For Old Times Sake

For Old Time’s Sake

Summary: It’s 1995 in Hawkins. When Y/N L/N returns home for the Hawkins High School reunion, she comes face-to-face with an old lover. Or, alternatively, the one where Steve falls in love with Y/N all over again.

Steve Harrington x AFAB!reader | read the female!oc version here

Warnings: 18+, mature content, neighbor!reader, ex-cheerleader!reader, smut, porn with plot, unsafe sex practices, unplanned pregnancy

A/N: I originally wrote this 3 years ago but with the big dad!steve energy and steve’s dream in s4, I thought i’d re-release a more inclusive version of this story

The town of Hawkins kept its secrets well. From the outside, and to every kid who made a run for it after high school, not much about the town changed. Small town stillness washed over the buildings and suburban homes that Y/N passed on the drive home to her parents’ place. If not for the empty lot where the Dairy Queen had been and the newly painted houses, Hawkins could have been a time machine to 1985.

She parked curbside outside of her childhood home. Through the trees, just past the Harrington home, she could vaguely make out the ruins of what was once Hawkins Lab. Even abandoned, it brought bile to her throat. When Y/N left Hawkins, danger eschewed the rosy lens of childhood she knew it under. Time blurred and muddied her memories, but fleeting images of a boy with a baseball bat comforted her; whatever it was, they defeated it together.

Y/N yanked the keys from the ignition. She didn’t come back to dig up old nightmares. Steadying her breath, she hauled her suitcase from the hatch of her car into her old home. Whatever she saw ten years ago in that shadowy building couldn’t hurt her now.

She retired to her bedroom that night with a head swimming in unsaid words and forgotten dreams she bottled up and left here in Hawkins. Traveling through the hallways of her parents’ house brewed an unwelcome, lonely sense of dejavú that could swallow Y/N whole.

The door closed softly behind her. Y/N looked to the window next door, partially out of habit, partially wrapped up in foolish hope, but instead found the curtains drawn. She longed for the secret notes passed through window panes on late nights and the stolen kisses as he stumbled into her bedroom. That was- they were- long gone now.

Now, standing alone in her girlish lilac bedroom, she felt like a stranger in her own life. The knick-knacks, trophies, Polaroids, and photo booth strips belonged to someone else entirely. She thumbed over the picture frame sitting proudly on her nightstand, swiping the dust away from the picture-perfect memory of two smitten teens. Her mother must have retrieved it from the floor and replaced it sometime after she left. The crack down the center obscured her face, but she cared more about the way Steve looked at her. Just as she let herself want, her finger caught on the crack and blood sullied the cheap frame. Cursing, she cushioned the wound between her lips to dull the bleeding.

Y/N L/N blossomed into her own person through the past decade; she had a place to call her own, a job she felt passionately for, everything she once doubted she could earn without her Daddy’s help. Something about Hawkins, though, made that woman shrink slowly back into the scared girl who ran away from it.

High school for Y/N looked picture perfect. In some ways, it had been, yet a part of her always felt sandwiched into the tiny pond that Hawkins was and desperate to swim upstream into the outside world. For someone with as many friends and as surrounded by people as Y/N the Cheerleader had been, she never felt more lonely. Her friends’ parents worked boring desk jobs that required no traveling and most of them had one boyfriend or another to waste their time with. She kissed as many boys as she could just trying to make up for the loneliness she felt in her parents’ absence; it always found its way back. Until Steve.

Steve Harrington lived next door. He talked too much, slept around quite a bit, and had a poor taste in friends. Y/N might nod along and listen as Laurie or Becky rambled off reasons why he could not be trusted, but she never cared to listen. She liked to think she knew Steve perfectly well.

The first time Y/N met Steve, she might have agreed with what her friends thought of him. They knew each other only through summer block parties and whatever other events their parents dragged them to until 1982. That summer leading up to sophomore year changed a lot for Y/N; her body filled out and her Dad started leaving home more often for work trips. She took up a job lifeguarding at the community pool and returned to school in August sunkissed, slightly curvy, and in need of a little trouble. Steve, who received a shiny new BMW for his sixteenth birthday, looked exactly like the kind of trouble she wanted.

