The concept of the Hawkins gang forever being a little unsettling to outsider’s eyes.
There’s the obvious, of course, the fact that they are dangerous people who handle tense situations with off putting ease.
One parent gets a little violent mid baseball game and Steve is there, steady, voice firm, shielding the teen referee with his own body and there’s something about it that makes the man back off. Only after the fact does he seem to realize that he’d grabbed a bat, casually, as if ready to swing it if necessary.
They send little naive intern Nancy Wheeler to cover a student protest and actual war reporters think she’s one of their own within seconds of seeing her on the field. There’s something haunted in her eyes and a firmness in her stand, the way she eyes the riot police’s weapons carefully… like she’s ready to take them.
Robin seems like all rainbow and sunshine’s upon first meeting her but the first time her new friends take her to the club the can’t help but notice how her demeanor changes under the flickering lights, how her eyes dart to the exits and her body tenses as if expecting a fight. They assume there just aren’t any gay clubs in Hawkins, that maybe she’s still on edge.
It’s the teacher that notice something off with Jonathan, because he mostly keeps to himself. But there’s something in his scripts, in the images he pitches, in how he portrays horror and violence and pain that makes them worry. It’s the way he doesn’t flinch away from it, actually, that he forces you to look. It’s not even cruelty but normalization. But then he’s the nicest to other quiet or shy students, and makes a point to ensure everyone is accounted for after a night out with his few friends. They don’t know what to make of it.
The kids aren’t exempt of this either.
Mike’s is almost a given, as a writer, the horrors he builds in his world attract thousands of readers, but his mentors squirm and wonder where sharpness of his descriptions come from. People have commented on how he can describe the exact smell of fear and spilled blood.
Lucas’s is more quiet, the steadiness of a foot soldier. He’s all smiles and warmth with his new group of friends until he sees someone being pushed around from the corner of his eyes and he’s stepping in, a firm hand on a shoulder, a steady shove against a wall, a whispered warning that doesn’t require repeating. There are no empty threats there.
There’s something more eery about Will and his new friends definitely notice the way he seems to know where everyone is at all times, how you just cannot sneak up on him, how his eyes go distant sometimes like he’s searching for something he can’t quite reach anymore.
It’s Dustin who catches people off guard more often, because his outgoing and easy demeanor stands out the most amongst his nerdier colleagues, but he’s warm and sunny and makes a point to make everyone feel welcome up until the moment a line is crossed. That line is simple and it’s kindness and the moment it’s lost there’s a fire in the kid that turns him into the protector of the shy ones around him. It takes watching him throw a single punch to know it isn’t his first brawl.
Max on the other hand has always been ‘a handful’ according to every adult in her life and if they thought a year and a half in a coma would smooth down her edges they were dead wrong. If nothing else, she seems more reckless, more forward, particularly in the skating world she gains the reputation of being a little too fearless, like she forgets sometimes that she can get hurt, that she’s not immortalized in someone’s dream.
No one would dare mess with the girl from the cabin at the edge of town. She’s quiet and reserved and sweet… she still manages to make friends at the local tavern and becomes an excellent teacher particularly for kids who are struggling with language and learning, but there’s a sharpness in her eyes, like she can peek into your soul, that makes grown men weary and older women whisper about shadow dreams and dark paths.
And then, and then, things happen when you put them together in a room.
Most people wouldn’t be able to put into words what it is about them that sets their primal instincts off, like they are suddenly in the presence of predators. Hunters. Something in the way they eye the exits, how they stands shoulder to shoulder, how all their heads snap as one towards any surprising noise in the dark, how they seem to communicate with a look, how they fall in line like a platoon. A pack.
If they weren’t so young, some might think they are veterans, old war buddies.
But they are so young, from a small sheltered town in Indiana. What war could they have fought?
