretty boy. He’s a rich, prettyboy who wears vintage jeans and drives a new Beemer and has never wanted for anything in his life.
And you’re… whatever the total opposite of that is.
You wear whatever’s cheapest at the thrift store or what Eddie lets you steal from his closet. You drive a rust bucket that belonged to your dad until he lost his license, so the thing practically rotted in the backyard until you got yours. And all you’ve ever done is want for things because you’ve never had anything.
And the one thing you want the most is something you’ve never been able to admit to anyone. Not even Eddie. Not even yourself. 
Screw new clothes or a car fresh off the lot. You don’t want popularity — you don’t even want money (though it certainly wouldn’t hurt). You want so desperately to be loved that it makes your bones ache.
All you want is someone to hold your wrists and kiss your palms, to cradle you when the thunder is too loud and the cracks of lightning make you shake, to be a hiding place where you can keep every secret and be certain it stays safe.
You want someone to smile at you the way Steve smiles at you. You want to feel held the way he makes you feel held — without ever touching you. You want to feel wanted the way he makes you feel wanted.
You want Steve. 
And you’re not sure how long silly love songs will substitute your yearning.
“What do you think about Steve?” you ask Eddie out of the blue.
He was in the middle of a rant about his latest campaign, but you hadn’t heard a single word of it if you’re honest. The butterflies in your stomach were too loud.
The boy sits across the room at his desk, back hunched, while he scribbles ideas into his tattered Dungeons and Dragons composition journal. You’re sprawled out in the middle of his bed like you have been for the past hour, making constellations of Steve’s face from the marks on his ceiling.
“I think he’s an asshole,” Eddie answers without missing a beat.
It makes you roll your eyes. You shouldn’t have expected anything less out of him, really. You toy with the frayed hem of your crop top and rephrase. “Okay, but do you think he likes me?”
“I know he likes you,” he scoffs. “That’s the problem.”
You smile widely to yourself, then purse your lips to the side to keep it hidden. There’s no one looking to see you grinning like an idiot, but it doesn’t make you feel any less like one.
“He wants to take me on a date tonight,” you confess out loud for the first time.
It wasn’t like you to keep something like that from Eddie. Or anything. At all. But you found yourself hiding it like some kind of dark secret. A distant part of you was terrified that it was all in your head, but it’s been three days since Steve asked you now. Which means you’ve spent three days pinching yourself.
You haven’t woken up yet.
“Like, a date date,” you clarify and rise on your elbows to study the boy across the room. 
You feel the need to explain yourself because movie nights and rides around town and hanging out in the break room after closing don’t feel nearly as serious as Steve wining and dining you. It feels much more official now, as though the line between liking someone and like-liking them has been drawn.
“And I’ve never been on a date date before—”
“What about the one time you went out with, uh…” Eddie trails off as he aggressively erases something on his paper. He stills and squints over his shoulder at you. “What was his name? Matt? Marcus?”
“Mason,” you correct and try not to shudder at the memory. “And I left him at the restaurant because he asked me how big my boobs were within the first ten minutes, so he doesn’t count.”
A grin pulls at the boy’s face. He chuckles to himself. “Oh, yeah.”
“And I know I shouldn’t be so nervous about it ‘cause it’s just a dumb date, like… We’ve been alone together a billion times now, you know? It’s just…” you ramble in one breath, then trail off with a huff. You flop back onto the mattress rather dramatically. “Steve Harrington doesn’t date girls like me. He dates girls like Nancy Wheeler. And, as far as I’m concerned, they were a matching made in fucking heaven— I mean, I didn’t know them back then or anything—”
“Obviously,” Eddie murmurs. “That was a train wreck.”
“—But they looked fucking perfect together, Eds!”
The image of them walking the hallways of Hawkins High isn’t hard to picture. You can still see Nancy in her pretty pleated skirt and pink manicured nails and Steve with his stupid hair and brand new Ray-Bans. They owned the school like their parents owned Hawkins — it was practically kismet. 
You try to picture him and you together, and it doesn’t come as effortlessly. 
It’s like trying to wedge pieces from opposites puzzles together; it just doesn’t work. 
And it’s different from anyone Steve’s ever dated. It’s different from anyone you’ve ever dated. People look at him and his pretty girlfriend and gush, “oh, wow, they look good together.” People look at you and a guy with smudged eyeliner and heeled boots and whisper in disgust, “oh god, they deserve each other.”
You won’t get any of the kindness that Steve is used to, only stares from strangers as they try hopelessly to figure out whether or not you’re dating — because surely, he wouldn’t stoop low enough to date someone like you.
“And I don’t wanna…” you waver, trying and failing to put your fears into words. “I don’t know, I guess I’m just scared.”
Eddie shakes his head to himself. “You don’t need to be scared, okay?” he mumbles, his attention still turned down to his notebook.
“Oh, thanks, Eds. I’m cured,” you monotone.
“I just mean that—” he cuts himself off with a deep sigh and swivels in his chair to face you completely. “Steve’s a douchebag, alright? But he’s a good douchebag.”
Your brows furrow. “…What?”
“He used to be an asshole and everything, but… I don’t know, I guess he turned out to be a pretty good guy— and if you tell him I told you that, I will kill you,” Eddie explains in one breath. The half-hearted threat spills from his mouth,and he goes suddenly soft. “He’s not gonna hurt you, okay? I promise. I mean, the guy’s practically a fucking teddy bear.”
A smile pulls slow at your lips. 
It’s the nicest thing you’ve ever heard him say about Steve, despite having been friends with him for nearly a year now. The foreign kindness comforts you well enough. If Eddie didn’t think Steve was every bit the good douchebag he says he is, there’s no way he’d let you go anywhere near him.
“Yeah?” you mutter.
“Yeah,” he echoes with a huff, obviously upset about having to admit such a truth. Then he shrugs. “And if he does hurt you, I’ll beat him up. Which, with his track record, I’m guessing it wouldn’t be too difficult.”
A laugh tumbles from your mouth. “Thanks for looking out, Eds.”
He only grumbles in response.
And even though he complains the entire time, he drops you back off at your place and helps you agonize over what to wear. He sits on your bathroom counter to keep you company while you shower, then holds your makeup bag in his lap while you get ready. He only comments once about how differently you’re doing it.
Then the boy lounges on your bed, legs crossed and back propped on the headboard while you rifle through your closet. In true Eddie Munson fashion, he’s got something to say about everything you pick out.
Your white sweater is too tight, he tells you, and the fuzzy texture feels too weird. The plaid skirt you pull from the depths of your closet is too “christmas-y” and “totally not your color.” He tells you he likes your boots better as he helps you with the finicky buckle of your Mary Janes, then snaps the band of your knee-highs when he stands again.
Eddie tells you all of this because it’s easier to tease you than to say what he really thinks — that it feels like you’re in high school again and trying out styles that don’t suit you.
He loved you the way you were, in black and leather and silver chains and fishnets, because he knew that’s what you felt good in. You found your identity in your unconventional style and you sparkled in it.
And you were still pretty like this, dressed in brighter colors and looking like the girls that used to bully you in high school, but it’s so obviously not you. More than anything, it irks him that you’re doing all of this for Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington.
But Eddie knows that you’re nervous — he can tell by the way you’re talking a thousand miles a minute and checking your appearance in the mirror every couple seconds like something might’ve changed. He also knows that you’re still skeptical about this whole thing. Because you have no idea that Steve looks at you like the whole world could crumble around him, and he wouldn’t even blink.
You don’t know that you have nothing to worry about.
So Eddie figures he’ll wait to make fun of you. Save all his teasing remarks for when you’re gushing about the date the next day.
But you’re already aware of all this — how different you look. You hardly recognize yourself when you look in the mirror. You’ve traded in your shades of black for something brighter. Your blowsy hair is clipped back out of your face. Your makeup is more conventional and modest than you’re used to.
You look less like the freak you usually are and more like a wild thing that’s been tamed.
You feel pretty. 
Or, at the very least, the idea that Steve will think you’re pretty makes you feel pretty.
It makes all the imposter syndrome worth it. 
You stand in front of the full-length mirror and tug the scratchy socks up and over your knee when they start to slip down. You rise once more, giving yourself another once over, then nod in approval — pleased with the costume you’ve put on.
A fleeting through with a mean, green, bleeding heart and a mind of its own scratches bitterly at the confines of your skull.
Eat your heart out, Nancy Wheeler.
˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗
The ghost in you, she don't fade.
Steve, riddled with chronic feelings of inadequacy, overcooks the chicken and spritzes too much cologne on himself.
He had always been the kind of boy that loved things a little harder than he should’ve. 
Ask any plant he’s ever owned that he accidentally killed with every leaf he overwatered, frightened that anything less would be neglectful. He was always so scared of them dying that he suffocated them until they wilted anyway.
He thought he might’ve grown out of all that until he realized he did the same thing with Nancy. 
He squeezed her too tight and she squirmed at his smothering, called him bullshit and pushed him away so she could breathe again, then stomped on his heart until she was certain it stopped beating for her.
And therein lies the state of limbo Steve Harrington has lived in all his life — between loving something too much and not enough. He hasn’t yet found that balance that stops plants from dying and people from running away.
He isn’t quite sure how to be anything other than the man he is now. 
His conscious clings to your every move. He thinks about when he’s awake, and when he isn’t, he hopes he’ll be lucky enough to dream about you. He bothers you at work all day, then asks if you want to go for a ride when you’re off because he hates being away from you. The nights get too cold when you stray too far. And even though he’s never been much of a chef, he offers to cook for you because he wants to show you he cares enough to try.
Steve’s the kind of guy that overcooks his chicken because he’s terrified that you’ll get sick if it’s not done enough. He’s the kind of guy that douses himself in cologne, then breaks the bottle because he’s terrified of not smelling good enough. He wants everything to be enough for you. 
Steve Harrington, for once in his life, wants to be enough for somebody. 
But now all he is, is a stupid boy that never learns, who smells like he’s trying to overcompensate for being a terrible, terrible chef. 
When Nancy broke his heart, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to be this person again. Steve was scared he’d become someone he didn’t recognize — someone who didn’t care enough to water plants because, hey, they’re gonna die anyway, right? Because he gave and gave and gave, and had nothing to show for it but a stupid wilting flower.
Steve made a dark room of his broken heart. A boogeyman lived there, too. It made him scared that he’d never be able to love someone like he loved Nancy.
But then you came out of nowhere — this beautiful, loud, and mysterious thing that exudes every color of the rainbow when she laughs, despite her blacker-than-black wardrobe. You smile at him like you’ve never been hurt, like a sun that’s never known the night. It makes him feel like he can be that too.
The two of you seek a similar solace in one another. You fill each other’s voids without effort and without trying, like puzzle pieces or halves of an orange.
Steve met you and he realized that he didn’t get his ability to love from Nancy. He had always been a lover, a boy who could love something deeply, and that didn’t go away when she broke his heart.
And sometimes it was awful. It was painful and frightening more than it was anything else — love. It was doubtful and envious and distant. 
Love makes you selfish and creepy and uncharacteristically overbearing. Love makes you worry about your hair and overcook your chicken and drench yourself in cologne. Love takes a hell of a lot of hope, and that’s what he feels like when he’s with you — hopeful. Like he’s never been hurt before.
A surge of optimism and apprehension hits him like a bolt of purple lightning just behind his ribcage when the doorbell rings. Mostly because he knows you’re waiting on the other side of it. His hands shake when he opens the door, but not because he’s scared. He’s just full of hope and buzzing with its foreign intensity.
Steve finds the rest of his life standing on his front porch, dressed in all the trappings of his past.
You’re smiling wide when you see him, the same whizzing ball of hope that he is now, and clutching a bottle of wine. You’ve traded your usual grocery store alcohol for something bottom shelf from an actual liquor store. The sunshine grin you’re wearing is about the only thing familiar about you now.
With your hair pulled back, brows combed neatly to match the pretty makeup you’ve spotted gingerly on your features, dressed in foreign colors with knee-high socks and kitten heels — you look nothing like yourself. It’s a costume you’ve got on, still so pretty but pretending in some way.
It has Steve startled for a moment, thinking Halloween came a whole six months earlier and he never got the memo. Then he realizes you must’ve gotten all dressed up for him, even though you never had to. Just like he didn’t have to try and play chef to impress you.
