pairing: steve harrington x hopper!reader
summary: You've known about the prophecy since the day you were born. The curse of the older sister. Ever since you and El were raised together in that sterile, white hell—shaped into weapons of war—you knew your life wasn't yours. Dying wasn’t brave. It wasn’t noble. It was simply the inevitable conclusion you had been walking toward since birth.
wc: 3.7K
warnings: mentions of violence, cursing, mention of y'know, since she choose to die, heartbreak and angst. if you don't feel comfortable reading this, even if it's a 'rewrite' scene from the tv show, please don't read and preserve yourself.
a/n: I was obsessed with the idea of Steve taking Mike's place when El leaves. So, here it is. I think I cried a few times while writing it (help). I was inspired by Ethel Cain's Nettles and Purple Rain to write it.
To love me is to suffer me
And I believe it.
The cacophony was absolute—a craggy wall of voices, the sharp clack of assault rifles being readied, and the guttural curses of men who had forgotten how to be human.
Steve was shoved forward, the momentum of the crowd carrying him along with Dustin, Mike, and Robin. He caught a glimpse of Robin’s hands, bound tight enough to turn her fingers white, before a soldier’s gloved hand slammed into the back of his neck.
His face was crushed against the cold metal of the transport truck. The smell of oil and old blood filled his nostrils. He couldn't breathe. Every gasp was a battle, his lungs struggling against the weight of a man twice his size pinning him down.
The problem was, he couldn't find you anywhere.
“Hey—hey,” He grimaced, a sharp, sickening pop echoing in his ears as his zygomatic bone groaned under the pressure against the metal panel. “Have you seen her?”
Dustin twisted his head as far as the restraints allowed, face pale but steady.
“She was with El, they must've escaped.”
The relief hit Steve like a physical wave. Good. That was more than good, it was the only thing that mattered. If the plan had worked—if the girl he loved was somewhere safe, somewhere far away from the screaming and the cold steel—then he could endure whatever was coming.
So a small, genuine smile blossomed on Steve's lips. It lasted only a second, because when he looked up, the smile died where it was born.
Where the sky had torn itself open, where the portal to the Upside Down bled a bruised, pulsating violet into the world, he saw you.
You weren't running. You were standing at the threshold, your silhouette framed by the apocalypse, your eyes fixed on the military line with a gaze so deadly it looked like it belonged to a different person.
“No… no, no, no—” Steve’s voice rose from a whimper to a raw, jagged roar. The realization settled in his gut like lead: you had stayed.
You were going to fight a war you couldn't win.
With a strength that shouldn't have existed in his broken, battered frame, Steve threw his head back. He felt the icky thud of his skull connecting with the soldier’s chin. He didn't wait for the man to fall. Two other guards lunged for him, their hands like iron claws on his sleeves, but something had snapped inside him. It wasn't bravery anymore, it was an animalistic, primal instinct.
“Steve!” Robin’s scream was high and thin, a desperate warning as a soldier leveled the butt of a rifle.
Steve didn't hear her. He stumbled, his legs heavy and uncoordinated, and when he finally fell to his knees, he didn't hit the pavement. Cold water splashed against his skin. He realized then, he was in your mind.
You walked quickly toward him and he got up, running to you.
“What the hell are you doing?” His voice broke on the words. “Please—please don’t do this.”
His hands gripped your shoulders, his fingers digging into the fabric of your jacket as if the sheer force of his touch could tether you to the earth.
He was shaking. There were tears welling up in his eyes, and despite everything, it was his broken expression that haunted you the most.
“Steve,” you whispered, swallowing the thick knot of grief in your throat. You looked into those deer-like eyes, your own vision blurring as the first hot tears spilled over. “You need to listen to me. We don’t have much time.”
He was hyperventilating, his chest heaving under his bruised ribs. His eyes searched yours, begging for a lie, begging for a misunderstanding he could desperately fix.
“What? No—no, whatever you’re thinking, we’ll find another way. We always find another way.”
“I need you to understand my decision.”
“No. No. I don't—Please.”
You kept going because stopping would mean breaking. “I need you to tell the others the truth. Tell Hop that Jane's safe. I need you to tell them—” Your voice faltered. You forced it steady. “Tell them how grateful I am. For being so kind to me. For loving me.”
Tears slid freely down your cheeks. Steve lifted his hand without thinking, brushing them away with his thumb like he always did, like it was a reflex built into him. He was crying too, silent and helpless, but still trying to take care of you. He always would put you first.
“You don’t have to do this,” he said, pleading now, like if he said it enough times, reality might listen.
“I do. Steve, this will never ends. El will be hunted for the rest of her life. She’s just a kid. She deserves a chance to grow up without blood on her hands.”
You caught his hands, pulling them from your face to hold them against your chest. His fingers were calloused, covered in the fresh scratches and deep purple bruises of the fight. They were the hands of a protector, and they were the only things you were going to miss.
He stared at you like you were speaking another language.
“What about you?” The question came out with a sharp edge of accusation, a jagged shard of resentment born from pure, unadulterated heartbreak. “Don’t you deserve to live? Don't I deserve for you to stay?”
