complexfemalecharacter | (no subject)

Entry tags:

steve

(no subject)

School is wrapping up for everyone but Maeve.

She watches as people in the care home talk about their exams, compare notes, cram the night before. The only person she really talks to at the home is Rue and she gets the feeling Rue isn't as worried about exams as most of the other kids are, so Maeve isn't even really able to get a sense of what she has to look forward to next year. It's just life going on around her and she's sitting there watching it.

Eventually, she just has to bail. With her phone in the back pocket of her jean shorts, a bit of cash in her pocket, Maeve heads for the record store. She doesn't have anything to play records on, all her music is on her phone now, but soon she'll be out of the home and soon she can get herself a proper turntable and listen to whatever the hell she wants, so she might as well pick up some music now.

It isn't even until she's through the door that she remembers this is where Steve works. She stops short, catching sight of him as he waves at a coworker, and she realizes he's wrapping up a shift. On his way out. Maybe the perfect opportunity for her to hang out with someone who won't be talking constantly about the exams she's not taking.

"Hi," she says when he's near enough. "Just finishing?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Are you going to be this insufferable the whole time?" Steve asks, but the smile on his face makes it obvious that he's teasing. Still, he hands over the scorecard and the little pencil, since he doesn't want to be in charge of them anyway.

Once they're in her hand, he lines up his shot and knocks the ball into the hole. After scooping it out, he turns to her and lifts a brow. "What do we get if we tie? As long as we're negotiating terms."

"I've been insufferable my whole life," she answers as she takes the scorecard from him, marking down their scores before she tucks it into the back pocket of her shorts along with the pencil.

"If we tie," she starts, her tone thoughtful as they move along to the next hole. "Someone pays tonight and the other person pays for it next time? It's not very creative, but given how little I know about this place so far, it's the best I've got. Unless you've got another idea."

She sets her little ball down and considers the next hole while she waits, trying to figure out her plan of attack. For a bloody mini-golf course. She just really wants to win.

“This doesn’t surprise me,” he replies, watching as she meticulously marks down their scores. Her idea, while not incredibly inventive, makes Steve smile because it means she’s thinking about hanging out with him like this again. He’ll take that.

She eyes up the shot like they’re on a PGA Tour, and Steve rolls his eyes in fond exasperation.

“Sounds like a plan to me,” he tells her, smirking as he nudges her calf with the end of his putter. “This place closes at midnight, you know.”

"So I've got a few more hours yet to make this putt, yeah?" she answers, throwing a glance at Steve over her shoulder before she taps the ball with her putter. It's pretty pathetic, considering her preparation, and the ball just rolls toward the corner, then bounces off the little wall and comes halfway back toward her.

"I planned it that way," she announces as she steps out of the way for Steve's turn.

"Not if you want to make that dream of arcade pizza a reality," he replies. "Plus, I still have to win you a sticky hand."

He gives her a dry look and bumps her further out of the way with his hip before leaning over to place his ball. This hole has a weird little hump at the end, with the hole resting on top of it, and Steve narrows his eyes a bit as he calculates his swing. The ball goes sailing right over the hump and past the hole, bouncing around a few times before coming to a stop in the corner.

"Okay," Steve concedes. "We may have to kiss that pizza goodbye."

"No, just the money it's going to cost you," she answers, then steps up to her ball and focuses harder than she really ought to for such a stupid little thing. It works out, though, and her ball climbs the little hump and drops into the hole, though only just. For a second she'd been sure it was going to come rolling back toward her. Again.

Maeve steps up to Steve and bumps him back. Just because she can.

It goes on like that for a while, both of them talking shit (with Maeve definitely taking the lead on that) while being not terribly good at mini-golf. He finds himself wanting to touch her, to flirt and lean in to brush her hair out of her face, and he wonders if that makes him an asshole. She's seventeen, and probably just wants to be friends, but his stupid horny brain won't shut it.

After the ninth hole, Steve steps up and snatches the score card out of her back pocket, wincing as he totals up the scores. A lot of guys he knew back home would absolutely lose their shit at losing to a girl, and he probably would have been annoyed at some point, but now he can't really bring himself to care. She's better than him, and that's fine.

