Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

❝ This year I have disappeared. Or I was never there. Or I was never here. ❞

Jane Mead, World of Made and Unmade

It’s worse, this time.

The summer is a fire that burns and burns out, into the sparking husk of an Indiana fall. Will Byers waving from the back of his brother’s Ford is the last ember to fade. After that, it’s dark. Mike fumbles the basement light and slouches to the cold floor where the blanket fort used to be, and he waits. He waits. Nothing happens.

This is the farthest he’s ever been from them, and the twin threads tug on his heart. He can see them going taut, thrumming, fraying, and he worries they’ll snap like guitar strings, somewhere deep and dark where he won’t even hear the twang. He wants to know what Will’s listening to on the radio, what city El’s devouring through the window for the first time. It’s like they’re parts of his mind that he can’t reach into anymore, black dots in the edge of his vision.

October is a backslide. It’s untucked shirts, red gashes on tests, and shouts down basement stairs. It’s an Atari back at the top of Karen Wheeler’s closet, gathering dust, and an “I just don’t know what to do with him,” whispered to Madge Galloway on the phone. It’s detention, detention, detention. A sense of imminence at the quiet dinner table.

There’s a storm on Halloween, and Mike’s call won’t go through. He stands by the basement phone, days-old sweatshirt too small at his wrists, and feels the thread in his chest pull.

“They’re probably out trick-or-treating,” his mom says long past dark, cold cream around her eyes, and he’s wound too tightly to explain that that doesn't help, not without shouting or stomping. He’s too big for tantrums, but his head feels like a tantrum, because Lucas and Max are at someone’s Halloween party, and Dustin had play rehearsal, and he’s sitting here pinned down by something he can’t name, something that won’t let him breathe, that clips his thoughts into frantic, breathless phrases. 

November is a blur. Will calls on the first day, explains that their phone shorted. El sends a postcard with a muted painting of an old-timey street. There aren’t this many horses now, she explains in large, careful handwriting. It’s addressed from Greenwood, Indiana. Mike misses her – misses both of them – like a limb, and he wants it to hurt, but instead he just feels lost. He feels dizzy. He lays in bed for two-and-a-half days, eyes wide and aching, his hair a tangled shock against the pillow. Beneath his bones, it feels like even his heart is beating wrong, pounding too hard to make up for dropped beats. Maybe it'll just stop, if he gives it time.

“You’re going for Thanksgiving, right?” Max asks him in history class. There’s a bite to it that he might be imagining, something gently jealous and chiding. You get to see them soon, she reminds him. You shouldn’t be acting like this. You shouldn’t be this messed up.  

Mike puts his head down on the desk, wood grain blurring to black, tuning out his friends’ exasperated sighs.

He doesn’t go for Thanksgiving. Nana Schmidt falls again, and the Wheelers all shuttle to her nursing home in Kokomo. They eat blobby gravy on plastic trays and watch the news for hours, primly ignoring the shadow Mike casts from his corner chair.

“I was supposed to go too,” Nancy reminds him over a can of ginger ale. The lights make everything look blue. “You’re not the only one who’s disappointed.”

“I know.” It’s one more syllable than Mike’s managed the whole trip, except to gripe about who’s getting the motel shower first. He crawls into bed before it’s even dark out, sneakers still tied, leaving mud in the sheets.

The next morning, he tries to call the Byers’. The line is busy.

December is black. December is frenzy. It roars in on the tail of the first snow and rattles his dark mood until it feels like a shaken soda, too many sparks on too many synapses. It’s stinging eyes, clenched fists, spinning thoughts that he can barely understand. It’s yelling at his dad over undone chores and walking up to the radio tower in blinding sleet, shivering to the bone. It’s “Your principal called” and “We’re getting concerned” and “We thought you outgrew these moods.” 

It’s bullshit. December is bullshit, and he thinks he never stood a chance once it got its teeth in. He ignores his parents and his friends and spends whole nights - one after the other - awake in the basement, just like last year, hunched next to a useless radio that refuses to fizzle into life, no matter how many times he takes it apart and puts it back together again. Will and El have told him they’re okay, they’re liking school, their house is alright, but the maelstrom in his head won’t stop turning. How does he know if he can’t see them? How can he look after them from two hours away? How can he just sit here and not do anything? All of his life has been about keeping Will safe, and then about keeping them both safe, and now his hands are suddenly grasping at empty air. In his head they’re both screaming, bleeding; black smoke pours into their lungs, and they try and try to call his name. The pictures fill his dreams, and when sleep stops coming altogether, they follow him out of bed, out of the house, into the frost-grey morning, leaving devilish tracks in the snow.

On December 10^th, Karen Wheeler looks over her wine glass and says, “On Christmas? Honey, we’re going up to see Nana. I told you.”

And on December 11^th, sometime in the formless dark before breakfast, Mike Wheeler vanishes.

The first missing persons case in Hawkins since 1983 doesn’t make the news. No search parties comb the frozen underbrush of Mirkwood. There are no casseroles baked, no posters slapped on shop windows, no candles held behind furtive hands on the football field. A single sheet of paper in the police department declares Michael Theodore Wheeler missing. Cause of absence, runaway. Mental state, upset.

“You can’t compare it to Will.” The cooling mug in Karen’s hand leaves a ring on the newspaper; she puts it back down without taking a sip, a feedback loop of fidgets running its course next to the kitchen wallpaper. Against her ear, tinny hold music plays from the phone. 

“Why not?” Nancy grips the doorway like a talisman, trying to find calm somewhere in the width of the molding against her palm, in the way it fits between her thumb and her pinky. If she focuses on something else – anything else – she can nearly forget the way her heart is racing out of time. “Because he took things?”

“He took things,” Karen echoes. Another touch to her coffee cup, another twist of the phone cord around her finger. “He left on purpose.”

“I’ve already called down there twice.” She’d caught them in the midst of breakfast the first time, Jonathan harried and pressed, his mouth half-full of toast. By the second call, an air far grimmer had fallen over the line, like a black cloud stretching from Hawkins to Greenwood. “Look,” Nancy adds, “if you’d just let me go out and-”

“We’re doing everything we can,” Karen cuts in, and in the lines of her eyes Nancy doesn’t doubt that she believes herself. Her parents are following what they know, what the world has told them to do. They’re not Joyce Byers. “Once your father- Oh, hi, Helen? It’s Karen Wheeler again, sorry to-”

Nancy can’t listen to another call with the state patrol, another vapid exchange of niceties. She leaves the kitchen in a blind huff, swallowing down the wild urge to kick and scream and swear, to upset all of the stupid pillows on her mother’s stupid sofa. Some part of her needs to make a mark, a dent somewhere, in the middle of every useless adult trying to track down her brother.

When the doorbell rings, she’s halfway up the stairs, smearing a thumb across her mascara.

For a moment there’s only sick dread. It twists cold in her stomach, deafens her with blank shock. It’s going to be the police; she knows it like she knows her own name. The new chief with the stiff, white mustache, holding his hat against his uniform coat. Anonymous and scripted. They’ll have found Mike’s bike, or his backpack, twisted off a highway or dumped in a snowbank, with or without its owner. She’s trying to decide which of the two she’d prefer when Lucas Sinclair’s voice erupts, muffled, from behind the door.

“We can see you!”

“We have Mike’s homework!” Dustin, too, his cold-reddened face pressed against the window.

Nancy has the door unbolted and open before Karen can make it out of the kitchen doorway; she’d been hovering there with a white, grasping face and a hand over the receiver. When she sees the visitors’ faces, she re-masks, deflates. Returns to her post.

“Homework,” Lucas repeats. He gives his overpacked, snow-dusted bookbag a rustle as he sidles through the open door.

“He’s-” Nancy’s jaw works, but she can’t make the right sounds come out. Has no one told them?

“Sick?” Dustin shakes his hair out, flinging ice into Nancy’s face. Behind them, Steve Harrington’s car is idling in the driveway, exhaust puffing out in little clouds. "We figured. He looked like shit yesterday." 

“He’s not here.” It’s too quiet, a little uncertain. Not the conviction Nancy usually aims to speak with.

Lucas frowns, one eyebrow quirked like he’s starting into a complicated math problem “Where is he?”

“I’m sorry, I- I thought they'd come talk to you.” Nancy pushes her hair out of her eyes, looking between them in something that’s both apology and panic. They came and talked to you before. “He’s… We don’t know where he is.”

“What the hell?” Lucas drops the backpack, eyes doubling in size. “Why didn’t anyone-”

“I thought someone would!” It’s too defensive, too guilty. Nancy sits down on the stairs, hysteria rising behind shaking knees. “The police have your names.” It’s just like last time, she doesn’t add, though they can all feel it between them. Back in the kitchen, Karen still chatters at the state patrol. Bicycle. Backpack. Mood swings. Like a parrot on loop.

“When did it happen?” Lucas finally asks, voice urgent, but a touch steadier. There’s an efficiency to him, a sense that he’s forming a plan. He and Mike have always had that in common, like twin commanders, too smart and too stubborn for their own good.

Nancy shrugs, and hates how it feels. She shouldn’t be the one shrugging. “Overnight. He took things.”

“Shit. Shit.” Dustin looks like he’s going to be sick on the welcome mat.

“If either of you know anything-”

Lucas shakes his head, eyes so honest they hurt. “Have you called the Byers?”

“Twice.” From the quick glance they share, she knows they’re going to as well; Will and El will be home from school, and then the news will be out. “Our dad and Jonathan are both out looking.”

“Just two people?” Dustin’s face wrinkles, incredulous to the point of anger. “In winter?”

“Will had hundreds!”

“Will was different.” The words are every bit her mother’s, tasting like white wine and hairspray in her mouth, and Nancy wants to take them back immediately. Because if she pushes past the lightning panic in her stomach, she can reluctantly understand. Mike isn’t a timid boy who got lost in the woods, not to the police. He’s nearly fifteen, a beansprout of a troublemaker with a growing behavioral record. No one’s going to line up to scour the outskirts this time.

“Will didn’t leave on purpose.” It’s Lucas who finally fills the silence, with that steely understanding Nancy is starting to get used to. “But if Mike did-”

“He’s still in danger,” Dustin finishes, the way these boys always do, as if their minds are switches in a circuit. All means to the same end. She knows they’re going to leave here, strap on their bandanas and headsets and snow boots, try to do something. It’s the old routine, now. Shotguns and baseball bats and kids with B-movie monsters breathing down their necks. And if Mike had been snagged by a Demogorgon, or sucked into the Upside Down, they might have a plan. They might have a place to start.

What she’s not sure how to tell them is this: there are monsters that don’t have sharp teeth, that can’t be torn apart by fireworks or magic. They live in your mind, whisper horrible things to you day and night, but heat won’t burn them out.

And the worst part is, they can steal you away all the same.    

It’s just after midnight when the LTD rattles into the carport. The headlights throw striped shadows into the front bedroom, across Will’s blankets, and after a minute he hears the clatter of the screen door.

“Nothing.” Jonathan’s voice is quiet, solemn. Will slides off his mattress and stands, soft and soundless; across the room, a pair of sloppy braids don’t stir on their pillowcase.

Frustration and pain are audible in his mom’s sigh. “Shit.”

“Went up on 29, back down through Kokomo. Not sure what I thought we’d find.”

“They still aren’t doing searches?” his mom asks. “Flyers?”

A sliver of orange cuts in from the hall as Will opens the door, his breath held behind anxiously chewed lips. It’s been almost nine hours, and his heart still hasn’t fallen back into rhythm. For a moment, he feels like his mother and brother might hear it.

“I’m surprised they told the police at all.” A chair scrapes on the linoleum. Exhaustion is written in Jonathan’s every word. “Ted Wheeler kept saying he’d come crawling home by dark, tail between his legs.” He says the man's name like it’s a curse.

Another sigh, pressed and beleaguered. “This is exactly what I’ve been saying.”

“I know.”

“We need to tell them. They have a right to-”

Then, without a heartbeat’s warning, Jonathan’s head tips right; it’s as though he’d sensed the pair of eyes peering from the hall, terrified and grieving, waiting for an answer no one in this house can give.

“Hey, bud.” He looks apologetic, like his little brother would be better off not having heard of the search’s fruitlessness. Bullshit. “Can’t sleep?”

Will steps into the hall and closes the door behind him, hoping he hasn’t woken El. There’s something so haunting, so final about the death march to the kitchen, and he takes it step by uneasy step.

“You didn’t find him.” It’s not a question, but his mom still shakes her head.

“We’re not done looking,” Jonathan is quick to assure him. But even though there’s hard conviction in his voice, a determination to the clench of his first, none of it reaches his eyes. His eyes are soft, scared, too young. His eyes are no stronger than Will’s, on the hardest nights.

“You need to get some rest, baby.” Their mom steps over in her ratty slippers, laying a hand on Will’s shoulder. It feels like empty consolation, and he has to resist shoving it off. Every muscle in his body wants to rush back down the hall, shake El awake, beg her to do something.

Only, he won’t. He can’t. She can’t.  

“I want to stay up,” he pushes, hating how his voice sounds. “I don’t want to miss anything.”

“There’s nothing to miss right now.” It’s rational, soothing, like Jonathan’s trying to talk him down from something. The logic hurts more than anything, the He’s right, he’s right, they’ve stopped. “Not ‘til morning.”

“But he’s out there.” Something in Will’s throat feels tight, like tears, or hysteria. He wants to run. He wants to tear out the front door, into the street, straight to Hawkins.

“Will, sweetie-”

“He could be freezing to death! Why don’t they care?” The Wheelers, the police, the world. Everything feels like a black hole, growing and growing, and he and El are the only ones who can sense it, the only ones sounding the alarm. Even Dustin and Lucas hadn’t seemed to see it earlier, over the phone. They’d kept saying Mike was upset, Mike was angry, Mike had been depressed. He’d run away, and probably crashed his bike somewhere, and that’s what he needed rescuing from. No monsters, no Upside Down. Just a plain, human crisis.

Will doesn’t understand. When he talked to Mike the night before last, he seemed fine. Energetic, talkative, happy even. He wouldn’t have just disappeared on his own.

“They care,” his mom finally says, leaning down to look at him with her wide, soft eyes. His heart hurts. “Everyone cares so much. We all love Mike.”  

Not like me, a terrible, strange voice insists, somewhere deep in Will’s head. He closes his eyes, swallows it back down, hopes his mom and Jonathan can’t somehow hear it. What do you know about loving him?

By the time Will slinks back into his sheets, the anger building in his chest has eroded back into fear. It claws at his ribs, squeezes his lungs, threatens to dissolve him into nothing if he lets it get control. He tucks his knees against his chest and shakes.

“Nothing?”

El’s voice is so quiet, it may as well have been a breath, or a thought. Rolling over, Will looks up at the bed, at a pair of too-serious eyes peering over the edge, barely visible in the darkness. She’s holding his old bear to the front of her (Mike’s) sweatshirt.

“Nothing,” he confirms, voice tight. He doesn’t want to cry in front of her right now; if he cries, she’ll cry, and neither of them will be able to stop. They’re a feedback loop of grief, ever since July.

“I’ll try again.” El sits up straighter, already pushing the covers aside, but Will shakes his head in protest. As badly as he wants answers, he’s wrung dry of watching her break further with every failed attempt. It’s going to break him too, before long.

“You’ve been trying all day.”

“And I’ll try until I find him!”

Some months ago, the rise of her voice may have rattled the door, cracked the flimsy window pane, knocked a picture off the wall. But now, in the black silence of the cramped room, it’s just a child’s voice, tired and desperate and too young for its hurt.

In the quiet that follows, Will sits up from his mattress on the floor, craning his neck until he can see her bowed head against sleeve-covered hands, the soundless way her shoulders shake.

“Hey.” The bed creaks when he perches on the edge of it. “Scoot over?”

It’s a question, a gentle suggestion subject to rebuke. Among all the things Will understands about El, her need for boundaries is paramount. The way their skin crawls when the world is too much, too close; the memory of their bodies not being their own. The need for comfort without suffocation. Silent nights pressed against opposite ends of the sofa.

This time, El nods. She wipes a sleeve over her red nose and backs closer to the wall. The two stretch out like twin saplings, only their socked toes touching beneath the old quilt. A car passes outside, and in the stretch of headlights, Will sees the fresh sheen in El’s eyes.