Both of you are just stupid idiots who care too much, making it painfully obvious despite your best efforts to keep it hidden.
“Hi,” you grin sheepishly through a foreign, pale pink, and glossy mouth.
Steve’s too busy gaping at you to respond in a timely fashion.
The wind billows through your hair and sends strands of it flying in your face. And even though he can’t remember a time when you’ve ever worried about the wild halo on your head, you’re quick to tuck them back into place again. 
With most of it pulled back and combed with obvious intent, your face is left unhidden. Your neck and shoulders and collarbones are too. And you’ve got on this tight sweater and pretty skirt and tall socks that make your legs look longer. All of your usually concealed features are heightened. 
The dainty swipes of mascara, eyeshadow, and blush only accentuate them further, though your spots are attentively covered with foundation that isn’t exactly your shade. It’s a bit lighter than your skin tone, like you’d gotten it some time ago when you were still a bit paler.
You look less like the loud, plucky girl he’s come to know and someone more timid, delicate, and polished.
You’re so pretty he damn near forgets how to speak. His tongue swells and every word he could use loses meaning at the sight of you. But it isn’t you, and that only confounds him further.
It’s like you’ve covered yourself in body paint. The real version of you is hidden somewhere underneath it all, glimmering somehow more golden than the flaxen you’re playing pretend in.
When Steve realizes he hasn’t yet answered you, it feels like it’s been ten minutes or more. In reality, no longer than five seconds have gone by.
“Hey,” he greets finally, in an exhale that gets caught in his throat halfway through. He clears it and smiles shakily. “Hi.”
He steps to the side of the doorway and ushers you inside. He wipes his sweaty palms on his slacks when he thinks you aren’t looking, but you catch him in the act when you turn to face him again. Your grin widens and you trap it between your teeth.
“Smells good in here,” you compliment, walking slowly backward with your hands clasped behind your back.
“Thanks,” he accepts your flattery with an awkward hand on his neck. “Yeah, uh— I kinda burnt the chicken a little bit, but everything else should be good. At least, I hope it’s good. It’s kinda hard to mess up a salad, right?”
He laughs under his breath, then starts to ramble without realizing it.
“I’m not the best cook, as it turns out. I mean, I thought I could at least fake it, you know? Fake it ’til you make it, or whatever that bullshit saying is — but there is no faking the tornado I just had in the kitchen. I don’t think I’ve made a bigger mess in my life. But, uh, yeah… And don’t worry! I didn’t put tomatoes in the pasta. Or the salad. Or the sauce. I know you don’t think them, so…”
You’re in the middle of beaming and trying very hard not to laugh when he hits you with that one. 
Steve, like you, is having a very hard time shutting up just now. He’s in the same web of nervousness that you’re spun up in too. He’s all tangled and trying to weave words that make sense, though everything things his mouth in half-thoughts.
But then he says something so strangely profound out of nowhere, and it makes your pounding heart stop without warning. He’s just talking about fucking tomatoes, but you understand that — in some weird, roundabout way — that it’s much deeper than that.
You’d told him the mundane little detail in passing some time ago. At the diner, when you picked the fruit from your burger with a grimace on your face. You said it tasted like battery acid and tainted everything it touched. He took it back to the counter when you weren’t brave enough to. 
“Here you go, Punchy. Your battery-acid-free burger,” he’d joked when he set the fresh plate in front of you.
And he remembered all that. He tucked that tiny piece of information about you into the very back of his mind so that he could use it to make you happy later on.
That’s adoration at its core, you figure. Somewhere in all those minuscule remember-ings.
“You remembered that?” you wonder aloud in a bemused sort of whisper.
Steve has already moved on. He’s rambling about the broken spout of his cologne bottle but stops the second he realizes he’s doing it.
Of course, I did, scoffs the little voice in his head. I’m sorta obsessed with you, as it turns out.
He doesn’t tell you that, though, for reasons he finds are quite obvious — the most significant of which would be running you off entirely. So instead, he just shrugs and tries to be cool, despite having already established how terribly uncool he is.
“Yeah. I remember everything.”
When the two of you settle at the dining table, Steve realizes he’s eaten most of his dinners alone until now.
His parents stopped caring sometime around middle school. His dad got too busy with work, started staying after-hours to catch up on paperwork or screw his secretary. And his mom didn’t care because she was too busy getting wine-drunk on the phone with whatever book club friend that was just as miserable as she was. 
Steve would fork at his cold pad thai while he listened to his mother’s muffled rant about who went where and who wore a hat.
He couldn’t find it in himself to eat in his room. The empty dinner table was the only sort of stable routine he had in the swirling uncertainty of being a teenage boy.
But now he’s got you. 
He hopes he never stops having you. He doesn’t want to go back to being alone like that again, not after he’s found someone that can fill an entire room with their laugh.
The cackle you let out at Steve’s terrible, terrible cheese pun — “yeah, I guess you could say I cooked this all on my provol-own — echoes through the dining room. Even though he knows you’re laughing at him and not exactly with him, he figures it’s a small price to pay to keep hearing such a heavenly sound.
It reminds him of the real you, the one underneath all the foreign regalia. 
The rays of your usual sunshine peek from the clouds you hide behind. You’re way too bright to stay hidden.
Steve can tell you’re watching his every move. You eye him from across the table with the intent of doing everything he’s doing, lest you might do something wrong. He puts his napkin in his lap, so you put your napkin your lap. He cuts his chicken with his fork and knife, so you cut your chicken with a fork and knife — though you quickly realize you’re not quite as dexterous as he is for all that.
It’s endearing. The kind of cute that makes his heart hurt just a little bit. He hides his smile and happily abandons the conventional things he’d been taught to do. He eats with his fingers and then licks the pads of them, grinning when you giggle and do the same. 
It’s not something he’s used to — grabbing pieces of cut chicken with bare fingers and slurping noodles without having cut them first — especially not when he’s trying to impress a girl. But he can tell the lack of etiquette makes you more comfortable, and that’s all he really cares about.
He offers you another serving once you’ve finished your first. You decline politely with the mutters of “oh, no, I couldn’t,” but he’s seen your appetite. You could down five burgers at the diner and not break a sweat if you’re feeling hungry enough.
It’s one of those little heart-wrenchingly adorable things you do that both shock and enamor him. But, for a reason he can’t name, you’ve decided that part of yourself was too deplorable to add to your costume.
Steve only scoffs at you in response. He scoops more chicken and pasta onto your scrapped-clean plate despite your refusal.
You’re grateful he doesn’t let you get away with your stubbornness. Truth be told, you were still sort of starving.
He’s just grateful you don’t think his mediocre cooking skills total a complete dealbreaker.
Steve tries to fight you when you offer to help him clean up the kitchen. He tells you to make yourself at home on the couch while he tidies up, ushers you to pour yourself a glass of wine and pick out a record while you wait for him. 
But you have issues with authority and take little fondness in being told what to do. So, in true Punchy fashion, you do the exact opposite of what he tells you to do.
You roll up the sleeves of your pretty sweater and stand next to him at the deeply set sink in his kitchen island. “You wash, I’ll dry?” you offer.
He doesn’t argue, only nods. 
He’ll let you take the blame for not wanting to be too far away from him. It’s easier than admitting his own guilt in the matter. ‘Cause sometimes his heart breaks when he blinks and he has to miss you for the faintest fraction of a second. 
“You seriously don’t have to, you know—”
“Stop saying that,” you scold and snatch the dripping plate from his hands. You swipe a towel over the ceramic with a meticulous ease. “I actually like doing dishes, okay? I do them at all time. I’m practically a professional at this point.”
“Yeah?” Steve laughs, shooting you a grin as he dunks his hand into the warm, sudsy water.
You love that stupid smile so much you’ve started to hate it. 
It’s soft and so sincere, just wide enough to reveal the dimple in his left cheek. The gentle grin drips with so much honey you can practically taste it. It’s so tender it makes you feel unworthy, so full of love it fills you with a distant rage that he might’ve looked at someone else with it.
You have to duck away from his gaze before he can catch you blushing. 
“Yeah. That’s, like, my one chore when I’m over at Eddie’s,” you respond with a shrug. “Because, you know, Wayne’s always working and Eddie’s… Eddie, and he really shouldn’t be trusted with anything remotely sharp or breakable, so…”
“What about when you’re home?” he wonders, simply for the sake of keeping the conversation going, but noting how the mention of home makes you tense.
“Uh, yeah. I mean, considering every time I go back, it looks like there’s been a tornado, doing dishes is just one part of the shit pile that I need to clean up, you know? My parents are usually on some bender — or still passed out from said bender — to take care of the place while I’m gone.”
Steve sees how distracted you’ve gotten as you keep wiping down a bone-dry plate.
“But, uh, anyway. Point is, I think I’m destined to have a career as a professional dishwasher.”
When your gaze flits back to Steve’s, he forces a smile at you.
He’s noticed how you always seem to talk about your best friend and his uncle without ever mentioning your parents. He understands now that it’s because they weren’t your family, not like Eddie and Wayne were. The small Munson clan was your home, it seems, and he fights to steer you back that way.
“So, you stay with them most of the time, then?” he redirects innocently as he hands you a freshly washed wine glass.
“Yeah. I think I’m pretty much Eddie’s personal caretaker these days.”
“Wow,” he marvels playfully, wide-eyed and grinning. “On top of being a professional dishwasher? You’re really doin’ it all, aren’t ya, Punchy?”
“Mm-hmm. I am a real jack of all trades, Harrington,” you joke back with a commendable finesse and flash a teasing smile up at him. The pastel-colored lipstick has mostly disappeared from your mouth now. You look more like yourself.
“And Eddie— he’s got this crazy scar on his hand from when he was a kid, and he was helping Wayne wash the dishes. He, like, blindly reached into the water or something and stabbed himself. Knife went straight through his palm.”
Steve winces.
“Yep. Now he says he’s too traumatized to help do the chores,” you reminisce with a distant laugh and set the glass upside down on the drying rack. “I don’t mind, though. I like doing them on my own. Gives me time to think, you know?”
“I’m standing right here,” the boy beside you scoffs, feigning offense.
“You can be the exception, Stevie,” you assure with a grin.
Maybe it’s the look you give him. Maybe it’s the nickname he used to hate, but now makes his heart skip a beat or two — or three. Maybe it’s all those things and the way your fingers brush his wrist when you move to take the pot from his hands. Either way, something shifts and he forgets how to use his fine motor skills.
The pan slips from his fumbling hands and yours and plops back into the water. The metal bangs loudly when it hits the bottom of the sink. Both of you jump back to avoid the splash.
“Shit. Sorry,” he apologizes, eyes scanning your form to make sure he didn’t make a total mess of you.
“It’s okay,” you promise with a gentle laugh and swipe the towel in your hand over your sweater to remove the droplets clinging there.
Steve scrunches his nose. “I feel like I might’ve just ruined my co-dishwashing privileges.”
“Just a little,” you quip.
You give him no warning before bringing the waffle-patterned nettle up to his cheek to dry him off, too. He flinches at the suddenness of the action but melts into your touch without thinking twice.
“You know, you have a pretty cool scar, too,” you tell him, mostly out of the blue, while you dab at the stubble on his jaw.
Steve’s gotten used to all your abrupt mannerisms and the way you flip-flop between topics with an expertise only you seem to possess. He likes that about you, though. There’s never a quiet or still moment when he’s with you.
“Yeah?” he hums back.
You nod and move down to his neck. “I felt it a while ago, during our Night of the Living Dead marathon—” of which Steve has no recollection. He can’t remember a damn thing from those movies, but can still feel the tingle of your mouth against his own. 
“—On the back of your head. Felt pretty gnarly.”
You switch the towel to your other hand and use your free one to swipe through his hair. Your fingers muss at his hour or more of hard work, but your touch is a far better reward than nearly quaffed hair. You weave through the chocolate strands until you reach a marred, barren line.
“Right… there.”
Steve, still buzzing with your touch, manages a breathy chuckle. “Uh, yeah. It’s a… It’s a really long, really stupid story.”
“Wanna give me the short version?”
The grin you give him is impossible to say no to.
“I’m a super klutz,” he summarizes with a shrug and a sloppy grin. 
He mourns the loss of your touch when your hand slips from his hair. “Well, now I have to hear the story.”
