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require-we-meeting-use · 21 days

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hi bug! Can I request you a ditzy or shy!reader where some girl flirts with Steve in front of her maybe at Family Video? Little angsty because she feels insicure of herself? Thank you🩷

ty for requesting!! — steve doesn't realize he's being flirted with because he's so in love with you (ditzy!fem!r, hurt/comfort, 1.6k)

You color in a scribbled heart with enough vigor to break the pink crayon in your hand.

Steve always hangs your drawings in his locker in the Family Video break room, so you tend to take your art pretty seriously. ‘Cause there’s absolutely nothing humorous about the two stick figures holding hands — each of them vaguely resembling the both of you — that you’re passionately scribbling behind the front counter.

He’d watch you work your magic on a piece of lined scrap paper if he could. He’s too busy tending to a regular now. Mia, he thinks, or maybe Maia. She rents movies every week, but according to the system, she doesn’t watch a single one of them.

“Well, what do you recommend?” she questions with a smirk on her painted lips, leaning her elbows on the counter until her chest juts out.

Steve leans slowly backward and tries not to cough at the overwhelming scent of her fruity perfume. “Uh… I don’t know,” he answers with an unenthusiastic shrug. “I usually just watch whatever.”

The girl squints her dolled-up eyes. “You don’t have a favorite movie?”

Steve ponders the question for a moment. ‘Cause he doesn’t have one, really. All his favorite films are your favorites because he spends the majority of movie nights watching you instead.

So, at a loss of how to answer, he tells her your first choice. “The Star Wars movies are pretty alright.”

“Do you have them here?” she wonders.

Steve nods and points her in the other direction. “Yeah. In the Sci-Fi section.”

“Can you show me?” the girl questions with a hopeful glint in her pale eyes. Everything about her sparkles with mischief, like a predator hunting for prey. Stealthy, like a ninja, Steve would’ve called the approach a couple years ago. Long before he found you.

He’s more into forthright proclamations of love these days — bubblegum pink lipstick stains pressed to his cheek and handmade pictures drawn in crayon.

But, for the sake of Keith totally reaming him for not helping a customer, Steve nods and rounds the front counter. “Uh. Yeah. Sure. Follow me,” he urges halfheartedly, sparing you a forlorn glance as he goes. You’re much too distracted to see it, though.

You’re too distracted to notice most things, really.

That’s why Robin’s angrier than you are about the whole thing. She exhales a big huff and stands across from you, peering over the tower of tapes there. “God, he’s so oblivious,” she groans.

Your hand freezes as you color in Steve’s vest. You glance up at her with wide eyes, heart sinking at the annoyed look on her freckled features. “Huh?”

“Steve. That girl’s been drooling over him for five minutes, and he hasn’t even realized.”

Your brows pinch. “What girl?”

“The one that’s hanging all over him,” Robin answers, nodding her head to the other side of the store. The girl in question lingers at Steve’s side, a little too close to be casual. She hangs on every word he says — which certainly can’t be a whole lot, considering he knows next to nothing about that Star Wars franchise.

“I thought she was just being nice,” you shrug.

“She was flirting with your boyfriend,” Robin corrects in a monotone. “It was disgusting. I’m pretty sure her flirt got all over my pants.”

You look back at the two across the room. Steve tenses when the pretty redhead presses her chest against his arm. For the sake of not making things totally awkward, he forces himself not to shrink away. What had seemed virtually innocuous to you now makes your stomach ache.

“She’s so pretty…” you observe quietly to yourself.

Robin only scoffs. “Yeah. If you’re into girls like that.”

You don’t know exactly what she means, but it makes you lean slightly forward in interest anyway. “Do you think… Do you think Steve’s into girls like that?”

“No,” Robin answers, features twisted like it’s obvious. “He’s into girls like you.”

For the first time ever, you find that slightly hard to believe. Why would Steve ever pick you over someone like her? The way she smiles is pretty. The way she laughs is pretty. Even the way she talks is pretty.

And what do you have? A couple of stupid crayon portraits?

A strange feeling sears your chest when Steve and the pretty girl walk back to the counter. He must’ve told her a joke or something ‘cause she tips back her head to laugh loudly in response. Jealous tears sting your eyes accordingly. You take your art and your box of dull crayons and scurry off to the break room.

“I can help you check out!” Robin offers, suddenly very chipper.

The redhead’s face twists. “Oh. I thought that—”

“Steve’s needed in the breakroom, actually,” Robin tells her when the stranger’s pleading eyes flit to the boy beside her. “I can handle it from here.”

