Dive Deep into Creativity: Discover, Share, Inspire
So I started writing something, but i don't trust myself to finish it, so i'll just ramble about it and hope people think it's decent!
My current hyperfixation is stranger things, and here's my thought: there is no way the upside down would have given the gang a whole year of peace when the gate was still open. In this au I've got floating around in my brain, I imagine that maybe it was a couple months before the tunnels started spreading, before the demodogs started spawning. I also imagine that my fave character, the main one in this au, ended things with Nancy early on, because he could see that she wasn't happy with him and he wanted to avoid an emotional trainwreck.
Because Steve wasn't spending as much time with Nancy, when he noticed that things with the upside down weren't over, he was able to take it on himself without her figuring it out. Cause Steve figures that the wheelers, the byers, heck, everyone involved from last time shouldn't have to deal with any more of this shit.
So what he did was, he started going to the old junkyard, baiting out the demodogs, and killing as many as he could with his nail bat and burning the corpses when he was done for the night.
As this was going on, he started looking out for Will, treating him normally and being there for him, because will deserves to have Steve as an extra older brother. It's not necessary to this au, but I will die on that hill.
Anyway, Steve's been doing this since around January of '84, so he's become pretty good at it. Then, that Halloween, instead of going to Tina's party, he was out there, killing monsters, but he got cut. Obviously, billy hargrove's rough-housing in basketball the next day didn't do him any favors. He ends up having to take a minute to go into the locker rooms to stitch himself up really quickly, because of course he's figured out how to do that by now. Then, billy walks in on him doing that, and promptly freaks out. Steve swears him to secrecy, because in his mind, it's fine, it's normal. He finished up basketball practice, and put the encounter out of his mind.
Later, Steve was back out there, and he had just killed the first demodog, when he heard this aborted, human-sounding, shriek. He goes to investigate, and who does he see, but billy Hargrove and eddie munson in the bus doing a deal.
Steve tried to give them an out, but of course the demodogs were swarming, so he had to deal with that threat and keep these guys safe, because Steve didn't think they should have to deal with this. They don't take the out. In fact, eddie and billy help Steve out through the events of s2.
Also, in terms of the thing with Lucas, I imagine that since Billy'd been fine with the black kids on the basketball team, Steve was able to pry out of him that he's trying to protect Lucas and max from ne*l.
Anyhow, that's the premise of this au that I've got. Like I said, I have started writing for it, but I don't trust myself to finish it or update it regularly. If anyone is interested in adopting this concept and writing their own take on it, feel free to dm me. Heck, you don't even have to do that, but I'd appreciate a dm, just so that I could read it!