this scene literally isn't real because my mike wheeler would've comforted will and told him "he was a grown man and you were twelve. will, you didn't ask for that. you were just trying to go home."
Steve Harrington x Bauman!fem!reader
enemies to lovers, heavy angst, hurt/comfort, upside down mayhem, S2-S4, post S4 into S5 universe hot-take, end-of-the-world / dystopian setting turned happy ending (no more upside down!), ugly fights turned smut (...but with hella plot). 18+
🖤 CHAPTERS SUMMARY: Sometimes, memories hit you out of nowhere. You can’t even blame it on nostalgia this time around. Just the impending doom of whatever the hell’s taken over Hawkins and the entire country.
Maybe that’s what has you replaying the summer of 1985 inside your head. Maybe it’s the nationwide shutdown, this patriotic apocalypse, that has you thinking back to Independence Day. Back when everything went to shit. Back when Steve’s ears rang louder than freedom, you fought Soviets like a soldier, and Robin’s striped uniform stained with blood made you wonder what the hell any of you were even fight for at all...
God Bless America, right?
Meanwhile — presently — you’re still on the run with Steve, who no longer hates you the way he used to swear he did back in ‘85 (well… and ‘86… and ‘84, before that…). Martial Law is making this world, this life, seem impossible.
…then again, you were nicknamed “impossible” the second that you were born, premature and addicted to the substance abused womb that held you before miraculous birth. And the handsome former king of Hawkins, who swore you were the bane of his existence, has fallen harder for you than he ever did from his throne. So who’s to say beating the upside down, the end of the world, isn’t possible?
One levitating Winnebago and a super-sized found family, coming right up. Yes, the happy meal toy is included.
🖤 AUTHOR’S NOTE: We’re in the thick of my S5 hot take with this story. Steve & Babe Bauman are eternally my Roman Empire. Their story is my longest one, and even when we reach their “happy ever after…” it still keeps going.
Enjoy the mayhem. It only gets crazier from here.
Chapter Sixty
Flashpoint
July 4, 1985 💭
Starcourt Mall – Russian Sublevel 3
The drag of your work boots scuffed and echoed down the steel-plated corridor.
Three sets.
Three bodies.
Three kids pretending not to be terrified.
Two Soviet guards flanking you had all the warmth of hard cold steel. They didn’t speak, just grunted in Russian and jerked you forward, each movement short, sharp and practiced.
Merciless.
Steve stumbled once. Robin flinched when they wrenched her upright. But you refused to let them see you flinch. Not yet.
They hadn’t injected you with anything. Not yet. But they didn’t have to. You were all outnumbered. Overpowered. Armed only with the fading bravado of adrenaline and a worn-in wifebeater tank top, newly soaked with sweat and mall paint, still spattered across your oversized pale denim overalls. Paint that you had mixed yourself. Brights and neutrals, undried streaks and blots on the knees from your highest paying job yet.
So much for that.
Now your paint-caked, clammy hands were zip-tied behind your back. Your shoulder throbbed and your pride burned worse.
Robin’s head hung, her breathing shallow, wheezing from the kick to her gut. She was definitely riding the struggle bus, but she was sticking it out and masking her fear as best she could.
If I can hide my sexuality, she thought to herself, then I sure as hell can keep these fears in the closet with it.
Steve? Not lookin’ so hot.
Well, technically, he still looked like a walking Abercrombie ad in a slutty little sailor uniform that you’d tried all summer not to gawk at and hated the fact that Billy’s whole “don’t cream your pants” now all but sang inside your head since the first week of June. Not that he noticed. Steve was already livid, as soon as he found out you’d be working at the mall that summer doing contractor work all the way into the fall.
Because he was still so hung up on Nancy that he couldn’t freaking think straight, and you were still the literal bane of his existence who had squashed his dreams with a glass of Smirnoff on ice and an asexual uncle who had a strange knack for calling people out like a witch doctoring love.
“Steve, Steeeeeve,” Murray had jeered, wry and sarcastic, that fateful night that Nancy and Jonathan sat in his bunker with you both seated across from them. “We like Steeeeeeve… but we don’t looooove Steve…”
The words haunt you now, no longer funny. And the consequences of your harmless actions are now for every time that Steve looks at you with pure disdain, wearing a soured expression that morphs his pretty face into something ugly anytime you’re near.
Currently, though?