You've known about the prophecy since the day you were born. The curse of the older sister. Ever since you and El were raised together in that sterile, white hell—shaped into weapons of war—you knew your life wasn't yours. Dying wasn’t brave. It wasn’t noble. It was simply the inevitable conclusion you had been walking toward since birth.
You were the burden that was meant to be dropped so the light could keep shining.
And Steve—sweet, stubborn, endlessly kind Steve—was the only thing that had ever made you wish, just for a moment, that fate might be wrong.
But then Hopper found you and Jane together in that forest, clinging to each other like a second skin, desperate and afraid of what fate had planned. And that changed everything.
He had reached through the brush and pulled you into a life you were never supposed to have. He was resilient, jaggedly caring, and he tended to your wounds with a gentleness that felt like an assault on everything the lab had taught you. He fed you, gave you shelter, and advised you—doing all the things a father was supposed to do. A father you and Jane had only ever seen in child storybooks.
You had been reluctant at first, a wild thing trapped in a cabin. You ran away a dozen times because you were convinced that this life—the warm blankets, the Eggo waffles, the safety—was for Jane, not for you.
But Hopper had been immovable. He insisted, with a gruff, stubborn love, that you deserved that comfort too. It wasn't a luxurious life, but it was a life full of affection.
And what was supposed to be just a life for three became a big dysfunctional family, but one that you loved with every shattered piece of your heart.
Joyce, Jonathan, and Will. The family that went through hell on earth when little Byers was possessed and captured by darkness. There was Joyce, who taught you what it meant to be a woman, who brushed your hair with a mother’s tenderness and hugged you until the cold in your bones finally began to thaw. There was Jonathan, the quiet observer, who always stayed close enough to make sure you were alive.
The kids, who followed you like you were something out of a comic book. They made you feel brave when you were anything but. They welcomed Jane like she had always been theirs, and through them, you learned what friendship really was, unconditional, loud, forgiving.
Nancy showed you worlds hidden in books and taught you how to hold a gun without flinching. She kept your secret without ever asking for anything in return. Let you sleep in her basement when Hopper’s house became unbearable. Robin taught you sisterhood—real sisterhood. Movie nights, bad jokes, honesty without fear. She made life feel lighter just by standing beside you.
“Every moment of my life has led me here,” you said softly.
“Bullshit.” His voice cracked, raw and furious. “This is all bullshit. You can’t—you don’t deserve this. You can stay, I—”
“Steve,” you whispered. “Look at me.”
You reached up, cupping his face with both hands. His skin was cold, damp with sweat and tears. He pressed his lips together, a sob catching in his throat, and you felt the hot, thick tears roll down his cheeks until they pooled in the palms of your hands.
“From day one, you saw me. You saw beyond what I could see in myself.”
Steve let out a broken, animal sound and leaned into your touch, his eyes searching yours for a way out that didn't exist. He had spent years trying to convince you that you were worth saving, and now, he was watching you use that very life to save everyone else.
How could you ever forget that first night in the Wheeler basement? You had been a mess, bruised and soaked from head to toe, looking like you’d gone ten rounds with a nightmare. But even then, he didn’t look at you like a wounded animal. He didn’t look at you like a disposable tool of war. He looked at you with a careful, tentative affection that felt like the first warm sun after a lifetime of winter.
But the words had been written in the stars long before you met him and your story couldn't have been written any other way. If you were here now, it was because fate had allowed you to live. And if you lived, it was because Steve Harrington happened in your life.
It was because he accepted you for who you are. Because he fell first, pretending that all that fascination wasn't masked as love. Because he held your hand that Fourth of July and kissed you under the fireworks. It was because he saved you from near death and allowed you to still have some time together. It was the way he had knocked on Hopper’s door with a bouquet of flowers, his knees literally shaking with fear of your father, just to take you to a movie date. It was because he loved you devotedly, respected you, adored you with everything he had.
“If I know what it's like to love and to be loved, it’s because of you,” you whispered. “And you don't know how forever grateful I'll be to you for giving me that.”
“Please,” Steve murmured repeatedly, his hands trembling as he held your body against his. He was clutching you as if he could absorb you into his own skin, as if he could hide you from the fate that was coming for you.
“You made everything easier. All my life I believed I wasn't worthy of being loved, but then you came along and changed everything.” You smiled through the tears, a fragile, beautiful thing. “I wouldn't do anything differently, Steve. Not a single second.”
“Don't do this to me, babe—please, please—”
It was breaking your heart. Each plea was a physical blow. You felt your heart cracking, tiny pieces of it falling away one by one.
“I need you to promise me something, okay? Look at me, Steve.” You sought his eyes and had to exercise a lot of self-control not to break down right there. “I want you to be happy. I want you to live the life of your dreams.”
His laugh was broken, almost soundless. “I fucking hate this,” he said. “How am I supposed to do that without you?”
“I’ll always be with you,” you said, even though you both knew what that promise cost. “You have a life ahead of you, Steve. A good one. Promise me you won’t stop. Promise me you’ll fight for it.”