“It’s dumb. Like, seriously—”
“I like dumb,” you assure quickly to stop whatever self-loathing he was about to spew. “I’m best friends with Eddie Munson. I think I can take it.”
“Touché,” he chuckles under his breath. The remaining dishes are left forgotten in the depths of the soapy water when he turns his back to him. He leans his weight on the countertop and grips the edges of it in his hands. “You see, I did this really smart thing when I was a baby where I’d, you know, crawl backwards—”
“Crawl backwards?” you repeat with an incredulous laugh.
“Yeah. I’d push with my hands — beep, beep, beep,” he flattens his palms and presses them against thin air to demonstrate it for you. “Always in reverse. I mean, it makes sense, right? You gotta push to move.”
“Sure,” you shrug. A laugh tumbles from your mouth shortly after.
“Did that until I reversed my way down a flight of stairs and hit my head pretty damn good,” he concludes with a wince. It’s like he can still feel the pain sometimes.
“Wow,” you marvel. “So, like… When people ask if you were dropped on your head as a kid, the answer would be—”
“Yep…” he sighs, then laughs when it makes you laugh. He looks over at you with sparkling cinnamon eyes. “It explains a lot, doesn’t it? I think, like, right out of the gate, I’m super confident, you know? But I’m also a total idiot, which is just a brutal combination.”
“I have noticed that, actually,” you confess with a gentle sort of smile.
“Yeah?” he winces.
“Yeah. You do this thing sometimes where you get all… suave and cool,” you tell him, squinting and lowering your voice a few octaves for effect. “Like you’re trying to be King Steve all over again. And then you, like, trip over a stack of DVDs or something because the universe is trying to humble you.”
“That is a… really good way of putting it, actually,” Steve confesses with a laugh.
“I think it’s sweet.”
“Well, the good thing is, I get a big enough thump on my head, I can change, you know? I can learn. So, I guess I’m pretty glad somebody bumped my head before we met. ‘Cause things probably would’ve turned out… a whole lot differently.”
Steve watches your face contort from understanding to confusion. Your manicured brows pinch together and your doe eyes squint over at him. He watches you break down his words in real time. 
“Somebody…” you murmur under your breath. “You mean… Are you talking about Nancy?”
“Yeah, uh… She gave me a— a pretty big thump, you know? Worse than the one I got falling down those stupid stairs,” he tells you with a reminiscent smile. 
It makes you feel like a total idiot, standing in front of him like this — a carbon copy of the girl that tore his heart to shreds.
“I deserved it, though. I mean, you knew me back then, I was a… a total asshole. And sometimes, I think I still would be if she didn’t, you know… if she didn’t… totally rip my fucking heart out,” he concludes with a sad sort of laugh. “Now I’m kinda grateful she did. As bad as it hurt — as angry as it made me — I think, in a lotta ways, it made me better.”
“Better?” you echo quietly.
“Yeah… If she didn’t break up with me when she did — if I didn’t get that dumb thump on my head — I wouldn’t have changed. I wouldn’t be… here right now. With you,” he confesses, revealing more of himself than he ever has before, to a girl he wouldn’t have been caught dead with a couple of years ago.
He looks beside him at this costumed girl — at you — and he sees someone he probably would’ve given the time of day back in high school. The lack of dark, baggy clothing makes you look approachable — like you won’t actually bite him for coming near you like the rumors always said.
And Steve’s self-aware enough to know he probably would’ve treated you like shit back then. He would’ve fucked you just to fuck you, then only talk to you when he needed you to do his homework for him. And you wouldn’t have been the first girl he did that to either, and the thought makes him want to puke.
He’s glad he’s found you when he did. He’s even happier you met him where he was at, in that awkward in-between stage of growing up where you’re trying to be someone different while still finding comfort in staying the same. You never complained even once when he reverted back to his old ways.
And even though you’re standing right next to him, your chest nearly brushing his arm with every heavy breath you take, he finds himself missing you. 
You’re not you — not without the fun outfits and the crazy hair and all your rings that clink together every time you move. He misses how the metal felt against his skin and the way they’d get caught in his hair.
You’re still beautiful like this, but it’s a strange type of beauty. One that both of you know doesn’t belong to you. You fit into it like baggy jeans or a too tight shirt. You’ve squeezed yourself into a ball to try to fit into a world far too small for you, because you thought that’s what Steve wanted.
“I’d still be that King Steve douchebag… Partying every night, getting drunk out of my mind, never settling down like I…” The words get trapped in his throat. He clears it to force them out. “Like I always wanted to, you know?”
“Right,” you murmur, voice not strong enough to be any louder than that.
“So, yeah, I don’t know. I guess, in some weird, roundabout way, I’m just to tell you that I’m not that guy anymore. King Steve,” he admits and presses his hip into the counter to face you fully.
When you gather the strength to look up at him, you find his gaze already dripping with honey and staring down at you. He’s all soft and mushy and twinkling with the adoration he’s got for you. And when he smiles, it’s so terribly sincere and coated with a distant sadness that’s been playing on the edge of his voice this whole time.
“And I know you might still see me as that guy. I don’t blame you. Honestly, I don’t really deserve to be looked at any differently, not after how I acted towards you—”
“Steve,” you breathe out in a tender sigh. “It’s okay—”
He shakes his head to himself. His eyes squeeze shut when his chin falls to his chest.
“It’s not. It’s… It’s really not. I just—” he inhales sharply, chest deflating on the exhale when his gaze turns back to you. He looks sterner now, but still so tender. “I just want you to know that I’ve changed, okay? I am changing. And I don’t want you to think I’m the kinda guy you have to change yourself for.”
When the weight of his words finally hits you, it feels a bit like being punched in the stomach.
It knocks all the wind out of you and makes it hard to think about anything other than the sudden loss of breath. Like a kid who’s fallen off the monkey bars and flat onto their back, you can’t do anything but writhe through the ache and hope you’ll be back to normal soon.
You got dressed that evening thinking you were the master of deception. You perfected your subterfuge and awaited Steve’s inevitable swooning because you looked like all the other girls he’d fallen in love with. 
But he sees through every inch of your pretending with his secret x-ray powers, and now you’re just a stupid girl standing in front of him, soaking wet with embarrassment.
It’s a little like when he and Tommy and all his basketball goons would make fun of you. They’d talk about you like you weren’t there while they tossed tiny crumbled up pieces of paper into your hair so they could watch you struggle to get them out. But, at the same time, it’s not like that at all. Because now he’s apologizing, and telling you that he likes you, and that you never had to change a single damn thing for him at all.
You’re equally as self-conscious, though, and feeling like a total idiot for thinking you could even pretend to be halfway normal.
“Oh…” is the only thing that leaves your mouth in that moment. Your mind is still going a million miles a minute. You want to blurt out an apology and an explanation all at once, while simultaneously turning into a puddle at his feet and disappearing entirely.
But rather than break down, you stay standing. Too stuck in your head to feel all there.
Steve seems to notice your trepidation almost immediately. His eyes widen and his brows raise and his pretty mouth falls open to let all of his reassurances spill out. 
“And it’s not that I don’t think you’re pretty! You’re— You’re perfect like this too, but I just…” he inhales and takes the tiniest step closer to you, putting an unsure hand on your waist. “I like you the way you were before. And this isn’t… This isn’t you.”
You blink back stinging tears and turn your gaze to where you toe your Mary Jane’s into the kitchen tile. You go to twist your rings like you always did when you were nervous before realizing you’d left them all at home.
“I just wanted to be like the girls you like,” you confess quietly.
“You are like the girls I like,” Steve corrects with a gentle laugh. “‘Cause I like you.”
Your eyes are all glassy when they flit back up to his. 
Even though you don’t look quite like yourself, the way you look at him hasn’t changed. You still gaze at him like you can see right through the nice hair and the dumb smirks and the stupid persona he puts on when he doesn’t feel good enough the way he is. You look at him like you’re in love with the boy he tries like hell to keep hidden.
The exact same way he looks at you.
“I think I just got a little spooked. Girls like me aren’t supposed to end up with guys like you.”
“I stopped believing in that shit a long time ago,” he admits with the shake of his head. “The whole soulmates-love-at-first-sight thing, it’s all… bullshit. If I’m gonna love someone, I’m gonna do it on purpose.”
Steve watches the lingering sadness in your eyes ebb to something sunnier. Your gaze sparkles and suddenly you’re beaming at him, not bothering to conceal the effect his words have on you. You don’t think you could even if you wanted to.
“I like that,” you murmur in approval, then more loudly proclaim: “Screw soulmates! Let’s start loving people on purpose!”
The two of you laugh about this promise you’ve just made to each other without really saying it to each other. It sort of goes unsaid — if I’m gonna love you, I’m gonna do it on purpose and let’s love each other on purpose. That’s what you mean, and neither of you has to say it out loud because you get it. 
It’s that exact realization that makes Steve’s heart flutter something fierce. Suddenly, the urge to touch you becomes too great to bear. He wants to feel you like he did on the couch of his theater room, when a film he could barely recall crackled in the background because the feel of you was too loud for him to hear anything else.
He needs you like that again, on him and all over him. The ache is a palpable one.
The boy squeezes your waist again, as though to remind you he was still there. Or, perhaps, to remind himself that you were still there —the real thing and not something his brain conjured up.
“It’s not totally insane how bad I want to kiss you right now, is it?” he wonders quietly to you. The low, sultry nature of his voice is not at all forced like it usually is when he’s trying most desperately to flirt with you. His words are just naturally weighed down by his desire for you.
You shake your head in a silent promise, then command through a grin, “Kiss me stupid, Harrington.”
Steve doesn’t waste a second.
He’s been anxiously awaiting his chance to touch you all night. He does so now with a vigor that makes you feel all of that anticipation. With one hand on your waist and the other cupping your jaw, you can feel his buzzing skin as it presses against your own — like the static of a television screen. His fingers settle between the strands of your hair while his thumb absentmindedly rubs along your cheekbone. 
The softness of his touch makes you hum against his mouth.
His lips are familiar like home — more than, because sometimes you think you’ve never really had one. 
There’s never been a cozy, warm, and tender place where you could rest your tired bones. Eddie’s trailer, maybe, but it wasn’t yours. No matter how often you slept within the four walls of his bedroom, no matter how hard you pretended like you’d lived there all your life, it would never belong to you.
But Steve could. 
Steve could be yours.
And you wouldn’t even have to pretend either. It would be for real this time.
His mouth was welcoming and pleasant and gentle, far more than you’ve ever gotten out of four walls and a roof. The plush pink of his lips — the cushion of his bottom one you like to dig your teeth into and the rough pad of his tongue that explores your mouth like undiscovered territory — is perhaps the softest thing you’ve ever known.
Even when he kisses you harder and guides you until your back is pressed against the edge of the countertop, it’s still so, so tender.
Steve’s hands migrate to your hips. His fingers clutch the fabric of your skirt as he cages you against his weight and the counter, as though out of fear you might slip away.
Your touch mirrors his desperate one. You cling to him with a similar intensity, balling the fabric of his navy blue Henley in one hand while you waltz through the pretty strands of his neatly styled hair with the other. You let him kiss you the way he wants to kiss you, keeping your obedient mouth plaint for him while he opens your mouth wider with his tongue.
His touches turn bruising, and yours go soft like summer rain.
Steve holds desperately onto you, like any moment he could wake up and none of this could be real. He kisses you like he won’t ever get to kiss you again, having no idea that you’ve already started to build a home in him. 
Meanwhile, your fingers tips trail like drops of water down his chest and stomach. They settle at his waist, on the top of his belt, and linger along the leather edge of it. You’re not quite sure what to do next — if you should wait for Steve to say something or if you should go ahead and take the lead.
Your sudden hesitation makes him nervous.
Steve’s lips click wetly as they part from yours. He peers down at you through heavy lids, amber eyes swimming with honeyed desire. His lips are pinker now, and swollen from being kissed so ardently. His brows pinch in concern. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t w—”
You barely let him get the words out before you press your mouth to his again. Your hands twist at the collar of his shirt to bring him back down to you. You stand on the tips of your toes to meet him halfway. 
“I want to,” you mumble, practically slurring from being so drunk on his touch.
“I wanna treat you right—” he tries to tell you. Some of his words are muffled against your mouth because you find yourself totally unable to stop kissing him now. “—Take things slow with you.” 
