#nettle wc | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cherubispunk · 9 months

Text

THANK YOU, MR. MILLER - bfd!Joel Miller x Reader

summary: caught up in the devistation of you parents ever crumbling marriage, you seek help and comfort from your older neighbour.

a note from lucy: this is one my faves i've written so far. I hope you enjoy because I did.

playlist

wc: 7789 warnings: 18+ MDNI! no outbreak au! bfd!joel, angst, fluff, smut, p in v smut, fingering, oral - fem receiving, light choking, age gap (reader is twenty one, joel is in his forties), swearing, mentions of infidelity and divorce.

Most days you wished you could tie your fluctuant thoughts together in a neat little bunch with a ribbon, maybe yellow or blue, knot it into a bow. Like a bouquet of flowers. Except they were not flowers. They were brambles and stinging nettles and those weird little dandelions that only stay pretty until a gust of wind strips them bare to their stalks.

To spite this, you had an avarice for perfection. As a result of all the times life seemed to spiral out of control. Like ivy up the trunk of the oak tree in your back garden. You cried the day your father had to saw it down; Only being Eight and watching through the sliding glass doors of your living room. Your treehouse came down with it. All that was left was a stump now smothered by your mothers prize winning hydrangeas. Tonight seemed to be one of those moments. One of those life altering experiences that are jarring even if you see them coming.

Deep down, in the pit of your gut that formed first at the family dinner table through awkward conversation, you knew it was coming. Your brother who left home a year before you, yet to return even once from the army, knew it. Everyone else on the street did too. Heck, maybe the whole of Austin’s suburbia knew? Knew about the pathetic crumbling foundations your parents’ marriage sat on. It was tilted at an alarmingly steep angle as pillars of salt corroded, eroded, dissolved. It was jarring in a way that knocked air out your chest and winded you. A way that blew your eyes wide. Now, without you or your brother in the house, they had no reason to keep up appearances behind closed doors as well as in the open, and they slipped.

It's why you found yourself staring at the front door of the Miller household. Praying that the only friend you had in close vicinity, heck in Austin, full stop, could hear you rant about the shit you encountered barely mere moments ago. The same shit that was happening under the roof of your childhood home. In your parents’ marital bed.

Just like the decay of a loving vow, It was no secret you had changed over the time away. You filled out your clothes more, despite losing a little weight from how skint college made you. Long gone were the awkward blemishes to your skin, and growth spurts that made your jeans too short in the leg, and growing pains of puberty. You had a little skip in your step. One that was no longer weighed down from the dull life you lead when back home. Your first year of college was difficult to begin with. But you slipped into routine there. And you found your people. A few friends, some on your course, some not. But coming back after your third year…it was…new again.

And the way Joel’s eyes roved over you for a split second upon seeing you at his door— it made an invisible shiver of something jolt down your spine. A shiver that rattled each vertebrae. It had you smoothing over the hem of your shirt into your stupid little gym shorts. You chose to wear them because it was comfortable to travel in. But now you felt cold and small under his gaze, like an ant under a. His face softened when he saw the shimmering streaks of tears run down your pretty little face, eyes red while you reached up to wipe your nose and sniff. God, the ground should just open in a gaping hole and swallow you, bones and all.

“Uh, sorry to bother you so late, Mr. Miller.” You choked, closing your eyes and holding in breath, cursing how easy it was for you to cry. Your mother often chided you for it. Said ‘no one likes a crybaby’. And your father would butt in with ‘stop having a bubble’. Words that still sting as they yelled out in echoes in your mind while you stood on his doorstep. “Is…” another sniff, “is Sarah in?” Joel’s head tilted to the side slightly, only askew as he tutted slightly and offered a sympathetic smile of pity, “No. She’s with her boyfriend. Ain't been back yet.”

“Oh.” You nodded. How foolish you had been to think that your end of term dates aligned with hers. “Okay. Thank you anyway.” You turned to leave, only getting about ninety degrees in your turn on his doorstep before he stopped you.

“Do you want me to give her a message when she gets back tomorrow?” He watched as only your head turned back towards him, your feet staying firmly planted to the floor. Jesus Christ, you missed the sight of him. Missed seeing him in the mundane setting of suburbia. It made it so much more interesting. His shirt, it hugged his torso, the sleeves clinging to his large biceps like a second skin and stretching the dark fabric taut. A deranged part of you slipped back to your 18 year old self, peeking through the window to see him pushing the lawnmower across his front lawn in the dry heat, a dark patch of sweat collecting on the dip of his lower spine and across the wings of his shoulder blades.

“No. That, uh…it's not urgent.” You tried, the corners of your lips tugging a smile, a sad little one that made you look far worse. A lie smeared across your now pale face.

“You look tired, Sugar.” He said, the words seeping into the very marrow of your aching bones, wrapped up in that southern drawl you missed hearing through your open bedroom window. In the morning’s when he called out to his brother if he picked him up for work. Tommy, you remembered, was his name. “You got somethin’ weighing on your mind?” You willed yourself to shake your head, but you couldn’t bring it within yourself to lie right now. So instead you just nodded. “You wanna come in for a second?” He asked, glancing between you and the house across the street. The one unspeakable acts of infidelity were currently happening just beyond the white picket fence, and the manicured green lawn. It made your stomach twist into knots and your belly churn in a queasy mix of bile and the muffin you got at the airport that early morning. His eyes, however, stayed on you when you too glanced back, swallowing dryly when he saw the soft curve of your ass hang out the bottom of your bunched up shorts, the soft, malleable skin teasing him, making him hot beneath the collar. He had to adjust his jeans slightly as they got a little tighter, the nasty thoughts of how the swell of your rear would ripple with the dents of his fingertips if he was rough enough. Would they leave bruises on your skin?

Fuck. Joel cursed himself in the tangled confines of his mind. Damining for the sexual frustration that caught him off guard. He hadn’t had a good fuck in years, but the way your tear stained cheeks glowed in the dim light of his porch had him caught up; Wondering if you’d cry like that for him as he bent you over his kitchen counter, tits pressed to the linoleum, cheek smushed under his hands, your body jolting from erratic thrusts, his hips sapping into your behind. Would you cry out his name? Or would you resolve into whimpers and whines? Joel would admit, using the sight of you as a way to set his dick wet was the lowest of low, a depth he didn’t think he’d reach even in the throes of painful, biting sexual frustration. But it seemed to have boiled down and condensed together over the years. And being parched of the sight of you, your innocence over the time you were away — to then have you flung back at him? It had him growling in his own mind. Clawing at the yellow wallpaper. Just shy of a year since seeing you last over the street. That’s all it took for desire to light a fire in the pit of his belly and set up camp. And it wasn’t a traveller anymore. It was there to stay until satiated. The length in his jeans wanted him so gravely of that.

Pervert. He thought to himself bitterly, laced with a vehement venom. It neighboured his lust for you.

“Okay.” He found himself blinking once, twice, a sharp inhale of air waking him up as it shot through his nose. You replied with the affirmative!

“Okay.” He nodded back, jaw ticking, the muscle in his neck flexed under the pressure of his teeth biting together, making you want to mimic it with your thighs— to ease the ache just slightly.

He stepped to the side.

With an audible gulp, one that made you cringe, you tiptoed on a proverbial tripwire, a livewire, into the foyer of his house, past him. A breeze followed you through with gusto, making a mockery of your senses as it blew his scent into your face when you turned back round to face him. He closed the door and you felt a relief, one that was short lived because you were now surrounded by him. His smell, his sight. Everything about him, it was clinging to the walls, painted a white that you imagined glowed a warm, mellow yellow in the morning light. An oddly domestic thought to be having given you were thinking of all the ways he might just make you fall apart just two seconds ago, drooling over him his tight fucking t-shirt.

It did look so warm, though, a faded black from being washed so often, the Rolling Stones album cover printed on the front was cracked, like the canvas of an old oil painting. Specks of white fluff clung to the fabric, a normal sight. But it did nothing to help your want for him. It would smell so richly of him, so lavishly of Joel. You knew it.

‘God, this was so inappropriate!’ You scolded yourself in your head, letting him lead you into his kitchen. If you had a tail that little fucker would be folded shamefully between your legs, curled in sin.

The only sound in his kitchen came from a fan that hummed weakly as it oscillated on the counter. It reminded you of a thought you had when leaving university for the summer. Would I miss the cool rain of Colorado? You felt a lot like that fan. Pathetic. Swinging meekly between left and right. Never able to stick to one side due to the instability you grew up around. Smothered in.

“College good? People treatin’ you well?”Joel asked as he filled up a glass of water for you and slid it across the counter your way. You nodded tentatively, wetting your lips with your tongue before raising the glass to them. He watches with a secret hunger as the cool glass met your lips and you take a small sip to soothe your parched dry throat.

“Yeah.”

“Where'd you go again? Washington, right?” “Colorado.” You corrected him.

“Colorado. Right.”

He paused after nodding…and the air was once again stagnant due to the fall of conversation.

“What major?” He asked again, making you look up at him in a skittish movement. Like a fucking deer in headlights. You wanted to bolt like a rabbit at the sound of a shotgun instead. I’m your disgust, your feet stayed firmly planted into the linoleum tile of his floor.

“Uh, I'm studying education.” He nodded, pursing his lips as he mulled the thought over in his head with a nod.

“You wanna teach then?” He inquired. You nodded, “Sounds about right. You were always so giving. Very selfless of ya.” You set the glass down, swallowing down the sip you took just before. You can’t help but smile a little at that, eyes closing as you let yourself feel — for just a moment — that you were meant to be laced up in his words; Wrapped and held in place by a little bow. Like a birthday gift, or something under the decorated tree at Christmas.

This little second to yourself didn't go unnoticed by Joel. It made his heart thrum rapidly, pinch behind his lungs in the cage of his ribs. It had him up in arms again over his riling thoughts. They stuck to the walls of his mind, clinging to them like a rabid animal. If you’d let him, he'd sink his claws and teeth into the action upon those images. Spur it into play. Maybe sink his teeth into the plush of your skin too. Would you like that? To be carnally desired. Would you consent to that horror born of lust? He thanked the separation of the kitchen counter hiding his cock that pressed to his thigh under his jeans, blood flowing south as you held back tears again after a wave of short lived relief.

“What’s up, pretty girl?” He asked. Making your eyelids spring open again to meet the dark chestnut of his irises. The warm hue from the under cabinet strip lights illuminated the individual honey gold flecks in them. You swore your knees buckled, joined groaning. “You got a lot running round that head of yours.” He pointed out, noticing the tight scrunch of your brow. It would curl like that out of pleasure, give him half a chance. He was sure of it. Fucked out and overstimulated, limbs sprawled out beneath him like a wire in a snare trap.

Your silence was deafening and he sought out to fill it when giving you another once over. Her rounded the kitchen counter, praying your eyes stayed on his because the way your shirt swallowed you whole had him wishing he was the one doing that instead, covering you with himself. Holding your naked self to his chest. Feel.

“You wanna sit for a bit and talk about it?”

You gnawed at the tip of your thumb, a nervous habit that had Joel wrapping his large hand around your wrist and pulling it back. His digits engulfed your wrist completely. His size compared to yours was startling. His smile was kinda, masking the thoughts of what those tiny hands would look like, wrapped round his dick as he hissed at the friction your smooth plans would give him. Would it wrap round the girth perfectly? Would your thumb meet your middle finger as you took hold onto him? Probably not.

He swallowed, trying not to think the same for your lips as you once again darted your tongue out to draw the plush pink of your bottom lip between the whites of your teeth.

Instead, he settled for pulling you gently forward, cheating you round towards the living room with a steady palm to the small of your back. He felt the jolt you made, and then the way your muscles eased, the arch of your spine soothing and straightening out.

With a gentle touch, he led you to the sofa, sitting beside you. Waiting for you to speak.

“E-everyone saw it coming.” You croaked out, an annoyance and intolerable hate for yourself and your dumbfounded stupidity pinching at your sides. “Even I saw it coming! I just don’t understand why I had to find out in such a-“ Joel watched your eyes dart around the carpet of his living room, as if the answer would lay right there, nestled between the threads and fibres, “a messy way…” you continued with a small voice. He titled his head towards you, raising his brows with gentle ardence for what you had to say.

And so you spoke. Told him of the messy tangling of your fathers limbs with another woman’s. The sound of them. Disgusting. Gut wrenching. How they mingled with the bedspread in a frantic assembly of passion and appendages.

Joel’s face turned into a grimace. He knew. He saw the two of them enter your home together when washing the dishes of his meal for one. Drunk, cheeks flushed with the secret they carried. An infidelity. He’d seen your mother commit a similar sin earlier this very week. He cleared his throat, resting a careful hand on your thigh, one that would make him lose control had it not been for its place just above your knee. Any higher and he was in hot water. He knew it.

