Chapter Text
Generally, Will was a concerned sort of person. It wasn't like he actively worried about things, really; instead, he worried in the way a dog worried through its bone, concerns tearing tiny holes inside his mind until he was more teeth marks than brain matter. Will had held this list of concerns for a long while, starting at age six with How can I hide myself well enough to disappear when bullies— a word that could mean many things, from mean-spirited first graders year olds to fathers— come looking for me? The list had only grown larger since then.
For a while, Do I even want to survive the end of the world? had taken first place in his ever-expanding list. In the last few seconds, however, What the fuck is going on? had superseded every other concern. But when he'd woken up in the dead of night with blood speckling his face, could you really blame him?
As for the blood, it wasn't last on his list, but since it wasn't him bleeding out, the blood wasn't exactly his number one priority. Currently, the whole blood-splattered-across-my-face thing was third on his list of concerns, sitting right under where the fuck did all these animals come from (which was a whole different thing to explain, okay, he was getting to it) and no, wait, where the fuck am I? It wasn't enough to make his heart race— just enough to make him a little sick, enough to make his mouth warm with sour saliva— but it was definitely still a concern.
The dead bodies, well. Not so much. Will had seen enough dead people for a stranger's glassy eyes to not phase him anymore, and while that wasn't exactly normal, Will probably couldn't define normal with a dictionary sitting right next to him.
Normal people, typically, did not wake up standing half-upright outside a ramshackle military base with warm blood dripping from their clothes like a paint job gone wrong. Some normal people sleep-walked, sure, but normal people probably didn't sleep-kill. And normal people definitely didn't wake up from sleepwalking surrounded by woodland creatures like some bad horror rip of a Disney princess movie.
If Will hadn't crossed the threshold from normal to completely and utterly weird in the second grade, he would have been scared out of his mind right now. If he hadn't gone from weird to haunted in the seventh, he still would've started hyperventilating, but seeing as he'd been more zombie than boy since he fell into literal Hell for a week, Will was far past hysterics.
He was tired. And cold. And he really, really wanted to go back to bed.
There was the problem of the blood, however, even if he wasn't that concerned about it, and the problem of not exactly knowing his way home. Will had purposefully avoided the newly constructed Hawkins military base, mostly because he was convinced a soldier would take one look at him and immediately assume he was harboring Vecna under his skin. Seeing as he had woken up in front of a military base surrounded by about three still-warm bodies— the first thing he'd done when he saw them was check for a pulse, but all he'd felt was blood the temperature of warm breath— they might be right.
So. He had no idea how he'd gotten here. He had no idea how he'd killed these three soldiers (scientists, more likely, from their once-pristine lab coats) and he definitely had no idea where all these woodland creatures (the thought made him want to laugh, but actually being stared down by a hundred pairs of animal eyes was more terrifying than hilarious) came from. The animals also didn't seem to want him to leave. Great.
He was a little scared, maybe, but that was sort of his constant resting state, so it was easy to ignore. Pretending that the strange woodland animal cult didn't exist, however, was a challenge. They were everywhere; a crowd of brown and white mouse scuttling past his feet like he was their Cinderella, a herd of deer back in his peripheral vision, swarms of cottontail rabbits and flocks of birds, all eyes trained eerily on him. He waited for a mouse's squeak or a bird's call, but no noise came.
"I, uh—" and he cleared his throat, speaking louder in the hopes that they would scatter, "hey?"
The animals, obviously, did not respond to his admittedly pathetic hey. Will inched forward, glancing towards an inch of space between a towering white-tailed deer and a group of twitching rabbits and hoping they would scatter when he moved. Instead, their gazes just honed in on him, dark and unnerving. They didn't seem particularly murderous— no open maws with rows of jagged teeth, no serrated claws, no red glints in their beady eyes— so Will was less terrified of being gored by a deer's antlers and more confused as to how he'd suddenly made a friend of one hundred animals, give or take.
At the thought, a voice echoed in the back of his mind to answer his question. You love animals, don't you? They came to help you.
Will was tired enough to assume the voice was his own, and he scoffed internally at its suggestion. He wasn't some fairy-tale princess. These deer didn't seem eager to do his laundry, and the birds perched on their antlers weren't about to start singing him songs. Deer could be driven to eat meat, in dire situations— they were probably drawn by the smell of blood, now that all the plants were slowly dying.
Animals acting strange during the apocalypse made sense, but not running from an obvious predator was beyond odd; Will knew, typically, prey animals fled at any sign of danger. Unless these deer were hungry enough to lick the blood from his forehead, they should've run the second he woke up.
(He'd had a soft spot for prey animals as a kid, how they were always on guard, always hunted. Will found a friend in their tendency to run; as a kid, he'd checked out books upon books on Indiana wildlife, until his father had called him a few choice words when he'd cried over a taxidermied deer head and nearly slammed Will's fingers in the return deposit of the Hawkins library.)
These animals were definitely not fleeing. If anything, they were moving closer, eerily robotic and still. The air around him felt— off, heavy and distended. Something about this was wrong.
Come on. Come closer. They'd like to say hello.
That was— okay, no, that was absolutely not his voice. Typically, Will didn't hear voices in his head, unless said voice was an interdimensional monster or the jeering taunts of his father, the jeering taunts of his bullies, Mike's spat-out insults, the disembodied voices of the people he'd let die—
Okay, so maybe he did hear voices. That didn't mean Will was going to start obeying them.
Come closer, it said, lightly. Look, how sweet— it's bowing its head for you.
A male deer— a buck, he remembered— had stepped into the circle; its head was tilted down, bowed almost in reverence, exposing the soft fur crowning its antlers. Dark, wide eyes blinked kindly up at him. Something darker crowded its neck, like a black spiderweb just under its fur. In the pale moonlight, Will could hardly make it out.
"Here lies William Byers," he muttered, edging away from the deer, "tragically gored by deer. Yeah, no thanks."
They miss you, William. The voice was deceptively sad, plaintitive like a child. Won't you pet them?
While Will had definitely heard voices, there had never been a voice in his head who had spoken directly to him. The Mindflayer's voice was more of a subconscious urge, an itch in his palms that forced him to move and talk as it wanted, while the voices of the people who'd hurt him were just worse versions of his own thoughts. This voice, however, talked to him like it was real.
Will had been told enough about Vecna to know how frightening he was— his clawed hands and tendency to snap limbs were enough to give Will nightmares on top of his pre-existing night terrors— but he'd never actually seen him, nor been gifted one of those grandfather-clock hallucinations from him. So far, this experience was seeming very, well, Vecna-like, but Will hadn't expected his voice to be so—
I am not an evil man, you know.
A rabbit hopped up to his leg. Its nose twitched once, twice, then went still as it brushed against Will's ankle.
I can be kind. Don't I sound. . . kind?
"No," said Will, taking a stumbling step back, "not really."
It— he, Will thought, he has always been a man haunting you— did sound nice, maybe. Like the way old women would look at him, seven years old in a yellow striped shirt, and call him sweet. He'd been too young to catch the double meaning then, but by now, Will was well attuned to what a person's tone could mean.
This was not kind. This was sweet, the way sweet went from a compliment to a euphemism for a fucking fairy.
Go on and pet it, said Vecna, almost in a purr. They don't bite.
Two deer stepped in close, flanking his sides. A doe nuzzled its flat head against his arm; in the dark, Will could vaguely make out more black webs running down its face, a stark contrast to its light fur.