"I could still make a comeback," he tells her with a grin, offering the card back to her. "Unlikely, but possible."

"I could have been doctoring the score all along," she points out, smirking at Steve as she lines up this next shot. She hasn't been and she doesn't even think he's been letting her win, which is a nice change of pace from guys who think they need to treat her like she's breakable.

Not that anyone in Moordale thought that. People in Moordale were mostly afraid of her.

"How far ahead am I?" she asks, turning her back on her ball as it rolls toward the hole. She doesn't even get to see her first hole-in-one. She's too busy looking at Steve, at the crooked grin he's wearing, at the way he's holding the card toward her.

"You could have, but you weren't. You don't need to," Steve says with a chuckle. "I do have eyes, despite what my low score might imply."

Maeve hits her ball and turns around, leaving Steve to be the only witness to the way her ball sails to the hole and drops neatly into it.

"Holy shit, did you do that on purpose?" He asks, because turning away to not even watch it is a total power move. The quizzical expression on her face tells him otherwise, and he lets out a woop as he goes over to give her a hug. "You got a hole in one!"

He lifts her off of her feet and turns her around so she can see the empty green, and then holds her up with one arm snug under her ass so he can throw his other arm in the air with a loud, embarrassing whoop of celebration.

He makes such a big deal about it and Maeve wants to act like it doesn't affect her, the way Steve first hugs her, then picks her straight up off the ground. This isn't her, feeling that stupid fluttering in her chest over a dumb boy.

Or maybe it is her. She'd felt it with Jackson, at least at first, and she'd felt it with Otis. It's just that people always disappoint her. They always let her down. She's so tired of it.

But she's tired of pretending she doesn't have feelings, too. On impulse, Maeve lifts both her hands to Steve's face so she can turn him toward her and press a kiss against his mouth.

For Steve, the kiss comes completely out of left field. Her mouth presses to his and he drops the putter and the scorecard so he can wrap his other arm around Maeve’s waist and kiss her back. He’s been trying not to think about this exact thing pretty much all day, but as soon as it’s offered up, his brain seems to go offline.

It’s a good kiss, her lips soft against his as she cradles his face in her warm hands. Steve has almost forgotten what it felt like to be kissed like this, with feeling behind it.

He likes Maeve, he really does, even if she’s only seventeen—

And there it is, his brain rebooting. God, he hates his brain.

He pulls back from the kiss as gently as he can manage, and carefully sets her back on the ground. Her mouth looks a little bruised and Steve stares at it for a moment before shaking himself and meeting her eyes instead.

“I— uh.” He swallows hard and realizes he’s still gripping her hip, so he lets go of her. “You’re seventeen.”

He wants to kiss her again. He wishes it didn’t make him feel like such a creep.

That's not at all what Maeve expects to hear and she takes a step back, looking up at Steve with a bewildered expression. He's rejecting her. At the same time, she knows he isn't, because that kiss... it had been a good kiss. A guy doesn't kiss her back like that if he isn't interested.

It's about her age, she realizes, and she laughs, a dry sound, then shakes her head.

"I'm seventeen, so we can't kiss," she says, looking faintly amused. Her feelings are hurt a little, a rejection still stings, even when she knows the reason has nothing to do with whether or not he wants to. Mostly, though, she's mentally calculating the days until she turns eighteen. Maeve usually hates her birthday, but maybe this year it won't be so bad.

"So what, I turn eighteen and I'm fuckable?" she asks.

At first she looks a little hurt and it makes Steve kind of feel like he’s just kicked a puppy on accident, because he doesn’t want her to be hurt. Then her expression turns teasing and what she says makes Steve let out a choking cough, cheeks going red as he rubs at his breastbone.

“I—“

“Hey, are you guys gonna play the damn hole, or what?”

Steve looks over at a group of kids waiting to play through, and he laughs as he gathers up their putters and scorecard and takes Maeve’s hand to lead her towards a small grouping of picnic tables so they can have this horribly awkward conversation.

He sits on the bench with his back to the table, and he can’t help but to remember that day in the park, when he sprawled out with his head in her lap, and how comfortable he had been.