“Sweetheart,” he started in a soothing, sympathetic but also telling manner, “Adults don’t always get it right. We…we ain’t perfect either.” He tried. He felt like he was having a conversation with Sarah. A torture of de ja vu. Way back when. Years ago she asked what happened to her Mummy. And he had said the same line of truth. A bitter, harrowing truth. But one everybody discovered sooner or later. He wished you knew it before and he wasn’t the one to twist those pretty features into pain instead of pleasure. He was silently begging to whatever higher power that was watching, that he wasn’t being perverted. That you didn’t see this is some little trick to get you vulnerable, in a headspace where he could fuck you until you felt better. Or until you entirely forgot. Forgot all but the way to mouth out his name in a shrill cry.

If you even knew in first place all the things he wished to do with you. To you.

“Sometimes you just find someone who ain’t right. They might be at the time. And you feel so sure ‘bout it that you make promises.” You listened, relayed it in your mind while you bit the inside of your cheek in futility. It wasn’t easy. Not by any means a conversation you wanted to have. But it was needed. The two of you knew it. A twisted part of you was glad it meant you got a chance to talk to him. To have him touch you gently.

He reached forward, tucking a single lock of hair behind your ear to see the hues of your irises. The way they gleamed slightly with tears. It was the prettiest sight of total devastation he had seen. Joel was no man of hubris, but he’d be damned if he didn’t think that getting you on all fours, crying a little for him in pleasure would boost his ego.

You glanced up at him, grinding your teeth together nervously while the ghosting of a calloused fingertip skimmed the top of your right cheekbone. If it weren’t for your thighs sticking uncomfortably to the leather of the sofa in this heat, you would have decayed to submission and slipped to the floor.

Joel let his knuckles that he cracked together to feel the grounding of physical pain, feel a comfort instead as they skimmed down your jawline. Physicality was so much tamer to him than emotion. There was the promise of knowing when you’d feel better that came with the ache to his joints and lower spine.

'`Thank you, Mr. Miller. It’s okay.” You sniffed, “I- I’ll be okay. I think.” Joel let a kind smile spread over his face.

“I know you will. You're a strong little lady. But please, call me Joel” Your eyes closed again and you swallowed. But opening them – that was the damning part. Because the moment they did, you saw how he flickered between each of your eyes. It must have been the intimacy of having the permission to use his first name, because it had you inhaling deeply in need of him.

You were surely frozen to the spot, his hand moving slightly higher up your thigh in a gentle caress before dragging back down to squeeze your knee. You let yourself have the pleasure of gazing at his lips. A mistake because it made you yearn to kiss him more. How would rough hairs of his upper lip feel against your cupid's bow?

It seemed your body moved of its own accord, for your lips met his. It was unlike anything you could have imagined when in bed, two fingers buried in your pussy, imagining they were his. His hot breath fanned over your lips, making you want more. But it was cut short when he pulled away with a groan.

Your skittish nature took hold of the reins and you jumped back, springing to your feet, hands tugging in your hair. “Oh, god- Joel- I…” You stammered, tears once again welling in your bloodshot eyes, “I’m so sorry. I thought…”

What? What did you think? That something would come of kissing your older, very age inappropriate neighbour? Fuck.

He stood up quickly after you, fists balled as if he was holding something back. Joel watched as you paced the floor once, twice, stopping at the far end of the room by the wall, distance yourself from the magnetic pull you had to him. “Hey, it's okay.’ He assured, taking a tentative step closer, hands now flat, fingers spread slightly as he tried to calm you down. “I’m not mad, sweetheart, okay?’ You took a breath in through your nose. Let it out again in a tremble of breath.

Another step closer. He was closer than needed, but you weren't the one making that call. He was. So you took it as a good sign, still pleading for his forgiveness though.

“Sorry.”

“You don't have to apologise for nothin’, Sugar.” He assured with that slow southern drawl again. It stretched out his syllables and smoothed out his vowels with it. God, it was a beautiful sound. One you wanted to muffle with your lips, with your legs over his ears. He was now an inch away from your chest, leaning closer to whisper in your ear. “I’d be lyin’ if i said I hadn’t wanted it.”

The sentence sent a jolt throughout you.

“Look at you.” He mumbled into the crook of your neck, the junction of your throat. A swallow passed through it, the cartilage of your windpipe flexing under his lips. “Too beautiful not to be touched.”

Those words struck a certain chord on your heartstrings. Plucked away at them like a harp. Made the beating of that very organ thrum in song. A tuneful symphony he felt through your pulse.

Too beautiful not to be touched.

No one had said that to you before. No one. And it was like a life altering experience. A mere ‘thank you’ didn’t feel like enough to respond with. It felt pathetic to say in comparison. And silence was so much more pathetic. But you couldn’t really articulate anything to say back. You just…stood there in awe of him as he continued to place careful, open mouthed kisses to your neck.

“How would you do it?’ You asked breathlessly, eyes closing, lashes fanning out over the tops of your cheekbones, “T-touch me?” You stuttered through fragmented, beating breaths. His kisses, they grew messier by the second now, and he hummed in amusement into your skin. Into the heat of it that crept up your throat. This was so wrong. So perverse it hurts is what he thought. But the pleasure from just his lips — it stung at the backs of your eyes like a prickling of tears; Oh god, it felt right. Right. Real. So, so…real- it was real. Repeating the word in your mind had it losing its meaning for a second, a jumbled up sound in the voice of your inner ear, your articulatory process working overtime just to feel into him. Feed the need for him.

“First.” He started, pushing you gently by the slope of your shoulders, until your back collided softly to the painted plaster of his living room wall, “I’d push you up against the wall.” He paused, pressing an open mouthed kiss to your collarbone, the shallow skin that was teased into view for him as he hooked a finger into the crewneck of your large t-shirt. “And then, I’d pin you down.” The thought made you whimper, a pulse of pleasure aching between your legs. Unquenchable, not able to be soothed by anything that wasn’t the touch of his rough fingers, the calloused pads of his digits. Middle and forefinger.

“You want that?” You nodded frantically in reply, breath catching your throat as he tugged at your shirt more. “Words. Use that pretty mouth of yours for words, sweet thing.”

“Y-Yes, Joel.” You stammered. Pathetic. Embarrassing. But it was impossible when his whole weight, his broad frame, toned with years of manual labour, pressed you into the wall. “Yes.” He let out another amused hum, except it tailed off into more of a growl now. A guttural one that rumbled in the back of his throat and reverberated in your ears. Rattled your ribs until they ached. It pinched them. The skin over them too and the lungs under them as well. Lungs that shivered from his touch. ��

“You wanna feel pretty.” It was not a question. A statement of understanding. One that made you think he once cracked open your skull and read each thought. The pages of your diary, even. Back to front. Cover to cover. Scour each word, ravage it of meaning the same way you wanted him to do with you. To your cunt that pulsed and soaked the fabric of your underwear. It made the skin of your inner thighs sticky as it dripped down gluttonously. “You want me to make you feel pretty, hm?”

“Please.”

He pulled back, a gleam in his eyes, and an almost evil smirk to match curled at the corner of his chapped lips. “I can do that, sweet thing.” He cooed, lulling you into a false sense of security. “I can make you feel pretty. Matter of fact, doll. I can make you feel fuckin’ beautiful.” You were now waving a white flag over your head to him. In that battle between your morality and lust, the turmoil of your needy, disgusting thoughts that echoed in your bones. It filled the hollow space between them. He stole away into it. He would make you feel pretty. Beautiful. He said so himself into the skin of your neck that now prickled violently with goosebumps. They made his words physical, scribing them out. A beautiful collision. And a stunning one it would be if he defiled you with the thrust of his hips. He’d make space for himself anywhere and you'd let him. Let him make roots in your mind. And not just the thought of him that you conjured up. No. He’d anchor himself there. Without your help. He’d make them himself. Without your involvement or investment.

It was no longer a question of how much you were willing to let up to him. How much of yourself you’d give up to him and set in his possession. It was now the complete certainty of how much he wanted. Or needed. You saw in his eyes he needed it. A comfort, a release of clashing teeth and viced limbs to his waist and back. It frightened you how easy it was to give that to him. To let him take that pleasure and make it his. His. His, his, his. Carve out a chunk of yourself from your arms that you hoped would surround him in the throes of messy heat. Give it to the man on a silver platter, surrounded by pomegranate, cherry and apple. Sweet fruits of you. Your fruits of your labours to him.

“We should stop—” Joel said into the skin of your neck, hands grasping at your hips, upper thighs. His fingers sank and embedded into flesh. He kept changing his mind, you kept changing your mind. But the actions he bought on, pressed to your skin by crafted lips, a little too far away in his own head — they went against his inhibition. Perfectly encapsulated the erotic stimulation as his hand slipped down your side to tangle messily with the hem of your shirt.

“We should.” You agreed breathlessly, immediately, chest in tandem with his, it’s rise and fall as they beat ceaselessly together, touching up to one and other.

“—But I can’t.” He continued.

“Neither can I. So please don’t.”

Being wanted. Wanting too much. It fed the idea of him but left you starving as you found those roots you made of him in your head being overgrown and overtaken by his own now. It was happening. In his own living room. Behind the closed curtains as he drew closer, closer, the windows seemingly fogged up to the outside. The suburbia that held its messy and primitive life, guarded by picket fences. Greying and peeling picket fences. Not white. Not pure. Not anything but decaying. Oh, you’d decay into him in a heartbeat. Give it all to him. Let him take it. Going through to the beating of your heart and crashing through your ribs. Rip it out your aching, pinching chest. A gaping hole left behind.

He didn’t stop. And thank god he didn’t. Because the way his hand smoothed between your thighs, between the seam of your shorts. Maybe it was something that was so taboo no one spoke of it? Maybe you too wouldn’t even speak of it after this. But it was too addictive to bother you. It seemed to flare your synapses, send shockwaves of rolling pleasure, cascading from your slouched shoulders as you slumped slightly more into him and off the wall. Your head spinning in circles loosened your chemicals. An endorphin rush. Pulled out your centrefold, staples bent and mauled as your pages fell from the book and onto the floor in front of him. Letting him tear you apart column by column.

“Lean back, pretty girl.” He commanded softly. Deftly. It made you feel like fine art, sculpted veins of his hands that flexed as they palmed your cunt through the two thin layers of fabric, slick clinging to them. You obeyed so well.

Joel’s curved, rigid nose ran along your carotid artery. The one that thumped with your quickening pulse. This anticipation and forbidden pleasure made him realise he was always more comfortable in chaos. In something a little out of the ordinary and unstable. Unhealthy. Joel gave into the temptation of low hanging fruit because it was there. And you got so little from anyone that what small intricacies you were handed, you let him. Let him as he snatched it up and bit a hunking chunk out of your soul. A souvenir for himself. Pulled the apple from the tree in the garden of Eden, sank his teeth into it, let the sweetness seep out of the core onto his tongue as it unravelled into addiction.

You were his apple now, and your teeth were bared to him, like his were to the delicate, shallow skin of your neck, the ridges one slopes of your collarbones. While his fingers, long and thick, slipped past the hem of your shorts, deeper past the little bow in the centre of the hem of your underwear. The crown of your head fell back gently to plaster, and mouth fell open with a small high gasp as he finally made contact with your clit. He hummed again. The slick you offered him made it so easy to give an experimental circle of his fingers.

Middle and forefinger pinching it slightly, circling it the way you felt you circled each other before now.

“Don’t wanna break you, sugar. Gotta be careful.” He said as his fingers coaxed you into bliss. Toes curling in your socks and high top converse.

“Please- I don’t care if you do- just—“ More. You needed more. Nothing, no matter how much you dreamed of this, seemed to be enough yet. “More. Please let me have more.”

“How much more?” He growled, rolling his hips into your thigh as he lost a little composure. It was just as he thought. Your begging was so sweet. Did God feel this way when he heard prayers?

“Inside. I want to feel you inside.”

His breath hissed in his throat as it caught between the walls of his windpipe and the strings of his vocal cords. With a slow, dragging pace of rough fingertips, he moved further down your slit, spreading your lips apart and holding a single pad of his digit to your hole, teasing you at your entrance. He growled again, teeth and mouth parting as he sank them into your shoulder. It made you cry out in a sharp wail when he slipped a single finger into your fluttering heat, cunt suffocating his digits. He was up to his middle knuckle deep in you, pulling out to do the same with two now. Middle and forefinger, curling them. Physically be king you towards a release. Your legs tensed and relaxed as each wave of pleasure rumbled through you. Hips bucked slightly into him and his free hand grapes at the flesh of your hip once more to slam your ass back into the wall.