No, those weren't webs. They were veins, dark and polluted, bulging from under the skin like something was trying to claw its way out.
"What did you do to them?"
Wrong question, said Vecna, laughing. What did you do to them?
The buck's tail twitched. Its hoof scratched at the ground as it snorted quietly, almost like a dog's disdain after being ignored instead of pet.
Hesitantly, Will lifted a hand, letting it hover between the buck's antlers. It looked up at him with wide, blinking eyes, and Will couldn't help himself; he lowered his hand, bringing a tentative two fingers to stroke the fur atop its head. Its gaze reminded him too much of a sad puppy for him to ignore the poor thing.
There you go, Vecna purred, pleased. I knew you could do it, William. You have before.
"I— what? What are you talking about?" Will's hand began to shake, trembling against the buck's brown fur. "What do you want from me? What did you make me do?"
For a moment, Vecna fell silent. Even then, Will could still feel his satisfied grin in his own head, like Vecna's leering smile was right in front of him.
I want you to take back what is yours, he said, finally. I want you to go home and wash up, before that blood starts to drip in your eye.
Slowly, the buck and the doe retreated from him, drawing back to their places in the circle of animals. A white rabbit darted between his legs, then stilled in front of his feet like it was waiting for someone. As if it was waiting for him.
Will took one shaky step forward, and the bunny hopped back. It hopped for a few more paces before turning to the west, down the town's main road. Scratch everything he'd said about this night being weird; a rabbit leading him home was definitely the strangest thing that had happened to him, minus the whole being-possessed-by-a-pillar-of-smoke thing.
The main road was deserted, save for a few flickering streetlamps struggling to retain power. Will stuck to the light, keeping his eyes on the bunny running in front of him until it turned a corner and disappeared from sight, down the side road that led to his house. He could recognize that road by the dip of its potholes, even in pure dark. Maybe he wasn't as lost as he thought.
As he turned to follow, the streetlamp above him started to flicker. Will froze instinctually.
Will, whispered the voice. It was less deep than Will had assumed, almost light enough to be the voice of a real man.
If he concentrated, Will could feel the sensation of a cold hand cupping his cheek. His mouth moved to form the words What? or Get out of my mind, you fuck, but no sound came.
I want you to know, he said, deceptively soft, my name is Henry.
The white rabbit flitted back around the corner, giving him a dark look as if to say What are you waiting for?
Despite himself, Will followed.
When Will woke up for a second time, there was still blood in his hair. There was also an eight year old sitting on his bed, and he wasn't sure how to handle both at once.
"You sleep so late," Holly groaned, kicking her feet back and forth off the edge of Will's bed. Well, it wasn't Will's, and it was really a couch, but— semantics. "It's literally—"
"—nine in the morning, Holly, get back here!"
"You're up," Holly protested, aiming her eye-roll towards the top of the basement stairs, "so it's not that early."
According to Mike, Holly had reached the terrible two's and never quite outgrown them. In Will's opinion, Holly was eight years old, so she couldn't exactly be a perfectly quiet kid all the time, but she was a bit overeager, sometimes. Take now, for example; fully-dressed at nine in the morning— on the first day of Thanksgiving break, mind you— hair pulled back in tight pigtails, grin plastered on her face and cleric minifigure clenched tightly in her hand as she swung her legs hard enough for the couch to creak. If Will hadn't had a headache before, he sure did now.
Something else creaked, far-off sounding as Will smothered his ears with a pillow. Mike must've taken the basement stairs two at a time and stepped on the loose floorboard. "I'm up," he said, obviously exasperated, "because I have to go clean the attic, like a grown-up. Kids don't need to be up at seven in the morning."
"Mom told you to clean the attic. Grown-ups don't let other grown-ups tell them what to do. And didn't you just say it was nine?"
Well, Will could name a million instances in which grown-ups listened to other grown-ups— for example, having a job— but he kept quiet. "She got you there," Will laughed, face still half-buried in his pillow. Mostly because he was trying to hide the tacky patch of blood he'd forgotten to clean from his bangs, but if it made his headache level stay at throbbing instead of full-on migraine, that was a win for him.
Even with his eyes shut in his pillow, Will could still visualize the way Mike ran a hand through his hair as he groaned. "You are— stop siding with my sister, asshole." There was no real malice in his voice; Will could tell the difference in Mike's tones better than anyone, and he knew the contrast between teasing and angry like the back of his hand.
"He's just mad you're right," said Will, turning to face Holly as best he could without revealing the chunk of flaking blood on his forehead. If he'd been less focused on hiding his face, Will might've gotten to enjoy Mike's look of outrage at his smug grin, but unfortunately, hiding all that blood was higher on his list of concerns than looking at Mike's face. It was sad, how all these near-death scenarios kept usurping Will's want to look at Mike until his features had been burned into his retinas, but in this semi-apocalypse, it was sort of unavoidable.
Oh, well. He'd been working on getting over his wants since he moved about six states away from said want. Maybe the end of the world would put the final nail in his pathetic unrequited-love coffin.
Holly giggled. "Asshole."
"I don't think you're allowed to say that, Hols," Will mumbled into his pillow, doing his best to stifle his laughter. Something about an eight year old swearing so happily made Will lose it with giggles, honestly, but he knew Mrs. Wheeler wouldn't be happy to learn he'd encouraged Holly's swearing habit after she'd specifically entrusted him and Mike to look after her.
"I think she looks up to you more than she does me," Karen had said to him, when the Byers had first settled in at the Wheelers' household. "You know, she's been really agitated lately, all worried about the earthquake and those rumors about monsters, and I just— I want her to have someone she can turn to, now that she's at the age where liking your mom isn't cool, apparently. You don't have to, of course, but—"
"I'll look out for her," was Will's immediate response, and he hadn't regretted it for a moment since. Except for now, maybe, as Holly's high-pitched giggle sent another wave of pain through his head. Ow.
"Yeah, nope, uh—" Mike started, doing a much worse job at containing his giggles— "not allowed. Now you have to go clean the attic with me."
At that, Holly flopped down on the couch with a dramatic sigh, directly over Will's legs— ow, her head was hard as a rock. "But I don't wanna," she said, as if she had been asked to do the impossible, like burn her house down or eat her vegetables. "Can't we play D&D?" She leapt off Will's legs just as suddenly, turning to his half-concealed face with newfound glee. "With Will?"
Mrs. Wheeler had asked him and Mike to find something to keep Holly busy, or, according to her, At least something to distract her from the fact that her friend down the street isn't showing up to school anymore. The game labeled as a Satanic cult by half the town probably wasn't Karen's first choice, but it had distracted Holly enough for her to ramble about her super-duper awesome half-elf cleric Holly Sparkleheart the Heroic every day, sometimes for hours on end (to Mike's disdain and Will's secret joy), so it was good enough for Mrs. Wheeler.
"We can clean the attic with Will," said Mike, shooting Will a conspiratory look. The look bordered on pleading, and that wide-eyed, puppy-dog stare made Will fold faster than soggy cardboard. Sure, wet cardboard was a sad comparison, but it was the only thing in Will's mind that would fall over as easily he did when Mike wanted something from him.
"Can we?" Nothing could make him fold faster than Mike, but Holly's pouting lip was rapidly approaching second place behind Mike's pleading stare. "Please, Will? Get up-p!" She tugged on his sleeve with impatient determination.
