Time After Time (a Stranger Things fanfiction)

Burning Love

"Burning Love"

I feel my temperature rising

Higher, higher

It's burning through to my soul

- Elvis Presley

At Hopper's cabin, Jonathan hoisted Will over his shoulder and Nancy and Joyce grabbed all the various heating components they had been able to find at Joyce's house.

Inside, Nancy turned on the lights. Most of the furniture was the same as Joyce remembered from the few times she and Hopper had tried to fool around here—but it was a lot cleaner. Had it been this clean years ago, it would have made a much better makeout spot.

"It's actually ... kind of nice," Nancy said, and Joyce turned to look at her, wondering if she had been thinking the same thing Joyce had.

But there was no time for that—no time to reminisce about the past, no time to wonder about Jonathan and Nancy. They had to get that thing out of Will, and they had to do it quickly. Joyce knelt in front of the wood stove. Once they got a fire going inside it, this would be the hottest spot in the cabin. "We'll do it here," she said.

They dragged a bed out of one of the bedrooms and put it in front of the stove, laying the still-unconscious Will down on it, and filled the stove full of wood before starting the fire. They tied Will securely at ankles and wrists, so he couldn't get away, and surrounded him with space heaters.

Joyce stood there in front of him, with Nancy and Jonathan behind her, trying to work up the nerve to torture her son. Never mind that it was for his own good, the only way to save him—this was her boy. Her instinct was to protect him, and she had to go against that instinct right now.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Jonathan whispered.

It was, she told herself. It had to be. "This thing has had Will long enough. Let's kill the son-of-a-bitch."

Nancy lit the fire in the stove and Jonathan and Joyce turned on the heaters ... and they waited.

The room heated, more quickly than Joyce had imagined it would. All three of them had stripped off a couple of layers of clothes and were down to T-shirts, and still sweating in those, before the heat woke Will out of his drugged sleep.

He shifted a little at first, then, when he found he couldn't move his arms or legs, he woke fully, his whole body rising off the bed as he tugged at his bonds. His head twisted on the pillow until he saw Joyce. "What's happening?" He started fighting the bonds harder. "It hurts. Oh, it hurts!"

The silent cabin filled with the sound of the springs creaking as Will fought his bonds and his voice crying out "It hurts!" over and over again.

Jonathan had been sitting down, and now he stood, instinctively wanting to go to Will's aid as much as Joyce did. Nancy reached for his hand, offering her silent support as Will's cries of "It hurts!" changed to the now-familiar scream of "Let me go!"

For the moment, this wasn't Joyce's son. This was the thing that had killed Bob. Gentle, kind Bob, who had loved her and wanted to love her for the rest of her life. She went around the room turning all the heaters up as high as they would go.

"Mom!" Jonathan protested, his voice a moan even as Will's screams grew louder.

"No!" She was not going to feel compassion for this thing, not when it was using her son, taking him away from her.