You smack a final kiss to his lips. When his honey eyes flutter open again, he finds you wearing a mischievous sort of smirk. There’s an accompanying teasing glint in your glazed over eyes.
“You can do all that when you’re inside of me,” you promise lowly, bold in a way neither of you are used to. The brazen nature of your dirty words is foreign but no less exciting.
They make Steve’s head get all swimmy and his cock tightens as it stiffens in his slacks. His spine tingles with his borderline overwhelming desire for you.
“Have mercy…” he murmurs within a heavy breath, more to himself than to you.
˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗
And love, is only heaven away...
Steve’s curtains match his wallpaper.
It’s a questionable blue and gray plaid that you doubt he picked out himself. The framed pictures of sports cars only add to the boyish flair of his bedroom. It doesn’t look like him, though. None of it does.
The only real trace of Steve The Hair Harrington is the poster of Christie Brinkley hanging beside his window, diligently placed right next to his bed. It’s a blown-up Sports Illustrated cover — a beautiful, soaking wet woman posing less than effortlessly against a palm tree in all her blonde-haired, blue-eyed, perfected-bodied glory. It’s the most King Steve you’ve ever seen.
All the minute details of his bedroom make you giggle.
“You have great taste, Steve Harrington.”
He grumbles in annoyance at your teasing as he clicks his door shut behind you.
“Well, you can thank my mom for my great taste, okay? She decorated the place when we moved in, like, forever ago. I just haven’t, you know, gotten around to changing it yet.”
“I can tell,” you laugh and turn to him with a smirk. “Really cool bedsheets, by the way. I mean, seriously. This is state-of-the-art design here, Stevie.”
It isn’t until he’s being pelted with your relentless teasing that he remembers he’s got dinosaur-patterned linens spread out on his mattress.
Steve typically likes to alternate bedsheets in between washing them. His plain gray ones would’ve perhaps been more appropriate for times like this, but they were in his hamper along with another set of plaid ones. His dino sheets may be immature, but they’re no less comfortable. It’s not his fault they just happened to fall on the week you were coming over.
“Alright, Punchy—” The boy rolls his eyes and splays two wide hands on your sides, pressing himself into you rather shamelessly. You wonder if the clothed stiffness against your lower stomach is just your imagination. Any other teasing remarks dissipate from the tip of your tongue as your eyes widen.
Steve notices your silence and smiles. “—You wanna keep making fun of me, or do you wanna make out some more?”
“I think we can do both,” you answer with a shrug, resting your hands along his waist. “I’m quite the multitasker, Harrington.”
“Yeah?”
You nod.
“Wanna show me?”
You nod again, smiling wider now.
He smashes his lips into yours again. You meet him halfway. It’s all too easy to fall back into the swings of things — the desperate mouths and longing touches. Maybe because you’re always desperate and longing for him. And, with the way he’s clinging to you now, you figure he must always be those things for you, too.
You relish in all of his little touches, in the duality of them. He cups your jaw so tenderly yet clutches your hip like he’s still trying to discern whether you’re real or not. Then his palms slide around your waist and up your back until he’s all but hugging you. It’s too sweet a gesture for how he’s prying your lips open with his mouth to slip his tongue inside. 
His hands settle, finally, at the very bottom of your sweater. They linger at them hem, not pressuring you to do anything, just waiting for you to make a move. 
You part from him to abide by his unspoken want. Your trembling hands work together to free you from your top. You’re more than grateful to pry the itchy thing off of you.
Steve doesn’t get the chance to admire the bra you wear. He catches a glimpse of frilly lace, but there’s little time to praise your topless form before you’re pulling him into another searing kiss. It’s full of tongue and teeth now, far more hungry that just moments ago. Your fingers slither through his hair and curl in the strands. You keep him firmly locked against you as his lips trail down your neck.
He finds your most sensitive spot in record time — the one just under your jaw, right beside your racing pulse. Your legs nearly give out when his tongue runs over it. A breathy moan exhales from your mouth before you can stop it and you feel him smile against your neck. He doesn’t comment on it, just keeps kissing you there in the hopes that you’ll do it for him again.
You do.
Steve sucks and nips at your delicate skin, and you revel in the feeling of his mouth. Head thrown back, you let him paint your neck in varying shades of red. Some will disappear come morning; others will darken into souvenirs for you to admire for the next few days.
The thought of him marking you drives you nearly as crazy as the feeling of his lips against you. 
You stopped trying to hold back your whines somewhere around ten of them ago. It was easier, you found, for him to kiss you and to let yourself enjoy it than be hyperaware of all the sounds you were or weren’t making. Steve seems to like it when you moan for him, anyway. Every time you do, he kisses you harder, holds you tighter, and hums out his own subtle moans against you.
He digs his teeth into your skin. It makes you whimper. The desperate, high-pitched noise fades into a lower moan when the rough pad of his tongue rushes out to soothe the bite. He moves on to kiss you elsewhere. You shiver when your spit-slicked skin meets the cool air.
You don’t notice that you’ve hitched your leg up his hip until you feel his warm hand on your thigh to hold it up for you. His fingers inch up until the tips of them rest beneath the hem of your skirt.
You don’t bother to hide how much you want him.
He doesn’t bother to hide how badly he needs you close.
“Wanna make you feel good,” he mumbles into your neck, smiling when his words make you whine. “Can I make you feel good?”
You nod when the words get stuck in your throat.
He parts from you for the first time in several minutes. His heavy gaze meets your own. “Can you say it for me?” he asks, not teasing you, just wanting to make sure you want this. Him.
“Want you to…” you start, then swallow when your voice is tighter than expected. You manage the rest through bated breaths. “…to make me feel good.”
Steve kisses you again, a long and thorough stamp on your lips, followed by several tinier pecks. Then his mouth starts its journey down, down, down your body, stopping only to admire your exposed chest. He’s more than pleased to find that what you’re wearing is hardly a bra at all.
It’s a sheer thing with dainty lace detailing. He figures it’s more for decoration than to push up your breasts. There’s no padding at all. Just a pretty tulle number that leaves very little to the imagination.
You watch him intently with a smile, enamored by how enamored he seems to be by a pair of boobs. You never thought yours were much to ogle over, but Steve presses tender, wet kisses to them anyway. He takes the plush between his teeth, sucking on the delicate skin to leave a blossoming bruise there. He only trails further down when he’s satisfied with the mark he’s branded you with.
Steve falls to his knees with a soft thud upon the carpeted floor. The faint sound is much more obvious in the quiet of his bedroom. He looks somehow prettier below you — soft and delicate and sweet like chocolate syrup or marshmallow fluff. But he’s still got this air about him, something stern and domineering, that tells you he’s still got all the power.
He presses a kiss to your thigh, just above the top of your sock, then several more further up. His fingers raise the fabric of your skirt the higher his lips travel. And, strangely, you’re not all that nervous about being half-naked in front of him. It’s hard to be when he’s kissing you like you’re a beautiful thing that deserves to be touched so tenderly.
Steve keeps pushing up your skirt and stills when he reaches the apex of your thigh, right where the top of it meets the joint of your hip.
Your underwear doesn’t match the bra you’re wearing, he finds. It’s orange all over and spotted with bats — the color has faded slightly, like you’d bought them some number of Halloweens ago.
It’s endearing. Everything about you is endearing. Even when you aren’t trying.
“Hold it up for me, yeah?” he asks you with your skirt in his hands.
It shouldn’t surprise him when you do the exact opposite. You step back from him to shove the thing down your legs, then leave it in a pool of forgotten fabric on his bedroom floor when you gravitate towards him all over again. 
His hands rise to your outer thigh and rub soothingly along the warmed skin. You wonder if he can feel the goosebumps pebbling there. The smirk he flashes up at you tells you that he does.
He’s got a twinkle in his eye when he teases you. “Really cute underwear, by the way.”
“I was obviously very prepared for this,” you retort with ease, making fun of yourself just as effortlessly as you can make fun of him.
“I like them,” the boy assures. “I really like them. Very on brand, Punchy.”
“Would you like me better out of them?”
Your arched brow and knowing smirk, kept caged between your teeth, is met with a bemused gaze. Steve’s eyes go wide at your forwardness.
“Uh, yeah— I mean… yeah,” he nods with a breathless chuckle. Then, more sincerely says, “Only if you still want to.”
You scoff at his timidity, though it’s more at yourself than him. “Look at me, Steve,” you answer plainly, motioning to your half-naked form and the damp spot forming in your underwear. “If I didn’t want this, you’d know by now.”
Steve huffs out a laugh, just before pressing a chaste kiss to the black bow of your panties. He noses at the softness of your stomach while his fingers curl around the hem. He tugs them slowly downward, giving you ample time to stop him if you wanted. 
A part of him is still convinced that none of this is real — you, namely. Truth be told, he’s waiting for a smack to the face and a rant about how all of this was just bullshit.
It never comes, though.
Instead, he gets a sheepish grin and a sparkling gaze as you hold onto his shoulder to step out of your underwear. The giggle that spills from your mouth when he tosses them over his shoulder makes him smile. 
Your pussy is as pretty as the rest of you. It’s more manicured than he imagined for a girl as wild as you. There’s a tuft of hair on your pubic bone, cut down and shaved around the edges. It leaves your lips bare and glistening with your accumulating slick.
Steve’s all but salivating at the sight of you.
“You wanna put that mouth to work, Harrington, or do you wanna ogle some m— oh,” you try to tease him, all amused at how he looks like he’s never seen a naked girl before, knowing full well he’s seen plenty. But your taunts evaporate from your tongue when he finally puts his mouth on you. They ebb into a breathy, high-pitched moan.
The tip of his chiseled nose smushes against you while he licks at the rest of your pussy with a practiced tongue. 
It’s more than obvious he’s done this before. Enough to have become a borderline professional at it. He finds your sensitive button within seconds and with minimal effort. Your legs are already buckling, practically turning to jelly, and he’s only just started. 
He latches onto your lips with a swollen pink mouth. His warm, wide hands wrap around the backs of your thighs to keep you steady and anchored against him.
Steve kisses your cunt like he’s making out with you. He opens and closes his mouth in slow, rhythmic motions, rutting his tongue along your glistening skin all the while. He’s sloppy with intention. Every touch is meticulous. He’s trying to figure you out, trying to learn what you like the most and what makes you moan the loudest for him.
Steve’s attentive. He’s ambitious and ardent. It’s like he enjoys kissing you down there, and not like he’s doing you a favor so he can get something in return. He moans against you like it’s every bit as pleasurable for him, as it is for you.
He alternates his efforts while he discovers you like unexplored territory.
You giggled like it tickled you when he stuck his tongue into your cunt the first time, then moaned when his nose nudged your clit. “Your mouth is so good,” you’d praised through bated breaths, but your whines had gotten too quiet for his liking. He opted to give his tongue a break and latch his slick lips to your swelling clit.
You liked it most when he sucked you there. At least, he figures you must, with the way your mouth parts in a silent cry and your hands dart to his hair to push him further into you.
“You like that?” Steve asks you, just to be sure. He pulls enough away so the words are intelligible, but still close for you to feel the vibrations of them against your skin.
“Yes,” you answer in a broken sigh.
Steve barely lets you answer before he’s licking a flat stripe up the length of your pussy. He slows methodically when the tip of his tongue catches your puffy clit, just so he can see your legs tremble. They do, rather intensely so, and he revels in the way your thighs quiver at his temples.
He wishes he’d laid you down before putting his mouth on you. He regrets not getting to spread you open, to part your soft folds with his thumbs, and admire you the way you deserve to be admired. 
But to be under you this way is a reward in itself. To get on his knees for you, to let you grind your hips against his face, it’s heaven. He never wants to stop feeling you this way.
“Please, Steve…” you moan breathlessly. “Please, please, please.”
You plea like it’s a mantra. Your voice grows tighter and tighter the closer you get to your peak. 
Steve’s not entirely what you’re begging for. You’re not either, really. You just know that the pleasure is swelling. The wringing knot in your stomach is close to snapping. The thought alone is borderline overwhelming. You want to run away from the crescendoing feeling and keep it locked against your pussy all at once.
“Steve… Steve, please. I’m— fuck.”