“That’s— a very loaded question,” he finally says, huffing out a laugh as he looks over at her with pink cheeks. “Look, I like you. You know I like you.”

His gaze drops to her mouth again. “This definitely isn’t about me not wanting to kiss you.”

"See, I was always told Americans were prudes, but I never believed it until now," she says, her mouth pursed in something that's almost a smile, but not quite there. It's partly the armour she's spent so long building up coming into play, keeping her safe from hurt, from disappointment. Yeah, she knows he likes her. At least she knows now that he's said as much. She doesn't really see what the problem is.

It's something to do with honour, but she doesn't completely get it. She's not going to be any more grown up in three months. He's trying to be a good guy, though, she has to give him that. It's more than most guys are capable of.

"Just wait until I tell Robin I kissed you and you said I was too young," she teases. "And just wait until three months from now."

“Prudes?” Steve laughs at that, but he doesn’t know enough about other places to argue. He doesn’t think he’s a prude, but a beautiful girl kissed him and he— he pulled away like a fucking idiot.

She’s looking at him like he’s an idiot, but she doesn’t seem mad or upset. He stares back at her and feels a little winded, like the air has been knocked out of him.

“Fuck, do not tell—“ He cuts himself off and swallows hard. “Three months? That’s not so long.”

His gaze drops to her mouth again, and his fingers twitch at his sides.

"Oh, I'm telling Robin," she answers. "I don't really do girl talk very well, but I think she and I can muddle through for this."

Maybe she won't tell Robin, but she feels like she needs a little leverage here. Something to give Steve a hard time about. Maybe there's nothing personal in him saying she's too young -- not even too young, just under eighteen, because she'll always be younger than him by exactly the same number of days -- but she still feels oddly vulnerable.

"I don't tell anyone about my birthday, so don't you dare do anything for it, but... yeah, September eighth," she says, then shrugs.

Steve lets out a beleaguered sigh as he imagines the severe taunting that his best friend will give him for this. They may not actively dislike each other anymore, but they sure haven’t stopped roasting each other to hell and back.

He looks over at Maeve and wonders if he overreacted, or if he’s too much in his own head. Maeve is more mature than most people he meets that are around his age.

“It just seemed like an important line for me to draw,” he says, trying to explain. He spends so much time around kids, both in Hawkins and here, but Maeve isn’t a kid. She’s far from being a kid, and it isn’t fair of him to treat her like one.

He sighs and scrubs his hands over his face before looking over at her again, feeling the corner of his mouth quirk into a smile.

“Not anything?” He asks, shifting a bit closer to her. She smells so good. He wants to kiss her again, but he wonders if maybe he missed his chance. “What if I took you to dinner? Someplace casual. Paper napkins only.”

Edited 2020-08-05 18:01 (UTC)

"As long as no one mentions the word birthday, it can just be a regular hang out," she answers, still smirking. Steve has shifted closer to her and she thinks, no matter what he's saying about drawing a line, he'd very much like to kiss her again.

But she's not going to make it that easy. It's a little unrelenting of her to keep giving him a hard time, especially since she's not actually angry about it at all. It makes sense and she respects it. That doesn't mean her ego isn't still a little bruised.

So she gets up from the bench, casually, as if she's not doing it just to bug him, then grabs her putter.

"Come on," she says. "I haven't won my free pizza yet."

A regular hang out. The words make Steve's insides do an internal wince that only gets worse when she gets up and walks away from him, but he does his best to push all his self-deprecating bullshit to the side and takes a look at her face. She looks like she's trying hard to smirk, and Steve realizes that he's being teased.

It's such a relief that he lets out a huffed laugh and pulls himself to his feet. He follows after her and this time when she bends over to place her ball, he really lets himself look at her. Her hips seem to sway in a way that's entirely unnecessary, and also in a way that could entirely be Steve's imagination.

"My game was shit before you distracted the hell out of me," Steve admits, finally dragging his gaze away from her ass as she takes her shot. "I'm pretty sure victory is yours."

