Flipped: A Steve Harrington Enemies to Lovers

Holly Jolly

You slept terribly last night.

The dreams you had were a blur of shrieks, teeth and nails clawing the edge of a poolside, before being dragged below. You awake choking for air as though you were drowning in chlorinated water, clutching your chest, trying to catch your breath; it's slick-wet. However, it's just sweat, not pool water.

"Weird..."

You realise you uttered this aloud when your voice stabs through the quiet veil of your lonely apartment.

Stretching over to your nightstand, you check your alarm: 0700 hours. Might as well get up. Extending your legs and flexing your toes on the cold floor, you wander across the room, past your couch, past the messy kitchen tops, to the tiny bathroom down the hall.

Pulling the cord, the fluorescent light flickers on - strange, it's never flickered that much before.

Shortly after, feeling fresh from showering, you stare and sigh in the mirror, fogging the glass a little. You begin with brushing your eyebrows into place, like you do every morning. You take extra care to strategically comb the hairs in a particular way, to cover the silver slither of a scar that runs through one of them.

You remember the day you were given it. You were 10 at camp, and you got your ass handed to you by one of the older kids. So much blood was spilled that day. Yours.

There's been many a lesson in life your dear, doting father has taught you. Don't pull your punches. Never miss the shot. Work hard, then work harder. Always follow orders. But only two rang out loudest that day...

The first, is that there was nothing you could've done to make him proud to call himself your dad.

The second, is if you rumble with someone and they knock you down, you better get the fuck back up.

The day you received your scar, your dad showed little concern, except over the fact you lost and failed the second lesson. Now you have a permanent reminder, to get the fuck back up, no matter how much bigger they are than you.

You pad back into the room where you sleep, eat, live.

Next, you pull a pair of jeans up your legs - frayed and dirty denim.

After, you next fetch a rumpled white tee from the floor. Giving it a sniff, you decide it's okay to wear, not perfect but it'll do. Your leather jacket and combat boots complete the look; it doesn't matter there's now a cigarette burn in the jacket sleeve - it'll still keep you warm. Besides, it's not like you can afford to replace it.

Heading out the door, you ignore the pictureless photo frame you still fail to fill, and it topples on its front in a clatter when you slam the door shut.

***

Sinking into your seat in class, you feel the intensity of girls' eyes hunting for their target, ready to cast the first stone and kill them with words.

A cacophony of: did you hear? She did what? No way! Swirls like poison in a cauldron round the classroom. Being used to it, you assume it's about you and glower at a gaggle of them squawking together nearby, after which, you snap open your book to the page you'd saved with a dog-ear.

More cackles, nasty enough to make your chest secretly flutter like a bell jar filled to the brim with hundreds of little moths. But you inhale to steel yourself, then try to ignore it again.

"Really?! Nancy 'Prude' Wheeler?" A voice gasps.

You can't help the pricking of your ears.

"That's what I heard! To think it's not Y/N this time!" Another bout of cackling before an assailant of leers flash over you.