“Have you felt anything?” she half-whispers, and it needs no further explanation. Will shakes his head, and for the first time he’s not sure it’s the answer he wants to give. Because if there’s no Mind Flayer, if there’s no Upside Down…

Neither of them knows where to start with simple, human horror.

r    e  w i n d

The bike is gone.

That’s the third thing he notices, once he gets onto his feet. The first is the sick throbbing of his nose, smashed against the hard ground; he can taste blood on his tongue, tacky but still flowing. The second is the sharp crunch of gravel under tires, only yards behind him and moving closer. Mike keeps scanning the ground, like the bike will just appear in the high grass if he stares at the ditch long enough. It isn’t until a car door clicks up on the highway shoulder that he realizes what’s going on.

“You need help?”

The woman who climbs out of the rusty truck looks about Nana Schmidt’s age, but somehow hardier, with a patch-work coat and a broad jaw. Mud-spattered boots kick through the frozen dew as she makes her way over.

“No, I’m-” Mike stammers, but it’s hard to mask his utter confusion. It sounds almost like a question. He watches the woman come closer, a few seconds of silent stand-off. The blood dripping over his upper lip is probably all the answer necessary. “What time is it?”

“Eight-thirty, just about.” The woman furrows her grey brow. “You look half-frozen. Someone should probably take a look at that nose.”

No, no, no, shut up. Something hostile and blind twists in Mike’s head, and he closes his eyes. “Bike. I can’t find my bike.”

“Did you crash it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” The last he remembers is a truck, a sideways skid, then… something. He’s not sure. White-hot pain in his face, tumbling against the icy sludge at the bottom of the ditch. He looks around again, waiting for his eyes to catch a flash of silver. Nothing. Nothing.

The woman sighs, and there’s something apologetic about it. “I don’t see any bike, son. Your folks can come back and look for it. But what you need is some dry clothes and a doctor.”

Mike doesn’t even feel cold, but underneath his racing thoughts and his anxiety he’s vaguely aware that his fingers feel numb. He hadn’t thought to bring gloves. Admitting a touch of defeat, he finally follows the woman out of the ditch and starts to reform his plan. He doesn’t need the bike. Screw the bike. He can just walk there. Or maybe, maybe, nick the truck and drive there. It can’t be too-

“Where do you live?”

“Indianapolis.” It comes out stilted, a little too fast, and Mike can see the immediate understanding in the women’s eyes. “South of Indianapolis, I mean. Greenwood.”

“Where do you really live?” she asks patiently, opening the passenger door for him. The truck is still running, musty heat pumping out into the frigid air. The radio is crackling out something with banjos, and the back of the cab is full of plastic sacks; a corner of red gift wrap pokes out of one.

“… Hawkins,” Mike finally admits, flexing his fingers. Horror visions of frostbite and amputation are starting to twist in around the disoriented determination. His head feels cottony, his thoughts slurred. He needs to get back to the starting point and try again.

“That’s better. C’mon.”

As the truck grumbles its way back onto the road, Mike makes one last scan of the ditch – a nervous tic of his eyes – still hoping in vain for his bike to appear in the tall, brown ryegrass. No luck.

The way back seems shorter. It always does, on car rides or long walks, landmarks passing as reminders instead of discoveries. Mike lolls his head against the window, an offered Kleenex pressed to his nose, and listens to his driver prattle, phasing in and out of understanding. His head still feels like a windstorm, but it’s… quieter, maybe. He almost feels like he could go to sleep, given the chance. When did he last sleep? Two days ago? Three?

“I’m headed to my son’s for the holidays,” the woman says just as they pass over Rock Creek. Mike doesn’t remember it being frozen before. “He and his wife just had a baby, their second. A little girl.”

“Hm.”

“They’ve been trying to move down from Kewanna for awhile, get closer to a good school system. Then – lo and behold – a job opens up, and then a house, one after the other.” She claps a hand on the steering wheel, like an exclamation point. “Someone was getting out of town real fast, after that business with the mall.” 

“Yeah.” The edge of town is approaching fast, too fast, and anxiety starts to build in Mike’s stomach. He thought he’d gotten farther away than this. He thought he’d almost left.

“Joe Keller, wife’s named Daisy.” Said as though Mike might know him. “Big house on Maple.”

That does get his attention, if barely. “Maple?”

“Maple Street,” the woman confirms, dipping her chin in a succinct nod. The radio goes static, and she reaches to fiddle with it. “Single mom with a couple of girls. Moved out in August, I think.”

Mike can’t claim to have a vigilant eye on his neighbors’ comings and goings, but even in all the summer’s chaos he thinks he would have noticed someone moving out. Besides, Mrs. Henderson is the only single mom he can think of on Maple, and she’s certainly still there.

“Who are your folks, honey?” The car pulls under the highway overpass, past the sawmill and the back way to the Byers’ house. The sun is starting to come out from behind the morning flurry, melting what stuck to the asphalt.

“The Wheelers.” Mike chews on his lip. “On Maple.” 

Something funny passes over the woman’s face then, something Mike can’t parse. It’s between sympathy and scrutiny, and it makes his stomach clench. He chews harder, drawing blood. Home is just a mile off, and then he can grab another bike, sneak out the other way-

The truck doesn’t turn where it’s supposed to. Instead of going east it shuffles straight into downtown, right past the library and Melvald’s and the lopsided Christmas tree, right up to-

“No. No.” Mike swallows down panic and betrayal, hands fumbling with the door handle. “Not the police, I don’t need-”

“Sweetheart…” The woman’s eyes are so soft, so unbearably concerned, it’s disarming. It cuts right through Mike’s furious scramble. She eases the truck into a spot, then leans right against the center console, slow and careful. Outside, the last flecks of the snow settle on the windshield. “Now, I don’t know if I’m right,” she continues, voice gentle. “If I am, though, then you know what I’m about to say.”

“I was gonna call them,” Mike spits out, a slurred mess, head already shaking the lies free. “I swear.”

 “I never met your mama, but I don’t have to know she and your daddy have been beside themselves.” The radio has fizzled back in, coughing out something tired and festive, and Mike wants to scream.

“I’ll go home,” he insists. “I’ll tell her, I promise, just don’t-” The front door of the station opens up, sending another jolt of panic through his stomach, and he looks up at the woman with desperation in his eyes.

“You’re not in any trouble, Michael. Not with Hawkins’ finest, at least.” It should be reassuring; it’s not, not at all. “But there’s a lot of people here who’ve been hurting for a long time, and you can clear it all up if you just march in there right now.”

Everything grinds to a halt in Mike’s head. A long time. The windstorm calms in the face of complete bewilderment, and he just blinks. Once, twice. Again. “What-”

“Flo’s not in today, Gladys.”

Even muffled by the window, the voice is the last straw. It tips Mike right off his axis, sends him hurtling. All the breath seems to leave his lungs; he’s frozen in place, trying and utterly failing to turn his head towards that familiar grumble. He catches the crank of the window, Gladys’ raspy response – “I’m not here for gossip, Jim!” – but it all feels like slow motion, like his head hasn’t fully caught up with the world.

“Who’s the kid?”

“Honey? Can you talk to the chief?”

You’re crazy, you’re crazy, you’ve gone crazy.

He looks. 

Chapter Text

❝ Past a certain point, you stop being able to go home... The thread snaps. The narrative breaks. And you are forced, pastless, motherless, selfless, to invent yourself anew. ❞

Zen Cho, The Four Generations of Chang E

“Full name?”

“Michael Theodore Wheeler.”

“Date of birth?”

The light is too bright. Hopper had said – twice – that this wasn’t an interrogation, that he just needed to get the facts, but the light is too bright, and Mike’s heart feels like it’s going to explode in his chest, and he really thinks his nose might be broken, despite what they’ve said, and-

“Date of birth, Mike.”

“April 7, 1970.” He chokes on it; he doesn't want to be here. 

Jim Hopper dwarfs the swivel chair he’s perched in, a hulk of tension – alive, alive – across the small table. He fiddles a pen between his fingers, furrows his brow at the cream-colored folder, then at Mike, then back again. Whatever he’s trying so desperately to make sense of, he’s not spilling.

“Parents’ names?” Hopper asks, and it breaks something in Mike’s chest, just a little farther.

“Hopper, it’s me.” He clenches his fingers around the table’s edge, body tight with paranoia. His knee hasn’t stopped shaking for the last hour. “Please. Just tell me what’s going on.”

“I’m asking the questions.” A police cliché. Another look at the folder, thumbing through its pages. For the first time, Mike catches a glimpse inside, and what he sees just twists his stomach up further.

His own seventh-grade school photo, blown-up and paper-clipped, smiling at him from between a mess of typewritten papers. Plaid shirt, slicked-down hair; a kid he doesn't know anymore. 

“What the hell?” Mike’s scrambling to his feet in a heartbeat, trying to get a better look at the folder, but Hopper’s a step ahead, whipping it shut with a palpable puff of air.

“Hey.” The first recognizable flash of annoyance in his eyes, after an hour of impenetrable concrete. “I don’t know where you’ve been all this time that they let you mouth off like that, but Hawkins ain’t it.”

Mike scowls. “I haven’t been any-”

“Two years.”

The room falls still. For a moment, all Mike can hear is the muffled click of typewriters, the huff of cars outside. He’s afraid to ask - terrified - so he doesn’t. He just keeps his lips pressed tight, his fingers tense against the cold metal, waiting for whatever explanation the universe can give him. The last two hours have completely drained him; he doesn’t even want to go to Greenwood, now. He just wants to go home.  

“Two years, Mike.” Hopper repeats, his voice quieter. “You’re not in trouble. But we need to know what happened. Your parents need to know.”

Mike just shakes his head, jaw opening and closing helplessly. Then, when he finally finds the words somewhere in the fog-thick air: “What year is it?" It’s all he can think of. He fell off his bike and through… something. Some kind of doorway. Out of his own time and into the future, missing all the months or years in between. Then Hopper answers, and the only theory he’s been able to form goes right in the wastebasket.

“Eighty-five. December.” There’s a careful sympathy to it, despite his characteristic roughness, like he's speaking to a small child. “You’d be fourteen.”

“I know, I-” Mike sinks down a bit, hand rubbing at his temples. It’s like he can feel his own body unraveling, feet-first; he wishes it would go faster. “I saw my parents last night.”

“Mike,” Hopper says, and it’s weary. It’s every time Mike’s yelled at his parents and just gotten concern in response, every look between his friends after one of his outbursts. Every unspoken, He’s lost it. “I’m not saying I don’t believe you. I’m just trying to figure out what happened.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” He swallows down tears, hard. His throat hurts. His head hurts. Everything feels wrong, and he wants to disappear. He wants to so badly he could scream, until his throat sandpapers into nothing. 

Another world-weary sigh. “Right now, it means you’re gonna sit here while I make a couple calls.” Hopper pushes the chair back. It squeaks tremendously against the tiled floors; his knees pop when he stands. “Don’t jump out the goddamn window, kid.”

The Hallmark Gold Crown on Wabash Street has exactly one customer inside – a portly grandfather picking through Christmas ornaments – when the phone rings. 

Once, twice – “Hello?” Joyce Byers leans on the sales counter, hauling the tangled phone cord over a scattering of gift boxes.

“I need you down at the station.” Hopper, two hours early for his lunch break call. On the days he can’t drive over with a couple of sandwiches or a thermos of soup from Flo, they're like clockwork.

“Hop,” Joyce replies, lowering her voice a bit, “you know I can’t just-”

“It’s an emergency,” he cuts in, and at once the whole world seems to tilt on its axis.

Two years since that November. Two years since Jonathan’s innocent eyes at the breakfast table, since Karen Wheeler’s voice over the phone, always so helpful and polite. Both of them breaking news that would crack the entire world in two, that would ring in Joyce’s ears like tinnitus. And then, just a few days later-

“What is it?” It’s useless to keep the panic out, ingrained as it is in every part of her being, like some sleeping beast. “Is it one of-” One of ours, she’s about to say, when Hopper’s answer stops the words cold on her tongue.

“It’s Mike.”

Joyce feels her chest deflate. It’s like the other shoe dropping, a kitchen timer going off. Ticking down this whole time, moving towards this certain eventuality, yet it still makes her pause. Inhale, exhale. Oh.

“They found him,” she manages after a moment. By now the old man up front is listening, but she doesn’t care. She leans on her elbows, eyes closed tightly, and tries not to think about what this means.  

It's over. 

“They found him,” Hopper confirms, but there’s something strange in his voice. Something tentative. “Out on Highway 29.”

“… What?”

“Gladys Keller spotted him climbing out of a ditch. Said he’d crashed his bike, but she didn’t see one.” There’s a pause, a moment of disbelieving awe, like he barely accepts his own words. “He’s alive, Joyce.”

She fumbles the receiver, fingers weak against the plastic. “H-how? How, Hop?” They all know what happened. They all knew what the odds were from the start, and it’s been two years, and-

“I don’t have any answers.” He’s just as rattled, but he carries it deeper, buried under the gruff impatience. She can picture him wiping his face with one hand, shaking his head. “He’s pretty messed up.”

“Have you called Karen?” God, Karen and the girls. It’ll be unimaginable news.

“As soon as we get off the phone.” There’s a reluctance to it. He doesn’t know how to say this any better than Joyce does. “But she’s hours away. You’re the closest thing he has right now.”

And she knows it’s true, before he even says it. Maybe she’s known since the start, since he called to break the news to her first. Karen and Ted are the parents who lost him, but Joyce is the one who’s left. Joyce is the sentry, waiting to hear the end of the story.

“Okay,” she says, already grabbing her keys. “Okay, I’ll… I’ll be there in twenty.”

She’s there in nine-and-a-half, bursting through the front door with the December wind behind her, nearly tipping an umbrella stand on its side.

“Mornin’ Joyce,” a voice starts – Barry Brighton, a new cadet barely older than Jonathan – but she cuts in with unintended impudence.

“Where’s Mike?”

It feels a lot like showing up at the principal’s office, there to fetch one of her brood up by the scruff from some fight or illness or other mid-day incident. Heart pounding in her ears, uncertainty and concern filling up her lungs. Barry points one skinny finger towards a nondescript door, and in seconds she’s turning the knob, pushing into a moment she never thought she’d see.

The boy sitting at the interrogation table is taller than expected, almost impossibly lanky. His hair is thick and tangled, and his cheekbones are too sharp, but the second he looks up with those dark, deep-set eyes - the crooked nose dusted with freckles - she knows just who she’s looking at.

“Mike.” It’s barely more than a breath, than the sound of her chest falling in relief. It’s every Friday night, every striped shirt, every toothy grin over the dinner table. It’s every time he wrapped his skinny arms around Will, every time Joyce watched them hold hands and felt so thankful for the boy who’d burst his way into her son’s life, made everything better.

He blinks and sets down his paper cup. “Mrs. Byers?” His hands are trembling.

“Oh, sweetheart.” Joyce winds her way around the table in a heartbeat, stopping just short of wrapping him up in her arms, not wanting to overwhelm him. “I’m here, it’s okay. You’re okay.”

Mike’s face softens, some of the defensiveness draining out, and at once Joyce can see all of the fear, all of the confusion. A wavering confession: “I don’t know what’s going on.”

It cuts right through Joyce’s chest, a physical ache. She reaches out, gently touching his arm, letting him lead. “That’s alright, honey. We’ll get it all figured out.”

The tiniest wobble goes through Mike’s lower lip; he scrunches up his nose, sniffing stubbornly. “I was trying to get to your house.”

It’s nothing that makes sense, nothing she was expecting to hear, but Joyce tries not to let the surprise show in her face. He’s pretty messed up, Hopper had said, and it all becomes true at once. Mike isn’t just a miracle – he’s a victim, and they don’t even know what of. “Yeah?” she offers, unsure what else to say, unsure how to make any of this better.

“I was trying to come see them,” he adds, a certain desperation behind it, like he needs her to understand. “I just wanted to see them.”

Them. Will and El, surely. She worries at her lip for a moment, then tries, “They missed you so much, sweetie. They’ve thought about you all this time.” Two years, and Joyce hasn’t stopped waking to the sound of soft sobs in the night. A bar of light under the bathroom, back before the move across town, when Will had been sharing a room with Jonathan. She’d sit on the edge of the tub, hold his head against her shoulder as the sun came up.

Mike nods, but there’s something absent about it. His eyes are too wide, too unfocused, like he’s been flooded with so much information that he’s stopped truly taking it in. Joyce doesn’t blame him. He’s walked back into a life that’s barreled forward without him.

