— CHAPTER 16 —
THE BAD MEN

SATURDAY 12th NOVEMBER,
1983

SPRAY-PAINT is the bane of Daphne's existence, she has decided, after ten minutes of vigorously scrubbing the marquee. So far, she is almost the end of the 'H' of 'THE' — this stuff stains more than she thought. The pungent, sharp chemical smell catches at the back of her throat, and she is at least thankful there is a light chilly breeze to cover it. Her palms are slowly starting to become tinted in a pale shade of crimson, too.

     Daphne starts working on the upper half of the 'E', her knuckles freezing cold after being dunked into the bucket of water multiple times. She's vaguely aware of the shuffling of footsteps behind her, and senses a presence before the voice speaks up.

"Need a little help up there?"

Her hand drops to her side, soapy suds trickling onto the pavement below. Turning carefully on the step ladder, she peers over her shoulder down at Steve Harrington. She hadn't expected to see him crawling back here — most to the point, not with a face covered in wounds. One particularly nasty-looking gash runs inches close to his left eye, a sheen of fresh blood still glistening in the open cut. He squints up at her, hands dangling limply at his sides, and there is something about him from this angle which suddenly makes him look so... small. Not the King Steve everyone knows at school.

"I'm fine, thank you," she says bitterly, returning back to the area she has been scrubbing for ages.

Silence. Maybe he's finally gone. But just when she thinks he has, he adds, "I think you missed a spot there."

Daphne whirls around with more force this time, almost toppling off the ladder; Steve shoots a hand out to stabilise the bottom. Her heart somersaults after the brief panic of almost falling, but then she regains her composure. If you can call it composure, that is. She could almost tear into him one right now, thinking of the shattered look on Nancy's face...

"You've got a lot of nerve showing up here, you know that?"

"I know..."

"What is it with you people? Thinking that doing shitty things makes you — I don't know — cool, or something? Because it's not cool. At all. And you could have taken so many other options, but nope! You had to—"

"Okay, okay, I get it and I'm sorry!" Steve exclaims, cutting her off. Then he sighs, his gaze wandering over the remaining graffiti again with a wounded look. "I just... I wanna help."

Daphne opens her mouth to speak, but finds her words vanishing and her resentment evaporating the moment she looks at Steve — really looks at him. There is pain going deeper than the cuts on his face, as she watches his eyes pore over the graffiti on the marquee. She thinks there might be some shame in there, and even a little bit of self-hatred. Now guilt for lashing out at him creeps up on her. If he seems genuinely open to helping out, then the least she can do is give him that opportunity.

Besides, Daphne likes to think there is a bit of good in everyone. It just takes a little more scrubbing to get the shine with some.

Hopping down the ladder, she offers the soapy sponge to him. Steve rolls his sleeves up and Daphne drops the sponge in his hand with a squelch. For a split second, disgust flashes across his face as if she had just handed him a slug, and she has to stop herself from letting out a laugh. But he soon turns dutiful, climbing up the ladder and scrubbing hard at the graffiti; as if he is trying to erase his involvement with this one step too far. Daphne remains below, holding the ladder in place for him. As she looks up at him from down here, she ponders the days when she might have been positively melting at this interaction — back when she looked at him through her rose-tinted, Middle School crush on him...

     Daphne doesn't remember why she suddenly felt star-crossed for him. What she does remember that it was a warm, breezy afternoon in the May of 1977 and she was ten years-old. She remembers Amy had gone to the nurse's office with a migraine that day, and Felix was unbeknownst to her somewhere in Montreal, so it had just been her in the playground. But Daphne never minded. She enjoyed disappearing into her own imagination, running around and chatting to herself animatedly — and when she came back from a lesson or eating lunch, she would simply pick up her epic story from where she left off.

     She knows she had one foot in her fantasy land at the time when the soccer ball rolled over. Daphne had felt it gently touch her heel, flinching as she lurched back into reality. Only metres away was Steve Harrington, his hazel eyes that the other Fourth Grade girls loved staring at her, and wearing a lop-sided smile as if he was doing his best not to laugh. She should have paid more attention to that then.

     "Hey," he panted, having only just jogged over, "Can you pass the ball back?"

     Daphne froze for a moment. Steve never talked to her. But she tried to appear natural, hands linked behind her back as she timidly nudged the ball his way. It was a pathetic kick, rolling to a halt halfway between them, so Steve simply met it in the middle. He'd run a hand through his mass of hair (which was unrulier then, less lathered with hairspray) and stuck the ball underneath his arm.