“You can take it,” he promises, speaking the words into your cunt. His lips smack when he pulls away from you, just for a moment to catch his breath. His chest heaves and his tongue darts to graze his bottom lip. “It’s yours, baby. Just take it—”
You’re a goner the second he wraps his lips around your clit again. He suckles there like his life depends on it. Your hips twitch and you tug at his hair when you come, perhaps a bit rougher than you realize. Steve delights in the burn at his scalp. He groans shamelessly into you, a hearty grumble that rolls over every inch of your body.
You make the mistake of looking down at him in the midst of your undoing. You bring your chin down to your chest and open your fluttering eyes to peer down at the boy below you. He’s already looking up at you, you find, with his own bleary gaze. His cinnamon eyes glitter up at you and you melt for him.
Something about the sight of Steve on his knees for you, face snug against your cunt, and gaze lidded with desire makes you keen. Your hips flex, then still against his mouth while you gush for him.
“There you go,” he murmurs against your cunt. “There you go, baby.”
A high moan gets hung in your throat at his praise. It escapes in a delicate cry when your orgasm pummels into you full throttle. You’re whining and terribly sensitive when the buzzing feeling starts to ebb.
Steve laps at your weeping cunt while you writhe. 
He knows to leave your throbbing clit alone now, but seeks to prolong your pleasure in other ways. He gathers the honey you leak from your pulsating hole with an eager tongue and doesn’t relent until you’re twitching away from him. Only when you’re tugging him off by his hair is he satisfied.
Then he goes effortlessly soft again.
He presses little kisses to the burning flesh of your thighs and runs his palms along the backs of them to coax you back to the earth again.
When your cries fade to more contented sighs and your eyes find his again, he smiles sweetly up at you. Too sweetly. He shouldn’t be grinning so tenderly, not when his lips and chin and nose glisten with your slick.
Steve wipes his mouth with the back of his hands as he rises to his full height in front of you.
“Was that… Was that good for you?” he wonders, suddenly sheepish like he wasn’t lapping at your pussy a minute or more ago.
“Are you kidding?” you retort, trying to laugh at him. All that comes out is a fatigued scoff. Your hands twist in the fabric of his shirt and you lean heavily against him when his arms wrap around you again. “I don’t think I’ve ever come that hard in my life.”
That nearly does him in right then.
He leans to press a languid kiss to your mouth. There’s a foreign musk to his tongue now that wasn’t there before. You hum a moan against him when you realize it’s you that you’re tasting.
“Can I suck you off?” you blurt.
Steve freezes. 
There’s hardly a thing he wants more than to feel your warm mouth on his cock. He’s been hard and aching since the second he got you into his bedroom. And that’s exactly why he knows he won’t last.
He usually jerks off before dates for that exact reason. At least, King Steve did because King Steve knew wherever he was going, he was getting laid. He wouldn’t have the reputation he did if he only lasted eight seconds.
He would’ve gotten himself off before you came around, made sure he was able to last as long as you needed him to if he’d expected you to need him at all. But he wasn’t expecting any of this to happen — especially not for you to come against his mouth and ask to give him a blowjob minutes later. 
He didn’t invite you to dinner in the hopes you’d put out after. Call him old-fashioned, but he enjoys spending innocent time with you. He would’ve been more than happy to cook you dinner and kiss you on the cheek before you left.
But here you are, wanting more.
You never stop surprising him.
“I mean, it’s only fair, right?” you shrug at his silence. “You deserve to get off too.”
“You don’t have to. Not just because I did it for you—”
“I’ve been hearing about your dick since the tenth grade. I’m pretty sure I’m the only girl in the class of ’85 that hasn’t seen it. The least you can do is let me give you a measly blowjob,” you confess lowly.
Steve, knocked senseless at your words, starts working his belt off without a second thought. His hands fumble with the buckle while he smirks at you. “Yeah? What have you heard?”
“Oh, you know. The usual,” you answer vaguely and saunter the short distance to his bed. You plop down on the edge of it and lean your weight on your palms. “Just that you have a monster-sized dick and that Marianne from Soc nearly broke it when you took her virginity.”
“That was a rumor!” he defends as he steps out of his jeans. His shirt goes next. He pulls the thing up and over his head with an admirable sort of finesse, leaving his toned torso and hairy chest on display for you. 
“The monster-sized dick or the Marianne from Soc thing?”
He doesn’t entertain with an answer, just drops his boxers and lets you figure it out for yourself. 
His cock is already hard and glowing a faint strawberry color at the tip with neglect. It curves to his right hip and hangs there, weighed down by its own size. The hair upon his pubic bone rises to meet the happy trail on his lean stomach, trimmed slightly but still a bit wild. Tanned skin, heavy balls, and a singular vein that trails like a river from the base to the head — Steve Harrington’s got the prettiest dick you’ve ever seen.
You don’t even realize you’re gawking at him because you’re too busy trying to figure out how either could be rumors. You’re looking at beast right now, a wild thing that tiny, little Marianne from Soc certainly couldn’t handle. You’re not even entirely sure if you can.
Steve blanches at your hesitation. He sees you retreat into your head and rushes to bring you back. “Hey, we don’t have to… We don’t have to do this if you do want to. We don’t have to do any of this if—”
“I want to,” you assure quickly, eyes widening when you realize how quiet you’d gone. You can imagine how mortifying it must’ve been, for him to get naked in front of you and be met with total silence. “You just… have the biggest dick I’ve ever seen.”
His concern ebbs to a relieved smile. “Well, thanks for stroking my ego, princess.”
“I would love to stroke something else,” you quip with a playful grin that’s far too proud of such a dumb joke.
Steve rolls his eyes but doesn’t bother to hide his smile. 
He wants it on record, though, that he’s not grinning at your mindless innuendo. It wreaks too much of Eddie. You both seem to possess a similar sort of humor in that way, in how you can make anything into a joke — particularly a dirty one.
“Thanks for stroking my ego,” Steve would say and Munson would joke, “Well, we both know nothing else of yours is getting stroked, Harrington, so it’s the least I can do.” And Eddie would’ve been right. But Steve would never let him know that.
The boy settles in the middle of his bed and watches with a glittering gaze as Eddie’s best friend climbs between his legs. She spits into her palm and starts tugging at his hard cock with it. Steve isn’t sure of what to do — if he should rub it in this boy’s face or keep this piece of heaven to himself. He decides on that latter when your lips wrap around his leaking tip.
You’ll tell Eddie about all this tomorrow. He’s your best friend, after all — Steve will be doing the same with Robin, no doubt. And that alone is a reward in and of itself.
Getting him into your mouth was easy in theory, but you quickly find that it’s a harder feat than you realized. Steve’s not just long, he’s wide, and the combination makes it nearly impossible to take him fully. 
You pay extra attention to his strawberry pink tip to make up for what you can’t reach. He seems to like that more than anything else. Pearly pre-come leaks from there and you happily lap up his dribbling honey. Steve shudders every time your tongue meets his mushroom tip. His cock keeps drooling for you, so you keep doing it.
You work the rest of him with your palm, made slippery with your spit. Your free hand anchors around his thigh.
The combined effort isn’t something Steve’s particularly used to. 
Most girls choose one or the other. They either try to swallow him whole or opt to use their hands when they know that they can’t. That is, if they even want to suck him off at all. The foreign attention you give him drives him to the edge embarrassingly quickly.
“Hey, we should, uh— we should maybe stop,” he cautions tightly.
You detach from the head of his dick with a soft pop, but keep working him slowly with your palm. Your brows pinch together with concern. “You okay? Is it not… Is it not good?”
“What? No! It’s not— It’s not that. It’s great. That’s the… That’s sorta the problem,” Steve assures with an awkward laugh. “I’m not gonna… I probably won’t last much longer. And if you wanna… you know…”
“Fuck?” you finish for him with a teasing grin.
“Yeah. Then we should, you know, maybe stop now.”
Your hand stills at the base of his cock. Steve can finally breathe without the worry of bursting entirely.
“I mean, we can stop if you want to. You know, no pressure or anything, but… I don’t mind. I was sorta looking forward to you coming in my mouth.”
And how the hell was Steve ever going to say no to that — to you? He’s never denied you of anything before, and with that godawful track record, he wasn’t exactly equipped to start now.
Your mouth wraps around him again. You kitten lick at his tip and moan at the musky taste before sucking at his blushing head.
It feels good — it feels great — but he’s plagued with a lingering worry. 
He wants so desperately to fuck you, more than he needs to breathe, it feels like. But your mouth is too perfect a thing to deprive himself of. He’s scared it’ll take him too long to get hard again, or worse, that he won’t be able to at all. 
The thought of embarrassing himself in front of you, of not making you feel as good as he wants to make you feel, is an unbearable one.
There’s no way he’s stopping you, though. How can he when you’re sucking him off like your life depends on it? Your hand tugs and squeezes at the base of his cock while your tongue laps at his drooling tip. And on top of all that, you moan against him like making him feel good is making you feel good, too.
“Holy shit,” Steve forces through a tightening throat when your tongue dips just below his head to lick where the pale blue vein fades. His neck stretches as he digs the crown of his head into the pillow, revealing all of the pretty tendons you want to sink your teeth into.
“Your mouth is— fuck… Your mouth is fucking perfect, babe, shit.”
All of his little reactions spur you forward. 
You want him to keep praising you. You want to keep making his legs shudder and his hips twitch and his cock jerk in your mouth. So you double your efforts, just to hear more of his pretty whines that get stuck in his throat.
When you duck your head to pay the same amount of attention to his balls, Steve’s a total fucking goner.
His hands, both of which were obediently fisting the bedsheets, immediately dart to your hair when you suck his sack into your mouth. One warm palm cradles your jaw while the other clings to the back of your hand. He doesn’t push you or force you to take him further — he just holds you.
“I’m gonna come,” he grunts before a groan climbs out from his throat. His head falls back again, but he forces it upright a moment later so he can keep on watching you.
His hips stutter when you hum a moan against him.
“Yeah? Is that what you want?” he manages through heavy pants. “You want my come?”
You nod with his balls still in your mouth, then pull off of them with a pop to put his cock back in your mouth. 
Steve gives you exactly what you want no more than ten seconds later, spitting several loads of his come onto your tongue. It tastes like what had been leaking from his tip, just a bit saltier and far more potent with so much of it in your mouth at one time.
Steve’s thighs tremble around you and hips buck wildly despite himself until he’s given you everything he can possibly give to you. 
He allows himself only a few moments to relish in the aftermath of his swirling pleasure before reaching for the box of tissues on his bedside table. He rises to his elbows to hand you the napkin when his dick slips from your mouth. 
“Here, you can—” he says, trying to offer you something to spit into. It’s a habit he’d developed after the tenth or so girl refused to swallow.
You’ve already wolfed down his come, though, and wiped the excess at the corners of your mouth with the tips of your fingers. You don’t let a single drop of him go to waste.
All this time, Steve assumed he just tasted bad. He figured that must’ve been why no girl ever swallowed for him — not even Nancy, the only other girl he was ever really serious about. And they were together for two years. On the off chance she ever actually wanted to give him a blowjob, he knew her swallowing his come was totally out of the question.
Steve never minded, though. He was a giver more than he was anything else and he preferred most to finish inside. But now, with you, he sees just how much he’d missed out on. It feels a bit strange and unearthly levels of gratifying.
The boy breathes out a laugh and falls back against the mattress. The tissue falls from his limp hand onto the carpeted floor as he revels in his post-orgasmic haze. With his head still swimming and his legs still tingling, his glassy eyes find the speckled ceiling above him but don’t focus on anything in particular.
“Was that—”
“Don’t even finish that sentence,” he interjects softly. 
There’s no use in asking if you were good or not. Surely, you could answer the question just by looking at him. He’s a puddle of a man in the middle of his bed, pliant and at your mercy.
You giggle and slither in beside him, pressing your mostly bare body into his side. One leg wraps over his own. The warmth of your slick pussy lingers at his hip. You prop your head up with your fist while your other settles along his chest, busying itself with the tufts of hair there.
“That was, like, really good,” you praise with a sheepish beam. You wish you knew bigger words that might be able to describe it better. Really good doesn’t come close to explaining how heavenly it felt to come in his mouth, for him to come in yours. “You certainly lived up to all the rumors, Harrington.”
“You say that like we’re done,” he chuckles at your conclusive tone.