You’re the least of his woes.
Right now, Steve’s lip was split. Bad. One eye was already purpling, swelling shut, and hiding one of his beautiful brown irises. But that wasn’t what stood out.
It was the way he kept looking at you.
…no, not looking. Scowling.
Because you weren’t supposed to be there.
That was the subtext behind every bloodied glance he tossed your way. You weren’t supposed to have followed them into the underground elevator. You weren’t supposed to now be Robin’s second set of eyes when he didn’t even think that they needed another body in the field. You weren’t supposed to exist in his warzone or his personal life. Not the smartass girl who always had paint on her elbows and a comeback on her tongue, with way too sharp of cheekbones and a natural Pilates body that came from hard work and manual labor.
But there you fuckin’ were.
You were right here.
And you were walking, not even fighting your restraints the entire time that they shoved you forward. You barely rolled your eyes or gave them the satisfaction of a response if they barked at you in Russian tongues.
But then one of them made a move.
Quick.
Brutal.
Uncalled for.
A gloved hand struck Steve across the face.
“Achk,” he hissed before swallowing it right after the strike.
You flinched instinctively. Visibly, clear as day. Not at the hit, but at the blind rage that newly ignited in your chest.
“Oh you can fuck off.”
You spat the words with a brunt kick to the shin of the soldier who’d struck Steve’s face — right before you literally spat in the fucker’s eyes, making him recoil.
“Hey—” Steve growled suddenly, voice low but cracking.
It was partially meant for you, to scold you for lashing out so irrationally. But it was also at them. Because now one of the guards had grabbed your elbow too hard, their fingers now digging into old bruises you didn’t even remember earning.
But you kept your chin high.
Something different in you had snapped. Not for yourself. You could’ve endured your bruises. Hell, you had endured them.
But Steve?
Steve Harrington, who barely looked at you without a glare in his eyes, and who hated how close you stood to Robin behind the ice cream counter all summer, who couldn’t even stand the sound of your voice?
He didn’t fucking deserve that.
He might hate you, but you didn’t hate him.
Not even close.
Because you’d already started falling for him.
Quietly. Slowly. Painfully.
And you would’ve let the world punch you out cold before you let them touch him again.
The guard didn’t release you.
The other one looked way too close to Steve for your liking.
So you moved first, still seeing red.
Quick, vicious, without thought, your foot snapped up and you drove your heel hard into his uniformed kneecap. The Soviet let out a howl, faltering just enough and causing your entire body to spin away, despite your arms being bound. It wasn’t enough to break free. But it was enough to make a goddamn point.
And enough to make the others snap.
Three guards converged.
“HEY—!” Steve barked, twisting against the second man’s grip, yanking at his own restraints.
“Undeterred bitch slaps, huh?” you sneered at the guard while he was down. “What is this, junior year?”
They didn’t strike you. Not yet. Just turned you sharply, roughly, now dragging you now in a different direction, toward a different hallway. Cold and narrow and unfamiliar.
Robin’s head shot up. “Wait—no! She didn’t do anything!”
“Where the hell are you taking her!?” Steve bellowed.
But you were already about to be taken around the corner.
“I said—” Steve’s now voice cracked violently, raw in the echo chamber of the hallway. “Where the fuck are you taking her!?”
You still didn’t let them hear you scream yet. Nah, instead? You just laughed. Snorted, breathless and loud.
“God, you assholes really are this cliché, huh?” you rasped, dragging your heels through every foot of polished concrete. “Dark hallway. Secret base. Matching boots. Is this where the Bond villain speech goes?”
“Shut your mouth,” one of them muttered in English, thickly accented. His hand slammed into your shoulder to keep you moving.
You winked at him. “That’s what your mom said last night.”
Your reward for the comedy was a bitch slap and swift punch to the ribs. A hard one. Now you staggered.
Didn’t drop.
Didn’t stop.
Just staggered and grunted as they hauled you off.
“BAUMAN?!” Robin shrieked in the distance.
“LET HER GO, LET HER GO!” Steve’s infuriated shouts followed hers, already sounding father away.
That’s when they opened a door to the room.
The metal shrieked on its hinges, and that’s the last Steve and Robin saw of you for hours until they were drugged out of their minds.
Room 3B – Interrogation Unit
“WHERE is she!?” Steve shouted again.