Things have changed and Maeve can feel it as they play through the next few holes. Everything is just a little bit charged where it hadn't been before and it's both frustrating and exciting. She doesn't want to like Steve, because liking guys is so often the kind of thing that ends up going very poorly. All her life, she doesn't think she's had one single good experience.

Jackson had been sweet and he'd been a good boyfriend, but she'd fucked that one up by just being herself. By being too much of herself when he had so much going for him. And Otis... well, she mostly tries not to think of him.

Steve isn't like either of them. She has no idea if that's a good or bad thing. She knows she wants to kiss him again. She also knows she doesn't think she can make another attempt, not if she's going to get gently turned down again.

"Victory is very close to being mine," she announces once they've reached the last hole. "So show me what you've got."

Steve is so distracted that he pretty much tanks his score, and doesn’t show much prowess in the way of putt putt golf. They keep looking at each other, letting their gazes linger, and suddenly Steve’s sad little blue ball becomes much more metaphorical.

The last hole is an easy one, just a ramp with a hole at the end that keeps the ball once it drops in. Steve lines up his shot and makes a bet with himself. If he makes it, he’ll stop thinking so damn hard.

He takes a breath and hits the ball, breath caught in his chest as he watches it roll up the ramp. It drops neatly into the cup, and Steve celebrates his first and only hole in one of the day by dropping his putter and turning around to pull Maeve into his arms and kiss her. He keeps one arm locked around her waist and cups her cheek with his other hand, holding her close and he kisses her hard enough to make up for all the stupid tension he put them through for nine long holes.

It's not an easy task, surprising Maeve Wiley. She's been through too much shit and dealt with too many crappy people to be anything but wary and on guard, but somehow Steve manages it. That says something about how he puts her at ease, something she can't let herself think about for too long or she'll convince herself it's a bad idea to let her guard down at all.

It's a good kiss. A really good kiss and she sinks into it with a soft sound against his lips. She knows Steve isn't going to completely change his mind and take her back to his place, but the kiss still makes her ache in a deeply pleasant way.

When they part, Maeve doesn't step away, just looks up at him with a small, crooked smile. "So all I needed was to be twenty minutes older, yeah?" she asks, looking amused.

It's a hell of a kiss. Steve is breathless by the time he pulls away, and he keeps a loose grip on her hip so she can't separate from him entirely. And then she speaks, and he lets out a huff of laughter as he rolls his eyes in fond amusement.

"Are you always such a smart ass?" He asks her, knowing full well the answer. His brow furrows briefly at the mention of her age, but he pushes past it. Arbitrary rules are sure to have exceptions, after all. "Three months isn't so long."

He kisses her again, and this time it’s softer. Maybe a little sweeter, so she knows that he doesn’t plan on this being the last one. He steps away from her and licks his bottom lip before bending down to grab her putter and offer it back to her. "Last hole, and then the pizza's all yours. You won."

"Pretty much all the time," she answers with a smirk, but she leans into the second kiss, too, and tries not to think about why she's a smart ass. It's kept her safe for this long and she can't imagine it's going to change any time soon.

She likes Steve. She doesn't want to, but she does, and that makes her nervous no matter how much she likes him or likes kissing him. No one is reliable, not really, and she has no way of knowing whether or not he'll just turn around and decide she's far too young tomorrow.

But that's a worry for tomorrow.

Instead of worrying, she takes her putter, turns and takes her shot. It doesn't go in, but he's right, she's still won even with taking two strokes on this hole and once it's complete she turns back to him with a smug grin.

Steve lets out an amused huff and shifts the items in his hand until he can scribble in her final score, even signing his initial at the bottom for posterity, and then hands it over to her.

"Congratulations," he tells her, smiling at her for a lingering moment before reaching out to take her putter from her. He sets them on the specified return counter and then opens the door to follow her into the arcade.

The sudden burst of light and sound is a little disorienting after being outside, and he blinks as he adjusts to it. He looks over at Maeve and doesn't quite know what to say, or how to touch her, so he reaches out to hook his index finger in the belt loop on her hip, giving it a little tug.

"Pizza," he says, smiling as his gaze shifts past her to a bank of games along the back wall. "And then I'm going to try to redeem myself over on that basketball game."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only