“Good girl. Such a pretty little lady. Beautiful little cunt for me.” He cooed after unlatching his mouth from the purple bruise of a bite mark on your shoulder. His hot breath kissed the shell of your ear and made the ache settle into pleasure deep in your walls. Right at the end. Right there. “Is it all for me?”

“Yes!” You whimpered, “Yes— all for you, Joel.”

“Mhm. Good girl. Beautiful little lady.”

His fingers seemed to pick up a pace, but it was hindered by the tight material of your clothing. So he opted to shove it over the swell of your ass, down to your mid thigh. Not bothering for want and need of pressing his fingers back into you. Plunging them back into your tight heat. The warmth and wetness lead to lewd sounds squelching between your quivering thighs, the meat of your flesh.

“Good girl.” He whispered again, grasping your chin in a vice grip and pulling you closer, crashing his lips to yours in a clashing of teeth and mingling of moans. “So fuckin’ needy. So fuckin’ Love it.” Joel growled, “And it’s all for me. Makin this old man feel so special, doll.”

Tears burned your eyes with the white hot pleasure that coarser through you like a racehorse. They slipped from the threshold of your waterline, and the moment he tasted them against your lips, he pulled from them, licking a hit stripe up your cheek. He lapped them up, inhaling deeply through his nose, caught up in everything your body gave him. “Gonna make you feel so fuckin’ beautiful. Make you forget about it all. Only want you to remember my name.” You nodded, his fingers now up to the hilt in your tight little hole that clamped around him, threatening to spasm as you lost control.

It burned in your lower belly. The crying, shrill screaming promise of climaxing.

“You’re so close. Can feel it.”

“Yes, Joel.”

“Want you to come for me. Let that pretty little cunt of yours come on my fingers.” It was purely debaucherous, disgusting how fucking good it felt. It made you angry for some reason unknown to your mind. But your orgasm was so tangible at the time you couldn’t bring yourself to care.

You cried out, your slim fingers gripping at his hair, fisting the curls between your nails and palms. It burned you up inside. Or was that from his fingers? Fuck, the thought of his cock and what pleasure it would unfold inside your anatomy had your mouth watering.

“Good fuckin’ girl.” He growled obscenely into your ear as the most animalistic howl you had made yet tore through your bronchioles and rattled in his ears; Bounced from the walls.

The moment your walls stopped squeezing him he pulled his fingers from your messy heat and shoved them past your lips, teeth scraping at his knuckles. “Taste it. Ain’t it beautiful? Ain’t you just the prettiest little gift to me?” You nodded, eyes locking zealously with his while you cleaned his fingers of your release. The tang of your juices had your eyes rolling back in your head. And Joel wanted more. So he pressed them further into the cavern of your mouth. His blunt nails passed the hard palate of your mouth, pressing into your soft palate nod. And the gag you gave out had his already angry cock twitch viciously in protest behind his zipper.

“Gonna get you naked now, Sugar. Gonna see what pretty little body you’ve been hidin’ away from me all this time.”

You nodded frantically, these moments of oblivion being all that you needed now. The infidelity of your parents’ now a thing of the past, cast to the attic of your mind palace. The walls are now painted in colours of him. Lifting your arms to aid your own undressing, he yanked the hem of your shirt up, tossing it aside, large hands now hooking into your bottoms and pulling from your still quivering legs. Those same hands, ones that you were convinced were crafted and out into this very earth for your pleasure, hooked under your thighs, lifting you up into him. Legs wrapped around his waist without hesitation while he carried you to his stairs, ascending them with haste burning in his stomach. Your hands tugging at his hair and your lips to his neck made his strides larger, taking the steps two at a time.

You were well into the belly of the beast now. Consumed and swallowed, wallowing in a haze of postcotial bliss.

His foot kicked open the door of his bedroom, and you felt the spring of the mattress under your back, pushed down from the rebound as he found himself once again on top of you. His hips now met yours, still clothed and he could feel your wetness seep through the waters of clothing.

“Please, Joel, wanna feel you.” He was slowly going at you with a stitch picker, pulling you apart from the seams of your fabric. And he relished in it. You both relished in it. “Wanna see you. All of you. Please?”

A hand of his hooked behind your calf, pulling each of your shoes from your feet, followed by your socks and he smirked devilishly down upon you. “Oh, yeah?” He asked, chuckling evilly to himself. A sound that made you writhe atop his bedspread; Made you want to creek into his skin and barks yourself between his spine and ribs. Any free space of him.

“Yes! Please.” You begged, reaching out to grasp the hem of that shirt he wore. It’s faded fabric bunching in your meagre handfuls. He growled, dragging you closer by the swell of your thighs, pressing the hard and defined line of his dick through his jeans into your wanting slit. Pink and puffy cunt swiping against denim. The friction made you jolt.

“Sure thing, Beautiful.” – ‘I’ll make you feel fuckin’ beautiful.’ It echoed again in his words and wanting, hungry actions. – “As soon as I taste that gorgeous pussy of yours.”

He sank to his knees, joints not clicking because he felt young. Fucking Alive. A hot stripe made by the flat of his tongue made you mewl, a hand in his hair once again. The other splayed out on the covers, propping you up to get a view of him buried so deeply between your thighs, nestled into their apex, tongue fucking into your fluttering hole and the tip of his nose pressed to you clit. Your brow scrunched, jaw unhinged. Like him. With every slight roll of his head, the defined curl of his nose brushed your clit deliciously, each nerve ending of the bud was alive, live a livewire. It rattled in your bones, steam through your blood. Tingling as the sensation spread through your limbs, almost like pins and needles.

The angle was altered ever so slightly as he hooked both of your knees over his shoulders, inhaling the sweet musk of your cunt. He growled into it, lips smothered in your juices that gushed onto his tongue.”Come on, little lady. Wanna taste you gushing over my tongue.” Joel mumbled drunkenly between your parted thighs, his eyes boring deeper holes into your already blown pupils. Dilated and wide.

It was all the coil needed to burn brighter and tighten in its twisted knot, snapping clean in half as you reeled. You shoulder blades crashed back down to the mattress, back arching, strung tight in a deep curve while you writhed. He tugged you closer, moaning lowly into the seam between your thighs, slurping needily at what your body gave him. He hummed, addicted now. That taste was fatal. He had his forbidden fruit and he’d jump to far higher branches to get another taste if it came to it.

“Taste so good. So fuckin’ good, doll. Like sugar.” He cooed again, pulling back once he had his fill for the time being. A good thing because the way the scruff of his chin rubbed at your thighs was starting to become harder to ignore.

You watched through heavy, half lidded eyes as he pulled off his shirt to reveal sweet skin, the slight pudge of his stomach. You followed the smattering of hair in his happy trail down to his jeans, just as he popped the button.

“Gonna fuck you real good, now, Sugar. Gonna make you feel so beautiful.” You believed him. Every word as it became gospel to the pair of you sinners. “Gonna me you want it even after this.”

“Always wanted it, Joel.” You mumbled, hypnotised by his fingers as they hooked into his jeans. He tugged them down over his hips, dragging down his adonis belt, softer, less harsh compared to the contours of the rest of him, such as his arms. He pulled them down in one swift motion with his boxers, his heavy cock slapping onto his lower abdomen, thich, red, the tip swallowed and leaking, drooling gluttonously with a rivulet of precum down the underside of his length.

His hand wrapped around it, the large splay of his palm did nothing to dwarf its size with he jacked himself once, twice, three times to the sight of you. Fucked out from merely his tongue and fingers. He squeezed the base of his cock with hiss, pulling his bottom lip between his teeth after cursing under his bated breath.

“Promise it’ll only hurt for a bit, Sugar.” He swore sweetly at the sight of your anxiety. How you shifted slightly atop his covers. He was able to read you so well, like a book he had scoured the ages of every night before bed. It made you feel special. Sacred. The way he did it so easily. It was everything you wanted. Someone to tell you and assure you of your safety even when you didnt voice a single concern. “I’ll make you feel so good.”

He ran the tip up and down your slit, having to hold back from slamming into you when the bulbous head notched at your entrance.

“You on birth control, beautiful?” He asked as he leaned over you, bent at the waist, wrapping your legs around him securely.

“Y-yeah.”

Joel took that as a go ahead to push into you, pressing his hips flush to yours as you swallowed him inch by deliciously thick inch.

“Good girl.” He crooned, spelling both of his psalm over your hairline sweeping the hair that stuck to your forehead in the sheen of sweat atop your skin. His large hands dragged over the top of your skull to the crown of your head, down the back of your neck. The delicate dragged of roughened skin made a trail of goosebumps rise over your skin, blazing in his touch’s wake. He trod a path with his hands down to your breasts, kneading each one between his palms, still buried to the hilt inside you. How he had so much restraint, he didn't know. And neither did you. But the needy roll of your hips into his showed just how desperate you were. He groaned at the start of the friction between you, and slowly dragged back out of you, moving just as slowly back inside.

The motion turned into a needy clash of his hips to yours. Again. Again. Again. Somewhere along the sting of passion and heat, his hand wrapped around your throat, feeling the flex of it as you swallowed under his palms. He bit down into your neck, reaching out from you as his hips slammed erratically. His heavy balls slapping against your ass.

Your cunt drooled down his shaft, down to the base, down the sensitive skin of his cock. He growled and ground and hissed in your ear, grip tightening in your neck. You felt it tighten. And tighten. Right in the pit of your stomach, deep in your sopping wet cunt. Suckong him back in as the angle of his hips snapped up into the spot that had you seeing entire constellations. They darted to and fro across your vision. It blurred the edge, spotted slinging over the back of your eyes that now burned with tears of pleasure.

His fingers gripped tightly at your hip, thin brushing over your hip bone down your mouth to toy with your clit. And action that sent you spiralling, babbling his name nonsensically among a string of curse words. So pretty and fucked out beneath him. Joel couldn't help but stare in awe as your eyes rolled back into your head when your orgasm hit like a freight train.

He came undone coon after, his climax hitting a crescendo with a growl bitten into your shoulder, leaving another beautiful purple mark on your flawless skin. His thumb still rolled over your clit gently, helping you ride that experience out for all that it was worth.

And then he scooped you, took care of you, let you stay the night. And when you were asleep, wrapped up in his sheets, clean, loved. He stole away downstairs, gathering your clothes, bunching up your panties in his fist, hiding them away in his nightstand.

Not that you would have cared.

You didn’t have to gather your thoughts anymore. Joel replaced them and the stinging nettles and the brambles and the dandelion stems with pretty sunflowers, lavender and sweet peas. And he tied them up with a sweet little ribbon of pure gold. Just for you.

#joel miller #joel miller x reader #joel miller x y/n #joel miller x you #joel miller x #the last of us #the last of us fic #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller smut #joel miller fic #tlou hbo #the last of us hbo #joel tlou #lu’s little bookshelf

171 notes · View notes

marrowfrog00 · 3 months

Text

You Stir My Natural Emotions

A/N: Hi, this is a post I made a while back on my Ao3 and since I'm dragging ass on writing anything new...I thought I'd rest on my barely-there, crusty, dusty ass laurels until inspiration strikes or I put my back into actualizing my idea-rs.

CW: MDNI, Smut (characters are 18+), Mentions of Trauma, Broken Bones, Misunderstandings, Idiots in Love, Quarreling, Canon Typical Violence, Flashbacks, Descriptions of female anatomy, Oral (f receiving), P in V, Protected Sex, Adaptive Sex, Mentions of deceased grandmother, Not formatted b/c fuck that r.n., lmk if I missed anything

wc: 13.9k

Steve’s polo was pasted to his back with the sweat of high Midwestern summer. He glanced back at his Bimmer, parked behind Nancy’s station wagon, more than a little uneasy at the prospect of leaving it on the narrow shoulder of the county road.

His destination, an unauthorized swimming hole with a somewhat rickety, decommissioned dock, didn’t have a proper parking space. Not like the well kept county-owned lakeside park on the other side of the water. That spot had designated parking but would no doubt be littered with desperate, unadventurous families trying to beat the heat.

People unlike his friends, who frequented the busted but perfectly functional East shore of the lake.

He bushwhacked through noxious weeds and nettles, feet seeking out the half-worn path that would take him to the meeting spot. He reached the little bluff, where he had to cut little switchbacks to make it down the hill without breaking his ankle. When he reached the last tree stand he heard the rowdy voices of his friends carry across the shallows of the lake.

And just in time, too - the polyester and mesh of his swim trunks were chafing him under his Jordache jeans.