He’d been screaming since they threw him into the chair, and this had been one of the constants flying from his mouth. His hands were shackled now. Not zip-ties. Real steel.
The kind that cut.
Robin was next to him, shaking but upright. Her nose was now bleeding, her sailor shirt was torn, but her eyes were molten.
“I don’t know what the hell you think this is,” she snapped at the broad-shouldered officer in front of her, “but if you think we’re gonna just sit here while you play footsie with fascism, you’ve got the wrong Americans—”
The officer struck her.
Steve roared. “Don’t you fucking touch her!”
He bucked forward, teeth bared. It earned him a baton to the chest, fast and sharp. His back slammed into the chair behind him, knocking heads with Robin.
“Steve,” she panicked. “Steve?! Steve, you okay—?!”
He just kept glaring.
He just wouldn’t stop.
No matter how hard he wheezed now, Steve wouldn’t back down.
“Where is she,” he asked again. Lower this time. Deadly and now stated before re-escalating. “Where the hell is she, where. Where—?”
“Why are you separating us?!” Robin chimed in with her own unhinged panic.
They didn’t answer.
They only circled.
One translated for the other. Names were tossed out at random but with purpose.
Sam Owens.
Jim Hopper.
Murray Bauman
Experiment 011.
Steve just spat at their boots. “Go to hell.”
Robin laughed weakly. “Think we’re going first.”
The questions just kept on coming. The hits, too. But nothing broke them yet.
Not until a sound.
Far away, through the wall, muffled.
A yell.
Robin’s eyes went wide.
Steve felt his soul coil.
It was your voice.
The sound was short. Wordless. But not angry anymore, no longer defiant or sharply clever.
Now it was panicked.
Then it turned into a scream.
Robin choked on a petrified sob.
But Steve saw red.
He lunged.
The metal restraints scraped flesh from his wrists as he threw all his weight forward, knocking the chair off balance, crashing to the ground, his voice an absolute bellow as he roared your name down the hall.
And that was the moment they knew they had leverage.
One of the officers, blond, maybe thirty, calculating… looked down at Steve’s collapsed body, then looked at Robin.
She was pale now.
So was Steve.
“Maybe next,” the officer said simply.
Then? They brought the syringes.
Not seven minutes later in Room 3B, you were silent now.
Somewhere.
Elsewhere.
Bruised in a cold cell.
All alone.
“S’like fighting the crack all over again,” you darkly muttered to yourself, slurring.
And the accuracy of that statement was insanity, really...
Because it was true, and now you couldn’t help but feel like this situation might be similar to what your fetus self experienced as it dodged remnants of hard drugs, all through an umbilical cord after you’d been conceived as a careless accident, then carried on for months as a crack baby.
The sound of distant shouting, Russian and sharp, sounded off from far away…
You didn’t know what they were doing to them. Your friends.
You were worried about your friends.
And you didn’t know what they’d heard. But you weren’t making a sound anymore, but they were and you didn’t shout back.
Because you couldn’t.
The scream had stolen your breath. The pain, your voice. It’d been winded from your lungs, after they’d shocked your whole brain with a harsh zap of a machine for not ten seconds.
You now laid on your side, wrists raw, arms curled against your chest, knees pulled in like a child waiting for a storm to pass.
They hadn’t asked you many questions.
Not yet, at least.
For now, they just wanted you separated.
Steve’s voice, when you heard it, had been… wrong.
It had sounded furious and protective and wild, like something feral. Not like the bitter boy who’d brushed past you all summer at Scoops with cold shrugs and rolled eyes.
Not the boy you’d scarred last autumn.
Not the boy who thought you talked too much.
Not the boy who never once remembered to check the paint room’s lock, and always pretended it wasn’t because he knew you were sleeping in there between shifts.
No. That boy didn’t exist anymore.
This boy was shouting your name like it was the only one that mattered, as if he cared about it almost as much as he cared about the kids. Dustin, Lucas and Mike. And Max, or Eleven.
Or Nancy.
And then there was silence.
Too long, too quiet.
…and you knew now.
They’d finally sedated him.
Robin, too.
You pressed your cheek to the cool concrete floor and tried to breathe, but the air didn’t feel real anymore and the angry burn behind your eyes had already brimmed and wet your lashes as you prayed to whatever higher power was up there that the boy you just heard calling your name would survive, even if it meant he would hate you for the rest of your life.
And just down the hall, the needle hit his neck.