He couldn't speak. He just looked at you, his chest heaving, his face a mosaic of soot, drying blood, and fresh, hot tears. He looked like he was physically dying, like his soul was being pulled through his ribs.
“I love you,” was all he managed to choke out between the jagged, guttural sobs that racked his body.
You smiled, even as your heart felt like it was being torn in two.
“I love you, Steve Harrington.”
When you moved, you collided like lightning meeting thunder, violent, inevitable, and destructive. Your mouths crashed together in a disastrous mess of tears, salt, and terror.
Steve wanted time. God, he had wanted time so badly. He had built plans around it, trusted it like it was something guaranteed. The weight of his mother’s ring, hidden on a small chain beneath his shirt, felt like it was branding his skin. He had decided he'd propose the moment you got home, the moment the world was safe. He knew how much you dreamed of Alaska—of the frozen, silent mountains and the way the northern lights painted the sky—and he had spent every spare cent he had for a year to make that happen.
The initial plan was to propose to you with that breathtaking view as a witness to your youth, reckless, love. But Steve had always been haunted by the feeling that time was a thief. That was why he’d put the ring around his neck that morning.
He just hadn’t known how little time he had left.
As he kissed you with a painful, bruising intensity, he reached for the chain. He ripped it from his neck, the metal snapping with a faint ping that was lost to the chaos. He pressed the cold silver into your palm, his fingers trembling as he closed your hand around it.
You felt it when he placed it in your hand, the cold metal against your palm.
You felt the weight of it, the history of a family you would never officially join. You deepened the kiss, holding him with a strength that defied your tired body. You were holding your first love, your only love, the boy who had made you human.
When you finally broke apart, foreheads touching, both of you breathless and ruined, you closed your fingers around the chain and held his hand instead.
“Please, please—” he whispered, the word barely there. “Don’t leave me.”
You wanted to say everything. You wanted to stay forever.
You were at the end of the road, and the time for promises had run out.
“Goodbye, Steve.”
The sound never fully left his throat. It caught there, raw and animal, and when reality slammed back into place, it did so cruelly. Hands dragged him backward. Boots scraped asphalt. Someone shouted orders he couldn’t hear because all he could hear was his own voice breaking apart as he screamed your name.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Everyone was frozen, witnesses to a sacrifice they were powerless to stop. Robin had collapsed to her knees, her sobs racking her frame until she was doubled over. Hopper stood paralyzed, his eyes brimming with tears he couldn't shed, his path blocked by a wall of military personnel. Nancy’s hands were pressed tight over her mouth, a single, silent tear tracking through the soot on her cheek.
These were your people. The one you had built out of chaos and survival and love. The one that had taught you what it meant to belong.
Steve fought like a caged animal, his boots scraping against the asphalt as he begged them to let him go, shouting your name until his lungs burned. He was thrown to the ground, the grit biting into his skin, but he never took his eyes off you.
You looked at Hopper one last time. Not to ask. Not to beg. Just to let him see that this was your choice. That you were at peace with it. That Jane would live. That she would grow up safe, loved, ordinary in all the ways you never got to be. She was now the age you had been when he found you in that forest, feral, terrified, alive. She deserved the life he had fought to give her.
“I'm sorry,” you whispered.
Then, the air crackled. You felt the surge of energy before the world white-outed—a hum that vibrated in your very marrow. A flash swept across the perimeter, a titanic force field that pushed the entire world back. The C4 charges detonated in a synchronized roar, and the Upside Down didn't just break, it folded. Everything was sucked into a violent whirlwind, a chaotic abyss that began to erase itself from existence.
The noise was horrifying, a primal scream of a dying dimension. You closed your eyes, letting go of the tethers that held you to the world of the living. In the fading distance, you could still hear them screaming your name.
But this was the end. This was your story, and as the darkness rushed in to claim you, you realized you were happy. You have lived. You have loved.
One last tear tracked down your cheek. And then, nothingness.
A deafening silence took over the place. Steve stared in sheer, unadulterated horror at the space where you should have been. There was no portal. Just a building in ruins, smoking under a normal, mocking sky.
You were gone. Truly, finally gone.
He dropped to his knees, skin splitting against dust, pain flaring uselessly through his hand. He didn’t feel it. There was no room for it. All he could see was you, every version of you he had ever loved, layered one on top of the other until it crushed him.
Steve squeezed his eyes shut, his breath coming in broken hitches. It was then that he realized his fist was clenched tight around something cold. He raised his hand, blinking through the tears, and saw it: the silver chain, the wedding ring dangling from the end. He hadn't noticed, but you had put it back in his hands as a promise you were forcing him to keep. You wanted him to move on.
You wanted him to be happy. A future you were asking him to live without you.
Steve let out a sound that barely resembled a sob and curled forward, clutching the ring to his chest like it might still anchor him to you.
But it would never be the same.
Without you, there was no happy ending.
“All right, all right—let’s go.”
Steve planted his hands on his hips, scanning the parking lot as the kids—who absolutely were not kids anymore—filed into the trailer. “Jeez, did you have to buy the whole store?” he asked, one eyebrow lifting as Robin struggled with a bag that looked one bad move away from tearing.
