⚠️: anxiety [but no attacks], drugged food/drink, chloroform

❓: no question this chapter. Just a reminder to take care of yourself and tell you I appreciate you existing 😌 also here's a cool shell I found for you 🐚

||𝟑𝐑𝐃 𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍 𝐏𝐎𝐕||

Through the heavy mist of rain, two beams of light emerge up the rain-soaked road. Behind it, two pairs of bikes; their riders - and one passenger - hidden under brightly colored rain slickers of red, yellow, and blue.

A flash of lightning erupts over their hunched figures, revealing the grim faces of El, Max, and Y/n.

With a wet screech, their tires skid against the pavement as they come to a sudden halt beside a very familiar mailbox.

"Is this it?" Max asks.

El steps off the back of Max's bike, her trepid features looking out over the front lawn and her gut sinks.

1438. Same red door? This had to be it.

El nods.

But what were they about to find?

That question had been rattling around Y/n's head all day, tangling her stomach into knots. Those knots only tightened when her friends began up the driveway.

She steals another anxious glance out from under her azure hood before joining them. Wincing against the mud trailing under her shoes as they sink into the grass, her stomach plummets when she spots the car taking up the rest of the driveway space: Billy's car.

Y/n sighed.

"Remember when this a regular sleepover?" She wonders aloud. "That was fun."

"Y/n, I'm sure it's fine. Come on," Max eases, genuinely trying to be helpful.

Y/n nearly argued with her. That there had to be something going on cause she had been feeling wrong about things since the night Dustin got home - since Will had started acting up. She wanted to argue that if El felt this strongly too, then it would be unmistakable. That something was going on.

But she didn't and she couldn't say why.

So here she and her friends now stood, hair clinging to their face in the humid summer rain, ready to investigate the newest mystery.

El's focus zeroed in on the door, and the muted click of the deadbolt unlocking itself reached their ears. And slowly, the red door crept open to reveal their figures.

Despite her fears, El stepped inside first with a newfound determination. Max lingered by Y/n, still adjusting to the reality of it all. Y/n's eyes catch her in a weak, knowing smile.

"Takes some getting used to, I know," said Y/n, reminded all too well of her last impromptu investigative adventure with El.

Max smiled a little after Y/n as she stepped inside before following in her footsteps, closing the door behind them.

The front entrance was short, and spit the girls out in a narrow, olive-green hallway lined with family portraits. Each of them featured a familiar face, the same face they had seen from the lifeguard info board: Heather Holloway.

As they trailed the halls, their soaked faces reflected in the glass of an all too happy family photo.

"This is her house," Max realizes.

"What?" El asks. That couldn't be right, could it? But Billy...

"Heather's house," Max confirmed.

"Billy's car was out front," Y/n mumbles. "Do you think he-"

The sound of a woman's laughter echoed out, pulling their attention down the hall. It was then they realized, they could hear the distant sound of music playing mingled in.

It didn't take them long to find the front living room. Coasters holding empty glasses were left forgotten on the coffee table, and from around the corner in the connecting dining room, they found a most unlikely sight.

Billy at the dining room table with the older couple from the photo; Heather's parents. They were all laughing and smiling. With Billy. It was as if they had somehow stepped into a creepy, picture-perfect, alternate reality.

"Isn't that cute, huh?" Billy had been saying, his face lit up in a friendly smile that didn't seem right to them.

The woman's laughter died out in an amused giggle, wine glass hung from her hand after a lazy sip. "He's so funny!"

Her voice trialed when all three pairs of eyes land on the three girls, gawking more or less in the living room.

Billy's smile never faltered when his eyes landed on his sister and her friends.

"Max!"

The couple at the dinner table bore vastly different reactions, despite the common shock.

"We didn't mean to... barge in," Max explains, still a little stunned with her brother's sudden unusual behavior. "We tried to knock, but... maybe you didn't hear us over the storm."