He could see the backs of Robin’s and Eddie’s heads in low seat beach chairs. They were clandestinely passing a flask between them while Nancy and Jon sat on a blanket beside them, Nancy rubbing sunblock on her boyfriend’s shoulders, pausing to push her sunglasses up the bridge of her nose.

She noticed Steve’s approach, head shooting up with a bright smile. “Hey! You made it!”

Eddie, Robin and Jon’s heads shot up in reaction, each of them shooting him a half-enthused greeting.

“What took you so long, dingus?” Robin crowed, clearly half-tipsy.

Steve scoffed, pulling his polo over his head and tossing it by the cooler.

“Well, someone called out today and I had to stay on an extra hour and a half at the store waiting for coverage,” he sniped back with no heat. Robin blew a raspberry at him.

“Strip down, Big Boy, you’re wasting daylight,” Eddie shot lazily. He stretched out on his beach chair, limbs quaking at full extension like those of a freshly-awakened cat. His chest was on full display, the white cast of badly-applied sunblock streaked across his tummy.

Steve rolled his eyes - there was nothing if not daylight to waste, the sun smiling at them all meanly from high in the sky.

He shuffled his jeans down his legs before kicking them in Eddie’s face, who expertly dodged the attack with a guffaw.

Over on the dock, Max and El lay shoulder-to-shoulder on their stomachs, giggling over a glossy magazine while Mike and Lucas hollered off the edge, filling their super soakers from the dock’s edge. Will was buried in a sketch pad, toes dipped in the water.

Steve’s hands were planted on his hips as he did a quick headcount. A force of habit these days. He narrowed his eyes in search of the missing two.

“Where are Dustin and Teenie?” he asked, noting suspicion in his own voice. The very two people he always had eyes on (if he could help it) were missing from this idyllic tableau. Nancy craned her neck to look toward the lake.

“They’re in the water,” she said as if it were obvious. “They’ve been in there forever.”

Steve felt his stomach clench uneasily but tried to school his expression into something nonplussed as he started toward the dock.

“Why is she in the water?” he muttered to no one in particular, noting the worried pitch in his own voice.

He saw the four heads of his nearly-adult friends turn toward him in unison as he walked past them.

Robin chimed in then, through a hiccup “Psh, she’s fine Steven. We reinforced her.”

Steve ignored her.

Max and El glanced up at him, muttering uninterested twin-greetings to him as he stepped gingerly between them. Will let him scooch past.

“Hey!” came your voice. “Do not shoot water in each other's mouths, this water is stagnant,” you barked. “That’s guaranteed dysentery.”

“Sorry,” Lucas and Mike responded in unison.

Finally, yours and Dustin’s forms bobbing in the water came into view. Dustin was sputtering and rubbing his face with the hand not holding his own super soaker, clearly having been on the receiving end of Lucas and Mike’s attack.

You were a few feet away from him, straddling a neon orange pool noodle.

You were wearing that infernal bikini…the spring green one with ditsy white flowers and an underwire that smooshed your bust into a juicy-looking sculpture shaped by the hands of an unfair, horny god.

Your hair was damp around your face. Even behind your red cat eye sunglasses, you appeared unimpressed until you caught sight of Steve and beamed at him.

“Stevie!” you squealed.

He didn’t waste another moment taking in the sight of you before he shoved off the dock and waded the short distance over to you and Dustin.

“Hey, Steve!” he heard Dustin greet sweetly. Steve ignored it, leveling his gaze at you.

“Teenie, what the hell are you doing in the lake?”

Your pretty smile fell at his words. You hesitated a moment before you fixed your face into a sardonic expression.

“You’re looking at it, Stevie.”

“Your arm, Teenie! Your cast!”

Steve didn’t notice how every head had turned toward the two of you at his little outburst. At that, you pulled your left arm out of the water, where it had been obscured. It looked like Swamp Thing, dark and soggy, water running off of it in rivulets. Steve saw that it was covered in a black rubbish bag, secured with silver duct tape (plus a derelict shoe lace) at your elbow.

“It’s sorted, Stevie.” Steve heard conciliation in your voice. “The plaster’s bone dry underneath, ya happy?”

No, he wasn’t happy.

Frankly, Steve didn’t care who had rigged the dry bag around the cast securing your fractured ulna. If he had, his money would have been on the braintrust that was Eddie and Robin, but who knew with this ragtag group? It wasn't as though the lot of them hadn’t crafted a bevy of improvised weapons and structures and clothing in the past.

Steve’s blood was boiling. He shouldn’t have had to tell you to stay out of the water, you should have just known.

Yeah, lake day had been your idea, but he’d had a very different design for this day in his head when you’d proposed it.

He thought the kids would splash around in the shallows while you and him (plus the other four sort-of grown ups) lounged at the water’s edge.

The two of you would lather each other in sunblock (you with your good arm) and share a beer or two, and he would stare discreetly and shamelessly at your half-naked, prone body behind the safety of his Ray-Bans while some sappy love song played over the boombox and he pretended you were his and he wasn’t tap dancing around his feelings that he'd only sort of started realizing were feelings and-

“Steve,” you uttered sharply, snapping him out of his daydream.

Right. He had been busy giving you the business about reckless swimming.

“You’re a terrible swimmer on a good day,” he scolded. “You really think you can hold your own with one arm?” he reasoned, gesturing at your form.

You pushed your sunglasses to the top of your head and glared at him, unimpressed.

Dustin chose then to speak up, mildly. Steve almost forgot he was there.

“We’re touching the bottom, Steve. We’re being safe, we’re touching the bottom,” he tried with a chord of desperation.

Steve looked between the two of you. A nasty little smirk on your face threatened to emerge.

“Yeah, we’re touching the bottom.” You demonstrated your point by bouncing up and down on your toes a few times. Steve had to ignore how your boobs bounced with the motion. “And I have this, for buoyancy,” you added, smacking the end of your pool noodle into the water and sending a spray of water into Steve’s face.

Dustin cackled suddenly at Steve’s sputtering. Lucas, Mike, El and Max joined the hysterics shortly thereafter. Will hid a snicker behind his sketch pad.

It should have broken the tension. It should have been the hard reset on the fun that Steve had almost ruined with his poop-pantsery.

“What about Dustin?” Steve tried then. He was feeling outnumbered here. And a little stupid, frankly. But righteous. Like, how the hell was he supposed to feel when he leaves the lot of you alone for one afternoon and the two (arguably) most vulnerable people are just hanging out with no one to stop you drowning?

Dustin’s blue eyes grew big and confused at the mention of his name. You looked at the young curly-haired boy reflexively.

“What about ‘im?” you shot back.

“He doesn’t have collar bones!” Steve barked, gesturing at the boy.

Dustin looked a little hurt by the observation, true though it may be. Steve winced a little at his own insensitivity and immediately wished he could walk it back. “Sorry, bud,” he offered.

Dustin seemed immediately appeased at his correction and shrugged as if to say “no problem.”

You weren’t ready to let it go, however. A mean guffaw escaped from the back of your throat before you replied “Dustin is fine. He’s a very capable swimmer,” you spat. Unlike me, Steve heard you mutter snarkily under your breath.

You flicked Dustin’s nose lightly and winked at him, and he preened under your attention. All the kids did. You had that way about you, is all.

Sensing the tension on the water, Eddie, Rob, Nance and Jon were stood up on the shore, looking on with mild concern.

Steve noticed you noticing them and then you shook your head and declared “Know what? I packed sandwiches and nobody has touched them, so…andiamo.”

With that, you abandoned your pool noodle and lifted yourself out of the water and onto the dock by your good arm.

I would have helped her, Steve thought to himself bitterly, watching you drop hard on your knees before getting to your feet.

He sated his need to help by pushing Dustin onto the dock by his butt, much to Dustin’s annoyance.

A bit later, everyone was seated on the shore, the last of the sandwiches having been polished off.

The tension had waned for everyone else and the ambient murmur of jovial conversation had returned.

Eddie was seated at Steve’s side, yammering in his ear about a road trip he wanted to take with you all sometime next Spring.

But Steve’s gaze was trained on you, across the circle, engaged in quiet conversation with Nancy and Robin.

You had pulled your shorts on, leaving them unbuttoned over your bikini bottoms. Your oxford shirt with the sleeves cut off was unbuttoned, billowing open down to your navel. The trash bag had been removed from your arm carefully with the help of the tiny scissors on Dustin’s swiss army knife.

You smiled wryly at some joke that Robin had made. Your face was free of makeup, eyes a little tired, but sanguine.

“Ya listening to me, Stevie boy?” Eddie asked, cutting through Steve’s haze.

“Sorry dude,” Steve shot back mindlessly, willing himself to pry his gaze away.

Eddie merely sniggered at his friend’s lack of manners. “That was quite a spectacle the two of you put on earlier.”

Steve scowled at him, knowing damn well what he was talking about, but choosing to feign ignorance.

“Dunno what you’re talking about.”

Eddie was unbothered by Steve’s pretend-game, continuing, “Like, you two guys pitch each other a lot of shit and it's usually good natured, but lately it's been…” Eddie sucked on his teeth as he pondered the right adjective. “Sticky.”

“Ed, man, shut up.”

“Nah,” Eddie said on a deep inhale. “Figure your shit out, Harrington. It’s embarrassing.” Eddie sunk back down into his chair.

“Teenie Ween’s always been a sweetheart as long as I've known her but lately, you've been bringing out the worst in each other and it's exhausting.”

Steve’s face scrunched up in confusion, pondering Eddie’s cryptic words.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said absently, though he didn’t know what he was sorry for.

Eddie just smiled back at him from behind a pair of aviators.

Soon, the sun started to dip and everyone was a little sun drunk and over the day. Belongings were packed and the troupe of you made it up the bluff and through the thicket of overgrown weeds, back to the road.

(⁠๑⁠♡⁠⌓⁠♡⁠๑⁠)

It was the transportation arrangement that really clinched the awkwardness of the outing.

Nancy had hauled everyone to the beach earlier that day, sans you. You had been dropped off by a boy called Allen Miles and the mention of his name grated on Steve’s very spine.

Before you and Steve could devolve into another bitching match, Nancy pursed her lips and made a sound declaration that Steve would drive you, Dustin and Robin home.

Nevermind that her station wagon would still be stuffed to the gills clown-style. And you wouldn’t even have the buffer of El at the ready since she was staying at Max’s house. You fought her on it, too.

“Does dad know you’re staying over with Max?” you asked her, almost pleading with her to give you a reason to pull elder sibling rank on you.

“Yes,” she hissed back at you haughtily. You deflated, knowing that you would be dropped off last.

Maybe you could pretend to fall asleep during the ride so you didn’t have to deal with Steve alone.

Looks were exchanged and car doors were slammed before you all set off into the twilight. Robin, who typically called shotty, practically shoved you into the front seat of Steve’s car. You didn’t want to make a scene in light of the day’s events, so you went without quarrel.

Dustin and Robin droned on in the backseat about…something. You couldn’t have recounted even a smidgen of their conversation with a gun to your head.

You were focused on Steve next to you, seething. You could feel it coming off of him.

Your jaw clenched as Robin fixed you and Steve with an exasperated look that you could see in the side view mirror before leaving you with a cheeky adios!

Dustin took up the mantle of filling the silence but soon enough, you were parked in front of the Henderson residence.

The boy parried a moment before seemingly deciding he couldn't say or do anything to pop yours and Steve's acidic little bubble. The pair of you watched his mom greet him at the door before pulling away.

The thing was, today hadn’t happened in a vacuum. You and Steve had always gotten along pretty famously as far as your friends and built family were concerned. Certainly enough to make it through a world of unconscionable shit alongside the rest of them.

But when reality as you all knew it was falling to pieces, nobody had the presence of mind to tune into the frequency that the two of you were on. They didn’t notice the intricacies of the geological formation of your relationship.

You had materialized - yes! materialized - out of nowhere back in the fall of ‘83. You’d been sucked into the Upside Down from another time and place entirely. The unwitting and unlikely victim of a quantum hiccup twenty years in the future near your home on Nellis Airforce Base in North Las Vegas.

Your slime-covered, barely animate fifteen-year-old body was discovered and carried out of the Upside Down by Hop. He, in a hazmat suit, you in your ripped, bloodied Catholic school uniform while Joyce stumbled alongside him with Will in her clutches.

For weeks, you’d been near-catatonic, held in the custody of Dr. Owens while a cadre of shady G-men (plus Hop and Joyce) had tried to piece together your journey.

You barely registered that you had leapt back in time and ended up somewhere you didn’t know a soul, half a decade before you were even born.

