Alexithymia | STRANGER THINGS [ON HOLD UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE]

sixteen | the gate

As he turned to look away from Hopper, Dustin said, "It's not. I'm sorry."

While Matthew only rolled his eyes at Dustin, El looked over at Hopper and told him, "I can do it."

Hopper said to her, "You're not hearing me."

With a nod of her head, El replied, "I'm hearing you. I can do it."

While Matthew glanced over at El with furrowed eyebrows, Mike said, "Even if El can, there's still another problem. If the brain dies, the body dies."

Max said to Mike, "I thought that was the whole point."

Mike replied, "It is, but if we're really right about this... I mean, if El closes the gate and kills the mind flayer's army..."

It was then that Lucas said, "Will's a part of that army."

Mike told them, "Closing the gate will kill him."

While Matthew only raised his eyebrows with a sigh, Joyce silently stared ahead of herself with furrowed eyebrows before she slowly walked out of the kitchen and over towards the room that Will was laying down in.

While the others slowly walked after Joyce, Joyce stopped in the room Will was in and said, "He likes it cold."

In turn, Hopper said to her, "What?"

After looking back over at Will, Joyce said, "It's what Will kept saying to me." After nodding her head to herself and starting to walk over towards the open window, she said, "He likes it cold."

After sliding the window shut, she turned to the others and told them, "We keep giving it what it wants."

With her eyebrows furrowed, Nancy said, "If this is a virus, and Will's the host, then..."

While staring down at his brother, Jonathan said, "Then we need to make the host uninhabitable."

In turn, Nancy said, "So if he likes it cold..."

While staring down at her youngest son, Joyce said, "We need to burn it out of him."

With a nod of his head, Mike told them, "We have to do it somewhere he doesn't know this time."

Then Dustin said to them, "Yeah, somewhere far away."

* * *

While Matthew was sitting on the floor and up against a wall with his eyes closed and a lit cigarette hanging out of his mouth, Lucas continued to attempt to sweep up the glass from when the Demo-dog was thrown through the window and had landed onto the living room floor before he looked up at Mike, who was pacing around the room, and then eventually asked him, "Mike, would you just stop already?"

As he stopped his pacing, Mike replied, "You weren't in there, okay, Lucas? That lab is swarming with hundreds of those dogs."

From the kitchen, Dustin yelled, "Demo-dogs!"

After pulling the cigarette out of his mouth, Matthew yelled, "Nobody cares about what the fucking name for it is! They're fucking dogs, Henderson, alright?!"

When Dustin didn't respond, Matthew let out a sigh before he brought the cigarette back up to his mouth, while Lucas said, "The chief will take care of her."

With a raise of her eyebrows, Max said, "Like she needs protection."

While he walked out of the kitchen with Dustin close behind him, Steve said to Mike, "Listen, dude, a coach calls a play in a game, bottom line, you execute it. Alright?"

In turn, Mike said to him, "Okay, first of all, this isn't some stupid sports game. And second, we're not even in the game. We're on the bench."

With a tilt of his head, Steve said, "Ri— Y— So my point is..." After seeing the way that three of the four middle-schoolers and Matthew were now looking at him, Steve said, "Right, yeah, we're on the bench, so, uh, there's nothing we can do."