Story's on archive so you can read here (chapters)

redamancy

There is an art to waking up from a nightmare without disturbing anyone else in the house.

Will has perfected it, he thinks. Waking with his heart pounding against his ribcage so frantically he thinks he can feel the shape of it against his own fingertips. With his face slicked with sweat and a scream clamped tight between his teeth. With his hands shaking so badly that one might mistake him for someone deathly ill and feverish, disoriented from the heat of their own body desperately trying to fight off something dangerous.

Perfected it, it seems, until someone else happens to be in the bed next to him.

The long claws that grasp his chin send a shuddering wave of revulsion through his body, and Will fights to twist his face away from the grip. He fails almost immediately, of course; Vecna has the audacity to laugh in his face for putting up such a pitiful effort. As if Will has any hope of escape when he's all alone in this place.

A soft whimper leaves his throat as Will twists his head against the pillow, fighting against an unseen touch as his hands curl against Eddie's back. The texture of soft, thin fabric goes unnoticed in the midst of what shapes up to be another nightmare, another painful reminder of the past he is trying so hard to put behind him. But the past is so near, so very near that the shape of its teeth is still imprinted deep within his psyche.

"I finally have you right where I want you." Vecna's deep, gravelly voice whispers across Will's lips as the abomination from the Upside Down stands before him, so near that Will can feel the chilly wave of vegetative rot rolling off of his body. "All of that struggling to get away from me, all of that effort put into severing your connection with me, and I finally have you right where I want you. Who is there to save you this time?"

His hands flex in the half-darkness of the room, wrists straining against bindings that are no longer there. He can feel them in the dream, or at least he can feel the impression of them, the memory of them searing everything bright and real and vivid in the hazy landscape of the dream. The tentacle-like vines that rope the Upside Down, ensuring even a minor vibration would reach Vecna should he be open to feeling it. They're wrapped around every limb, every joint, keeping Will perfectly in place so that struggling is useless.

Tears prick the corners of his eyes and break free all without his consent, thin tears dribbling down his cheeks as fear grips him so tight he can hardly breathe.

"What do you want with me?" But Dream Will already knows. Dream Will has the cognition that his true self lacks, the memory of having his limbs pinned down, of being unable to escape as Vecna visited unimaginable, unexpected pain onto every part of his body.

From head to toe. Inside and out. Until Will was ruined both body and soul.

In real life, Will thrashes as a pitiful whine leaves his lips. His omega would have picked up on it so much faster than he himself. Instincts seize control of his mind without him able to stop them, and when gentle yet firm hands grip his arms to hold him still, a thin wailing noise spills over his lips. Fear grips him so tight that it yanks him from the shadowy hellscape of the dream before Vecna can answer him, and he blinks frantically through layers and layers of darkness until he's pinned in place by dark, dark brown eyes.

Will sips frantic lungfuls of air as his gaze darts over the face that he does not recognize right away, unused to having somebody in bed with him. Brown eyes. Not blue. Almost every part of Henry Creel had been leeched from Vecna's cold and clammy skin, but the sharp blue cut of his eyes- void of any human emotion short of sadistic glee and derision- remained. It is enough to remind Will that he is no longer with Vecna.

Enough to remind him that he's lying in bed with Eddie Munson of all people, and that the hands holding him down by the shoulders are not trying to hurt him.