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Steve Harrington thought he was one of a kind. Royals are funny like that.
Kings, and queens, even princesses—they come and they go, living up to their titles, filling out to meet the expectations that come with it. There are not many, there are few, and that’s what makes royals think they’re better than everyone else. Limited series, collector’s edition, only one hundred copies ever made.
None of that compares to the prince.
The first-born son of a mighty ruler, the extension of the bloodline, the first in line to the throne; all titles thrust upon a babe the second he’s pulled from his mother’s womb. A prince does not live in the present, he exists only in the future, in what he can be, what he will be, someday.
When he’s older, bigger, stronger—he grows up a boy king, knowing his destiny before he ever really knows himself. His life is laid out before him.
It’s not a burden, his father tells him, it’s a privilege.
Steve thinks it’s anything but.
He grows up cautious but curious, searching for any avenue but the one set in front of him. Years go by and parts of him start to chip away, no longer a boy, but a man, now, or at least the beginnings of one.
He inherits the crown when he turns sixteen.
He’s on the starting lineup as a sophomore, and he drives a beamer to school, and his sneakers are always white because he’s never worried about getting them dirty—he’ll just buy new ones.
He molds his hair to fit the shape of his crown, molds his body to hold the weight of it. Farrah Fawcett spray, weight racks on the weekends. He wields barbs and taunts like chainmail, never really striking to kill, just holding enough to protect himself.
There is no place for a king on the battlefield; he has people for that.
So he rules from a public court, center stage in the cafeteria, where everyone can see him, but few dare to speak. He doesn’t really know why.
He finds love and loses it, finds a friend in the aftermath. It’s nice, for a little while, to feel something as trivial as love, something so plain even the commoners can find it. It’s there, and it’s gone, and it’s there again, sort of, but not in the way it is for others.
Never in the way it is for others.
Because Steve Harrington is king.
One of a kind.
Or so he thinks.
It isn’t until he sees it that he really understands, isn’t until he stands tall enough to see over the wall around the outskirts of his kingdom that he notices what he never has before.
Three tables down, one to the left.
Another crown, this one cast in silver instead of gold, something that others mistake as lesser but Steve clocks as original. Another ruler living in the parts of the world he’s never ventured to before.
Steve Harrington is the king of Hawkins High, but Eddie Munson is king of the Freaks, and the thing he’s starting to understand is that there is not one king.
But two.
But twelve.
But many.
Two princes born worlds apart; one sleeps in a crib sculpted from marble, the other is held in hands that shape iron.
Living within shouting distance of each other, this whole time.
He had no idea.
Steve has already fallen from grace by the time he meets Eddie, has already relinquished the crown to the next boy king who will wince as the metal digs against his scalp, whose knees will buckle under the weight of it all.
(He’ll figure it out, they always do, and that’s the only reason Steve can leave it behind without looking back. No more crutch.)
But Eddie—see, Eddie is at the height of his rule, strong enough to carry the power and smart enough to know how to wield it. A prince not by his birthright, but by his own right, crowned king by subjects who respect him for who he is, not what.
Steve finds it fascinating. Freeing, almost, to know that this kind of kingdom exists at all.
Eddie doesn’t lead from a throne, he serves in the trenches, pressed shoulder to shoulder with his knights and his soldiers. He works the front lines, always the first one to put his body between his shepherds and an enemy threat.
He steps into place between Jason Carver and two unsuspecting freshmen, shows the boys a world of magic and monsters, where dragons roam free and soar through the skies of their imaginations. He makes jokes out of Jason, teasing him to his face and taking everything that gets thrown back in retaliation, shouldering the weight of the new king’s entire arsenal like it isn’t even heavy.
Like it isn’t another thorn in the crown that shines like silver, from a distance, but up close it’s set like steel.
A sword and a shield and a title.
A burden.
A blessing.
No matter how it’s disguised.
Eddie rules his kingdom up close and personal, knows the names of all his subjects, knows them well. It’s a weakness, sometimes, to have things he cares about, to have people he loves, but Steve doesn’t see it like that.
A lone knight, bold and brave, stands up to an entire army set on killing his king. He has no protection, no numbers, no real reason to defend the crown that isn’t his, except for the fact that it’s Eddie he’d go to war for—not the king.
Steve has never known a world where a king and his title are not one in the same.
He’s starting to see it now, though, standing on the precipice of his future with his crown soiled in his muddy past. He is not the king—he is not a king—anymore.
He’s just Steve.
Still a prince by his birthright, the first-born son of distant rulers nobody remembers. Still destined for the greatness he thought he left behind, but it’s not there, on the dirt road that leads back to his crumbling castle. It’s ahead of him, shining bright as it ever has.
He sees it in the glint of Eddie’s eyes, that shimmer he’s been searching for his whole life.
Silver and gold.
It’s Eddie who tells him he can have it, tells him he can have the moon and the stars and the entire night sky if it makes him smile like that again. It’s Eddie who shows him there is more to life than being a king—there is more to life than living to serve others. That it’s okay to serve himself, sometimes.
It is Eddie who kisses him on the rope bridge dangling between their kingdoms, a few planks missing and the drop lethal.
It’s the scariest thing Steve has ever done, but when his hands tangle in thick wavy curls, when his fingers brush against the cool steel of the crown atop Eddie’s head, he gets a glimpse of the life he’s always wanted, waiting for him somewhere in the brush.
Kings, and queens, and princesses—they come and they go, and this king is no different. The time has come to step down from his mighty throne, to pass the crown on to the next generation. He chooses his successor carefully, a wizard this time instead of a bard, and something in Steve starts to heal when he finds out that bloodlines do not rule this world.
Eddie dubs the new Dungeon Master in the plastic throne he stole from the drama club last year, appointing Will the Wise the next ruler of Hellfire.
He wears the silver-steel crown with his chin held high, a thousand lives lived and lost behind his eyes before he turns sixteen. Uncertainty lingers on the surface, but there’s a steadiness that lives just beneath, a strength that runs bone deep.
He’ll figure it out; they always do.
But it’s different, this time, when Eddie falls from grace, because he’s not so much falling, but making space for something new, something better.
He doesn’t run away, doesn’t flee from his kingdom like Steve did because he’s proud of his kingdom, even if it’s not his anymore.
Eddie walks across the stage at graduation with a new sort of crown balanced atop his regal mane, this one green with a flat top, pointed at the corners and a tassel hanging over one side.
He gets his diploma, finds a job. Something simple, something he likes.
He works as a mechanic at the garage over on the east side of town, ten minutes from his uncle’s trailer, five minutes from the video store.
Eddie shoulders the ghost of his title in a way Steve never figured out how to, but that’s okay. They help each other, they learn together.
Steve shows Eddie how to look his future in the face, how to not cower in the unknown, but to stand up and walk towards it, slowly. Eddie shows Steve how to put down his past, how to stop carrying it around with him everywhere he goes.
They settle down somewhere on the outskirts of both kingdoms, right on the line that brought them together in the first place. Robin is there, and so is Nancy, and the kids visit all the time.
It is a home forged from kindness and love; a refuge open to all who need it. Some stay for a little while, some stay for longer. Knights and soldiers and maidens—they come and go. There are more than a few, there are many, and that’s what makes this place so special.
Some say that it is haunted, that the halo of two crowns, one silver and one gold, float through the air like ghosts of the kings who once wore them, two mighty rulers that nobody remembers.
But there in the doorway, often found staring off into the horizon together, stands Eddie and Steve, who nobody could ever forget.
Two princes, standing before the world.
Born and made and born again.