“In my defense,” she said, breathless but defiant, “we have, like, a small army to feed. And I needed a Kit Kat.” She held one up proudly. “I even brought one for you.” She tapped a second bar against Steve’s chest.
He caught it between his fingers, let out a long, grounded breath, and stuffed it into his pocket. “All right. Enough. Everyone here?” He poked his head into the trailer, performing the mental head-count that had become second nature.
Lucas glanced around. “Uh—Dustin’s not back yet.”
Steve opened his mouth to complain about the schedule when a familiar voice grumbled behind him.
“Jesus Christ, the bathroom in this place should be classified as a biohazard.” Dustin shrugged, his face twisted in a look of pure disgust.
“Everything okay, bud?” Steve took off his shades and patted Dustin’s shoulder, fighting back the laugh that threatened to break through his responsible adult mask.
“Barely,” Dustin said. “I stared death in the face in there, ‘cause—.”
“Biohazard,” Max interrupted, rolling her eyes with a smirk. “We get it.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“All right,” Steve said, gentle but firm, clapping hands to get everyone moving and get things in place. “Everybody, buckle up. Right now!”
Max and Lucas were already arguing about who got to lean on whom for the next leg of the trip. Dustin went back to his astrophysics book while Mike, Will, and El chatted happily in the back.
Steve caught El’s eye in the mirror. She gave him a small nod, there was a depth of respect and gratitude in her eyes that always made Steve’s heart ache.
When she had returned to Hawkins eighteen months after the Upside Down took you, it had been a bittersweet miracle. Hopper and Mike had known she was safe because of your final message, but for Steve, her return was the final, broken proof that you were gone.
He didn't blame her. He loved her. But looking at her was a constant, living reminder of the price you had paid.
“All right, dingus,” Robin said, already buckled in, watching him closely. “We doing this or what?”
Steve slid into the driver’s seat and fastened his seatbelt. “Yeah,” he said. “Let’s do this.”
He pressed play.
The familiar, melancholic chords of Piano Man filled the cabin, your favorite song. Billy Joel’s voice drifted through the speakers, steady and nostalgic. Steve turned the key, the engine roaring to life, and before they even cleared the gas station parking lot, the chaos in the back reached a fever pitch. Max was yelling at Lucas, Dustin was laughing at something Will said, and the air was thick with the life you had died to protect.
Beside him, Robin offered a small, closed-mouth smile: a look of pure solidarity.
Before hitting the highway toward the long road to Alaska, Steve glanced in the rearview mirror. Hanging from the glass was the silver chain, the wedding ring catching the afternoon sun. It swung gently with the movement of the car, a North Star to guide him.
A small, genuine smile touched his lips. This was what you wanted. This was the life you would have led if fate had been kinder.
“All right, Alaska,” he whispered, his voice barely audible over the music and the kids. “Here we come.”
He shifted the trailer into gear and pulled onto the open road. It was for the kids. It was for the future.
PROJECT SUNSHINE → CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN: LOCKED DOWN
summary: steve harrington x lab!oc. series rewrite-ish | read on Ao3
when another product of Hawkins National Laboratory escaped a long-survived nightmare alongside her sister, she crashed into one unsuspecting teenage boy and dragged him deeper into the dark mysteries that made up their hometown.
word count. 4.4k || masterlist
a/n. here's a little taste of what lies ahead in season 5. shit is about to get crazy, guys. I'm so excited! I noted it in the warnings, but this season will stray from canon a good bit.
warnings: cannon typical violence, child abuse, horror, gore, and depictions of mental illness. season 5 will stray the furthest from canon events!
A cold sweat beaded across Steve Harrington’s forehead as he woke up with a start. His heavy breaths replaced the silence of his bedroom, cutting through the thick air. With a shaky hand, he brushed back the damp pieces of hair stuck to his forehead before ripping the blankets off.
Despite it being summer, his bedroom had a chill to it that wasn’t determined by the weather outside or the thermostat. The chill ran deeper than that; it caused an endless dull ache to overtake his chest every time he stepped inside.
He left his room and wandered downstairs into the kitchen, where he didn’t expect to see his mom already awake. The sun wasn’t even up yet, but she had a pot of coffee made.
She looked up from her book resting open on the counter, looking equally as surprised to see him up. “Hi, honey,” she greeted. “What’re you doing up so early?”
Steve cleared his throat, half expecting it to hurt from screaming, but that had only happened in his dream. “The usual,” he replied.
If someone had told him two years ago that he’d be back to telling his mom about his nightmares, as he had done when he was a little boy, Steve would have laughed. He wouldn’t have believed it for a second.
However, following Hawkins being split into fourths by what most people believed was a freak natural disaster, the military placed Hawkins on lockdown. Only authorized individuals were allowed in and out, trapping all of the residents inside. His mom had returned to town just before the ‘earthquake,’ sealing her fate to remain in Hawkins for the time being. His dad did not make it back before that. At first, he tried to bribe his way back in, but Steve assumed the man realized that would make him stuck in the Harrington’s abode with his wife who resented him and his son who hated him. So, he decided against it.
