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With his head in Robin’s lap, her fingers stroking through his hair, and The Breakfast Club playing softly on the TV, Steve feels truly at peace. They’d had a long day at work, and it’s heaven to just come back home and unwind. They’d already eaten dinner, just a reheated lasagna, but it was warm and filling and Steve can’t really ask for anything better, not when he gets to have this.
Robin plays with his hair, scratching her nails across his scalp like she knows he likes. It’s not unusual for them to do this, but they haven’t had the opportunity to in a while, since she’s been busy with school and Steve’s been picking up more shifts. It’s nice to just sink into the comfort of her lap and rest easy knowing that Robin’s got him.
Even when her fingers snag on his hair, it doesn’t break him out of the haze. It feels good, the little pricks of pain enough to spark through his veins but not to make him truly uncomfortable. He lets himself surrender to it, the movie becoming background noise as he focuses on the feeling of Robin’s fingers, sinking deeper every time she accidentally pulls.
The silence is broken when Robin shifts under him like she’s going to stand up. “Gonna get another drink,” she whispers to him.
He just groans and nuzzles deeper into her thigh. “Comfy…”
She chuckles fondly. “I know, but I gotta get up, okay?” She starts to move again, and he once again stops her, bringing a hand up this time to hold onto her leg.
“Nooo,” he mumbles. “Don’t wanna.”
She rolls her eyes and gives his hair a sharp tug, playful but still harder than she’d been doing before. “Behave, Steve. Now let me up, unless you wanna go and get it for me yourself.”
He gasps when she yanks his hair again. It feels different when it’s on purpose, and she keeps hold of it the whole time she’s talking, not letting up until she hears an answer from him. It’s making his brain go all fuzzy, the pain giving him a headrush, the heaviness spreading from his head down to his body like a bathbomb in water. “Okay,” he says mindlessly.
Robin loosens her grip. “Okay?”
Steve nods, wrenching his eyes open, because he can’t succumb to the sinking feeling right now. He has a task. He lurches up from the couch, ignoring the headrush from being vertical again after lying down for so long. “I’ll get it for you.”
He makes his way to the kitchen, opens the fridge, gets her another Coke, and walks back to give it to her, all without consciously considering what he’s doing and why. He could’ve just kept lying there on the couch and stayed all comfortable and sleepy. But Robin had given him something to do for her, and he loves doing things for her. So why wouldn’t he take the opportunity to make her happy?
When he hands her the Coke, she just stares at it in confusion before smiling at him. “Thanks,” she says, popping it open and taking a sip. She pats her thighs and gives him a look when he just continues standing there. “What are you waiting for? Get back here.”
With the clear instruction, Steve knows it’s good to lay back down and rest his head on her lap again. He’s rewarded with her fingers carding through his hair, now a little colder and wetter because of the condensation on the can. Robin hums, pleased now that she has her soda and her movie and her best friend, and Steve can’t help but hum back, pressing back up into her hands to encourage her to pet him more.
They settle into relaxing again, Robin watching the movie and Steve floating in that strange space between awake and asleep. After a while, Robin switches from just stroking his hair to twisting it around her fingers, which feels better than ever because of the sharp zings of pain that it gives him. He sighs contentedly and settles into her lap.
“Steve,” she whispers, some time later, after she’s twisted up all the hair she can reach and then some. “Sit up, I gotta go to the bathroom.”
He sits up without argument, too hazy to even think of talking back. She leaves, and he listens to the toilet flushing and the sink running until she comes back, staying in the exact position she put him in.
“Steve?” She asks, coming closer to stand in front of him. “Are you okay?”
He nods, eyes slipping closed now that Robin’s back and he can relax.
Her hands cup his cheeks. “Open your eyes for me?”
He obeys, staring blankly at her freckles as she pulls his face from side to side. “Big pupils…” she mutters to herself. “You’re not high, are you? Did you drink anything tonight? Take anything?”
Steve blinks. “High?” He shakes his head, the question nonsensical to him right now. “No, I didn’t… no, nothing.”
That answer doesn’t seem to satisfy her. “There’s no drugs in the house…” She keeps talking to herself, like Steve can’t hear her. To be fair, it’s not like he’s really comprehending it right now. “Did you break into your dad’s liquor? When would you even have had time to do that, we’ve been hanging out all day!”
“Wha’?” Steve murmurs, watching her pace around and look in all the cupboards like she’ll find the answer in one of them.
“Are you sure you didn’t take anything?” She asks again, striding back over to him and leaning down to make eye contact.
“Uh-huh,” he nods, too intimidated by her frantic energy to make words happen.
“But then why are you… Do you feel, like, weird?”
It takes him too long to think of an answer, which is maybe an answer in itself. He shrugs and says, “Feels good.”
“Feels good?” Robin exclaims. “So you did take something!”
“No, no, I didn’t take anything,” he explains, her panic starting to wake him up from his haze. “I’m just… comfortable. Relaxing.”
She squints at him suspiciously. “You don’t look like this any other time we’re relaxing.”
He flushes. “It, um… it felt really good when you played with my hair.”
She barks out an incredulous laugh. “So you look high right now because I petted you like a dog?”
Steve blushes hard and lets out a squeak, because he hadn’t been thinking about it like that, but… she’s right. He had been letting his best friend pet him like a lapdog and loving it.
