The Long Game━ (l. sinclair)

sam snaps, mike breaks, and corey's a stubborn bastard

Sam didn't like what Will was saying. She didn't like it at all.

"What does it feel like?" Max asked, because unlike Sam or Will, she was left clueless about the horrifying sensations.

"It's like—" Will exhaled, trying to put his feeling into words. "You know when you drop on a roller coaster?"

"Sure," said Mike.

"Yeah," Max nodded.

"No," frowned El.

Sam watched as Will's fingers flexed anxiously, and he looked down trying to cope with it all. "It's like... everything inside your body is just sinking all at once, but... this is worse. Your body... it goes cold, and — and you can't breathe."

She hated seeing her friends so upset; it hurt to see Will trying to explain all of this. Sam felt horrible. First, Will gets lost in the Upside Down; then, he gets possessed by a shadow demon; now, it's all coming back to haunt him.

"And you didn't tell anyone?" Sam asked sadly, wishing she would've known.

Will shrugged shyly, said, "I didn't want anyone to worry."

"Well, I'm worried," argued Sam.

Lucas rolled his eyes from the couch. "You're always worried," he pointed out.

Sam shot him a look. Max and El shared eye contact, thinking back to what Sam had said about Lucas back at El's house. Now that they knew about the situation, it was clear as day to spot the tension.

"Clearly it's warranted," Sam gestured incredulously at Will.

Will nodded in an okay, that's fair manner. He agreed, "Yeah, that feeling... I've felt it before. Whenever he was close."

Max shook her head. "Whenever who was close?"

"The Mind Flayer," Will confessed.

Sam stiffened at the mention of his name. Of course, she'd had her theories about the whole ordeal, but having the Mind Flayer mentioned so bluntly like this... well, it made everything feel more real. Sam hated it.

"I closed the Gate," El reminded him, trying to comfort Will.

Will shook his head, gaze dropping to the floor again. "I know, but... what if he never left? What if we locked him out here with us?"

Sam sat forward at this, frowning slightly. "How?" she asked.

Will struggled to word his thoughts for a moment, glancing around the room for assistance. Then, he bolted to his feet and snatched a blank piece of watercolor paper and a stick of black pastel from the box of cluttered drawings supplies on one of the shelves at the back of the room. Will placed them down on the D&D table as everyone crowded around to observe what he was doing.

"This is him, all of him," Will rambled, sketching out a quick outline of the Mind Flayer's daunting figure. "But, that day on the field, a part of him attached itself to me."

He swiped his hand over the pastel, smearing his drawing and transferring the black color onto his hand in the process.

"My mom got it out of me, and Eleven closed the Gate," he continued. Will flipped the paper with the blank, white side facing up. "But the part that was still in me, what if it's still in our world? In Hawkins?"

Will slammed his hand onto the blank side, stamping a black handprint right onto it.

"I don't understand," Corey's face screwed up judgmentally. "The Demodogs died when El closed the Gate. If the brain dies, the body dies."