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NOT MINE!!

A/N: You guys already know who's this is :)



True to her word, Robin spends the next night sitting on the edge of the Harrington's jacuzzi tub, plucking Steve's hair through a cap with a crochet hook.

About every five pulls, Steve exclaims, "Ow! Jesus!" to no avail.

"It's not my fault you're like the princess and the pea," Robin says. "Every little pluck." She punctuates this statement with a particularly aggressive one.

"I would've been better off going to the beauty shop and letting Carol Perkins do it if you're going to leave me bald," he whines.

"Just wait until we get to the bleach," Robin sing-songs, tapping the hook against his scalp. "Carol Perkins would've melted all your hair off on purpose as a hate crime. I'm going to do it on accident . Now get back to the story―I think you were finally about to see that sliver of exposed ankle, hmm?"

It would actually be quite a while before Steve Harrington saw a sliver of Jonathan Byers' exposed ankle, not least because it was mid-November in Indiana.

When Jonathan returned to school, it was nearly Thanksgiving break, and he seemed intent on ducking his head and slinking away any time Steve was in the vicinity.

Steve's parents had suddenly developed a keen interest in visiting his grandmother in Ohio for the holidays, citing a need for her to know her only grandson and a desire to show Steve some cave his dad used to like hiking to. Steve suspected their primary motivation was the Hawkins police department, who were still nosing around in their backyard as the Hagans grew increasingly frantic.

No one would say that they thought Tommy was dead outright, but rumors were flying now about a bear in the woods and, in the really fringe groups, an ambiguous curse that had the power to disappear unsuspecting teen basketball stars. Even though everyone knew that Tommy was last seen at his house, no one had dared to indicate Steve, either; but something was shifting, imperceptibly at first, in the social structure of Hawkins Highschool.

If Steve could trace it back to any one event, it would be the day that Carol Perkins had a come-apart at her locker. People hadn't outright gawked, at the time, but Steve had known there was a possibility that someone had heard―Carol wasn't exactly known for being quiet and discreet.

But he also knew who he was, back then: He was Steve fucking Harrington. Steve of the hundred and one girlfriends, Steve of the hair and the BMW and the keg stand record. King Steve, though people didn't really start calling him that to his face until later, when it was typically being spat at him more than anything. If he wanted to hunt monsters with Jonathan Byers on weekends and come back to school with an arm around Nancy Wheeler on Monday morning, who was going to challenge him on it?

It turned out, a lot of people had been waiting for the opportunity to do just that.

It started out with all the typical signs of a coup. Guys who used to bow their heads and defer to him on everything from basketball plays to whose house they were using for a party were suddenly shoulder-checking him in the hallway; girls who would've dropped everything for five minutes in the back seat of his car were sneering and turning their backs to him when he asked if they'd done the math homework.

For obvious reasons, Steve didn't take most of this into account until much later. He was slogging through most of his days in a haze, jumping when the shoddy fluorescent lights of the hallway flickered and convincing himself he smelled blood in the middle of history class. But then Jason Carver started mouthing off to him.

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