“Are they here?” There’s a hangnail on his thumb that he’s been fiddling with, and it’s starting to bleed, smudging red on his fingers. “In Hawkins?”

Joyce thinks better than to ask why they wouldn’t be. “Yeah. Yeah, they’re in school. Do you want to see them later?”  

Another nod. “Mm-hmm.”

She rubs at Mike's arm – too thin, too tense – but the squeak of the door interrupts anything else she may have said. Mike’s posture straightens back up, his guard bristling, as Hopper peers in.

“Joyce.” Strained, already exhausted just three hours after they sat across the breakfast table from one another this morning. “A word?”

The hall smells like burnt coffee and cigarettes, like every morning or afternoon or midnight Joyce has sat in one of these plastic chairs, waiting for news she didn’t want to hear. She pulls her coat tighter and looks back at the closed door, as if she could make sense of all of this by giving it another glance.

“You talked to Karen?” she asks, just above a whisper. She’s not sure how far the news has made it yet, and she doesn’t want to be the one to tip off a nosy cadet. The second boy to come back from the dead in Hawkins is sure to make a riot.

Hopper ushers her down familiar, worn carpet, towards the open door of his office. “She and Nancy’ll be here about one. They’re dropping Holly off with family.”

It’s three-hour drive north from Louisville, where Karen had quietly whisked the girls in the last weeks of summer, just as the mall’s ashes were cooling. Lucas had sounded the alarm the day the sign went up, and the SOLD sticker got slapped on just two weeks later. It was a goodbye all of them felt profoundly. No one was sure where Ted had gotten to after the divorce, and with the house sitting empty, waiting for its new family, Hawkins was unsettlingly devoid of Wheelers. It was why Joyce had decided so concretely to stay; the split-second that escaping Hawkins crossed her mind, she’d banished the thought. Because wherever Mike was, whatever had happened to him, he needed someone here. He needed a parent who would wait for him, who would drive past the spot where it happened and hope he could somehow feel her standing there, keeping him company.

Hopper sinks into his chair, pulls out a cigarette. It dangles in his fingers for a moment, unlit. Finally, he takes a deep, rasping breath. “I can’t make sense of it.”

“It’s him, Hop.” Joyce doesn’t intend the impatience that works its way into her voice, but it’s there nonetheless, pushing across the desk, trying to tug at Hopper’s jacket. It's 1983 again, and she's begging him to understand - her boy. Her boy. 

“Didn’t say it wasn’t,” Hopper answers, quieter than usual. His jaw is clenched, like he’s got a headache coming on.

“Then what are you thinking?” It’s not a question she really wants the answer to, not with Mike’s wide, terrified eyes still burned behind her own. Everything in her aches to leave, to go back down the hall to him, to protect him from this. 

“Even if he survived, got confused, wandered off…” Hopper lowers the unused cigarette. “Joyce, there were people combing every inch of this county for weeks, looking for El. They would have found him.”

“Maybe they did.” It’s a horrible implication, and it makes her feel sick deep in her stomach, but it’s better than Hopper’s. “Maybe they’ve had him all this time.”

“And he, what – escaped? Like El?”

Joyce shakes her head, takes the cigarette from him. One hand fishes in her jacket for her lighter. “I don’t know. I don’t know what happened, or where he’s been, but I do know that boy, Hop.” Wide eyes, messy hair, too much fear behind a brave mask. She knew him for seven years, and she knows him still. “He’s scared, and he needs our help right now, not our suspicions.”

“I know.” Hopper passes her his own. “I don’t want to be going at this like some conspiracy theorist, okay? That’s not what I’m trying to do. But you know the facts just as well as me, and I want you to be prepared.”

The frown is automatic, lit up by the flicker of flame in her hand. “Prepared for what?” she asks around the cigarette. It's what they say to parents in hospital waiting rooms, what they say to people who are teetering on the edge of absolute loss. “For him to be another fake? Something put out by the lab?”

“Maybe they don’t want us digging around in the quarry anymore.” It’s a weak suggestion, Hopper knows, but he’s got nothing else to lay on the table. “Maybe there’s something down there.”

“No one’s been digging around,” Joyce argues. “Not since the search got called off.” The Department of Energy had torn apart the woods all the way into January, but it had only taken the police a couple of weeks to give up on looking for Mike Wheeler. Hopper had kept the file open all this time at Joyce's sole insistence, and they both knew it.

“Look, I’m not saying I’m right. I just- I got nothing else, Joyce.” Everything in Hopper’s posture reads of exasperation, but his voice is as soft as he can make it. “I want my gut to be wrong, believe me. But I’ve got three eyewitnesses to a suicide. If there’s something rotten here, we’ve got a lot on the line. A lot of people are gonna get hurt.”

And Joyce hates it, but she knows he’s right. As much as she wants to rush back down the hall, scoop Mike up and carry him home to his friends, give him back the life he left, she knows what the reality is. She knows where they live, what this town does to people, what the last two years have taught them. They have to be careful. They have to move slow.

They all have to hold their doubts just as closely as their hopes.

Mike is on his third cup of coffee – bitter, too hot – when he hears the commotion. A new voice through the hollow walls, familiar and frantic. Hopper’s throaty grumble in response. One word – Karen – and then the door is swinging open in a flurry of motion and wide-eyed faces.

He’s seen his mom without her hair done precisely once, when Holly was a newborn and his father was barely home and everything felt bad. He’d caught her on an early morning, haloed in grey light, bare-faced and undone. A single sob into half-empty mug. It felt like something he wasn’t supposed to see, and he’d tiptoed back upstairs in silence. By the time he returned for breakfast, a couple of hours later, the mask was back on – blonde hair fresh out of pink plastic rollers, eyelashes perfectly lifted over a sunny smile.

The woman standing in the doorway now looks almost like that five o’ clock intruder. Her hair is flat and too dark, almost brown, her eyes sunken in a way that nearly mirrors Mike’s. There are tennis shoes on her feet. She and your daddy have been beside themselves, he can can hear Gladys Keller saying in the back of his head, and for the first time he starts to believe it. It makes no sense, and yet there’s scientific proof standing right in front of him, clutching her chest with one hand.

“Oh, my baby.”

He thinks it might be the first hug he’s had since October, and for several seconds he isn’t sure what to do. His arms lift uselessly beneath his mom’s grip; over her shoulder, he sees Nancy push past Hopper, the same deeply broken awe in her expression.

“Mom,” he tries to say, but it won’t come out. She smells wrong; her hair feels too coarse.

“You’re okay.” It’s barely more than a whisper, a quiet prayer against his shirt collar, and it makes him want to squirm away. It’s not right, it’s not real. “You’re okay, you’re alive.”

“Wh-what’s going on?” he finally rasps out. His mom starts to pull back, quiet platitudes behind damp eyes, wrinkled at the corners. “No one’ll tell me what’s going on.”

“You’re home,” his mom says – insists, “that’s all that matters right now.” And then Nancy is moving across the room, pale as a ghost, and her face is crinkling into something unfamiliar and gut-wrenching, and Mike just can’t take it anymore. He barely registers scooting backwards, away from them, but he manages to hear the chair scraping over the rush of blood in his ears.

“What happened?” It just seems to wound them more, striking like a spark, and Mike’s chest tightens. “Why won’t anyone-”  

“Mike,” Nancy starts, her voice faint and cautious and heartbroken, but he’s had enough of listening to nothing, of watching people gape and fawn and cry without giving him a single answer. It’s becoming clearer and clearer that something’s wrong, that something horrible has happened, and the panic is welling up in his chest more with each second, clawing back his breath. Two years, two years, Hopper’s gruff voice repeats, and he wants to scream at his head to–

“Shut up!”  

It echoes in the room for a second, and then longer in Mike’s own ears, a shameful bell tolling. The hurt and bewilderment is instant in his mother’s eyes, and he knows right away that this is different. Because the mother he knows – the mother he left this morning, still asleep – wouldn’t be looking at him like that right now, with so much raw sorrow. She’d be clicking her tongue, narrowing her eyes, grounding him for a month, but not-

“Mom, I…”

Karen Wheeler is out of the room in seconds, muttering an apology to no one, wiping her coat sleeve across her nose. The tight-hinged door swings shut behind her, clicking with an awful finality, leaving him and Nancy in a silent, sniffling stalemate.

His sister looks the same, mostly. Maybe her hair is straighter, or her makeup darker; Mike had never paid much attention. He had always assumed that was mutual, but the piercing way she looks at him, like she’s trying to pick out what’s wrong, what’s off, makes him feel horribly seen. It makes him want to hide.

“Are you okay?” she finally asks, when the quiet has gotten heavy and unbearable for them both.

“Yeah,” Mike mutters, looking down at his sneakers. The chief’s voice carries in from the hall for just a moment, but it’s too muffled to understand.

“God.” Nancy rubs at her arms, shoulders folding in awkwardly. The voices outside shift and fade; Hopper must have taken their mother to his office. “You’ve gotten so tall,” she adds after a second, a bit lamely. It’s an olive branch, an offer for him to say more.

He takes it, throat clenching around all the words he wants to say, all the words he knows this not-sister in front of him isn’t going to accept. “I don’t remember not being here,” he settles on. It’s rushed, a bit muffled.

“… What?” Concern in her eyes, a little bit of alarm. All the classic traces of He’s cracked and I should get Mom.

Mike bites his lip, tastes blood. “I don’t know what everyone’s talking about.” He tries to say it just above a whisper, so there’s no chance of his mom or Hopper hearing, but slow-building panic drives his voice louder. Saying it like this somehow makes it real. “I don’t know anything. Why won’t they let me just go home? Why did it take you and Mom so long to get here?”

“You…” Nancy blinks; her eyes are full of apologies when she answers: “Mike, we moved to Kentucky.”

“What?” It tears out of him, too high and too frightened; he can feel the storm in his head coming back. His heart beats out of rhythm, nauseating and unsteady behind his ribs. “When?”

Nancy purses her lips, clearly trying to hold calm. “August. Before school.”

“I-” Mike looks away, looks back, looks up at Nancy. “That’s- I don’t-” Words stick in his throat, and it takes him a second to realize they’re catching on tears. He feels like cornered prey, so on-edge that his muscles ache with it.

“Hopper said you were confused. That you’d maybe hit your head.” It’s resignation, or consolation, for one or both of them. She’s found her baby brother, and he’s fucked up. He’s broken. He’s not the right one. Mike squeezes his eyes closed.

“I was here in August, Nancy.” He wipes his face and furrows his brow, like anger will hide the desperation, the complete breakdown he feels coming. “I started ninth grade, at Hawkins High. You told me not to talk to you in the halls. I was here.”

“Mike…” Nancy’s voice trembles openly now. Her arms wrap tighter around herself like a shock blanket. “I haven’t seen you since 1983. No one has.”

The terrible truth he knows, the one he’s been hearing all day – but now it’s plainer. It’s out in the open, on his sister’s devastated face, on the folder Hopper took back to his office.

Two years. Two years.  

Mike wants to scream, or sob, or run. Instead he manages, “What happened in 1983?” His own voice sounds distant, like it’s coming from the other end of a tunnel, or from outside of a dream. He wonders briefly, stupidly, if that’s what this is. He fell off his bike, he hit his head, and none of this has been real.

Nancy shakes her head, dismal and grave. “I don’t know if I should tell you.”

“Please.” His voice is too loud now, he knows, and any moment someone will hear them, but Mike’s stopped caring. He wants answers, and he wants his bike, and he wants his real family, and he wants this all to be over. “Please, Nancy.” Like he’s begging for cash, or for a ride, only nothing has ever mattered as much as this.

For a second Nancy looks like she’s going to refuse. Zip her lips, leave the room, come back with a team of adults. But as soon as Mike spots the glint of a fresh tear in the corner of one eye, he knows he’s gotten her. He’s won.

Her voice on the edge of breaking, Nancy looks at him and says: “You jumped off a cliff.”

November 12, 1983

It isn’t how he thought it would be. Somewhere in the back of his imagination, he’d expected time to slow, music to swell, everything to seem bigger. Sunlight would glint off quarry rocks as the gears in his head turned, turned, calculated. And then, three inches taller against a Hollywood-blue horizon, he would leap forward like an action hero. He would grab Mike from mid-air, haul him easily to safety, and shoot a witty threat back at their stunned assailants.

Only, time doesn’t slow. Space doesn’t stretch. Mike steps into the sky and disappears, dropping like a pebble. In the time it takes Dustin to blink, the whole thing is over. There’s no teetering on the edge, no last panicked catch of eyes. Mike is there, and then Mike is gone, and the blood is rushing too hard in Dustin’s head to understand what happens next. James and Troy escape in hoarse, panicked shouts – “If you say a word, you’re fucking dead!” – and at some point the world tilts, and rough ground presses against his knees. But the next thing Dustin knows for sure is the stretch of blue water far below him, hands digging into the dry ground as he peers over.

“Mike!”

It echoes - Mike, Mike, Mike – and for a desperate second it sounds like a cry for help, deep in the quarry. But there’s no small, sopping figure on the rocks, or on the shore, or flailing in the lake. The only ripples Dustin can see soon draw still, until the surface is as smooth as the sky.

If you say a word, you’re fucking dead.            

It isn’t much of a threat, Dustin thinks. Because even if he believed it, even if he still had room in his chest for that kind of fear, he knows he couldn’t keep this inside. The horror is already rising like bile, and it’s something he’s never felt before, not even when Will was pulled from the lake. It’s sick and it’s terrible, the kind of darkness that you know is going to change everything. It doesn’t creep around the edges; it floods right through the middle of you, paints itself across your vision.

Then, somehow, through the spreading dimness: a voice.

“Dustin?”

Quiet, halting. A mouth feeling out a new name. A pair of borrowed sneakers scuffing up dust. Eleven steps off of the path, into the high grass, wading through the horror of the scene with wide, confused eyes. But Dustin looks up at her, backlit by late afternoon, and he knows. They both know.

Something shattering has happened, and she was a minute too late.

Chapter Text

❝ In a dream I meet my dead friend. He has, I know, gone long and far, and yet he is the same for the dead are changeless. ❞

Wendell Berry, Meeting in a Part

Side B. 

The clock over the stove is just blinking seven o’ clock when Will bustles in, shoes tracking mud across the holiday doormat. The kitchen is dark, but the air smells like fresh popcorn, and he can hear a muffled radio jingle playing from upstairs. Something feels off, just enough that an electric buzz of a shudder goes up his neck.

“Mom?” The jingle ends, melts into the first familiar beats of a song. “El?” A squeak of the floorboards overhead, and he repeats her name – louder, more urgent – as he makes for the staircase, adrenaline starting to thrum in his veins. “El?”

A door squeaks, and at once light and sound pour down the stairs – the yellow glow from El’s lamps, the staticky bassline of “Under Pressure”, Max Mayfield’s voice singing along distractedly. El is a silhouette in the middle of it, wiping popcorn crumbs from her lip.

“Will?”

Relief, though limited. “Hey,” he answers, climbing the last few creaky steps, edging past his own bedroom. “What’s going on? Where’s mom?” The grocery store, work, the station – he can already hear all of the logical answers, everything his brain rejects until he knows, until he has proof. And with a quiet, understanding glance, El confirms.

“Station.” She smiles one of her endlessly gentle smiles and steps to the side, inviting Will in. The room is cold, and a few moving boxes are still stacked against the closet’s accordion doors, but everything else feels warm. It feels like friends. The “Endless Summer” poster over her bed, the LEGO police station she and Dustin had built, a dog-eared copy of Treasure Island that used to belong to Lucas. Little traces of their year, of them welcoming her into their world for good.

“So.” Max flips over on the bed; she’s wearing one of El’s sweaters. “What’s the verdict?”

“I’m a neutral party.” Will drops his backpack by the door, trying to look long-suffering and put-upon, but he can’t help smiling at his friend’s dramatically pleading eyes. “I can’t pick sides.”

“Come on, dude! You’re our man inside! At least tell me Lucas is getting his ass kicked.”

The bet had been made three days ago, over their raucous little lunch table in the corner. Lucas, mouth full of cardboard cafeteria pizza, putting his Thundercats #1 on the line with a promise that he could make the highest grade on his biology midterm. Dustin had been the only taker; they’d been neck-and-neck all semester, while the others sat back in the B’s and C’s.

It hasn’t been easy, the last two years, but sometimes a moment like that will come along, so unexceptionally youthful that he forgets why there’s an empty chair beside him.