The drug coursed through his veins and all his muscles went slack as the room began to spin in dizzying circles.
And just before his vision fell backward into black…
Just before the drug drowned him…
He saw you.
Not actually in front of him.
But in his head.
He saw you kicking and biting and snarling like something out of a fever dream. Like a feral cat with nothing but sharp words and skinny fists, wearing those damn paint-splattered overalls, streaked across the thighs and knees with your long, wiry arms that still held muscle. A bruise on your collarbone instead of the indigo smear from your sponge roller, fresh and spreading, and a body built for building, for climbing, for enduring what wasn’t humanly possible ever since you’d clawed your way out of the womb.
And you were still fighting.
And you were still standing.
And clearly your prayers were being answered in this last moment of lucidity for Steve Harrington, who had one last thought before his eyes shut:
She’s gonna kill one of them before this night is over.
…then the corner of his mouth twitched.
…right before the darkness swallowed him.
Chapter Sixty-One
Cold Trail
March 11, 1987 • 10:19 PM
Eastern Range, Northern U.S.
PRESENT DAY
The dark had teeth.
It gnawed at the edges of vision, curling like smoke through the trees. Winds carried a low growl, constant and cold, threading through the dense ice packed wilderness. And moving through it slowly, deliberate and off-road, was an impossible sight:
Two Soviet tanks and one levitating Winnebago.
The tanks were iron giants, camouflaged and disguised, both serving as a perfect image of the nationwide martial law, and both bore their ironically christened names with smug dignity. Dingus 1 and Dingus 2, graffitied on the sides in marker and Max’s “lucky tube of lipstick” she used to always keep in her pocket for good luck (which Lucas, of course, kept safely in his pocket over the last nine months on her behalf).
No headlights.
No walkies.
Just low comms between tanks and dead silence otherwise.
The Winnebago, floating steadily six feet off the frozen ground, glided like something from a dream… Or maybe a weaponized hallucination.
Inside Dingus 1, you sat up front in the passenger seat, your gaze cutting through the dark ahead with a protective eye on the levitating motor home that five of your six nuggets. The icy windshield of your ride was coated in frost, a few spots cleared by hand. Your breath fogged slightly beneath your scarf.
Dmitri was at the wheel. Not where he should’ve been, not for visibility, not for safety… But the Russian man was nothing if not stubborn. Uniform snug, shoulders rigid, with his piercing eyes narrowed as if daring the darkness itself to move wrong.
“You know, you really shouldn’t be up front,” you muttered, watching the RV ahead as it floated over a stretch of frozen creek bed. “You’re like… target priority number one.”
“Number one, eh?”
“The whole ‘betray my homeland’ slash ‘let my people go’ schtick kinda ramped you up on the tier list.”
“…and yet here I am.”
Dry. Amused. Russian to his bones.
You grinned. “You’re here because I’d rather keep you where I can see you than spend the rest of this mission dragging your corpse through the snow.”
“Romantic.” He glanced sideways at you, a coy smirk barely tugging at his mouth. “If I die, make sure it’s dramatic. I want explosions. A swelling score.”
“You’ll get snow in your mouth and accompaniment,” you said, deadpan and mock-solemn.
Dmitri chuckled, knuckles whitening slightly on the panel. “Your American sense of ceremony continues to disappoint.”
You grinned again. Just slightly. But your eyes never left the RV up ahead. You kept checking the signal light on the back end… three soft pulses every sixty seconds. Their version of a pulse check.
The kids knew the drill.
It was still blinking.
Still airborne.
“Winnebago’s holding altitude,” you murmured, tapping your comm switch on the inside of your glove. “Dingus 1 confirming stable float. We’ve got eyes. No sign of movement.”
“All’s well inside the home front,” Joyce’s voice now confirmed through the comm, up in front of the Winnebago in Dingus 2. “Confirming, Jonathan’s got eyes on Murray up front.”
“Roger that.”
“How’s our soldier?”
That was Hopper. You glanced over your shoulder, a fond sigh leaving your lips before you answered.
“At ease,” you murmured gently into the comm. “Steve’s got her.”
Inside your tank, El sat cross-legged on the floor, centered and calm, both of her palms open and facing the ceiling. Her eyes were closed. Breathing slowly...
A faint smile curled her lips.
