Chapter Text
The late January air in Hawkins had a bite to it that sank through denim and leather, a cold that felt personal. Eddie cut through the park, a shortcut from the dreary halls of Hawkins High to the relative sanctuary of his van. His head was a million miles away or, more accurately, deep in the twisting catacombs of the Underdark, plotting next week's Hellfire encounter. How many Gricks was too many Gricks? Would Henderson call him a cruel god if he used four?
He was so lost in the logistics of fictional monster development that the voices from behind the thick, winter bare hedge at first just registered as background noise. White noise. Until they didn't.
"... so I was going to tell her her perm looks like a poodle who lost a fight with a lawnmower."
The voice was young and female, and carried a crisp, cutting precision of a scalpel. Eddie's steps slowed. Hawkins was full of them, he thought, a familiar bitterness coating the observation. A particular breed of girl spawned in the nicer subdivisions. Daddy's little princess. Rich, sharp tongued and spoilt in more ways than one-just as rotten to the core as the money lavished upon them by Daddy Dearest. He could picture the type perfectly: expensive sweater sets, a sneer perfected by fourteen, a future carved out in country clubs and casual cruelty. He'd suffered enough of their tittering laughter in the hallways.
A low, familiar laugh answered her. It was a rich, rolling sound that somehow cut through the cold-Eddie froze, his boot hovering over a patch of gritty snow.
No.
But it was. He knew that laugh. It had echoed through Hawkins High’s hallways for years, usually following some biting remark that left its target flushed and humiliated. Steve Harington. And here he was, cultivating the next generation. A vague, half formed memory flickered-Harrington trailing a different blonde, a sharper, crueller laugh. Carol. His guard bitch for most of his school life. He wondered, idly, what had happened there. Faded away like last season's fashion, probably. Not enough to derail the ugly clarity of the present.
Harrington's voice came next, lower, conspiratorial. "Too obvious. She'll cry and you'll look like the bully. You gotta be surgical. Isolate the target. You make her friends laugh at her."
Eddie could almost see the smirk. The lesson continued.
“You don't insult her. You express, like... fake sympathy. Loud enough for the squad to hear. Say something like, 'oh, it's such a shame your hairdresser made that mistake with your perm. You should ask for your money back', or 'you missed a spot dying your roots, honey. Here I have a mirror'. Make it sound like you're trying to help her. Friends will start speculating. They'll titter. They'll wonder, what else is fake. The goal isn't to make her hate you- she already does. It's to make her own friends question her. That's how you win.”
A cold that had nothing to do with the January wind seeped into Eddie's bones. He stood there, hidden by the brittle hedge, listening. His gut churned with a sour, familiar feeling. Of course. The righteous anger was almost a relief. It was simple, clean. King Steve hadn't fallen from grace; he'd just evolved. Trading in direct bullying for a more insidious psychological model, mentorship: He was grooming this new mean spirited protégé, teaching her the family trade, this was an advanced cruelty. Passing on the poisoned apple. The thought was somehow worse.
Eddie's jaw tightened. He rounded the corner of the hedge, a scathing remark about corrupted youth and Kingly legacies already forming on his tongue.
The words died.
The scene before him was so profoundly absurd it took his brain a full three seconds to process it.
Harrington was perched on a frost tinged park bench, sitting with an unnatural, statue like stillness. His hands were splayed on his knees, palms down. Kneeling on the bench beside him was a small black girl with bunches. Her brow furrowed in absolute concentration. She was holding Steve's left hand steady with one of hers, and with the other, she was carefully applying a coat of nail polish.
It was a glittering, shameless, electric blue.
Recognition clicked, but slowly, like a rusted lock. This was Lucas Sinclair's little sister. Eddie had only seen her in flashes: a scowling shadow behind Lucas at the mall last summer before it burned, a story from Dustin about a 'Demogorgon of a little sister'. He didn't know her name, just her reputation as a tiny, unstoppable force of judgment. She didn't fit the mental picture he'd just painted-no sweater set, no country club future. The calculation in his head short circuited.
And Steve Harrington was just sitting obediently, smiling and letting her paint his nails.
The little bottle sat open on the table next to them. Steve wasn't looking at his nails. He was looking at the girl, his expression one of serious consideration.
She didn't even glance up from her work as she replied to his earlier advice, her voice dipping with disdain. "I don't want her friends, Steve. They're idiots. Their collective IQ wouldn't fill a thimble."