Apparently, cleaning could be fun if it involved Will. He hadn't thought his presence could make chores bearable for anyone, but Holly's yanking on his sleeve was starting to hurt, so maybe he'd been wrong. "Okay, okay," he said, face still in the pillow because the sticky mess plastered to his forehead had not, in fact, gone away within the last five minutes, "I'm coming. Just give me a minute to get ready, okay?"
Holly plopped herself down on the coffee table. "Okay. I'm waiting."
"I think he meant alone, Hols," said Mike, ruffling her hair. Holly leaned away with a disgusted look, and Mike turned to Will with a faux-wounded frown. Will rolled his one visible eye.
"Fine," Holly huffed, hopping off the table before glancing back to Will. "Are you going to get off the couch?"
A spike of panic ran through Will's chest before he realized that she hadn't mentioned the blood at all. His voice was only slightly shaky when he answered, "No."
Mike's fake frown faltered as he continued to look at Will, eyes tracing the shape of Will's blanket-covered body. His eyebrows were just starting to pinch in confusion when Will decided to stop whatever train of thought was forming in Mike's all-too perceptive head. "And if you don't get out to let me put on normal clothes instead of pajama pants, I'll fuse into the couch cushions forever."
"Can he really do that?"
"No." For just waking up, Mike sounded like he was already done with the day as a whole.
Holly shot Will one more worried glance before grabbing Mike's hand and tugging him up the basement stairs. "Bye, Will! Don't fall into the couch!" Will watched them go, and saw through the corner of his eye that Mike's gaze was trained on him until the door creaked closed on its hinges.
The words No promises died on Will's lips as Mike and Holly disappeared. Finally alone, Will let out a shaky exhale, warm breath fanning around him as he slowly lifted his head from the pillow. Vaguely, he was reminded of the still-warm blood from last night, dripping down his face like he'd been in the splash zone of a bucket of red paint.
He was reminded a little less vaguely when he came face-to-face with the dark stain on his pillowcase— Mike's pillowcase. Tentatively, Will reached a hand up to brush his bangs away; there was no wound on his face, but the uneven splatter of tacky blood smeared across his forehead was very much there.
Well. He had no time to wash the pillowcase, and he'd probably have to throw it away now that the blood had dried. He had about five minutes to wash his face and find a clean pair of clothes that hopefully weren't Mike's before Holly wrestled free from Mike's grip and came barreling down the stairs again, so he should probably get to work.
And, maybe, Will should start trying to figure out whether the blood had been spilled by him, or if he had simply sat back and watched.
For a long while, the problem of falling in love with Mike Wheeler was that Will had fallen in love with a boy. Now, the problem with falling in love with Mike Wheeler was that he had fallen in love with Mike Wheeler.
Falling in love with a boy was still, obviously, a problem, just not a pressing one. It was a problem like that time he'd knocked a cup of paint water all over his shoes had been a problem; unavoidable, a stain on his entire existence, but pointless to sulk over. Sure, the cup had been more paint than water, and his shoes were stained blue for three washes afterwards, but at the end of the day, he couldn't go back in time and set the cup on the table. There was nothing Will could do that would make his feelings less apparent, unless he could put his heart in the washing machine with his sky-blue shoes.
So he'd set the boy thing on the backburner, after a while. Will was stuck like this, forever wrong and always wanting, but he'd learned to live with it. Sort of.
(He'd never live with it, really. Will didn't think there would ever be a moment where his gut reaction to looking at Mike for a moment too long— like that moment with Holly yesterday, when Mike had tilted back his neck to laugh and all his dark hair pooled in a halo around his head— wasn't a warm, gnawing sort of love immediately followed by enough guilt to swallow him whole.
There had been a time, in that long stretch of dry summer and the dragging months in Lenora that followed, when Will had wished to be anyone but himself. He still hadn't learned to live with who he was, but he'd learned to live with not being able to change it. At least in the daytime; at night, Will's hold on his emotions went shaky. In the dark, at least, no one was around to see him cry.)
The loving Mike Wheeler thing, however— well, Will couldn't really ignore that. Not when Will lived with him.
"Will, look," Mike whispered, nudging Will with his elbow and using his free hand to gesture to— some sort of cuckoo clock? "What the hell is this?"
As he looked it up and down, Will couldn't help but grimace. It looked to be Alice in Wonderland themed, with a cluster of rabbits and red birds on its green, grassy base. Atop the now-defunct clock, another ceramic rabbit stood tall, adorned with a top-hat and its own miniature timepiece. And, painted in glaring red strokes across the clock, was—
"Time is running out?" Will read, incredulous. "What sort of antique stores does your mom go to?"
"Haunted ones, apparently," Mike said, eyeing the cuckoo clock like he expected the Mad Hatter rabbit to spring out at him. "Should we toss it out the window?"
Apparently, Holly had ears larger than a rabbit, because she perked up from the stack of books she'd been sorting into boxes. "Toss what?— hey! Don't throw that away!" She dropped two thick books to scamper over to Will, and their pages fell face-up to the floor in a flurry of paper.
Holly snatched the cuckoo clock from Mike's grip, holding it precariously in her tiny fingers as it slid around in her grasp. "You can't throw Alice out the window," she said, sending Mike a sharp glare.
"Alice?" Will named all his stuffed animals as a kid, but naming a clock hadn't really been his idea of fun.
"Yes, Alice," Holly said, rolling her eyes. Apparently, this should've been common knowledge. "She's on the back." Holly flipped the clock around, and there she was; a ceramic replica of Alice from the Alice in Wonderland Disney movie, tumbling out the back of the clock like she was falling into a rabbit hole.
As Will looked down to admire the clock— it really was beautiful, if you ignored the bug-eyed rabbit— Mike made a loud huff, distracting Holly for a moment so he could snatch the clock from her hands and set it on a high shelf. "Have you been going in the attic?" he said, mirroring Holly's sharp stare. "You know it's full of, like, fiberglass and spiders, right?"
"Uhm." Holly glanced away. "No?"
She wouldn't meet Mike's eye, choosing instead to fidget with the cuff of her lavender sweater. Will glanced between her and Mike, and almost laughed out loud; she had the same guilty expression as him, down to the pouting lip and furrowed brow. "She's as bad of a liar as you."
Mike turned surprisingly red, before glancing away with that same furrowed brow and pursed lip. "Tell me whether you've been sneaking into the attic or I'll— well. Uh." He paused to consider something, then gestured to an exposed pile of pink fluff in the corner of the attic. "I'll dunk you in that fiberglass. You, uh— you really don't want to get dunked in the fiberglass." He didn't sound very confident in his own threat.
"That's cotton candy, dummy," Holly said, shrugging as her gaze followed Mike's arm to the pile of fiberglass.
"I— okay, no, it's a bunch of tiny glass shards," said Will, "not cotton candy." Holly looked way too eager to get in that fiberglass, and Will did not want to explain to Mrs. Wheeler why her daughter was covered in cuts from head to toe.
"Oh." Holly only seemed mildly less deterred from touching the fiberglass. "Can I have Alice back now?"
Now that Will was thinking about it, he noticed quite a lot of Alice in Wonderland paraphernalia around the attic; an Alice doll with its arms hanging out of a donation box, a Cheshire Cat plushie with eyes that almost seemed to glow, and an oversized Mad Hatter statue covered in cobwebs, to name a few. Will couldn't recall Mrs. Wheeler mentioning the story even once, and he'd been in their attic a few times before. Where had all this come from?
