Erratic driving was the least of their concerns as they made their way to the Byers' old house, apart from Nancy it seemed.
"I shouldn't be doing this!" Nancy cried out; nervous hands fidgeting whilst affixed on the steering wheel and eyes flicking to each mirror.
"Wheeler, you're the most sober of us all. No better man or woman for the job, I cross my pissin' heart," Eddie mimes doing just that from below Steve's knees, grinning up into his face.
See, there weren't enough seats for a car that sits five people. And unfortunately for Steve, fate made it so Argyle hadn't drove to his house. He'd picked Robin up from Hopper's cabin, with Argyle coincidentally tagging along. Jonathan and Nancy had walked to Steve's, but they hadn't minded (hadn't wanted to call to trail Steve out, apparently). Hawkins was a relatively small town, anyway, so Steve hadn't been overly concerned.
Jonathan grabs Nancy's thigh in comfort, but the comfort quickly shifts to alarm as he grabs onto his seatbelt because Nancy steels herself at Eddie's words and makes the abrupt decision to step harshly down on the accelerator.
Eddie lets out an excited whoop and shakes Steve's leg. Steve looks at him like he's crazy. Because he definitely is.
Steve rubs at the skin just below his eyebrow, trying to keep his eyes open, feeling drowsiness sweep over him as Nancy makes a screeching left turn and he shoulders right into Argyle, who stares back at him with red eyes, giving him a relaxed toothy smile as if they weren't in imminent danger of crashing.
At least it wasn't Max driving his car right now, he thinks in self-consolation. And at least he was too wasted to give an honest shit, really.
Robin starts rapidly whispering over Argyle who sits, dazedly, in the middle seat, "has anyone proposed yet that Will just sneaked out? And he's going to come back soon enough, and then," she hiccups, and points a finger at Steve that Argyle looks at with crossed eyes, as if it's an animal at a zoo exhibit, and then he raises his hand to daintily pinch her finger with two of his own (which Robin does not seem to register, bizarrely).
"And then! He'll be in mega trouble with miss mama Byers, and we're all going to overhear it and mortify him for the rest of his life?"
He whispers firmly back, "I mean, I guess I did, propose that? But Joyce seemed pretty adamant that, ugh," he hopes to God that the feeling in his stomach was going to right itself and he wasn't going to spew his guts all over everybody, "that there's something wrong over the phone. I don't know. I'm sure he's… fine."
Even Steve had his doubts, though.
He hadn't seen Will since he'd woken up, but from what he gathered from Jonathan when he'd asked about how he's been doing (as per small talk goes, but genuinely Steve did want to know), well, he got a decisively cagey answer back that probably meant not great.
Once they pull up in the driveway, or more like shoot up it with a sudden stop that lifted them out of their seats and got them to look at each other in horror, apart from Argyle (who seems entirely too calm for the situation at hand), they see Joyce shove through the front door upon their arrival, devastatingly with a blotted red nose and panicked eyes.
Jonathan rushes her in a hug, and Steve feels a pang in his chest. It can't be easy revisiting old wounds like this. Will had already gone missing once, and he's sure this was bound to freak them out.
Once they go inside, Hopper's already laid out a map with circles around each site the gates were open at.
Steve widens his eyes, and blurts, "you think this has something to do with the Upside Down?"
Hopper glances at him and then shares this certain look with Joyce that sets alarm bells ringing for the entire group.
"Mom?" Jonathan says, voice tinged with something unnameable. Nancy squeezes his arm in support.
She looks at him imploringly, "you've-you've noticed it too, haven't you? He's not the same. He wouldn't even look at me in the car after the hospital! And then during that third game, his face… There's something's wrong." She puts her head in her hands, as if fighting the rough edge to her voice so she wouldn't break down.
Jonathan can't respond, an introspective expression flitting over his face. "I thought, I guess I thought it was just because of Mike."
"Mike?" Nancy and Joyce say collectively, and Joyce drops her hands and looks at him with her eyebrows scrunched, confused.
Jonathan responds lowly, "well, they had a fight, back at the hospital. Don't you remember them?" He directs to Nancy, appealing to her, "Will had been crying and Mike couldn't even look his way!" He tries to keep his voice soft, but it comes out hard and accusing.