     "Thanks," he'd said.

     She nodded. A breeze had swept through then — it rustled the birch tree branches above them, and fanned through his hair. Steve looked over his shoulder, and then back to her. He idled for a moment, passing the ball from hand-to-hand with one last look backwards before he had casually blurted it out:

     "By the way, you're really pretty."

     The next thing she knew he had torn off in the opposite direction, to a chorus of cheers from his friends, and Daphne was left alone to let her imagination fan the flames of his words. Did he... think she was pretty? Daphne couldn't believe her lucky stars. Her ten year-old arithmetic figured out the simple answer to this — and so began another of her childhood crushes. She spent the whole of sixth period staring at the back of his head, as if maybe she would be able to see what he was thinking. Daphne daydreamed about him, watched him carefully in class, found herself jealous of the other Fourth Grade girls who fell about him.

A few months later they were starting their first year of Middle School, so far, so good. Another few months later, and it was Steve's eleventh birthday. She had it all planned out, had even drawn a huge circle around the special date on the wall calendar that year (much to her dad's confusion). The evening before, Daphne had stayed up past her bedtime in the dim light writing him a letter for his birthday — she doesn't even remember what she wrote now — and popped it inside a Hershey's Kisses tin. Daphne was too shy to give it to him herself, so during recess she tucked it gingerly underneath his coat peg.

To her confusion, however, when she happened to pass him inspecting the tin and its contents, his surrounding friends were laughing.

What Daphne hadn't paid enough attention to that fateful day in May '77 was Steve running back to his friends. The way they had huddled together and pointed her way before he went over, snickering the entire time they talked, and laughing and clapping him on the back when he returned. It had been a dare. A stupid dare, which little Daphne had fallen hook, line and sinker for. Steve Harrington was not her Fifth Grade soulmate. She should have known better.

It could have just been an innocent Middle School crush. It didn't have to be a big deal. But now, Daphne was on the radar of the likes of Carol and her friends, and as far as they were concerned she was a weirdo. So her next years of Middle School consisted of hiding in the bathroom stall from Carol and her friends, Carol and her friends pouring ice down Daphne's neck on the way to school, Carol and her friends 'accidentally' hitting her with the ball in P.E. lessons... and that was only a slice of her experience. There were also all the names, all the side-glances and contained laughter around her. And Daphne came home and bottled it all up — she wasn't ready to tell Thomas any of it, for he had only just started getting better for the first time after Mom died. She was still getting used to the notion that he was available to support her. Then Felix arrived at the start of the Eighth Grade, and the rest was history...

     But upon reflection, there was always one person in the clusters of name-callers and ice-pourers who never laughed with them — that person was Steve Harrington. During those years, she vaguely remembers them catching each other's eye in the hall, and he almost looked guilty. Like he was stuck to do anything. It's a similar look to the one he wears now, making much quicker progress on clearing the graffiti than Daphne had (much to her annoyance).

     Looking to break the ice, Daphne stares up at him and studies his bloodied face again. "So... who did that to you?" she asks.

     Steve slows down his scrubbing for a moment, as though he is considering whether it would be wise to tell her.

     "Byers did it."

     "Jonathan Byers did that to you?" Daphne can't help but giggle. Her grin soon subsides as Steve glares down at her. Clearly not in the mood for jokes. "Sorry," she apologises, face flushing. "It's just... I thought maybe Tommy or one of your friends did it, not skinny little Jonathan, that's all."

     "Yeah, well, I think I maybe deserved it this time," he grumbles, dunking the sponge into the water bucket.

     His humility catches her off guard. Daphne studies him carefully for a moment, watching him concentrate on the scrubbing. "You didn't do this, did you?" she finally says. It isn't a question; she feels she knows the answer.

     "What do you mean?"

     "You didn't graffiti the marquee yourself."

     "What makes you say that?"

     "Well... in my opinion, I don't think someone who calls their girlfriend a slut in graffiti for the whole town to see," says Daphne, "is the same kind of person who'd own up and clean up their act afterwards."

     Steve hovers there, red soap suds dripping from the sponge onto the pavement.

     "Tommy H?" she offers, as a guess of the culprit. When he nods, she shrugs knowingly. That figures. "So where are your friends now?"

