I love your KBD universe, I know that Beth is having a hard time with being the weird kid and I just have to say as a lover of weird things and people I would love to see something where Bethie comes home from school happy to have met someone who LOVES that she’s a little weird!
dad!steve and his weird girls <3 mom!reader, 1k
When you get home from work with the big kids in tow, Steve’s gonna kiss you stupid. With baby Wren gurgling on his tummy and less-baby Dove sitting by his head where he lays on the couch, he’s never been this happy. He’ll be happier when the big girls are home, but for now, he’s snug as a bug, treated by his second youngest to a buffet of affection.
“Love you,” Dove says, kissing his cheek for the tenth time in the last two minutes. He can’t stop laughing.
“I love you, too!” he says, shifting his hand to give Wren some more room.
“Love you, dad,” Dove says.
“I know, baby, I know. Thank you for the kisses, you’re so nice.”
Dove kisses him again. “You’re happy,” she says.
“So happy. Can I get another kiss, you think?”
He turns into her. She’s sitting too high to be cuddled; all Steve can do is take in her sweetness. He can’t believe how quickly her babyhood has passed into toddlerhood, and she’s been sort of a nightmare, but she’s also his little girl. She’s your daughter, her sisters’ sister. She was always going to be lovely, and Steve feels it like a loving punch as she noses at his ear. “Daddy,” she laughs, “you’re too warm.”
“I’m blushing, babe, I’m getting all these nice kisses!” He laughs like an idiot and decides he must hug her, pulling his arm up and scooping her into his chest.
She groans in annoyance before she realises what he’s doing, “Hug!” she says excitedly.
“Hug!” he echoes, wrapping his arm around her. She’s starting to look less like a baby and more like a little tiny kid, which he hates and loves at the same time. “Aw, I love you, Dovey.”
The door clatters open. Wren jumps at the sound, hiding her face in Steve’s neck, to which he gives a good back rubbing. “It’s okay, bubby, it’s just your mommy. Don’t be silly, huh? Just mommy. You’re gonna be happy when she turns the corner.”
“Shoes,” you’re saying from the door, though Steve can’t see you, he can tell you’re smiling. “Shoes, Beth, then you can tell dad.”
“Daddy, we’re home!” Avery shouts.
“I can hear you, babe!” he shouts back, not unkindly.
“Dad, I have something to tell you!” Beth shouts.
Steve hoists himself up into a sitting position, two babies in his arms, knowing you’ll know he’s laid down all day from the mess of his hair alone but not trying to hide it. You can do whatever you want on your vacation days, you’d teased. Just make sure you feed the kids.
“Hi,” you say, appearing in the doorway, two balls of energy at your legs that bolt for Steve the second they see him.
“Girls, I don’t have long enough arms,” he says, trying to cuddle them all, even though it’s impossible.
He finds himself suddenly relieved of the second youngest. Dove might love her father, but she adores her mother, and she hasn’t seen you all day —she slinks down out of his hold and through the mess of her sisters to grab at you, to which you gratefully receive her, pulling her up to station on your hip. “Hi, gorgeous,” Steve hears you say. Avery pushes him back, climbing into his lap with a happy sigh. “Miss me today? I missed you,” you ask sweetly.
“What did you want to tell me, Beth?” Steve asks curiously, grinning as Avery makes herself comfortable on his thigh, her arm wrapping behind his neck. He’s happy to see everybody else so happy, even if it’s hectic.
Beth beams up at him with her brightest smile in weeks. She’s been having such a hard time at school, Steve wondered if he could start homeschooling, coming home upset nearly every other day. It isn’t fair. His relief that she’s had a good day is palpable.
“Dad, there’s a new girl! Her name is Francesca and she’s got the same birthday as me and guess what!”
“What?” he asks.
“She said she likes being weird!” Beth’s eyes glow shiny with joy. “Cos Hilly called me weird, and she said she likes being weird. She said we can be best friends.” Beth hits his knee in her excitement. “She liked me, dad.”
“Why wouldn’t she like you?” he asks, wondering how old he’ll have to be before he stops tearing up at Beth’s good heart. He blinks quickly to dispel any tears before they can gather. “Her name is Francesca? When did she move? Do you think she wants to come for dinner?”
Your laugh is a snort. “Steve.”
“What? Friends come for dinner. Best friends! Did you speak to her mom?” he asks you.
“I didn’t see her.”
“Don’t worry, Beth, I’ll speak to her in the morning. We’ll see if they want to come for dinner or go swimming or something.”
Beth’s smile gets wider, “Really?”
“Yeah, really!” He gives Avery a little shake. “Did you meet Francesca?”
Avery nods. “She’s pale and she has big hair. Curly hair, too.” Her voice is a tad scratched, perhaps from the cold out.
Steve lets his weight fall into the arm, cautious not to squish your baby, a grin on his face to rival Beth’s. She gets the memo and climbs up, claiming that last bit of space under the baby to hug his stomach. He tries to wrap them all up, gurgly Wren, exuberant Beth, and poor cold Avery. “You coming?” he asks you.