Mike must not have noticed the rest of his mom's fairytale collection, because he kept his eyes on Holly as he crossed his arms in front of the clock. "Only if you tell me why you've been sneaking into the attic," he said, eyes narrowed. Was he trying to sound threatening?
It took a great amount of effort for Will not to laugh, because Mike looked about as threatening as a growling puppy. At the same time, the thought of Holly climbing into the attic under his watch, falling off the ladder that led through the hatch and hitting her head on a rung, then having to explain to Mrs. Wheeler why her daughter had a concussion— yeah, no thanks. "Have you?"
He kept his voice soft, eyes open and friendly instead of copying Mike's forced glare. It seemed to work; Holly turned to Will with an abashed look, frowning a little as she explained herself. "Maybe," she said, worrying her lip between her little teeth. "But the man in the living room saw me reading Alice in Wonderland, and he told me I could find an Alice doll in the attic, so I came here!"
Will's blood went cold. For a moment, his head started to spin, or maybe the room was spinning, or maybe it was just him and the tepid vomit creeping up the back of his throat.
I am not an evil man, you know. I am not an evil man, I am not an evil man, I am not—
"What man?" Mike's confused voice broke Will from his dizzy spell. "Do you mean Jonathan?"
"No," said Holly, rolling her eyes again, "the man. You know, the one with the blonde hair, and the weird hat that matches his ugly clothes. He was sitting in the living room this morning, too."
Vecna had been a man, once. According to him, his name had been Henry.
"What did he say to you?" Stepping forward felt like an out-of-body experience, like his limbs were moving themselves forward before he had the chance to steady himself. "Holly, what— did he do something to you?"
Holly's constant, know-it-all eye rolls weren't so funny anymore. When she rolled her eyes again, Will had to suppress the urge to vomit instead of laugh. "He gave me toys," she said, pointing to a pack of Alice in Wonderland-themed playing cards with a tiny finger, "duh."
"What toys?" Mike's voice was edging away from confused and leaning more towards frightened. "Mom told you to keep all your toys in your room, because she kept tripping over them."
The Cheshire Cat plush flicked its tail, just once. Will flinched, and Holly giggled.
"The man said they were special toys," Holly said, skipping over to the plush. "He said they would take me to Wonderland."
The stuffed animal's head turned to face Holly. It held a paw to its mouth, as if to shush her. If Will concentrated, he could almost hear the noise, soft and low like a cat's hiss.
Slowly, Will turned to Mike, expecting his eyes to be on, you know, the literal moving cat plush. Instead, he was staring straight at Holly, mouth open like he'd tried to speak and been stopped abruptly. His eyes were wide as saucers, and each rapid blink only made them grow wider.
When Mike turned to Will, his heart rate went from rapid to a rabbit kicking its foot against his chest. The last time he'd seen Mike this horrified, they'd been hunching over a dead body. "There's nothing there," Mike breathed, shaky. "There's not— Will, tell me you don't see anything."
The Cheshire Cat's mouth stretched in its signature grin, slowly disappearing as it climbed back into its donation box. Holly frowned as she watched it go. "Fuck," Will said, eloquently. His throat was too full of panic to say much else.
"Holly," Mike said, reaching out a hand, "I think you should come back here."
After a long moment, in which Will contemplated burning the attic and Mike seemed to consider dragging Holly from the box with his fists (if the twitching of his hands were any indication), Holly turned back to him and Will with a pointed frown. "You made him go away," she said, sulkily. "He said I told you too much, and now he doesn't want to come back."
"I think," Will started, careful to keep his voice calm before Holly went from sulky to teary, "we should go downstairs, and we'll, uh— I'll make you some hot chocolate, alright? How does that sound?"
"Yeah, uhm," agreed Mike, "hot chocolate. Yep. No imaginary toys."
This only made Holly sulk more. "They're not imaginary if you can see them," she huffed, crossing her arms. She cast one longing glance over her shoulder, and Will followed her gaze. All the toys were gone now, save for the cuckoo clock.
"Let's, uh," Will started, glancing at Mike and refusing to let his heart twist over Mike's worried frown, "let's talk about this downstairs, okay? I'll find you some more toys, and Mike will make you hot cocoa."
There was still a suspicious look on Holly's face, but she moved closer to them, so it was a win in Will's book. "With marshmallows?"
"Marshmallows and sprinkles," Will assured her. Holly's face brightened, and she raced down the attic ladder, hollering something about the last person to the kitchen being a total loser as she sped through the hallway. Will wished, momentarily, that he could forget his own worries just as easily.
While Will's eyes were on Holly, Mike's were on Will; he could feel Mike's stare boring holes through his skull even before he looked up. "What?"
Their eyes met, and Will considered climbing into the box that the Cheshire Cat had slunk into in the hopes he'd disappear, too. The way Mike was looking at him— it was too soft, too happy. Will didn't want his stomach to flip at Mike's small smile, but it did somersaults nonetheless.
"Marshmallows," Mike repeated, raising an eyebrow, "and sprinkles? I'm not going to get involved with that sugar rush."
Will winced. "Sorry. I had to get her mind off, uh, that—" he said, with a pointed glance towards the now-empty box— "somehow."
Mike's smile disappeared. "Yeah. About that, uh— how did you. . ." and he paused, swallowing the rest of his words down as he turned to the ladder. "I— nevermind. We should probably follow her down before she spills hot cocoa mix all over the floor." Without another word, Mike started to climb down the ladder, pausing halfway to glance up when Will still stood rooted to the floor.
"You coming?" His voice was too soft, more gentle than Will was allowed to have. This time, the voice that spoke in Will's head was his own. Stop it. Stop staring. You were supposed to get over him.
Getting over Mike was like getting over being dead. Once the dirt had been thrown over, no one crawled out of their grave. "I, uh— yeah. Sorry."
Will still wasn't sure how to get rid of his feelings— and to be honest, he wasn't even sure if he wanted to— but he was sure of this. Between the 'imaginary' man in the living room and the amount of sprinkles Holly was about to consume, Will knew for a fact that Mrs. Wheeler wouldn't be happy with them.
Making hot chocolate angrily wasn't something Will had thought possible, but right now, Mike was doing a very good job at stirring his rage into a mug of milk.
"We have to tell someone," he insisted, slamming the microwave and jamming its buttons with all the grace of an alligator that had grown opposable thumbs. "I mean, next thing you know, she'll start playing with Demobats! Demobats, Will!"
"Fuck," Holly parroted from her spot on the back of the couch, swinging her legs repeatedly into the backrest. "What's a Demobat?"
Will spoke before Mike could tell her off, because Mike seemed about one inconvenience away from locking Holly in her room until the Upside Down had been burnt to a crisp. He understood the urge, but Will remembered how it felt to be a scared child, herded around and watched like a hawk by his own mother. It definitely wasn't fun, and it definitely hadn't worked. "Don't say that," he said, with a cursory glance over his shoulder at Mike's huffed exhale to make sure Mike wasn't, like, smashing sprinkles with his fists, "and, uh— it's nothing, okay? Don't worry about it."
"Okay," said Holly, chipper as ever. She opened her mouth to say something else, but Mike interrupted her with a hurried hiss in Will's ear.
"We can't just not tell her," he whispered, pained, "or she won't even know how to defend herself! She's obviously a target now, and I don't know why Vecna's targeting seven year olds, but—"
"I'm eight!"
