Summary: Steven falls asleep on you. No… I mean literally on you.
Reader: fem! Vagina-owner. She/her pronouns. Gendered language e.g. girl, pretty.
Author’s note: I couldn’t resist a second bash at Steven. I adore him Written largely before Ep2, so it’s Ep1-centric.
Genre: one-shot, fluff, pining, meet cute, silliness, but also angst I’M SORRY. Definite angst. (If you don’t want the angst and think ignorance is bliss, stop reading at the heading “the next day” for a far fluffier experience. Either version should feel complete.)
Rating:Mature for mentions of sex. NO SMUT.
Warnings: EPISODE 1 SPOILERS. Mentions of: memory lapses / time-skipping / sleep disorders - inc. insomnia, night terrors (reader). Loneliness. Sex references (nothing explicit). Swearing. Rejection themes. Not proofed very well.
“Ohgod no,” you hiss, upon seeing the limp torso of the stranger in the row opposite you begin to cant dangerously towards the aisle. The priorly sleepy (now sleeping) stranger has been nodding off intermittently for the whole bus journey so far, causing his pretty curls to bounce and flop over his forehead in a way which has kept drawing your eye.
If you don’t intervene soon, however, the crumpled heap of him on the floor will be drawing your eye, as the bus zooms dangerously fast around a loose corner. And so, you urgently shuffle your bum to the aisle-edge of your seat, stretching your arm out across the space to nudge the man into a more upright position. Your palm contacts his arm gently, but with enough force to redirect his centre of balance; just right.
It’s often amusing to watch someone fall asleep on public transport, you think. The gradual head loll, followed by the sudden jerking awake? The embarrassed look around - sometimes an abrupt, rough snore snatching them awake, the kerfuffle resulting in covertly passed laughter - little bundles of joy spread between the other passengers with a stifled laugh behind a palm here, and mirth-sparkled eye contact there? Cracking entertainment, that. At least, it is when you’re out of data for the month and can’t watch videos of cats taking baths to amuse you on the route home. However, with this guy… it’s simply not funny. The sheer aura of despondency he wears like a cloak sees to that. All you want to do is hug him. Sing him a lullaby. He looks flat enough, deflated enough, that you could lie him on your floor and use him as a bath mat. Of course, apart from those persistent, voluminous curls.
But, it’s more than that. There’s something else about him which means you’re simply not laughing.
Instead, you’re… looking.
Is it his infeasibly long lashes, fanning out over his cheek? The set of his sharp jaw bobbing gradually towards his chest? His broad hands, resting - palms up - against his denim-clad thighs?
You snatch your eyes away. Christ. You’re sure this can’t be right. You don’t think it’s illegal, but surely it can’t be right to - effectively - watch someone sleeping, can it? Without their knowledge? Even on a bus, there’s surely rules for that sort of thing?
Regardless, for the sake of his physical safety (quite aside from any -ahem- personalmotivations you may have), you’ve been keeping a pretty close eye over in his direction ever since he’d boarded. You’d watched him shuffle aboard the bus, immediately dropping his Oyster card on the floor, and almost losing the lid off that bright pink, heart-shaped box of chocolates - currently tucked under one elbow - while he bent to retrieve it. He’d practically gone full Frank Spencer.
Well.Typical Steven, you’d thought to yourself as you saw the scene unfold. This poor bugger can never seem to catch a break.
Oh, yes, that’s right - you do know his name.
And whilst he’s technically a stranger, in that you’ve never been formally introduced, you know a fair few other things about him too.
One thing that came to mind as I re-watched Moon Knight today is that Steven isn’t aware that he has DID. He knows he has blackouts and that ‘his body goes for a wander’ but he doesn’t know that he has a whole other personality (Marc) in his head, along with a hitchhiker (Konshu). It seemed to me that the scene in his flat where Marc tries to warn him off and then in the bathroom where Marc asks to take over is the first time Steven has become aware that there’s more going on with his blackouts that just him losing time and occasionally waking up somewhere odd. (Though it does appear that the waking up in another country in the middle of a heist is a bit of a first. It sounded like the previous times he’s at least woken up in London.)
Marc and Konshu obviously know that there’s three of them in that head, which Marc seems to have accepted (given that he gets Steven a date - even if he then screws up said date - and that he tries to replace Gus so that Steven won’t notice) and Konshu is irritated by it, but Steven seems to be the odd man out. Or he was.
