Hawkins, Indiana — Harrington House, Late Night

The house was too quiet for how loud everything felt.

Steve lay stretched across the couch, one arm hanging uselessly over the edge, the other bent awkwardly against his chest. The living room light was dim, casting long shadows across the walls — trophies, family photos, pieces of a life that suddenly felt very far away.

His face was a mess.

A bruise was already blooming dark and ugly beneath his eye, swelling fast. There was dried blood along his cheekbone, smeared across his jaw where you’d wiped it once and made it worse. His knuckles were split, skin torn and raw, crimson staining the towel you’d wrapped around his hand.

Old King Steve. The one everyone used to fear, admire, follow.

And now this.

You sat on the edge of the coffee table, knees pressed close to the couch, hands steady even though your chest was tight. The smell of antiseptic mixed with iron filled the room as you cleaned him up, careful where you touched, gentler than you felt. Every so often, his jaw clenched — not from the sting, but from everything he was holding in.

Billy Hargrove’s face flashed in your mind uninvited — the way he’d looked at you like you were something to take, the way Steve had finally snapped when it went too far. California confidence crashing headfirst into Hawkins pride. Two kings, neither willing to back down.

Steve’s breath was slow but heavy, eyes fixed on the ceiling like he was counting cracks to keep from exploding again. Anger still clung to him, sharp and restless, even now. It sat in the room with you, coiled and unspent.

You’d known him since you were four years old. Scraped knees, shared secrets, first dances, first kisses. Fifteen years old and it had turned into something else — something permanent. Something that had never once broken.

And now here he was, bleeding on his parents’ couch, because someone thought they could step into his life and take what had always been his.

Outside, Hawkins slept like nothing had happened. No one saw the cost of it. No one saw the way Steve’s hand twitched every time you cleaned a cut, or the way his pride fought harder than his body.

You kept working in silence, pressing gauze to skin, steady and unyielding.