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—we going ridin’ on the freeway of love wind’s against our back, we going ridin’ on the freeway of love in my pink Cadillac—
“Steve.”
—never you mind the exit signs, we got lots of time—
“I’m going to lose my mind.”
—who knows how fast a car can get—
“Oh, no you don’t! No way you’re going below the belt with Aretha Franklin on the radio.”
Steve detaches his lips from Jonathan’s neck and pulls back, pouting. He puts his hands up in surrender.
“Why not? Don’t you want to—”
He pauses, holding a finger out as Jonathan frowns. The song plays on.
“What?”
“Don’t you want to…” Steve says with a smirk, and then sings along with the radio, “— Go, go, go !” He bangs his head in time with each go , hair flying wildly, cheeks flushed and smile wide.
Jonathan flops back onto the bed, covering his face with his hands. “Oh my god.”
Hands dance up his sides, tickling his ribs and tracing softly over his chest and neck before lightly grasping his wrists. They tug and Jonathan doesn’t budge.
“Fine.” The hands disappear, but another quick kiss is pressed to his neck. He feels Steve’s weight shift on the mattress before disappearing completely.
The station changes a few times before Steve apparently settles on one.
—so give her inches and feed her well—
“How’s this?”
Jonathan lets his hands flop down by his sides and looks up at Steve, raising an eyebrow. “A little early for that, don’t you think?”
“Hm, I don’t know,” Steve replies, slowly inching back toward the bed. “Never too early to rock your boyfriend like a hurricane.” He stops at the edge of the bed to get on, crawling up to Jonathan at a snail’s pace. “You know… lovingly.” Steve straddles him and brushes a strand of hair back from his face.
—here I am, rock me like a hurricane—
Now that he thinks about it, maybe lying down on the bed wasn’t his best plan, because before he knows it Steve is hovering above him, arms to either side of Jonathan’s head, leaning down, and he isn’t sure that he could escape even if he wanted to. Jonathan can’t bring himself to regret it. Maybe three in the afternoon is a bit early for a hurricane, but surely a light shower couldn’t hurt. Maybe a thunderstorm or a monsoon. Are hurricanes worse or better than monsoons? It doesn’t really matter. Jonathan is absolutely down for a monsoon.
Steve’s right hand comes up to stroke his jaw so tenderly that it makes Jonathan a bit dizzy. His smile doesn’t seem like it should exist in conjunction with the song blaring from the stereo. It always catches him off guard for some reason, how gently Steve touches him. They’ve tried to be harsh and demanding before, tried to rough each other up and spit insults back and forth, but it never lasted more than a minute before one or both of them dissolved into laughter and apologies. The closest they've gotten to success in that realm is pinning each other's hands above their heads, but that's more about Jonathan's inability to keep his fingers from seeking Steve's hair and Steve's general neediness and impatience when Jonathan's taking the lead than it is about power or domination. They just aren't really cut out for that kind of thing.
"You wanna smoke?" Steve asks, leaning down to kiss each corner of his lips, right and then left, before kissing the tip of his nose.
"You realize you don't need an excuse to kiss me anymore, right? Like, you can just do it. You just did it."
"Hey," Steve's eyes narrow, "Shotgunning is a time-honored and noble practice, alright? It's economical. Twice the high for the same price."
Let it not be said that Jonathan’s boyfriend doesn’t know the way to his heart. He does love a good two-for-one deal. Jonathan takes the opportunity to thread his fingers through the hair at the nape of Steve's neck, stroking his cheek with his thumb. "Appreciate the offer, but I've gotta pick up Will from the Wheelers' place later. Apparently, he’s okay not being independent when it's below freezing out."
Steve smiles. "He's a smart kid. Talented, too. Tell him I'm expecting a hand-drawn Christmas card, alright?"
"Will do. Can we stop talking about my little brother?"
"Your wish, my command." Steve lowers himself slowly and Jonathan feels a heady rush of attraction. He never really gave a shit about muscles before dating Steve. More specifically, before he realized that Steve could lift him off the ground without breaking a sweat and do things like this, controlling his gradual descent so carefully that Jonathan gets a little impatient by the time their lips finally connect. He could always pull Steve down or go up to meet him, which he does sometimes and thoroughly enjoys, but he likes the anticipation. It reminds him to enjoy the journey, not just the destination.
"I love you," Steve whispers, breath warm against Jonathan’s lips, and Jonathan finally allows himself to pull Steve in like he's been dying to do since he got here.
He isn't sure why he's still hesitant to let Steve see just how badly he wants him. It's dumb. Steve does it all the time, and it always makes Jonathan feel special in a way he never has before. A good boyfriend would want to give that feeling in return.
Jonathan just isn't like Steve. He can't randomly lean over and whisper , baby, your hands are driving me insane right now , or stutter out a description of exactly what he wants Steve to do to him, or tell Steve that he spends every night he's alone imagining that they're holding one another. It feels like too much, like handing over that last little bit of control he has over his heart. Steve gave Jonathan that control from the first time they kissed, fingers loosely intertwined, and he gives more every day, so much that it's almost frightening in its magnitude. He doesn’t do anything by half, especially not love. Jonathan never thought he could date such a romantic, but all of those little things Jonathan always figured would be annoying or fakey just feel real coming from him.
The song changes. This one is also about sex. Jonathan wonders for a second if Steve just put in a mixtape rather than switching to another radio station.