Steve, didn't flinch, didn't shift a muscle that might disrupt the nail painting operation. "Exactly," he said, his voice calm, instructional. "So you make her look like an idiot to them, then you walk away. She'll spend all her energy trying to get them back, and none of it on you. You win by being too cool to care. Classic strategy, modified for '86. The key is the exit. You got to sell the exit."
This wasn't gossip. It wasn't petty meanness for fun. Eddie listened, the angry script in his head crumbling. This was a tactical debriefing. A general coaching his lieutenant.
He was teaching her how to fight a social war where the rules were inherently unfair. This little girl-a young, black, fiercely intelligent kid in a town like Hawkins-couldn't afford to get caught in a direct, messy fight. She couldn't shove some blonde girl in the hall and get a sympathetic sigh from a teacher. She had to be smarter, cleaner, and untouchable. And Harrington, the master of appearing effortlessly, untouchably, cool, was teaching her how to weaponise that very unbotheredness. He was giving her his armour.
It was protection. Not predation.
The realisation hit Eddie like a physical blow, leaving him winded and stupid. He just stood there gaping, his earlier fury replaced by a dizzying confusion. He'd gotten it all wrong. Not just about this moment, but about the girl, about Harrington's intent... about everything.
Steve's eyes, which had been fixed on the girl with a commander's focus, flicked upwards. They landed directly on Eddie. Those brown eyes saw his stunned paralysis, his wide eyed shock, the whole internal crisis playing out on his face.
A slow, knowing smirk spread across Steve's face. It wasn't the cruel, triumphant smirk of the King. It was wry, almost... shared. A smirk that said, "See, don't you feel like an idiot now."
The smirk should have been infuriating. A final smug punctuation to Eddie's own stupidity. But as he stood there, pinned by that look, a memory surfaced, unbidden and unwelcome. A kaleidoscope of flickers: Tommy H, posturing by the bleachers, puffing up like a threatened blowfish. Himself on the cafeteria table, a grand, pointed speech about conformity and sheep. There were always separate skirmishes. The fact that the physical with Tommy had started after Billy and not before.
Then it landed sharp and clear: Junior year, the hallway after a swim meet. Steve, his hair still damp, had been animatedly telling Carol something, his face open, excited, "... and my time was actually-" Tommy had clapped him on the back, gloating, "Should've been there, Care, Stevie cleaned house!" They were a closed circuit. Eddie Munson didn't even register as scenery. The raw, unguarded enthusiasm on Steve's face. Something Eddie had never seen, had never imagined the king could even possess-had irked him deep in a place he didn't examine. He slouched past and had thrown a sneering remark over his shoulder, aiming for the perceived softness: "Careful, princess, don't go cracking a nail diving off the board or you'll never make it to the Olympics."
The effect had been instant. The light in Steve's face shuttered off, replaced by a blank, cold mask. Tommy swelled, turning bullish but Carol stepped smoothly in front of Steve, not Tommy. Her eyes, flat and assessing, slid over Eddie. Her voice was a bored, off hand swipe that cut far deeper than Tommy's bluster ever could. "Careful there, Munson, you seem a little too invested in our Stevie's performance. You better not be getting any... queer ideas."
The hallway had tittered. The victory was hollow and sickening. He'd wanted to get a rise, to prove their joy was fragile. He hadn't expected that. He'd started it. He'd been the one to lob the first, real personal grenade that day. And her retaliation hadn't been to defend Steve's athletic prowess, but to insinuate something twisted about Eddie's own interest. It was the same move. Isolate the target, make the crowd question something fundamental. It was the exact cold strategy Harrington was now, years later, calmly explaining to a little girl. A shield he'd once been given. A shield he was now passing on.
He gave a tiny, almost imperceptible shake of his head. Steve looked back down at Sinclair's sister, who was now critically examining her work.
"The glitter is uneven on your pinkie. Hold still."
"Yes, ma'am", Steve said, the smirk softening into a genuine smile aimed at the top of her head.
Eddie stumbled back a step, then turned on his heel, walking away quickly. The cold air burning in his lungs. The image was seared into his mind: the fearsome Steve Harrington, holding perfectly still for a tiny, terrifying little girl, his nails gleaming a brilliant, defiant blue.
His whole world, the comfortable map where jocks like Steve were the obvious villains and freaks like him were the misunderstood heroes, had just tilted violently upside down. And standing in the centre of the earthquake, a tiny general commanding a King, was Lucas Sinclair's little sister.
The puzzle of Steve Harrington was no longer a distant curiosity the school cohort possessed. It was now a door he'd accidentally stumbled through, and it had slammed shut behind him. He was inside, and nothing looked the way it was supposed to.