Steve sat beside her, warm and still in the faint red glow of the instrument panels. He hadn’t said much since sunset. His palm rested lightly on Eleven’s forehead just as a present touch, not a fraction or anything pressing. Simply a tether.
She didn’t need it. But she let it stay.
Steve wasn’t watching her now, though.
He was watching you.
Or rather, he was watching the back of your head through the tank window. Your silhouette outlined by the console lights up front, your frame steady and squared beside Dmitri’s.
God, you looked…
Unreal.
But not because of the uniform.
Not even the ponytail or the dirt-smudged cheekbone or the long, clean lines of your neck where the scarf had slipped.
It was… the way you sat as if this was your goddamn warpath. Like nothing scared you, and even if it did, you’d chew the fear and spit it back out before it could register.
Steve sighed.
He didn’t deserve you.
That was the truth of it. And it had been gnawing at his insides since before sunset.
Not because you were beautiful. Although, Jesus—you were. But also because you were always ready. You always had been. It didn't matter what hit you all out of nowhere.
Just like in 1985.
Back in Starcourt when you turned yourself into a blunt force weapon in defense of him. Back in Hawkins, when he didn’t realize what you were doing every time you shut down your own fear just to steady his. Back then, he’d thought you were just stubborn. Just rude. Just in the way.
But now?
Now he saw it.
Now he felt it.
He saw the girl who’d kicked a Soviet guard in the kneecap for laying a hand on him. And now you were up front in a stolen Soviet tank, talking to the Russian defector like you were old war buddies, scanning the treeline like a soldier born and bred with a parental gaze set on the RV just up ahead.
It finally hit him.
You really had been in love with him this whole damn time.
Not loudly.
Not even hopefully.
Just silently.
Like a constant.
An unrequited constant for three years.
Steve swallowed and looked down at El again. She was still calm, still focused. His thumb brushed her temple gently, and the gesture calmed him more than he wanted to admit.
Beside him, Argyle chewed an apple and stared out the back viewport. “You’re thinking too hard, my man,” he said without looking at him. “Like, your brain is radiating.”
Steve blinked. “What?”
“You’re vibin’ heavy.” Argyle pointed toward the tank’s front window, toward you. “You thinking ‘bout her?”
Steve rolled his eyes. “Jesus. Am I that obvious?”
“Bro, you look like you’re trying to solve quantum physics with your feelings.” Argyle now leaned back in the seat and crisped another bite. “It’s adorable. And tragic. Deeply romantic. Kinda nauseating.”
Steve exhaled sharply through his nose. He almost laughed. “Yeah well, that’s me. Mr. Idiot.”
Argyle smiled wide. “True. But you’re the idiot in love with a war general who loves you back.”
El stirred gently beside them, her lips twitching like she’d heard every word. But her eyes didn’t open.
Steve leaned his head back against the steel wall and stared at the ceiling for a moment. “She loved me first,” he said, quietly.
Argyle looked over. “Yeah. We know.”
Steve sat with that, letting it settle. He let the guilt and the awe and the goddamn weight of it sit right inside his chest.
“I didn’t deserve it,” he added, more to himself than anything. “I spent years being…just…”
“Blind?” Argyle offered.
Steve nodded once.
“But you see her now,” El whispered, her voice like icy flurries on the glass from inside of a snow globe.
He turned to her in surprise. Her eyes were still closed, but she was smiling brightly now.
“She always looked at you,” she said. “You finally looked back.”
The comm crackled in your tank up front. Dmitri looked at you before his voice low answered. “Checkpoint up ahead. Forty meters. Unmanned.”
“Copy,” came Hopper’s voice from Dingus 2, his tone clipped, quietly braced. “Keep it clean. Keep it moving.”
“Moving,” you echoed.
Steve watched your hand flick the switch, watched you nod to Dmitri… watched your mouth move in command.
Goddamn, you were steady. And hot. And everything he’d never thought he’d be lucky enough to hold in this lifetime.
And now that he just… had you…?
Steve has no clue how that even happened, but he does know that he has you now and he’ll go nuclear before he loses you.
The RV floated onward, seamless, above the tire tracks that would’ve otherwise betrayed them.
Max was curled by the window with one crutch propped like a weapon. Will and El flanked her like satellites. Nancy had a rifle cradled against her chest, her blue eyes like a hawk’s on the window. Mike sat beside her, locked in and focused, not even twitching like he used to.