For you were traumatized and plagued with guilt over the death of another teenage girl. A girl that had desperately wanted to get back to where you found yourself by accident.

You'd tried pulling Barb off that sticky wall, even though part of you knew she was already dead. Soon, you surrendered to your exhaustion and found yourself glued to the same wall, a grotty vine prodding at your lips, trying to make a home in your esophagus right as Hop and Joyce happened upon you.

Eventually, your body healed and you came out of your stupor. You went to live with Hop. You didn’t have anywhere else to go, and besides which way, the best conclusion that the scientists from the DoE could come up with was that if you were going to go back “home”, it would be the way you came. So you had to stay close by.

They paid a stipend to keep you fed and kept - you were an investment, afterall. Moreover, you were a liability and a paradox, and this was the best arrangement Owens could come up with.

Hop got used to having you around, never trying to force the matter of you returning home. In the weeks when you’d lost track of El, you would sometimes stand timidly in front of the towering man until he promised you that you would find her.

Neither of you could stand the guilt of her being out there on her own. Eventually El showed up and he decided that you would all carry on as though you had both been there the whole time.

Nobody wanted you to go back home. How would you get there? How would you survive a second time?

You started school in January of ‘84, sticking close to the walls.

Nancy and Jon felt responsible for you and kept you close. By default, that meant Steve, too. But Steve was suspicious of you.

You were freaky to him and despite what he’d seen in the Byers house, he couldn’t really comprehend your being there.

Sometimes, when you were all hanging out, a brand new song would come on the radio - like the DJ would make a big production of stressing the just released single - and then you’d absentmindedly mouth all the words perfectly.

Other times, you’d say non-sequitur things that would turn out to be quotes from movies that hadn’t been released when you’d uttered them.

The most unnerving was when Nancy’s father was hemming and hawing at the breakfast table one morning you were all over at the Wheeler house.

He was pouring over a newspaper article about some sick murderer on the loose, reciting the most sordid details while Karen Wheeler stood at the stove flipping pancakes, scolding her husband for discussing it in front of the kids.

Suddenly, you paused with your glass of orange juice poised at your lips and muttered the name Alton Coleman with a vacant look in your eyes. Days later, Alton Coleman was apprehended.

Karen and Ted Wheeler had missed it, luckily. But when Nancy had pressed you on the issue, wondering if you were tapped into some latent psychic ability that you and her could use to fight crime, you'd disappointed the girl by informing her that one of the last things you'd seen on TV before you “leapt” was a documentary about Alton Coleman. And it had only stuck with you because you'd gone over your actions in your last days at Nellis with Owens until you were blue in the face.

Then there was the style stuff. You seemed totally confused about what you referred to as “big, crispy hair,” not to mention your general aversion to spandex and high-waisted jeans.

You wore your hair with minimal volume, kept your clothes and makeup neutral, toned down, boring.

Nancy thought it was because you’d been to Catholic school and you were “demure” as she put it.

But Steve had quickly clocked that you thought everything around you was cheesy and dated but you didn’t want to stand out or accidentally make a statement by dressing from your own time. So you dressed like a bland schoolmistress and let Jonathan make you mixtapes because a constant rotation of Top 40 artists eventually set your teeth on edge.

You stopped telling Steve who the one-hit-wonders were because he was really rooting for Dexy’s Midnight Runners and he got all salty when you told him.

Nobody tried to meet you where you were at culturally, because all of you were a little worried that if you divulged secrets from the future, it would create some kind of extra rip in the universe. So you kept your trap shut except to say that you didn’t really like your time either and that, really, the ‘80s weren’t so bad in some ways.

Plus, you practically drooled at the sight of Eddie Van Halen and Mickey Rourke whenever you got the opportunity. They were so hot, you'd lament in a pained wail at the TV, as if you weren't living in the very time in which they were dropping your panties.

Steve rolled his eyes every time you did this. Little Miss Catholic School swooning over rock stars and greasers. How original. Your crush on Spock from Star Trek…Well that broke up the cliché a little.

Steve slowly started to feel more at ease around you, distracting himself with his romance with Nancy.

And you started to branch out, making friends outside of the people that knew too much for their own good.

You started wearing acid-washed denim over bolder colors, teasing your hair a bit, adopting high-waisted jeans (which made your ass look delectable, Steve grudgingly noticed - as did Allen Miles, apparently).

You were still on the shy, mild side, but you weren't such a wallflower. People knew you by face and name now.

Steve thought being from the future made you naturally more magnetic or something. Like you were always two moves ahead of everyone. That made him kind of nervous, though, so he still watched you in his periphery.

He told himself it was to make sure you didn’t slip up and involve anyone else in your freakish situation. He’d watch you in the cafeteria, the courtyard, laughing with your small circle of casual pals, looking for any indication that you were spilling your guts and making yourself look like a headcase in the process.

Best case scenario, you’d wind up in an asylum or something. Worst case, you’d end up in a gulag with electrodes inserted in every square inch of visible flesh. Months of his low-key recon suddenly became moot the night of the Halloween party in ‘84.

Steve had just had his heart crushed by Nancy in a spectacular fashion, when he pulled over on his way home.

He was trying to stave off waves of fresh pain in his chest, sat at the wheel of his car, gulping air, willing the sting of rejection to sink to the depths of his loafers. Toto’s Africa provided the soundtrack to his misery.

He startled at a gentle rapping at his window. He looked up to see you, haloed in the streetlight, wearing a copper lamé dress with a high split in the leg and a dip at the shoulder. Your eyes were smoked out, making your confused glare even more intense.

Possessed Dana Barrett, you’d explained, offering him a bite of your candy apple. He refused it, so you chucked it out the window into a storm drain, licking your sticky fingers.

You'd taken Nancy's little brother and his friends trick-or-treating and they'd cajoled you into being Possessed Dana Barrett to round out the Ghostbusters cast. You wanted to be Slimer but you didn't know how to pull it off on such short notice, and Joyce Byers had loaned you this gown from the days of disco, and why was he so long in the face, anyway?

Steve was just desperate enough to ask you to hang out at his, which turned into a request for you to stay over at his. He'd never had his heart broken by someone he’d chosen, and part of him wanted to hide.

But he knew going home to his empty house and the silence would taunt him. You went along with it easily. You almost didn't even seem confused as to why he was asking you.

You washed your face and used a spare toothbrush he had. The sleeves of the pajama top he'd long since outgrown still reached past your fingertips. He'd stared at you as you rolled them up your forearms, one leg crossed over the other, hanging off the edge of his bed.

It felt strange but comforting and he allowed himself to wonder if he'd ever get to see a lover or even his wife do those same dainty motions in a bigger bed. In a shared bed, one day. He wondered if he'd remember the sight of you, right now.

You and him were laying in his bed, top and tail - platonic 69’ing, you'd joked, immediately clearing your throat when Steve didn't laugh -, when you broke the silence telling him, “Talk to her. In a couple days. She was drunk, Steve, she didn't know what she was saying.”

He had to remind himself that you were talking about him and Nance.

“She was hurtfully clear about it,” he retorted. A beat passed before you offered an anecdote about your first time getting drunk at a Christmas party on base.

You'd snuck a bunch of drinks with some other Air Force brats throughout the night before loudly declaring to a room full of military families that you were going to invent the hoverboard from Back to the Future.

Steve didn't know what Back to the Future was and you quickly corrected course, telling him to get some sleep.

That was the night the two of you became something like friends.

The next day he woke up with the red painted toe nails of one of your feet lodged in the crook of his arm. He didn’t hate it.

Mere days later, after you'd blocked Lucas Sinclair’s body with your own and gotten Billy Hargrove’s backhand for your trouble, after he'd watched you clutch the Mother Mary medallion around your neck and recite whispered, rushed prayers to a god you scarcely believed in in the back of an abandoned school bus before fighting otherworldly monsters alongside him, and going back into that hell mouth because you'd been down there before and couldn't let the rest go in without knowing what they were up against…

Steve felt ready to let Nancy go.

He still cared for her, he still didn't like how it ended, but his world felt bigger and less stifling now. And he didn't need to hold onto the last dregs of something that would stay just that…dregs. There were possibilities all around him. He didn't want to cling to someone that didn't want him back.

Yours and Steve's friendship was quietly strengthened over two more reality-rocking apocalypses. One of those included his initiation to the Back to the Future franchise. “Ooooh,” he'd loudly declared in the theater, finally understanding your reference while off his face on Russian truth serum. You’d looked over at him with bleary eyes, shooting him finger guns, grateful for the vindication.

In between, and after the mall fire, there were lots of jokes, cookouts, Midwest adventures and plenty of heretofore platonic 69ing in his bed. Top and tail sleepovers followed by rote, cozy breakfasts at the county’s diners.

You would mewl a miserable sleep song on those mornings until he reminded you of the very existence of French toast.

Sometimes it was just the two of you, sometimes your friends joined. But it was almost agonizing in its closeness and familiarity. And it grew out of the impossible.

A shrink could have told Steve that the bitching between the two of you that occasionally oozed to the surface like liquid rock was a trauma response. The shrink would have gone on to explain that Steve was projecting his fears onto you because you were an easy target. You'd experienced it together and he had access to you. And Steve would need to find another shrink because he'd know they were only half-right.

Yes, you'd become fixtures in each other's lives and had shared experiences out of the ordinary. But the same could be said of Robin or Dustin or Eddie, etc. and yes, he mother-henned them all, but when it came to you, he couldn't be talked out of it. Because as important as Robin or Dustin or Eddie, etc. were to him, it was your ass that he couldn't seem to crawl out of, and it annoyed you as much as anyone else.

You'd been very sweet and mellow about it up to this point, but things were getting confusing between you two. Hence the pool noodle incident and passive aggressive defiance.

You started buttoning your shirt up just for something to do with your good hand and after a prolonged and uncomfortable silence, Steve spoke. “Allen Miles,” he said simply.

You stopped at the top button of your blouse. “Allen Miles,” you parroted back.

You saw the tip of his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth. “Allen…Miles,” he tried again, testing the name on his tongue.

You picked at your cast, tracing the well-wishes in Robin's loopy chicken scratch with your thumb. “Is a person that exists,” you said flaty, as if to staunch whatever shit was about to come out of his mouth next.

“Allen Miles is a douche-dick,” he sing-songed quietly enough that you could have pretended not to hear.

Unbelievable. You sniffed at the insult. “What'd Allen Miles ever do to you?”

“Why'd he give you a ride today?” he asked, dodging the question. “You could have piled in with everyone else.” Ugh. He sounded like Hop.

The simplicity and faux-calmness of the statement took you aback. Was he for real right now? “He works at the rec center on Saturday mornings and I had physio-therapy there today. He offered,” you countered, trying not to sound as defensive as you felt - though the words came out in a rapid stream almost as if they’d been rehearsed (they weren’t). You bit the inside of your cheek. An argument was a-brewin.’

Steve turned off the narrow highway onto the skinny, heavily-wooded trail to the cabin. He was seething and neither of you knew why. “So he waited for you to get done with PT?”

“No,” you shot back, not fully understanding the anger under his line of questioning. “His shift ended a half hour after I was done. I waited for him.”

A scoff. “He made you wait for him?” He posed the question as if it was the most distasteful thing he could imagine.

“He didn’t make me do anything! He didn't have to drive me in the first place!”

“Well then why didn’t you come to the store! If you were waiting for a ride, you could have waited for me!”

“That would have taken hours! What is your problem?”

“Just-” Steve took a deep breath, flicking his gaze to you briefly as the Bimmer trundled down the beaten path to the cabin. “I just wonder about Miles, ya know? He’s a little sleazy around you, what if he just wants to get in your pants? What if he’d-”

Steve was the Larry Bird of cutting himself off, apparently.

“What if he’d made a move?” you offered.

“Exactly,” Steve said, pointing at you.

“What if he had?” you questioned honestly.

The cabin came into view, mercifully, only a moment later. Your head was swimming. Steve had been acting so short with you the last few weeks. It had ramped up when you’d broken the arm.

It was a stupid accident, really. Max had begged you to take a run on the skateboard, something you’d never done. She’d egged you on and you’d done it and you’d gone flying over a stop skid in the church parking lot.

She had to run into the church and have the secretary call you an ambulance. In hindsight, you were lucky you hadn’t broken your face open. You knew when to take a W, so you didn’t dwell on the possibilities too much.

Steve had heard you were in the hospital and had a conniption. Granted, he hadn’t stayed on the phone with Max long enough to hear It’s just her arm, she’s fine.

You’d been hopped up on morphine and called him a fruit loop for getting his panties in such a twist.

And ever since then, you two had been walking a razor’s edge. Where it had once been easy to diffuse your little tiffs, you seemed to be perpetually living under one another’s skin.