Your eyes flit from his face to his softening cock lying limb on his thigh, then back to his face again. You arch a skeptical brow. “No?”
“Not even close,” he shakes his head defiantly. His honey eyes flit between the both of yours. “I need to fuck you, babe, I just… I need a few minutes. If that, you know— If that’s okay with you…”
“You just give me life-changing head. So, yeah, I think I can give you a couple minutes,” you promise with a playful, but not insincere smile.
Even after having his mouth on you, and your mouth on him, you still like kissing him the most.
No amount of pleasure can sate the feeling of having him so close in this way. There’s nothing equally gratifying as sucking his bottom lip into your mouth or feeling the wet muscle of his tongue running itself over your own. You’d be more than happy to kiss him like this until sunrise.
Steve’s hands stay locked on either side of your head while he pries your mouth open with his own. He’ll occasionally pull back to admire your spit-slick, kiss-bitten lips for a moment or two. Then he’ll flash you a smile, like you’re a piece of finished artwork he’s happy with, before pulling you back down again.
You lean just over him, elbow digging into the pillow beside his head as you rest your weight on your arm. That hand twists itself within the strands of his hair, fingers lazing in the chestnut halo on his head. Your other migrates down his body, touching him with feather-light grazes to coax him hard again. 
His stomach tightens when your nails sweep over the thin trail of hair there. His stiffening cock twitches where it lazes along his inner thigh.
“Top or bottom?” the boy mumbles between languid kisses. His eyes flutter open long enough to catch the brief flash of confusion on your face. You don’t stop pressing your lips to his, even amid your uncertainty.
“Like bunks?”
Steve sputters a laugh against your mouth. He pulls away so he can look at you. “No, like— I meant, do you wanna ride me? Or would you rather lay down?”
“Oh. Shit. Sorry,” you stammer quickly. You figure the question must’ve puzzled you because no guy has ever asked before. This kindness is still a tad bit foreign. “I just— I wasn’t thinking.”
“It’s okay. It was cute,” Steve assures with a smile so soft it has to be sincere.
“Um… I don’t— I mean, I don’t know. Is that, like, something you want me to do?”
His right hand leaves your face to find his cock. He wraps his fist around himself, pumping slowly to keep himself hard for you. “It’s whatever you want, okay? Promise. I just thought it might be easier for you if you were on top. So you can take things at your own pace and everything.”
“Yeah,” you affirm within a heavy exhale. You feel yourself growing wetter at the mere thought of being on top of him like that. You nod until the words catch up with you. “Yeah. Okay.”
It isn’t your first time being in this position, but something about straddling Steve’s hips feels foreign. You’re starting to notice that most things you do with him feels that way — new and strange and alarming. Even the most innocent things, the mundane shit you’ve done a thousand times before, it’s all brand new with him.
You twist your hand behind your back to unclip your bra. Steve watches you with wide eyes like you’re doing some sort of magic trick. When you toss the piece of fabric somewhere on his bedroom floor, he spits into his palm to wet his cock.
His eyes flit from his hand, to your glistening pussy hovering just above his lap, to your face. “You can, uh— You can rub yourself on me, if you want. You know, to get it wetter. I don’t have lube or anything. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, I’m…” you trail off. I’m more than wet, you’d almost said. That felt a little too overzealous, though, so you settle on telling him: “I’m okay.”
“You’re still on the, um, the pill, right?” he wonders, feeling a bit lame for remembering something you’d said in passing so long ago.
You complained once that birth control made you feel crazy. You said it affected your mood so drastically sometimes that it didn’t feel worth it to take. That was weeks ago. A brief conversation you’d left in the Family Video parking lot. 
You nod wordlessly in reply.
Steve holds the base of his cock to keep it steady for you as you pierce yourself with it. 
Taking his blushing head was the easiest part. The sensitive tip slips so effortlessly into you, just bulbous enough for you to feel it but not enough to stretch you out. It’s a Goldilocks just right sort of feeling that has low moans crawling from the depths of your throats.
Down, down, down a couple more inches and that’s when the ache starts to set in.
His girth stretches you in an unfamiliar, but no less satisfying way. As good as it feels, the burning sensation is a hard one to ignore. It’s like a fire, a distant one. It’s sort of like reaching your hand toward a flame while your brain screams at you to not get any closer.
It’s a lot like that, actually.
Your brain cautions you about taking him any deeper than you have now lest he might totally split you in half.
“Sorry— Sorry. I’m sorry,” you sputter suddenly, a little embarrassed that he’s only a couple of inches within you and you’re already having so much trouble. With your chin tilted towards your chest and your eyes squeezed shut, you refuse to meet Steve’s concerned gaze. “It’s just… It’s kind of a lot.”
“It’s okay,” he assures quickly. He rubs two soothing hands along your hips and fights back the urge to thrust further into you. You don’t see the gentle smile he looks at you with your eyes closed. “Take your time.”
A little over a minute and a pep talk later, you finally build up the courage to sit on him fully. Come, you can do it, your inner voice spits at you. Stop being a baby. It’s just a penis, don’t be such a bitch. 
Your face scrunches when you slide slowly down upon him. Steve expects you to stop and take a break for anothera moment like you’d done just before. He’s more than surprised when you try to take him completely.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. You don’t have to— holy shit, babe— don’t hurt yourself— fuuuck.”
You breathe out a heavy sigh of relief when he’s finally sheathed within your pulsating pussy. A lazy, lopsided smile makes its way to your lips, delirious with pleasure and pride. 
Both of you exhale faraway moans at the new feeling, heads falling back on their own accord. You’re already more than gratified and you haven’t even moved yet. He’s reaching parts of you that most guys don’t on their best day, making you feel full without trying. Even without his thrusting, the minuscule twitches of his cock are already driving you toward an orgasm.
“Can I tell you a secret?” you ask him suddenly, smiling lazily at the ceiling. 
Steve’s adams apple bobs as he swallows. Then he nods.
“I’m already really fucking close,” you confess with a breathless laugh, face crumbling under the weight of your pleasure halfway through.
Steve chuckles, then groans quietly. “Can I tell you a secret?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I am, too.”
You laugh together and your coinciding embarrassment fades like an ebbing tide. The intimate confessions affirm what you were already more than aware of — that the both of you are just a couple of lovesick idiots who are head over heels for each other and in so far over your heads that you can barely breathe.
You’re spurred on by the sight below you. Steve’s wild hair and amber eyes and swollen pink mouth make you ravenous. He runs his tongue over his bottom lip, looking like the sight of you makes him hungry too, as you start to grind your hips over his lap.
He guides your rhythm with two wide hands on your hips. Your pace is slow, every roll of your hips is experimental, and he revels in every second of it.
You start by rocking back and forth over his lap, then by moving in small circles to add stimulation. When get more confident, you lift yourself up and down over his cock. He’s able to hit your most sensitive spot that way. Steve seems to like it too, because you feel the subtle jerks of his responsive cock.
He accommodates your every move — thrusting his hips in time with your bouncing, then flexing them to reach as deep as he can within you.
“That’s it…” Steve murmurs, mostly to himself. He’s not exactly trying to praise you, but his words send lightning strikes of pleasure to your pussy anyway. He keeps babbling to himself. “That’s it, baby. Take it. Just like that…”
You support yourself with your palms on his hairy chest when you double your efforts on top of him. Steve groans at the lewd sound of your slick thighs clapping over his lap every time you move down on his cock. Your cunt quickly drenches his lower stomach and the small thatch of pubic hair just below it.
You too easily forget that fucking is a marathon and not a sprint. 
You overexert yourself quickly in your attempt to rush toward an orgasm and the effects of your sudden fatigue make your legs feel numb.
“Sorry,” you apologize breathlessly when you’re bouncing slows to a stop. You collapse to your elbows, nose nearly grazing Steve’s, as you swivel your hips slowly over his lap. You try to laugh at yourself. “My legs are just getting a little tired… I haven’t done this in a while if you couldn’t tell.”
Steve smiles sympathetically up at you. His hands leave the plush of your hips to cradle your jaw. He gazes at you with a stern sort of gentleness. “Stop apologizing. You’re good,” he promises, then pulls you softly down to peck your mouth.
He rolls his hips up into you and grunts when it makes you whine. “So fucking good…”
Steve tells you to tuck your knees further up his torso and you obey without thinking. You tuck your face into his shoulder and let him cradle the back of your head with one hand while the other settles on your ass. 
He grips you there rather shamelessly, fingers digging into your plump skin, while he bends his knees behind you. He plants his feet on the mattress and thrusts up into you without warning. 
His pace is already a relentless one, having no need to work himself up to a rapid pass as you had. Being basketball team captain has done wonders for his stamina, it seems. He drills up into you and keeps drilling into you without tiring. 
He keeps you securely pressed against him all the while and you relax into his embrace, happily letting him fuck you in his own delicious rhythm as he’d done for you.
The new position stimulates you from all angles. Steve’s hard cock pounds into your weeping pussy. Your swollen clit catches the coarse hair on his taut stomach with each of his thrusts. Your pebbled nipples drag along his furry chest.
It leaves you a whining, writhing mess on top of him.
“You like this?” he murmurs in your ear through broken pants. 
He’s partly teasing you. He knows you mustlike what he’s doing to some degree because you’re moaning something fierce into his neck, peppering too sweet kisses in between your pretty whines. But he also wants to know that you like it. He wants to hear you say the words.
He feels you nod against his shoulder. “Yes...” You sigh, then whimper. “Yes, yes yes—”
“I knew you did,” he affirms. You can hear the smile on his face. You’re not sure if he’s mocking you or not. You’re not sure if you particularly care either. 
His stubbly jaw grazes your cheek when he turns his head to press a kiss to the burning skin. “Knew you’d like it… Takin’ my dick like a fuckin’ champ, babe.”
“Wanna be good for you,” you confess against his sweat-slicked skin, your voice high and wet like you’re close to crying.
Steve tugs at your hair, not enough to hurt you, just enough to pull you from the refuge you’d sought in the nook of his neck. He finds that your eyes are glassy with unshed tears, brows pinching and swollen lips softly agape. His amber eyes are just as wild, heavy with hunger.
“You are good for me, baby,” he promises and seals it with a searing kiss to your wet mouth. He means it in more ways than one and prays you understand. “You’re so good for me… Fucking perfect, babe— shit—”
His cock twitches in your snug slick when you clench around him. He tightens the grip he’s got on your ass and spreads you wider to pound harder into you. You hope his scorching touch will leave bruises come morning. You want to remember how it felt to have him touching you this way.
“Steve…” you sigh, helpless.
“Hmm?”
“I’m gonna…” you start, then whimper when you feel the familiar pleasure start to crescendo once more. It takes a moment for the words to return to you. “I’m about to come.”
“Touch yourself,” he blurts.
Your lidded gaze widens. You peer down at him, bemused by his sudden request. “Huh?”
“Touch yourself for me,” he repeats, groaning when the request makes you tighten around him. “Want this to be good for you, too.”
He says this like you’re not already in heaven. You listen to him anyway, though, and squeeze your hand between your slick bodies to find your sensitive button. You rub at your clit until your thighs tremble around his waist. You try your best to ride through every bolt of lightning the pleasure shoots down your spine, despite the distant fear that you won’t be able to weather them.
“Yeah, there you go,” he praises lowly. “Keep rubbing your clit for me…”
Your free hand stays locked in his hair. Your grip tightens within the chocolate strands as you near your peak. Steve revels in the ache, groaning into your shoulder when the burn at his scalp spreads. 
You’re already gut-wrenchingly close. You can feel the coil in your belly tightening, a struck chord crescendoing — and then Steve changes the angle of his hips. He flexes them suddenly and his thick cock probes something much deeper inside of you. Something that’s never been touched before — not by another guy or a toy or you.
It’s tender, and much more sensitive than your clit. Your vision strays for a brief moment as a white-hot flame of pleasure makes you jerk against him. You gasp sharply, then forget how to breathe when a moan gets caught in your throat. Your hand stills between your slick bodies as you freeze on top of him.
The wet cry finally spills from your mouth after several long seconds. It’s as long and delicate and wet as the orgasm you gush around Steve’s cock.
The flame burns red hot just before you come, then turns to simmering embers when your cunt numbs from the intense pleasure. You blink, and suddenly the fire is burning blue. The rest of your body becomes a casualty to the inferno.
