Welp, here I am again, rambling on Tumblr cause I can't ramble about it irl. Hope this makes somebody smile!
So, here's my thing. We all know that if the og party, none of them were "mr. popularity." We also know that they were bullied by what's-his-name- troy, right? And when Max joined the friend group, she might have been picked on for associating with the nerds. After the events of season 2, or even before everything goes down, I imagine that the party, now including Max, is getting chased around by troy, and they somehow end up near the high school gym.
As they're trying to figure out where to hide, Dustin has a thought: wouldn't Steve Harrington be in basketball practice right about now?
Meanwhile, Steve is just trying his best against the absolute beast of an athlete that is billy hargrove. He's already having a hard time focusing, but then he hears the door opening.
"Steve!"
He pauses, and turns his back on hargrove to see Will, and all the kids who were involved in last year's shitshow, plus a red-headed girl he hadn't seen before. With the exception of lil' Byers, everyone is talking over each other.
"whoa, whoa, whoa," he says. "Slow down, guys. One at a time. What's going on?"
Henderson takes a deep breath and speaks calmly, but Steve can hear his voice trembling.
"troy is giving us shit again. Can we hide out here for a little bit? We're nerds, so he'd never thin to look for us in the high school gym."
Steve starts to nod, but pauses. Something Nancy had told him comes floating to the front of his mind.
"Isn't troy the kid who threatened to cut your teeth out if Wheeler didn't jump off the cliff at the quarry?"
Henderson and Wheeler both go a little pale, so Steve knows he's remembered correctly. He takes a deep breath to reign in his anger. Even if the kid deserved it, no eighth grader, not even this "troy" bastard, deserved to get beat up by a high school senior. Besides, the kiddos don't need his anger right now.
Okay, sorry, that became much more like an actual story than I meant it to, and I don't know how to continue it that way, but I'm not finished rambling, so. I'll continue, I guess.
Anyway, Steve gets all protective of all of them, naturally, and gets Hargrove to chase troy away, because Billy is freaking scary. He doesn't realize that Billy agrees because this punk was chasing Max, too.
Anyway, at the end of it all, the kids are kind of shaky, and Steve remembers that they all play d&d, and he also remembers that there is a particular student who dms the school d&d club. So what does he do?
He gets cleaned up, and picks up all 4 of the lads-don't ask me how, he strong jock boy, ok?-and carries them off to Hellfire. Max follows on foot, because Steve asks her if she'd rather do that, or be carried with the boys. Max prefers to walk.
Anyway, that is how Steve introduced the lads to Eddie Munson, and how both the bad boy athlete and the metal head nerd both fall for Steve, because I just can't help myself.