She had him completely, utterly wrapped around her finger by the end of September. Y/N got to know every inch of that car as summer came to autumn. She only meant to distract herself, but her desire for fire and trouble died down into an ache for the boy next door. Y/N let herself love him wholly. Steve became her future; he tamed her rebellious spirit into a lovestruck girl who wanted only for him to stay with her forever.

Forever, for Y/N and Steve, instead became the beginning of junior year. He stomped on her heart and spit it right back at her. As Y/N pulled back to lick her wounds, Steve zeroed in on his next prey. Nancy Wheeler stood for everything Y/N could never be. Girls like Nancy didn’t just offer up their virginities to the first boy who called them pretty or invent their own hangover cures out of necessity. Y/N hated the thought of Steve with someone like that, because she could never be half as good. Good girls like Nancy shone like blank canvases void of any tarnish and squeaky-clean enough to bring home to Mom; Y/N the Whore and her Father-sized baggage could never compete with a girl like that.

Even now, the sight of that swimming pool nauseated her. Mr. Harrington had it drained years ago, but she only saw the very end of Barbara Holland’s life, the thing that took her, and the boy she still loved already falling for Nancy Wheeler, all right outside her bedroom window. Y/N yanked her curtains shut. The demogorgon might be unreachable now, but nothing so far healed her battered little heart.

“Joey, you little shit! Let go of your sister’s hair”

Y/N clung to the kitchen island, watching as the red-headed toddlers tornadoed across the living room. Carol stormed out of the bedroom sporting only one shoe and looking more grown up than Y/N ever imagined she would be. Tommy and Carol’s wedding unsurprisingly predated the prompt birth of their first child by mere months. Between the two nightmares currently messing up their house and the heavily pregnant bump in her purple gown, Carol looked about one temper tantrum away from a spectacular breakdown of her own.

However exhausted parenthood and married life looked to someone like Y/N, that new sheen in Carol’s eyes and the bizarrely adult change in Tommy’s demeanor suggested otherwise. The life of a Hawkins housewife, with all its cliquey glory and PTA snobs, suited Carol’s catty nature and, to everyone’s surprise, fatherhood had calmed Tommy’s recklessness. Y/N took one look at their messy, chaotic, love-filled life, and her confidence crumbled. Her life in New York outpaced anything Hawkins could offer her, but she couldn’t pretend that she had once not wanted any more than this life with Steve.

“For fuck’s sake Tommy, would you hurry up?”

Carol herded her husband towards the door, cursing under her breath at his inability to correctly tie a necktie. If not for the wedding rings and Carol’s baby bump, Y/N might have mistaken the scene for a recreation of their senior prom night.

Y/N piled into the backseat of Carol’s mini-van. Tommy stuck his head out of the driver’s seat as they sped off to Hawkins High, screaming:

“Class of ‘85, motherfuckers!”

Carol yanked him back into the car by the collar. She added a swift smack to the head for good measure. Y/N smiled to herself; at least some things never did change.

As the burgundy minivan pulled into the spot once reserved for Y/N’s Jeep, she saw her life from the outside. Without the safety of her green and white cheerleading outfit, Hawkins High School looked a whole lot less impressive than back in the day.

Tommy and Carol dispersed into the crowd not long after their arrival, while Y/N gravitated towards the open bar. She greeted passersby who recognized her and watched the crowd swell. She stirred her drink absently and watched the night unfold around her.

Old cheer squad members earned careers in fashion or television or teaching. Her third grade best friend married her ninth grade lab partner. Old Hawkins friends gathered like nothing ever changed, but Y/N felt acutely aware that everything had.

Meanwhile, Steve tore himself away from a conversation with a few classmates he only vaguely remembered. He stopped a few feet away from her, as if unsure whether or not to proceed.