“Lucas is getting his ass kicked,” Will answers dutifully after a moment.

El shakes her head, and sits down in her desk chair, feet tucked up. “No, he’s not.” It’s deadpan, but there’s a hint of a smile in one dimpled cheek. She doesn’t need her powers to know; the two have spent enough time together since last winter that each other’s quirks and tells just translate naturally.

“Oh my god.” The bedsprings give a groan as Max sits up, wiggling her feet a bit in time to the music – people on streets, ee dah dee dah day - “You guys are already twins.”

It makes El smile, and it makes Will shiver, because they both know why they’re so close, why they sometimes feel like they’re the same person in two bodies. It’s not about their parents’ fresh relationship, or their shared midnight snacks in the new house. It starts with a monster’s silhouette against a streetlight and ends with her stepping out of a fairytale and into his life, each of them a reminder of a boy they both lost.

Will rubs at his arms and looks over his shoulder. “What did mom say, exactly?” The uncertainty is still settled hard in his stomach, the feeling that something isn’t normal.

Ever the eidetic reciter, El tilts her head: “Something came up and Hop needs an extra set of hands. Home around dark.” It’s been dark for almost an hour, and Will’s concern is apparently clear on his face.

“Hey.” Max sits up, her voice easy. “It’s alright. Just hang out here with us. Have some popcorn.” She tosses a piece over, and it pings off of Will’s jacket and into some laundry.

“Joyce is bringing pizza.” Another not-psychic revelation. El spins the chair around, and her hair whirls out.

“Are you staying?” Will starts to ask Max, but the words are still forming in his throat when he hears the grumble of a familiar truck. Headlights shine into the room, glaring in the vanity mirror.

“Hop.” El stands up, crunching the stray popcorn with her wool socks. Another pair of lights follow the first, and sputter wanly to a stop.

“Mom,” Will adds, following behind

With a bright smile, Max throws in, “Pizza.”

The front door is already creaking open when Will sidles past El, into the hallway, but only one figure enters. Hopper, exhausted and tense, not pausing to slip off his boots by the mat. He looks right at the kids on the landing and lets out a beleaguered breath.

“Back upstairs.” He climbs the first few steps, one hand on the rail, and Will can see just how pained something in his face looks. Panic thrums back through his own chest. “Max, can I talk to these two alone?”

Surprised but obedient, Max throws her friends a look (Jesus, what’s up?) and skitters back into El’s bedroom. The hall is left dark and quiet; El reaches out for Will’s hand, just two fingers linking through his.

“What’s wrong?” Will is almost surprised by his own voice, as tight and useless as his throat feels. He thinks about another night, another adult asking to see him alone, sitting next to his hospital bed and telling him the worst thing he thought he’d ever hear.

He wonders if Hopper’s going to lie, too.

El squeezes Will’s fingers, catching onto the rising urgency. “Joyce?”

“Joyce is-” Hopper shakes his head, runs a palm over his beard. “Your mom’s fine, nothing-”

“Jonathan?”

“Everyone’s fine.” The Chief is treading between impatience and genuine distress. “No one’s hurt or dead. I just need you to listen for a second.” His voice drops into something almost secretive as he leads them up another two steps. “Look, we’re still trying to figure out what’s going on, so you two need to keep this quiet. Just between the people in this house.”

Will’s heart pounds; he feels nauseated with the anxious anticipation. “What are you-”

But the front door bursts open again in a flurry of movement, led by his mother, her nose bright red from the cold. Her brow cuts into a deep furrow the second she steps over the threshold, peering up the stairs at her family.

“Hop, I meant-” Joyce looks over her shoulder, holds up a hand at someone unseen. “I meant take them in a room, or something! Not right by the door!”

“I thought you were coming in the back!”

“Can I come out yet?” Max’s voice, muffled through the door.

A hand to her face, Joyce looks back outside, says something that sounds a lot like, “Karen.” It sets the gears in Will’s brain grinding again, trying desperately to hold onto clues, parse through secrets. There’s another muffled voice outside – two muffled voices, too soft to hear – and surely his heart is going to crack right through his ribs.

“Will,” Hop says, his tense voice trying to be something so gentle, impossibly tender. “El-” But Joyce steps out of the doorway, steps past the stairs, and Will watches with disbelieving eyes as three people enter the front room.

He can still remember the Wheelers of his childhood, before everything changed. Their house always warm, always wide-open, always smelling a little like cookies and Mrs. Wheeler’s flowery perfume, instead of cigarettes and must. Then later, towards the end – baby wipes, raised voices. White wine glasses left on the sideboard. 

The Karen Wheeler of after doesn’t look like a woman who wears Estée Lauder; Will knows this already, from the days during the divorce when he and his brother had taken over casseroles and helped her with the yard. He knows the way Nancy’s delicate face had turned dour, the way her graceful dancer’s walk had gone flat-footed and stormy. The way she barely seemed to see Jonathan, after only one of them took a baby brother home that night in 1983. The Wheeler women march in together, a joint front of dark hair and hard eyes, and Will is looking over to his own mom for an answer when he sees.  

Pale face, wild hair, Hopper’s tan jacket over a red sweater. Disjointed images backlit by streetlights. That’s all he notices for a moment, and later, when he’s cried himself to sleep in El’s bed, he’ll feel the wrongness of it. For two years, he’d thought that he’d know Mike Wheeler anywhere, anyhow. No matter how much time passed, no matter how much he had changed. If he was somehow alive, if he ever walked back into this world, Will would know him, just like he’s always known him.

Instead, it’s El who recognizes him first. “Mike?”

The boy turns – dark eyes, galactic freckles, the last words they said under a flickering garage light – and Will’s heart stops.

Then, he runs.

r    e  w i n d

November 22, 1983

“Radio not working?”

Will slides his thumb off the button, and the static cuts to silence. “It’s fine.” It’s not. He’s pretty sure it never will be, but that’s not what Jonathan needs to hear. That’s not what he can tell their mom, when she bustles in to feel his forehead, smooth his hair back, make sure he’s eaten his lunch. They went through hell for him, and they should feel like they won.

He thinks, maybe, they’re the only people who did.

Jonathan closes the door behind himself and moves to sit on the very corner of the bed, barely making an impression. His face is sallow, pinched, burdened with everything that’s happened in the last month, and Will doesn’t want to add more. But then he feels a hand on his ankle, just a brush through the quilt, a promise – Nothing you have to say is going to be too much. A relic from their childhood, when they both swallowed down poisonous grief while hiding from their parents’ shouts. Keeping it inside will be worse, Jonathan had always said, and he was right.

“Dustin and Lucas said…” Will’s voice trembles, and he hates it. He tries to swallow the weakness down, keep steady. “They said they heard me on the radio, when I was gone. I keep thinking…”

“That maybe you’ll hear him?” Jonathan says it so easily, so simply, that it almost sounds possible. It almost sounds like it’s not the fantasy of a boy who’s gone completely mad.

“It’s stupid.”

“It’s not.” Jonathan scoots up the bed a little. There’s comfort in his eyes, but pity is tucked close behind them, and that stings. “It’s not stupid, Will. If it’s important to you, and it makes you feel better, that’s all that matters.”

“It is stupid,” Will shoots back, and he feels his eyes starting to well up again, embarrassing and traitorous. “I wasn’t really-” A pause. A breath. He doesn’t want to say it, but no one else has, not since the hospital. “I wasn’t dead when they heard me, and Mike’s-” The first sob sneaks up on him, and his chest heaves with the sudden burst of grief, so awful and acute that his vision tunnels.

In a heartbeat, Jonathan’s already moved, already wrapped his arms around Will, pulling him close. He smells like sweat and their mom’s cigarettes and the fast food they had for dinner, and Will wants to be comforted by it, but he’s not. There’s only one thing that can comfort him, and it’s somewhere at the bottom of Sattler’s.

“I should have been there,” he protests, barely a whisper, hitched by the shudder in his chest. “I should have saved him.” It’s dumb, and it’s childish, and he can’t stop holding on it.

“I know it’s hard to understand.” Jonathan’s voice is a buzz against Will’s hair. “But it’s not your fault. It’s not anyone’s fault.” An accident, everyone’s been saying, until it’s stopped registering as a word to Will’s overwhelmed ears. “Even if you’d been there, he still might have made that choice. And it’s not because he didn’t want to be here with you guys, okay?”

“… What?” Will pulls back, just a hair, just enough to see Jonathan’s face. “What choice?” To look for me? To go to the quarry?

Something in Jonathan seems to hesitate, and then he asks, “Do you know what depression is?” It’s a voice Will’s heard before, just a few times. It’s, Do you know what alcohol is? Do you know what divorce is? It’s a horror movie overture, his orbit shifting, a collision course towards something terrible.

He feels himself nod. He doesn’t want to; he wants to close his eyes, will himself into unconsciousness. Find Mike, wherever he is in deep black nonexistence, and burrow against him.

“It makes someone feel really, really sad,” Jonathan’s saying, like a voice from a high-above PA, “even if there’s nothing to be sad about. Their brain makes them think things that aren’t true, or do things to hurt themselves.”

Why are you telling me this? Will wants to ask, but his jaw feels locked. He just shakes his head. No, no. This isn’t the answer. “Mike wasn’t-” he finally says, strained and damp with tears, but Jonathan cuts him off, as gently as possible.

“He was really sick, Will.” No, no, no. “He just didn’t tell anyone.”

It’s worse than the hospital, somehow. Worse than his mom leaning in close, brushing his hair aside – There was an accident. Worse than Dustin and Lucas walking in, distraught yet grateful, hugging Will close – Did you hear? He’d heard, his mom had told him.

His mom had lied.

“She said he fell.” It’s an accusation, a horror, a heartbreak. He pulls out of Jonathan’s arms, gasping for a shallow breath. For a second he feels like he’s back down there, back in that thing’s nest, something terrible filling up his throat – and for another second he wishes he was, because at least when he was there, he thought Mike might still save him. He hadn’t known that Mike was already gone.

“Shit,” Jonathan breathes, his own face gone stark white. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Will.” He whispers it again and again, into the air between them, and then against Will’s shoulder as he hauls him back close, tries to soothe the uncontrollable shaking. He whispers it and he whispers it, until the last orange of the sunset fades away, until Will falls into a fitful sleep, until the words don’t sound like words anymore.

Side A. 

December 11, 1985

It’s chicken again. Made fresh, not reheated. The glass of pinot grigio in her mother’s hand has been refilled at least twice, and Nancy is nursing a headache just from the constant motion in and out (and in, and out) of the kitchen. Stove, phone, table. Stove, phone-

“That was Mr. Bradley. The camera down there caught someone going past around seven.” Karen drops a dish of green peas down on the table; it clunks just a fraction too hard.

Nancy is incredulous. “That’s the only camera on Wabash?” For half a second, she wishes the lab was still up and running; at least that way, they could count on some surveillance. The camera at the Big Buy would have been checked at eight this morning. A hundred government agents would have known precisely where her brother was before he managed to skip town.

“They put it up last year,” her dad offers, answering precisely nothing, “after the Russian girl busted their door.” He seems to find his own contribution satisfying and reaches for a dinner roll, tearing into it with slow, indulgent voracity.

“Can we go see it?”

“The camera?” Karen asks. She brings in another dish; carrots, lovingly honey glazed. Her smile looks as fragile as the ceramic bowl. 

“No, the video.”

“They said it was too blurry to make out.”

Jesus Christ. Nancy wants to scream, or be sick, or possibly both. “Couldn’t they tell which way he was going?”

“South.” Distracted, buzzing, empty. “Holly, sweetie, use your fork.”

Something in Nancy’s chest snaps. She shoves back her chair with a scrape against the linoleum, her tongue heavy with swears and condemnations and her brother’s name, and makes for the stairs.

“Nancy-” her mother calls, exasperated, but she doesn’t stop until she’s climbed two-by-two, chest tight with anger, into the dark upstairs hall. What finally makes her stop isn’t her parents’ voices, or any twinge of regret.

It’s Mike’s door.

No one’s opened it since this morning, when her Mom made her preliminary determinations, listed the missing items, sealed it back off. The sight is like a fist around Nancy’s throat. She’s watched movies, read human interest pieces - bedrooms, vacuum-tight, unused reminders for years and years. For a second, she pictures Mike’s room years in the future, a dusty museum of relics. Winter, 1985, in a time capsule.

No. No, that’s not like their mom. She’d clean it out, empty it into the basement, turn it into something else. Something she can use, something she can show to people.

Nancy turns the knob and pushes into the room.

She’s not sure when she was last inside, but it has to have been months by now, maybe even a year. Most of the Tinker Toys and action figures have been swept off the shelf, replaced by books, shoes, empty soda glasses gone sticky. The floor is a minefield of laundry and crumpled papers; she unearths one, flattens it out with her foot – a math quiz. C-minus. Then, next to it, kicked halfway under her brother’s bed-

A long piece of black plastic, and several AAA batteries.

It takes her a moment to realize what she’s looking at. One side has an open panel over a full battery compartment, and the other sports several wires, a couple of them clipped and frayed. Then, just above the hand strap, in little white letters: ᴄɪᴛɪᴢᴇɴs ʜᴀɴᴅ ᴛʀᴀɴsᴄᴇɪᴠᴇʀ. Part of Mike’s walkie talkie.

“He ran away once before.”

Nancy feels her nerves jump. Unconsciously, she clenches the piece of plastic tighter, until it digs into her palm; something in her chest feels oddly protective over her find, like it’s a tiny part of Mike that her parents aren’t allowed to touch.

“What?” Her mother is a sliver of pressed cotton-blend in the corner of her eye, and Nancy needs to make sense of something.

Karen steps inside, feet quietly bypassing her son’s belongings. There’s something too eerily guarded about her voice, about the arms crossed over the front of her sweater. Up here, away from the busy duty of downstairs, the edge of her mouth trembles. “You were at dance camp.”

Four summers ago. 1981. Nancy feels the breath go cold and sharp in her lungs. “You should have told me.” Back then, yesterday, at some point.

“He was only gone a few hours.” Her mom chews carefully at one lip, twists the ring on her finger. It’s a familiar nervous tic, muted under her practiced façade. “Joyce found him out in the woods with a backpack full of comic books.”  

But what if she hadn’t? The question burns in the back of Nancy’s mouth. She can picture herself at thirteen, down in Bloomington, getting a summons from the camp director. Her life changing forever, two years too early.

“What happened?” she asks instead, still looking at the carpet.

“He was upset. You know how he gets.”

You know how he gets. Soothing, dismissive. It hits like a meteorite, rattling Nancy’s constraint. The words that tear out of her are too harsh, too sharp. “Aren’t you and dad even worried?”

“Sweetheart…” The gentle shock on Karen’s face still isn’t enough. It’s like she’s been so afraid of breaking something, afraid of being heard by someone. Afraid of shattering the game of pretend. “I know we’re not always the best at it, but your father and I love you and Michael and Holly very much.”

“He left the batteries here.” Nancy finally chokes it out like a bad pill, melting bitter on her tongue. She thrusts the radio backing out so hard the panel clacks. “He left his coat here, in the basement. Something’s really wrong, mom.”

To her credit, Karen almost looks rattled, like the building panic has found a crack to the surface. Her throat seems to work for a second, before she swallows some of the fear back down and shakes her head. “He took the blue coat,” she replies. Nancy can almost hear her dad’s voice behind it, the simpering placations of the other moms. “I don’t see the blue one any-”

“He gave the blue one away, last winter.” El had almost grown into it, before the move.

“The green one, then.”

Still hanging over the basement sofa. Her parents hadn’t even noticed.

“He should have been going to a doctor,” Nancy continues, her voice starting to strain and tremble. “He should have been talking to someone, or-”

Her mom shakes her head, like she’s trying to will the words away, fit them back into their neat story. “He was doing better, after Thanksgiving.”

And maybe he had been, Nancy thinks, but it would have been a meager blessing. Mike’s been up-and-down for two years now, maybe more, and she hates how long it took for her to realize that there was something so wrong about it. The way he would just disappear from their lives, collapse into himself, ignore his friends’ calls until they came knocking on the door, timidly asking Nancy if Mike was mad at them. The way he would bounce his legs like they were on fire, jolt violently away from contact, talk like steam bursting from a pipe. The way he would stay awake in the basement for days and nights on end, unnoticed by their parents while he tinkered and scribbled and prattled on his radio, rings under his eyes growing deeper all the while.  