Owens kept watch by the front, glancing back every so often to check on El’s vitals, breathing patterns, tension levels.
Murray?
Murray now sat on the floor near the front seat with an entire goddamn flamethrower in his lap like a house cat. He hadn’t said anything in over twenty minutes.
“Why do you have that?” Dustin had asked earlier.
“Because I can,” Murray had answered.
And that was that.
In the front tank, Robin and Eddie were cackling softly about something they wouldn’t share. Hopper and Joyce both drove and navigated in tandem. Jonathan rode up front and between them, sharp-eyed and quiet, but every so often Robin reached from her seat to fist bump him and make him laugh.
Back in Dingus 1, the comms pinged softly. Pre-arranged, and scrambled, and encrypted.
One click. All clear.
Two clicks. Visual hazard.
Three clicks. Prepare.
You tapped in a reply… one.
Then you turned to Dmitri. “Coast’s still clear.”
“Good.” He exhaled, then glanced at you. “When this is done… you and Harrington are going to make it?”
You paused. “We already are.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Then why do you look like someone’s aiming a scope at your future?”
You considered that, almost afraid to answer. Eventually, you settled on a more morbid version of the truth. Or maybe it was just a morbid joke.
“Might just be my face.”
Dmitri blinked at that. Once, twice. Then he slowly turned to look at you, finding you grinning, just like your uncle, and before he could help it, he barked a laugh.
It actually startled you.
“Wow,” you smiled. “I want that on record.”
“Ладно, попал в точку,” he cleared his throat, sighing out the humor and shaking his head but still smirking before it faded completely.
“Ladno, popal v tochku,” is what he’d said.
Translation? “Alright, you hit the mark.”
You hummed in satisfaction.
Behind you, Steve finally stood and walked forward. He quietly knelt beside Eleven and checked her nose again as you came through the front passage a few moments later to kneel beside him like it was second nature.
“El alright?” you asked, palm resting briefly against her arm.
Steve looked up at you, soft and wide-eyed. “She’s good. Just holding it steady.”
You nodded warmly.
Argyle passed you a pack of needles and yarn from the small supply rack in the corner. “We gotta get you something to knit, chica,” he said with a grin. “You look like you’re seconds from unraveling.”
You took the yarn, smirking. “I’ll knit a scope cover for Nancy’s rifle.”
“Make it match her sweater,” Steve offered.
“Pink?” you asked as you glanced at him, spotting the look.
He wasn’t smiling. Not fully.
But he was looking at you like maybe you’d always been the home he had been stumbling towards in the dark. Crawling backwards, seeking from the moment he’d started walking.
“…if I get a big enough thump on my head, I can change, y’know?…”
You’d given him the biggest thump of his life, after Nancy.
And now, finally, he was crawling forward.
He could see the light on.
You held his gaze a second longer. “We’re close,” you told him softly. “We get through the gorge by sunrise. No tracks, no um, signs of life.”
Steve nodded once, but his gaze never altered. Your brows pinched together with tender curiosity.
But then Eleven spoke quietly. “Float’s getting harder.”
You and Steve turned to her in sync.
“We’ve got her,” you said, already shifting. “Go, go.”
You moved fast, back to the front. Dmitri nodded. Cranked the engine harder. Time to draw some visual coverage.
In Dingus 2, Robin flicked the comms. “We’ve got flare activity west. Minor. Looks like a weather probe.”
“Clocked,” you replied. “Stay close.”
“On your six, General.”
You smirked. “That’s Commander Smartass to you.”
The convoy moved into the next stretch of darkness.
Still silent.
Still floating.
But not for long.
And this time?
If anyone tried to take what was yours?
They’d never see the retaliation coming.
🖤 forever dedicated to @silkholland & @aloneinthehellfire
Walk with me, Vecna possesses Mike and reveals he was his original fourth victim, until he left for Lenora. “If only you’d stayed here, Michael, I would’ve gladly left Maxine alone.”
