❝I think your stupidity is finally starting to rub off on me, Harrington.❞
In which the new girl in town earns a babysitting gig... though she doesn't remember monsters being in the job description.
↳extended summary inside
↳steve harrington x...
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ANNALISE MADDEN believed she was a blank canvas that hid in the shadow of her father's. His was splattered with vivid colours and pictures, painted with memories and impact. Hers was devoid of vibrancy, a white expanse only tinted by murky water from worn-out paintbrushes.
Nearly everyone knew the name Michael Lee, having seen it plastered all over movie posters in the last twenty years, lit up in gleaming lights and uttered throughout households across the world just as much as in his own home. His face wasn't a simple one passed in the street or glimpsed in a cafe. No, it was memorised by millions and left anyone who saw it in person starstruck. He had many other titles, too — a celebrity, a star, a heartthrob — and the simple 'dad' one was no longer the only role to fill.
Annalise didn't always hate it. In fact, as a child it was her proudest achievement to have such a famous dad, something that gave her bragging rights and earned envious but awestruck looks from other kids. She loved getting to visit hit sets, play with the cameras, even sometimes sit on the knee of a director and yell "Action!" at the top of her lungs. She was treated like a little princess with her own section of his trailer that would always be filled with delicious food. Stunt directors had given her a few small lessons on days when she was bored. Her name had even made it into a few magazines.
It shifted into more of a curse as she grew. Men with cameras showed up where she lived and the magazines began making up stories, her endearing childish nature no longer all they cared about. She began to spend more time hiding behind the anonymity of her mother, even taking her last name for some added privacy. The attention around her died down over time, though it definitely didn't happen overnight. She often wondered if that was the reason her mom finally called for a divorce — she had avoided the public surprisingly well until Annalise chickened out and decided she wanted shelter.
Her mom left quickly after the divorce, promptly making sure to leave her only child behind. The memory of her high heels clicking across the pavement, the echo of her shouted words through thick cigarette smoke that beat the revving of the engine as Annalise's pleas got lost in the racket, were forever engraved in her mind — it was all her fault. She had forced her mother away.
And the press weren't quiet in their beliefs about that scandal: how maybe Annalise had succumbed to the savage world of underaged alcoholism or the like, had maybe even gained an addiction to drugs and scared her mother off as if Annalise had been the one with an addiction in the house. Nevertheless, those words in ink rattled around Annalise's mind like loose change in a pocket and helped the guilt to sink its teeth further into her flesh.
Michael wasn't mad about Annalise's hatred for being in the public eye. On the contrary, he encouraged her desire to disappear beneath a wave of privacy and asked reporters to not bother her. Not even did her wish to keep the surname Madden bother him. He was just happy to have her.