Time dealt Steve Harrington the short hand. He stayed in Hawkins, he told himself, not out of fear but just to keep an eye on things for a while. Jim Hopper promised to call if any more monsters popped up. No need, he said. I think I’ll stick around a while longer. First, Nancy, and Jonathan Byers, even Eddie Munson, graduated and took the fast track out of town. By the time Dustin and Lucas and Mike and the rest of the rugrats set off to college, Steve was fresh out of excuses.

He had none left to give the day that Hopper took a quick visit down to the record store where Steve took up a job to pay his bills. He leaned down over the counter Steve worked behind and lowered his voice:

“What the hell are you still doing here, kid? We both know you don’t belong in this shithole.”

“Yeah,” he deadpanned. “You’re probably right”

Hopper, more a father to Steve than his own ever was, refused to let him give up like this. Where Steve saw in himself the self-righteous asshole who helped to vandalize the town movie theater, Hopper saw the young man who readily put his own life on the line to save those kids.

“Look, I don’t really care what you do,” he lied. “Just quit feeling sorry for yourself and do something with your life.”

The next morning, Hopper arrived at the station to find Steve Harrington sitting with his tail between his legs in the chair facing his desk. By that time the next year, he was the latest member of the Hawkins PD. And a damn good one at that, he might add.

For the first time in his life, Steve had everything he could want. Everything, that is, except someone to share it with.

His heart skittered as he worked up the courage to get Y/N alone. He’d heard that she came alone and wanted little more than to catch her attention. Things ended so badly between them- his fault, really- that he hardly imagined she wanted to see him again. So, with the same sense of humility as that fateful morning in Chief Hopper’s office, he tapped her shoulder:

“Save me a dance? For old time’s sake.”

Gooseflesh rippled her bare arms; she would recognize that voice anywhere. Y/N set her cocktail glass on the bar, turning her head towards him. He looked the spitting image of the nervous boy who first asked to take her out to the movies. Hands scrunched in his suit pockets, and sporting the very same crooked smile she remembered, Steve Harrington stood before her.

Y/N’s powder blue dress blended well with her skin tone in the dim gym lighting and her hair popped against the fabric. His heart swelled at the sight of her standing in the very same gym they shared their first kiss in. Steve wondered how he ever let a girl like that slip through his fingers.

“Okay,” she said. “For old time’s sake”

He led her by the hand to the makeshift dance floor, feeling for the first time in ages the sweaty anticipation of a lovestruck school boy. Her cheeks swelled with a smile in tandem with her shaky hands as they locked between the ducktail of hair at the nape of his neck. His hands resting easily on her hips, they danced.

“Y’know,” he chuckled. “I really didn’t expect to see you again. I’m glad I did”

The way he looked at her, even after all these years, sent Y/N to the verge of tears; no one had looked at her like since she was a teenager. Since she and Steve were in love.

“Yeah,” her voice came out soft and small. “Me, too.”

They’d come full circle. Although life led them in different directions, and took Y/N and Steve to the wrong people in their journey to find the love they first had in each other, it seemed their story looped back to that dingy old gym. Steve knew the second he saw her that tonight would be a whole lot more than reminiscing with a lost lover. Even if Y/N didn’t know that, yet, Steve didn’t mind waiting.

Steve would wait forever for her if it only meant that he could see that smile one last time. The way her eyes sparkled in the dim lighting, the way her hips filled out the fabric of her gown, the way her delicate touch ghosted over him as they danced; Y/N was filled with reminders of the way he once loved her. The way Steve still loved her.

Y/N cupped his cheek, stroking it with her thumb and watching after him with a melancholy smile.

“I am so proud of you,” she whispered.

Y/N clung to her once-lover long past the end of slow songs, the two swaying to synthetic pop tunes. It seemed that each of them darted around fears that, should they let go of each other, they might never get the chance to do so again. Whether she admitted it to herself or not, Y/N let herself believe that, maybe, she was always meant to find her way back to him. She felt not like an adult but once again like a teenage girl nervously dancing with the prom date of her dreams.