Steve threw the car in park and whipped over to face you. “What do you mean what if he had?” You did not appreciate the falsetto that his voice had taken on to impersonate you.

“I mean what I said, Steve! What is your deal?”

“He could be a total dirt bag, Teenie!”

You sighed to yourself and pinched the bridge of your nose. You were suddenly so tired. “He didn’t make a pass at me, Steve. He was very sweet and cordial and I got there in one piece and I really need you to back off right now, please.”

This was it. This was your limit. You wanted to crawl out of your skin. You huffed quietly to yourself before telling Steve “I need you to not talk to me for a while, okay?” And at that, you grabbed your bag from between your feet and got out of the car.

You heard Steve government-name you before you closed the door and skulked toward the cabin. The tears came fast and you were grateful that Steve didn’t follow you. Instead he gripped his steering wheel and internally scolded himself for everything that had just transpired.

Steve knew he wasn’t always the brightest, but how? How did he always end up shooting himself in the foot? He chanced a look at the cabin and lingered for a moment after he saw the light in the mudroom off the side that served as your sleeping quarters had turned on.

He gave more than a passing thought to going in after you, but he wasn’t going to fuck it further by pushing you when you’d explicitly asked for space. Plus, he was chastised, but he was still fussy, and he didn’t fully trust himself to not keep digging this hole deeper.

After a moment, he gathered himself and left the property, turning up the radio and letting Talk to Me by Stevie Nicks rub the salt in as he made his way back to his empty house.

Inside the cabin, you watched Steve’s headlights disappear as you wrestled your Detroit Red Wings jersey over your cast. It was the only sleep shirt that you could get over your cast at the moment.

Your tears had subsided, slurped back up into your tear ducts for the sheer fact that you didn’t want to waste anymore tears on Steve Harrington.

He probably didn’t know it, the beautiful dolt, but over the years that you’d known him, he’d kept pushing on the same bruise, and it had gotten even more difficult for you to cope.

He'd gone for the throat harping on Allen Miles, whom you were not interested in like that. Steve's over-the-top paternalistic revulsion at the thought of you getting some hurt your feelings and made you feel like he'd only ever see you as a fragile little sister figure that he needed to coddle. Like your having sex was some kind of aberration.

Having him treat you that way with the way you felt about him twisted your heart.

You were tired of having a big and important part of you ignored. A part that you’d never talked with anyone, especially Steve, in great detail. The sexual part. The (gag) sensual part. You were eighteen going on forty-eight, already whinging internally about how you were a woman™ dammit and you had needs™.

You weren’t seasoned, by any means. You’d had a handful of secret fumbles with secret partners and you’d made discoveries about yourself.

A of all- and this one you’d suspected since puberty hit - you got turned on easily. Like sloppy, soppy, pushing down on your vulva like you were hiding a boner turned on. And for no reason.

Sometimes it happened when you saw Eddie Van Halen on MTV or Mickey Rourke in Rumble Fish or LeVar Burton on the cover of TV Guide.

Sometimes it happened when you had to go to a stupid school spirit assembly and had to look at boys in their stupid, short basketball shorts and/or girls in their cheerleading regalia.

Sometimes it happened when you watched Eddie’s band practice in Gareth’s garage and saw the young Munson trash around all sweaty, handling his guitar expertly.

Once, it had happened when you saw Robin throw a balled up Dixie Cup into a bin at a considerable distance and she’d celebrated excessively and it was cute.

You knew you didn't want to fuck Eddie or Robin -it would be weird beyond weird. It's just that you could appreciate them.

The same way you appreciated the nasty smacking noises Nancy and Jon made when they were making out in what they thought was a private moment and you knew they were gonna bang later.

Your friends did sexy things, and sometimes it turned you on.

Mostly, though, it happened with Steve. At least once a day (usually more), he did something that accidentally got you going. A hand on his hip, and hand through his hair, a smirk, a wink, a smile, a whisper in your ear, a casual touch on the small of your back.

This was to say nothing of how he made you feel emotionally. How unguarded and at peace you felt when he was around. How physical closeness felt as natural as breathing, and you were not hugged enough as a child, so that was saying something.

Sometimes you'd give each other long lingering hugs and it made you wish you could fuse your flesh to his. You wanted to be his Kuato, always melded to his tummy. And you knew it was weird but so what? Nobody needed to know.

B of all - you liked being touched. And snogged. And railed. And held tight. Which you discovered on your own and in secret, no thanks to Steve. Because Steve usually had a squeeze waiting in the wings somewhere.

And even when he didn’t, he was preoccupied either with healing from his first great heartbreak or pondering how to rebound from said great heartbreak. Despite your raging hormones, you knew you wanted nothing to do with either of those. So you outsourced your sexual energy.

As soon as you'd gotten over your hangups about the cheesy, neon, teased to high-hell vomit pile that was the 1980s in America, and you'd leaned into it just a little bit, you started getting noticed. And you discovered, thanks to Francis and David and Chelsea (separately), that you did not just enjoy sex in theory, but also in practice.

The kicker, though, was that while you physically enjoyed the sex that you’d had, you realized when you were coming down from the high that something might be missing. You could have an orgasm that you felt in your very boots, but you wouldn’t ever ask the person that had just rocked your world to drive you to the airport or buy you French toast, much less trust them with your heart.

Your stupid, stupid heart. It beat for a boy that seemed to think you had the sex life of a castrato.

You flopped down on your bed and stared at your ceiling. You felt kind of bad brushing Steve off like that, even demanding that he not talk to you.

You hadn't chanced a look back at his face when you'd left his car, but you knew you would have seen that hardened, confused look that he got when he was hurt. That look that always crushed you and made you want to kiss his face and whisper sweet words until he broke out into that cocky grin of his.

You rolled over and closed your eyes, wishing he was next to you, that you could feel his weight and body heat, that you were holding him by the crook of his elbow and pressing your face into his bicep. That you could somehow transmit your thoughts without speaking them out loud and that he would at least be gentler with you and not infer that you were sexless anymore. Even if he didn’t want you like that.

You settled into that lukewarm fantasy, of the memory of him, and let yourself drift to sleep.

(⁠๑⁠♡⁠⌓⁠♡⁠๑⁠)

Steve was sitting on his floor leaned against his bed, holding one of his most prized worldly possessions. It was a candid Polaroid of the two of you.

It was taken at the fair last year. It was a little overexposed with the lights from the rides surrounding you, but the figures of you two were clear as day.

In the photo, Steve was holding your wrist to his chest with a crooked grin, mouth poised near your ear. It looked like he'd just whispered something to you. Your head was crooked to the side and down, like you were trying to worm away from his grasp, your eyes closed with the intensity of your laugh. Your face was glowing with the fair lights and there was a streak of white on your cheek. You both looked sublimely happy.

Steve smiled at the memory. You'd made a game of forcing bits of funnel cake into his mouth when he wasn't paying attention when finally, he'd caught you before your next “attack” and smeared powdered sugar from the pastry onto your cheek as revenge.

His first thought when Jonathan had presented him with the memento at the end of that night was that he was looking at you like a boy in love and he wondered how many times he'd been caught looking at you like that, without photographic evidence.

The bitter memory of you telling him I need you to not talk to me for a while roared back into his consciousness and slapped him in the face. You'd sounded hurt, on top of being pissed.

Did you really want to date Allen Miles? You said he hadn't made a pass at you. Did it hurt your feelings because he didn't make a pass at you and Steve had just dug the knife in more? He'd throttle Miles if he'd hurt your feelings. Fuck that guy.

Or were you worried about Steve's opinion of your choice in boyfriends? Was Allen your type? What was your type? He knew Eddie Van Halen and Mickey Rourke and LeVar Burton were your type but that weird trinity did not clarify things for him.

Steve tried to recall what, besides his shortness with you, could have triggered you to react the way that you did. By now, he knew that whatever it was, it was his fault. He would love to pawn the blame off on you but you were usually blameless, especially to him. You were sweet and gentle and always seemed to anticipate and prioritize other people’s needs at your own peril.

He'd given you space like you asked but it had been a couple days now. He was starting to feel like he was jonesing.

He was hoping you would have come to visit him at the video store by now, jumping on his back and hugging him like a koala, whispering in his ear that all was forgiven and things could go back to normal, like how they were before you'd broken your arm.

But when Steve thought about things going back the way they were, it made his brain itch. He felt like something was totally different and the two of you couldn't go back if you wanted to. Moreover, he didn't know if he did want to. He wanted…

Steve's thoughts were interrupted by the phone ringing. He slid the Polaroid of you two back into his bedside drawer and hastily picked up the receiver. Please be her, please be her, please be her.

“Hello?”

“Steve?”

Nance. “Nance?” Fuck it all. Steve bit back his disappointment. “What's up?”

“Is Teenie over at yours? I tried to call her but El said she's not home but she's not working today, either. I know Robin was scheduled at the store today. I thought she might be with you.”

Steve's jaw clenched involuntarily. Were you with Allen Miles?

“Um,” Steve said with a little choke. “No, no. She's not here. Everything okay?”

“Yeah, everything's good. It's just that I was emptying the cooler and I found that Mother Mary medallion she always wears? It must have slipped off her neck. It was her grandmother's and I thought she might be bugging out thinking it was lost forever and-”

“I'll come get it,” Steve interrupted. He was already pulling his sneakers on. “You gonna be home for a minute?”

“Oh.” A pause. “It's no big deal, Steve, I'm running Mike to the cabin tomorrow, I can just drop it off then.”

Steve was pacing now, thinking he might be losing his line back to you. You did love that necklace even though you'd abandoned the Church forever ago. Your grandmother was the only person from back “home” that you were sentimental about - and she'd died not long before you'd ended up here.

That necklace was the only tangible piece of your former life that you really cared about. Maybe you'd be more inclined to listen or even share oxygen with him if he brought it back to you.

“Uh, it's cool. She actually left her uh,” Steve began, looking around the room then down at his feet, “uh, her shoes, yeah. She left them in my car when I dropped her off the other night.” Lie.

He heard Nancy laugh, a little disbelievingly. “She left her shoes in your car.” It came out as a statement.

“Psh, yeah. They were all sandy from the beach and she hates the feeling of leftover sand in between her toes.” Half lie. You had told him that, once. “Anyway, I'll be by in like ten.”

“Ste-”

Steve dropped the receiver back in the cradle and made a mad dash for Nancy’s. Nancy was waiting for him on the front step when he arrived. When she dropped the necklace in his waiting palm, he held it gingerly and stared at it like a holy relic.

Nancy cleared her throat. Steve met her eyes and he could see something like suspicion dancing behind them, along with a little smirk. “You better go find Teenie. Poor girl’s walking around without shoes, afterall.”

Nancy was always too smart for her own good - or anyone else’s for that matter. He thanked her as if she’d given him the world and went on his merry way.

(⁠๑⁠♡⁠⌓⁠♡⁠๑⁠)

Steve decided to make a pitstop back at his house instead of going right over to yours. He’d been planning on going to the cabin and waiting for you if you hadn’t gotten home yet.

But after he left Nancy’s, he thought that this might not be the move. You were really mad at him and he wanted to show you that he could listen and respect your wishes.

He spent a good twenty minutes pacing around his living room trying to come up with a gameplan on how to return your necklace without ruffling your feathers further.

Maybe he should buy you an obnoxiously large teddy bear?

No, if you hated it, he would be stuck with an over-large, cutesy reminder of his failure.

Or maybe he could hire one of those dorky barbershop quartets to show up at work and sing you a song about how he knew he was a dipshit, but you meant so much to him, please take him back?

No, no. You would die of embarrassment and probably haunt him for the rest of his days.

He was still holding your necklace, gripping his hair by the roots when he heard the doorbell.

Maybe it was Dustin or Eddie. Maybe he could bounce some ideas off them, he thought as he jogged toward the door.

He opened it and felt the air leave his lungs when he saw you standing there. You were staring up at him, eyes wide, swaying your shoulders a little bit the way you did when you were nervous.

You were wearing his favorite dress of yours. This beige thing with tie straps and red flowers on it. The first time he’d seen you wear it, you’d been all dolled up in a way that was almost salacious. Now you wore your hair down with barely a stitch of makeup on and Steve thought you looked…

“Hi,” you said shyly.

“Hi,” he said back, his voice sounding small in his ears. He cleared his throat, hoping that if he found his voice again, he wouldn’t sound so broken. “Come in?”

You didn’t hesitate, thankfully. You walked past him, minding your cast and stopped in the foyer before you turned to him. You shrugged one shoulder bashfully.

