Sugar Series - Tumblr Posts
Sugar || 10
Masterlist || Part Nine
Steven Grant/Sugar Mommy!Reader
Word count: 3.2k
Series Summary: You meet Steven in a museum gift shop and feel an instant connection. Before you walk out the door you decide, perhaps against your better judgment, that you need him to be your sugar baby. Now you just need him to let you treat him right.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” Steven says immediately after his admission. He doesn’t even give you time to react.
“I’d rather be your boyfriend.”
He stands and starts pacing in front of the couch, carefully stepping around the cushions and pillows scattered on the floor, left there after vacuuming the crumbs from the chairs.
“I haven’t even told you what happened, and as soon as I do, you’re never going to want to speak to me again,” he continues to ramble, scenarios playing out in his head—none of them ending happily for him, you’re sure.
All the while, you’re still caught up in what he said to you.
“I’d rather be your boyfriend.”
That’s what you want, isn’t it? And yet, you feel strange.
The words repeat in your head, threatening to overshadow this past weekend and Steven’s alarmed state.
“You know what? I didn’t mean it. Sorry to inconvenience you. I’ll just see myself to the loony bin now.” He starts to walk away, heading for the door.
He’s actually going to leave.
Your hand shoots out, grabbing his before he can get far. “Steven, wait.”
He stops, his hand twitching in yours, unsure what to do.
“Let’s just…try this again,” you say, tugging him back down onto the couch. He didn’t actually want to leave, it seems. He just doesn’t know what to do, overwhelmed by whatever happened and the unplanned admission.
“I’d rather be your boyfriend.”
You push the words away. Even if Steven genuinely meant them, coming on the heels of a blackout that has him more scared than before renders them almost meaningless.
“I told you everything I know. Now it’s your turn,” you say, and Steven tenses even more.
“I-I don’t know if I—”
“You came here because you needed help. Whatever it is, I’m here for you. No matter what, okay?”
Steven stares at you, nervous.
“What’s the first thing you remember?” you ask softly, squeezing Steven’s hand.
“Are we just…skipping over the embarrassing thing I said?” he asks, trying to tease, but his body is still tense, and his smile is more of a grimace.
You smile at him, trying to think over the heavy thudding in your chest.
“We can talk about that too if you want. After you tell me what you know.” You rest your other hand on top of his, cradling it between both of yours.
Steven looks away, his face flushed.
Then he takes a shaky breath and tells you everything.
He tells you about the strange dream that possibly wasn’t a dream at all. He mentions waking up in a strange town and the odd man who sent people chasing after him. Steven says he doesn’t remember how he got away and that some of the details are fuzzy.
Throughout the retelling, you get the sense that he’s holding something back, but you have no idea what it could be, not with how open he’s currently being.
“What was so strange about the man?” you asked.
“He was…weird, ya know? Talked like a cult leader or something,” he answered, a slight tremor in his voice.
“Why were they chasing you?”
“They thought I had something. Some artifact? Definitely don’t have anything like that, though.”
Steven couldn’t even tell you where he was.
It was an outrageous story, to be sure. You’re once again tempted to put some sort of tracker on him in case this happens again. Maybe you can ask…
“It couldn’t have been real,” Steven concludes at the end of this tale. “It had to have been a dream, right?” He looks at you, desperate, though for what answers you don’t know.
But you’ve never been in the habit of lying to Steven, and you won’t start now.
“Did it feel like a dream?” you ask. You feel confident it wasn’t, but Steven needs to accept it himself before the two of you can move on to finding a solution.
“No,” he answers quietly, sounding defeated and perhaps a little afraid. You pull Steven into you, wrapping your arms around him.
“We’ll figure this out. I promise. I’ll look for doctors or psychiatrists again. Something.” You hold Steven for a moment longer, relishing his presence, and he yours, when something occurs to you. “That strange man,” you begin slowly, making sure you have Steven’s attention. “Do you think he’ll come after you?”
After what Steven told you, if this man sent people to chase after him on the assumption that he took something, there’s no telling what lengths he would go to.
Steven tenses under your hands before pulling away from you.
“He wouldn’t. Couldn’t,” he says, though you don’t know if he’s trying to convince you or himself. “He doesn’t even know who I am. And if I didn’t even know where I was, there was no way he could follow me. And I don’t even have the bloody scarab he wanted! He’s got no reason to find me.”
You bite the inside of your cheek to keep from saying anything. Whatever the artifact is, this scarab Steven mentioned, if it’s valuable enough, some black market dealers will go to any length to ensure their payday.
Instead of saying anything to Steven, you smile and try to appear relieved.
“Let’s not worry about that, about him, okay?”
You don’t doubt that Steven’s telling you the truth about his blackouts, but you can’t help but wonder how someone like him could get involved in business like that.
Skipping the background check was a bad idea.
You immediately scold yourself for the thought.
You know Steven. You trust him. Whatever happened had to have been some sort of mistake.
It had to.
You and Steven didn’t talk about what he said. With everything he told you, you figured it best to wait for that conversation.
Instead, you make sure he eats something and, remembering his schedule, get him ready for work tomorrow.