     "They're not my friends," he suddenly fires back. And in his eyes there is genuine regret, visibly paining him just to think about, but also a fighting inner conflict as he struggles with his words. "I... I made a mistake. I thought Nancy was doing stuff without me, you know, with Jonathan. Stupidly, I told Tommy and Carol, and next thing I know I'm watching him spray-paint this stupid shit onto the movie theatre."

     Daphne says nothing.

     "I know I should've done something, made him stop."

     "So why didn't you?"

     "Geez, I don't know! I just... I thought I... I was..." Steve sighs in defeat and scrubs furiously at the 'SLUT' on the marquee.

     A good guy caught in the wrong crowd. She doesn't feel she knows Steve well enough, but the fact he bothered to show up to clear someone else's act speaks volumes. Daphne believes in the inherent goodness of people... maybe excluding Steve's ex-friends. But there is something her grandfather always used to tell her, that perspective matters. For instance, when Steve smashed Jonathan's camera the other day. Yes, very shitty and one of Jonathan's prized possessions gone, or a boyfriend trying to protect his girlfriend from something that could have easily been really creepy.

     "It isn't too late, you know," says Daphne, with an unexpected air of confidence. "You can still do something. Humans make mistakes. Admittedly, this is a pretty big one, but... the very least you can do is talk it out with Nancy. And by that, I don't mean kissing her ass so she comes running back to you. Admit you were wrong. Listen to how she feels. Respect her wishes, whatever they are."

     Steve wipes his forehead with the back of his hand, staring down at her again but with a gentler gaze — as if he is considering her advice seriously. As he gets back to scrubbing the remainder of the marquee, Daphne glances over her shoulder and notices her dad staring out from inside the theatre lobby. Scepticism is written all over his face, but she ignores it. This might be redemption in the making. She hopes so.

━━━━━━

     CATH can't help but feel like the end is near. Whether that is a good or bad thing is another matter. The group is banded back together, all except for Lucas — who she really hopes hasn't gotten himself into danger — and she heard Will. She heard Will. And he heard her. Finality is on the horizon, surely, at last.

They are back in Mike's basement, him alone with Eleven in the bathroom to clean some of the dirt from her face. Cath sits with Dustin by the D&D board, still turned upside down from a few nights ago. So much has happened since then. The walkie-talkie on the table starts to crackle and piques her curiosity.

     "So do you guys all have one of those?" Cath asks, nodding to the device.

     "What, a Supercom? Yeah. Everyone in the party has one. It's our main source of communication."

     She sighs. This is what she has been missing, some sort of inside connection with friends. Now she is thinking hard, Cath doubts she has ever had something special like that with any friend; except maybe for Will. "I guess it's better than racking up a phone bill..."

     "Yup," says Dustin, popping the p. He has picked up the Supercom and has started fiddling with the dials now, as the crackling grows more incessant. She thinks little of it until there is a scratching noise, small intermittent blips of noise trying to break through the static. It reminds her of how Will's voice tried to reach them through the Heathkit and the kitchen radio at home.

     "Could it be... Will?" Cath asks, holding her breath.

     He lingers for a moment, squinting as the voice slowly becomes clearer. Then Dustin shakes his head firmly. "Not Will," he says. "Lucas." The Supercom clatters onto the table, still emitting static as he careens over to the bathroom door and flings it open — catching Mike and El with their faces curiously close to each other... but meanwhile, Cath cradles the Supercom anxiously in the hopes that she could somehow decipher what Lucas is trying to say.

     "Um... Lucas? Can you hear me? It's Cath," she says awkwardly, knowing this is not the time to feel self-conscious about speaking into such a device.

     "Do you remember how he said he was looking for the gate?" Dustin is asking Mike as they emerge back from the bathroom.

     "Yeah?"

     "What if he found it?"

     Lucas shouts indistinctly over the Supercom, no words tangible but his urgency coming through crystal clear.

     "What's he saying?" asks Mike.

     "I don't know," replies Dustin, "he's way out of range."

     Mike takes the Supercom from Cath's hands and pulls out the antenna. "Lucas, if you can hear us, slow down. We can't understand you."

"Yes, I copy!" they hear from the other end, his voice sounding panicked.

"Do you?"

"They know about Eleven!" Lucas cries. "Get out of there! They know about Eleven!"

"Who knows about Eleven?" Mike asks, brows furrowed in confusion although Eleven has noticeably tensed at his side.

"The Bad Men are coming! All of them! Do you hear me? THE BAD MEN ARE COMING!"