“Yeah? Is that the spot, baby?” you hear Steve wonder. He murmurs the words in your ear, but you don’t hear them. They sound muffled and far away. 
You hope he doesn’t expect you to answer. You’re not entirely sure if you can form words anymore, or any actual conceivable thoughts. All you can do is suffer through every overwhelming wave of your orgasm that leaves you a crying and convulsing mess on Steve’s lap.
“Holy fuck—”
The boy slams his hips against you with a final, dense clap that sounds deafening in the quiet of his bedroom. Your gushing and fluttering cunt milks his cock. The feeling of your weeping pussy and the sound of your pretty whines throw him headfirst into his own orgasm. His thrusts still as he twitches within you. A moment later, you feel the subtle tingle at the base of your spine when he spits his come inside of you. 
His come paints your welcoming, rippling walls. It’s warm, like the first sip of coffee in the morning or fuzzy socks on cold feet. It blankets you in a sinful comfort.
Steve noses at your cheek while he rides the high of his climax. He rolls his hips slowly into you, much softer now that his cock has grown so sensitive. He clamps his mouth shut between his teeth to stifle his too loud moans and desperate whines. They’re forced to crawl from his throat as suffocated grunts.
You mourn the loss of not seeing his face while you’re tucked so securely into the nape of his neck. It’s a work of art you can imagine so clearly — his pinched brows and scrunched nose and parted lips. But you relish in the searing hold he has on you now, happy to hold and to be held.
The shuddering is slow to subside, especially from you. The aftershocks of your orgasm keep your hips spasming over his lap. Steve groans into your shoulder every time your pussy quivers around his softening cock.
And then the two of you just lay there. You hold onto each other and try to catch your breaths. With the both of you covered in a fine sheen of sweat, your skin sticks together with every tiny movement. The feeling of it makes you smile. You feel like the two of you really are melting together.
Steve’s fingers part from your wild strands of hair and take to tracing the expanse of your damp back. You hum in contentment at the feeling, nuzzling your nose up and down the right side of his neck. 
The moment is melted ice cream and early morning rain and marshmallow fluff. It’s spring mornings on the porch and warm breezes in the fall. It’s a soft and familiar thing that’s still so, so new.
You think you could spend forever here, if you had to. In Steve’s bed and in Steve’s lap and with all of Steve’s languid touches.
But sex is different when you’re an adult. 
When you’re a teenager, you get to be irresponsible. Carelessness sort of comes with the territory. You have sex in a dirty bathroom of a bar you snuck into and don’t think twice about the implications of any it. But as an adult with bills and a nine-to-five and groceries you’ve got to get once a week, all you can think about is how inconvenient a UTI would be.
“I should probably use the bathroom,” you murmur, already grieving the loss of his touch before you’ve even parted from him. 
You leave the safety of his neck to peer down at him. His heavy lids mirror your own. 
“I have this thing where if I don’t piss after sex, I feel like I’m gonna be, like, cursed or something. Kinda like when you break a mirror and you’re stuck with shit luck for seven year— or however that dumb superstition goes,” you ramble, voice heavy with fatigue and lingering pleasure. “Anyway. Yeah. Plus, I should probably clean up, too.”
Steve breathes out a laugh at your sudden prattling but humors you nonetheless.
Somehow you manage to pry yourselves off of each other — you, feeling significantly emptier without him inside you and Steve, already shivering with the lack of your warmth all over him. 
You separate just long enough for him to wet a washcloth in the sink while you piss just a couple feet away from him. The bathroom connected to his bedroom seems to be a foreign sight for you — a least, that’s what he assumes because you rave so enthusiastically about it the entire time. 
It’s all Steve’s ever known, though, so he finds it difficult to do anything but nod along with your rambling. More than anything, he’s glad you’re not as weighed down by the domesticity  of the moment as he is. Because he, for one, feels a little like he’s been hit by a freight train. 
Perhaps spending so many years all alone has made him sensitive to closeness.
You sit on the marble countertop and rest your forehead on his shoulder while he cleans you up. He runs the warm cloth along your delicate folds and wipes away traces of your slick and his come that glisten on your thighs. He pleats the rag and does the same to his softening cock and surrounding skin. 
It feels so strangely intimate, more than the sex somehow.
Steve tugs on a fresh pair of boxers and gives you a faded Hawkins Phys. Ed tee to change into. The loose fabric and baggy fit feels much more familiar than the costume you’d initially arrived in. He might be happier than you are, though, to finally get to see you in your most natural state — makeup sufficiently smudged away and ill-suited clothes forgotten on his floor. 
You crawl beneath the mussed navy comforter of his bed and smush your face into his pillow. “See? The dino sheets aren’t so bad, are they?” the boy teases when you hum in contentment. 
The mattress dips beneath his weight as he settles in beside you.
You smile but don’t open your eyes. “I’m just sleepy… Sue me.”
“It’s barely nine o’clock, grandma.”
“It’s your fault,” you argue, voice dripping with exhaustion. Your skin purrs as he reaches blindly beneath the covers to rub his palm along your forearm.
He grins softly to himself. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. You wore me out, Harrington.”
“I’ll make it up to you in the morning, ‘kay?” he promises, then laughs when you smirk and raise your brows — eyes still shut. “Not like that, you perv. I was talking about breakfast. I make a mean scrambled egg.”
You tell him you’re looking forward to it, to breakfast in bed and breakfast in bed. He falls further for you somehow, despite his lingering disdain for your silly little innuendos. It’s the price you have to pay when you love someone, he figures, like when your crush gets a bad haircut or has shit music taste. 
It’s a quirk he welcomes along with your many others — your rambling and forgetfulness and social unawareness and inability to sit still. All your little idiosyncrasies weren’t obstacles he had to get over to love you, just more reasons for him to.
And it isn’t this one-sided thing, either. Most people would look at the two of you — at the dowager king and local freak — and they’d think he was doing charity work to love you. But Steve’s got peculiarities of his own. 
His best friends are a fourteen-year-old nerd and a closeted lesbian because they were the first two people in his life that didn’t judge him. He chews on the ends of pens and pencils, and his handwriting is shit because he never cared about school. He buys things without ever looking the price tag, then leaves them to collect dust in his room because he never really needed them anyway. He still feels the need to be the center of attention sometimes because the faintest hint of disregard makes him feel neglected.
These are all things you’re aware of. Most of them came with being the wealthy, popular kid from the right side of the tracks. And you liked him anyway — no, you liked him because of them. You adored him through all the heavy shit, and here he was, doing a shit job at pretending to like metal music and horror movies.
“Are you asleep?” Steve wonders after a few moments of velvet silence. He’s still looking at you, one arm propped beneath his hand and the other toying with your fingers splayed on the mattress between you. He hasn’t been able to stop looking at you.
“Almost,” you mumble in response.
“Can I tell you a secret?”
Your heart stops at the innocent question, tired eyes flying immediately open and knocking you out of your fatigued stupor. 
All of a sudden, it’s 1984 again. You’re the weirdo who bites people and Steve’s royalty who’ll fuck anything that walks — and here you are, in bed with the asshole. For a moment, you expect Tommy Hagan to bust out of the closet with a tape recorder and for Steve to tell you this was all just some stupid bet.
It’s a pang of blue lightning, an ice pick to your abdomen, that lasts no more than a couple of seconds. 
Internally, you curse yourself for getting so worked up. You make a promise to yourself to work on all that — the regressing and the disbelief that comes with the not-feeling-good-enough bullshit.
“Yeah?” you finally answer.
“I don’t actually like Dio. Or Def Leppard,” he confesses, finding it hard to meet your gaze  like a child who’s been caught in a lie. He focuses on running his thumb over the irregular pattern of your chipped nailpolish. “And I don’t collect vinyls either, not really. I just… I kinda just said those things so you’d like me.”
And, compared to the web you were just spinning in your head, that’s nothing.
“Ooh,” you wince playfully. “Def Leppard I could take, but Dio? I don’t know… That might be a dealbreaker, Harrington.”
He only smiles because he can tell you’re making fun. “I could learn to like them, you know? If it means that much to you. That’s what we’re doing now, right? Loving things on purpose?”
You capture your smile with your bottom lip between your teeth. Your eyes sparkle at him when you nod. “Yeah… We are.”
“Which means you could learn to like football and Bruce Springsteen,” Steve jokes and shifts on the mattress so he’s closer to you. 
Your feet bump together, then entwine effortlessly. He plops his head on the same pillow you’re using. The proximity leaves your faces no more than a couple inches apart. 
You scrunch your nose, wondering if you should hide your disgust in his playful request or make a joke out of it. You don’t do either. “I could… If it means I get to keep you.”
“Keep me?” he scoffs. “Good luck, getting rid of me, Punchy.”
“Who said I wanted to, huh?”
“You will. When you get sick of me.”
He’s smiling like he’s kidding, but you can tell there’s an edge of self-loathing to his tone. 
Your hand crawls from beneath his own and settles on his stubbly jaw. You run your thumb over the cheek, effectively sealing your promise into the blushing apple of it. “I’m never gonna get sick of you, Steve Harrington.”
His brows raise. “No?”
You shake your head against the pillow, then shove the side of your face further into it when you get nervous. There’s a timid quirk to the corners of your lips and a more sheepish glint in your eye. “You don’t get sick of people you love,” you tell him.
Steve opens his mouth to retort. He wants to tell you that he gets sick of Dustin all the time, but that it doesn’t mean he doesn’t love the little shit. He gets sick of milkshakes and pizza and Cheers re-runs when he consumes too much of them in a single setting, but he loves all those things too. 
You get sick of things because you love them, he reasons, because you love them too hard and you hate how much you need them.
He doesn’t get the chance to argue any of this, though.
“Not when you love them on purpose,” you clarify with a sunshine-coated grin.
That shuts him up real quick.
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bestpigeon · 2 months
Text
THE FALLEN ONE
LUCIFER X MALE READER
You, an angel, betrayed heaven and refused to kill demons. How will this go?
Words- 1.4k
Warnings- swearing, gore, fighting, gay
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It was extermination day. How exciting.  The truth is, i genrally despise extermination day. We get sent down to hell to kill souls. yeah, theyre evil and in the pits of hell for a reasom. however i dont believe that its the right thing to do. i mean, its still souls were killing. They dont deserve death. Were not very angelic if were killing souls? For what, so they wont revolt? They will anyways.
Adam was giving us a pep talk. I was on the front lines since im a worthy soldier. Adam was talking, shouting, about Vaggie. Vaggie betrayed us ages ago, Lutes long life plan is to kill her and rip out her other eyes or something. I sniker at the thought and i get a large death stare from Lute. Adam then shouts something that i didnt care enough to listen and everyone started charging through the portal and into hell. I fly down into the dome that some percular demon had created. It was all green and weird.
I land and look at the other angels either killing canibals, or getting killed themself. i scurry into a corner and hide near some broken rubble. I suddenly hear a chuckle. i whip my head in panic to.. shit, Lute.
"well well well. Really thought youd slack and get away with it?! this isnt the first time ive.. caught you avoiding battle." she says as she chuckles at my patheticness.
I roll my eyes and stand up. I flap my beautiful and delicate white angelic wings behind me. I turn my mask to face Lute.
"what? all to join in on killing souls? They arent innocent, yeah, but.. they dont deserve this-" i say before getting lunged at. Lute jumps ontop of me and we tumble backwards. I groan in agony and annoyance
"your so fucking pathetic. how about you join Vaggie? You and that bitch can rot down here. Worthless fu-" she says as she grits her teeth. I interup her by thrusting her off my lap and kicking her aggressivly with my legs. I stand up and point my spear at her.
"i am NOT going to join in with this shit anymore! you will not control me like the freak you are" I say as i squint my eyes under my mask. I didnt want to be controlled like a peasent, a doll, a puppet. Not anymore.
She laughs and stand up clearly pissed. She glares at me before thrusting her spear near my stomach. Like the trained angel fighter i am, i quickly dodge it easily. We fight back and back for a while. Both throwing some degrading. Some Lunges, spear attacks, grunting later, Lute has me pinned to the floor with a spear aimed at my head. I look up at her with nothing but hate and anger.
"Fucking kill me- Just like you did to Vag-" I say in anger, before getting interupted with a spear being jabbed into my leg. I scream out in pain as the angelic spear peirces the flesh on my leg.
