hiiii, so timetravel au where nancy + jonathan + steve + dustin go back in time in that scene in s5 with the beemer, they travel back to when Steve was 12 (the summer he befriended tommy and established his status as a popular kid) (he had stayed with tommy’s family all summer because his parents forgot to arrange a babysitter)
however, due to a miscalculation, young steve never ends up staying with the Hagans—because of the group's own actions—so now the four of them are trying to find a way back. the problem is that two of the four hate steve and nancy is, at best, indifferent, so, they don't care about altering the timeline—especially if it affects steve—and at one point before they leave, steve suddenly disappears. when they finally return, the timeline is completely altered: eddie is alive and knows about the upside down, max was never a victim of vecna, and robin and erica know nothing about the UD (among other even stranger, crazier changes). steve is nowhere to be found, and dustin—the only one who remembers altering anything—celebrates at first, only to realize that the has somehow ruined steve's life.
Hm, yeah, Steve had a rough summer in the new timeline. He spent most of it hanging out in the woods behind his house with a kid who was only in town to stay with a relative for the summer. They actually ended up kissing.
Unfortunately, that part happened in Steve’s house the day his parents got home. Since the kid was not only a boy but a Munson to boot, Steve was sent off to corrective boarding school. He is… alive, but deeply closeted, friendless, and miserable.
Eddie hasn’t had a chance to speak with Steve since he was shipped out of Hawkins, but still feels guilty for letting them get caught. It’s that guilt that drove him to help investigate little Will Byers’ disappearance and first get involved in the Upside Down in ‘83. It’s that guilt that drives him to once again sign himself up for a suicide run in the fight against Vecna, and dies again even worse than the first time.
And it’s kinda all Dustin’s fault. 🙂 Oops. 🙃
(Note: I love Dustin but if shit gets changed suddenly Steve, someone who has been beaten and literally tortured trying to keep all those kids safe, disappears and Dustin celebrates at first? Uh uh. No. That’s bad karma and it’ll bite his ass right off.)
… Maybe a while later, after Vecna is defeated in ‘89 (it takes longer), Steve turns up after all. He’s married with a kid on the way and the most boring-ass career imaginable. He’s got a buzz cut and a low-key coke habit.
And he’s absolutely devastated because on top of this shitty, repressed as hell life:
He’s also been having screaming night terrors for over half a decade because he remembers the way it used to be too.
He also remembers how none of his three companions cared about altering the timeline.
Eddie is still dead (which he hadn’t known for sure until finally getting up the nerve to track Dustin down), but now he remembers what it was like to kiss him.
