The Long Game━ (l. sinclair)

will's possessed ass

I'm gonna kill Sinclair when I see him next, Sam thought immediately, then remembered they were dealing with much bigger things right now. She sighed, deciding not to press the topic further.

"Well, that's just great," Sam commented sarcastically. "I have to go."

"Bye, Sammy. You owe me for covering for you."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Bye, Core."

Sam hung the phone up after that, trying to bite down a fond smile at what she and Corey's relationship had transformed into. Just a year ago, they didn't even talk to one another, and when they did, it was just Corey bullying her. Now, the bullying was lighthearted.

"Everything okay with your cousin?" Joyce asked from the kitchen.

Sam turned around to face her, a little surprised because she forgot Joyce was there. "Oh, yeah, he's fine. I just wanted to let him know I wasn't arrested. That's more of his thing and not mine."

"Oh," Joyce blinked, unsure of how to respond at that.

"Yeah," Sam smiled back innocently. "Is it alright if I head into Will's room?"

Joyce's taken aback face softened, and she grinned back at Sam. "Of course, honey. The boys should still be in there."

"The boys," plural, because the house was no longer only occupied with Sam, Joyce, and Will. After school, Mike had stopped by, and was quickly filled in on everything that had happened in just a few hours. Sam was honestly afraid to talk with him, because she didn't want to hear anything about these vines that she accidentally drew.

Since night had fallen, Will had since put a cotton grew sweatshirt on his skinny frame. But he wasn't joking about wanting everything cold; just that loose sweatshirt was enough to get a pool of sweat formed at the nape of his neck.

When Sam entered, Will was conceding to the questions plaguing Mike's mind.

"It's like — It's like I feel what the shadow monster's feeling," Will was saying as Mike ambled around and bizarrely examining Sam's murky drawings littering the walls, twisting and twining like the intricate roots of a grand tree. Sam, not wanting to be looked at by Mike, sat on one side of Will, but not too close, so that he wouldn't feel suffocated. "See what He's seeing."

"Like in the Upside Down?"

"Some of Him is there," Will explained, disturbed eyes looking out at nothing as Mike rounded around the bed to where Sam and Will were facing. "But some of Him is here, too."

"Here, like... like in this house—?"

"Like everywhere," Sam interjected, glancing away from her strange etchings on the ceiling when an uncomfortable feeling began to twist in her stomach. Her eyes rested on Will, and she found that the boy was already looking at her. "You can feel it, too, can't you? The cold?"

Will gave no response and turned his head forwards again. The sweat had lathered across his entire torso at this point and there wasn't an inch of his sweatshirt collar that wasn't soaked through. "It's like — It's like He's reaching into Hawkins more and more, and the more he spreads, the more... connected to him I feel."

"And the more you see these now-memories," Mike put together, taking a spot next to the other side of Will so he was in between them.

"At first I just felt it in the back of my head. I didn't even really know it was there," Will rasped, placing his hand at the nape of his neck as he continued, voice strained with emotion. "It's like — when you have a dream, and you can't remember it unless you think really hard — it was like that. But, now it's like — now I remember. I remember all the time."