Mike gave the general area of the living room couch a rude gesture. Will tugged his arm down before Holly could see, then cursed himself when his hand lingered on Mike's sleeve for longer than what was, probably, new. For some reason, as Will pulled his hand away, Mike's face went red around the edges. "Shut up, Holly!" In response, Holly stuck her tongue out at him. Mike looked tempted to stick his tongue out back.
Instead, he turned to Will. He had this pleading look on his face, all wide-eyed and frowning, and— oh, Mike wanted something from him. Of course.
"Can you at least let me talk to your mom about this? She'll know what to do." Mike's voice had gone all soft again, honey-mouthed just for him. Will didn't have the guts to hate it. He was supposed to, probably; after months of being ignored by his best friend, why wouldn't Will hate how Mike was trying to worm his way back into his life?
Because you love him, his own voice echoed back, the sneering part of his own mind that would always hate who he was. You'd do anything for him, even if he wanted nothing to do with you. As long as it makes him happy, because people like you don't get their happy endings, right?
Will shook the thought from his head as soon as it came. He'd come to terms with not having his own fairytale ending— or any sort of ending involving love, really— a long time ago.
"My mom doesn't have the best track record when it comes to being a normal amount of protective over children," said Will, drily. This was true, but honestly, Will just didn't want his mom to wonder why he had seen these hallucinations when Mike hadn't. She'd put the pieces together far too quickly for Will's tastes (which, currently, were at the speed of never), and right now, Holly needed more protection than him. Will could handle his own problems, but Holly trusted the world too much to think twice about following a Cheshire cat.
Like you did before? that same small part whispered, his own voice twisted into a mocking sneer. What happened the last time you tried to handle your own problems?
In response, Mike just sighed, throwing a large handful of marshmallows into Holly's mug with grit teeth. He twisted the cap on the sprinkles with a bit too much force, and— oops, there went the cap. A barrage of rainbow sprinkles fell into the mug, bobbing with the marshmallows like brightly colored fish.
"Just let me tell her," Mike said, glaring at the sprinkles. "Please?"
"What about Nancy?" Nancy didn't care about Will. Not like his mom did, anyway; Nancy knew when to fight, and the puckered burn scar under Will's rib was enough indication for Will to know she would put Holly before him. "She's more— level-headed, I guess." It would be nice, Will thought, to be around someone who could actually see him as a threat instead of a victim.
Mike stared at him for a moment, jaw dropping almost to the floor. "No," he said, with an incredulous laugh. "No fucking way. Nancy's not level-headed, she's—"
"Good with a gun," Will interrupted. "And less likely to lock Holly in her room for the rest of her life."
"I don't want to be locked in my room," Holly called out; now, she was laying upside-down off the couch, pigtails swinging as her head turned between Mike and Will. "Why am I getting locked in my room?"
For a moment, everyone went silent as Mike made an exasperated inhale. "No one," he said, pinching the bridge of his nose, "is getting locked in their room, okay? How about you and Will go find your stuffed animals? I think you left them in the shed out back."
Holly eyed him suspiciously. "What about my hot cocoa?"
He and Mike shared a look— the sort of Oh God, we're about to send her on an insane sugar rush sort of grimace that Will once thought was only exchanged between exhausted parents— then glanced down at Holly's now rainbow hot cocoa in tandem. "I, uh— you know what, whatever," Mike sighed, holding the mug carefully so the liquid wouldn't slosh over the rim as he walked over to Holly. She accepted the cup with a gleeful grin, only after Mike nudged her upright instead of upside-down on the couch.
With an excited squeal, Holly hopped off the couch and started towards the backyard door, a bit of cocoa spilling down her hands and onto the floor as she went. Will and Mike winced in tandem as she took a sip large enough to fill a goldfish bowl. "Come on, Will," said Holly, turning back to Will with a pleading stare. "We can play a campaign with my plushies!"
Mike nudged Will towards the door with the back of his hand. Will did his best to not go stiff under his touch, but he froze anyway. "Distract her," Mike whispered, far too close to Will's ear for comfort. "Please."
"Only if you go talk to Nancy," said Will, pointedly, "not my mom."
"Fine." Mike didn't seem too happy, but he didn't sound mad; if anything, Will could see his mouth twitch up in a small smile. For some reason.
The back door creaked on its hinges as Holly tugged it open, running out into the November cold without a second thought. "Hey, wait! Don't forget your jacket!" Will started to rush to the coat hanger in the front hall, but Mike beat him to it. In barely a blink, Mike was gone and back again, holding a thick winter coat. His cheeks were flushed; either that short sprint had winded him, or the crisp air had already leaked into the kitchen and onto his face.
There was a third reason, which involved the way Mike kept worrying his lip and wouldn't meet Will's eyes. Will didn't want to think about it.
"Here," Mike said, a little breathless. Will took the jacket, and Mike's fingers lingered on his wrist for a moment longer than necessary. A lot of things Mike did around him were starting to seem strangely unnecessary, really.
When Will responded, he was a little breathless, too. It was hard for him to breathe at all when Mike's flush had started to trail down his neck, but he'd learned to handle it. Mostly. "Thanks. I should, uh—"
"Yeah, uh, you should go," said Mike, not moving away from Will in the slightest. "Before Holly, like— falls down a rabbit hole, or something."
"Yeah." Before Mike could say anything else, or steal any more of Will's breath, Will walked to the back door as fast as his legs could take him. He felt Mike's eyes on his neck until the chilly wind shut the door behind him.
"The crocodile can be an orc," said Holly, primly, "because it's ugly."
Will, who had been enjoying the sweet (too sweet for Mike, probably) remains of Holly's hot chocolate, choked on air and sprinkle-filled dregs. "I— we don't call things ugly, Holly."
"It has stuffing for ears. It can't hear me."
Will couldn't really argue with that, so he sat her plushie down next to the rest of her stuffed animals; a bright red bird turned centaur rogue, and a pale rabbit turned goblin barbarian. Honestly, Will hadn't expected her to warm up to D&D so quickly, but she'd agreed almost immediately when she'd learned Will would paint a minifigure for her.
"I don't get it," he remembered Mike saying, all sulkily. "It's like she likes you more than me."
Mike had been trying to wheedle Holly into playing in the Party's campaigns since she was old enough to talk, to no success. Apparently, all it took to convince Holly on something was Will's mere existence, a fact Mike was not too happy about. "Mike, come on," Will had said, laughing. "She loves you. You're her brother."
"Yeah, but she likes you," had been Mike's response, and honestly, Will hadn't thought about the difference between loving someone and liking someone. Usually, he did both at once, not one or the other. "How do you do it?"
Even now, Will wasn't sure. He had to keep it up, though, in case Vecna— or Henry, apparently— came crashing through the backyard shed's window and tried to lure Holly to 'Wonderland'. Will didn't even what to imagine what he meant by that.
Above him and Holly, the shed's lightbulb flickered. Speak of the devil.
For a moment, it was like two seperate images had been slid over Will's eyes. In one, he was twelve and terrified, red puffer vest hiked up to his cheeks as he aimed a gun with shaky hands towards a shadow he couldn't see; in the other, he was fifteen and still terrified, just deeper down, sitting cross-legged in a different garden shed with a little girl wearing a jacket the same shade of red. In both, his rabbit-heart raced with fear, slamming against his chest and screaming Get out, now.
"Hey, Hols," said Will, only slipping up and letting his voice shake a little, "wanna take this outside?"
But Holly was already distracted. Someone else had done Will's job for him.
