NINETEEN: THE MIND FLAYER

AS SOON AS THEY ALL ARRIVED AT THE BYERS HOUSE, Daniel sprinted out of Hopper's truck, pushing past everyone else trying to get out. He got out right as Mike was getting out of Jonathan's car. The curly-haired boy caught the other's eye and he was running. He pulled Mike into a tight hug, pulling apart only when Mike pressed a kiss to his lips. Normally, Daniel would have a problem with his boyfriend kissing him out in the open in front of everyone, but right now, it was what he needed. He didn't give a shit what anyone else thought right now because his world was a mess and the only thing keeping him sane had been the thought of seeing Mike again. All worries of jealousy or whatever were squashed when Mike kissed him again and again.

"I was so worried," Daniel mumbled, shoving his face into the crook of Mike's neck, "I hadn't heard from you, no one had!"

"I know, I know, I'm sorry," Mike muttered, hugging Daniel just as tightly.

Steve hit the side of Hopper's truck to get their attention as everyone else was heading back inside, "Hey, lovebirds, one of your friends is possessed and your sister is bleeding out, let's get down to business."

His tone was joking, but the underlying stress in his voice was hidden by nothing. Apparently, the creatures now had a body count and they were unstoppable. From what Daniel heard Hopper discussing with Steve, they even got to Misses Byers's boyfriend, Bob. Daniel had met him once at the beginning of the school year, but that was it. He seemed nice enough, though, Joyce had needed someone nice in her life. This situation, if it wasn't bad enough, just seemed to keep getting worse and worse. The boys headed inside, Daniel observing the nightmare that was the cluster of drawings taped all over the house. He turned to where Will was lying on the couch, Jonathan leaning over him and whispering. Last he checked, Will was just a little shaken up, not feeling well, but according to Hopper, he was possessed by some creature from the Upside Down. Nancy and Veronica were behind Jonathan, the Wheeler girl with one hand on Jonathan's shoulder and the other wrapped around Veronica. Apparently, something had developed there, too, so Daniel must be really out of the loop. Hopper was on the phone with someone while Steve leaned against the wall, watching as Joyce tried her best to patch up Heather's leg with her first aid kit since the teenager insisted on staying. She was laying on the counter while the woman worked and the kids were all seated around the kitchen table. There weren't enough seats so Mike and Daniel shared. Now that things were out in the open, they could do whatever they wanted.

After Hopper hung up, Dustin was the first to break the tense silence as usual, "They didn't believe you, did they?"

Hopper just turned to face them with an intense look on his face, "We'll see."

"I've been through too much trauma for a fifteen-year-old," Daniel sighed, resting his head on Mike's shoulder softly.

Hopper squinted at the two, "So are you two, eh..."

"Yup, don't mess," Lucas answered for them, his glare likely stopping anything else Hopper was going to say. Daniel was glad he always had his friends to defend him.

The man just raised his arms in surrender, "I wasn't gonna say anything bad! 's cute. I was just clarifying."

Daniel laughed. It felt good to laugh. "Yeah, yeah, we're almost one year."

"Traumatic experience always seems to bring us together," Mike spoke softly, almost whispering. He leaned into Daniel's touch, resting his head on top of his. "But not like this. We can't just sit here while those things are on the loose!"

Hopper's mood shifted, "We stay here, and we wait for help. We already lost one person today and we're not looking to lose another."

"I mean," Heather cut in from over on the counter, "I'm fine staying here, I swear, but I would absolutely love to get some stitches so there's that."

Joyce looked up worriedly, "She needs them, badly. I've done all I can."

With that, the woman walked away, probably needing some solitude from the house filled with what felt like a million people. Daniel watched as she left and how Steve quickly took her place next to Heather. Steve hoisted himself up onto the counter so the girl could rest her head on his leg as he played with her hair. Everyone was obviously stressed and it was killing Daniel. He hated seeing Mike like this. He hated seeing anyone like this. He was at an absolute loss for what to do, he had no idea how to make everyone feel better.

Hopper followed Joyce, leaving the kids around the kitchen table. The silence was filled to the brim with anticipation and impatience. Mike suddenly gets up, leaving Daniel by himself. His gaze followed his boyfriend as he picked up a game before turning to face everyone in the house.

"Did you guys know Bob was the original founder of Hawkins Av?" he spoke softly, holding the game with a certain fondness. Daniel hadn't known that.

"Really?" Lucas asked from the kitchen, everyone else too afraid to speak.

"He petitioned the school to start it and everything," Mike explained, "Then he had a fundraiser for equipment. Mister Clarke learned everything from him. Pretty awesome, right?"

The boys nodded, all of them saying, "Yeah." It was a simple answer, but it was the only answer necessary.

Mike came over and placed the game on the table in front of them. "We can't let him die in vain."

"What do you want us to do, Mike?" Dustin asked with an annoyed voice, "The Chief's right on this. We can't stop those Demo-dogs on our own." Huh, Daniel liked the name. He couldn't say the same for the creatures, though.

Max scrunched up her face, "Demo-dogs?"

"Demorgon dogs," Dustin began to explain in a lightly condescending voice, "Demo-dogs. It's a compound, it's like a play on words."

"She's not stupid, Dustin," Daniel raised his eyebrows.

Dustin glared at the boy as he continued speaking, "I mean, maybe we had a chance when it was just Dart but—"

"—There's an army now," Lucas finished the sentence.

"Precisely," Dustin nodded.

"His army," Mike muttered.

This got Steve's attention, "What do you mean?"

Mike suddenly got excited, grabbing Daniel's hand and squeezing, "His army. Maybe if we stop him we can stop his army, too!"