He nuzzled his nose forward against her cheek. His hot breath fanned out against her skin and pulled her in even more. The sweet, mesmerizing scent of Steve’s rosewood cologne, the ghost of spearmint chewing gum, and a hint of musk hypnotized Y/N. As he finally kissed her, Y/N folded into his touch. The kiss was a decade in the making, the kind featured on movie screens and cheesy discount novels. Every word they were too afraid to speak into existence and all their repressed emotions poured into the kiss.

Reluctantly, he broke off the kiss. Only as the final song of the night faded into its closing note did Y/N pull herself away from his warmth. Steve stole a quick kiss to her cheek. They walked slowly towards the edge of the dance floor.

“Here,” he said. Steve draped his sports coat over Y/N’s shoulders.

Hair bouncing along with his lopsided grin, Steve couldn’t take his eyes off of Y/N and that captivating laugh of hers. Even as she led him away from the dance floor, Steve found himself absorbed in her. Her neatly styled hair fell rebelliously out of place, the heat radiating off of her and perspiration from nerves and the dancing all adding just the right amount of lived-in smudge to her make-up. Y/N looked radiant. The words fell out of his loose lips like thoughts so strong that his mouth couldn’t contain them:

“You’re beautiful.”

She slumped into a seat, letting out a breathy laugh. He slid into the empty chair beside her. Although his mind seemed acutely aware that they were running on borrowed time, Steve swore that the night would last forever. Time was edging on despite his best efforts to run backwards against the current; he would never be fifteen again, and their relationship would never be from a clean slate again.

She thanked him quietly. Another stolen kiss followed. The night grew thin around them, their classmates retiring to whatever lives they put on pause for the night's trip down memory lane, but neither could be bothered to tear themselves away. Y/N was quiet for some time afterwards, trying to make sense of her emotions. Steve turned to her, forehead pulled in thought:

“We made quite the mess, didn’t we?”

Y/N paused, tearing herself away from the fears of yesterday. Her eyes flickered to him. She smiled sadly. All Steve had to do was stay. When it was Y/N’s turn to choose Steve, she decided to run instead. It seemed neither of them had the courage to face the very real feelings between them that even time and betrayal couldn’t seem to erase.

“Yeah,” she said eventually. “We sure did.”

He chuckled dryly, rubbing his palms together in thought. The universe seemed to laugh at them, to revel in the tragedy of their bad timing; love itself just wasn’t enough to make them work. His eyes begged Y/N to ease his nerves. Steve needed Y/N to give him some sign that this was more than just in his head.

“Why is this so hard for us?”

The worry in his tired face looked all too familiar to Y/N. A sinking feeling returned to her stomach.

It wasn’t until the summer after graduation that Y/N let herself start to forgive Steve for breaking her heart. With the drama and confines of high school now behind them, Y/N and Steve vowed to make that summer theirs. A last hurrah of bad decisions with minimal consequences. What they intended to be a string of crashed house parties and getting drunk by the quarry instead was a summer filled with late-night conversations on the hood of Steve’s car. With Y/N often teetering between sunburnt and sun-kissed after a shift at the community pool and Steve sticky and burnt out from serving ice cream at Starcourt Mall, they lacked much time or energy to live out the summer they outlined.

Neither of them really minded the extra time to themselves. In fact, Steve soon found himself excited for his shift to end and comforted by the knowledge that Y/N was waiting for him in the parking lot, food in hand. By late June, Y/N had his order memorized and Billy Hargrove had stopped trying to get her to hang around with him past closing time. That was how they found themselves devouring take out from Dairy Queen, still in their work uniforms, and sitting closer than necessary on the BMW.

She wiped the grease from her fingers with a napkin, laughing. Y/N caught a glimpse of Steve in her peripheral vision- dripping with happiness, a shine to his eyes, his Scoops Ahoy sailor hat sagging lowly on his head.