“Wait— What’s in the breakroom?” he wonders obliviously.

“Your girlfriend, dingus.”

Steve blinks once. The sudden lack of your presence makes his chest ache. He stalks off to find you without another word.

The redhead, Mia or Maia or whatever, doesn’t bother to disguise the shock painting her dainty features. “Girlfriend?” she echoes, quiet with disbelief.

Robin nods and takes the tapes from her hands, knowing she’s only renting them ‘cause she thought Steve liked them. The scanner beeps as she rings them up. “Yeah. He’s kinda in love with her, turns out. It’s disgusting.”

The conversation fades the further Steve gets down the hall. He opens the door to the back room with a grating squeak. The rusted hinges screech again in protest when he swings it shut behind him. He finds you slouched over the table, vehemently scribbling with vibrantly colored crayons.

He can’t help but smile at the sight of you. “Whatcha doin’?” he lilts in place of a greeting, sliding back a chair to sit across from you.

“Nothin’…” you mutter distantly.

Steve folds his arms over the tabletop and rests his chin on top of them. It bobs with every word. “Why’d you leave me, huh?”

You shrug with a faint I don’t know type of sound.

“Can I see what you’re drawing, at least?”

He grins and reaches for you without thinking — because you always let him see. Needless to say, when flinch suddenly away from him, it scares him far more than it should. You scramble to cover the paper with your arms like you’re doing something wrong.

“No,” you answer in a mousy voice.

A chuckle spills from Steve’s mouth. “What? Why? You always show me.”

“It’s stupid…”

“It’s not stupid! I love when you draw stuff for me,” the boy insists with a lopsided smile, distantly surprised by your sheepishness. The pretty pink grin slips from his mouth at the crestfallen glint in your eye. He softens without thinking. “What’s wrong? What happened? Did— Did Robin say something?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

You avert your eyes from his prying ones, feeling half-suffocated beneath his honeyed gaze. You start to color again with an absentminded hand, if only to have something else to look at. “You’re just…” you trail off, shifting uncomfortably in your chair. “You’re too pretty.”

He laughs before he means to. “What?”

“You’re pretty, and I don’t like that other people get to look at you,” you confess quietly, coloring in Steve’s hair with the ‘deep golden’ crayon. “It’s not fair— No one else should think you’re as beautiful as I do. I don’t like that.”

Steve props his chin on his palm and hides his grin behind his fingers. He reaches for your busy hand with his free one to get your attention. “Well, you know what?” he starts when your eyes flit up to his. “You’re the only one I want looking at me. So what everyone else thinks doesn’t really matter.”

“It is when they’re drooling all over you,” you answer with a scrunched nose.

Steve can’t help but scoff out a laugh. Those words have Robin Buckley written all over them.

“Last I heard, Rob was giving that girl what for, so… you don’t have to worry about that anymore,” he tells you, both to soothe the misplaced jealousy and to make you smile. He thinks it only half works. “Can I tell you a secret?”

You perk up at that. Steve grins and leans in close like he’s about to confess something serious. His dark eyes twinkle with mischief.

“I’m so stupid in love with you that I forget other girls exist sometimes,” he murmurs in true secret-spilling fashion. “And when they’re… drooling all over me? I don’t even see it. ‘Cause all I’m thinking about is how I have my own girl back home. And that I’d much rather have her drooling on me.”

“…Am I the girl?” you press in a tiny voice, just to be sure.

“Yes, baby, I’m talking about you,” Steve chuckles. “You should know that— You’rethe one drooling on my pillow every morning.”

Your nose scrunches sheepishly. “You’ve said that word too many times… It doesn’t sound real anymore.”

“What’s that called again?”

“Semantic satiation,” you answer without missing a beat.

“Well, now I’m gonna tell you I love you ’til you’re semantically satiated,” the boy teases with a knowing squint in his eyes. “‘Cause I love you.”

“Steve.”

“I love you.”

“Stop,” you say, sterner now, though your gaze still glimmers with something soft. Your eyes follow his form when he rises from the table, shifting the short distance to sit in the chair closest to you. “Steve, stop—”

“I love you,” he repeats, anyway, taking you into his arms and smacking a dramatic kiss to your warm cheek. Between each innocuous peck, he mumbles, “I love you— I love you— I love you—”

Steve doesn’t stop kissing you until he hears you giggling again. The pretty sound brightens the dull breakroom. And all he can think about is what a lucky schmuck he is. To get to kiss you and make you laugh forever.

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