Billy didn't answer, he only stared blankly ahead as he chewed on his mouthful of steak. Mr. Holloway didn't let them off so easily.

"I'm sorry," he snarks, speaking to Billy as if they weren't really there. "who is this dripping all over my living room right now?"

Y/n bites her tongue. Her eyes were unable to pry themselves from the complete stranger calling himself Billy, wracking her brain as to how this could be the same person who had attacked Lucas. The one she heard horror stories about from Max, the one who shot her annoyed, rotten looks her way whenever she visited. Y/n could only imagine how Max must be feeling.

"I'm sorry," Billy let out a charming laugh, gesturing between his dinner hosts. "Janet, Tom, this... is my sister Maxine."

"Oh!" Chirped the woman, Janet, with a smile, further annoying her husband.

Billy rose from the dinner table and made his way towards the three utterly baffled teenagers in a tone so unsettlingly casual and upbeat.

"What on earth are you doing here?" He asks. "Is something wrong?"

"We just... wanted to make sure everything was okay," Max stammered, just as confused as her friends.

A look of concern flashed over Billy's face as he inched closer. "Okay? Why wouldn't it be okay?"

El had never officially met Billy, but she knew in her core how wrong everything felt. This was not the same man who she had heard so many awful things about, and this certainly was not the man who she had found in the void. Like her friends, El didn't know what to do. All she could do was watch, rooted to the spot right of Max as Billy seems to loom over them, his eyes drilled into Max's.

El couldn't take it anymore. This had to be an act. After all, El knew all too well how to spot when someone was playing nice. When someone was hiding their real intentions. She had learned how to it long ago in the lab.

"Where is she?" El all but growls.

His eyes snap to El, and she could have sworn she almost saw that mask break.

"I'm sorry," he said slowly. "Where is who?"

"Well, they're a little burnt, I'm sorry,"

All eyes turn to the chipper young girl striding in with a tray of cookies in her hands and a lingering smile on her face.

Heather.

The only troubled thing about her was the crisp cinnamon cookies in her hands. She had trailed off upon noticing the three young visitors.

"Heather!" Billy smiles, welcoming her as if she was an old friend.

El looked like she was seeing a ghost.

"This is my sister, Maxine," Billy chirps, turning back to the three confused girls. "And I'm sorry," he says to El, with an almost edge to his voice. "I did not quite catch your name."

El finally tore her eyes away from Heather, her mind racing. She might not have understood how she could be standing here, with Billy, as if nothing had happened, but she knew it had. Billy was hiding something, even if Max couldn't see it.

With a determined look in her eyes, she matches his steely gaze.

"El."

His smile, so fake it reminded her of plastic, never wavered. The unnamed look in his eyes flaring up.

"El." He hums. "What a pleasure it is to meet you El. And of course, who could possibly forget..."

El's stomach turns when Billy looks to her right. His movements were stiff and smooth, like a marionette puppet on strings, his eyes unblinking landed on her for the first time since they arrived.

"Y/n."

The sound of her name on his tongue made her skin crawl.

She was soaked to the bone, but the only chill Y/n felt came from Billy's unwavering stare on her. It was then she realized what was off about him, other than his unusual behavior. It was his eyes. Everything about him and his actions were warm and inviting, completely unbothered.

But his eyes... They were cold. Far away, and detached. And as he looked at her now, that crack in his mask was undeniable. And it widened to reveal something else entirely.

An untamed, hidden rage.

Billy inched closer to her in a single, nearly unnoticeable step.

And so did El. Wedging herself in between her friend and Billy.

Y/n hadn't said a word since seeing him, and she was glad she hadn't. But she didn't need to. The look in her eyes spoke volumes, challenging the look in his.

Hardly any time had passed, she realized, when Billy shakes his head with a laugh.

"Why, it's only my little sister's best friend." Her glare remains, and he glances at the Holloways. "Now please," he chirped, his gaze hardening as it zeroes in on El. "What is it you ladies were saying?"

