I doubt this is somethjng I'll ever get around to writing but I have such a clear vision for Demo-Creature!Steve.
Post season 4, Robin gets on him for hauling boxes around with fresh wounds and he keeps trying to brush it off but she realizes he isn't even wearing bandages anymore so she forcibly gets a look at his demobat bites only to find that they're completely healed over, silvery-pink puckered scars. And Steve doesn't know anymore than she does but hes clearly scared and I think maybe Robin would keep this secret for him because nothing else seems wrong and he doesn't want to cause any problems when so many awful things just happened but as time goes on it becomes obvious that something IS wrong. When Steve starts acting skittish, when he stops really eating, when his skin goes pale and his teeth get sharper, when looking him in the eye strikes genuine, god-fearing, terror into Robin's soul- she finally decides ro escalate.
She tells Nancy and Jonathan, who attempt to confront Steve regarding the matter but he's being so weird and he's snapping at them and somehow someway this gets ran all the way up to Joyce and Hopper without ever informing the kids and maybe Steve overhears or walks in on them talking about him. And then it all comes spilling out of him. The nightmares, the hunger, the mouthful of teeth, and the skin around his mouth that's begun peeling that he's too afraid to check underneath. And the fear. He's so goddamn scared.
Someone makes a bad call and suggests going to Owens maybe, someone in the government they trust, and Steve flips out. Not only is he already terrified of hospitals and governments and needles but he knows now, can feel it in his bones, that whoever they hand him over to will see him as a monster.
So he runs off. Straight up disappears. The kids finally get clued in to what's going on and they're all pissed about being left in the dark. That's Steve, their Steve, and they hate that he's kept this secret from them. Especially when they could have been helpful. Someone realistically suggests the idea of him being flayed like Billy and they begin to panic. So El goes to look for him in the void, to find out if he's flayed or not. To find him in the first place.
She guides a group of them to Steve via walkie, and I think the group would be Hopper, Nancy, Robin, and Dustin the latter two having wormed their way onto the team because they care so much about Steve. But when El finds him, Steve is full Demo.
His eyes are glazed over, his body is disproportionately long and boney, his clothes are torn and he looks like his jaw has been goddamn torn off. But no, the bottom half of his face is just that of a demogorgon's. And when they find him, he's tearing into a pack of demodogs. I mean, really eviscerating them. There's blood in his mouth and on his hands and when he sees them he roars and he's decidedly not Steve Harrington.
But El can find him. El sees him. In the void there's the monster, sure, violent and hungry and uniquely foreign, but if she squints she can find Steve. She can talk him down, pull him out of this stupor. Tell him that he doesn't need to be afraid.
He falls to his knees, still mishapen and towering over her but she holds his face, pushes the flaps back together, and tells him that he isn't a monster. And that if anyone knows what its like to feel like you are- it's her.
When Steve comes to in his actual bldy he finds Robin doing the same thing. Holding his face together and sobbing because after he'd stopped his bout violence he's simply stared at her, unseeing. Like he didn't recognize her at all. And when he tries to speak, it comes out a broken and garbled, "...ro-bin?" And she laughs because of course she does. And Dustin can't be held back anymore, a mess of tears as he climbs to Steve's arm. And maybe it's just that he's calmed down or maybe it's unironically the power of love but Steve's face sews itself back together, leaving faint little scars where his flesh peeled back. His claws go away, his hands looking mostly human again save for some unnaturally pointy nails, and his eyes go back to their normal color and all that's left is the bloody mess of a kid held desperately by his friends.
So they go back to the cabin or whatever and they get Steve cleaned up and they force him to actually face this instead of running away from it. They determine that getting bitten by a demo creature does this, creates this werewolf style monster within you. It makes Steve's stomach churn to hear. But when someone asks, "how did we miss this?" The answer they get in return is:
"Well, do you know anybody else who got bit by a demo creature and lived to tell the tale?"
The answer is no. It's just Steve. But they don't let him shrink away, they don't let him feel alone, they remind that as fucked as this whole thing is- they still love him.
Steve just wishes it hadn't taken turning into a half-demogorgon to hear it.
