(no subject)

[complexfemalecharacter]

Nights like this one are actually really nice.

Maeve isn't sure where Rue is, but she and Steve have the flat to themselves, and while they had more than taken advantage of that fact a little earlier in some ways that involved very little clothing, now they're both on the couch in front of the TV. Some movie is on, something unfamiliar to Maeve, but Steve is never offended when she picks up a book and reads instead, which she does now.

Dressed in a comfortably loose pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt she's commandeered from Steve's collection, Maeve is reclined on the couch, her head on Steve's thigh as she reads.

It's fairly domestic, something Maeve never would have imagined she would like. But then, she'd never been with Steve before Darrow.

Classes are done for the semester, she's picked up a few extra shifts at New Leaf, and she gets to spend more time with him for the rest of the summer until classes start up again in September. This is the life Maeve knows she never would have been able to have in Moordale, stuck with her reputation, her lack of income, the judgment of the teachers around her.

She needed to get out and now she has.

Comments

[haplesshairpile]

It turns out that when it works, when it's right, Steve is a pretty damn good boyfriend. He'd once told Nancy that he wasn't, and for a long time he thought it was true, but he was wrong then. It just didn't work with them. It wasn't right.

As it turns out, what he has now is all that he ever really wanted. All that playing the field, dumping girls before they could get too close-- it was all bullshit. He wanted a relationship the whole time, he's realizing, but he was just so worried that he would be shitty at it just like his parents were.

But he isn't. Maeve is right, this works, and Steve often finds himself flooded with a contentment unlike anything he's ever known. Sure, he likes to go out and have fun, but he likes this too, the quiet nights in.

Steve is slumped against the couch watching some terrible action movie while Maeve lays in his lap, head rocking back and forth a little every so often as she reads. His hand is under her shirt, resting just below her breasts, but there isn't anything sexual about it. It's just comfortable and intimate, and he always wants to be touching her if he can.

"They're too fast, Maeve," he says in a playfully exasperated tone, lifting his other hand to gesture at the television. "They're just too furious."