"But… they never fight. Mike wouldn't-,"
"Nancy, I don't think you really know what Mike would or wouldn't do. He had to have said something. Will was clearly upset."
Nancy starts to look considering, and collapses her shoulders, "I guess, maybe. But Mike hasn't been himself this past year. He gets irritated, and he lashes out sometimes, but he always apologises. So, maybe he said something he didn't mean?" She defends, surprisingly feeling a surge of protectiveness.
Steve decides to butt in, as Joyce starts to seem a little lost for words, having not known Will had been having problems with his best friend, but Steve knew it was time to get back on track, "anyways! How 're we splitting up? Who goes," he hiccups, "where, you know?" He feels slightly unsteady on his feet.
"Are you lot drunk?" Hopper says, outraged.
Robin belches, and then claps a hand to her mouth.
"No?"
And then they hear a swooshing motion coming from inside the house.
Robin whispers conspiringly, "raccoon?"
She is ignored.
"Get behind me." Hopper says to Joyce, voice alarmingly tight and eyes like that of a hawk. But she goes willingly, peaking over his shoulder as they move jointly toward the sound.
Steve shoves Robin in front of him and does the same, and she glowers.
"You total pansy."
He pouts at her with big eyes, and she huffs at him.
Hopper starts to hear more scuffling sounds behind Will's bedroom door, and holds a shushing finger up to his lips, looking over Joyce's head reproachfully at two stumbling idiots in particular.
Steve and Robin both suck in their lips with abashed and rueful faces.
Steve totally feels like he's been told off by a teacher.
Hopper bangs open the door, flicks the light on to Will standing shell-shocked with a black substance smattered across the front of his clothes and blood at his ears.
"Hopper?" He exclaims, "what-?"
And then he sees Joyce barge in, followed by the rest of them who squeeze past Hopper.
"Where have you been? What have you been doing? What is that?" Joyce says with a flailing hand to Will's clothes, her eyes bulging with the force of her questions.
"Um, I can explain?" Will says with a shuddering voice. And then Joyce notices his trembling and places a hand to his head.
She hisses at the contact, and then starts to fret, "you're freezing! Just, just go have a hot shower first and warm up, okay? But we are talking about this." Her voice brooks no arguments.
Will nods, gulping.
As he walks past, he raises questioning eyebrows at the rest of them clumped together by his wardrobe. Robin gives him a wave that he returns nervously before he leaves.
Joyce slumps on Will's bed, shaking her head, though relief floods her still, knowing that Will's home and safe now. "What the hell am I going to do with you boys?" She questions the room.
"What? What have I done?" Jonathan says mock-offendedly.
They move to the living room. Hopper and Joyce start talking amongst themselves, circling questions about what Will could have possibly been doing, why he looked like such a mess, and then they sit in silence waiting for the sounds of the shower to tamper out.
Steve is resting his head in Robin's lap, hoping for the room to stop spinning. Why did he drink so much? He thinks despairingly.
"There, there." Robin pets his head.
"I'm not a cat, Robin."
Eddie joins the conversation at just the right moment, "oh, but you're just so fluffy!" And he joins Robin as they ruffle up his hair.
He sits up quickly which gives his headache a little too much power and the lights glare just a tad more harshly, but he raises a defensive hand up anyway, for his integrity, "hey! You're ruining it!" He scowls at them.
"Oh, couldn't do that, now, could we? Ruin your most important asset for the ladies?"
"It's not my only asset." Steve says without thinking.
Eddie grins, delighted, "oh?"
"I, I didn't mean it like that." Eddie and Robin laugh at his stuttering.
"God, shut up, you're making my head hurt more, which I didn't even think was possible. Dicks."
Will chooses that moment to walk out with wet hair and clothes slightly too big for him. Oh, that's right. The group had sacrificed some clothes for them to borrow until Dr. Owens' entourage brought back the Byers' belongings from California.
"So, about that explanation." Hopper reminds, challenge written across his face with crossed arms to boot.
Will feels slightly mortified, and fingers at the sleeves of his top.
He doesn't know how he's going to explain this without making it sound utterly insane, mostly because it was insane.