When you ask if he wants to stay the night with you, he practically jumps at the chance. Then he hesitates, suddenly looking nervous.
There are a few things still left unsaid.
“We’ll talk tomorrow. I promise,” you tell him with a soft kiss on the cheek.
“Alright,” Steven says softly, staring at you with tenderness filling his gaze.
In the morning, Steven isn’t beside you.
Not again.
You check the sheets, searching for his warmth, but find none. It’s almost become a routine at this point.
“Steven?” you call out, heartsick. He’s not in the en suite; the door is left open, and the lights are turned off.
You don’t want to leave your bed, afraid of what you might find. Or rather, what you might not.
But then—
“Downstairs,” called quietly back up to you.
The sound that escapes you would have made your face heat with embarrassment if you weren’t so relieved to hear Steven’s voice. You rush out of bed, not caring about your appearance. He’s seen you like this before anyway so what did it matter?
Steven is in the kitchen, sitting at the table, surrounded by the remnants of his making breakfast.
“Still warm,” he says, pushing a plate toward you. “Just finished up a few minutes ago.”
“Why didn’t you wake me?” you ask, sitting across from him. Why did he make you wake up without him?
He opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. You wait, but he seems to rethink whatever was about to come out and remains silent.
Turning to the plate in front of you, letting Steven think, despite how nervous his silence makes you, you look down at the plate he prepared for you. It’s simple. Pancakes topped with the bananas you had browning on the counter. You top them off with the syrup he’d left on the table and dig in.
“I don’t think we should get involved,” Steven blurts, the words coming out in a rush that leaves you choking on your food.
“W-what?” you manage between coughs.
Steven stands and starts pacing in a loop around the table. “I know what I said last night, but you… After this weekend, you shouldn’t want to even be around me.”
“Steven—” you try to interrupt.
“Something’s definitely wrong with me, and who knows where I’ll end up next or what’ll happen or if there will be some other shady man with a bad haircut—”
“Baby, stop,” you say softly, reaching out to gently touch his arm, bringing him to a stop.
Steven stares at you, holding his breath.
“Baby, we’re already involved,” you tell him. You’ve been involved since he agreed to meet you to go over the terms of your arrangement. And not once since that meeting have you ever thought about ending things between you. You’ve only grown more attached.
Steven shakes his head but doesn’t pull away from you. “We shouldn’t be,” he argues weakly.
“I want to be.”
His breath catches, and his eyes darken.
You know what to say next, but the words catch in your throat. You’ve been fighting your feelings for so long now. It’s like your mind is trying to stop you from going any further. You’ve protected yourself from any solid romantic feelings for years, causing you to balk at their rising.
This could end badly, a dark, scared part of you argues. He could hurt you. Break your heart.
You’ve always listened to that voice. It’s worked out well so far. That’s what you’ve always thought, at least.
But you don’t want to listen to it anymore.
“I want to be your girlfriend,” you admit, breathless, like your body couldn’t find the air until you said the words.
The words trigger something in Steven, all the fight visibly leaving him.
And before you realize what’s happening, Steven’s lips are on yours, crashing into you with a fervor you haven’t seen before.
You kiss him back just as fiercely.
“You don’t mean that,” Steven sighs, his lips brushing yours.
“I do,” you pant, grabbing him by the shirt and pulling him back into you.
You want him even closer, but the angle is all wrong—him towering above you while you’re still in your chair. For now, though, it works, and you don’t want to let him go for a moment, even if it would be to somewhere more comfortable.
Eventually, you and Steven calm down. The kisses turn soft, lingering, instead of the gnashing of teeth and tongues it started as.
“Don’t go to work today,” you say softly, pulling away to look Steven in the eye. You don’t know if you can ask that of him, if you should, but you don’t care.
You want Steven with you. Forget everything else.
His face flushes as he looks down at you. “Okay,” he agrees immediately. “Do you…have something in mind?”
You take Steven in, pupils blown wide, blending into the brown, kiss-swollen lips, his mouth open, panting slightly. You can’t help but smirk a little, guessing his thoughts.
“We need to talk,” you say, standing and stepping away. You need to clear your head, and distance is likely the only thing that will help.
“Talk?” Steven asks, confused.
“If you want to do this, if you want to be more than my baby, things will be different. We’ll need to talk about it first before anything else,” you explain.
Steven frowned. “How different?”
You give him a gentle smile and take his hand, squeezing it. “Just different. Good different.”
You leave him to clean up the kitchen and call in sick to the museum as you return to your bedroom to make yourself more presentable. Giddiness fills you, knowing Steven still wants you after running out of bed and with syrup on your face.
When you go back downstairs, Steven is in the living room, having replaced all the cushions and pillows you had strewn across the floor. He’s staring over the back of the couch at the stairs, waiting for you. He gives you a tentative smile that you easily return.
He reaches for your hand as you round the end of the couch, pulling you down beside him, so close you’d be in his lap if you shifted your legs just a fraction closer.
“Romantic relationships are harder,” you start, needing to say it, to remind yourself, but also to make sure Steven realizes it. You’re giving him an out should he decide he needs one. Much like when you went into detail about your expectations of him as a baby, you want him to know that he doesn’t have to agree to this.
