In a world with daemons (external representations of a person's soul which take the form of animals, changing throughout childhood until settling into a final form), it turns out whenever gates to the Upside Down are open, anyone with an unsettled daemon nearby has the possibility of their daemon taking the form of creatures from the Upside Down.
Steve Harrington learns this the hard way. For the past several years he and his daemon had been pretending that his daemon settled to avoid the stigma of reaching his mid/late teens without having managed to settle yet. He and his daemon picked one form for his daemon to always wear while out in public (maybe it's something like an ocelot or some fancy breed of hunting dog. Whatever it is, it's something that people see as being a little bit exotic and cool but mostly innocuous) and only experimented trying to find an actual permanent form while safely out of anyone's sight. Then, in the heat of the moment of his first encounter with the demogorgon, Steve's daemon instinctively shifts out of its fake-settled form to take on a shape more useful for fighting such a foe and ends up as a demodog.
At first, Steve considers this slip up to be only a minor concern compared to finding out that monsters are real, because Steve thinks Nancy and Jonathan will be willing to keep his secret after what the three of them have just gone through together. Then the true severity of the situation begins to dawn on him as he realizes that his daemon can't shift back to its usual fake-settled form due to having finally settled for real.
Now he is going to have to face the world with a demodog shaped daemon (which he doesn't yet know is going to grow up into a demogorgon as he finishes maturing from a teenager into a full adult) instead of the facade he was used to having his daemon present to the world. Needless to say, everyone, both Hawkins locals and the various shadowy organizations affiliated with Hawkins National Laboratory, all flip their shit and nothing is going to be the same for Steve ever again.
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timeasmymeasure
Steve (can be gen, or Steve/Jonathan/Nancy, or Steve/Eddie), Daemon AU
Date: 2023-08-04 10:37 am (UTC)Steve Harrington learns this the hard way. For the past several years he and his daemon had been pretending that his daemon settled to avoid the stigma of reaching his mid/late teens without having managed to settle yet. He and his daemon picked one form for his daemon to always wear while out in public (maybe it's something like an ocelot or some fancy breed of hunting dog. Whatever it is, it's something that people see as being a little bit exotic and cool but mostly innocuous) and only experimented trying to find an actual permanent form while safely out of anyone's sight. Then, in the heat of the moment of his first encounter with the demogorgon, Steve's daemon instinctively shifts out of its fake-settled form to take on a shape more useful for fighting such a foe and ends up as a demodog.
At first, Steve considers this slip up to be only a minor concern compared to finding out that monsters are real, because Steve thinks Nancy and Jonathan will be willing to keep his secret after what the three of them have just gone through together. Then the true severity of the situation begins to dawn on him as he realizes that his daemon can't shift back to its usual fake-settled form due to having finally settled for real.
Now he is going to have to face the world with a demodog shaped daemon (which he doesn't yet know is going to grow up into a demogorgon as he finishes maturing from a teenager into a full adult) instead of the facade he was used to having his daemon present to the world. Needless to say, everyone, both Hawkins locals and the various shadowy organizations affiliated with Hawkins National Laboratory, all flip their shit and nothing is going to be the same for Steve ever again.