Joyce makes a suggestion in a calming tone, eyes fixed on Will's, "just start from the beginning, okay?"
He nods sharply, "I guess, well." He pauses, giving it a momentary thought, "it started mostly with this feeling. That my connection with the Upside Down, it was getting stronger, and like it was always at the back of mind, just waiting. But-but I wasn't convinced, not until," he sucks in a breath anxiously, "not until my dream."
"Dream?"
"I know how it sounds; it sounds crazy. But the Mind Flayer, it talked to me." Tears start to cloud his vision as he remembers Mike's face, and his blank dark eyes.
Horrified looks were exchanged between everyone, and Joyce sits forward, as if making to stand up.
Will shifts in place, and then gingerly decides to sit down beside Joyce who wraps him up in a hug.
She whispers in his ear, "I don't know why you haven't told me, but just know that I believe you. I'll always believe you." Will feels a lump in his throat, and she squeezes him tighter before she lets go, wiping at her eyes.
And then she asks, "what did it say?"
That's when Will panics, because he can't tell them the truth. It's too embarrassing, too personal. They'd never look at him the same. "Um, just that it was back."
Will tries not to make any eye contact with anyone, "that's not the important bit, though. Tonight, I saw-,"
"Was it your True Sight? Is that why, you kind of freaked out during our game?" Nancy questions softly, though her eyes light up curiously like a true investigator, and Will shakes his head.
"I, I didn't actually think you guys noticed that." He laughs emotionlessly (of course they noticed, that's all they notice lately. You, upset and scared, being a burden…)
"Will?"
He shakes himself out of his stupor. "But, yeah, no. Not my True Sight, thankfully. Although, it wasn't anything better, either. I sensed something," he gulps (here it goes), "I sensed something crawl out of the Upside Down."
A few people gasp, and others are shocked into silence. Will watches them all with a grimacing face.
"Please, Will. Please tell me you didn't go and try to find it, on your own no less!" Joyce exclaims in alarm, eyes pinning Will's. "Well?"
He hunches in his shoulders, eyes apologetic.
And as Joyce chastises him, the rag-tag group of teenagers watching suddenly feel like they're not meant to be seeing this, and they look away from the scene trying to mind their own businesses discreetly.
Then, Jonathan asks, though he's pretty sure they all know the answer, "well, did you? Did you find it?"
And Will fatefully says yes in a quiet voice.
Will goes on to explain how he knew where to go, and where he'd found it, how it could fly, and let out this burst of sound that made him want to pass out, how his hearing still felt sensitive from the encounter…
He talked about how it died, and how before that, Will had a vision.
"AN ARMY!" They yell out.
Will clutches with one hand at his ear, trying to dim the pain, glowering.
"Oh right, sorry Will." Jonathan says, and the rest mumble the same too.
"It's, it's okay. I know it's kind of a lot to lay on you guys. I thought, maybe if I dealt with this on my own, I could've spared you all getting involved. I hate feeling like-," (a burden, who pulls people into problem after problem, who is only good for getting people into danger, or worse, getting them killed).
But Will stopped himself just in time, a hot flush spreading through him.
Joyce nudges him with a concerned frown, "feeling like what, honey?"
"Ah, it's nothing."
Jonathan almost goes to say something, but Eddie can't contain himself any longer. Feeling like he'd burst after being sat still and quiet for so long.
"Hey, whatever made you go out into the wilderness, to go fight a literal half-fly half-human monster," he shudders, "and might I add, fight it on your own. Basically self-sacrificing yourself for the party like you're on a real-life D&D campaign," Eddie says, with wide admiring eyes, and then more pointedly, "now, that has got to have a more deep-rooted reason than you're letting on."
"Um, what he said." Jonathan seconds him, and then inquires with a disquieted expression, "so why didn't you tell anyone?"
Once Will is faced with the expectant expressions from family and friends, he feels his lip start to quiver.
"Like, like I said. It's nothing."
Joyce grabs his hand, "maybe later, then?"
Will doesn't respond, and he slides his hand away as if burned.
Joyce looks at Hopper, and he sends back the same unsettled and worried expression.
Jonathan watches, wondering why Will is still so closed off, more than he's ever been before, but instead of pressing, asks the question on everyone's mind, "so what do we do now?"