“Are you sure you want to be involved in that way? There’s no going back,” you warn, because there won’t be.
Once this line is crossed, there’s no taking it back for you. You know yourself too well. If this doesn’t work out with Steven, if being your boyfriend—and potentially anything else in the future—is too much, he could never go back to being just your sugar baby.
You will either have all of Steven or none of him.
Steven squeezes your hand, the flush returning to his face.
“I’ve sort of…already told people you were my girlfriend.” He ducks his head in embarrassment but doesn’t try to hide from you. “So, yeah. Very sure I’m sure.”
“You what?” you ask, a little stunned. “Who did you tell?”
“People at work,” Steven starts, sounding apologetic. “Donna was going on about how I couldn’t get a date. So I told her, actually, I’m dating an amazing woman, thank you very much, and she’s too good to be around the likes of you.”
“Did you really say that to her?” you laugh.
“Well, not that last bit. Didn’t actually want to get fired. I wasn’t sure if I should have tried to explain that you pay me, so it just kind of slipped out.”
“You should have told me. I would have put Donna in her place.”
Steven smiles affectionately at you. “I know you would have. But it was alright in the end. She didn’t have much to say after I showed her the pictures of us in Germany.”
You laugh again. “Good!” You loved that trip. You can’t wait to run away with him again. Then, you ask, “Did you tell your mom I was your girlfriend?”
He shakes his head. “But I talk about you enough. I’m sure she suspects.”
“Maybe we can call her again,” you suggest, remembering the one call—or rather, voicemail—you sat in on, how Steven was so excited to have you talk to his mother.
A tenderness filsl Steven’s eyes. “I’d like that.”
You take a moment to envision what all this could mean. What your future with Steven could look like.
It excites you.
“So first things first,” you say, finally ready to go into how things would change once he’s no longer Steven Grant, sugar baby, but Steven Grant, boyfriend. “Obviously, you can keep whatever I’ve given you so far, but I won’t be paying you anymore. That includes your bills.”
“I was never doing this for the money anyway,” Steven assures you, and that surprises you a little. The two of you have never spoken about why he agreed to be a sugar baby even though he’d never done it, never even had it on his radar.
Then again, it wasn’t typically a question you asked any of your babies. The answer was always the same: they did it for the money. Either they wanted it or desperately needed it. People don’t become sugar babies because they want to soothe the loneliness of the wealthy elite.
“Why were you doing it then?” you ask quietly, unable to guess the answer and unsure if you want to know but need to ask anyway.
Steven flushes again. “Well, when a woman like you said she wanted to take me to dinner, I wasn’t inclined to say no.” He gives a flustered, delighted laugh, remembering the day you asked him out. “And then we got to talking, and I liked you. Really liked you. And you liked me, which was shocking, I must say.”
He runs his thumb across your knuckles, taking a moment before continuing. “When you asked me to be your sugar baby, I figured if that was the only chance I was going to get at being around you, then I was going to take it.”
You’re both pleased and stunned by his admission. To know he was interested in you since the beginning—and not for your money, but just you—makes this feel like a dream. Surely, you are still asleep and will wake up to an empty bed, Steven gone.
But you know you’re awake. Steven thinking the only way to be with you was by being your baby wouldn’t break your heart so much if you weren’t. It hurts because you know it’s true.
Had Steven refused your offer and said he’d rather date you and act like a normal couple, you would have dropped him then and there, never tempted to see him again. It wouldn’t have mattered what you saw in him in those early days, how much you saw yourself in him; you would never have broken your self-imposed rule against traditional dating and relationships. It’s only now, months and overflowing—overwhelming—feelings later, that you’re finally willing to give it, give Steven, a chance.
And now, sitting here with him, you don’t know what to say. A breathless “Oh” is the only thing able to escape your lips because the knowledge that he has only ever seen you leaves you dumbstruck.
Steven must somehow know what you’re feeling, though, because he squeezes your hand, still clutched in his. Then his free hand reaches up and lays on your cheek, thumb lightly stroking it. His eyes don’t waver from yours as he leans in.
This kiss is different from the one in the kitchen. There’s none of the urgency or desperation. It’s soft, gentle, almost chaste, like Steven is trying to tell you something without words.
You guess at what it could be but are afraid to let the thought settle. Things are just beginning with you and Steven. There’s no rush to do anything. If he wants to tell you whatever he’s trying to through touch, you’ll happily wait until he can find the words.
And then, so unexpectedly you can’t help letting out a surprised sound, Steven gently pushes you down onto the couch. He braces himself on his forearms, keeping most of his weight off you. When his lips move along your jaw, you let out a gasp.
“We haven’t finished going over everything,” you say, clutching Steven’s shirt—not to push him away but to keep him close.
Steven lifts his head and grins down at you. “I think i can figure out how to be your boyfriend. Or do you have a list for that, too?” he teases, and your face warms ever so slightly.
“I might,” you mumble. Though now, you’re not sure you need to give it to him.
“You can tell me about it later, then, yeah?” Steven chuckles.
“Yeah,” you agree as you slide one hand up into his curls, pushing his head down so you can kiss him again.
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