"Mad hen," Dustin echoes. "Does that mean anything to you?"

"No, Dustin, bad men," Cath corrects him. She freezes around the same time as the rest of them do. The connotations of the word are realised, the memory of how Eleven always seemed to wither even at the mention of them. So what does that mean if they are on their way? Or are they already here?

A horrible epiphany dawns on her.

"Is that repair van we saw when we came home still there?" Cath asks.

Mike rushes over to the basement windows and draws back a curtain. "Yeah? Why?"

"Don't you think that if he was a real repair guy, he would have gotten out of the van ages ago instead of just sitting there?"

As he realises the possibilities, the colour drains from Mike's face. The repair man was spying on them. Possibly. Maybe. There is only one way to find out — Mike races up the stairs with Cath in tow, practically burning tracks in the carpet as he skids along and halts in the kitchen, where Karen is on the phone.

"Well, I know she and Steve have been spending some time together," Karen is saying, fingers intertwined in the phone cord, "so I thought that maybe—"

"Mom!" Mike yells.

"W-Well, is he home? Maybe you could ask him—"

"MOM!"

"I'm sorry, can you just hold on, please?" Karen's honeyed tone sours into a flustered one as she looks his way. "Michael, I'm on the phone. I've told you a million times—"

"Did you schedule any repairs?" he blurts out.

"What?"

"Is there anyone supposed to come and do repairs on the house?"

"I don't understand. Is there something wrong—"

"No, Mom, nothing's wrong in the house," Mike's voice shakes as he turns to Cath. They just got their answer. Dustin is already yelling at them from the hallway that they need to go, Eleven looking like a spooked deer in headlights as she is caught up in the chaos. They start running off to meet them.

"Michael!" Karen calls after her son, more confused than anything.

Mike skids back, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

"If anyone asks where I am, I've left the country!"

Between Karen's perplexed calls for him and the group bursting out of the back door, Cath manages to shoot Mike an unimpressed look. "I've left the country? Really?" she remarks.

"I was improvising," Mike shoots back without much care. She would have told him how the Bad Men would never believe that excuse, but there is no time and frankly no need. The kids run up the hill, half-mounted on their bikes and half-pounding their feet against the road to propel them. When they get to the top of the hill, they check if the coast is clear as Eleven hops on the back of Mike's back. Left, all clear. Right is —

Cath feels her jaw go slack.

The entire road outside the front of the Wheeler house is filled with so-called repair vans, and a cluster of armed men in black move towards them like a swarm of flies. The Bad Men. At the forefront of the group is a tall, slender man with silver hair; there is a sinister gentleness about him which Cath does not like one bit. Something about the way he and Eleven exchange a long, lingering look also makes her skin crawl and her mind race with questions.

     But there is no time to ask now. There is only time to pedal.

     "Go, go, go, go, go!" Dustin exclaims. The group kick off and slam down extra hard on the pedals, gaining as much momentum as they can to clear distance between them and the Bad Men. They swerve down between the fencing of two houses as a short cut, Dustin leaving behind a trail of colourful curses. Then they turn onto the empty road ahead of them, pavements almost empty of passers-by.

     Cath can hear Lucas's voice through the headset radio Dustin is wearing. "Do you copy?"

     "Yeah! Lucas, they're on us."

     "Where are you?"

     "Cornwallis."

     "Meet me at Elm and Cherry!"

     "Copy, Elm and Cherry!" Dustin's voice cracks. The group cut through another small road as a short cut and into another stretch — but this time, the repair vans are turning in and hot on their trails. Cath's hands lurch on the handlebars with shock, and she wobbles so hard that she might have fallen if it weren't for her speed.

     "What do we do?!" she cries, frantically looking over her shoulder.

     "This way!" Mike yells, turning sharply onto a patch of grass. Cath winces as her bike jumps on the curb and bumps her tailbone, pedalling uneasily after the boys as they meander between trees and what feels like back yards. Two young girls are standing by a plastic slide, chanting and doing an elaborate handshake until Dustin rings his bell urgently.

     "Out of the way, out of the way!" Dustin hollers.

     The girls part just in time for him to pass through, Mike and eventually Cath (along with a hurried "Sorry!" to the girls). As they slow to stop in the middle of the next empty street, she hopes that surely they would have lost the Bad Men by now. A fourth bike skids to a halt behind them and Cath lets herself, for a moment, feel relief.