With it just being Steve and his mom in the house, their relationship had changed dramatically from the past spring. She went from hardly knowing anything about his life to knowing the exact reason why he had changed so much in a few short years. It wasn’t because he was lazy or didn’t give a shit about his future, like his dad, and by proxy his mom, had assumed. No, Steve’s whole world changed, and his priorities shifted.
Steve didn’t necessarily want his mom to know about the Upside Down and all of the danger that came with it; that was never his plan. Even after growing closer with her, he probably wouldn’t have shared that much with her, for the sake of her sanity and safety. But when Mr. and Mrs. Torres came to his house that day Sunshine was taken, the two desperate for answers that Sunshine told him Steve had, his mom had been there. In his distraught state, he didn’t ask his mom to leave when he spilled the truth to Sunshine’s parents. She heard all he had to say and somewhat digested it much later on.
That newfound and complicated knowledge reconnected her to Mr. and Mrs. Torres, like how they once had been when Steve and Sunshine were younger. It also allowed Steve to divulge some of his fears and worries to his mom, instead of keeping them bottled up tightly inside because he knew they’d eventually burn a hole right through his chest.
Of course, there were things she and Sunshine’s parents didn’t know, details that he didn’t give because they would only lead to more questions that no one had answers to. Steve’s mom did know about his nightmares, though, and had even woken him up from some.
Nightmares weren’t new for Steve. For years, like the rest of the party and company, he had faced down Demogorgons in his dreams and had seen horrible things happen to his friends. It became a kind of fucked up routine for Steve, but instead of fading when he woke up, since last spring, the pain his nightmares caused lingered well past when he opened his eyes. The images and feelings haunted him like relentless ghosts.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked him, her voice soft like the hum from the radio on the kitchen counter. She poured him a mug of coffee. Steve used to hate black coffee. He hated the bitter taste, but even without coffee, bitterness was stuck in his mouth, his mind, and everywhere else. So, he figured there was no point in trying to sweeten it.
He shrugged. “There’s not much to talk about.” The fresh coffee turned the mug hot. He pressed his palms and fingers against the outside, feeling the sting. “It was her, again.” It was always her.
Yes, nightmares weren’t new, but his mind had to have been playing a cruel joke on him at that point. It felt like every time he closed his goddamn eyes, he saw Sunshine. The worst nights weren’t when the nightmare occurred while he slept, but rather when he woke up. He’d have good dreams, ones where Sunshine was there, smiling at him like everything in the world was the way it should be. Then, he’d wake up alone in bed, no Sunshine, no warmth, or that love-sick flutter in his chest. He was alone.
As much as his body let him, he’d avoid sleeping and cure the exhaustion with bitter black coffee. But he had to sleep from time to time, and it was never restful.
His mom frowned deeply. “But you all are still looking for her, right?”
“It’s not just about finding her; it’s about getting her out and keeping her off the military’s radar.”
Every moment since last spring, they’ve been trying to come up with a plan to get her back. But they had yet to figure one out that didn’t put Sunshine’s siblings at risk, as they were being actively hunted by the government for what they could only assume was the same reason they took Sunshine. Hopper wasn’t willing to risk any of them. Everyone else who wasn’t in threat of being kidnapped was willing to storm the military base with nothing but their bare hands just to get their Sunshine back, but they lacked the right knowledge of the base, and realistically, couldn’t do anything with firepower that at least matched whatever the military had. It wasn’t like they could sneak off to War Zone. The only way they gathered supplies was from Murray, who snuck in and out of Hawkins under the guise of being an authorized delivery driver for Bradley’s Big Buy. Slowly, they were building an arsenal, but it was a slow process.
Nearly every scenario they came up with had too many holes, too many unknowns, and too many risks of them making things even worse for Sunshine. That, and they weren’t soldiers. Most of them were still teenagers or close enough to it. Once again, they were at a crossroads of another unfair fight, and it was driving Steve crazy.
There had been more than one instant in which Steve was beyond aggravated, not at anyone in particular, but at everyone and everything. He was ready to just storm the military base himself, uncaring if something happened to him; he just had to try. He just had to do something because Sunshine was alone and probably hurting while he was…what? Waiting? Doing nothing?
He had been close, way too close to doing something that would have gotten him killed almost immediately, but Hopper had found him before that happened. Hopper, a man who had come back from the dead like the rest of his kids, returned more gruff and soft at the same time. He stopped Steve, earning a pretty shiner on the temple from Steve’s right hook. But Steve hadn’t really been looking for a fight, and Hopper knew that. The man didn’t throw a single punch; he just grabbed the collar of Steve’s jacket and told him to let it out, all of that shit he’d bottled up for months. Steve broke down like some kid who lost his best friend all over again.
“You’ll get her back,” Steve’s mom said. “You did once already.”
Steve hummed in response, but his hope had started to wane somewhere around month six. He was scraping the bottom of the barrel for any optimism.
The radio station that Robin had the brilliant idea of hijacking after its owner and showrunner fled Hawkins when there was a rumored serial killer loose in Hawkins had become the group’s home base. It was just far enough from the center of town that there were no prying eyes seeing who entered and exited. It also turned out to be the perfect cover to communicate with the group without raising any red flags, since their phones were all tapped, and walkie-talkies weren’t always the most convenient.