“Maybe you should have been looking closer,” Nancy finally bites, hating herself more than a little. Then, she drops the radio backing onto the floor, silent among the hurricane debris of Mike’s life, and leaves her mother alone.

“What does that say? Is that even English?”

“Your handwriting sucks, Mayfield.”

“I don’t see either of you clowns writing it.” The paper nearly rips as Max tugs it away, bearing down on Dustin’s biology textbook with her felt tip pen. It bleeds and blots, turning what might have said government into something that nearly looks French, full of slurry vowels. The next word is only slightly clearer – baddies.

Lucas tilts his head, squints a bit. “Why are you putting my name by-”

“So we know whose fault it is when we wind up hunting down false leads.”

The Hendersons’ house is familiar, homey; next to the paneled walls and the fading smell of Hamburger Helper, the bullet-point list triangulated between the kids seems uncomfortably dark, like a secret none of them want to know. Two out of three hands had vetoed writing Operation Saving Throw across the top, in the interest of seriousness, but the sight of the paper still makes Lucas’ legs itch to move.

They’ve done this shit before. They’ve marched out into the woods, into the tunnels, into the mall with their arms full of fireworks, and the crazy thing is - it’s always worked. They’ve always won, and they’ve never had a goddamn list. His stomach flutters with the need to run at this the same way, to just smear on his war paint, tie on his bandana, get out there.

Max makes a second bullet point. “What’s next?”

“El says it’s a monster.” The second problem: something’s off about Dustin. He doesn’t say monster like he’s mentally flipping through his D&D binder, like the words yeth hound are about to come out of his mouth, followed by a flurry of numbers and abbreviations that they’ll both watch Max refuse to parse.

He says it like he doesn’t believe himself.

“Will?” Lucas continues, but his interest is fatally distracted. He’s already set on his vote.

“'Undetermined'. His word, not mine.” Hardly a word, really, from Max’s chicken-scratch handwriting. “And Dustin, also undecided?”

“I’m keeping an open mind,” the boy throws in, fiddling with a fiber of loose carpeting, yanking it loose with too much aggression.

“You can’t investigate an open mind.” This is getting them precisely nowhere. Lucas’ objection goes wholly unnoticed, however – Dustin has leaned in to decipher the last bullet point, frowning as the alien scrawls start to form a word.

“You really think he just ran away?” Dustin’s voice sounds like betrayal, or somber resignation; Lucas is too wired to tell, and the noncommittal shrug Max gives in reply just makes him more on-edge.

“Kids do it all the time.” Then, worse: “I did.”

He had been prepared to argue (Yeah, on TV!), to shoot down what Max thinks she might know about Mike, their clumsy-armed captain who would curse out adults and throw flimsy punches but would never, never let down his friends. But it all dies in his throat, dried up with a new, horrible thought.

“You-” He doesn’t get to ask why. Max whirls right back into her list, holding it up against the yellow glow from the ceiling light.

“So – three leads, and two open minds.”

Dustin gives a slow, tired shrug. “I’d say we could look at the mall, but we’d have to get in first.” Even five months later, the ruins are still a fortress of yellow tape. Davey Ballard, down the street, claimed he’d snuck in and saw the bodies, but even the people who weren’t there knew he was horseshit. There wouldn’t have been bodies, a girl in first period geometry had argued, citing someone-or-another’s friend’s firefighter uncle. Stick a person in a fire that hot, and all that’s left is ash and fat.

“Lab would be easier,” Lucas says after a moment; he doesn’t want to go back in the mall anyway, whether or not Ballard’s story is true. “It’s abandoned.”

Max huffs, her eyebrows raised. “Only if you wanna go missing too.”

“This isn’t about us.” The air feels charged, and it’s all Lucas can do not to hop up and leave. “A member of the Party is-“

“In trouble, I know!” Pen and paper drop to the carpet between them; Max rocks back on her feet, frustrated. “And every other time, we’ve had a hell of a lot more going for us. Do you see anyone here with superpowers? Or anyone over fourteen, for that matter?”

A quick pause, a shift of eyes. Dustin shakes his head.

“We aren’t breaking into the lab with a slingshot,” Max continues, but something’s already been lit in Lucas’ chest.

“Then we get everyone back here!” He can hear the hint of a whine in his voice and he hates it, but he keeps going, keeps trying to feel that fire he always pictured Mike drawing on during his best speeches. “Guys, we’ve killed monsters before. We’ve literally saved the world. We can save Mike.”

In the silence that follows, Dustin chews on his lip and casts his eyes over at Max. Dark doubt lines his every feature. “When you ran away… where did you go?”

A sharp shrug, a bit little defensive in the wake of Lucas’ outburst. “Sometimes you just go to go.”

“That’s stupid,” Lucas mutters, only adding to the churning discomfort in his stomach. This isn’t something he knows about; his childhood was idyllic, protected and nurtured at every turn, right up until the Monday morning Mrs. Byers called, looking for her son. He never had a thought about leaving any of it.

Max just looks at him, patience rapidly dwindling. “Was El going anywhere when she escaped the lab?”

“No, but-“ What does Mike have to escape from? He can’t reason it in his head. Hawkins is a shithole, sure, but Mike isn’t alone in it.

“I’m going to get more chips.” Dustin starts to stand up, the plastic bowl in one hand; it’s only half-empty, but Max’s knowing expression is warning enough not to mention that. She stays silent, lips pressed together, as Dustin leaves the room; for a moment, as the door opens and closes, the sound of Mrs. Henderson’s TV program drifts in, muffled and indistinct.

“He’s taking it really hard.” Max’s voice is gentler than before. It extinguishes some of the fire in Lucas’ veins, just enough that he can settle back against the bedframe.

“Yeah,” he agrees. It’s been rough on them all, but there’s something different in the way Dustin’s reacted. Something darker, almost. “His mom watches those police shows. Keeps talking about the first forty-eight.”

One red-orange eyebrow slants up in confused interest. “The first forty-eight what?” But before Lucas can give an answer, there’s a shout from down the hallway. It cuts through his stomach, setting off an intuitive alarm he doesn’t quite understand.  

Bad news, bad news. You were wrong, Lucas Sinclair.

A creak of floorboards, and then Dustin bursts back into the bedroom.

“They found something!”

“- was located in a creek in Huntington County, about seven miles south of Hawkins. Investigators have identified the bike as belonging to Michael Wheeler, a fourteen-year-old who was reported missing earlier today. Anyone who was in the area of Widow Pond and Burt’s Towers and Flowers this morning is asked to call Hawkins Police Department’s non-emergency line with any-“

Side B. 

December 12, 1985

Three o’ clock comes and goes before Mike gives up.

Jonathan’s room is spartan compared to the one Mike remembers, cluttered and unruly, loud music always rattling out of an old stereo. The walls here are off-white, patched with scant posters. Cardboard boxes, taped and labeled, crowd into the corner, hiding everything Mike knows he would recognize. The photo tacked over the nightstand is the worst of all: Jonathan with his arm around some black-haired girl, a high-schooler Mike’s seen around. Samantha, maybe. He’s staying at her house tonight, Joyce had said, leaving a bed open for company.

Company. Mike is company, delegated to an empty slot in a round of musical chairs, while two of his best friends sleep in their own beds in this alien house. We moved about a month ago, Joyce had said earlier, crowded into the hospital waiting room. Banal conversation to keep his mind off being stuck and prodded and evaluated for so many hours. Just to the other side of town. Room for all five of us.

He wonders if Hopper’s cabin is still destroyed, here. He wonders if there’s a way to ask, without giving away all that he knows.

The blow-up mattress on the floor gives a groan, and his mom takes a whistling breath. She’d fallen asleep hard after a glass of wine and something from Joyce’s medicine cabinet; all day her nerves had been in in a state Mike has never seen them, and it's put a permanent twist in his stomach. He’d long thought of his parents as unshakeable, unmovable to every plight, and the thought that he’d done this is the most awful part of it all.

Exhibit A for this being a nightmare. Some horrific, comatose vision after falling off of his bike.

The digital clock hits half-past, and Mike finally sits up, in need of air and a sip of water. The kitchen is just outside Jonathan’s tiny back bedroom, a short, bare-footed walk on cold floors, and it’s a small blessing that he manages to make it without waking his mother, slipping into the unfamiliar room like a ghost.

With a jolt to his chest, he finds it already occupied by one.  

He hasn’t seen Will since earlier, when the boy scurried up the stairs and behind a slammed door, stunned by the clumsily handled reunion. Mike can’t say that he blames him; if Barb Holland or Bob Newby walked in the door right now, he would probably run as well, unsure what part of his mind had just shat itself to call up such a realistic vision. By midnight though, when Joyce finally shuffled a wide-eyed and talkative El off to bed – not his, just barely wrong – he’d started to feel resentment seep into his stomach.

It all vanishes when he looks over and sees Will standing at the sink, eating a slice of cold pizza over a paper towel, frozen solid.

“Hey,” Mike tries, but it comes out clumsy and hoarse. He knows he looks a wreck, folded into Jonathan’s too-small pajamas, his face bruised and his hair wild. But as Will studies him in growing, silent disconcertment, it finally hits Mike.

He’s a stranger. He’s a complete stranger to Will, in every single way. His own best friend – this version, at least – hasn’t seen him since that last game of D&D, before the Demogorgon, when they were both twelve and chubby-cheeked and so stupid, unaware their lives were about to fall utterly and irreparably apart.

And so suddenly, swift as a bully’s fist to the face, Mike wants to cry.

“Hi,” Will finally answers, fingers clutching his pizza crust like some kind of lifeline. His face looks blue in the shadows, quiet and devastated and every age at once, a slideshow of what Mike did to him. What he didn’t mean to do to him.

Mike shuffles his feet, staying stock-still in the kitchen doorway. “Are you-” A dry swallow. “Are you okay?”

He knows at once that it’s a stupid question, that it means nothing to either of them in the face of what’s happened. Either he’s lost in some unconscious fantasy, or he’s really left his friends behind for two years thanks to his own recklessness, and neither of those seem any better than the other.

Will works his jaw around an answer for a second, blinking incredulous eyes. Then, finally: “Mike, you- you were dead.”

It’s just above a whisper, but it feels like it shakes the house. In some nonsensical sliver of his mind, Mike is half-surprised that no one comes running from upstairs, feeling the tremors through their beds.

“I wasn’t.” It’s useless, helpless, but he doesn’t know what else to say. “I’m not.”

Unsatisfied, Will puts down the paper towel and takes a restrained step forward, chin held steady against tears that Mike can nearly feel. “What happened?”

The question on everyone’s lips, and Mike still doesn’t know where to begin his answer. It’s what’s kept him awake all night, staring holes in Jonathan’s ceiling. “I can’t-”

“Why not?” Quietly panicked, more than upset. The same tone as Mike’s mom, as his sister. El had been different, her eyes curious and prying instead of desperate, like she could sense the answer somewhere just under Mike’s denials.

He doesn’t want to tell lies. Lies just weave more lies, a web he knows he can’t control, not when it’s this serious. Because if there’s one thing he knows about his friends, it’s that they don’t sit idly. The first hint that he’s been endangered by someone or something, and they’ll be on their feet, out the door, heading for the ruins of the lab.

But if he tells the truth…

He swallows again, shaking his head, steeling for more hushed interrogation, more cautious stares from someone who has been permanently entrenched in him for almost a decade-

Only Will doesn’t say anything. With a choked sound that barely makes it out of his throat, he rushes forward resolutely and wraps his arms around Mike. Ten fingers press into the borrowed T-shirt, press all the way into Mike’s heart, and he finally lets out the breath he’d been holding all night. All day, maybe since October.

“I missed you.” It’s damp and muffled, whispered into Mike’s shoulder between held-back sobs. Will’s hair is too short, and it smells like the wrong shampoo, but it doesn’t stop Mike from gripping him back as tightly as he can.

“I missed you too,” he whispers, and it’s not a lie. Not all the way. 

Chapter Text

❝ Your mother is pretending that she hasn’t seen anything. Your father is fiddling with the knobs. There is an empty seat next to you in the station wagon. ❞

Richard Siken, You Are Jeff

Side A. 

December 12, 1985

“Hello?”

She’s the quietest Joyce has heard her, coming over the line like a peek around a corner, too cautious and too groggy. The white noise of a Wheeler family breakfast, always a background buzz at this hour, is nowhere to be found.

“Karen? It’s Joyce.” She sets her coffee cup down on a splay of mail – bills, always bills – and when there’s no answer, she adds, “Jonathan told me, about the-”

A shaking breath. “I thought he’d be home by now. I really thought-” Karen cuts off, drawn back by her own reins; Joyce can imagine the careful control on her face, the practiced grace in her posture. Dignity, heavy as an albatross, is as much a staple of Karen Wheeler as a frosty glass of white wine.

“It’s okay,” Joyce urges on clumsy instinct. “It’s okay.” A lie, and part of her feels wretched, but it’s what everyone had said to her, back at the beginning. When Will was merely a question, and the answer hadn’t yet been pulled out of the quarry.

“Ted never wanted the police involved.” Quieter, but not a whisper; her husband’s at work, then. “He thinks Mike’s just being difficult.”

The Wheelers’ trepidation is an alien thing; Joyce had spearheaded her own hunt, barreled into the police office not an hour after her first, desperate grasps came up empty. She can’t fathom these reaches for normalcy.

“What do you think?” she prompts, slowly and carefully.

The speaker goes static with a trembling breath. “That it’s my fault.”

“Karen-”

“I’ve had so much on my plate. I’d told him he could visit Will, but then my mom broke her hip, and-”

Joyce leans against the counter, shaking her head as though anyone could see it. “No one could blame you for that,” she cuts in, but it’s an empty balm. She can hear her own thoughts, echoing across two years: You’re the one who worked late. You’re the one who didn’t call. It’s your fault. Anything to chart a scenario that makes sense, that works with what you know of the world, of karma and guilt and blame.

“Mike does,” Karen protests. “He blames me and Ted for everything. He’s always so angry, and I don’t understand.”

The portrait fills in, getting less and less recognizable. Part of Joyce wants to disagree, calling up the sweet, curly-haired kid who spent so many nights at her dinner table, who would always hold Will’s hand on the worst of days. But then, she thinks about 1984. Before the now-memories and the Mind Flayer, before the tunnels and the dogs and Bob. There had been groundings, she remembers. Weekends where Mike didn’t show and Will hung his head, where even the radio went silent.

“Sometimes you can’t understand. I mean, you remember what it was like, being their age.” Bitter, oppressed, always raging against something. Will and his friends have never seemed the type, but maybe she’s blinder than she thought. Maybe everyone is.

“I wasn’t like them.” There’s a faint sound under the electronic echo of Karen’s voice, like glass against a laminate countertop. A metallic crack, the hollow pop of a cork. Half past eight in the morning. “I wasn’t like any of my kids. Even Holly looks at us sometimes like there’s something we’re just not getting.”   

“They’re smart.” It’s the only answer Joyce can summon, the only thing in her chest that feels genuine. So many years of feeding and watching each other’s kids, and she has no idea how to look after Karen herself. “They got that from you.”

A harsh breath of a laugh, and for the first time it sounds damp. Control slipping, tin can crackling. “If I had half of what they have, I would have seen this coming.”

You would have. You should have. “Or maybe not,” Joyce urges. “Maybe there weren’t any signs.” Signs. Signs of what? Of something she’s too afraid to say, lest she talk it into being? She knows what her kids are whispering about behind a closed door. She knows what kind of monster they’re imagining, and she knows what her own gut tells her.

“Did the news say how they found it?”

The question sneaks out of left field, and Joyce merely gapes for a moment, working her jaw around an answer. “The bike?” she asks, dumb and blunt. She hadn’t seen the news, not down here in Greenwood; she had heard from Jonathan, who had heard from Nancy, who had heard from the police, who had found it just after seven, halfway buried in muddy slush.

Karen takes a bracing breath, as though fighting back horror, and says: “It was folded in half.”

Side B.

The worst part, of course, was that there hadn’t been a body.

In the cold mornings after that November, as the chill blurred into frost and the rest of the world hung their own twinkling lights, Joyce had sat on her porch and thought. Thought about her family, thought about the Upside Down, and about what this town had done to that little girl. But mainly, she had thought about the Wheelers.

For a few days, she had been at the bottom of the bottom. A reckless mother who’d lost her child, who’d failed her family, who’d become the punchline of Hawkins’ cruelest joke. She’d looked across a fresh grave at Karen and Ted, and almost had the presence of mind to envy them. Whole, alive, flanked by children they would never have to see on a slab.