"Yeah, us angels kill pathetic souls like you. People who dont deserve life, or the honourous position your in" She says as she lifts her spear up, prepaired to finish me off, finally. Then, out of the blue, Lute gets blasted with angelic power. I flinch and cover my face in worry. It was another angel, so i thought. Until i looked up and saw the King of hell himself. I leaned on the floor on my elbows before quickly pulling myself backwards. It was..over? All the angels were leaving, going back to heaven, including Lute.
Lucifer approaches me and knees beside me, he glares at my with symapthy. My mask was half cracked, you could see half of my face. "you alright kid?" he says as i looks down at my legs.
"um..yeah, im alright apart from the yknow, big slash in my leg-" I say before i clear my throat.
"why did you help me? Im an angelic warrior, im on the other side..?" I say confused as i cock up an eyebrow. Lucifer chuckles and smiles warmly. I thought it was a big perculiar, i mean demons being nice?
"I couldnt help but overhear your conversation while fighting Adam, by the way i absolutly destroyed Adam- anyways, your not like the other angels." He says as adjusts his beautiful white and red wings behind him. Though his wings were like mine, they still were different. More majestic i should say.
"mh..yeah well i dont agree with the extermination.. yknow? killing innocent- well not innocent, but killing souls in genral.. its, not something us angels should do." I say, as i spoke i kept eye contact the whole time. I could see the visible change in Lucifers expression. It seemed to soften, he clearly shared the same opinions as me.
"right, exactly the reason i saved you. You think like a real angel. well, now your in hell, but..better then death, right?" I coudnt help but notice he started to move his arms, one around my lefs anad the other around my back. He, bridal style, picked me up and held me in his arms. I gasp and i tense slightly. I glare up at him and he smiles at me before bringing me to the other demons.
He puts his hand on my leg and heals it, he closes his eyes as he does so. I couldnt help but realise how pretty he was. I blush at the thought before he puts my down on the floor. I smile when i realise my leg was healed finally.
"thank you" I say quietly. I see a collection of other demons looking at me weirdly, i dont blame them, im meant to be trying to kill them afterall. I smile awkwardly before Lucifer wraps his arm around my neck and pulls my to the group of demons. Some blonde demon approached me, her name was Charlie, Lucifers daughter.
"hey..? dad why is there an angel here?" she questions as she steps a step infront of me and twists her head. I look at her awkwardly and i cant help but notice vaggies peircing eyes stare aggressivly at me.
"um..im joining you? i guess? i betrayed the angels. Its just..not right to kill souls without reason." I say, i see Charlies face light up slightly. I feel Lucifers hands go onto my shoudlers.
"See Char Char! Hes on our side." He says i blush slightly when he gets really close, he leaned his head near my shoulder. Vaggies feirce appearence calmed slightly, though it was clear shes still on edge.
"oh! well hi! Its nice to meet you! Its amazing when we have other members of the Hazbin Hotel!" She says before she hugs me. I gasp when she lunges towards me and i flinch, my eyebrows lift in confusion but i hugged back soon as later. I didnt think kind souls existed in hell, maybe it isnt that bad?
I smile awkwardly. "Thank you- i appriciate it" I say as Charlie steps back and smiles at Vaggie. I notice the other demons were just doing whatever, mainly chatting and laughing together. I cant help but smile. Demons arnt that bad?
I feel the hands on my shoulders move and turn me around. I glare down at Lucifer, huh, didnt know he was that short.
"Are you all healed?" He says as he touches my waist and stomach to check if i was okay. I blush slighty and chuckle awkwardly. "yeah- yeah im fine your majesty"
"please, its Lucifer, and im glad your alright." He says as he smiles warmly at me, i return the smile.
"They might take a while, but they should warm up. Angels dont do well round here, but they will adjust." He says as he smiles. His hands were still on my shoulders.
"alright, im thankful still, thanks for helping me. Lute would have killed back there." I say smiling at him. He chuckles before walking towards his daughter.
I watch as he leaves. My thoughs are bombarded with all different things. Am i in the Hazbin hotel now? Hell can be nice? Well somewhat, i mean, i did nearly die down here.
Maybe, just maybe hell isn't too bad? My thoughts get interrupted by a huge explosion behind me, i turn to see a few demons ripping an angels wings to death. I squint in disgust, realising i should get us to that. Other than that, this couldn't be that bad.. I might even like it here.
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disillusioneddanny · 1 year
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The Savior, The Reaper, and The Champion
Today was a bad brain day. That was the first thing Danny had realized as he laid beside Tim and let the other man rest his head on Danny’s bicep. On the other side of the human, Conner laid down, wrapping his strong arm around the man’s waist and burying his face in between Tim’s shoulder blades. 
No one ever tells you that being a supervillain is so fucking hard. That there would be days where you struggled to even get out of bed. When they had each chosen this life, they knew it would be hard. That there would be days where they questioned if what they were doing really was for the greater good of the world–even if the Justice League didn’t see it that way. 
That was the biggest thing, Danny had mused. They weren’t really villains, not to anyone except for the Justice League and the eyes of the government. Most of the citizens in this world loved the duo.
“It’s okay, we’re here,” Danny whispered as Tim let out a sob. He ran his fingers through his hair as he and Conner held their little super genius close. Today was one of the harder days. It was the anniversary of the day Bruce Wayne had officially disowned Tim Drake. It was a bittersweet day considering how it had ended between them. On one hand, Tim had felt liberated, no longer under the thumb of Batman, the World’s Greatest Detective and Control Freak. But on the other hand, he had lost the only real father figure he had ever had. 
The day Tim had gone on his own, he had lost practically everyone. Danny wanted to hate Bruce for it, but it had also been the reason he had met Tim in the first place. It had been just five years ago now, the day that Tim had first summoned Danny. 
He pressed a kiss to Tim’s head as another sob wracked through his lithe frame and Conner’s arms tighten just a bit around Tim as the man buried his face in Danny’s chest. 
“We’re here, we love you,” Conner whispered in Tim’s ear, voice hushed, calming. 
They had met just a few days after Tim had gotten into a screaming match with Bruce–a fight that Conner and Danny still didn’t have all the details for. He had gone off on his own, determined to destroy the League of Assassins once and for all and to have Ra’s Al Ghul die by his hand. He had summoned the Ghost King to find out about the secrets of the Lazarus Waters. Upon learning about them and Ra’s, though, Danny had decided to help get rid of them for good. No one was meant to live forever, not the way Ra’s was doing it at least. It was easy to say that once Danny learned of how the assassin cult was using the corrupted ectoplasm, he was more than ready to help take them down.
Between the two of them, they had completely destroyed the League and Ra’s. Upon learning about it, Tim’s family had been horrified. Apparently they had been holding out hope that he wouldn’t go through with his plans, that he wouldn’t fall so far and fast from the pedestal he had once stood on as Red Robin. They had cut him off, decided that Tim had crossed a line and they were unwilling to forgive him for it. Surprisingly, the only one who had stayed in touch was Jason. 
“Family pariahs have to stick together,” he had said. It also hadn’t helped that Danny had managed to heal the pit rage inside of him and supplement it with a healthy ghost core. 
The others, though, had declared Tim a rogue for his actions. Dick had even gone as far as saying that Tim had hit supervillain status and was on the same level as Lex Luthor. Danny didn’t see it that way. In his opinion, all they had done was get rid of an organization that would never truly stop killing, no matter how many times Batman and co. fought them. 
“I just want to forget about it,” Tim whispered, his fingers bunched in Danny’s shirt. 
After they had destroyed the league, the couple had fallen in love, they had finally found someone who was at the same level. They were the perfect puzzle pieces for one another. And once Danny had felt close enough to Tim, he had told him his trauma, shared with him the pain he had never told another living soul. 
And Tim? Well he went out that very night and placed a few explosives in just the right spots. And they had done their jobs. The GIW and the Fentons would never harm Danny again. He had the vivisection scars to remind him of the pain that they had caused but he would never see them again. It was then that the young ghost king had decided that he would follow Tim to the ends of the earth, do whatever Tim wanted from him. 
He may have been the Ghost King but Tim was his monarch and he was prepared to worship him any time and any place, prepared to do whatever bidding he desired. And it was then that Savior and Reaper had made their names known far and wide. 
Tim had declared himself the savior, promising to destroy those that the Justice League were too cowardly to fight, and he had declared Danny his loyal right hand man, his knight to command, his reaper. 
The people saw them as heroes, finally doing what others wouldn’t. Everyone else saw them as supervllains. TIm liked to call themselves the necessary evils. Conner liked to say that they were just doing what the heroes were too cowardly to do. They were willing to darken their own souls if it meant saving others. 
They had run into Conner shortly after Reaper and Savior had killed the Joker and sent his soul to the Nightmare Realm where he would suffer for all of eternity. He had known Tim from his heroes days and knew that if anyone would help him, it would be Tim. Soon Savior, Reaper and their newest member,Champion, had made their move and Lex Luthor had become their newest target. For a man who had done so much damage, it had been laughable at how easy it was to kill him once and for all. Danny had made sure to give him a special place in the Nightmare Realms for the pain he had caused Conner.
The team had made a name for themselves, they hadn’t come up with a name but Danny had heard the whispers of stories and myths, of how others would reverently call them the world’s new furies. They had become gods of vengence. Tim had been likened to Alecto for being unceasing, Danny had been compared to Tisiphone for being avenging, and Conner had been dubbed Megaera for being grudging.
So they had taken it for themselves, the Furies of the New World they were called, or just Furies for short. 
“I know you do, baby,” Danny murmured. “But it’s a part of you, it’s who you are.”
“I miss them,” Tim said with a whimper, curling in on himself. Oh their fearless leader, Tim who had called himself Savior and swore to protect the world from injustice, who despite himself being powerless himself, kept two of the most powerful beings on tight leashes behind him, ready to unleash them into the world on his command. And yet he still was just so small, he trusted Danny and Conner so much that he allowed them to see through the facade, to force their way through the cracks and see the broken man he had become. 
Some say that you have to sell your soul to become a fighter for the people. Danny was pleased to say it wasn’t true, he saw Tim’s soul, saw his love to his bones and knew him better than anyone in the world.  
“I miss talking to Alfred, sparring with Bruce, late night Bat Burger with Dick–I miss my life. I just, was this all a mistake? Is Bruce right? Did we go too far in our mission? Did I lose my family for nothing?” Tim whispered, wracking his fingers through Danny’s hair, petting him slowly. The ghost nearly purred at his lover’s touch. 
“We can stop if you want,” Danny offered quietly. “I can get Clockwork to reset time, let us start all over, let you decide-”
“No,” Tim said sternly. “I don’t want to forget what we’ve done. We’ve helped too many people for that. I’m just being a baby,” he said softly, folding in on himself slightly. 
“We can have Danny take us to a completely different dimension,” Conner offered, his thumb rubbed along Tim’s hipbone. “We can make new lives, leave all of this behind. We’ll make you happy, Tim, happier than you can even imagine.”
“We’re still needed,” Tim said, squeezing his eyes shut tight. “We still have so much to make right, to fix. I just miss the life I had, it doesn’t mean I hate the new one. I’m sorry-”
“Don’t be,” Danny told him seriously, moving to rest his head on his hand and looked down at Tim. “We all have our days. Timmy, my parents cut me apart limb from limb and there are still days I miss them, where I miss the life I had before all of this. It’s how the world goes.”
“The two of you make life so much easier,” Tim whispered, looking between his two lovers, tears collected in the corners of his eyes. Conner swiped a thumb across both, wiping them away. “I’m glad I have both of you here with me, I feel less insane, less out of control.”
“You’re not insane or out of control,” Danny murmured before he pressed forward and kissed Tim’s pouty lips softly. 
“Yeah,” Conner murmured, pushing Tim’s shirt up slowly so that he could tweak a nipple softly. “You’re our fearless leader.”
“And we’re your strong henchmen,” Danny finished, and nipped at Tim’s nose, making his precious lover giggle.
“You aren’t henchmen, we’re partners,” Tim argued, glaring at both of them. Danny and Conner just grinned at one another before they looked at Tim. 
“Nope,” Conner said. “You’re the brains and we’re the brawn.”
“We’ll follow you anywhere,” Danny said reverently. “Why do you think I call you my Northstar?”
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