There was a newer edge to his voice, a smug one. Almost as if he knew he had them cornered.

"You were..." They flicker back over Y/n, before resting back on El. "looking for somebody?"

El looked between him and Heather, her brain scrambling to make things connect. None of it added up. The void never lied to her. It had been misleading, and troublesome more often than not but everything she saw was real.

"I-I..."

So why wasn't this?

"I saw you-"

"Your manager." Max cuts in, quickly grabbing Heather's attention away from El. "At the pool. He said you guys didn't come into work today, so we got worried."

"Heather wasn't feeling so hot today," eases Billy. "so we thought we'd take the day off and nurse her back to health."

With that same, haunting smile, he looks back at Heather with a pointed look in his eye.

"But you're feeling just fine right now. Aren't ya Heather?"

"I'm feeling so much better," she assured.

Billy returns to the girls, calculated but smiling.

"Do you girls want a cookie?" Heather asks, finally managing to tear Y/n's challenging glare off of Billy. "They're fresh out of the oven,"

Thunder rumbled as Y/n looked her over, the booming in the sky matching what she felt thudding in her chest. Y/n couldn't help but feel like Hansel and Grettle as she looked upon the delicious tray of cookies, held out before her with a sickly sweet smile she couldn't at all bring herself to trust.

If she wasn't hurt... just what was going on?

⊹ ⊹ ⊹

Disparaged and thoroughly disturbed, the girls pick up their bikes where they had stashed them at the bottom of the porch steps.

Out of habit, Y/n swipes away the rain on her seat as if it would make a difference. The only thing she succeeds in doing is spreading the water all over the leather, and she sighed, accepting her mind was elsewhere.

Billy was up to something. She just wished she knew what.

As she watches El join Max down the lawn, Y/n stands rooted to the spot, rain pouring down her back as she lingers.

She could feel him watching her.

And when she looked over her shoulder to see him leaning in the doorway, he was.

Her worried gaze hardened in spite as she stared back. His lips spring into a forced smile, his eyes still a dark nothing. Finally, she turns, hidden under the deep blue of her raincoat before retreating into the night with El and Max.

The smile fell away from his face as quick as she looked away, and a poisonous scowl quickly took its place. In those same stiff movements, he stepped behind the door as he closed it, lingering behind the windowpane as his eyes locked on their retreating forms.

His heart pounds dangerously loud in his chest as he watches her.

He feels his brow furrow, revolted.

He knew he had recognized her since she first stepped inside - he could feel the heat lingering from down the hall just as he remembered it.

The pain wasn't just fresh, it was still there.

He could still feel it, as searing and unforgiving as it had been that night.

《•••》

The world bent at her will; everything not screwed to the walls or floors broke loose as the cabin moved around all inside it. It was a movement so forceful and demanding, it moved all of Hawkins. A guttural battle cry pierced the air as her powers exploded into an unstoppable force that had awakened her full potential.

《•••》

He watched in a mixture of fear and hatred as she joined her friends in mounting their bikes. And for a moment, the small, dying part of Billy tries to understand why until he loses himself in another unfamiliar memory.

He had been having them all day - seeing her - all day.

《•••》

Her s/c skin began to glow like a star, the cosmic force at work pumping hard through her veins. The three figures watched in awe as she comes alive, all the while his small and trembling frame twisting and kicking as he is engulfed in searing pain.

《•••》

Fury pumped fast through his veins like ice, desperate to cool his already freezing body. He was filled with a powerful cocktail of anger, frustration, and terror. A feeling Billy was used to. But this...

Somehow, this was also something else entirely. And it was all Billy felt now and all he remembers before the world goes black again.

His pupils dilate and closing in around them are several black veins that cloud the whites of his eyes as he remembers.

《•••》

His screams vibrate with his body before his small frame shrinks in on itself like a dead spider. He straightens in seconds, his head, hands, and feet now glued to the bed as he bends in one final arc, his chest rising to the heavens. His mouth opens in another scream and a billowing cloud of inky black smoke escapes. It twists and unravels out from between his lips like a pitch-black tornado.