Only days later, her own son safe in his bedroom, Joyce had been the one bringing them noodle kugle. She had been the one laying a hand on Karen’s trembling shoulder, offering skin-deep sympathies, searching for something that wouldn’t cut. The world had flipped before she could find her footing, before she could heal the wound of losing Will, of seeing his image pale and bloated in the coroner’s basement.

The Wheelers never got that particular luxury, and she had watched it destroy them. 

Crrrrrrk. Rusted hinges protest as the screen door swings open, and Joyce nearly douses her cigarette on instinct, like a shamefaced teenager.

“Oh, I don’t mind.” Karen’s words puff out white as she sidles onto the back porch, a vision in threadbare sweats and her daughter’s scrunchie. She had still been asleep when Joyce had crept out, tiptoeing around their sons’ lanky, huddled forms.

“Will’s trying to get me to quit,” Joyce answers. It’s conversational; safe. It melts right into the air like empty vapor.

“Jim wants to talk to Mike again.” The porch rail protests as Karen leans into it, and she quickly recoils; Joyce makes another mental note for the repair list, already volumes long.

“We can all go down together,” she suggests. “After lunch.”

Karen shakes her head. “He said it might be easier for Mike, if I don’t go in.” A short pause, as she seems to wrestle with something, and then, in a halting voice: “In case there’s something he doesn’t want me to hear.”

“Go down anyway. Sit in the hall, if you have to.” Joyce leans in, tipping her cigarette away. Somewhere in the yard, a grackle grates out its call. “He’ll want you close, right now.” Tall and angular and strange as he’s grown, Mike is still a child; he’s going to need his mom.

Her words are met with a distant hum, a long gaze out into the foggy fields. Scrubbing her hands over her face, Karen shrugs. “It’s terrible,” she starts, voice distracted, “but I used to see parents in the news and think, maybe we got off easy. I lost my kid, and it destroyed my family, but at least… at least no one else hurt him. At least we didn’t have to sit through a trial and hear what some sicko did to our baby, you know?”

Joyce doesn’t know, but she tries. She presses her eyes shut, thinks back to that worst of the worst year, and tries. Would she have thought herself lucky, if Will had had an accident on a clumsy ledge? Would that innocent finality have been some kind of blessing, next to all the other possibilities?

“Karen, I-”

“That’s what I’m afraid of, when I look at him.” There’s a clamor from inside, a brief din of breakfast pans and young voices, and Karen lowers her own. “I just keep thinking of everything I don’t know.”

There are a scant few inches between the cuffs of their sweaters, and something in Joyce’s stomach wants to close it, wrap an arm around this woman who’s looked the worst beast a mother can face right in the eye. But there’s a frostiness there, a decorum as old as the decades they’ve known each other, and she can’t bring herself to breach it. Time has swapped the lines on their faces, but she’s still the outcast, smoking behind the gym, and Karen is still the cheerleader, gleaming from her boyfriend’s Ford Fairlane.

“We’ll all be there, once you do.” Joyce looks over, trying a smile, but Karen doesn’t take her eyes off the swirling grey, the sunbeams cutting through into the overgrown grass. The trance remains unbroken, rumple-browed, until the screen door clatters open behind them with another tremendous creak. Hopper, cracked mug of steaming coffee in hand. A whiff of burnt toast follows him out.

“Mornin’.” His glance at Karen is wary, balanced on eggshells, but she meets it with a polite dip of her chin.

“Chief Hopper.” Always that Wheeler formality, unbroken through the worst of times. Joyce thinks of a high school art lesson, photos of cracked pottery mended with gold. Metallic light, running through the seams.

Hopper coughs, then sips his coffee too loudly. “We still thinking this is a good idea?”

The million-dollar question, ever since Mike brought it up over last night’s pizza. An uncertain frown, a stabilizing breath in the middle of picking off his pepperoni (one-by-one, a ritual Joyce remembers from his childhood). Then, as fidgety and dubious as he’d always been: Can I see Lucas and Dustin?

“It’s Mike’s call,” Karen says, rubbing at one temple. Her nails are unmanicured.

Joyce tips her head, peering back in through the half-open door. “Are he and Will still-”

“Passed out by the couch,” the Chief provides, and both mothers pass a quick smile across the porch. It feels like something old, something so nearly lost, and Joyce swallows back the faintest prickle of tears.

“Look.” Rubbing a hand across her forehead, Karen finally turns to look up at Hopper. Something in the jut of her jaw seems ready for a battle. “If Mike wants to see his friends, let him see his friends. Who are they going to tell?”

“No one, I’m just…” A long-suffered sigh; Hopper closes the back door the rest of the way, drowning out their daughters’ chatter. “I’m trying to be cautious.”

It’s what’s logical. It’s what’s smart. They live in a town plagued by espionage and betrayal, by years of horrific loss, and they have a right to hold their cards – and their hearts – close to their chests. They have a right to expect the worst of this. But then, Joyce closes her eyes, thinks back to the fall of 1983. Halloween, the last night she saw them all together. There’s still a snapshot in Will’s room, four Star Wars heroes in miniature, holding up their spoils in plastic buckets. One face that would so soon disappear, and three that would never be the same again.

“Keeping those kids apart is what you should be worried about.” She douses her cigarette, breathing a last lungful of smoke down into the frozen shrubs. Overhead, the grackle seems to agree.

Karen looks over, something like gratitude in her pinched face, behind the golden seams. “This town wouldn’t survive it,” she adds, and it nearly summons up a laugh in Joyce’s chest.

Sensing the matter closed, Hopper shakes his head. “Okay, okay. Fine.” It’s not short-tempered, or even frustrated, but merely the distracted tone of someone trying to solve a very complex problem in a very short time. “Next week, though. We need precautions.”

Precautions. Joyce wants to roll her eyes, frown up at him, rail against his doggedness like she always does. It’s how they operate, even with their cars next to each other in the driveway, their toothbrushes in the same cup. But when she looks up, about to enlist Karen’s reinforcement, she pauses. The woman is staring out at the field again, mouth frozen at the start of a thought, her brow gently rumpled.

“What?” Joyce turns to look, but all that’s there is the familiar yard, patchy grass opening up to untended field, State Route 17 unseen in the distance.

“I thought…” A blink, a breath, and Karen shakes her head, turning away from the railing. “It’s nothing. Just need some of that coffee.” She disappears through the open door, calling out to her daughter, and leaves Joyce and Hopper in silence.

Side A. 

For an hour and a half, Nancy watches her mother watch the phone, tension rising steadily in her veins. She listens to the air-soft pop of a cork, the sloppy coo of platitudes at Holly. A building discomfort, heavy in dim light, as no one calls, and still no one calls.

At the turn of the second hour, she digs her keys out of her backpack and leaves. The front door slams, and she can’t imagine that anyone hears it.

In the wake of Will’s disappearance – two years ago, too fast and too slow – Hawkins had been an unfamiliar landscape. Mothers had clustered their children indoors; businesses had had his tiny face plastered in their doors. There had not been a stretch of life unaffected by the mystery of his loss. It was inescapable, inundating, even in its wake.

The grade school kids across the street wheel their bikes out as Nancy pulls away. Around the bend, one of her own classmates walks his dog; she hauls the station wagon in the opposite direction. The week is warming, and the town is flocking to the sun, unaware that anything at all is wrong.

Folded in half. Missing one handlebar. Bottom of a ditch, just beside the highway. Thought it might be hit-and-run, the chief had said, tracking mud on Karen Wheeler’s flawless parquet, but they don’t usually take the body.

Two glasses of wine and a vodka soda later, Nancy had helped her mother up to bed, and felt the words repeating in her head, stammering like a scratched record. The body. The body. The body. It had haunted her into a sleepless night, over a cup of weak coffee and a tasteless breakfast. 

She turns onto Wabash, the Big Buy in her rearview mirror, and starts south.

On this side of downtown, houses start to trickle to a crawl. Shutters peel and siding grows mildewed behind yards looped with chain link, and she thinks of a time not so far gone, of sweater sets and a nose turned up. A different girl riding down this street in a different car. If she closes her eyes, she can almost smell the Calvin Klein.

The station wagon is just rattling into a safe fifty when Nancy’s eyes land on a pair of orange braids against winter pines. She huffs out a sigh and eases on the brakes, lowering the window with a nail-scratch squeak.

“What are you doing?”

Max Mayfield’s eye roll is visible from six feet away, as is the frosty red of her nose. “Going home.” The words puff stark white into the air. There's a grocery bag in one hand: bread, peanut butter, tampons. 

Click. “Door’s unlocked. Get in.” Nancy removes a flashlight and her mom’s old Polaroid from the passenger seat, but she only gets a freckled sneer for her efforts. Sometimes, she thinks Max and Mike could be the same person.

“It’s, like, half a mile.”

“Uphill, on ice.” She doesn’t want to say it. She doesn’t want to put it into words: My brother’s missing, maybe dead, and you need to be careful.

If Max hears them anyway, she doesn’t say it. A truck pulls around them noisily, and she chews crossly on a chapped lip. “What are you doing out here, anyway?”

Out here. The meaning isn’t missed; it could nearly be a name on a map, circled and capitalized. Out Here, gravel and tin cans, where no one lives on purpose.

“Just going to look at something,” she answers, and it isn’t a lie. It passes whatever medieval bullshit code Mike and his posse were always touting until it was inconvenient.

“Can I come?” The question is hardly a question, more of a warning; Max is already reaching for the handle, an eagerness in her movements that contradicts the scowl in her eyes. Behind her, a pit bull clatters its fence, barking a rote pattern.

Nancy’s face pinches with impatience. Just the one day since she last saw Mike has permanently imbued her with wrinkles. “Your mom’ll throw a fit.”

But the door swings open, letting in crisp air, and Max bows her head beneath the roof. She’s grown taller too, taller than Nancy; her too-short corduroys disclose a healthy inch of striped sock as she climbs inside, backpack and skateboard a tight fit.

“My mom’s at work ‘til midnight,” Max protests. “Come on.”

Jesus Christ. “Fine. Okay.”

If Nancy had expected anything like agitating excitement on the girl’s face, she would be sorely befuddled by the reality. Instead, Max seems to deflate as she closes the door behind her, a neat thwump that silences the dog’s baying. It’s relief, instead of triumph.

“You okay?” Nancy throws the car back into drive, watching Max from the corner of her eye. The tires crunch gravel as she pulls back onto the highway.

“Neil left.”

The second surprise hits harder than the first, leaving Nancy’s mouth dry and wordless. Grey clouds open up before them, but she feels almost claustrophobic, like the town has followed them and boxed them in. Like Hawkins isn’t a place at all, but a monster in itself, creeping south like smoke in the sky.

“I…” She swallows, shakes her head. Her fingers are stiff on the steering wheel. “I’m sorry.”

Max snorts, too loud in the silence. “Don’t be. I’m glad. It’s just…” Her eyes are glued to the window, fixed on the little, green sign as they come up on her street. It passes into the rearview mirror, and then vanishes. “My mom had to double her hours, you know? The house is always empty.” 

Nancy does know, and she doesn’t. Her house had always been full, teeming with a boisterous little brother, stomping down the stairs and rifling through the pantry and shouting from across her locked door. It had always been a circus, until suddenly it wasn’t. Mike got strange and quiet, and her parents stopped talking to each other, and suddenly she was living in a museum. Hushed voices, pretentious statuettes. All they were missing were marble floors.

“Could you hang out with Lucas?” She isn’t sure why she asks it; she and Max certainly don’t have any sort of friendship, outside of facing down a few monsters.

“Every day?” Another face reminiscent of Mike, scrunched and incredulous. “I’d lose my mind.”

Nancy certainly doesn’t want to speak ill of the mourning, but she can’t help a tense smile, just a quick quirk of her mouth. Her brother’s friends are all family by now, and it comes with the requisite sibling vexation. Sometimes, she forgets where one of them ends and the other begins – was it Mike who spilled Kool-Aid on her backpack, or Dustin? Did she teach Lucas how to tie his shoes, or was that Will? 

The car rumbles past the last copse of beaten-down houses and the turn-offs for Delphi and Lewisburg, until the grey sky splits with the dinge of dead grass, and the countryside empties. For what seems like an age of silence, Nancy steels her jaw and watches the snow-dusted crops blur past, one after the other.

This all would have been dark, yesterday morning. Just icy wind, a half-moon behind cloud cover, and a jacketless boy on a bike.

“How much further?” Max fiddles with the heater, restless energy sparking off of her. One of her braids is coming undone, and Nancy resists an urge to reach over and fix it.

“I don’t know. Close.” Another cornfield, brown and white. She should have brought a map. “I’m looking for a bridge, it should be-”

It happens quicker than a heartbeat. For just a flash the thing is in the road, a sweep of pitch black from right to left, and Nancy punches the brakes so hard her stomach leaps. She hears Max yelp, feels the pain of whiplash already tensing through her neck, but it’s hardly an afterthought, because there’s a giant, black thing on the road, feet from the nose of her station wagon. Ten feet tall, darker than tar, staring right through her with headlight eyes.

And then, in the next instant, there isn’t.

“Holy shit!” Max tears her seatbelt off, pressing a hand where it’s bruised her collar. Beneath the sea of freckles, her face is stark white. “What the fuck was that?”

Nancy blinks, and then blinks again. She can’t tell if her body’s shaken itself into abject numbness, or if the jolt threw her mind a million miles away from it, but her own voice sounds like a long-distance call when she asks, “Are you okay?” A communication bouncing down from space. A ping from a lost satellite.

I thought all this was over. I hoped all this was over.

“Yeah.” It’s unsteady, uncertain. “Yeah, I think-”

There’s a sudden thump on the passenger window, and Nancy’s heartbeat skyrockets. She grabs wildly for the gear shift, one nail breaking on the vinyl as she tries to throw it into drive, but then-

“You ladies alright?”

Not the roar of a gruesome monster, but the nasal, Hoosier drawl of a pink-faced policeman, tapping on the station wagon window. Barry Brighton, hardly older than herself, in police browns. He looks like a child dressed for Halloween.

It’s Max who gets to the crank first, rolling the window to half-mast. The smell of wood smoke drifts in. “Deer,” she says, cool as the air. “Out of nowhere.”

Barry sniffs and wipes his nose on one khaki sleeve, looking off into the cornfield. “Must’ve run off that way.” He gestures across the road, and then points his knobby chin over one shoulder. “We’ve got all this blocked off.”

And for the first time, Nancy sees it. Just a hundred yards ahead, cordoned with orange cones. The chief had said bridge, and she’d pictured something with rusted beams, spanning a great gulf of marsh. Something sinister, where things go to be lost. A nowhere land for monsters.

It isn’t any of that. It’s low and innocuous, just old asphalt and knee-high cement barriers over a modest creek. Behind it, the outline of a barn against the colorless morning.

“Is this where they found it?” She can feel her eyes zero in on the creek, tunneling at the edges, as though tearing them away would be physically painful. “Mike Wheeler’s bike?”

The recognition is clear, as Barry’s face goes from surprised to understanding to apologetic, all in a slow, sequential shift. “Yes ma’am. I mean, Nancy. I mean, Miss Wheel-”

“Can I look around?” Her hand is already on the seatbelt, but she’s met by a headshake so agitated that the boy’s hat nearly flounders its way off.

“Sorry, I can’t let you in.” Barry holds up his scrawny wrist and looks for a watch that isn’t there. “This is an active site for, uh… another few hours.”

Max furrows her brow. “You’re stopping?” She turns to peer ahead, out the windshield, as though she could inspect the scene from here. All that’s visible is the top of a second officer’s head, lighting up a cigarette in the thistles.

“Closin’ up shop,” Barry confirms, dipping his chin. “I reckon we found all there is to find. No footprints, no nothin.’”

It’s a punch to the gut, and Nancy wants to scream. Her mind flips through scenarios like flashcards, and she can feel Max’s eyes on her, wide and discerning, looking to pinpoint Nancy’s worry.

They don’t usually take the body. Drunk drivers, no. But the shape of the thing is still seared behind her eyes, and she can’t stop thinking-

“What if the snow covered them?” she asks, and immediately she knows it was the wrong question. The wrong card. She’s missing basic facts, now.

