Crash And Burn...Harrington

ᴘʀᴏʟᴏɢᴜᴇ

IF STEVE HARRINGTON HAD TO DESCRIBE HIMSELF IN ONE WORD, HE'D END UP SPILLING OUT AN ENTIRE PARAGRAPH. Of course, no one had ever asked him that. There was never a need for icebreakers in a stationary town like Hawkins, Indiana. With it's total of 2 and a half seasons, overpredictable climate and general midwestern atmosphere, why would anyone bother except him?

Yesterday, he'd sat in a different lunch table, and asked a freshman what her name and favorite color was. She'd looked at him in confusion and near revulsion, and gotten up to sit at another place. And though he didn't know the girl, and acknowledged that she might've just been weirded out by a senior talking to her, he knew at heart, the reason she, and everybody else was treating him this way. A low fire lit in his chest as he'd glared across the cafeteria to Billy Hargrove, Tommy Hagan, and Carol Perkins, laughing easily without a care to anybody else. 

Or maybe he was so pissed because of other reasons. For one, he'd just had a breakup. Nancy'd basically shredded the weathered rope that tied them together with her bare hands, dark blue eyes watching in regretful but purposeful action. And whenever Steve turned back behind him to check if the rope was there, he'd only see an inch long cloth, frayed at the ends just like the nerves in his brain. Maybe if Nancy'd actually told him anything related to closure, it might've been a nice clean cut. But no.

He'd built himself up over the years, decades of beaten down to the bone, torn apart by hours and hours of neglect, harsh words screaming and tearing at his soul until all that was left was a single spark on a shamash, all other eight flames withering and black on a rusted menorah. Sometimes he wondered whether his downfall had been inevitable. If feeling like shit was supposed to be.

Part of him told him that he should be proud. You survived a fight with a supernatural monster, fixed up some mistakes. The chaotic adrenaline of courage he'd felt rush through his body came from a source unknown and barely contacted with, like a new door had materialized in his gallery of feelings, and left him the pure embodiment of an American Hero. Yet as he sat alone on a Monday, eating a sad meal of corn and fruit salad, the Hero was lit ablaze, the fire of anger, grief, and unbridled pain ripping through his armor like a steady, agonizing death over open firestorm. He was standing nonetheless, though barely by a thread. The fear of scarring, hot, scalding flesh etching deep in his skin he felt a thousandfold, as he knew, one day when the fire grew hot enough, that fear would be a reality.

Steve Harrington was burning, and 162 degrees was approaching.

━━author's note ━━

updated prologue alert!! since kat's character synopsis was already given in the summary, i figured i should write one for steve instead of continuing with kat; kat's story will be explored in the chapters itself and i wanted to give more context to our fav white boy.