And, as it turned out, Robin was a really good radio host. She was known around Hawkins as Rockin’ Robin, and used her beautiful brain to weave codes through her radio rambling that let the group know when the military was making their move into the Upside Down.
Steve was fine leaving the radio show to Robin and expected her to appoint her girlfriend, Tamera, or even Jonathan to help her. But Robin insisted that Steve was her co-host of sorts. He wasn’t on the mic, but he ran the sound effects.
The job kept him busy, and his mind temporarily occupied, which he suspected was the reason Robin was so pushy about him doing it. Instead of saying that, though, she called them ‘coworker soulmates,’ and claimed she simply couldn’t work a job in Hawkins without him. Steve seriously doubted that, but he couldn’t say no to her.
That, and he needed a distraction, or God only knew what he’d do with that time.
The radio station also functioned as Eddie Munson’s new ‘home’ of sorts. The earthquake put a lid on the angry mob and halted the police investigation. Since no one had seen Eddie in the aftermath, and no one else had been murdered, it was assumed that he died along with too many others during the earthquake.
His uncle fled from Hawkins when the first rumors of a lockdown hit. The plan was to reunite the two after things settled and Vecna was dead, but as the months stretched on with no end in sight, it was hard for anyone to see the finish line.
“Hey Harrington,” Tamera greeted as Steve descended into the secret basement of the radio station.
Tamera spent most of her time there, bouncing between flirting with Robin and trying to keep Eddie from going mad while on house arrest.
“You look awful,” added Eddie, earning an eye roll from Steve.
In the time that Steve had shared a bedroom with the metalhead, before they acquired the radio station, he learned that was Eddie’s way of showing that he cared. Instead of more careful concern, like Robin or Nancy, or that certain look Hopper often threw his way, Eddie’s way of showing he cared was crass and easy to mix up with him just being an asshole.
“No beauty sleep for me last night,” Steve said, faking the lightness in his tone as he sat down on the couch with a freshly made mug of coffee in his grasp.
Tamera picked at a loose thread on the sleeve of her sweater. “More nightmares?”
It was hard to explain to the newest members of their fucked up little group how to get through the aftermath and cope with the nightmares that often accompanied it. They didn’t go away; they just became a part you dealt with. Before last spring, Steve would have said they got easier to handle, but he had lost his grip on them and felt back at the beginning.
“Yep,” he said with a sigh.
Tamera winced. “Sorry.”
Steve shook his head, a simple dismissal of any need to be sorry. “Any updates from church?” he asked, changing the subject.
To keep their finger on the pulse of what was happening with the people of Hawkins, they discovered the best place to overhear their thoughts, fears, and loud opinions was at Wednesday and Sunday church services. Tamera, much to the joy of her mom, volunteered to attend the services to act as their spy of sorts.
“Nothing besides people getting more antsy,” she said. “Old Man Marty is still set on the rapture being near, but the pastor always shuts down his tangents and urges everyone to ‘exercise patience.’ He’s stopped telling people to give thanks for the military’s help and, instead, pray for their swift finish of whatever the hell they're doing, so Hawkins can return to ‘normal.’”
“I guess that’s a move in the right direction,” Steve said.
Eddie snorted. “If anything, it sounds like Old Man Marty knows the most about what’s going on. Maybe we’re all about to get raptured. Wouldn’t be the craziest thing to happen.”
“I doubt that’s in the cards for us,” Tamera retorted.
“If even the pastor is getting fed up with the military, others who haven’t yet will get there. They’ve gotta run out of patience sooner rather than later,” said Steve.
“That’s what we’re counting on.” Robin’s voice sounded from the top of the stairs. “Anyone got an icepack?”
Descending the stairs behind Robin were Jonathan and Nancy. The latter had a scowl on her face and a blooming bruise on her cheek.
Tamera jumped up from her seat and volunteered to find an icepack.
“What happened?” Steve asked as Nancy reached the bottom step. She didn’t look in pain but rather pissed off.
“She tried to fight one of the soldiers stationed downtown,” answered Jonathan, his voice somewhere between annoyance and concern.
Nancy scoffed. “I didn’t try to fight him. I wanted him to answer my question, and he made the mistake of not listening to me,” she explained. “All I did was grab his shoulder, and he acted like I was armed and dangerous. Which I wasn’t, but maybe I should have been.”
“So, now the military is hitting civilians?” Eddie asked with a raise of his brows.
“To be fair, and I’m not justifying the hitting because that is super messed up, but we have to think that not all those men are clueless as to what’s going on and has gone on here, right?” Robin said. Nancy shrugged just as Tamera returned with an icepack and pressed it against her cheek. “Right, so could that maybe be why he reacted that way? Maybe he knows who you are, your involvement. Maybe you made him nervous?”
“I highly doubt I made a trained U.S. soldier nervous, Robin.”
“I don’t know about you, but even if I were a big, strong patriot,” Robin continued, her tone drenched in mockery. “And knew that you, standing at five-foot-four and can’t even drink legally, had faced down otherworldly monsters with nothing but a shotgun, I’d be nervous.”
