✶ ┄ SORE LOSER !

summary: steve harrington doesn’t like to let you win until he realizes how good it feels to lose.
pairing: best friend!steve harrington / f!reader
word count: 1.6k
warnings: a lil bit suggestive towards the end, but nothing crazy
a/n: i got super carried away with this lol i kinda just took this request and ran with it and well… here we are :) enjoy!

Steve never lets you win. 

He thinks it’s letting you off too easy.

The boy’s competitive to a fault. He can’t stomach a loss, even if it’s in something as meaningless as a carnival game you only wanted to play for the giant dinosaur plushie that’s half the size of you. 

He always ends up giving it to you when he inevitably wins, wearing a big smug smile on his pretty, pink lips. You take it from him with a pout. The childlike scowl is quelled only by the funnel cake he buys you after.

It doesn’t matter what it is — a game of monopoly, trivia questions on the ends of popsicle sticks, taking in the groceries — Steve finds a way to make all of it competitive. He wants to have the most fake money and little fake properties, he wants to shout the answer before anyone else can, he wants to carry more heavy plastic bags than everyone else. Just to say that he did it.

If you put this much effort into school, you’d be in college right now, Harrington, you’d tease.

Not my fault you’re a sore loser, he’d retort. I’ll let you win the next one, sunshine. Promise.

He never does.

You and Steve play-wrestle like a couple of kids. It usually comes out of nowhere. You’ll make fun of him, he’ll shove at you, and you’ll shove back harder. Then it just turns into a game of who’s stronger than who — and it’s always him. Obviously. 

You try your hardest to prove your strength, pushing at him with nimble fists and wriggling something fierce in his hold, but you come out red-faced with a participation ribbon laced within his taunts. And even though he’s got several inches on you and quite a bit more muscle, he never lets you win. Ever.

He manhandles you, perhaps a little too rough at times, but it wasn’t like he had to be kind to you. You weren’t dating or anything, you were best friends — this is what a couple of pals do, right?

They play fight on the carpet of the other’s movie room after being told their closest confidant would murder them in a game of fuck, marry, kill between Anthony Michael Hall and Robert Downey Jr. with zero hesitation.

Friends totally force the other onto the ground by grabbing at the bottoms of their thighs before kneeling over them, wrenching their wrists in their grip and pressing their hands to the ground on either their head.

It’s the definition of being best buds. Truly.

For the first time, you manage to get the better of him. You’re pressed beneath his weight, breathing heavy and rapidly tiring, and you wave the white flag of surrender.

Just when Steve’s letting you up and swiping a hand through his mussed hair, you force him onto his back and straddle his waist — like he always did to you — and giggle with mirth at the idea of finally beating him.

He doesn’t find a similar enthusiasm in it, though. His tune changes almost immediately.

You beam down at him, the words of a taunt on the tip of your tongue, and you notice how his cheeks flare pink. His honey-colored eyes widen and his mouth falls softly agape. He glows red in embarrassment and you think he’s just upset that he lost, but he sounds like he’s panicking. The words rush out of his mouth — “Alright, shit, fine— you win, sunshine. Get off, alright? Off, off, off.” 

His hand swats at the side of your knee to hurry you off him.

“Alright, jeez!” you concede with the roll of your eyes, halfway annoyed that he just can’t let you win anything. “You don’t have to be such a sore loser about it, Harrington—”

You understand his haste in that moment, when you feel him brush your inner thigh. Like, all of him — as in, the boner trapped in the sweatpants he’s wearing, all rock hard and raging in its cotton confines.

Suddenly, you’re just as bashful and panicked as he is. 

Your eyes lock at the rock hard realization but neither of you can think of anything to say.

Do you apologize? Do you act like you didn’t feel anything? Do you trust your voice to make a stupid joke so you can move on and forget any of this ever happened? You’re not quite sure.

And in the five-second silence, Steve just wants to die. Internally, he’s praying for a strike of lightning to take him out on the spot because he’s never been more embarrassed in his life.

He’s certain that he’s grossed you out, or worse, made you irreversibly uncomfortable.

In the mess of thoughts running through his head, he tries to rush out some apology that might soothe the awkward air. Your laughter does all the work for him before he can.

It bubbles like sunshine from your mouth, filling the silence and allowing Steve to breathe again. He finds himself chuckling under his breath with you, though he’s still red-faced about it.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Keep laughing, sunshine,” he chides with the roll of his eyes, though a smile hints at the edges of his mouth. He rises on his elbows to look at you. “What was I supposed to do? Your tits were in my face and your ass was on my dick— sorry for being human!”

“Sorry, alright? I’m sorry,” you manage through hearty giggles. You settle finally at his side and look over at him, still grinning. “Want me to leave so you can… take care of it or whatever?”

He knows you’re joking but he shakes his head anyway. “Nah, it’ll go away. Let’s just… finish this stupid movie.”

“Stupid movie? You picked it!”

“Yeah, so I could see Kelly Lebrock in a bikini!” he argues back, more thankful for the familiar bickering than he ever thought he’d be. “But you made me miss it!”

“It’s not my fault you can’t keep your hands to yourself.”

“Watch it, sunshine,” he grumbles, half-heatedly. “Don’t start something you can’t finish.”

“I think you’re the one who needs to worry about finishing, Harrington,” you joke and giggle when he shoves you.

You would’ve helped him, if he wanted you to. You know it’s uncomfortable and that it’s partially your fault. You also know that all of those are just excuses to cover up the fact that you’ve always wondered what his cock looks like.

He’d need only ask you, but you know that he won’t.

Even if he did like you in that way, it’d just make things all complicated. And that was totally the opposite of the effortless relationship you’ve developed with him. The kind of effortless where he can be rock hard next to you, and you’ve both decided to just move on from it.

Steve, meanwhile, spends the rest of the movie not watching a single damn minute of it. He’s too busy trying to calm himself down like a teenage boy and figuring out he can get you on top of him again without being too obvious about the whole thing.

He decides he might just start swallowing his pride and let you win sometimes.