Having Y/N back in his life, even if only for brief, stolen moments on the hood of his BMW and late summer nights thick with their past, the future; it patched up the broken parts of his battered heart. She felt like home. It might only be for the summer, but Steve fully intended to hold onto every second with Y/N that he could.

“Hey, Steve?”

He looked so eager, so happy to see her. Steve wouldn’t even know what hit him. That summer, he slowly tore down the walls their break-up built against her and she knew from the start that she couldn’t take him with her. The thing about running away from her problems, it seemed, was that Y/N had to abandon every good thing in her life right along with the bad. Unfortunately, that included Steve.

She knew she should have told him from the beginning, that she never should have let herself get that close to him again so soon before leaving town. Y/N should have told him, and yet she couldn't bring herself to break it to him. Not that Y/N hadn’t tried to; she had, many times. It just hurt too much.

His laughter tapered off into an inquisitive hum.

“Do you ever think about leaving Hawkins?”

Maybe it had treated him less than kindly the past year or so, but it was still the only home Steve had ever known. The thought of skipping town never crossed his mind. He decided a long time ago that he would stand his ground and fight until his dying breath if he had to- Steve was braver, more stubborn than Y/N that way. Another reason she would tell herself they didn’t work out; Steve Harrington was a fighter but Y/N L/N was a survivor. And sometimes that meant putting herself first.

“No, I can’t say that I have. Why?”

She shrugged, uncharacteristically shy:

“I don’t know,” she balled the napkin up into a makeshift stress ball. “I-I just think maybe I need to get out of this town, Steve. Parts of me can’t seem to shake what I saw, what I did-“

She let Barbara Holland die. Y/N watched from her bedroom and did nothing as the thing ate her whole. And when she saw the damn thing again, she hadn’t been strong enough to kill it. She couldn’t save its future victims.

“Hey,” Steve pulled her under his arm. “Don’t say that, okay? You did what you could… We all did. It’s not your fault.”

Tilting her chin upwards with his fingertips, Steve pressed a meaningful kiss to her lips. She leaned into him. His embrace quieted her thoughts enough to mute her worries away. It wasn’t the first kiss they shared that summer, but something hid behind it that made Y/N unable to shake him- so much so that she lost her nerve to break the news to him. She left Hawkins the next morning, while Steve dreamt of seeing her again.

The guilt ate at her from the inside out until the town she once loved only suffocated her with living nightmares and her own inadequacies. Deep down, Y/N knew that running away from her problems would not solve anything. Still, she craved a change of scenery, an escape from the reminders of what Hawkins truly was under its all-American suburban façade. Hawkins was, quite simply, home to the gates of Hell and Y/N didn’t want to stick around and wait for them to crack their way open again.

They had, eventually, done just that; only, Y/N wasn’t by Steve’s side that July Fourth when he needed her the most.

Steve stood abruptly, offering her his hand:

“You want to get a drink?”

Nodding, she smiled. The last thing she wanted was to leave Steve’s side. Y/N took his hand and followed him through the parking lot. They walked in a comfortable silence. She squeezed his hand in hers.

“Steve?”

The pair paused beside his car. Y/N glanced up at him with the guilt of a child caught breaking their parents’ valuables while playing inside the house.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you I was leaving,” she paused. “I should have.”

Steve’s eyes softened. He brushed loose hair from her face, smiling sadly.

“I know you are,” he said. “It’s okay, Y/N. That was a long time ago.”

Forgiven or not, Y/N still juggled her feelings of guilt and lingering feelings for Steve between stolen glances on the drive home. He may have absolved her, but Y/N still needed to forgive herself.

“Come on,” Steve opened the passenger door. “How ‘bout that drink?”

The pair of them stumbled into Steve’s old bedroom between stolen kisses and wandering hands. Retracing steps from a lifetime ago, they fumbled blindly in the dim lighting, too utterly consumed in each other to care much for the world outside those walls. There was only the electric rush of pure, raw sexual chemistry and unresolved feelings.

