#Nine is April obvs and the boys are from the Upside Down

[spectrumscribe]

i’m in the middle of working on “The Strange Happenings of Lakefield” right now, but i gotta get this drabble out of my drafts so i can concentrate.

the Stranger Things AU i talked about earlier, co-owned with @rhi-draws-things who helped with the designs and is making art of it currently. more to come sometime in the future.

Casey isn’t sure his mom or dad will be happy he’s sneaking out like this, but Nine isn’t exactly someone who lets people say ‘no’ to her anymore.

So out the window he goes, dropping onto the grass below his ground floor bedroom windowsill, and with a brief glance around himself, he ducks into the woods behind his house. His backpack, filled with snacks he’s not supposed to take so many of, bumps against him as he jogs.

The woods are cold tonight, fall on the way, and it makes goosebumps prickle over Casey’s skin. He could swear it feels like the trees are watching him.

Casey ignores that creepy thought- he’s too old to get scared by ghost stories- and keeps his steady pace to reach his destination.

Nine is exactly where she said she’d be, sitting with her knees curled up to her chest on top of an old stump. She’s not shivering in the brisk evening air like Casey is, probably on the account of her borrowed winter coat and thick yellow scarf; taken from the back of Casey’s family closet. Her freckled cheeks are reddened though, as well as the tip of her nose.

“Hey,” Casey says as he enters the small clearing, slowing his jog. It’s nearly pitch black out here, so he has to be careful where he steps. “I brought some good stuff. You hungry for chips?”

Nine nods, and holds out a demanding hand. Casey drops his bag on the ground and takes out the promised snack, putting it in her hand without delay. Nine wastes no time opening it and pulling out a handful to drop into her mouth.

Casey looks around at the trees while she eats, giving Nine a moment to get past her tunnel vision for food. But, his curiosity only lets him stay quiet for so long.

“So, uh,” He can’t find anything weird nearby, or see anything besides chips in Nine’s hands. “what’d you want to show me, exactly? You said it was gonna be metal.”

Nine licks her lips, nodding her head. “Very metal,” She says, in that kind of halting way she talks. Like she thinks hard about the words before saying them. She gives Casey a very serious look.

“Don’t be scared,” Nine says, and then whistles low and long.

Casey starts looking for a dog- maybe a cat? Do cats come when they’re whistled at?- but he doesn’t hear the sound of quick little animal steps approaching. He barely, barely hears something taking slow, careful steps towards them.

Casey whips towards the sound of a snapping twig, coming from behind Nine on the edge of the clearing. His mouth drops open.

A thing on four legs emerges from the shadows, something like a low growling trill coming from its chest. Casey can’t make out perfect detail in the dark- why didn’t he bring a flashlight? Or a bat?!- but he thinks he sees a tail and a shell, and luminescent red eyes.

“This one,” Nine says, holding out a chip to the thing as it comes to stand by her. “is named… Smart. Also Tall.”

The monster lives up to its second name, then; standing on its back legs and going from three feet high to nearly five. Casey gulps, staring at it as it stares at him. The rumbling clicking sound persists as it cocks its head, examining him.

Its lower jaw abruptly splits into three parts and a long tongue shoots out. Casey flinches backwards with an aborted yell.

Its long tongue snatches the chip from Nine’s hand, and slither back inside as Smart eats the snack with a small crunch. It then drops back onto the ground, sitting next to Nine and her stump. Nine pats its head and offers more of the chips, which it eats this time with its long clawed fingers.

Casey watches his weird psychic friend feed the monster like it’s a docile housecat for a solid few seconds, and then slowly stops eases out of his frozen fear.

“…dude,” Casey breathes. He grins. “That’s so metal!”

Nine gives a tiny smile in return, and her monster opens its mouth to display row after row of teeth. Five more chips disappear as it does.

Its tail is wagging, and Casey is about seventy percent sure it’s not eyeing him like a meal. So he decides he’s on board with this.

“Good.” Nine says firmly when he tells her that. “There’s more.”

And about then, Casey’s backpack is snatched off the ground and carried away by a galloping creature. Two more tackle it to get at the bag as well, and before Casey can react, his snack stash is strewn across the ground and being devoured. Nine actually giggles as they tear open the packets and bags, which just makes the situation all the more unsettling.

Casey rolls with it, anyway.

But he doesn’t even try to get the food back. He values his fingers more than he values twinkies.

Casey does, however, convince Nine to convince her monsters- named Brave, Stubborn, Smart, and Clever- to give back his bag, and also let him toss chips in the air to see how many they could catch without using their hands. The answer is all of them.

“Where’d they come from?” Casey asks, watching as two of the monsters go barreling around the clearing; still fighting over packets of food. The one he thinks is Clever has a sneaky mound of them to itself, while Brave and Stubborn are fighting over a single one. Smart is enjoying the comfort of being handed its share by Nine.

Nine crunches a few more chips, finishing her second bag with that. She wipes her mouth on her sleeve, and finally says, “The Other Side.”

“The other side of where?”

“No. The Other Side,” Nine says fervently, which still doesn’t clarify anything to Casey. He gives her a confused frown, and Nine glares at him for not understanding what she’s trying to explain.

She stands suddenly, dropping the chip bag on the ground and marching away. Casey belatedly calls after her, scrambling to keep up and not be left unsupervised with her monsters. They follow them as Nine walks into the trees, and Casey keeps close to his friend’s side as the two of them are surrounded by the pack.

Are they really, really fucking cool? Absolutely. Does Casey trust that they won’t take a chunk out of him when Nine isn’t looking? Also absolutely.

They arrive at a large tree a couple paces from the clearing, and Nine points at it, still glaring at Casey.

He dutifully looks at it. It’s a tree. Wow, shocker.

“Still not getting it,” He says, and Nine makes a disgusted noise.

“Watch,” She instructs, and raises both hands. A beat of nothing, and then the air shifts.

Something like ripping flesh and paper, and the trunk of the big tree splits down its length. Casey’s mouth falls open a second time that night as a fleshy, dripping tear is opened in what should be solid wood.

Nine lowers her hands, swiping at a drip of blood from her nose and breathing in quiet gasps. Her monsters creep over to the opening, and without prompt, disappear inside it with squelching noises as they rip through the white film over it.

Casey’s hand is seized, and without ceremony or pause, he’s dragged into the opening by Nine.

He falls through, shoved by a girl half his weight, and his eyes sting when he opens them again. He’s on his back and the sky above him is pitch black- not like a normal nighttime sky, though. There’s just nothing there. No stars, no moon. Just… void.

The world around him is grey, filthy, and Casey’s pretty sure he’s lying on something fleshy. What looks like ash drifts through the rank tasting air, but Casey feels no heat of a forest fire nor sees any lights of flame.

He slowly sits up, just as Nine comes through the opening with Smart at her side, and Casey stares around at the dark, wrong looking forest they’re in. Nine’s monsters circle them both, heads turning and unnerving eyes darting at the woods around them. Why, Casey isn’t sure he wants to find out.

“Oh,” He says faintly as Nine hauls him to his feet. “The Other Side.”