Bullshit [Stancy]

Chapter 9

"I swear," Dustin shouted for the last time, throwing his back against the small couch in the basement of the Wheeler's house. "It was him."  

Steve put a hand on his shoulder, watching him apprehensively. 

From across the room, Nancy could feel Jonathan's eyes on her. They flitted between herself and the boy sitting on the couch. Guilt began to make its way to her stomach, but she blocked it. What was between her and Steve? What was she supposed to tell him? 

Will, leaning against the wall and looking down at the floor, took a step forward. "He's here, he's close." With an automatic gesture, which she had seen him do dozens of times by now, he brought his hand to the back of his neck. "I can feel him." 

"Eddie?" asked Steve. 

Will shook his head, and out of the corner of his eye Nancy caught sight of Eleven doing the same. 

"The Mind Flayer," Will replied, but at the same instant the girl froze him. 

"It's him, it's Henry," El corrected him, seeking Mike's eyes as encouragement to continue her explanation. "He controls the Mind Flayer."

"Oh my god." Robin's exclamation garnered a couple of whipped glances in her direction. 

Dustin got up from the couch, approaching the corner of the room where Mike and El were standing. "Do you think you can find him, Eddie?"

Mike squeezed her hand. Nancy's eyes could not part with the simplicity and intimacy of that gesture. She had always seen Mike as a child, and in that moment he seemed to have grown up all at once. 

"I can try," said Eleven, without really making eye contact with anyone present except Mike.

The girl positioned herself cross-legged in the middle of the room, wrapping an old scarf around her eyes. Silence fell all around. 

It was a silence she could say she was used to by now. Her heart beating against her chest with such force that it felt like it wanted to burst out, the struggle to breathe shallowly, despite the accelerated beats, so as not to make too much noise. The lungs that burned demanding more. Her yes fixed on a spot on the floor in anticipation. She didn't know what she feared more looking up: crossing Jonathan's eyes, or Steve's? 

She felt that whatever she did, she would hurt one of them, or perhaps both. Why did it have to be this way? 

She took to counting her breaths to stay focused on the present, and on the current problems, far more important than her own. After a while, Eleven pulled off her scarf with a gesture full of frustration.

 "Did you see him?" The question, though coming from a single mouth, Dustin's, was evident in all the eyes that surrounded her and waited for her answer with bated breath. 

"He is somewhere in this world. But he's far away."

"Can't you get a better look?"

"Dustin-" Mike stepped forward, his eyes dark and brows furrowed, placing himself between Eleven and the boy. However, El blocked him, wrapping a hand around his arm. 

"It's ok, Mike," she said, almost a whisper. 

Nancy lowered her gaze, feeling as if she had invaded a private moment between the two of them. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught her brother's shoulders relaxing as the girl whispered something in his ear, inaudible from the corner of the room she was in. 

"Everyone get out," Mike then said. "El needs silence." To the confused look on the faces of those present, he added "more silence". 

Too many people were cooped up in the small basement for her to be able to concentrate properly, gathering the mental energy she needed to find Eddie, wherever he was, so they all went outside, except for Mike and Dustin.