《•••》

There was no more denying it.

It was her.

He couldn't have forgotten her or her poisonous touch if he had tried.

It was bad enough that pesky, foolish child to have awakened him - to have shut him out - was here and had been watching him.

But she would have her uses. A means to an end.

All in good time.

But the other? The one to have made him feel a pain worse than death?

Well, the Mind Flayer was determined to return the favor.

⊹ ⊹ ⊹

As Will mingled with the dirt beneath him, the storm pounding against his back soaking him to the bone, he feels it again.

The same feeling he had felt the night before Dustin's return, the day of, and now...

Well, there was no denying it. No more running. This was real, and it wasn't something so easily shaken.

A great change was upon him and his friends, a change none of them were prepared for.

Shakily, he pulls himself to his feet, not entirely sure if the voice calling his name was real.

"What happened? Are you okay?"

With a faraway look in his eyes, Will turns to his awaiting friends as his stomach plummets beneath the earth.

"He's back."

⊹ ⊹ ⊹

"He was singin' Bye bye Miss American Pie..."

Billy returns to the dinner table where Heather and her family awaits, the record player blasting an upbeat, melancholy tune to fill the silence.

"Is everything alright?" Heather asks, as he returns to his seat.

"Yes. Everything's fine," he assures.

"Your sister really didn't want to stay?" Janet asks with a frown.

"No, she's just not... you know, really a people person."

"Well," she says, fingers twitching numbly with the napkin in her lap. "I just don't like the idea of them out there in the storm like that."

"Oh, they'll be fine,"

Nervously, she reaches for her glass, not expecting her movements to be so sluggish. She yelps softly when her knuckles collide with the glass, knocking the wine out onto the table cloth.

"I told you to slow down on that wine, Janet," Tom grumbles from across the table.

"Yes, darling," she mumbles, embarrassed, as she dabs at the spill.

"Are you okay, Mommy?" Asks Heather.

"Yes, I'm- I'm just..." she stutters, doing her best to shake away the dizziness swarming her brain. "feeling a little lightheaded is all."

Billy boredly takes a bite of his food, sharing a discreet, fleeting look with Heather.

"Hm," Tom hums knowingly. "It's all that wine."

"I'm sorry," she says, fighting hard to keep her eyes open. "Um, if you'll excuse me, I'm just gonna go upstairs and lie down for a bit."

It takes all her effort to pull herself out of the chair, and she has to use the arms to hoist herself up but she eventually does the job. But she never reaches the end of the living room before she collapsed with a thud.

"Janet?" Tom asks, jumping to his feet.

"...half-time air was sweet perfume..."

Billy pulls a small glass vile from the floor with little interest. All the while, Tom threw himself to floor by his wife's side in a panic.

"Janet? Janet? Janet!"

With as little enthusiasm as Billy, Heather rose from her seat taking the wine bottle in hand. The record player continued its song louder than ever as Billy tipped the bottle of chloroform into the tablecloth napkin.

"Janet!" He turns to his approaching daughter. "Call 911! Call 91-"

Heather had struck him in the head with the wine bottle before he could finish.

"...never got the chance..."

Billy rose from his seat, leaning himself against the wall of the dining room as he hands Heather the napkin. She was advancing on her father, painstakingly slow as he tried so hard to crawl away to safety. But like his wife, moments before, the world had become a blur.

And it remained so even when he felt the sharp heel of his daughters shoe piecing his skin. Her fingers yanked at his hair, pulling his bloodied face out of the carpet. Before he could make sense of anything, he heard her detached voice in his ear.

"I'm really sorry about this, Daddy, but it'll all be over soon, I promise."

"We started singin' Bye bye Miss America Pie"

He tried to scream, but his voice died out in the chloroform soaked rag and the world went black.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

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