A tawny rabbit hopped across the floor, trembling on unsteady feet as its eyes darted around the room. Holly watched it intently, gaze drifting over its fearful, pinned-back ears as it took short jumps away from Holly and towards the shed door. The rabbit must've blended in with the wood, and Will hadn't been paying enough attention to notice, like a stupid, stupid idiot, and oh, God, Mrs. Wheeler was going to hate him when he had to explain why Holly hadn't come back into the house, and Mike would never forgive him—
They are beautiful creatures, are they not?
Will did not whirl around. He knew exactly who was behind him— he could feel Henry's stare burn itself all the way into his throat, crawling up into his mouth like bile— but a small part of him hoped that maybe, if he didn't see the figure behind him, it wouldn't be real.
That small part of him was stupid. The rest of him had stopped believing in hope a long time ago, but the tiny bit of him that wanted would always remain. It reared its head in his worst moments, like when he was about to die, or when Mike opened his mouth to profess his love to anyone but him.
Unlike Will, Holly's head immediately snapped away from the rabbit, turning to the door that Will had left ajar. Reluctantly, Will followed her gaze.
No light seeped out from the crack in the door. It had been closed shut, leaving the shed dimly lit by a swinging, flickering lightbulb, and in front of the door—
I told you I was a man, Will, said Henry, with a thin-lipped smile. Now that you see me, do you believe me?
Even with Holly's description, nothing could've prepared Will for Henry's appearance— which, at least ostensibly, was normal. Until Will blinked, that was; then, Henry's platinum hair washed out his skin to a ghostly pale complexion, his hands turned into spider-like limbs, and his eyes turned black and beady. He was an afterimage of a man, moreso a bright light burned into Will's retinas than a solid person.
"We aren't on a first-name basis," Will choked out. He tried to take a step back, but found his feet frozen to the spot.
Would you rather be called by your father's surname? He must have seen the way Will's face soured, because Henry's smile opened to show teeth. I thought so.
Vecna— excuse him, Henry— wasn't opening his mouth when he spoke. He kept his lips pressed tightly together in that perfunctory smile; his words seemed to spill directly into Will's mind, instead of echoing out into the air. And, if her confused look was any indication, Holly seemed to hear Henry as well.
"You took my toys," she said, frowning.
And you, said Henry, strolling up to Holly in two large strides, couldn't keep a secret.
Time seemed to freeze when Henry spoke, like the world around him had been set aside in parentheses to make room for his words. Will found it hard to move whether he was speaking or not, but Holly had no such concerns; she shied away from Henry's gaze, teary-eyed and pouting. Henry crouched down to her height and gave her what might've been a reassuring smile, if it came from a crocodile.
I forgive you, Holly. That's why I brought you a friend.
At Henry's beckoning hand, the rabbit hopped between Holly's legs, black nose twitching as it looked up to Holly's wide eyes. In the flickering light, its fur shone white, like someone had dumped a bucket of paint down its ears and left it to lay in the mess. It was white now, sure, but Will didn't think it wasn't supposed to be. Something was clearly wrong, and the dark veins teeming under its fur didn't help its case.
All Holly's sulkiness was gone, now. She smiled and cooed at the creature, crouching down to hold out a tentative hand to the rabbit's nose. It took a little hop back, but Henry nudged it forward, and the rabbit sprung into Holly's outstretched arms.
Only then did Will realize he should probably move, now. He scrambled forward, forcing his legs to move as he shoved himself between Holly and Henry, arms outstretched in attempt to shield her. Protecting himself had never gone over very well for him— Go away, go away echoed in his mind, and he was sure that if he spoke his words would come out as shaky as they had years ago— but this was Holly.
She was just a kid. She was eight years old, and it wasn't fair that she was the one being targeted out of all people, and it wasn't fair that she couldn't live a normal life, and she was so young, full of wide-eyed innocence not even Will had held at that age. She deserved to hold onto that for just a little bit longer, and she didn't deserve to have it ripped away from her so quickly, and God, it just wasn't fair. She didn't deserve this.
"Stay away from her." Surprisingly, Will's voice came out stronger than he'd thought. "You don't— why do you want her?"
He was so much taller than Will. For a moment, Will felt like a child again, two different time periods sliding over his eyes; the present, as Will tried not to cower in front of Henry's thin smile, and the distant past, when Will had cowered and trembled in front of a shadow in the shape of a man. Henry towered over Will, and he didn't want it to scare him, but he couldn't help how small Henry made him feel. Feeling young, to Will, was never a good thing.
She wants me, said Henry, walking around Will's oustretched arms where Holly stood, still distracted by her eerily white rabbit. He stroked the rabbit's fur with two spidery fingers, and the rabbit shied away, ears flattened against its sides. Don't you, Holly?
"He's my friend too, Will," said Holly, smiling. "Don't worry. He's nice. And he gives me presents!" She held up the bunny with a toothy grin, like she'd won a prize from an arcade claw machine. The bunny burrowed into Holly's hands with a distressed squeak.
Henry walked around Holly and back to Will. His eyes were dark and cold, sharp above a smile that didn't even come close to his eyes. The closer he got, the dizzier Will felt. The fear didn't make him want to run; it made Will want to freeze very, very still, like he could blend into the shed's wooden wall and not be noticed at all.
You can't have anyone all to yourself, Will, he said, pressing the flat palm of his hand to Will's cheek. It was cold enough to burn him, but Will couldn't find it in himself to jerk his head away. And even if you could, no one would put you first. Such a shame.
"Stop," Will rasped, like it would do anything. "Leave Holly alone. Take me."
So noble, he mused, stroking a thumb across Will's cheekbone. Will wanted to vomit. So very, very brave of you. Is there someone you are trying to impress?
As Will tried to formulate some sort of plan in his fear-stricken brain, anything that would get Holly out alive, Henry began to move. He took large steps right in front of Will, pushing Will back with his hand until they had both reached the wall of the garden shed, far away from Holly's crouched form. She was still focused on the rabbit, but at the moment, Will didn't doubt its ability to grow fangs and bite her hand off like the killer rabbit in Monty Python.
Only when his back hit the wall was Will able to choke something out. "Holly, Holly—" and, thankfully, Holly turned to look at him, "you need to run. Run back to the house, okay? Get your mom, Mike, just— someone. Anyone."
At first, Holly didn't seem to listen. She looked between him and Henry, eyes wide; then, slowly, she took a few steps towards the shut shed door. But when Holly got a hand around the doorknob, Henry pulled out his silver tongue, and everything started to unravel.
I thought you'd always wanted a pet bunny, Holly.
Her hand slipped off the doorknob. "I still do," she said, glancing down at the bunny cradled in the crook of her arm.
Mom doesn't want all that fur in the house, hm? Henry tilted his head, a condescending smile flickering on his face as Holly began to frown. And Dad— oh, no, he would never allow an animal in the house. Sad, how they give you everything except what you really want, isn't it?
"He's trying to trick you," said Will. He wanted to yell, but his words wouldn't come out right. "He won't give you what you want, Holly, you have to run—"
Before he felt pain, Will heard the dull thud as Henry slammed his head against the wall. Black stars bloomed in Will's vision as Henry finished the motion with a wave of his hand, only hard enough to stun him still. Warm spit filled his mouth, vaguely metallic.
You don't want toys, said Henry, or dolls, or even bunnies.
Holly looked at confused at this, glancing down to her rabbit. As Henry came closer to her, the rabbit began to twitch, retreating into Holly's arms. "But—"
You're like Alice, aren't you? Henry pressed one spidery finger right above her lips. Don't pout. You're curious, like her. I know you'd love a good adventure.