On Nancy’s uncovered cheek, a light flush appeared at Robin’s words, but she quickly shook her head. “I appreciate that sentiment, but I think he just hit me because I wasn’t exactly being subtle in the questions I was asking. They obviously don’t want any press, and if he didn’t know who I was, I tipped him off that I knew more than I should, or more than what he knows. That could’ve just pissed him off.” She let out a heavy sigh. “I knew I shouldn’t have…have prodded and asked who they were keeping inside of there, but I did. I poked the bear, and now there is no way they’re going to let me anywhere near their base. I’ll be lucky if they don’t ransack my house looking for this.”
Nancy pulled out a voice recorder from her purse. She stared at it in her hands and frowned.
“You know, a cagy response isn’t bad,” Tamera said. “It could be enough to get people suspicious enough not to trust them.”
“That’s the only kind of response they give. If we want people to really question why the military’s here, why we’re really under lockdown, and what the hell they’re hiding from people, we need more than just some cady response from a low-ranking soldier,” said Nancy.
Along with their desire to kill Vecna and get Sunshine back, Nancy, Robin, and Tamera had started to play with the idea of exposing the doings of the government in Hawkins. They wanted to use the mob-like anger the people had for Eddie and Hellfire and turn it against the military stationed in town. If they could do that, or at least get people talking, they believed they could force the government’s hand. It had the potential to free Sunshine and clear Eddie’s name, if they could actually do it.
But that was yet another plan with a long list of risks, too. It didn’t seem entirely impossible, though. Nancy had succeeded, with the help of Jonathan and Murray, in exposing a watered-down version of how Barb’s death was tied to the government. What they wanted to do was on a much larger scale than what Nancy had already done, but the people of Hawkins had been lied to for so long. So many deaths, unnecessary deaths, could be pinned on them, directly and indirectly. They deserved justice, too. Whether that came in a watered-down version of the truth or the real deal was still undecided.
Nancy clearly wanted to get the ball really rolling with that plan. She, like Steve, was growing more restless and reckless. She wanted to tell people the truth, but she wanted a real shot at getting Sunshine back more. She lost Barb, and the weight of Sunshine’s absence seemed to be weighing on her all too similarly.
No one realized how much so until a couple of weeks ago, though.
Nancy didn’t drink, but there had been one night. Mike had called the radio station while Steve, Robin, Tamera, and Eddie were trying to brainstorm. The kid was frantic and said that they couldn’t find Nancy or reach her via walkie. Jonathan had already left to look for her, but Mike wanted to check to see if she was with them.
They, minus Eddie, set out to look too, fearing something bad had happened. They found her seated on the curb outside the unbought Holland house with a bottle of something hidden in a brown paper bag, crying on Jonathan’s shoulder.
Mascara was smeared down her face, and she kept saying that she was sorry. When they asked her what for, she didn’t answer, just cried harder. They brought her back to the radio station and told Mike they found her, that she was safe. She ended up falling asleep sandwiched between Robin and Tamera.
The next morning, she nursed a hangover with coffee and embarrassment that they tried to tell her wasn’t necessary. Later that day, she snapped back into herself, but they all could see the cracks in her exterior a lot clearer.
It felt like they all were on the verge of falling apart. They had so many ideas, so many ways they needed to turn their luck around, but it was like, no matter what they tried, they found themselves at another dead end.
[...]
Leia Hopper stood in front of the bathroom mirror of the cabin, narrowly observing her reflection. Her blonde hair had finally grown long enough for her to copy the style of the woman she shared her name with, Princess Leia. Twin buns sat on the sides of her head, which reminded her of the cinnamon rolls that Joyce had made for the day Luke and Leia claimed as their birthday.
Maybe it was a little silly of a hairstyle, but it made her feel more confident, and she needed that for another day of training. She wore a dark purple windbreaker and matching shorts, along with a pair of tightly laced tennis shoes, an outfit she deemed her training uniform. It made it feel more serious to her.
Both El and Kali were dressed in their own training uniforms. El’s was meant to allow her to move, run, and even fly through an obstacle course that they constructed in the old junk yard. Kali’s was dark-colored and comfortable, allowing her to focus on her mind and creating illusions that were more convincing and ones she could hold for longer. Leia fell somewhere in the middle of the two. She was trying to grow stronger, be able to knock out any technology within a certain radius without being so drained. But she also wanted to be able to dodge attacks and move quickly.
Stealing Sunshine right out from under their noses wasn’t enough for the military. They wanted all of them, the ‘lab’ kids. But as they continued to train, there was less and less of a chance of that happening and more of a chance that they would find Vecna, kill him, and get their sister back.
When they learned, so soon after their return from California, that Sunshine had been taken, Leia caused a townwide power outage. Between her missing sister and seeing one of her best friends broken in a hospital bed, Leia was pushed into such a fit of grief that it had nowhere else to go but through her abilities.
She wasn’t a little kid anymore, but Hopper had held her like she was.
It wasn’t fair. She had cried that over and over. It was Kali who, while quietly seething with rage, reminded the twins and El that the only thing they could do for Sunshine, and to get revenge for Max, was to get strong enough to beat both kinds of monsters: real ones and the people who were so hellbent on hurting them.
