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redamancy 2

Later, when the two of them are alone, Will is certain Jonathan will ask about the lights.

Impossible to ignore. Impossible not to see. Glittering and enchanting, magical and bright, glowing like a dying star and centered around the person meant to be stitched to the other half of his soul; how could he have ignored them? How had he not seen the glow just walking in the direction of Eddie Munson's hospital room? How could he stand there and have a casual conversation with Mike when his soulmate was sitting in the hospital bed, staring at him with eyes so deep and dark they put shadows to shame?

I'm used to hallucinations. I know better than to trust what my eyes can see.

The world around him simply does not feel real right now. The stiffness of the hospital mattress, the warmth of the body next to him, the weight of the arm curled around his shoulders, fingers splayed across the curve of his shoulder- Nothing feels real anymore, but Will has given up trying to explain this to anyone in any meaningful way.

The last thing he wants to do is spend his remaining years locked up in a psychiatric institute while people pick at his brain. As far as the rest of the world knows, Will is simply a normal, if slightly eccentric and incredibly traumatized, teenage boy.

His head thrums with the beginnings of a headache as several people try to ask him and Eddie questions at the same time, his knee bouncing nervously as he fixes his eyes on the wall over Jonathan's shoulder. Answering anyone right now feels overwhelming, his mouth filled with cotton and his heart beating too fast against his ribcage. He wants to tell everyone that he loves that this is fine with him, and that he was so surprised to even see the lights at all that he simply thought he was making it up in his head.

Well, no. He doesn't want to tell them that. Better to let them think that Vecna did incredibly little damage to his psyche, and that he hasn't been seeing lurking monsters in every shadow that seems a little deeper and a little darker than it should be.

"All right, all right!" Hopper lifts his voice above everyone else's, just loud enough to bring a sort of tense silence to the room as Will quickly swallows past the knot in his throat. "We're not getting anywhere. Everyone, slow down. Start at the beginning."

The words are aimed at the two of them, but Will makes no effort to speak and simply tries to fight off the shy urge to press himself into Eddie's side. There are stitches beneath the hospital gown, that he knows, and he saw quite a lot of the damage done to Eddie's body prior to Vecna's defeat. Remembers the sensation of blood hot and sticky under his hands, the flutter of a heart against his fingers. Directly against them.

Has anyone told Eddie about that? Probably not. Will hopes not, because the two of them have just met each other. What will he do if Eddie decides the last thing he wants is an omega who came out of the grasp of a monster with a new, unsupervised gift of his own?

Eddie's fingers flex and curl, the callused pads pressing into Will's skin through the thin fabric of his t-shirt. "I saw the lights, the rainbows, you know." He gestures vaguely with his other hand, far more animated than he was when Will first stepped into the room upon hearing Mike mention his name. "The ones that show up around your soulmate."

Soulmate. He says the word so easily, so simply, as if the very concept is not threatening to rip the world out from underneath Will's feet. "I saw them, too," he offers quietly.

Jonathan's eyes burn into him from where he stands near the doorway, one foot still resting on the tiled floor of the hallway in case Nancy calls for him. This is not something Will has to guess; he's watched the two of them ever since he was reunited with his big brother, clinging to him like a lifeline while he tried to find his footing in the real world again. To be honest, Will is still unsteady, but at least he has Jonathan.