The rabbit started to squirm in Holly's grasp. Henry bent down to take it, but the rabbit scampered away, falling from Henry's hands and darting behind a box of gardening tools. Still reeling from the force of being slammed into a wall, Will used all his effort to glance to where the rabbit had gone; behind the boxes, there was nothing but dark, empty space.
Curiouser and curioser, said Henry, with a fake, syrupy-sweet frown. Like the girl in your story books, hm? I know you're tired of being kept in the house, all cooped up like a hen in its cage. Don't you want to visit somewhere as magical as Wonderland?
Will stumbled forward, little white blinkers stil floating in his vision. "Holly, please, listen to me—"
"Can Will come with me?" She glanced between him and Henry, eyes wide and confused. Her hands twitched at her sides, and one reached up to tug at the cuffs of her jacket, another nervous tic she'd taken from Mike.
Mike. Oh, God, Mike would lose it if Will couldn't protect his sister, and as selfish as it was, Will wasn't sure he'd be able to stand under the weight of knowing one more person had died, all because of him. There was no time for Holly to make up her mind and run. Will would have to use all the strength in his arms (which, while now being strangely muscular, were still weak as ever) and snatch her up, run until his legs burned and his knees went wobbly, run until he couldn't feel Henry's stare burning holes in the back of his neck, because that was all he'd ever be good for, running and hiding and freezing like a deer in headlights.
Anyone can, purred Henry, sickly sweet. I can be anyone you'd like.
He saw Holly start to tremble first. Before he saw Henry, he saw Holly back herself up to the door, grabbing blindly for the doorknob, eyes blown wide in fear. He saw her mouth open and close once, twice, and no sound came out except for a strangled cry. "You're not—"
"But I can be," Henry said, turning to Will. His voice sounded strangely louder, now, less of a time-freezing echo and moreso the voice of a real man. "I can be whoever you want, however you want them."
When Will met Henry's eye, Will found his own reflection staring back at him. Dark eyes blinked balefully down at him— the face was right in theory, capturing all Will's soft edges and smooth cheekbones, but the eyes— oh God, the eyes—
They were completely dark, without a shine. The light flickered above them, but instead of reflecting the glare, the irises seemed to swallow it whole.
Henry tilted the mask of Will's face up in a small, sneering smile, cutting off Will's train of thought as he tried to choke down the sick creeping through his throat. Will wasn't sure he'd ever seen his face make that expression before.
"Wouldn't you like that, Will?"
They were lucky Nancy got there when she did.
"Do you miss your daddy, Holly?" Will could remember how dizzy he'd felt at Henry's sickening pur, how Henry had paced around Holly as his body flickered from Will's lithe frame to a mockery of Mr. Wheeler, face put together in a sneering smile Will had never seen on Mr. Wheeler before. "He never pays any attention to you, does he," he'd mused, crouching down to Holly's height on stocky limbs that didn't belong to him.
Will had started to move, then, stumbling towards Holly in an effort to snatch her and run until Henry turned to him.
"Do you miss Mike?"
He couldn't help it when he froze. It was basic instinct, embedded in him since he was small; standing still in a closet, clamping hands over his ears as footsteps thundered closer and voices careened louder. Hiding worked well, as long as he stayed still.
If he froze, no one would notice him. If he froze, no one would throw glass bottles so they shattered just above his head, and if he froze, no one would yell. Will used to hope that one day, if he stayed still enough, he would disappear entirely.
If he froze, maybe the Mike standing in front of him wouldn't have looked so happy.
"Will!" Nancy's voice jolted Will out of his daze. He'd stopped walking halfway across the lawn, and Nancy and Holly were already on the back porch. Nancy had Holly's hand held tightly in her fist, and Will wanted to turn tail and run when he locked eyes with Holly's frightened stare. He took an unconscious step backwards when his eyes met Nancy's, because she looked like she wanted to gut him.
"Come on," she said, her pinched voice carrying across the backyard. "Holly won't come in without you." She said this like she was more annoyed with him than she was Holly. Will couldn't blame her, not when she'd had to put up with him and his family intruding on her life for seven straight months.
It wasn't that the Byers couldn't afford a place to live— they weren't exactly well-off, but government hush money had made them a little more than poor— it was just that there wasn't really anywhere else to live. The four gates had torn through more than half the houses in Hawkins, and no one could live in a house with its floor split in two. Any house a family had moved out of had been demolished by the government; Will was sure they were destroying Hawkins entirely as one last cover-up, but having a supernatural tether to the world under its dead grass made it sort of hard for the Byers to leave.
Thus, the Byers had stayed in Hawkins, and the Wheelers had been generous enough to open their doors instead of— well, Will wasn't sure. Sleeping in their car? Paying for a motel twenty miles away? Cramming into Hopper's one bedroom cabin?
Sometimes, Will would've preferred curling up in the trunk of his mom's green Pinto than sleeping in the Wheeler's basement. Now, with Nancy pacing around the kitchen table in clicking flats while Will ignored a headache, was one of those times.
He shut the backyard door behind him as quiet as possible. Will had been following the philosophy of maybe, if I make no noise and no dent in the kitchen cupboard and have no effect on the Wheeler's lives at all, they won't even notice I'm here. It seemed to work with Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler— though she kept telling him This is your home now, take whatever you want, sweetie, which only made Will feel more guilty— but with Nancy, it was like she could notice the way his body displaced air.
"Michael!" she yelled, sending a glare up the stairs. "Get down here, now!"
A groan echoed down the stairs, along with the sound of socked feet sliding along a wooden floor, "Don't call me Michael, Jesus, I'm coming—" and he stilled at the top of the stairs, taking in Will's presumably shell-shocked stare before he even looked at Holly. "Will? What happened? Are you okay?"
"You're the one who sent them to the shed alone," Nancy snipped, crossing her arms, "right after they both started hallucinating cats. You tell me."
"The Cheshire Cat," Holly corrected. Her voice still sounded a bit wobbly, and Will had the urge to wrap an arm around her, but Nancy already had it covered. If he did try to hug her, Nancy would probably bite his head off.
(Will wouldn't blame her. This was his fault, after all. Sometimes, he wondered if coming back alive was the reason for all these tragedies. Maybe they were all in the wrong timeline, and the fatal difference of Will being pulled from that face-hugger was the reason for every problem. Sometimes, Will thought he wasn't supposed to come back, and because he did, he made everything wrong.)
"Shit," said Mike, rushing down the stairs two at a time. "Did it happen again? Did Vecna hurt you?"
Right now, Mike's face was pinched with concern, mouth opening and closing in shallow breaths as he checked Holly for injuries, then gave Will a long glance while his fingers twitched at his sides until Will shook his head and gestured to his unharmed body.
The Mike who had approached him in the shed had been beaming, so full of happiness that he'd stretched his arms out to envelop Will in all that love, eyes wide and blatantly absent of a shine. They were too dark to be alive.
"I can give you what you want, too," Henry had said, with Mike's voice. It was too flat to really be Mike, too devoid of his little inflections and voice breaks to bring about the warm feeling Will got from hearing Mike speak. "Why don't we start with this? A hug from a boy who won't even touch you."
