love your shitty little sister, max

The Sauna Test 2

I wasn’t planning on writing a part two but it sounded fun and I was bored so here we are. here’s part one and the inspiration post and if y’all want a part three lmk and i will do it. tbh i like part one better but probably bc its more angsty.

warnings: language, flashes to the upside down (so scary stuff), a pinch of byler like always, mild angst, yelling, mentions of violence

other notes: despite the title this actually takes place during s3e5, The Flayed

-------------------------------

The phone had been ringing for several minutes now. 

Nancy was starting to get worried. Yes, it was early, and yes, Jonathan probably still hated her for getting them both fired, but if the Mind Flayer was coming back, and it definitely seemed like it, then talking to Will would be her best bet. 

“Hello?” an angry voice from the other end of the line answered.

“Jonathan!”

“Do you realize what time it is?”

Yep, he was still mad. For sure.

“Listen to me, okay?” Nancy could feel that old feeling of panic starting to bubble up again. Something bad was happening, and again, no one was listening to her.

“It’s 6am, and I had a late night with Feagan and the gang so—”

Nancy thought that sounded like a lie, but at this point, she didn’t care. “I’m at the hospital with Driscoll.”

A pause. “What?”

“She’s been sedated for a few hours and the doctors are still running tests.”

She could hear Jonathan wake up almost immediately. “Nancy, please tell me you’re joking.”

“It’s not a joke, and yes, I know I’m insane, and irrational, and out of touch, but save your lecture because I really don’t give a shit right now, I just…” Nancy took a breath to calm herself. The few people out at this hour have been giving her weird looks during the whole conversation. 

“I need you to put me on the phone with your brother.”

“What?”

“Jonathan, please.”

Nancy was praying this would work, that Will would remember enough to give her something, anything, about what she had just witnessed in the hospital.

“He’s not even here,” Jonathan said, and Nancy felt her stomach drop. 

“Where is he?” She knew her voice was getting more and more frantic, but if this thing was commanding Mrs. Driscoll, then it was commanding others too. If she knew her brother and his friends, it’s that they always ran head first into the chaos, exactly where Will could be in the most danger. “Is he safe?”

“Why wouldn’t he be safe?” Jonathan’s voice was quavering. Nancy almost regretted saying that, reminding him of the past two years in which he had to watch his brother go through hell, but if something had happened to him...

“Nancy, why wouldn’t he be safe?”

“So you don’t know where he is?”

“Nancy!” Jonathan’s voice was on the brink of yelling now. “Tell me what happened at the hospital.”

Nancy’s eyes started to brim with tears. “It...I don’t know, it looked like that night, in the cabin, when we burned the Mind Flayer out of Will, but worse…” She heard Jonathan curse on the other end. “Do you know where he is?”

-----------------------------

“So...it felt like when he possessed you?” Max’s eyes drilled into Will’s. She looked scared. All of them did. He couldn’t help but wonder if they were scared of him.

“I mean...yeah. Like that.” 

The whole morning, the group had been grilling Will on the events of the previous night. Will didn’t want to tell them that the cold feeling never went away. He didn’t want anyone to worry. He didn’t like being the center of attention, but at least they were somewhat focused on other things. Between speculating about what happened to Will and the constant asking of are you sure you’re alright?, Mike had been whining about El and El had been working on finding Hopper. As it turned out, he was in Illinois. With Joyce. While everyone found that a little weird, they had bigger things to worry about. 

A loud knock on the basement door caught everyone’s attention. 

“Not now, Mom!” Mike screamed, and instead being greeted with his mother’s annoyed tone, Nancy’s voice screamed from just up the stairs.

“Mike, open the door!” 

The group just stared at each other in confusion. Finally, Mike got up. Nancy and Jonathan came running down the stairs, shoving Mike out of the way. “Will?” Jonathan said, looking frantically around the room.

“I’m right here,” Will said, confused as to why Jonathan’s face was twisted with fear.

“Oh thank god,” Nancy breathed, and Mike turned on his sister abruptly. 

“Okay, what is going on right now? Why do you two look like you just ran a marathon?”

Nancy and Jonathan looked at each other. Nancy took a breath and explained everything she had just seen.

“What time was this attack?” Mike piped up once she was finished.