Steve pulled back momentarily, lips dripping in unspoken words. Y/N shook her head, stroking his cheek sensually with her thumb:

“Not now, Steve,” she shushed him, her waiting kiss soaking up his silent fears.

He pulled her hips flush against his torso, working blindly on her dress zipper. Steve’s rough palms explored every inch of her flesh that he could reach. He pinched purple hickies into the crook of her neck, chasing after her as her head flopped in pleasure. Y/N hadn’t let anyone mark her skin that way in years. Steve made her feel young again, like his touch was the Fountain of Youth and she was Ponce de Leon, drinking him in deeply.

Her dress pooled on the floor around her feet as Steve pushed the thin straps from her shoulders. She looked even more mesmerizing than he remembered. Y/N grew into her curves; time transformed her from a bewitching teenage beauty to the woman of Steve’s dreams. And he wanted to feel, to taste, every inch of her.

Spreading her legs apart ever so slightly, Steve dropped to his knees before her. He thumbed at her through the meager fabric of her lace panties. Another hickey on her smooth upper thigh. He groaned at the smell of her arousal. His expert mouth latched hungrily onto her core through the fabric.

Y/N wriggled in pure, hot pleasure against his magical lips. Her fingers dug into his scalp, pulling on his hair just the way she knew drove him crazy. Steve pushed aside her panties, buried his nose, his lips into her most sensitive nerves. She tasted like heaven to him, the mere sight of her writhing above him an ethereal vision. Her taste dizzied him and Steve coddled her closer to his lips.

Steve loved the chase almost as much as the kill itself. He knew what he was doing, and knew he was damn good at it, too. If Steve had been a wolf in the bedroom as a teenager, then the only thing to stop him now was a silver bullet. And Y/N was his full moon.

Her first orgasm hit hard and unexpectedly early, received by Steve’s eager tongue. He pulled her in by the neck for another kiss. The salty taste of her own arousal clinging to his breath intrigued Y/N; touching Steve turned all her other experiences into blurry non-memories. Touching Steve felt like coming home after a long day.

The sight of Steve in all his naked glory sent Y/N into a tizzy. She licked teasingly along his length, easing her way into giving him the head of his life. As she worked, Y/N focused in on the bliss reflected in his face.

“Jesus,” he whined. “I forgot how good you were at that.”

Eager to be inside her, Steve reluctantly pulled her back up to her feet. He backed her up against the bed. Y/N melted back against his pillows, a siren waiting for him to fall right into her trap. He kneeled over her figure. Steve kissed her sweetly. One hand thumbed at her clit. In one fluid motion, he pushed inside her.

Steve loved the way she clung to her. Her touch only egged him on. Steve rutted into her deeply. He made love to her with a veracity and dedication that put every other man she’d been with to shame. It was only Steve.

With one final grunt sandwiched by her name, Steve came deep inside of her.

She fell back against his sheets, spent in a fucked-out bliss. Y/N felt her life in the city slipping further from her mind the more Steve Harrington and his magnificent cock drew her to a future here.

“Do you remember what you said to me the night Nancy and I broke up?”

Y/N hummed in her sleepy daze, nodding:

“Sure, I do.”

“Did you mean it?”

She rolled over on the pillow to face him, fully awake now. Y/N blinked through the darkness. Grasping in the dark, she clamped their hands together. From behind his messy hair, Steve looked like a shivering puppy left out in the rain. A soft smile graced her lips. She thought of the last time she saw that look.

“She never loved me.”

Nancy might have been the good girl toying around with Hawkins’ playboy, but instead she tore Steve to shreds and ran for the hills. Now, he wanted someone to sympathize with him. Y/N, though, had no room in her life to be anyone’s second choice.

Y/N tossed the hat to her candy striper costume on the duvet, sighing. She pawed at the vomit stain on her skirt with a damp towel. Perhaps the only person in town who had missed Steve and Nancy’s fallout, Y/N left Tina’s party early to lull a dangerously intoxicated Brittany Matthews home before she ruined anyone else’s costume.