There’s dinner to make. You ignore it, crossing the mess of the living room to flop down on the couch next to them all. Steve lifts his face in that way you always recognise, and is pleased as punch when you peck him quickly.
You don’t realise how Steve thinks of you, he’d say. Don’t realise he wants another kiss, then another, that you’re on his mind when you aren’t there, and dominate it when you are. He loves his babies, but he loves you too. He wants another kiss.
“Steve,” you scold lightly, surprised as he presses two kisses to the corner of your mouth.
“Sorry. Beth, tell me more about Francesca. What did she say exactly?”
Beth takes a deep breath.
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Missing my zombie!steve husband 🫶🏻
quiet day at the camp… hope something bad isn’t brewing… zombie apocalypse au <3 fem, 2k
Steve loves the sound of the river, but he only allows himself a moment to lay down on the riverbank during laundry hours.
You stand knee deep in the water with your pants and sleeves rolled up, the corrugated metal of an old shed roof that’s been repurposed into a washing board held to your chest. It was pointless to roll your sleeves up, you’re soaked to the bone, even your hair, but the summer sun keeps you warm.
“Don’t get too hot!” you call.
“I’m fine,” he says, unwilling to shout.
“He’s fine!” Robin shouts from beside him. “Numbskull.”
Steve stares at you, locking you in, so to speak, the nice shape of your hip and stomach, the mess of your wet hair. Tonight, he’ll help you fix it, but there’s no rush and no hurry to dry off while the sun is out, and the fences are up. He turns onto his stomach. Grass tickles his cheeks.
“You sure you’re okay?” Robin asks quietly.
“Fine. Can you tell me if she needs help?”
“Sure.” He listens to the sounds of her moving, likely pulling the slim lengths of her legs against her chest to hug herself, the tan leaves of a book spread out just in front of her.
Steve could really go for a cigarette. You swapped the last box you found for toothpaste, isn’t that how it always goes? You and Robin found a cheat code in the apocalypse, nicotine with a capital ‘N’. You swap Arctic chewable for socks without holes and boxes of Marlboro’s for the bathroom essentials. Everybody wants them, and you’re great at finding them. Steve never thought he’d crave a cigarette again considering he wasn’t addicted, having smoked for a couple of months in high school to feel cool with his friends, stopping when his mom asked him to. He doesn’t remember why. She’d asked, and he’d listened, as he used to do. Swim team, cross country, basketball, lifeguard training, mowing the lawn, not upsetting his father, taking out the trash, vacuuming, no drinking and driving; task after task after task. Some of it was easy. He liked doing the dishes, and he loved taking care of his mom even if she didn’t feel the same.
Not that it matters now. Does it matter now? He’s never gonna see her again. She’s a memory. She’s a bad memory, most of the time.
The more he reflects on it, he decides. She was a bit shitty, but she’s his mom, and she’s likely gone, so he’ll try to remember the cookies they made together and the way she’d smile at him after she tied his shoelaces before school. And also the mean fucking bitch she’d turn into when she drank two glasses of wine.
“What are you thinking about?” Robin asks.
“That’s the wrong soap,” you say from the river. Your voice floats over the breeze.
“Fuck off, soap is soap,” Eddie says, your not-so-new friend, Steve’s sworn enemy.
“I’m just saying,” you laugh. “Look, I’ll wash, you rinse.”
“I’m thinking about that time,” Steve begins, holding his hand out toward her, open but not expectant, “when my mom and dad came home early from his business trip in Missouri and found us sleeping together.”
“I’d never heard your dad laugh before,” Robin says.
“My mom really didn’t like you after that.” He smiles as she takes his hand. They were a lot more touchy, pre-apocalypse. He misses that sometimes.
“I don’t even think she thought we were dating.”
“She was disgusted.”
“She said we were being weird teenagers.”
“I guess we were. I never had a friend like you before so maybe I can’t blame her,” he says. He has something special with you, you’re a best friend because you’re half of his heart, but Robin was his first proper best friend, and remains it. “I missed you a lot when we were stuck in Indiana. There were a ton of times where shit would go wrong and I would get mad at you because I knew you’d know how to fix it, but you weren’t there.”
“You’d get mad at me?” Robin asks, squeezing his hand. “You jerk. Be mad at yourself.”
“Can you wait for me next time?” he asks.
Robin’s quiet, then she laughs, “I’m nodding but you can’t see.”
He wonders how she’s feeling. He admits to not doing that much in the past. Not that he didn’t think about how he made others feel, he was always worrying about that after Nancy, but he can’t say he thought of it in the moment. Steve forces himself to sit up and offer his arms for a hug, which Robin gladly accepts, her frazzled laugh on his neck as he pats her back.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
“You know Y/N says I’m possessive?”
Robin leans away, fingers curled around his elbow. “You’re fighting?”
“No, just. She says I’m possessive, that I get mad about, you know, my people.”
“Right. Isn’t everybody?”
“I never thought I did. I’m not, like, too proud most of the time.”
“Steve, this is super introspective,” she says, frowning, smiling, a weird expression somewhere melding in the middle of happy and concerned. “Are you sure you’re okay? It’s fine if you’re not.” She laughs shrilly. “I woke up the other day and cried and then ten minutes later I felt fine. I’m far from okay.”