“Last night,” Nancy said, still looking fearful.

“Right, but what time last night?”

“Around nine.”

Jonathan turned on Nancy. “You waited all night to call?”

“I was waiting for the doctor to run some tests.” 

Will’s eyebrows knitted in confusion. “You weren’t there?”

“Well I’m here now, aren’t I?” Jonathan snapped.

“Hallelujah,” Nancy quipped back. 

Nancy and Jonathan had been avoiding eye contact for the whole conversation. Everyone could tell something had happened between them. It was almost comical, seeing their tense and awkward interactions.

“So wait, what were you guys doing last night?” Nancy said, breaking the uncomfortable silence.

They all looked at each other. Will looked at the ground. Finally, Mike spoke.

“We, uh. We went to find Billy and...and we tried to get the Mind Flayer out of him. With a sauna”

“What?” Nancy and Jonathan exclaimed in unison. 

“It was working, for a bit,” Lucas said slowly. “But then he got out of the sauna and then he tried to possess Will again and then El threw him through a wall and he got away.”

The room went silent. Jonathan slowly turned to look at Will. “What do you mean ‘tried to possess Will again?’”

“Jonathan—” Will whispered.

“Why would you go with them, when you knew this would happen? You’re lucky he didn’t do anything to you,” Jonathan yelled. Will squeezed his lips together. “He didn’t do anything, right?”

“I don’t know, he...he did something to me. Like he was trying to control me again. Like I still have some of the Mind Flayer left in me.” Will’s voice was shaking. He knew he was on the brink of tears, like he always was when he talked about the Mind Flayer or the Upside Down.

“Yeah, Billy made Will collapse. It was freaky, it was like Will couldn’t hear us at all,” Max said, leaning closer to El. Jonathan looked furious.

Suddenly, a chilling sensation tore through Will’s body. His lungs constricted in pain. His head started pounding again, as Mike’s basement faded away and all that was left were shadows, and little white spores flitting through the air. 

“Mike?” Will said quietly, standing up from the couch and trying to adjust his eyes to the darkness. He heard a sound from outside, something all too familiar. Will couldn’t move. He knew he had to run, but he couldn’t risk being seen. He looked down to see vines creeping over his shoes, trapping him. The sound was coming closer, and it would find him again he would find him again he needed to run and hide and not let him see and he had to get back to Mike—

“Where are you?”

A singsong voice echoed from all sides. Will felt the back of his neck start to tingle, like the feeling of being watched. The toxic air pierced his lungs and stung his skin and he started to get dizzy—

“WILL!”

Will’s eyes shot open to see his friends surrounding him, Mike’s hands on his shoulders. He felt El’s hand on his arm, and Jonathan’s hand on his forehead. 

“Was it another episode?” Mike asked, staring intensely at Will’s face. 

“God, you’re freezing.” Jonathan lowered his hand. “What happened?”

Will sat back down, breathing heavily. He tried to focus on Mike’s face, looking increasingly more worried the longer Will didn’t speak. He opened his mouth, and a wave of nausea fell over him. He squeezed his eyes shut to stop the spinning.

“...Will?” El’s voice was quiet as she sat down next to him. “Was it Billy? Was he there?”

Will shook his head. 

“No, it was...well, it sounded like Billy. But it wasn’t. It was him. And he knew I was there.”

Nancy and Jonathan exchanged a look. “Is it...in you again? Do we need to burn it out?” Nancy said, her eyes wide.

Will shook his head. “I don’t think he actually possessed me this time. He’s just trying to scare me, I think. I know too much.”

“Well, what do you know?” Lucas leaned forward. Will noticed that he and Max were holding each other’s hands tightly, their knuckles turning white. “I know how he works. How he thinks and everything. He views me as a threat because...because I got through his control in the past.”

Lucas sighed in frustration. “Well, if you could do it, why can’t Billy?” 

“I—”

Will’s neck tingled again, like a warning. “I think something’s wrong.”

Nancy stared at him. “What? What’s happening?”

He looked up at them, eyes wide.

“It’s Mrs. Driscoll.”

