Chapter Text
A little-known fact about Steven James Harrington, his parents weren't home often. They were always off on some business trip or vacation. He supposed it wasn't bad. At least his dad wasn't there to hit him for not reading fast enough or hold his head under the water of the pool when he spaced out too long or started several projects at once.
See, James and Vanessa Harrington had wanted a perfect son. Smart, athletic, charismatic, good-looking, a real staple of the perfect American family. Someone to take over the family corporation after college, someone to marry a good girl from a prominent family, someone to continue the Harrington name, someone to keep the family in the good graces and spotlight of high society.
Unfortunately, they had not gotten that. Instead, they had gotten a dud (their words, not his). They had gotten their athletic son, yes, but Steve couldn't read to save his life, his science grades were subpar at best, his math was atrocious. The only thing he was decent at was history, because it interested him enough that he didn't space out. He was charismatic, yes, somewhat good-looking, but he wasn't smart, he never had been. He spaced out constantly, could never focus on one task for longer than a day, was failing a majority of his classes, and had lost the best girlfriend in all of Hawkins. If his parents were home more often, he would have been punished for sure. But since they were never home, they didn't have to know that he was flunking his classes, or that he had lost Nancy Wheeler to Jonathan Byers, or that he had lost his crown to Billy Hargrove. They didn't have to know any of that. And he supposed he was all the better for it.
He just didn't understand how people like Nancy and Jonathan read in their free time. Was it fun for them? Was it fun to chase the letters around the page as they moved and swapped and morphed together and melted into puddles of ink? Because it honestly gave him a headache. Was if fun to have to force themselves to stay focused? To tell their brains 'No, no. We do not need to go see how well the silverware is organized in the drawer or start a new sketch or clean the house. We need to be reading the Hobbit, you dingus' every time they tried to read a chapter of a book? He didn't understand how people like Nancy and Barb (God rest her soul) and Jonathan had all made it look so... easy to learn. He had begun to think that he was defective. Like his brain was the single model that had a production issue.
That was another thing. Steven James Harrington had ridiculously low self-esteem. Everyone just... assumed that he would be this confident, preppy jock who ignored the haters or tore them down, but that wasn't the truth. Truth was, he took all of the mean rumors and sayings that people had ever made up about him straight to the heart. If it was something that was repeated over and over again, then it slowly became a truth in his mind. For example, every time someone had ever called him a 'dumb jock' or 'muscles for brains' or 'stupid'. He could no longer deny that he was completely and utterly brainless. He was the dumbest member of the Party, for sure, and everyone loved to remind him about it.
He had always been a people pleaser, he supposed. If people were adamant about seeing him a certain way, he subconsciously strove to be that way. He had always shoved any hint of authenticity, any hint of his true self, into a tiny bubble where it could not escape. It was better that way. Nobody had to know that Steve secretly loved horror and all things Halloween, or that he preferred darker colors to the brighter ones that the popular kids always wore, or that he desperately wanted piercings and tattoos and to wear his hair on the longer, more androgenous side. Nobody had to know that he loved to snuggle with stuffies or bake or drink hot cocoa, or that his favorite song was Psycho Killer by Talking Heads (though Live Wire by Mötley Crüe was a close second) or that he wanted to paint his nails and wear rings and necklaces and makeup.
Nobody had to know. His parents had beat that into him from the first time he had been caught with black nail polish that he had gotten from a girl at school on his fingernails in the fourth grade. He had been ever so proud of those nails. But his father beat him until he was black and blue all over his torso and his mother had scrubbed furiously at the paint until it came off.
After that he hadn't been allowed to do anything without the supervision of his nanny, who would beat him as well if he did anything that his parents wouldn't like.
So, yes, nobody had to know.
But people sure as hell found out.