Never would Leia have believed Kali would have switched up her way of thinking so drastically. The Kali that Leia knew while on the run was colder and wanted nothing but pain and revenge on everyone who had hurt them. She didn’t care about anything else. But the Kali that was back in Hawkins had been changed for the better because of Sunshine and because of their friends, who showed her that she didn’t need to live life so scared. There was a life for them, the children of Hawkins Lab, that had a happy ending. But it was up to them to make it happen, to grab it before it could be taken from them too.
There were still cracks in Kali; there were cracks in all of them, and that couldn’t be filled until the missing pieces that made them whole returned. When Sunshine was back and Max was awake, those cracks would go away.
Someone knocked on the bathroom door. Leia opened it to reveal Joyce, who smiled at her. “Ready?”
Leia took a deep breath and nodded. “Let me say goodbye to Luke first.”
The loft in the cabin had been restored and was back to being Luke’s bedroom/art studio. The walls were once again filled with drawings that he spent day after day trying to understand.
“We’re about to leave,” Leia said as she reached the top of the ladder.
Luke paused his painting to look at her. His eyes always seemed to carry dark circles under them, and he wouldn’t let anyone cut his hair, making it look shaggy but kind of cool, even though she wouldn’t tell him that.
“Be careful.”
“I will.” She shifted her gaze from him and onto the newest drawing on his easel. It was a landscape which weren’t always super helpful. Especially when they looked like nowhere near Hawkins or the Upside Down. That drawing looked to be of a desert, with lots of light browns and oranges.
“Is that a new scene?” she asked.
Luke nodded before his shoulders slumped. “They’re getting harder to understand. I know this is from Max.” He pointed to the middle of the page where a small figure stood with red hair. “But there are two other people here, but it won’t show me who.”
Hope sparked in Leia’s chest, shining through her eyes. “But if it’s from Max’s future, that means she still has one, right? That’s a good thing!”
“I’d like to think so.”
As long as Luke was being fed visions of Max’s future, no matter how odd the scenes were, there was a reason to hope that she wouldn’t forever remain stuck in a hospital bed. She would wake up, and they’d be right back to eating ice cream until their stomachs ached, and reading Wonder Woman comics until they fell asleep. Leia had to hold onto hope.
“Anything else for Sunshine?” she asked.
Since she was taken, Luke had only one vision of her future. It was front and center on his wall, but it was just a drawing of her hand reaching upwards, illuminated with light. That was it, which was nothing helpful.
All they really knew about Sunshine was that she was alive, which was much better than the utter agony of not knowing. El made frequent trips into the void to check on her. As long as she was still alive, they had hope they could eventually break her out.
“Nothing yet,” Luke said. “But I’m still looking. There has to be something, and I will find it.”
Leia held back a sigh and fixed a small smile on her face, knowing that her brother was working hard. He was spending more time than he liked in his head in the hope of finding something that could be an answer or at least a sign for certain that there was a happy ending on the other side of everything.
She retreated down the ladder and stepped into the kitchen, where El was packing Gatorade bottles in a lunchbox, and Kali was tying her hair up.
Hopper was by the front door, a stopwatch around his neck, beside Joyce, who was slipping on her shoes.
To any outsider, they probably looked like a normal family getting ready for a summer day outside. If Jonathan and Will had been here, it really would have felt like they were a normal family. Leia wanted to reach that. She wanted that to be what waited at the finish line. When the monsters were gone, and everyone was awake, alive, and safe, the Hopper-Byers clan could finally live like a real family, together.
“Everyone ready?” Hopper asked.
All three girls nodded, faces set in determination, all ready to keep fighting.
stranger things season 1-5. a steve harrington x hawkins lab!oc
when another product of Hawkins National Laboratory finds herself fleeing from a long survived nightmare, she crashes into the life of one unsuspecting teenage boy. together, they are dragged into the dark mysteries that begin to consume the small town of Hawkins, Indiana.
stranger things season 1-5. a steve harrington x hawkins lab!oc
when another product of Hawkins National Laboratory finds herself fleeing from a long survived nightmare, she crashes into the life of one unsuspecting teenage boy. together, they are dragged into the dark mysteries that begin to consume the small town of Hawkins, Indiana.
Thats it, Doom likes to run scifi fandom forums and Peter has an account on every one of them, and every time Peter starts discussion threads, 9 times out of 10 doom shows up and either adds context that supports peters claims, or shows up edgeworth-style for a debate to the death with this high school rando, and when not fighting theyre unsuspecting pen pals, and have cheesy as fuck usernames that hint at being dr doom or spidey.
Spider-Society Ask Me Anything segment featuring the Super Sentai because that is literally what Miguel’s team is.
Toei Spider-man in BTSV or I riot.
Those weird games they make actors play on talk shows to promote popular films like the Avengers movies or something.
IDK, I wanted to draw the 90s kids.
Intended this to be a quick drawing to take a break, but I always overestimate my ability to draw new characters.
2087
stormborns
theartofmadeline
izzy806
jacobvanloon
dededos
