Steve & Kayla, Steve Stalks Kayla (1)

Note: this is the first in a series. As I write them I’ll link them together so the story can be read from start to finish.

Bad boy. Good girl. It’s an old cliche, a soap cliche, even a Days cliche. But a soap at its best breathes new life into the old standards, the old archetypes, the recycled plots. And that’s what Days did with Steve and Kayla. They proved that if you do it with conviction, you can make a cliche new again.

This couple was planned. This wasn’t an accidental oops they have chemistry pairing. It’s fascinating to me, knowing this, that they chose to pile so many obstacles in their path before they even meet. In addition to the challenges posed by differences in class, moral code, family, and background, plus the grudge he holds against her brother for putting out his eye, they chose to start this couple off by having Steve scare her out of Cleveland (where she is living) by breaking into her apartment, making threatening phone calls, and generally pretending to be an obsessed stalker. It’s ballsy, to say the least.

It’s suggested that Steve takes the job (it’s all part of Emma Marshall’s evil plan to kidnap Andrew) of scaring Kayla because he hates Bo, her brother. I had never seen the stalking clips until this past summer, and Steve is terrifying. It’s creepy that he calls her “Sweetness” in his first threatening phone call, and when he breaks into her apartment and trashes it, he leaves behind a yellow rose. Steve and Kayla’s special flower! It killed me!

He succeeds in scaring her out of Cleveland, and when she arrives in Salem he immediately starts following her, working for Victor this time (Victor is keeping tabs on Bo). It’s amusing to me that Victor chooses perhaps the most conspicuous man in Salem for a shadowing job. But Steve doesn’t try very hard to stay hidden, and entertains himself by crowding into her personal space and making leering comments. He’s clearly fascinated by her.

Perhaps it goes without saying, but the sexual attraction between them is the leaping off point for their story together. Steve tells Kayla later, “I wanted you from the first moment I saw you,” meaning from inside that closet in Cleveland. It’s why he asks to extend his shadowing job when Victor fires him, because he wants an excuse to stay in her orbit. Less obvious but equally important is Kayla’s sexual attraction to Steve. She must have thought herself crazy (we viewers, naturally, understood) to be attracted to someone so sleazy and so obviously dangerous. There’s a scene where she’s leaving Shenanigans and Steve steps into her path and gives her a hard time. When he brushes past her to go in, her whole body stills, and then she slowly turns to look after him. When he catches her eye, she quickly runs out. She’s afraid of him, but against all reason she’s attracted to him too. It obviously confuses her, but it’s part of what makes her want to look deeper. It’s not just sympathy.

The first hint that Kayla gets that there might be more to Steve than meets the eye is the warehouse accident where he saves Bo’s life. Traits that later become crucial to Steve’s character are first shown here: that he unthinkingly puts himself in danger to save Bo, that he deflects all praise and credit for it, that he doesn’t call attention to his own injury until he collapses, and that when he’s injured his defenses are lowered. He maintains his sleazy-guy persona even as he’s being treated for his concussion, but there’s a small moment as he’s leaving, when he turns to say, “Bye, Kayla,” that the mask slips for a second. It’s the first time he calls her by her name.

After Victor becomes convinced that Steve is jerking him around and not giving him any useful information, he orders him beaten up. Kayla finds him on the pier, takes him to his place, and treats his injuries. She has to remove his patch to do so. And she stays the night with him when it’s apparent that he has no one else.

As all Steve and Kayla fans know, the patch removal scene is indeed crucial. It symbolizes that Kayla will get past his defenses, that she will gaze with acceptance at his pain and the (moral) ugliness it engenders and “not even flinch,” as Steve says. And not only to look, but to try to heal. To Kayla it shows the vulnerability lurking beneath the tough exterior. When he pleads with her not to take the patch off, it’s heartbreaking. This scene deserves to be seen from start to finish, and it always bothers me when it’s chopped up and inserted in clip montages.

After the patch removal scene, I think the writers decided they had a winner on their hands. But they still took care to go slowly, by involving both Steve and Kayla as secondary players in a larger storyline, Andrew’s kidnapping. I won’t go into all the details here, but Steve realizes what Emma is up to and tries to help. He goes to a great deal of trouble to try to track down the baby himself, but all he succeeds in doing is implicating himself without helping Kim or Shane very much. He refuses to tell all he knows, and he doesn’t point the finger at Emma. Kayla is disgusted with him because she’s sure he’s involved somehow. In retrospect, not being fourteen and blinded by love for Steve, Kayla’s right. But even attempting to help is a step forward for Steve, and his motive of not wanting to be party to a kidnapping is believable, given what we find out later about his childhood.

Go on to part 2: Frankie and Max