The boy lets go of Daniel's hand, running over to a stack of papers and pulling out a drawing. The rest of the kids followed him, listening intently.

"The shadow monster," Dustin mumbled, taking the drawing from the other boy.

Mike nodded enthusiastically, "It got him that day on the field. The doctor said it was like a virus, it infected him."

"And so this virus, it's connecting him to the tunnels?" Max asked, everyone trying to process this information.

"To the tunnels, monsters, the Upside Down, everything!" the boy exclaimed.

Steve interjected, representing Daniel's thoughts when he said, "Whoa. Slow down. Slow down."

Mike began to explain at a less frantic pace, "Okay, so the shadow monster's inside everything. And if the vines feel something like pain, then so does Will."

"And so does Dart," Lucas continued. This was slowly starting to make sense to Daniel, but he had no idea how this information would help them.

Still, Mike continued, his hand gripping his boyfriend's tight. "Yeah. Like what Mister Clarke taught us. The hive mind."

"What's that?" Daniel said at the same time Steve asked a similar question. He really needed to start paying attention in Science class.

Dustin sighed, beginning to explain, "A collective consciousness. It's a super-organism."

The Wheeler boy nodded, pointing to the drawing, "And this is the thing that controls everything. It's the brain."

Dustin gasped like he had some great revelation, "Like the mind flayer."

"The what now?" Daniel asked with an expression of pure confusion on his face. Knowing Dustin, it was likely something related to Dungeons & Dragons. Thankfully, Steve and Max seemed just as confused. Finally, he wasn't the only one. Dustin grabbed his D&D book of information, opening it to the right page and slamming it down on the table.

"The mind flayer," he spoke dramatically like this was some gigantic reveal that would make every random puzzle piece fit together seamlessly and create the big picture. "

"What the hell is that?" asked Hopper. He had rejoined the group at some time, Daniel would be lying if he knew exactly when.

Dustin's face lit up as he began to explain, "It's a monster from an unknown dimension. It's so ancient that it doesn't even know its true home. Okay, it enslaves races of other dimensions by taking over their brains using its highly-developed psionic powers."

Hopper looked displeased, "Oh, my God, none of this is real. This is a kids' game."

Daniel shrugged, "I mean, that's what we thought about the Demogorgon and that turned out to be pretty real."

The other curly-haired boy nodded, "He's right. It's a manual, it's not for kids. Besides, it's not like this is our first rodeo. And unless you know something that we don't, this is the best metaphor—"

"—analogy," Lucas interjected.

Dustin looked over with a dismayed and annoyed expression, "Analogy? That's what you're worried about?"

"Yeah, dude I'm literally dying!" Heather called from the counter, "Also someone help me down, please, I wanna be in the inner circle!"

Steve snorted before going over and helping Heather sit down in one of the chairs around the kitchen table. In the brief glance he got, he could see Heather was already bleeding through the bandages she had wrapped around the area just under her knee. He couldn't worry about that right now, but he really wanted to. In order to make himself feel better, he squeezed Mike's hand. He squeezed right back, like always.

Dustin scoffed, "Fine. An analogy for understanding whatever the hell this is."

Nancy, who Daniel just noticed had joined along with Jonathan and Veronica, exclaimed, "Okay, so this mind flamer thing—"

"—Flayer. Mind Flayer," Dustin corrected.

The Wheeler girl just sighed, "What does it want?"

"To conquer us, basically," the boy explained, him having somehow become the leader of this conversation. "It believes it's the master race."

"Like, like the Germans?" Steve suggested, trying to relate it to something besides D&D. Daniel was tired of D&D analogies, too.

"Uh, the Nazis?" Dustin asked. The teenager just shrugged, nodding along with that. "Uh... if the Nazis were from another dimension, totally. Uh, it views other races, like us, as inferior to itself."

Mike nodded, continuing the explanation, "It wants to spread, take over other dimensions."

"We are talking about the destruction of our world as we know it," Lucas cut in which totally didn't terrify Daniel at all. Nope, not one bit. He let go of Mike's hand just to wrap it around his waist and pull him close, he needed the comfort right now.

Steve embodied everything Daniel was feeling when he said, "That's great. That's great. That's really great, Jesus!"

"I thought this ended with the Demogorgon," Daniel laughed, but there was no humor in it, "I just want this shit to be over."

Heather sighed, reaching out for her brother's hand on the table, "We all do, we all do."

"I lost my switchblade so I'm ass out when it comes to fighting things," Veronica interrupted, "So how do we beat this thing?"

"Well," Nancy began, picking up the manual, "If this is the brain that controls everything, then if we kill it—"

"—we kill everything it controls," Mike finished his sister's thought.

"Will," Daniel whispered, his eyebrow creasing with worry. No one else seemed to hear him or make this connection. Hopper began discussing how to kill it, so he spoke louder, "Will. What about Will? Isn't it controlling him?"

Hopper cursed, "Right, shit. What are we even doing here?"

"I thought we were waiting for your military backup?" Mike sassed, his voice getting louder.

"We are!" Hopper yelled back, "but if we can't kill this thing without killing the kid..."

"We can't just shoot this with guns," Dustin argued.

"We don't know that!" the man shouted. Everyone was forgetting about Will.

"They already killed everything in that lab," Mike argued.

"And it's only a matter of time until those tunnels reach the town," Lucas cut in.

Breaking the argument, a new voice joined the group. It was Joyce. "They're right," she spoke, "We have to kill it. I want to kill it."

( note! )

oof we almost at the end y'all! an ep and a half left! (and an epilogue, and bonus scenes, but ya know!) also, get this to 100k please it's only like 21k away so please like recommend this shit to your friends, nominate it for shit, like, it would mean the absolute world to me if y'all could make this happen for me!