My Number One (001/Henry Creel/Vecna x Reader)

God's Plan

I thought about everything he had just said for a moment. I imagined him doing everything he'd told me, including ripping away his own Soteria tracker, and then mine. With everything I had to distract me since the day I escaped the lab, I had sort of forgotten all about the injury the removal of the Soteria had left me with on my neck. When I put my hand to it now, it felt like it had scabbed over. I glanced at Henry's neck, too, but I couldn't see his injury with the changes in his skin, which was now gluey-grey to blend in with the rest of the Upside Down.

"I'm glad you've explained all of this," I said finally. "I had so many questions I still wanted to ask, but you seem to have answered most of them."

Henry watched me for a moment. His eyes floated from my face, to my body, and back to my face again. "You're wearing my father's shirt," he said, and I couldn't figure out from the tone of his voice how he felt about that fact.

"Oh," I said. "Do you want me to take it off."

Henry leaned back in his seat. "Well, yes...but not for that reason."

By this point, I understood why he liked to see my body. It was the same reason the girls in the strip clubs wore such minimal clothing. Attraction.

I did as he told me to and unbuttoned the shirt. I didn't fully take it off, though, I left my arms inside of it. Henry sat opposite, saying nothing, as if waiting for me to continue. I suppose I didn't take it off because I didn't want to normalise being naked all of the time...and I just wanted to see how he would react. I found out when he stood up, walked slowly around the table so that he was behind me, and pulled the shirt down so that it fell to the floor. He then placed both hands on both of my shoulders and ran them down my arms. I held my breath as he moved his arm around my neck into a headlock and pulled me back against his chest. With his other hand, he began to feel my body, and with his mouth he began to kiss my neck. "That's what I like to see," he murmured as he let me go.

I loved how unpredictable he was. I breathed out heavily as he took our plates and placed them in the sink to wash up. As we were in the Upside Down, everything was slimy and dirty, so the sink didn't look quite clean enough for me to feel satisfied with the was the dishes would get, but I supposed there was no other option. Even the water from lake we swam in felt significantly thicker and slushier, and looked murkier than natural water from the normal world.

"I wonder how Eleven is getting on," I mused as Henry turned on the tap, setting off a stream of bluet-grey water over the dishes.

"Forget about her," he replied.

"I can't," I said, and I wasn't trying to argue back. I wanted to forget, and I wanted him to help me.

"She's in good hands," he said, glancing round to look at me.

"I know," I said softly, hoping he was right. "I wonder if those boys—Mike, Lucas and Dustin—found their friend Will who they were looking for."

"I wonder," Henry agreed blankly, continuing to do the dishes.

"I don't like Mike," I confessed.

"Why?"

I was about to tell Henry about how rude Mike was to me, but I didn't want to trigger another situation where he'd set out to kill whoever was mean to me, so I decided on simply saying, "No reason."

After a few minutes of silence, Henry turned to face me, leaning against the counter. "Do you like living alone with me?"

I thought about it for a moment. "Yes," I said. "I'd prefer to live in the normal world with you, though. There's so much I haven't seen...and it's much less gloomy."

"What if I told you we can do that?"

My heart lifted. "Really?" I asked, smiling. "I thought you didn't want to go back there because you'd lose the strength you've gained in the Upside Down."

"There is a way I'd be willing to do that," he said slowly. "If we destroy everyone else, we'd have the whole world to ourselves, and I'd have no reason to be so powerful anymore."

My mouth dropped open. "What?" I said faintly. I couldn't believe he was suggesting such a thing.

"Why not? I'm the only one you need, aren't I?"

"All of those innocent people deserve their lives," I said faintly. "I can't believe you'd want to do something to twisted."

"Twisted?" Henry repeated, taken aback. "No, they're twisted."

"Why?"

"I've already told you, Twelve, that you don't know a thing about the world and its society."

"I've seen enough to know that there are good people out there that don't deserve to die." I shook my head. "I mean, I managed to somehow understand you when you killed the other test subjects because at least they had done some wrong. At least it wasn't unprovoked. At least you weren't evil...or so I thought."

"The human race is lost, Twelve. It is so far gone. The made-up rules of society have become so ingrained in our being that we don't even realise how unnatural it is to go through the same cycle every day, every week, every month, and every year of our lives until we're too old and weak to abide by it anymore. Wake up, work nine-to-five to hold a roof above our heads and provide our bodies with basic, processed meals, leaving us with barely a shred of money left to spend on our own enjoyment, sleep, and then repeat. From the moment we're born, we're tied into this. If we manage so much as an attempt at living off-the-grid, we're deemed lunatics by the people so brainwashed they can't see through their tainted lenses. I'm not evil by wanting to do this. I wouldn't go to hell. If a god really is looking down on us, he'd be sick to his stomach at what has came of his beautiful creation. You know, perhaps instead of killing everyone off, we should leave just the babies, and raise them our own way, the way Mother Nature would have intended."

I stumbled to my feet and began backing away from him, but he advanced towards me.

"If you're with me on this, we could rule the world. We could go wherever you wanted, whenever you wanted to. We wouldn't be made to pay to visit a place owned by no one but nature. We wouldn't have to get permission to swim in a stream. We wouldn't have to earn a licence to sail a boat. Everything would be...right."