“Ma’am, there ain’t been a flake of snow since Tuesday night.” It isn’t news he wants to tell her, and his pity is nauseating. Everything in Nancy itches to rush out of the car anyway, kick over the stupid cones, examine every blade of grass until one of them tells her the answer. “None of the ground’s been disturbed. Either no one walked out of this creek, or no one was in it in the first place.”

There would be blood, if there was a monster attack. Blood, or some kind of clue, maybe a footprint. A claw mark in the frozen soil. A broken branch. Nancy can find them.

“So you think the bike was planted?” Max this time, gears turning. She’s the practical half right now, Nancy thinks. The Jonathan of the situation.

Barry shrugs, a disheartening gesture from one of Hawkins’ finest. “Can’t say it wasn’t. But what I can say is…” A brief pause, and a guarded look back at the ditch; his partner is still fumbling with his lighter, knee-deep in weeds. “What I can say is we think we got this one solved.”

Side B .

It’s cold. It’s very cold, or maybe it’s actually hot, or maybe it’s both. The wind stings, but at least it’s stopped snowing; the last flakes hang on his lashes, glinting like holiday lights. Overhead, the sky is patchy. Dark blue, light grey, pink coming in from the east. Red sky at morning, sailor take warning. Mike swerves across the center line and back, across and back, across and-

Headlights. A car horn. He swerves and steadies, back to his lane, panic bubbling up into laughter, into a stupid grin he flashes at the driver.

Mike.

The voice echoes, and he pulls back from it, grasping the early morning road, the wind whistling past his ears. He’s almost there. He can almost see.

Mike.

The barn’s dark roofline, the frozen stream, the concrete barriers. This is it. He can feel what comes next: the pain in his head, the taste of creek water. A jolt sideways, tumbling end over end with his bike. He needs to look. He needs to know.

“Mike. Breakfast.”

A pair of warm eyes, brown and familiar. Behind them, cream-colored walls, the orange glow of a lamp through its cracked shade. Mike blinks, heavy eyelids fighting their way awake; the sofa arm has left a sharp crick in his neck.

“Hi,” El says, voice louder as the last of the dream fades away. She’s already dressed, and the living room smells like syrup.

Wincing, Mike pushes up on his elbows. “Hi,” he answers, managing a pallid smile. His watch reads “9:06” – just four hours after his and Will’s whispered conversations finally petered off into a light sleep. Four hours of restless dreams, dropping in and out of wild, hazy memory, and he barely feels like he closed his eyes at all.

They hadn’t talked about the bridge, or the stream. They hadn’t talked about a cliffside in 1983, or the years stretching out since, or the careening heartache of that moment on the front stairs. Instead, Will had looked up him, hands still flat on his back, and said, I can’t believe you missed Ghostbusters.

And Mike, lying through the ringing in his ears, had asked, What’s Ghostbusters?  

“Alright, we have scrambled eggs, and we have the world’s tiniest pancakes.” Joyce peers around the doorway, an egg-spattered spatula in one hand and a fleck of white shell on her cheek.

A call from behind her, gruff as ever: “Just eat two at a time!” Hopper. For the first time since waking, Mike notices the clamor filtering in from the rest of the house, and a hum of irritation prods at him. He wants to run, or hide, or shout.  

El seems to sense it, and she pulls back, rising to her feet. “Coffee?” Calm, helpful.

“Yeah.” He nods, scrubbing a hand over his face, but a creaking tread on the stairs stops him, and he looks up and over, breath stalling.

Wet hair, cheeks flushed from hot water. Will pauses, lips pressed together – then, he smiles.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” Mike repeats, softer, as the distance closes. Something in his stomach mourns for those quiet, pre-dawn hours, and only when El and Joyce leave the room, disappearing back into the kitchen in search of coffee mugs, does it feel somewhat quelled. He sits all the way up, running fingers through his tangled hair.

“Hopper wants to talk to you again.” Will perches on the end of the sofa, too many feet away. “They’re all being sneaky about it.”   

They aren’t. They never were, starting from last night. After Will’s retreat, Mike had spent hours sitting on this same couch, feeling like a psychologist’s patient, squirming under a magnifying lens. He’s known the police weren’t done with him from the moment they left the station.

“It’s not like it’s gonna help,” he answers, and he knows it’s too bitter, too full of vitriol, but he can’t pacify it. He just wants to go home, and not to his mom’s new apartment in Louisville.

“…Yeah.” Will swallows, looking down at socked feet. His posture is almost rigid under an oversized T-shirt, and Mike can read him like a book, even after months apart.

He doesn’t believe the story. Nobody does.

“Will-” Mike moves to follow, reeling and lightheaded, but before he can say anything else-

Ding.

Five heads turn towards the front door – six, as Mike’s mom emerges from the back bathroom, a toothbrush frothing in her mouth. The bell rings again – ding – and this time, is followed by a pounding against the wood.

“I’ll get it!” El springs forward from the kitchen, full of jubilant energy. Hopper follows, considerably less jubilant.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

Anxiety swells in Mike’s stomach, pushing at floodgates. The knob squeaks, metal on metal, as Hopper reluctantly opens the door, letting in whatever villain has caught on to their situation; Dr. Brenner, maybe, or one of his goons from the lab. Something worse, something there to finish the job from the highway.

“Holy shit! Holy fucking shit!”

Dustin Henderson stands frozen on the stoop, first still raised in position, eyes zeroed in past Hopper, to where Mike stands behind the coffee table in too-small pajamas. After only a moment, a second pair of hands wrestle Dustin to the side, frantic and determined.

“Mike?!” Lucas shoves for a spot, slack jawed. Both boys’ eyes are moon-wide, their expressions frozen. The magnifying glass strengthens, pinpoint sun gleaming in, and Mike shrinks a bit under the heat.

“What part of ‘confidential’ didn’t you understand?” It isn’t directed at either of the boys; instead, Hopper peers over their heads towards a third face on the front steps, freckled and innocent.

“It wasn’t me,” Max argues, stepping around both of her friends and into the warm house. Her eyes flick over at Mike, uncharacteristically apologetic. “It was Lisa Brighton. Her brother works for the police.” Barry, a spindly guy with perpetual braces, a couple years ahead of Nancy. Mike remembers seeing him at the station, fumbling with paperwork behind the front desk.

Hopper groans and moves back towards his mug of coffee, letting Lucas and Dustin pile in through the door. A struggle of snow-dusted parkas and long limbs ensues, before Lucas triumphs, entering the room with raw wonder in his eyes. Behind him, Dustin looks close to tears. Discomfort spins faster and faster in Mike’s stomach. He had wanted to see them, but not like this. Not like he’s some kind of phenomenon. Not like his friends’ hearts are breaking all over again.

“Dude,” Lucas breaths. His hair is buzzed closer than Mike remembers, but he can’t say if it’s new; he’s seen his remaining friends so infrequently since October. “You’re okay?”

“We missed you so much, man.” A plump tear vanishes down Dustin’s cheek as he steps forward, his smile half wonder and half hesitation. “Where have you-”

“Hey, hey.” Joyce sets down her spatula and scurries into the den, a force of order and control. “He already got the third degree from Hop. No questions right now.”

Mike shoots her a grateful glance, trying to keep the dread off his face. Everything in his head is racing, racing, racing, but he feels frozen, incapable of speech. The boundless, agitated high of the last few days has crashed, and all he wants to do is escape.

A quick meeting of shifting eyes is all it takes. El looks, heartbreakingly kind, like she’s trying to quell the dark thing in his chest, like she can still feel what he’s thinking. Then, she looks over at their unexpected company, and grins.

“We’re having tiny pancakes,” she announces. “Coffee?”  

Chapter Text

❝ I am nowhere. I have left my world behind, and have not yet found another. That is the tragic adventure. I have departed, but not yet arrived. ❞

Jean-Marie G. Le Clezio, The Book of Flights

Side B. 

December 12, 1985

“Ms. McDonald isn’t the best teacher. She’s just the blondest.”

A pancake-laden fork punctuates the point, dripping syrup onto Max’s placemat. Her claim is met with a clamor of disapproval, adding to the comfortable hum of the breakfast table.

“Blonde people can’t be good teachers, now?” Dustin sneers, eyes scrunching up into half-moons, but it’s good-natured. He presses a friendly elbow against Mike, who’s watching the whole scene with something between amusement and overload.

Lucas makes an obstinate grab for the saltshaker. “You just like Mr. Brown ‘cause of his beard.”

“Only one I’ll ever see,” Max retorts, to a smatter of appreciative oohs.

The Byers’ dining room table seats eight – three teenagers, two parents, and a carousel of rotating guests, in seats topped by faded needlepoint. Mismatched chairs wedge between claustrophobic arms, a satellite band of voices that just add to the tension in Mike’s shoulders. He looks up from his plate and makes eye contact with his mom from across the swath of serving plates; she smiles, easy and kind. It makes him want to cry, somehow.

“Are you two back together?” Nancy asks; the Wheeler women are the only ones touching the provided knives, slicing their pancakes into tidy strips.

“Since last week,” Dustin answers around a full mouth. “Their record’s two months.” Then, with a turn towards Mike, “Can you believe he was the first one to get a girlfriend?” It earns him a swat from Lucas.

Mike opens his mouth, protest ready – then, just as quietly, he shuts it.

It didn’t happen like that here. He never kissed El in a school gym, hands around the waist of a satin dress. He never sat next to her on a lumpy couch, Raiders of the Lost Ark half-muted on the television, and asked if he could be her boyfriend someday. She never said yes.

Max blessedly breaks the silence: “I can’t.” Another round of laughter, light and carefree. It cuts right through Mike’s stomach like nausea, and he struggles to swallow his bite of pancake, suddenly dry and thick in his throat. The gentle commotion prickles in his chest – too loud, too harsh, every sound a shock of electricity.

He shoves his chair back, hands planted on the edge of the table, wincing at the monstrous scrape against the wooden floors.

“I’m-” They’re all looking at him, and he wants to disappear. He wants to run out the back door and keep running until he finds air that his lungs will accept. “I’ll be right back.”

The bathroom is muggy, the mirror steamed with floral heat from a recent shower. Mike flicks on the lights and sinks to the floor the second the lock clicks, his back pressed against the wall. It’s a pose he recognizes, arms wrapped in a vice grip around his knobby knees, and for a wild second all he can think of is Halloween, more than a year ago. Will, sucking in desperate breaths, shaking in a tan jumpsuit. Is this what it feels like? Is the air about to go thick and green, dense with spores?

He squeezes his eyes shut, and tugs at his tangled hair, trying to feel something other than the crushing pressure in his chest. His thoughts are a spinning loop, vicious and confusing: warm laughter at the table, his mom’s warm eyes, Dustin’s teasing grin. Everyone he loves, wrapped around him in one orbit, doting and caring in a way that feels so alien from the cold heartbreak of home.

Everyone he loves, and everyone he’s lying to. Everyone he’s going to hurt if the truth comes out, if they find out that their wayward, prodigal boy really is lost to them, really did kill himself in an act of needless heroism.

Mike rubs his hands over his face, and opens his eyes.

And the world turns sideways.

For a moment, it’s simple. His eyes open to pure black, all-encompassing darkness, and he thinks: the power is out. This is an old house, with old wiring, and Hawkins’ power lines have just been hit with a few good inches of snow and ice. The possible answers are plentiful, and logic overtakes panic long enough to suck in a good breath and push his self-pity aside. Mike pushes off of the floor, using the toilet’s edge for support, and reaches resolutely for the doorknob.

The next thing he notices is the silence. Even from the bathroom floor, he had been able to hear the breakfast chatter, like white noise from a radio. Now, the only sound is the persistent ticking of a clock, somewhere in the dark kitchen. He takes a careful step forward, and then another, like the creak of a floorboard might attract danger.

Fear doesn’t start to creep in until he reaches the threshold, and the doorway to the dining room becomes visible.

Dark. Empty. No sign of the Byers’, or his mom, or his friends. No heaping plates of breakfast food, no scent of syrup and eggs. The only thing in the room is a small, round table, draped in lace, enclosed by three chairs.

Mike takes a step backwards, towards the bathroom door. Maybe the answer is there, cowering behind the closed door. Maybe he can reverse the process, undo whatever it is that’s happened. He turns around, heart pounding – and freezes.

There’s a woman in the doorway to the back bedroom.

She looks as old as his grandmother, her hair scant and wiry, her frail fingers clutching the hand rims of her wheelchair. He thinks for a moment that she might scream and prepares himself to lie for his life. Sorry, wrong house.

What Mike isn’t prepared for is the woman reaching behind the doorframe, just out of view, and returning with a shotgun.

“I’m leaving, I’m going!” He stumbles backwards, the twin muzzles glaring like a second set of furious eyes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-”

The woman replies with a shake of the gun, and a stream of Spanish that Mike can’t understand. He doesn’t bother with further apologies, instead raising his hands in a pose of deference and hauling to the back door as quickly as possible.

That’s it, I’m crazy, he thinks, rushing out onto the back porch. I hallucinated the whole thing. Maybe he hit his head in the crash and has just been in this lady’s house the whole time. Maybe he’s still there in the ditch, bleeding out into the brown grass.

The snow crunches under his bare feet, and the resulting swear comes out in a puff of white. It’s not as cold as it was yesterday, but it’s still goddamn cold, and he’s not too addled to recognize the badness of this situation. The woman inside has probably already called the police, and Mike needs to find somewhere to hide that won’t give him frostbite. Losing his mind might be inevitable, but he’d rather not lose toes on top of that.

He’s halfway to the edge of the yard, looking out at the blank, white field, when the back door opens behind him. His chest clenches up, expecting a husband or a son, shotgun blazing.

It’s Nancy.

“Mike?” The concern in her voice is indisputable. She looks like she’s watching her own heart break. “Where the hell are you going?”

Side A. 

“A dog?”

Dustin asks it around a mouthful of fries; a dab of ketchup sits, unnoticed, at the corner of his frown.

“But huge,” Max confirms. She’s busy working her hair into a braid, half a box of cooling McNuggets already systematically devoured from a plastic tray. Lucas listens, visualizes, mulls over the words.

“And it was right there, where-” he starts, but his girlfriend cuts him off.

“Right where they found the bike.” She had told them she had news, but Lucas hadn’t expected this. “Maybe it’s connected, right?”

It comes as a vague surprise when Dustin, usually first to get caught up in the intrigue and excitement of a cryptozoological mystery, doesn’t reply. He just takes a sip of his soda, the end dregs bubbling at the base of the straw, and frowns at the neighboring table. The glances the trio have been receiving all day haven’t gone unnoticed, landing somewhere between pity and interest. For the second time in as many years, they’re The Missing Boy’s Friends.

“Told you guys we should have eaten at my house,” Dustin mutters. Lucas ignores the flare of annoyance that flashes through his chest, and turns towards Max.

“So,” he continues, “If some monster’s got him-”

“Woah, I didn’t say it was a monster.” A forehead full of freckles scrunches up in obvious disdain. “I said it was something. Besides, they said they knew-”

“A dog the size of a van sounds kind of like a monster to me!”

Max tips her head back, irritated. “Maybe it was a bear, I don’t know.”

“Since when does a bear sprint?” Dustin finally adds, though his heart isn’t into it. That seems to be the tipping point; Max crosses her arms over her chest, summoning up a closing retort.

“I said maybe,” she snaps, an exasperated sigh almost audible in the short words. Sensing the opening notes of an ongoing feud, Lucas lets out a frustrated breath and concedes.

“Okay, we’ll put it on the list, and we’ll keep looking.” He makes a mental addition, in Max’s penciled chicken scratch: Dog-bear-monster. “And what else? What were you saying they knew?”

“What happened to him.”

There’s a harsh squeak, like nails on a chalkboard, as Dustin abruptly pushes his chair out. He picks up his cup, crushing it a bit in his hand. “I’m gonna get more Sprite.” His voice is good-natured, but clearly stilted.

They both watch him for a moment, bickering halted in favor of tense concern. Lucas is about to turn back to his tray when Max touches his arm, nudging his attention back across the restaurant. Dustin’s bypassed the soda fountain entirely, and his mess of curly hair is disappearing through the bathroom door.

“Shit,” Lucas says. He stands up, snagging the attention of at least a dozen nosy diners. “Look, I’ll see you later, okay?”

Max nods, eyes gentle. “Go get him, stalker.”

The McDonalds’ restroom is small and dim, half in shadow from a burned-out light. Dustin stands against the glossy, cream-colored cinderblocks, a paper towel held to his pinched eyes. Even from the doorway, Lucas can recognize the wet rattle of tears.

