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a longing for innocence
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. ✧ ・゜. +・o ✧
Gabe's theory had been right. At the Hawkins Community Pool, Billy Hargrove was indeed sitting at his lifeguard's post, swathed in a robe, a hat, and sunglasses, nursing a slushie as he watched the crowd. Watching him, Gabe wondered how he wasn't sweltering under those layers of clothing—he himself was boiling in just a tank top and shorts—but then he reminded himself that the alternative was being cooked by the sunlight. If he was indeed a host to the Mind Flayer, his skin would be more susceptible to being burnt, no matter how much sunscreen he slathered on beforehand (speaking of: did the Mind Flayer even know what sunscreen was? What even existed in the Upside Down?). Hosts' skin became paper and their brains became books to be examined at leisure. They just weren't fully human anymore.
Max was the one who had binoculars, so she got a clearer view of her step-brother, but Gabe's eyesight wasn't bad (despite all of those years he'd read with only the light from his window aiding him) so he didn't have much trouble, either. All of the party members, excluding Dustin, who still hadn't picked up (where was he? Gabe was starting to get worried), skulked in the parking lot, half-hidden behind a car the color of caramel, trying to figure out how they were to go about doing this. How they would find out if Billy was the host or not.
"I don't know." Max, still staring, still sounded skeptical, despite everything. "He looks pretty normal to me."
Gabe's eyes wandered off of Billy (who he would rather not be spending his time watching, considering everything he'd done) and moved to the laughing children in the pool. How he longed to be one of them—young, carefree, innocent, thinking about nothing except how they were going to win their next game of beach volleyball. Their biggest problem that would come to them during these summer months would be facing boredom, never facing Demogorgons or Mind Flayers or classmates with superpowers.
He had been one of them—well, a messed up version of one, who dug newspapers out of trash cans and stayed awake at night listening to the cries of baby Nicole and the constant, constant conversations about him, about how worthless he was. But he regardless found himself envying the earlier days, after running away, when the only monster he knew about was tiny, slug-like Dart.
