The babysitters club|| Steve Harrington

1

Hawkins, Indiana.

What a shit hole.

The sun hung low in the sky, casting a warm, golden hue that slowly turned red over the "quaint" town of Hawkins. The residents of said town knew it to be anything but quiet and peaceful by now.

Hawkins was the kind of small town you would read about in books and wish you lived in. The kind where everyone knew everyone else, where you couldn't go five feet without meeting a neighbor or a school friend or a friend's aunt. The kind they would show on the television, making everyone ooh and ahh at the visuals. But the reality, as it often is, was much more disappointing.

It was a town that had seen generations come and go, and in many ways, it had remained untouched by the fast-paced world beyond its borders.

The main street was lined with charming storefronts, which now stood bare with "SALE" signs plastered pathetically on the glass windows. Ever since the new Starcourt mall had been built, very few people shopped where they used to. Businesses went bankrupt, people who had been working for decades lost their jobs, so in a way it was an ushering of a new era.

All of the old, the history, was slowly being washed away. Some may find it a bit sad, but Matteo didn't really think about it like that.

In an alley on Main Street, by a diner, the neon sign flickered to life as the evening approached. Why did all of the stories start with the ending of a day? Why was the time of dusk such a momentous occasion everyone romanticized so much?

It was just a random Friday evening, nothing special about it. Just the end of June, when the weather which was already boiling to begin with, would start to get hotter. The heat became suffocating after a while, as if the sun had a personal vendetta against the residents of Hawkins.

The humid air he tried to inhale was dense and provided little relief, it only succeeded in making it harder to breathe. A gust of wind was a godsend on hot days like that.

Matteo could feel sweat tricking down any and all parts of his body, some of it was mixed with blood. Sweat was supposed to cool your body down, but mixed with blood, it only made it hotter for him.

"My grandpa punches better than you" He grinned, "And he's been dead since I was twelve"

"When was that? Yesterday?"

"Listen, if you're just going to keep making terrible jokes, can you at least try to wrap this up in fifteen minutes? My shift started at 6" He shifted his hand to get a better look at the watch on his wrist, but the surface was cracked and the arms were half hanging out, "Oh come on, what did the watch do to you?"

"Fucking Fag-"

"How uncreative. Do you have to use the same slurs I've heard a million times? If you're going to be a bigot, at least make it entertaining for me"

That earned him a punch to the nose as his assaulters sauntered away, high fiving each other. There were three of them- two guys and one girl, not that it would matter. It wasn't as if Matteo was going to report this, all that would do was raise more questions. Questions he didn't want to answer.

The chief of Police- Jim Hopper- seemed like a nice enough guy, but Matteo didn't trust him about this sort of stuff. In fact, he didn't trust anyone save for his friends and a few meetups in shadowy alleys.

But rumors spread faster than wildfire. And as if he didn't have enough to deal with in highschool, he had homophobia to think about as well.

After graduating just last month, Matteo had (wrongly) assumed the bullying would stop. But, only the setting changed. Instead of a punch in the locker room or slurs hurled in the bathroom, it was now beat downs in an alley, apparently.

Matteo DeAngelo had lived in Hawkins his entire life. And he had been miserable for all of it. He wasn't sure if it would be better anywhere else.

All he could do now was get to his feet, ignore the pain, sneak in through the back door of the diner and hope his mother hadn't heard the fight. Technically, it hadn't been much of a fight. If there was one thing Matteo knew, it was how to take a beating.

He moved his face at the exact angle he knew the punch would land so it would hurt him less, the exact way to make himself bleed more and hurt less so his attackers would leave satisfied. He'd had years of experience with this sort of thing, as sad as it was, he supposed that it was a skill that could come in handy sometime.

The key fit in the lock, his keychain making a jingling sound of metal on metal.

Sneaking in and out of his parents diner was second nature by now, still he had to focus and make sure he didn't fuck it up.

The door swung open with more noise than he would have liked.

And as quickly as he had been approached by his attackers, he tiptoed to the sink in the bathroom. He suppressed a slight sigh of relief when he saw his reflection in the mirror. Thankfully, the idiots must not have been very good at beating people up, since they'd done a pretty bad job.

For god's sake, his nose didn't even hurt. How could they barely even throw a punch, and yet, wanted to seem tough and scary? The blood he had felt, tasted and smelled, was mostly from his tongue that he had bitten accidentally. Only his temple throbbed in pain, leaking a few more drops of crimson.

He washed up quickly, berating himself for being so late.

By the time he was finished, pink diluted blood swirled in the old white sink before it vanished down the drain and he looked mostly whole. The only other indication of this altercation would be the bruise quickly forming on his stomach. But that would be covered up by his shirt.

He sent a silent thanks to himself from the past for not changing into the Scoops Ahoy uniform yet, otherwise he would have had to explain to his manager why he had blood over it. His laziness (and unwillingness to have anything to do with that awful, hideous piece of clothing) had saved him for once.

Like he had sneaked in, he sneaked out.

The only people inside the diner at this time would be his mother and her best friend. Customers were rare nowadays, and he had heard his mother rant in frustration about it endlessly. Her hatred for the new mall knew no bounds, but her solace was in the fact that Matteo had taken initiative and tried to earn money for once.

If it had been up to Lucia DeAngelo, her son would have been working only in the family diner like he had since he was sixteen. But Matteo had different plans. He still helped her out at the diner, but he had also gotten a job at the ice cream parlor along with his best friend.

"Shit, shit, fuck-" He stuffed his hand down the shorts of his uniform. "Keys-"

Finally finding what he had been searching for, he jumped into his Toyota Camry (a second hand one, but at least it was a beautiful cherry red), before speeding down the street.