“Nancy said you had my necklace.” Your face scrunched up in confusion. “Also, something about shoes?”

Steve pushed the door shut and walked over to you.

“Uh, yeah, I might have lied to her and said you left your shoes in my car so I’d have an excuse to take custody of your necklace.”

The confusion on your face deepened.

Steve held your necklace out to you and you let him drop it into your good hand.

You both stood there for an awkward moment. “I missed you,” you said.

Steve felt his heart soar and opened his mouth to respond but you cut him off.

“Will you help me?” you asked, holding up the necklace and then your cast to make your point.

“Yeah, yeah,” Steve said, rushing to your back. You handed him the necklace and bunched your hair up in a fist, holding it out of the way.

Steve took a moment to appreciate the back of your neck, the downy hairs at your hairline, the little birthmark at the junction of your shoulder. He looped the necklace around you and clasped it, checking that the spring in the clasp was still sound.

“All set,” he said.

You spun around to meet him and he saw you touch the pendant at your decolletage with a little smile. “Thank you.”

“I missed you too,” Steve rushed out, hands shoved in his back pockets.

The look you gave him back was soft and dazed and he felt his heart kick in his chest. You cocked your head at him. “Why were you so upset about Allen, Stevie?”

Steve didn’t detect even a hint of anger in your question. You just kept staring at him softly. Steve walked over to the couch and perched himself against the backrest. His thumbs rubbed dual patterns on the suede upholstery while he thought up a response. The best he could come up with was “Do you like him? Allen, I mean? Like…romantic-wise?”

He glanced up at you bashfully, dreading the answer he was sure would come.

Your eyes narrowed, but not meanly. You walked over to him and planted your hip against the couch next to him.

“No,” you said, simply.

Steve released a relieved exhale from deep in his chest. You weren’t done, though. “But Stevie, why…I mean why did you get so mad at the thought of Allen and I together?”

Steve felt his eyes bug out but tried to school his expression into something less obvious. He shrugged when he finally met your eyes again. “Teenie, I just.” He wet his bottom lip. You wore the same soft, contemplative expression but he thought he could see your breathing kick up as you waited for him to finish.

Steve was right. You were trying to stop yourself from hyperventilating. You hadn’t come over here to confront Steve, not really. You really just wanted to see him again and figure out what he was playing at, purloining your necklace from Nancy in an obvious attempt to get back in your good graces. It would have been a cute gesture if you weren’t so worried about what was coming next.

But two days of feeling like your brain was leaking for its singular fixation on your Stevie and how much you missed him had finally gotten the best of you. You came round the moment you could. You knew it was time to face the music, come what may.

“I just want…whoever you hang out with or end up being with…I just want them to treat you with respect. And I want you to have fun and feel safe and…”

God, he was beautiful. Didn’t he know? How could he not know?

Steve seemed to be at a loss for words now, so you offered some.

“I could have those things with you,” you breathed out almost dreamily.

Steve's eyes went wide again and you felt like your heart was going to break because that look could have meant…so many things. Not all of them good.

You backed away from his side slowly, ready to make a break for it, but Steve caught you gently by the upper arms and stood at his full height. He stared at you like you were a brand new lifeform.

“Teenie?” he said in a too-tiny voice.

You were looking right into the void, free-falling into the hinterworld of your own heart.

“Stevie, do you think of me like a little sister?”

Steve's eyebrows shot up with something like horror before he cleared his throat and shook away some thought known only to him.

“Ew, no, Teen.”

You bit your lip and stamped your foot just a little bit, feeling a little unmoored. You worried suddenly that you wouldn't get the answers you wanted.

Steve had loosened his grip on you just a smidge. He was absently stroking your arms with his thumbs.

“One of the kids then. Dustin or Max or-”

“No,” he answered immediately, shaking his head decisively. “No.”

And you knew. You knew he meant it.

You backed away, feeling singed by his sincerity. You paced the length of the runner behind the couch and slid a nail along your cast making little zipzipzip noises to fill the quiet. You turned to him after a moment.

“So what's happening with us. Why are we being so weird with each other?”

Steve put his hands on his hips. “You broke your ass, Teenie,” he said sternly. “It could have been your head!”

“It wasn't though, it wasn't my head!” Your voice had a desperate edge. “Way crazier stuff has happened to me, to both of us! All our friends…”

He looked at you like you were speaking a different language. He shut his eyes tight like he was willing the memories away. He gathered himself quickly.

“Right, and if things had gone differently, we don't know what could have happened!”

Both of you were breathing hard, tears stinging your eyeballs. It's like you had awoken a sleeping beast by merely mentioning its existence.

Steve gestured into the air and stared into the distance as he continued. He was so fuckin’ pretty, you thought then. Even when he had big fuckin’ feelings that his pretty fuckin’ self couldn't contain in his pretty fuckin' meat prison.

“Every time something happens to you, it's like I can't stop thinking about it.” Steve's tented his fingers at his temples to demonstrate his point, eyes wide and unblinking like there was a movie playing behind his eyes that he couldn't look away from.

You started taking slow, tiny steps toward him, like he was a wounded rabbit and you didn't want to frighten him off. You wanted to hold him.

“I spin out and I can't stop thinking about you dying.”

Two more tiny, furtive steps toward him.

“Or being born.”

“Oh, Stevie-” Wait. “Wait, being born? What?”

Steve had pulled at his hair and it was messy in that perfect way.

“Your birthday, Teenie.” He said it both frantically and like you were dumb for not following. “It's 1986, your birthday is less than two years away and we don't know.” He practically whimpered your name, willing you to understand.

It hit you then. You'd forgotten yourself for a minute, how absurd your life was. The very thing that was whispered among your friends and found family - spoken in a hushed manner for fear of speaking it into reality (or causing you an existential crisis.) You always heard them, though.

You had almost…almost found it funny how nobody seemed to think that the thought didn't cross your mind at three in the morning most nights.

The question of what would happen when the day of your birth - the one on your original, undoctored birth certificate that you'd left in a banker box back on Nellis AFB - finally rolled around. The day you would find out to what extent you were an actual paradox. If having been evicted from your mother's womb on that day would cause you to be slurped back into the Upside Down…Or if you would blink out of existence.

But the question hadn't woken you up since Spring Break. Because the positive to having a psionic demon vampire picking apart your psyche is that sometimes you got good intel.

You felt so warm all of a sudden, watching Steve watch you with his eyes wide and desperate and his scrumptious lips pushed into a sad pout, looking so young. You'd never been so touched in all your life.

You strode over to him and pulled his collar to encourage him down, closer to your height.

His arms looped around your middle. It was automatic. The half-crazed look on his face dropped away, replaced by an expression that told you he was taken aback but that he didn't hate this.

“I love you,” you declared, firm and resolute, yet quaky with emotion. You hoped he knew that this wasn't like the other times you said it. And that you could table the birthday discussion until after…

You squeezed his face and pushed your mouth into his as you looped your broken arm around his neck.

Steve gathered your hair away from your face and returned the kiss without a moment’s hesitation.

His mouth was warm and soft and a little tacky from how he'd been licking his lips nervously moments before. Your lip balm provided just the right amount of slide for your lips to tangle together perfectly.

Steve stumbled with you in his arms against the nearest wall. You took great care not to accidentally dicknail him in the side of the head with your cast as he hoisted you up, cradling your thighs in his hands.

Through his panting, he managed, “Do you mean it?”

Both of you knew what he meant. Did you mean I love you? Did you mean the kiss? The answer to both was a resounding fucking yes.

“Yes, Stevie. I want this. I want you so bad-”

Steve dive-bombed your mouth with his own, caressing your tongue with his. You opened your mouth wider to let him riff on it.

You shuddered when you felt his crotch press into yours. The feeling of his hardening cock pressed into the space that was rapidly becoming drenched with your horniness and love for this boy combined with the slipperiness of your tongues moving together was beyond your wildest dreams.

Steve couldn't believe this was happening. He couldn't believe that the only thing standing between you two and your mutual desire to jam yourselves together like you were trying to fuse into a superbeing was that you thought he didn't think you were sexy or mature or whatever the fuck.

If his blood supply wasn't rushing to his crotchal region right now, he might have done some psychological forensics to figure out how you'd arrived at that conclusion.

And fuck him if you didn't know what you were doing. This clearly wasn't your first heavy make out. Normally, that thought would make him jealous as all hell. But he could feel it. The rightness of this and he knew it didn't matter.

He pulled back from your mouth and let himself stare at you shamelessly. Your mouth was kiss-bitten and -oh - you already had this sexy, flushed glow painted from your cleavage to your cheeks.

You wore a beautifully profane expression, half-helpless and half-threatening as in I'm going to eat you if you don't eat me first. Your irises looked almost feline.

He stole one more kiss from you before he hoisted you over his shoulder like a sack of flour. He expected you to protest but you just grunted slightly at the impact and braced yourself as much as you could for what turned out to be a short commute to Steve's room. You were too turned on to question his method.

Steve deposited you on the bed and you scrambled up to your knees to pull him forcefully into another kiss where he stood. You started nipping and biting sucking at his earlobes, his jaw, his neck, his chest.

Steve felt almost overwhelmed. This the hottest thing that had ever happened to him. You two were feral for each other and probably would have looked completely insane if you’d had an audience. Unlike his previous encounters, nothing about this felt stilted or transactional or lopsided.

In spite of how erotic it was, though, it also felt tender. Like this thread between you had been pulling taut for god knew how long before it had almost snapped. And as soon as you'd stopped resisting it, it pulled you into one another. He needed to be sure that you felt the same, though. He wouldn't risk another communication breakdown.

He pulled your face away from his neck by your hair and you looked startled but not displeased. Your lips curled into a dozy smile at the show of force. Steve was all business, though.

“How far do you want this to go?” You both chose to ignore the way his voice gave a little.

You swallowed as you stroked his chest. “Um, well, I really want you to make love to me but, like…I'll take whatever you give me.”

Steve closed his eyes in quiet supplication to whatever force was allowing this.

He smiled at you with his tongue poking at the back of his teeth. You returned it with a goofy giggle. God, you two were idiots.

“Game on then, baby,” Steve said.

Steve insisted on going down on you. You didn't strictly need it. You were so turned on that you could already feel that ache inside where you'd opened up to receive him.

You were almost worried that you might end up accidentally waterboarding him with your cunt for how wet you were already, but you needn’t have worried.

After he'd fluffed the pillows behind your shoulders and pulled your soaked panties off of you, he didn't waste a minute exploring down there with little kisses and bites to your thighs before he finally dove in and got to work.

Within minutes he had you shivering and moaning, letting nonsense fuck language spill from your lips as you scratched his scalp in little circles.

Steve was painfully hard in his shorts but he would have stayed down here for millenia if you'd let him.

Soon, you were gripping his wrist and writhing. Your legs were bent and rigid like a Barbie doll's but quaking with the intensity of your orgasm.

You let a sharp cry escape from your chest. It was high-pitched and wild and unguarded and it was the most beautiful sound Steve had ever heard.

He looked up at you. Your head was resting at an angle like it was too heavy for you to hold up. He let himself enjoy the sight.

With your eyes still closed, as though you were in a deep trance, you started groping with your good hand, uncoordinated at your shoulders until you found the tie straps on your dress and undid them.

Without communicating it out loud, Steve pinched the fabric of your dress's bodice while you lifted up on your elbows so he could pull it down.

God, you were beautiful. Not just your tits. Yes, your tits were insane, but it was just you. Every inch of you, every plane on your body and, outside of your physical form, your gravity and orbit. He would never escape them and he didn't want to.

Steve crawled up your body, leaving smooches up your tummy and along your breasts and neck until he got to your mouth. You pulled him into you, kissing him stupid.

“Off,” you said bossily, breaking the kiss. Tugging at his collar. “These, too,” you insisted, pinching the cuff of his jeans between your toes.

Steve chuckled and pulled the shirt over his head. He got to work on his belt, kissing the tip of your nose.

“You want it like this?” he asked, indicating the missionary position you were in.

He got his belt free and shimmied his jeans away and down the bed, not wanting to leave you.

You bit your lip, eyes cast down lustfully, and Steve noticed you were checking out the tent in his boxers.

He snickered. “My eyes are up here.”

You giggled at him, flicking his nose.

You two settled into a cozy silence and just stared at each other. You cleared your throat. “My favorite is being on top, usually,” you began. “But it might be hard with this.” You lifted your casted arm.

Steve deliberated for a moment. You could have told him you liked it upside down on a hammock and he would have found a way to make it so. But the thought of you riding him was making his dick weep. He would make that so, no problem.

“Teenie-on-top it is.” He gave your naked thigh a couple of light slaps. “Up,” he instructed.