“What? Why are you even here, Steve?”

“I don’t know,” he shrunk down. “This is the first place I thought of.”

Oblivious to his pity party, Y/N fussed about. She tried to clean the night’s memory of her drunken, sophomore team mate nearly passed out on Tina’s front porch right off her dress right along with the stain.

“What the fuck are you talking about, Steve?”

“Nancy,” he suddenly fell sheepish. “She never loved me.”

Y/N watched after him, incredulous. Her hands gripped at the soiled towel as she bit her tongue. Steve, craving some sort of reaction from her, pressed on:

“I should have known,” he sulked. “I mean…God, when did I become such a fuck-up? This is bullshit. Of course it was. I should have known no one could love me-”

“Oh, fuck you! I did! I loved you so much, Steve. You had to have known that.”

“What? Y/N-”

“You broke my fucking heart, Steve. I’m not about to pretend that I didn’t see this coming and I’m sure as hell not your shoulder to cry on”

She tossed the soiled washcloth right at his chest. If Steve hadn’t been crying before, he sure was now. Still no movement.

“But-“

“I think you should leave.”

When he made no moves to do so, some part of her snapped right along with the last string of her heart that still reached out for Steve. She plucked the picture frame from her nightstand, their picture, and chucked it towards him, only narrowly missing his head. It landed on the floor under her dresser, as cracked and broken as their relationship, where it stayed until well after Y/N graduated and left home.

“Get the fuck out, Steve.”

He faltered a moment, her words hitting him full-force with the one thing he must have known and feared but chose to ignore for the past year. Thick layers of tears caked his cheeks. Steve moved slowly and fluidly back towards the window he snuck in through, hoping all the while that he might uncover some magic words to undo the damage he slung onto her poor heart. He found only silence, and by the time his feet hit the ground, Steve knew he’d really done it this time.

He wanted only to be the carefree fifteen-year-old who got to kiss her in secret moments shared in the backseat of his BMW and late at night in her bedroom, when her parents were asleep. Steve wanted Y/N back, but this was too little, too late. She locked the window behind him.

Looking at him now, her heart ached. The stubborn parts of her hadn’t forgiven him for breaking her heart all those years ago. Yet, she mostly just wanted him.

“Yes.”

Steve pressed his lips lightly to her knuckles.

“For what it’s worth, I loved you too.”

Steve leaned over the extra pillows to face her. He cuddled her close as the pair of them drifted off to sleep, too afraid to let the other go should reality come knocking before morning.

When Steve finally awoke the next morning, he found himself surprised to see her messy hair splayed out across the pillow beside him, and utterly bewitched by the sight of Y/N curling into the sheets as she slept soundly in his bed. He thought, though not for the first time in his life, that he might like to wake each day to the sight.

Steve insisted on helping her carry her things to her car and seeing her out. Now that her Honda was all packed, he looked for any excuse to prolong her inevitable departure. He grabbed at her hips, using every last drop of cheekiness to woo her away from that car. Steve let Y/N go once before and he spent the next ten years regretting it.

“Stay.”

“You know I can’t.”

“What’s keeping you?

She exhaled with a soft laugh. Her home, her friends, her career, all waited for her back in the city. The only thing Hawkins, Indiana had that New York City didn’t was Steve Harrington.

“I’m sorry,” she kissed his lips sweetly. “Goodbye, Steve.”

He stood at the curb, hands balled into his shorts pockets, and watched her drive off until the Honda turned out of sight. Steve smiled after her, sporting the same smile he’d flashed the first time he told her his name, only this time a bitterness hid behind it.

Like Lot’s wife fleeing Sodom, Y/N knew better than to turn around, knew his puppy dog eyes would trap her here forever, melt her down into a pillar of salt. And, like Lot’s wife, she did anyway.

She knew she’d see him again, if only in her dreams.