“Oh my god, you do!” She crows. “You like it!” She pauses, her face screwing up. “Oh, ew. You like like it.”
Steve’s brow creases. “I like like… Oh! God no, not like that!”
It genuinely hadn’t even occurred to him to connect this to anything sexual, even though now that he thinks on it, the only other time other people have pulled his hair has been in bed. Robin is just so far removed from that in his mind that it feels alien to put her in that category, as adjacent as it might be.
Robin stops, evaluating him. “So… it’s just a sensation thing for you? Or something?”
“I guess?” Steve shrugs. He’s almost entirely out of that headspace now, and it’s not like he even knew that it could happen or what it was. “It really did just feel good. And when you pulled it too, that was really nice.”
“Really? It didn't hurt?” Robin seems skeptical, but not in a bad way. “I'd think that would snap you out of it, if anything.”
Steve shakes his head. “No, it's… I mean, it did hurt, but in a good way. Made me feel even better.”
“Huh.” Robin looks pensive, eyeing him curiously. “So you have a thing for pain?”
“No!” Steve shouts instinctively, before thinking back to how good it felt when she pulled his hair, and how much he liked when Nancy had clawed at his back, and how he always thought that the girls he slept with could stand to leave a few more hickies. “...Oh. I… I guess I do.”
“Congrats, dingus.” Robin claps a hand on his shoulder.
Steve snorts. “Thanks, I guess.”
She sits down on the couch next to him. “So…”
“So?” Steve echoes.
“What now?”
Steve blinks. How is he supposed to know? “I don't know.”
She rolls her eyes. “Should we, like, talk about this? Do you wanna keep doing it?”
“Oh.” Steve’s cheeks warm as he thinks about feeling that way again, on purpose this time. “Yeah, I think I do.”
“You want me to keep pulling your hair?”
He nods. “I liked how you were doing it earlier.”
“Like this?” And just like that, her hand is at the back of his head, gathering up the hair there and pulling gently.
“Y-yeah,” Steve stutters, the pain making his mouth drop open involuntarily. “You could — you could go harder if you want.”
Robin hums and relaxes her grip only to grab a bigger chunk of hair and yank. Steve can't help but let out a sound between a gasp and a moan.
“So that's good, then,” she says conversationally.
“You're taking this very well,” Steve says once he's recovered from his embarrassment at almost moaning in front of his best friend. “Aren't you gonna make fun of me or something?”
Robin shrugs. “I dunno, it's kinda fun. Seeing what reaction I can get out of you.”
“What am I, a game to you?” Steve complains, a smile tugging at his mouth.
Robin grins mischievously. “More like a toy.” And doesn't that make him feel something. Not quite arousal, not quite pleasure. Excitement, maybe? Satisfaction? “Just gotta find all your buttons,” she continues, oblivious to his inner thoughts.
“Well, you've found one of them,” Steve says, trying his best to hold a coherent conversation through all of the new things happening to him right now.
“Anything else you can think of?” Robin asks.
His mind goes truly blank. “Uh… I don't know. I guess you can just try stuff and I'll tell you if I like it?”
“Well, I don't want to hurt you if you're not gonna like it,” Robin frowns. “I don't want you to be in, like, actual pain because of me. That would be…”
“I know, Robbie.” Steve engulfs her in a hug, trying to take her mind off of what they're both remembering. “I'm asking you to, okay? We won't know if we don't try. And my pain tolerance is pretty high anyway.”
She pulls back from the hug and quickly wipes under her eyes. “Okay, okay. Just make sure to tell me right away if it's bad, okay?”
“I promise,” Steve says solemnly.
Robin lets out a shaky breath. “Okay.”
“Okay,” Steve repeats with a smile.
“So… is there anything you want to try right now?” Robin asks.
“I kind of just want to go back to what we were doing before,” Steve admits. “It was just… nice.”
“Yeah?” Robin says, the smile returning to her face. She pats her lap, inviting him to return, and he does, shifting until his head is back on her legs.
“Yeah,” he breathes contentedly as she starts petting him again. “Feels really good. Warm. Safe.”
“I'm glad.” She continues petting him, pulling his hair a little harder now that she knows he likes it. Her nails scrape against him too, and that feels just as good.
“Nails feels good too,” he tells her in a mumble.
“You want head scratches?” Robin proceeds to give him just that, focusing on a spot behind his ear that has him craning his neck to get closer to her. She laughs. “God, you really are just like a dog.”
Steve whines and buries his face in her stomach. That hazy feeling is coming back, and it's making words harder than usual to put together.
“Hey, that's not a bad thing,” Robin says. “It's kinda cute.”
Steve grumbles to save face. “‘M not cute.”
Robin snorts. “Yes you are, especially like this. You make a good dog.”
A good dog…
The phrase bounces around Steve’s head, the combo of that and the gentle pain bringing him down to that hazy headspace faster than anything has before. He wants to be her good dog maybe more than he’s wanted anything ever in his life, which sounds like a lot until you realize that she’s Robin and he’s Steve and then it just makes sense, doesn’t it? Or at least it does in his head.
He sighs happily and nuzzles into her lap, letting his thoughts float away to where they can’t distract him from the sensation of hands in his hair and scratches on his scalp. His world doesn’t need to be anything but that feeling — at least for the rest of the night.