Writing was so so shit so here’s how I would’ve changed it (vol 2) (just my opinion):
- Jonathan and Nancy should have died, it would’ve made their whole speech more emotional and wouldn’t leave viewers wondering wtf is going on w them now
- if they had died it would’ve maybe had an impact on the coming out scene because he never got to tell Jonathan and he wants to tell the others before it’s too late
- max and holly’s speech was too long they I understand why it was there but how did vecna not follow them when they were there? They were out of the cave and just standing there for minutes
- I actually though Dustin and Steve’s arc was fine it made sense and I liked it idk
- actually I think they should’ve had a lil more time because I really just need Steve’s trauma to be addressed this poor man
- the coming out scene should’ve been just his closest friends and family and no one else. Kali doesn’t know who this kid is, Vickie barely knows him, Steve and him haven’t had an interaction in years, the list goes on.
- the speech was good I didnt mind it actually it just felt like we were straying from the point but over all it wasn’t bad
- if mileven is endgame there should’ve been more mike and Jane scenes where they seemed together because they felt platonic as fuck (also if they are still together i think that mike and Jane should’ve broken up with him after knowing she was going to die so as “not to hurt him” it feels very on brand for them)
- if byler is endgame then they should’ve kissed or had a shared moment or mike should’ve done more
- mikes entire character seemed botched it didn’t feel like him he just kinda stood there and nodded sometimes
- if neither is canon I don’t think I’ll be happy with will finding some random guy it feels forced and rushed
- vecna and the kids plot along with the wormhole thing felt very over complicated I don’t know what I would change but the jumping of povs plus trying to understand the plot just recently given to us was very confusing
- I’m also still not sure what’s going on w kali idk
Anyways this is just the ramblings of someone very sleep deprived and annoyed w the episodes idk it felt badly written and I wanted them to be something they could’ve been but noooooo (you can disagree idc pls tell me what u think im just kinda done)
anyways decided to post my own rewrite of st5 from mike's pov bc WTF WAS THAT FINALE BRO
The dipshit duffers can pry complex well-written character gay mike with internalized homophobia and meaningful character development from my cold, dead body
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Summary:
It's 1987. November 3rd, three days before the anniversary of Will's disappearance.
The world ended, but they survived. Hawkins is finally returning to normal--well, almost.
They still haven't found Vecna yet. They still don't know what the fuck he's planning. Everyone's slowly losing their minds.
And Mike... Mike can feel Will pulling away from him. Something about him has changed, like he's... not himself anymore. None of them are.
n̴̮̭͈̥̭̱̩̱̣͈̥̘̗̠̣̞̂̋̚ͅo̶̡͍͙̠̠̮̬͈̱̤̦̯͇̙̤͐̈́̊̚͜͝ǹ̶̛͔̹̙̤̝̙̫̳̼̜̺̺̖̽̒̋͛̏̃͝ę̶͕̑͒́̑̀̌̓̆̂̚͠͠ ̸̭͕͇̰̘̝̳̺̭͍̦̬̙̬̩͂̀͊̄̀͐̌͊͝͝ơ̷̯͖̩̲̺̠͎̬͍̯̔̉͗͊̉̔̊̀̒̌̒f̸̡̨̦͚͕̗̭͕̻̮̥̤̩̯̯̅̏̀͜ͅ ̷̠̗͙̟̇͂̑͑̆͌̈́̆̀̆͊̇̏̒̚̚͝t̸̞͎̀̂̔́͆̒͘͠ͅͅḣ̴̙̜̣̳̤̀̽̑͛̐͑̑̿͑̈́͜i̷̧͚̣̜͉̻͉͕̜͖̬̠͓̯͇͒͛̋̏́̓̈͊̈̅̉̒̾̈́̅̉͛͂͜͠š̴̖́͐ ̵͖̥͆̂̔̉̀̈̓̌̃͂̾͝͝ȉ̷̪̲̑̂͂̍̆́͑͂͆̅̄̎̐̊́̚̚š̸̼ ̷̧̨͍̰̠̰̮̪̼̠̗̞̠̹̪͈̘̃̄͗͛̏͑r̵̢̢̭̺̩̩͓̲̥̦̱̻̰̱̻̞͖̮̅̔̆̕ĕ̶̛͓̱̼͖͎̊̽̎̀̑̒̂̒̕͜ͅä̵͔͔̲̳͚́̔̓͂͌̂͛̀̈́̀̊́́̏̂͐̚̕l̴̝̼̱͖̠̫̈̈́͆͂͐̂͜
Mike...? Mike! MIKE, WAKE UP!
or, st5 but Mike gets vecna'd. Vecna makes him believe he's finally lost Will for good.
tagging some folks bc they wanted to be updated when i post (or bc i just felt like they'd be interested)