Y/N nervously twirled the phone cord around her finger. She stared at the slip of paper and dialed his phone number, her mind stuck over the words. The last time she felt this afraid, Y/N lodged an axe into the neck of an interdimensional monster. This time, though, she knew that wouldn’t solve her problems.

“Steve? I need to see you.”

The trek to Indiana did little to calm her nerves. She drove with the radio turned down to silence. No matter how many times Y/N practiced the speech in her head, it didn’t get any easier.

She stood at his doorstep. Fiddling with her hands, she contemplated blowing him off. Y/N felt out of place at his apartment. To her, Steve would always be the boy next door. No matter what happened tonight, she thought of him always as he was then- handsome, full of life, brimming with dreams. Full of love for her.

When he opened the door to let her in, Steve couldn’t dull his smile. He looked almost the same as the boy in her memories. The love hadn’t quite left his eyes yet. It was with the comfort of this thought that she stepped inside.

Steve’s apartment was neat, small, homely. She could see him settling down before the TV with a beer or fussing over his hair in the mirror by the door. The thought made her smile.

He sat down with her on the couch, hands clasping with hers. His bright eyes watched her closely, waiting and ready to accept her back into his life.

“Is everything okay? You sounded upset on the phone.”

“I just- I wanted to talk.”

“Talk?”

He blinked. Steve knew this song and dance and he was tired of trying to keep her here. Tired of letting her toy with his heart.

“I haven’t seen or heard from you in months and you came all this way just to talk?”

Steve told himself he would hear her out, but his emotions got the best of him. He raised his voice in frustration. The abrupt shift in tone caught her off guard. She hadn’t meant to upset him. Y/N deflated in her seat, the speech she’d had prepared now stuck in her throat.

“Forget it,” she rose. “I don’t even know why I came here.”

He followed her out onto the sidewalk. Y/N walked out of his life too many times for him to let her go again.

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know! Home, I guess.”

“Don’t you dare walk away from me again!”

This made her stop in her tracks, whirling around to face him. Angry, frustrated tears welled in her eyes. He stood just close enough for her to touch. Close enough for her to feel his heart breaking.

“And why not? We both already know how this ends.”

“I love you so much that it hurts. Why can’t you just admit that you want this, too?”

“That’s not why I came back, Steve.”

“Well, then, what? Is this some kind of a game to you-“

“I’m pregnant.”

His expression blanked. Steve didn’t know the first thing about fatherhood. His own gave him next to nothing to start from; the last thing he wanted was to find himself repeating his father’s shitty parenting style. He liked to think that he had finally shed the damage his absentee parents did to him, and that he had found a way to fill the gap their cold demeanor created where affection should have been in his childhood, but that didn’t stop his fears of repeating the vicious cycle.

Y/N looked just as afraid.

“Do you really think we’re ready to be parents?”

“No,” he held her hand tighter in his. “But I know that I’m not my father and we can learn from our parents’ mistakes. You’re my future, Y/N”

“Do you mean that?”

“Of course, I do.”

They sat together on his front porch steps. Silence engulfed them for a moment as her earth shattering news settled in. Fear crept back up on Y/N the longer he stayed quiet. Did Steve want to raise this child with her? Did he want her? Her questions and insecurities were overwhelming.

She broke into tears. “I’m scared, Steve.”

“Me, too.”

He held her close to his chest as she cried. A few tears slipped from his own eyes. Steve combed his fingers through her hair and whispered comforts into her ear. Suddenly, he saw a future for himself. A modest, comfortable cottage with a nice yard for the kids to play in, maybe a dog too, and Y/N standing beside him with all the love in the world in her eyes. It was comforting, warm. He wanted that future, with her.

“Stay here, with me. I love you, Y/N, and I want to raise this baby with you, if you’ll have me.”

Sniffling, she turned her chin upwards to face him.

“Okay,” she said. “Yes, I will. I love you, too, Steve.”

As he pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead, Steve knew that everything would turn out okay. He loved Y/N L/N and that was enough for him.