Steve is kind of a horndog, which shouldn't be half as charming as it is, but he's just so damn earnest about it. The difference, Jonathan's learned, between fucking in the backseat of your car and making spontaneous love in the moonlight, is essentially just a thesaurus and a decent soundtrack. The difference between swapping spit in a grimy alley and catching a few precious moments together is all in the way that Steve smiles when their lips first meet, in the way that Jonathan cradles the back of Steve’s head as he presses him into the wall, and in the way they take a few seconds to complain about their managers and laugh before Jonathan’s lunch break is over and Robin demands her turn at fucking around and doing nothing.
Their lips separate with a rather gross sound as Steve lifts himself up to hover over Jonathan again. “What’cha thinking about?”
“You,” Jonathan says, trying to pull Steve back in, but he won’t come.
“Mmm,” Steve purses his lips. “If you were just thinking about me you wouldn’t be thinking at all.”
“Fine. Us, then.”
“Should I be sitting down?”
Jonathan rolls his eyes. “It’s stupid.”
“I love stupid.”
“Fine. How are you always horny?”
Steve’s arms give out and he collapses onto Jonathan, laughing and burying his face in Jonathan’s shoulder. The weight of his body lying across Jonathan’s feels nice.
—your walls come down, you wanna live, you wanna move to the sound—
“I’m not always horny, asshole,” Steve says a bit too loudly, lips brushing against the outer shell of Jonathan’s ear.
Jonathan takes the opportunity to tuck his hands into Steve’s back pockets. “You’re above average.”
Steve rolls off to the side and Jonathan immediately has to take his hands back, meeting Steve’s eyes with a challenging look. Steve doesn’t seem quite as playful anymore.
“Is it too much? We don’t have to—”
“No, I don’t— trust me, I’m not complaining!
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah, Steve, yeah,” Jonathan assures him, cupping Steve’s face because he can and so he can see Steve tilt his jaw into the touch. “I just don’t know how the hell you function when I’m not around,” he tries to joke.
Steve snorts. “I’m, like, eighty percent less horny when you’re not around. Not really a big problem.”
“Oh.”
—sometimes I wonder as I look in your eyes, maybe you’re thinking of some other guy—
“Shut up,” Steve says, turning to kiss Jonathan’s palm. “Can you blame me?”
“Yeah, kind of,” Jonathan laughs.
“Oh, come on! What, I get the hottest guy in Hawkins in my bedroom and I’m supposed to just keep my hands to myself?”
“Flattery isn’t gonna get you anything you haven’t already had.”
“I’m serious! Like, I’m not always horny, I just always wanna touch you and, like, make you feel good.”
“Steve,” Jonathan says admonishingly, as if he might be able to take back the beat his heart just skipped if Steve says he was only kidding. For some reason, he feels like crying.
“You don’t believe me.”
“I believe you think you’re charming.”
“Okay, one, I am charming—”
“Sure, tell yourself that.”
“—and two, John, I’m being serious.”
—just wait and see—
Steve’s eyes are usually closed when he calls him John. His eyes are usually closed and his hair is a sweaty wreck and his chest is flushed and his mouth is slack, breath too short to gasp out Jonathan . He’s usually so far gone that he can’t think of any sickeningly sweet pet name to use that’s fewer syllables, so he says John, fuck, John, Johnny, please , like he barely knows what he’s saying, but here he is fully clothed and coherent, looking right into Jonathan’s eyes, calling him John. Jonathan exhales.
“I believe you.” He speaks so softly that he wonders if Steve can even hear him over the radio. “Does it bother you that I don’t tell you things like that?”
“No,” Steve says immediately, then, “Well, maybe. I don’t know. It’s not really your style, is it?”
“No. But if it bothered you, you know, I could… try.”
“Try?” Steve raises an eyebrow.
Jonathan tries.
He shifts quickly and settles into place, pinning Steve down by sitting on his hips and savoring the wide-eyed gaze he gets in return. Steve recovers quickly, schooling his expression to mask the pure desire that’s going straight to Jonathan’s head.
“Try it, then,” Steve goads, “What are you thinking?” A smug grin calls to mind crueler days, but those memories don’t hold much power anymore. Jonathan just feels kind of high.
Steve’s eyes are so expressive. His lips are insanely pink even though Jonathan’s definitely kissed away his subtle layer of gloss by now. The freckles on his collarbone are singing his name, urging Jonathan to slip his hands under the hem of Steve’s shirt and tug it off, but this isn’t about action. It’s about words.
“You, uh,” Jonathan tries, then swallows because his throat is dry. “You look…”
You look like something precious, Jonathan wants to say, like you were made for loving. Like a man confident in his skin and a teenager itching to tear free, like everything Jonathan’s ever feared and ever wanted, like the guy who’s gonna break his heart someday. It’s exhilarating, sexy and terrifying all at once, and how does Steve ever find the words?
He looks open. Trusting. Patient.
He looks like he’s in love.
Jonathan slips his hands under the hem of Steve’s shirt and tugs it off, leaning down to lick those damn freckles (brown, lighter and more delicate than the deep color of his eyes) and quickly sitting up to watch how Steve blushes, chest going nearly as pink as his lips.
“You look like you’re mine,” Jonathan whispers.
He smiles. “Well, you got that right,” Steve says, and doesn’t give Jonathan much of a chance to talk any further.