“i’m never more at peace than i am in your arms.” with Steven Grant
Pairing: Steven Grant x Reader
Word Count: 887
A/N: Just opened up my askbox for some requests!
Warnings: fluff, hurt/comfort if you squint, poorly-edited
The service had been a lovely one. The reception even lovelier.
The reception is even lovelier.
Having stepped outside of the venue and into the cooled heat of the summer night for a moment’s rest from the festivities, you feel as if it was all a memory, a misfiring of neurons that made you believe that the day had truly happened.
You’re tired, tuckered out. The type that only comes from not eating enough and feeling too much.
Your bones ache, there’s a film of something stuck to your skin and inside your lungs. You’ve spent too much of the day outside, with too many people you’d spend at most an hour with.
A grating static is littered like chalk dust inside your mind. The more you try to wipe it away the worse it gets.
A rumble of laughter flows out from the open window, and it goes straight to your head in the worst of ways.
It’s a horrid combination of too many things that, each one in moderation, would be alright to handle but put together like this are too much at once.
You’re oversaturated.
There’s an increase and decrease in noise as the door opens and closes, the bit of a drag on the second step that lets you know that everything is going to be alright, that you no longer need to struggle to keep the cracking mask on.
“Hiya love,” his voice is warm, like the sun. “Everything alright? Lost each other in there, didn’t we? For a bit.” His arm comes to curl around your waist, he pulls you close to him.
Everything is alright now.
Guilt crawls up your throat at the poorly-hidden worry in his voice, “Sorry about that.” He’s wearing the cologne you got him for Valentine’s three years ago. He’s on his second bottle now. “Didn’t mean to run off.”
“Well you didn’t go very far,” Steven shrugs. The movement against your own body is a redemption in itself. There’s a purr of laughter around his voice, “If anything I’d say it was a piss-poor attempt at running off.”
You smile and laugh, breathing coming to you a little bit easier now that his body is warming yours up, now that it’s just the two of you again. “Didn’t take you long to find me.”
He shrugs again. You suppose there isn’t an answer to that anyways, the pull between you and Steven inexplicable, though entirely tangible to the both of you.
“You feelin’ alright, though, dearie? Somethin’ on your mind?” His free hand presses against your forehead, the side of your face. There’s a dimple between his eyebrows.
You turn and look up at him, pressing the length of your body into his side. Even the rub of the fabric of his pants against your skin is enough, the truth of his own skin underneath shining through it all like seaglass.
You know for a fact there’s a dopey grin on your face. Your arms come to circle around his neck like Saturn’s rings, your fingers come to play with the ends of his hair, “Just you.”
“You wanna go home? Really, I wouldn’t mind, the band was gettin’ a bit on my nerves if I’m being honest,” he turns away for a moment, his voice dropping to a grumbling tone like it always does when he complains. “Don’t know what kinda stick that trumpeter's got up his arse but he’d be doing us all a good favour if he took it out and threw it far, far-.”
“Steven,” your voice isn’t harsh, a gentle callback to the moment between you two that existed free of any trumpets. “I’m alright now,” you cup his cheek, gaze into the coffee cups of his eyes. He’s more concerned than you initially took it for, his light-hearted teasing a paper-thin veil. “Just needed a breather.”
“You sure you don’t wanna go? It’ll be much nicer at home, Gus’ll be there n’all.”
Steven loves live music, despite his complaints. He’s notorious for being the life of the dance floor whenever you two go out, and his eyes are still twinkling, the need to dance still present in his soul like a blossoming tulip.
“I'm never more at peace than when I’m in your arms…when I’m with you,” you smile, trace the ridges and grooves of his nose, press your thumb into the prominent pockmark on his left cheek, right above his mouth. “Thanks for coming and finding me.”
“‘Course honey, ‘course,” he swallows, tightens his grip on you a little. “You really wanna stay?”
You nod, “I think I’ve got an hour or two left in me.”
He doesn’t stray from your side once after that, sweat dampening his forehead as he spins and spins to the music he seemingly hated. In something beyond your soul, his presence is steady and quiet like a rusted anchor.
Steven’s hand is warm and soothing in yours, his voice hoarse and scratched an hour later, after you’ve said your goodbyes and are heading out.
Your feet ache a little. For some reason, the nails of your hands are throbbing. Your soul is calm, soothed.
As always, all you really needed was Steven.
And Steven always came to you.
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