Hey! Im pretty new to the fandom (since like summer) and i was wondering if there were any crazy fan theories before s2 came out? Like the speculation over s3 has really got me thinking how much people predicted before the show came out last time? I’ve really enjoyed reading your posts so thanks ♥️

Okay so crazy fan theories idk if u mean crazy like, funny, or crazy like INTENSE so I’ll just answer for both lmao. There were a LOT of funny theories before the show came out. I mentioned one of them the other night, which was the El/Mike MORPH theory, but if u didn’t see that post, basically when the first s2 teaser came out there was a shot from the scene of El and Hopper’s fight where El is crying. It was the first look we got of El in s2 so that was the first time we were seeing her curly hair and all that, and also in the shot (which didn’t make the final cut of the show) she was covering her face, so at first we weren’t 100% sure if it was her. Millie and Noah ended up confirming that it was, but a LOT of ppl were still convinced it was Mike, which led to a bunch of ridiculous theories that in s2 El was going to morph into Mike, that they were actually the same person, there would be a body swapping plotline, etc. like there were a lot of variations of it but it can all be p well grouped under the same theory. The main other FUNNY theory coming to mind is my personal favorite, PregNancy. A completely baseless-yet-popular theory that was exactly how it sounds, Pregnant Nancy. It rlly only started bc in the trailer they included the shot of Nancy crying in the Holland’s bathroom, so a lot of people ran with this whole idea that she’s crying cause she just took a pregnancy test and there were a lot of spiraled out theories like whether it was Steve or Jonathan’s baby and all that. Those are the two main comedic theories from s2 that I remember and ppl who were here for them can all remember hauntingly and joke about

As for ACTUAL theories, jeez there were a LOT. There were some rlly good ones too. I remember a rlly popular one was that after someone leaked some set pictures of Millie filming the scene where El gets off the bus in Chicago, a lot of ppl started theorizing that Eleven was hiding out there with some friends Hopper had there or smth (Now we know that “the city” Hop used to live in was New York, but we didn’t know that pre-s2 so ppl figured it might be Chicago and he had an old apartment there or smth). There were also a LOT of theories centered around the tunnels, bc that was some of the only plot hints we had going in to the season. People caught on pretty quickly after the trailer came out that the drawings in the Byers house were a map of the tunnels, and stuff spiraled from there. I remember one theory I personally believed was that the tunnels were what Will used in the Upside Down to get around and hide from the Demogorgon. Another big theory was that the red cloud that the Mind Flayer appeared in in Will’s visions was going to be an actual physical storm coming to Hawkins, which came p much from the few shots of it in trailers alongside the fact that the show originally released some fake episode titles when they announced s2, and one of them was “The Storm”. The old title for “The Lost Sister” was actually “The Lost Brother” and a LOT of theories came from that, ranging from pretty accurate like it being another experiment, to completely off base, like one I remember was it being about a 4th Wheeler sibling (Mike’s twin) who died (p much just came from the fact that Mike has a bunk bed). OH and if you remember the DnD scene at the end of season 1, aka everything with the proud princess, the lost knight, and the weird flowers in the cave? Everyone was CONVINCED those were supposed to be clues for season 2. Literally 99% of s2 theories mentioned those 3 things, and in the end they were complete red herrings. A lot of theories also came from Dragon’s Lair, as the Duffers hinted a lot that there would be symbolism in the game. Now we know that “symbolism” was rlly nothing more than foreshadowing that Lucas would end up with Max and not Dustin (”Princess Daphne is still mine!”) but for a long time we thought it was PLOT foreshadowing. And lemme tell you anon, I personally did SO MUCH research on that game and watched the gameplay so many times making theories. The plot of the game is about a knight rescuing a missing princess from a dragon, and a lot of ppl (me included) thought that was going to foreshadowing for Mike saving El from whatever was the reason she was still missing. For a LONG time ppl thought El was going to be in the Upside Down for a full year. If you read any pre-s2 fics, there’s a good chance that’s going to be referenced, bc for so long we didn’t have ANY clue where she could be so we just assumed she was stuck in the Upside Down as a default. It wasn’t until a year after the show came out that it was confirmed she’d been out of the Upside Down since the beginning. So yeah for a long time there were a LOT of theories about the kids doing a rescue mission to the Upside Down. Another theory that came from Dragon’s Lair was that Dustin was going to die, bc his character dies in Dragon’s Lair and people thought that would be similar foreshadowing to how in s1 Will’s DnD character was taken by the Demogorgon, then that’s what happened in real life. Speaking of character deaths, a LOT of people thought Steve or Hopper were gonna die. There wasn’t rlly explanation behind it, but everyone kinda agreed, their character arcs as of the end of s1 were set up well if the show wanted to kill one of them off. Another big plot theory that I remember was that the Upside Down would be spreading to the real world, bc the tag line for season 2 was “The World Is Turning Upside Down” and people connected it back to Mr Clarke’s line about how the gate could swallow everyone up whole. That theory KINDA became true and the gate was spreading in s2, but it wasn’t the plot of the season or anything, and it wasn’t near as serious in reality as people theorized it to be. There were a also LOT of theories about Will too, and a lot of them were some variation of Will having powers. Oh and since one of the episode titles is “The Spy” there were a lot of theories about who the spy was, the most common ones I remember were Max, Billy, Bob, and Hopper. The first 3 bc they were the newbies (no pun intended on Bob’s end) and Hopper bc we kinda knew he had some connection going on with the lab, but didn’t know the nature or what was going on or anything. OHMYGOD and how could I forget the Thessalhydra. The FREAKING Thessalhydra. Another DnD related theory that I spent HOURS of my life dedicated to researching only for it to amount to NOTHING. The Thessalhydra is another DnD monster, and it was also mentioned in the campaign at the end of season 1, and everyone was convinced that would be the new monster from s2. There weren’t a lot of theories about the Mind Flayer going into season 2 just because we didn’t know enough to even have theories, but almost every theory that did exist assumed that the shadow monster was the Thessalhydra coming to Hawkins following the Demogorgons defeat. Another one I remember is since we got shots of Joyce, Hop, and Bob wearing scrubs in the trailer, people thought they were going undercover in a hospital to either 1) kidnap Will out of it or 2) steal medical files.