     "Lucas!" Mike exclaims.

     The Sinclair boy doubles over his handlebars, catching his breath. "Where are they?" he pants.

     "I don't know."

     "I think we lost 'em," adds Dustin.

     Speak of the devil. The rumbling of engines catches their attention, and surely enough at the top of the road a swarm of repair vans are headed right for them. The kids frantically scramble to start pedalling again as they try and outrun the vehicles — Cath can feel lactic acid chewing her up, hands gripping her handlebars so tightly that her knuckles protrude in bone white. Salty droplets slip from the corner of her eyes, both from the wind lapping her face and the terror of it all.

     There is just a long stretch of road ahead of them. They just need to get distance between them, somehow. Dustin is swearing like a sailor once more, and Mike is screaming at them to go faster, faster, faster! Cath's brain tells her to pedal like her life depends on it, but her body is saying stop, give up, you don't stand a chance.

     It gets worse. Right in front of them, the screech of tires swerving rattles their heads as another repair van heads right for them. They are cornered. There is no escape. It's over.

     We're gonna die, we're gonna die, we're gonna die.

     The van is storming head-on towards them. Cath wonders if it will ever stop, for a moment — would they actually consider hurting a bunch of eleven and twelve year-olds? Would they really bring harm to children? She squeezes her eyes shut, unsure of where her bike will take her, bracing herself.

     Suddenly Cath feels her body grow cold with shadow.

     Daring herself to look up, she opens her eyes and gasps. The van is flying above them, rotating weightlessly in the air in what feels like slow-motion. She can almost see the utter shock in the driver's face, the bare register of what is happening. All is quiet... and then with the most almighty CRASH, it plummets to the road behind them in a torrent of glass and smoke. It blocks the other repair vans from trying to reach them.

     The culprit isn't hard to figure out. Just in front of her, Cath catches the firm look in Eleven's eyes as blood trickles from one of her nostrils. She and the boys exchange glances as if to ask, "Did that really just happen?" before overwhelming gratitude and relief seeps in.

     The rest of the ride is in stunned silence, not trapped in pursuit by Bad Men, all the way back to the junkyard. The minute they slow to a stop, El staggers weakly off of Mike's bike and sets herself down on the grass. Cath takes the first chance she can get to throw her arms around her with thanks — the girl seems unsure how to respond at first, until there is a gentle brushing of fingertips on Cath's elbow.

     "Holy... holy shit!" Dustin whoops. "Did... did you see what she did to that van?"

     "No, Dustin, we missed it," Mike deadpans, but even he is smiling a little.

     "I mean... that was..."

     "Awesome," Lucas finishes for him. It catches El's attention, turning from Cath's embrace for a moment to face him. "It was awesome." He crouches down beside her with an earnest look in his eyes. "Everything I said about you being a traitor and stuff... I was wrong. I'm sorry."

     Lucas places a reassuring hand on her shoulder, and for a moment it looks as though she is welling up at the gesture. Her lip quivers as she searches for words to say. "Friends... friends don't lie," El finally replies. "I'm sorry too."

     Cath smiles fondly at the exchange — she feels a strong nurturing instinct towards Eleven, something she hadn't expected upon first meeting her, and seeing her grow in just a few days gives her a strange sense of pride.

     "Me too," Mike says. He extends out a hand in Lucas's direction, a peace offering. The boy gets up onto his feet, looks his friend up and down for a moment. Then their slap their hands together and link them in a firm handshake. The bond had been re-forged.

     "It's good to have you back, Lucas," Cath admits sheepishly, placing a hand on Lucas's back. He turns around and gives her a warm nod of acknowledgement.

     Whatever happens next, they all will endure it together. As friends.

━━━━━━

A/N;

ladies and gents, i give you... your first proper glimpse of ✨STAPHNE✨
their scenes are kind of limited in this first book, but i'm so excited to write much more of them in the future! i've been dying to write this single interaction for ages. also, now you know when in the past daphne had a crush on him...

p.s. this chapter included one of my favourite stranger things scenes and my favourite mike wheeler quote, which is: "if anyone asks where i am, i've left the country!" IT'S JUST THE WAY HE RANDOMLY SAYS IT BUT IT'S ALSO SO SERIOUS—

as always, thank you for reading! please leave a comment if you get the chance, feedback is always very much appreciated. hope you enjoy the rest of your day/evening.

— Imogen

[ Published: October 10th, 2021 ]