#maybe he had some secret affinities but they never were blatant enough to go 'Hmmm something's funky fresh in this Home Depot'

[chickensoupleg]

I had an idea based off of this (It has nothing to do with said idea the context is the Sims 4)

So Neil gets married to his first wife, all is well, she gets pregnant. What he doesn't know is she's some deity of some form or another and was either in a selkie skin situation where she can't return home because Neil has something of hers or knew that she can't legally just run away with child without Neil getting the law involved and put herself in danger. How a mortal man would put a being too powerful for him to even dare lay a hand on (He does anyways) in danger who knows, but whatever it is, she's not budging for a good couple of years.

Anyways, so at some point she does actually leave, abandoning her son to the dogs despite the possibility that she could have tried to bring him too, but simply could not. It could be a time thing, where her point of freedom was short and grabbing Billy without alerting Neil was too risky, a mortality thing where Billy being part of Neil's blood too made him impossible to bring where she was going, or just simply she did not want to.

Regardless, now Billy's stuck with Neil, time passes, joy of joy they end up in Hawkins.

Billy remembers his mom, definitely. Probably idolised her as many children do, especially when said parent tried protecting you from your other parent and gave you happy memories. Very likely he had no idea that his mom wasn't just a mortal woman.

Very likely – before the Mindflayer got its grubby slimy little tentacles in Billy – it didn't know either. Why would it. So, after it DOES get its nasty little whippersnappers into Billy it just... goes horrendously wrong.

Turns out adding the Upside Down to Godly Blood is a horrible combination and should not be done under any circumstance.

It becomes a horrible rendition of slowly distorting Billy's body so badly he might as well just been Mindflayer 2.0 but with exactly one (1) soul suffering in agonizing pain and misery.

It doesn't stop his mind from going between completing the Duty forced upon him and trying to figure out why everything in his bones hurt.

Pros:

-Nobody gets melted, hooray!

-The original Mindflayer + Henry now have to fight this Holy Blood with the mind control, and turns out a small child is much easier to control than WHATEVER THIS IS.

-The pain of summer being legal and a thing is likely not as severe but still very uncomfortable because someone on this brain council likes it cold.

Cons:

-Billy does not get his memory of him as a kid on the beach with his seven foot wave shown to him by a girl he doesn't really know but was about to feed to a massive monster in the mall and therefore remembers what feeling safe was like.

-Max still gets trauma regarding said brother, just in a different ice cream flavour.

-He doesn't understand what is going on and he's never gonna get his answers because it's too late for him.