𝐆rease, a little romance and the breakfast club, Those are the three movies you always rented.

Steve found it a little weird at first, how you nervously counter each dollar out to yourself before sliding them all over and then sliding the vhs tapes into your tote bag.

He recognized you from school, a grade below him, always dressed in toned down colors to hide yourself away from the loudness of the rest of Hawkins high. He remembered when you sat alone at lunch, head in a book and a Walkman attached to your waist.

You were nothing but a mystery to everyone around you but you were one that nobody tried to figure out.

But school was behind him now and so were all the labels he had forced on himself as well as others. Now you were just some girl who he couldn’t help but watch as you searched the color coded Shelves.

You had started coming in a little after he and Robin got jobs at the video store. You would stay there for hours on no end, sometimes his entire shift just walking around, he didn’t find it annoying like Keith did, he didn’t find it kind of weird like Robin did.

He thought it was interesting.

Sometimes he talked to you, made a joke, one that always managed to get the corners of your lips to pull up slightly. He started taking small parts of you in, the way you always managed to smell like pinecone and vanilla, the way your cheeks turned a baby pink when you noticed him staring.

You were so incredibly hard not to swoon over, maybe that was just Steve though.

Even with his streak of dates lately, he was too nervous to ask you out, every time he opened his mouth once you finally checked out, he closed it again just as quick.

Whenever Robin asked if he had done it yet, he would make up excuses, saying that you seemed upset that day or you were in a rush.

But that ended today, he promised he would ask you out and he has ten dollars riding on it.

He just had to get it over with, rejection or acceptance.