As for theories that were accurate, there was a surprising lot. Honestly in reality a LOT of stuff that happened in season 2 was stuff ppl either theorized about, but their theories went WAY more in depth & went beyond what actually happened, or it was smth ppl figured was too obvious to be true. So honestly in the end we definitely OVER-theorized a lot for s2. El and Hop was one of them. Hopper hiding El in a secret cabin in the woods was one of those things that everybody in the fandom thought about, but most of us thought it was too predictable to be true (especially because one of those original episode titles was literally “The Secret Cabin”). Everyone pretty much assumed that Dustin’s pollywog was really the slug Will threw up, and there were even a lot of theories about it being a baby Demogorgon (though I don’t think ANYONE anticipated the demodogs). Or like I mentioned before, a lot of theories about El going to Chicago, but none of them were even CLOSE to what really happened. Kali’s original name in the show was Roman, and they kept her SUPER secretive. When the final trailer of the show came out, they included a shot of the gang wearing masks, and I remember someone was able to figure out that one of them was Roman/Kali, and that’s rlly all we knew about her going in. I actually remember someone sent me an ask back then thinking that the girl next to her might be El in a mask too, and I specifically remember looking at that picture thinking “Nah that’s not her” bc I mean, no one expected anything like episode 7. They had announced there was going to be an independent episode, and I remember our theories ranged everywhere from a musical episode to flashbacks of the year between 1 and 2 to a whole episode dedicated to Terry and MKUltra. But at no point did anyone come even close to figuring out the truth. There’s a lot of smaller details ppl anticipated too, like the Stancy breakup or Bob’s death, and even a good chunk of the plot honestly, even if no one rlly theorized the exacts, the whole kinda premise and concepts we had brought up a lot before and we had loosely figured it out. But there was also so much stuff no one ever thought of before, like the Demodogs or everything with ep7 or the lab shutting down or Will getting possessed.

All in all honestly we did a pretty good job. Everything we COULD figure out based on the information we had we did for the most part, to the point where honestly this time around the show is being WAY more secretive in s3 because they don’t want us to figure stuff out again. Like I said before, honestly we over-theorized, we took all the information we did and definitely overthought everything a LOT and ended up going a lot more intense with it than what ultimately happened in the show lmao