"Will," said Nancy, a bit gentler than last time, "can you tell us what happened?" Now, she was leaning against the counter, tall and intimidating from where Will sat hunched at the kitchen table. Her nails tapped an arrythmic beat against the marble top, sending a jolt of pain through Will's head with every click. "I mean— Vecna likes to monologue, right? Did he say why he was targeting Holly?"
She didn't ask why he was targeting Will, because everyone already knew the answer. He was the spy, the weak link. The Trojan horse wheeled into a city's walls.
It took Will a moment to gather his words, and when he did, each sentence came out with a halting stutter. "I don't— it's not—" and he swallowed the rest of his words down in the hopes that he'd stop sounding so scared, because Nancy's stare became more disapproving with every word. "He said he wanted to take her somewhere, but he didn't sat why. And then—"
Will paused. He could tell Nancy about what Henry had done to trick Holly, but how Henry had tricked him was just humiliating. Being enticed with nothing more than a hug was, at it's essence, pathetic.
"He thought he could trick me by turning into Will," Holly said, filling in when Will went silent, "but that was stupid. Why would I want two Wills?"
While Will shot Holly a grateful glance, which Holly returned with a small smile, Nancy and Mike's faces had turned to equal shades of abject horror. Will hadn't noticed how similar their expressions could be until they were side by side, mirroring each other's half-open mouths as they slowly turned towards each other.
The only difference was in the expressions they faced Will with. While Nancy had steeled her face into something slightly less scared and somewhat more determined, mouth set in a thin, hard line, Mike look even more terrified. His wide eyes flickered between Holly, then Will, then Holly again, before deciding to look past their shoulders and stare firmly at the wall. "He became you?" Somehow, Mike's voice sounded more scared than Will's.
"Sort of," Will said, moving his chair closer to Holly when she started to frown again. "It was more like he was wearing my skin, I guess? The looks were right, but the voice was wrong, and the eyes were all dark, like—"
"Like a dead body," Nancy finished. Holly squeaked, tugging her knees up to her chest; Nancy moved to comfort her, but Will got there first. He set a hand on her shoulder, murmuring soft comforts. Nancy looked— well, angry was how Will would've described her at first, but there was something deeper hidden under her scowl. Will didn't really want to know what it was.
Now that Will had intercepted Nancy's attempt at comforting Holly, she went back to pacing again, up and down the linoleum floors in a dizzying beat that made Will want to bash his head into a counter, as long as it would stop hurting. "He can't want Holly for the reason he wants you," said Nancy, giving Will a cursory glance on you as she muttered to herself. "He wouldn't need a spy in the same place, but if he wants to lure Holly somewhere, away from us. . ."
The pieces clicked together in Will's mind as Nancy trailed off. "She's bait."
"Yes!" Nancy whirled on him with a satisfied grin, in sharp contrast to the glares she'd inflicted upon him moments earlier. "Vecna thinks he can take her from us, but we'll be watching her even closer than we were before. We'll make sure she's safe." When she finished speaking, it sounded more like she was reassuring herself. Either that, or it was a pointed jab at Will for not keeping her safe. Will would've taken it either way.
"But why does he want Will?" Nancy gave him a sharp look, probably because she thought Mike should be more concerned over his own sister than the intruder who slept in their basement— and Will agreed, seriously, why wasn't he more terrified for Holly— but Mike ignored it, instead choosing to ramble on. "It doesn't make sense. Why can Will see the things that Holly sees? Why is Vecna letting him see those things?"
While Mike raked a frustrated hand through his hair, Nancy opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again. Her brow furrowed like she was seriously irritated that Mike had stumped her, and it stayed in this position until Holly hopped off her chair and pushed it backwards with a hard shove.
Her chair legs scraped against the wood floor. Nancy and Will winced in tandem at the nails-on-a-chalkboard noise as Holly pushed past Nancy with a huff, arms crossed as she made her way to the stairs. "I don't want you all watching me," she said, stomping away. Her shoes were still on, scuffed with garden dirt from when she'd tripped on the lawn with Nancy. "I'm not a baby."
In that moment, Holly's small voice overlapped with Will's own, his own sentiment from years ago— They all treat me like I'm fragile. Like I'm going to break.
He couldn't let this happen again. He couldn't let another kid— just eight years old, God, she was too young— fall prey to Vecna. He couldn't just watch as another kid woke up screaming after nightmares of gaping maws and clawed hands, or sit back and let another child freeze up when they saw their own mother because their hands had been on her neck only hours ago.
At least Will had already known what it was like to be hurt before Henry had taken him. Even at eight, he'd known what pain felt like inside and out, but Holly?
If Will protected her, Holly would still get to be young. Will had never gotten that luxury, but being who he was, Will didn't think he'd deserved to.
"Hols," Mike started, running to the base of the stairs, "come on. We just want to keep you safe."
"I can handle myself!" Despite yelling, Holly's voice sounded small. Had Will sounded that young, too, when he'd been taken? "Leave me alone." She turned the corner and slammed a door, presumably the one to her room since Will heard the loud flap of a poster (Blondie, Will remembered, because apparently Robin had been spending too much time with Holly too) as the door shut behind her. Will flinched at the noise, and Nancy gave him a weird look. Great.
At the slam of the door, Mike started up the stairs in a race to follow her, but Nancy tugged him back by the hood of his sweater. "Leave it," she snapped; Mike glanced away, cowed. "I'll talk to her, and you— hell, I don't know. Go talk to Will, since you seem to care so much about him."
"I—" Mike spluttered, whirling around to face Nancy with a scowl. If Will wasn't considering shriveling into his chair and dying there, he would've noticed how every Wheeler seemed to have the same pissed-off face, how they looked vaguely disgusted and extremely irritated at the same time. "So what? You're treating him like some— info source for your fucking newspaper or something! At least I asked him if he was okay."
"And did you ask Holly that?" Will was surprised Nancy's stare didn't wither Mike away completely, right then and there. Instead, Mike just stood there, mouth opening and closing stupidly. "Yeah, I thought so. I'm going to go talk her down." Nancy disappeared up the stairs, and Mike just stared, swallowing his words down with a visible lump in his throat every time he started to speak.
In all fairness, it wasn't like Will could control how Mike acted. Some part of him knew he should've been angry, or at least offended by the way Nancy pinned Mike's— well, Will couldn't make heads or tails of the way Mike was acting, so he wasn't sure how to describe it. Regardless, Will was more mad at himself than Mike or Nancy.
He didn't need Mike's concern, much less deserve it. Mike's attention should've been on Holly, and it was Will's fault for taking that away from her.
So, in the hopes that all of Mike's attention would disappear, Will stood up and started for the basement stairs. "Sorry," he murmured as he slid past Mike, hoping Mike would hear the words but not register his presence. Of course, nothing he hoped for ever happened, so Mike saw him anyway.
"Will, wait," he said, holding a hand out then jerking it back when his fingers grazed Will's arms. "I— that wasn't your fault, shit, I just—"
"It's fine." Will opened the basement door and tried not to throw himself down the stairs; if he hoped to break his neck and die in the fall, his constant bad luck would probably leave him permanently paralyzed. Instead, he shut the door behind him on the first stair, and shut his eyes hard to let his lingering headache pound behind his eyes.
He didn't want to think about any of this. He didn't want to think about Mike's irrational behavior, or Holly being tormented with visions of a father who cared about her, or his sleepwalking tendencies and the animals and blood they brought about. He didn't deserve to not think, and it was selfish of him to even want it, but God, he wanted it.
Will wanted his brain to be quiet, sleepwalking be damned. He was going to take a nap.