movies; steve harrington

two

It was the way that he looked at her.

That was the reason she was now trying so desperately to stare into the page before her instead of his eyes, and read off the words like she was a robot designed to say them with zero emotion."So when you multiply X," she continued explaining the process to Steve, but he wasn't paying her much mind.

For the first half of their study session, Jasmine had helped Steve color code his equations based on his level of understanding so that he could go back and practice in order of priority. She had been present, physically and mentally, aware, and she'd been enthused to help Steve with his studies.

That changed. Fast. Now, she was staring at the contents of a textbook, not doodling on Steve's page absentmindedly as she read. She was bland, not making eye contact or engaging in extra conversation like she normally would have. Steve, much like Jasmine seemed to be, was stuck in his thoughts, drifting out what felt like every second she continued with her unusual behavior. She was, however, here. She was present and knew of her odd behavior, opting to stare at the page instead of at Steve. It was a very conscious behavior. If she unfocused she knew she'd look up. At him.

It was after Jasmine finished speaking that she looked up at Steve. She noticed something was particularly off when she had asked him a question and he didn't have half a mind to respond in any capacity. Jasmine allowed her eyes to focus on him, only in concern. "Steve?"

He slowly came back, now focusing on her as she was him. She quickly buried her face back in the book with a clear of her throat like nothing odd had happened when he looked at her. "Did you hear what I said?" He'd hardly heard her with her not facing him, but he heard her well enough to respond this time.

"Uh no - sorry." Jasmine wrote it off as Steve thinking about Nancy and getting caught in his head - that was what seemed most plausible. That was what made the most sense.

"Is this statement true or false?" As she spoke, she highlighted the statement she spoke of with a green highlighter.

"False," he didn't pay much attention, taking in as little information as he could to throw out the answer he believed to be correct.

"You're missing something," she observed. "Read it one more time."

The behavior. Steve couldn't place where he seemed to have gone wrong with the interaction. He couldn't have known that when she was entirely focused on the page, he was staring at her with an emotion neither of them could quite explain. And when she looked up for even a flash of a second, she saw it.

Maybe she was overreacting, he just broke up with Nancy, she repeated. Over and over again. But the thought that maybe he was thinking of her in the way she was thinking of him - it scared her. Jasmine didn't imagine she'd ever be this close to Steve Harrington, that she could be, but here she was.

**

The first couple months were everything.

It didn't take the two long to finally start a relationship, and when it did happen, no one was really surprised. Jasmine was never extremely popular per se, but she wasn't hated. No one really cared, in complete honesty, except for the immediate friend groups of the two.

Tommy didn't hang around Steve much anymore, and he was really one of the only people Steve had considered a "friend." Until he met Jasmine's friends of course; they immediately took him in and loved him like a family. They were considerate without the attempts to pry into his home life, and he respected them much more than anyone else who went to Hawkin's High.

Steve and Jasmine were close those first couple months, walking each other to class, sitting impossibly close to each other at lunch, and their friends ate it up. Comments of "you guys are so cute" and "I wish I had someone like you" surrounded them all of the time. And they loved it. They were almost perfect and enviable, they had what everyone desired and it was amazing.