Steve glances past Robin’s head to watch you in the river. You’re sitting down amongst the stones. It really isn’t too deep, water to your ribcage washing suds down to Munson, who’s smiling at you kindly, not smarmy or flirting, just smiling.
“Why did you cry?” he asks quietly.
“I missed my cousin, I think.”
Steve curls his arm behind her head and encourages her in for a fiercer hug.
“Think we should probably go help them,” she mumbles.
He takes it for the brush off that it is; sincerity is too much to take, sometimes. If she wants to be evasive about it that’s okay, she already took the leap and admitted to getting upset.
“I cried thinking about Y/N’s hands the other day,” he says.
“Steve.” Robin rubs her eye with the heel of her hand. “I don’t even know what to tell you.”
“What? I’m trying to show you I’m pathetic so you don’t feel bad.”
“I know you’re pathetic, and I don’t feel bad.” She climbs off of the ground and brushes broken grass off of her legs. Steve climbs up next to her, nudging her with his elbow. “You’re mucho pathetic. It’s kind of crazy.”
“I think I might try and drown him,” he says conversationally.
“Why now?”
“Why do you think?” Steve asks, toeing off his shoes and peeling off his socks, nearly pitching forward on the wet bank closer to the river.
You and Eddie look up as they approach from different spots of the water. Your smile at seeing him winds him for the thousandth time, just so happy to see him, so in love with you he doesn’t even know what to do for a few seconds. “Hey, honey,” he says, “can I help?”
“Now you wanna help?” you ask, gesturing to your soaked front.
You’re messing with him, and he doesn’t care anyways, you can talk to him like crap if you want to. He shuffles down from the mud of the riverbank and into the water, cold and wet like a shock against his ankles, softer as it climbs to his knees. You’re sitting where it’s more shallow, opposed to Eddie on his knees and almost drowning further down. He puts his hand on your wet shoulder and kneels down in the water beside you. “Wanna hug?” you tease.
Steve hugs you. Doesn’t care that you’re soaking or that the water is freezing against his crown jewels, though he shivers by your ear, prompting your laugh like bubbles in his own. “It’s cold,” he says.
“Freezing!”
Not to be a freak, but he can feel your chest pressed to him, and he knows you get achy in the cold. He wraps his arms doubly behind your back and rubs at your sides. “How much laundry’s left?” he asks. “We’re gonna get hypothermia. Again.”
“You didn’t get hypothermia,” you remind him, folding into his space. “Steve… is everything okay?”
“Do I look mopey today? Robin just asked me the same thing.”
“You don’t look mopey, but you’re being touchy. You’re cuddling.”
“How am I not supposed to cuddle you, dummy? I’m keeping you warm enough to function right now. Without me you’d be an ice cube floating down the river.” He leans back to hold your face in one hand, your cheek under his thumb, water racing down his wrists and your neck.
You push against his hand gently with your cheek.
“Sorry,” he says.
“What for?”
For lots of things. “I didn’t realise how cold the water was. I would’ve come to help you.”
“It’s fine. I scrub everything and then Eddie catches it. We’ve only lost one pair of underwear,” you say. “The river’s like a long washing machine.”
“How much do you have left?” he asks.
“Nothing. I was just about to get out.”
“Couldn’t have told me that before I came to get you?”
“No,” you say, lifting your chin. Not challenging, but close. It’s an offer, Steve decides, kiss me or don’t kiss me. You don’t seem to realise he doesn’t decide, he needs you. If you always wanted to kiss him, you’d always be kissing, all the time, everywhere.
Steve gives you a quick peck. “Come on, let’s go set up the line.”
You somehow, together, make your way back to the tents without freezing to death after throwing your clothes on a drying line between trees. It’s warm enough that stripping down to your skivvies is mildly pleasant (away from the eyes of the other campers). You get dressed in the softest clothes you own upon Steve’s insistence, sweatpants and a dark hoodie, three pairs of socks and the tent door left open, before he lays you down on the sleeping bag, and settles between your legs, his full weight bearing down on you, his face nestled in the damp crook of your neck.
“I couldn’t kiss you the right way,” he confesses.
“Why?” You pull mildly at the ends of his hair.
“‘Cos I always want more than one kiss.”
“That’s a strangely romantic way to say you wanted to make out with me,” you whisper.
“It’s not like that,” he insists, even though he does want to, and he did in the river, and he does all the time.
“You’re getting kinda heavy, Steve,” you mumble.
“What?”
“It’s a good thing.”
“How dare you.”
“We got sorta frail for a bit.” You wrap an arm around his head, tip of your nose to his forehead.
“Yeah. Lucky we’re in camp Eddie now,” Steve says.
“I never thought I’d hear you say that,” you murmur, so close to sleeping Steve can tell. You just need a feeling of security to nudge you over the edge.
“Lucky we’re together.” He climbs off of you slowly so as not to rouse you too much, kissing your slack cheek as he settles on your shoulder. “You and me. I don’t care where we are.”
He ends up falling asleep not long after you, lulled by the rhythm of your light snore.
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