You pushed up onto your knees as he leaned over to his nightstand, extracting a loose condom packet. He stood up and pulled his boxers down.

When he looked at you, you were sitting on your haunches, knees splayed wide. Your arms were limp at your sides, hair a fucked out mess. You stared at his cock with what looked to him like reverence, mouth agape.

“Oh, Marone,” you whispered to yourself with a gulp, fisting your hair at the scalp.

Steve snorted. You were so cute it made his chest hurt. He explained his plan as he ripped the condom foil open and rolled it over his cock.

“I'm going to hold you up so you don't put weight on the arm. I've got you, just trust me, ‘kay?”

He didn't know if you'd been paying attention to what he said. You sprung up on your knees and collapsed into him and gave him a searing kiss on the mouth. “‘Kay.”

Steve slid into bed and guided you by your hips to straddle him. You held your casted arm off to the side, balancing like you were getting into a rowboat as you braced your good hand on his forearm.

“Good?” he asked.

You hummed as you began moving yourself over his cock. Steve's breath hitched, but he kept his grip on your hips firm as you acquainted your bits with his.

Your slickness and his spit had cooled a little but soon he could feel a pool of warmth. He was at your entrance. Your skirt was ruched around your waist, the straps of it hanging limply. His favorite dress.

You locked eyes with him as you reached between you and guided him inside. You sheathed him in inside you completely, pretty much immediately. No adjustment period needed. Your body had waited long enough.

Both of you had done so much waiting.

You rocked your pelvis against him, getting used to the sensations. It felt like coming home, it felt so right.

Steve’s cock was like a pleasure-seeking missile. It found enclaves in your body that you'd never have discovered on your own.

Your cunt hugged him, letting you and him both know how rich the landscape of your body was. You could feel everything and everything felt so good.

Steve was still holding onto your hips but he was squeezing his eyes shut and writhing and moaning. You really fucking knew what you were doing. Or maybe this was just a long time coming. Maybe it was destined.

The sounds of his moans were like a cool drink of water on the hottest day of the year. You wanted the sound bottled. You wanted to bathe in it.

You braced your good hand on his chest and gripped his elbow with the other as you changed up the angle and pace. He was caressing your g-spot now and when you moaned loudly at the sensation, he gripped you tighter, encouraging you to devour that feeling. Your clit found his mons and pretty soon, playtime was over.

You were both panting and moaning and before you knew it, you were right there. Your pussy was fluttering. Steve's stomach was taut, his upper body having gone rigid. His face was red and the veins in his forehead were prominent with his exertion. He was trying to delay his own orgasm until you were ready.

You folded over then, collapsing forward and cradling his head between your upper arms. Electric bubbles of happiness fizzed in every part of your cunt, sending effervescent kisses up your spine and down to your toes. You thought your broken arm might have healed, even.

“FuckStevieBaby,” you whined, pressing your forehead into the dip of his shoulder.

Steve was a goner. He moaned your name pathetically as he pistoned his hips up into you, helped by the wetness of your cum. Heat lightning overtook his body as he felt himself spill inside the condom and he saw sparkles.

Your skin was pasted to his with sweat.

You shakily made yourself up to a seated position and looked down at him like you were getting to see the Northern Lights for the first time.

He returned the gaze. Except to him, you were the Northern Lights and the Milky Way and a lofty angel with wings of purple fire. Jesus, when did he get so poetic?

He sat up and wrapped you in his arms, kissing you and pulling you into a hug. It wasn't unlike the ones you'd shared before, nudity notwithstanding.

It was a hug that said hi, I'm here, I've got you, always.

You let your heart rates ramp down before he lifted you off his softening member, but keeping you in his lap. He drew circles on your sweaty back.

“I love you,” he said into your collarbone.

Your heart did a little dance in your naked chest.

“I love you, too. More than anything.”

Steve pulled you both down and situated it so you were both laying on your sides, facing the other. He clasped your hand in his.

“No, I mean I love you.” It was emphatic despite the sleepiness in his voice. “I'm in love with you and I want to keep you. I want us to do this. I want people to know we belong to each other.”

If anyone else on planet earth had said those words to you after you'd just fucked, it would have sounded like cro magnon-freshly-emptied-balls possessiveness.

But not with him. It's like you could see tomorrow in his beautiful brown eyes. You two were finally, blessedly on the same page.

“I've belonged to you since…” you rolled your eyes upward like you were thinking, when really you actually knew… “Halloween ‘84.”

Steve smiled at your confirmation. But also in bemusement.

“The night me and Nancy-”

“It was when I was on your bed,” you interrupted. “Right here in this spot. I was rolling up the sleeves of that stripey old man PJ shirt you loaned me.”

“I remember,” he whispered, swallowing the emotions bubbling up.

“I saw you looking at me and for just a second, I let myself think…”

You had let yourself think, this feels so easy. I'm about to spend the night in a boy's bed for the first time and it feels so easy. What if he wasn't heartbroken? What if he didn't think you were a freak? What if you'd done this a before in a thousand and one lifetimes? That's how easy it felt.

“I never stopped being yours, Stevie.”

He scooched closer, ran his index finger down the bridge of your nose, kissing you one more time.

“I hope you never do.”

“I never will.”

Steve got a faraway look in his eye as he looked past your shoulder.

He didn't want to burst this bubble, but if he felt this way now, what would it be like less than two years from now. Less than two years away.

You clocked it immediately, you little mind-reader.

You couldn't let him stew in his fear anymore. You hadn't meant to drop the subject before, but you had the pressing matter of showing him how much you loved him to attend to.

“I'm not going back, you know.”

His eyes shot to you, suddenly way more alert.

“How-”

“Creel.”

Steve propped himself up on his elbow and studied you. You never brought this up. In fact, if any of your family's little misadventures ever came up in conversation, even briefly, you would excuse yourself from the room. Everyone learned to keep that talk to a minimum around you.

Besides that, Steve didn't like talking about when you'd been Vecna’d. It had been in the same manner as Nancy had been. Not meant to destroy you but to show you things. When the group had asked you what you saw, you simply told them “me.”

At the time, you had made the executive decision that what you had been shown wasn't valuable to any fact-finding that would help you defeat your foe. And when you were pressed for more, when Dustin had accused you of a party infraction by withholding, you'd leveled him with a deadly glare and stated “Not this, Dustin. Not now.” You had been so uncharacteristically severe that everyone silently agreed to leave it.

You turned over on your back and stared at the ceiling.

“Before Spring Break, I was having a really hard time.”

Steve remembered. The recesses of his memory held images of you looking off into the distance, refrains of sorry, what? whenever you got caught out.

You'd buried yourself in schoolwork, picking up extra shifts at the bowling alley, packing your calendar with babysitting gigs. Like you were trying to erase every moment of idle time, pulling away from everyone.

Steve had worried but when he talked about it with Robin, she'd dismissed it as paranoia. Think about it, Steve, what's she's been through. It catches up.

He figured Robin might know something he didn't, hurtful though it was. He'd dropped it.

“You were dating around and Nancy was missing Jon. El was gone, Hop was gone. Max was totally checked out. And I started wondering, like..”

Your eyes were wet, now, voice a little choked. Steve brushed your cheek and that seemed to give you the resolve to keep going.

“I started to worry that I would never find someone that could really know me. That I couldn't ever really move on and grow up because the people that did know me were all…”

You gestured vaguely into the air.

“I felt so out of place all of a sudden. And for the first time since I got here I just wanted to go back. I wanted to go back to where I made sense. Even though I didn't like my life before…”

Steve's heart broke at the thought that you'd felt so abandoned. He could kick himself for being so flip about it back then.

Your story took you over then. It was so cemented in your mind, it might have been inscribed on tablets.

You'd blinked. One minute you were at the mouth of the gate. The next minute you were in some sort of cathedral. But it was in ruins. The exposed sky was red. The air was stale..lightning flashed a deeper crimson across the sky.

There were pews made of shaley stone. What would have once served as a wall was crumbled around the arrangement.

He stood at the pulpit, a stone monument, cracked with angry looking clefts glowing with smoldering fire. He clutched each side of it, staring you down.

He breathed your name in a dulcet huff.

“You don't belong. You belong nowhere. You're a reprobate. Abominable. An orphan in time.”

He was hideous. And massive. You hadn't seen him until now. You'd only heard conjecture on what his visage might look like.

He was slimy and twisted and hairless. The sinews of his skin were a swampy gray, eyes ringed with red. For his florid yet cruel indictment of you, he was foul. You could taste him just by looking at him.

You were paralyzed with revulsion and fear. You were worried that you might actually pee your pants.

“You have nowhere to return to. You absconded from your problems, as you've always done. But I have nothing but good news for you.”

You glanced around, not daring to move your head. You only saw more waste, more nothingness, more anger and despair scratched into the landscape that surrounded you. You wanted to go home.

Suddenly you knew where home was. It had never been so clear. It was with the people that had held and kept you since you'd been sucked through a leak in space-time.

“You can make a home here. You can join my menagerie. You'll never suf-”

“Don't listen to him, Ladybug,” came a sharp, familiar voice behind you, coated in the accent of her mother country.

You spun to meet her eyes...Your grandmother was sitting on one of the rock pews. She looked as elegant and warm as ever. She was wearing the satin wrap dress she wore to Easter mass the last year she was alive.

You stumbled over to her. She stood and opened her arms as you fell into her.

Suddenly you forgot that you were in a red-tinged hell scape with a slimy vampire at your back. Wherever this was, wherever she was, was a sort of paradise.

You held her tight. You could smell her familiar shalimar perfume over the fetid ozone stink of this place. The wings of her upper arms were soft in the crooks of your elbows. She shushed your crying and stroked your hair.

It was her. You knew, beyond what it was to know, that it was her.

You heard Creel growl behind you, startling you out of your grandmother's arms. She held fast to you and tilted your chin to look at her. You heard the air around you twist like warped steel, Creel’s voice laced through it, muddled and distorted to something imperceptible.

“He is a liar. He will lie to deceive you.” Her accent made it sound like “day-seef.”

You missed her. You missed the way she talked. You missed how severe she was when she wanted to make a point.

She'd found you. Outside of time and space and a living vessel, she'd found you in this hopeless place.

Her eyes burned into yours. “Your father is fine. He knows you are fine. He doesn't know how he knows, but I've seen to it.”

You could hear that desperate argumentative groaning trying to pierce through. Your head was hurting. You had pressure in your ears.

“Your place is with your friends. Never stop thinking of them and you will never lose.”

The world around you started to crumble and fall away. You saw those big spires of rock around you crash into the ground.

You gripped her hands that held your face. “I love you,” you sobbed.

She smiled at you as everything caved in. You closed your eyes and felt her kiss your forehead.

When you opened them again, you saw Steve. He was cradling you and hyperventilating. He seemed to register that you were back. Relief washed over his face and his breathing returned to normal.

“Did I pee my pants?”

Steve had the courtesy to glance down to your upper-thigh region.

“If you did, it must not have been a lot.”

You broke into a sob and let him hug you while your friends rallied to get you away from the gate.

From then on out, you heeded your grandmother’s advice. You never stopped thinking of your friends and you didn't fail…You got Hop and El back.

You had your friends.

You had Steve.

You had shut your eyes while telling Steve the story but you opened them now. You turned your head to face him.

“I'm sorry I didn't tell you,” you told him through tears. “I didn't know how.”

Steve didn't know what to say. He stared at you with gentle eyes. He didn't want you to cry anymore.

He kissed you lightly and stroked your side. “It's okay. I get it.”

He did get it. He understood all at once why you couldn't tell them back then. You didn't want to make it about you.

Max was still in danger. The world was still in danger. You'd been gifted a secret weapon that you had to wield and you didn't want anyone to hear what you'd seen and tell you that you'd been bamboozled by Creel and blunt your weapon with doubt.

You'd known in your heart that it was real. Steve knew now because you knew.

You were tired then. Well and truly sleepy. Steve accepted you into his arms.

You two fell into silence, breathing in tandem, stroking each other.

You felt Steve's chin wag on the top of your head when he asked “What do you think will happen on your 20th birthday?”

You smiled into his chest. You loved that Steve-flavored curiosity whenever it showed itself.

“I dunno, Stevie. Maybe nothing. But if anything does, you'll be there to find out with me, right?”

He scratched lines up your back as he answered.

“Can’t wait.”

(⁠/⁠^⁠-⁠^⁠(⁠^⁠ ⁠^⁠*⁠)⁠/

#steve harrington x fem!reader #steve harrington x you #steve harrington smut #steve harrington friends to lovers #ao3 fanfic #adopted hopper reader

30 notes · View notes