“What’s up?” It comes out too loud. When Dustin just shakes his head, Lucas adds, “It’s okay, man. You can tell me anything.” He can’t pretend that he hasn’t felt the distance this last year – the distance between all of them – but he can choose to fix it. This is him, fixing. Calling the shots, in Mike’s absence.

Without moving the paper towel, Dustin finally mumbles, “What if it’s not monsters?”

“What-”

“I mean, what if it has nothing to do with the Upside Down, this time?” Finally, Dustin uncovers miserable, red-rimmed eyes. There’s an exhaustion in his words that makes Lucas feel like shit. He’s taking it really hard, Max had said, the night before last. They shouldn’t have let it drop. They should have done more, but-

“Come on,” he tries, half-assing a smile. “Mike wouldn’t just leave. He’d tell us first.”

Blinking hard, Dustin shakes his head. “He left before, in fifth grade!” A hazy memory, their moms all fretting over something that passed, an almost-disaster over in an afternoon. None of them talked about it, just like they didn’t talk about how easily Mike fell into his moods, or how sometimes there was no getting through to him at all.

He swallows, stomach churning. “Yeah, but-”

“And then there was the cliff.” The way Dustin says it, it may as well be capitalized. Something vitally, gravely important. Lucas searches his memory, then frowns.

“When El caught him?” Troy, a knife, the old quarry. An oft-repeated victory cycled into legend.

But Dustin doesn’t answer. There’s a twitch, and a sniff, and suddenly his face is twisting back up into anguish. A fresh set of tears start to track down his round cheeks as he yelps out, “He just jumped! He didn’t even look scared!”

Lucas steps closer, brow furrowed. He knows the story by heart, but the point doesn’t land. What does that awful, insane day have to do with this? “He was trying to save you,” he says, confused, but it already feels empty, like he’s piling more glue onto something that’s already falling apart.

“My teeth!” Dustin insists, voice edging on hysteria. “Who would die for teeth?”

A hero, Lucas would have said two years ago. He’d sure thought so the first time Dustin told the story, grubby hands gesticulating under hospital lights. Mike, brave and selfless, saving Dustin from a bully. Mike, twelve years old, accepting death without a tremble. They’d all been too wired to notice the cracks in their thesis. Even Dustin, who would have gladly traded his teeth to see Mike safe, was caught up in the sleepless relief of winning.

Lucas’ stomach goes cold.

“Someone who loves his friends,” he finally says, quiet and neutral. What would Mike say? What would Mike do right now?  “Someone who’d do anything to help them.”

He may as well have recited nursery rhymes; Dustin just looks down at the grody tiles, and wipes his nose on the rough, brown paper. “We should have told somebody. We should have told an adult.” An adult. Like they’re little kids, too small in a world controlled by their parents.

“There was a lot going on, man.” And who could they have told? Who would have helped? “And there’s no telling why he did that. He’s always been-”

“Stupid.” For the first time, Dustin looks up, bleary eyes meeting Lucas’. One of the remaining lights flickers. “What do you think happened? This time?”

Voices trickle in from outside; Lucas edges in front of the doorway, like he could somehow protect Dustin from any intrusion. “I don’t know,” he answers, achingly honest. “Maybe we should do what we did before. Take the Mike Wheeler approach.”

Finally, blessedly, Dustin smiles. It’s half-hearted, but it’s something. “Walk around in the woods like dumbasses?”

“At night.”

“In a fucking thunderstorm.”

Their wet laughter is drowned out by the door swinging in, and Dustin darts to throw away his towel, face bowed and hidden. The two push against the influx of a toddler-laden family and out into the restaurant.

“We’re gonna do it, okay?” Lucas looks down, resting a hand on Dustin’s shoulder, and tries to believe himself. For just a moment, Mike’s voice overlays his own in his mind, and he does. “We’re gonna find out why he left, and where he went, and we’ll- we’ll get him back, man. I swear.”

Side B. 

Jonathan’s room lacks the cold, grey professionalism of the station’s interrogation table, but it works in a pinch. The trio shuffles in – Mike, his mom, the Chief – under an audience of posters, alt-rock legends looking on in judgment as the guilty party sits down on the plaid blanket, twisting his hands. His feet still prickle with phantom snow.

“You’re still sticking with your story from yesterday?” Hopper leans against the wall, a broad-shouldered barrier between the bed and the door. The look on his face isn’t one Mike is used to, and it makes his stomach turn. It’s quieter, almost careful. A wary adult dealing with a child they don’t understand.

“I don’t know,” Mike answers, stubborn but truthful. His mom sits down beside him, plain concern in her eyes. She’s still not wearing any makeup, and her hair is knotted into a fraying tie.

There’s a clamor in the kitchen, dishes and voices and the trill of a phone. Hopper moves closer, like a microscope lens focusing in on a subject. “You don’t know what?”

“I don’t know what happened.” Frustration, coughed out into sharp words. It’s the plainest lie he’s told, and Mike can feel its rejection immediately, in the way his mom brings a hand to her temple, the way Hopper shuffles his notepad. The air is muggy with discomfort.

“Look, Mike.” Hopper runs a hand over his eyes. He doesn’t look like he’s had much sleep, if any. “This isn’t an interrogation. You’re not a suspect. You can just… take it easy.”

A bubble of laughter, sharp and hysterical, stops itself in Mike’s throat. Easy? Really? He’s halfway convinced that he’s just hallucinated someone’s grandmother pointing a gun at him in the kitchen, and he’s supposed to take it easy?

“Now, there’s a guy named Dr. Owens,” Hopper continues, kneeling down with a pop of his joints. “He used to see Will, after what happened in ’83, and I think it’s a good idea if he checks you over.”

The air in Mike’s lungs goes to ice. “For what?” He knows about Dr. Owens. He knows Dr. Owens, just like he knows what someone’s death throes sound like after they’ve been mauled to shreds.

“Anything that might explain where you’ve been. He knows about the Upside Down.”

“He hasn’t been to the Upside Down,” Mike’s mom cuts in, sitting up straighter, and if it weren’t for the rush of panic flooding Mike’s chest, he might realize why the words sound wrong in her voice. He might make sense of it faster. Instead, he just shakes his head blindly, eyes fixed on the floor. In the wood’s knots and fibers, he can almost make out the front doors of the lab, gaping open, spewing out horrible noises. The ice has moved to his stomach, wrapped a fist around his entire abdomen. Wildly, he wishes that his mom would hug him.

“I haven’t.” Not since the tunnels, but then… did that even happen here, without him to suggest it? How did they save Will and El that night? It’s not like he can ask without giving himself away. Shit, he’s going to have to be careful, and that’s hard to do when your mind feels like a train shaking apart. “I haven’t even seen it.”

But something in Hopper’s eyes is too knowing when he leans in, and for the first time Mike can almost imagine how El loved him. There’s no anger in his face, none of the spitting disdain he showed for his daughter’s no-good rascal of a boyfriend. He looks like a father, and not for the first time Mike thinks back to that awful night at the Byers’ house, to hoarse shouting that faded and broke and shook until strong arms looped around his back and held him together.

“I’m not here to be the bad cop,” Hopper says. “I’m here because I want to help. I want you to be safe.”

Mike shakes his head, blinking frantically. “I do feel safe.” And it’s hardly a lie, because he’s not sure what he feels. Nothing makes sense, in or out of his head. He’s unmoored, unrooted, lost in space. His mom slides a hand over his elbow, and somewhere a phone rings again. He hears it through cotton. Outside of the door, the Byers household is still bustling, and Mike feels like the kid who got sick at the sleepover, ushered away from awkward, pitying eyes.

The look Hopper gives him isn’t pity, and it isn’t suspicion, but it’s spread somewhere between. “And that’s why you ran barefoot into the snow this morning?” Blunt, almost challenging.

“I wasn’t- I-” Two sets of eyes on Mike, and he wants to bolt. But where would he go? Back out to his friends? Will they even want to see him? “I freaked out. It was nothing.”

A short knock on the door saves him from the next question; when Joyce slips her head in Mike feels his body deflate with relief, a safe warmth no one else has yet provided.

“Hop? Flo’s on the phone.” Something about her exasperation makes it clear that this wasn’t the first call, and Hopper seems to pick up on it. With a gruff sigh he stands up and makes for the bedroom door, casting a final look back at Mike.

“You good, kid? Five minutes?”

Mike nods and tucks his restless hands under his thighs. The door swings halfway closed behind Hopper and Joyce. Mike feels the bed shift next to him, hears his mother say something about a cup of hot chocolate, and then, with another stream of fluorescence across the bedroom floor, he’s alone. He flops back on the bed, sucks in a grounding breath, and closes his eyes.

Joyce’s voice, filtering in from the kitchen, opens them.

“Linda Ballard, down towards Anoka.” It’s hushed, clearly meant to be kept private. “Just found two of her horses dead.”

A huff of breath from Hopper. “I’m not goddamn Fish and Wildlife.”

“Hop, they were-” They were what? “You should really talk to Flo.”

Holding himself still as death, Mike pushes off of the mattress, willing it not to creak. Something is spinning to life in the back of his mind, an old windmill beginning to turn after months of dormancy, tugging at the hair on the back of his neck.

It’s starting. It’s starting again.

He’s just made it to the door, the kitchen a thin strip of light beyond the hall, when he hears his mother’s voice, timid and horrified in a way he’s never known: “They’re back, aren’t they? The monsters?”

Side A. 

“He wouldn’t say what they think happened?”

Will shoves aside Jonathan’s comforter, making himself small in the far corner of the couch. The narrow front stretch of the Greenwood house is a revolving stage of spaces: his brother’s bedroom, a basecamp for fretting over Mike, a backdrop for every fierce argument in their two months here. Right now, it’s a dining hall; two Byers’ and one Hopper balance plates of lasagna in their laps, as precarious as the conversation, while the evening news flashes blue on the TV screen.

“Just that they think they solved it,” Jonathan answers from the armchair. “Nance is gonna call.” The anchorwoman switches into a discordant fast food jingle, and Jonathan reaches for the remote, bumping the volume down a couple of notches.

Next to Will, El is a knot of limbs and nerves. She squints at the television, eyeing cartoon hamburgers as though they might make sense of something, and then murmurs, “Did someone hurt him?” It’s halting and brief, a little uncertain. Her words never come out as smoothly around a vice grip of fear.

“We don’t know that,” Will is quick to answer. “All they have is the bike.” His mom passes by the kitchen doorway, tomato-splattered spatula in hand, and he lowers his voice. She hasn’t wanted them speculating, wandering down rabbit holes that only lead to panic and hopelessness, but Will can’t just stop. The more possibilities he considers, the closer he comes to landing on the right one. Or at least, that’s what he thinks Mr. Clarke would say.

Jonathan hums in half-agreement. “That’s all they’ve said they have.”

El’s eyes, flickering blue in the light, go wide. “Would they lie?” She has one frame of reference for law enforcement, and he was laid to rest a hero to the last step. The uselessness of the team who took his place continues to baffle her, each time they speak with Nancy.

“Sometimes they keep secrets,” Jonathan tries to explain, setting down his fork. “That way, if someone says one of the secrets, they know he was involved.” He says it like he’s explaining the color of the sky to a child, and it rubs Will the wrong way. Jonathan’s a great brother, but he takes El at face value, like her trouble communicating indicates a trouble understanding.

“Okay, turn that off.” Their mom bustles into the living room, her own plate steaming in one hand, hair frizzing out of its ponytail. There’s a pinprick stain of sauce on her work shirt. “No one’s called?”

“Not yet,” Jonathan answers, glancing at the clock.

Impatience and frustration bubble up in Will’s chest, and he barely feels himself adding, “Their parents don’t even care.” It comes out like poison, immediately turning on him.

“Will!” Joyce Byers rarely scolds, but her sharp, scandalized reaction comes close. It’s tinged with concern, though, recognizing the uncharacteristic prickliness in Will’s attitude. “How could you say that?”

Because I’ve been to their house, he wants to say. I’ve seen the way they talk to him. But before he say anything else he’s sure to feel bad about later, there’s a series of rapid-fire knocks on the front door. Jonathan peers out the window, eyes widening at what he sees, and rushes to unlock the bolt.

“Nancy!” Jonathan ushers her into the house. “I thought you were-”

“I had to get out of there.” Her cheeks are pale, but her nose is red from the cold. Behind her, Will can see the Wheelers’ station wagon parked on the street.

“Oh, sweetheart.” Joyce sets down her plate and rushes over to wrap her arms around the girl. “Stay here as long as you like.” From dining hall, back to basecamp. Will knows he’ll be sleeping on the living room floor tonight.

“Did you find out anything?” he asks. Next to him, El sits up straighter, already waiting on needles for a reply.

For a moment, Nancy looks hesitant, eyes flicking between Jonathan and Joyce. When it was the Upside Down, information was passed readily, without regard for age or maturity. Will knows they think it’s different now, but the discrepancy makes him want to scream. They don’t know it’s not the Mind Flayer. And even if they’re right, and it isn’t, how does that make it any less of the kids’ business? Mike is always Will’s business.

“They think he just left it,” Nancy finally says, her voice brimming with fury, hoarse with exhaustion.

Jonathan screws up his brow, incredulous. “What?”

“His bike. They think he got hit, and just- left the scene.” Her footfalls heavy with annoyance, Nancy moves to sit on chair arm. Exhausted as she looks, her voice is tense and wired with fierce energy. “It’s all- it’s bullshit.”

Will doesn't need to ask why. You don't walk away from a hit that turns your bike into scrap metal.

“How’s your mom doing?” his mom asks, looking back as she heads towards the kitchen. Despite her gentle tone however, it seems to ignite something else in Nancy. This is a girl who’s clearly been simmering all day, and she’s finally getting the chance to let loose.

“I can’t even talk to her about it!” She stands up and starts to kick off her shoes. “She believes whatever the police say. She’ll believe anyone’s theories as long as she doesn’t have to feel like it’s her fault. And my dad-”

But Will’s catharsis is cut short. Even in the face of such an outburst, he watches his mom’s eyes fill with kindness. “Go easy on them, honey,” she says from the doorway. “They’re going through one of the worst things a parent can face.”

Everyone in the room knows precisely what she’s talking about, and it sends a shiver of discomfort through Will’s stomach. He looks down at his plate and pinches his eyes closed. As much as his mom tries to relate though, he knows in his gut that she’s off-base. She did everything in her power to bring him home, while Mike’s mom would rather listen to the police and feel sorry for herself. If she was worth half of Will’s mom, she’d be out combing the woods day and night. She’d be working herself bone-tired to bring her son home.

Unexpectedly, El is the one to break the uncomfortable silence that follows, when she leans forward and asks, “You saw a monster?” Max had called them just a couple of hours ago, after the longest day in recorded history, talking a mile a second about Nancy and a cop and a giant dog. Blessedly, Nancy doesn’t hesitate in answering.

“Yeah.” She rubs a fist across her eyes. “Me and Max.” There’s a level of conviction missing from her voice. Back in July, she was a spearhead. Now, she seems unsure of her own beliefs.

“Did you tell the police?” Will asks, though he already knows the answer.

“I would’ve been laughed out of the station. They’re basically zero help without Hopper.”

El shoves her lasagna around with her fork, tipping her head in a failed attempt to hide dampening eyes. It’s a step forward from summer, but grief is a long-lived beast. “He didn’t like Mike,” she manages, and it’s as fond as it is wounded.

Will’s mom returns with a plate for Nancy, just in time to hear the quiet remark. Her brows furrow up. “He cared about Mike, sweetie. He was just protective of you. That’s how parents are.” She passes the plate off and stops to run a hand through El’s hair, longer and curlier by the month. “Now eat up. Food’s gonna get cold.”

Blinking away the traitorous beginning of a tear, Will shovels in a bite of lasagna. He tastes nothing. His thoughts keep bouncing, a game of ping pong between a shadowy beast and an empty road and a bike twisted around itself. For a wild, dizzy moment, he thinks back to Hopper’s fierce protection, and wonders if his mom will ever act that way over him, if someone will ever love him so much that she wants to wrap him up tight and keep him to herself. He’s not quite sure which part he can’t imagine.

Nancy sits down on the couch, creaking its springs, and reaches out to touch El’s shoulder. “We’ll get him home, okay? We’re not gonna give up.” Jonathan joins in, smiling warmly at Eleven, and then their mom offers something soothing, and in the pit of his stomach Will just wants to cry. He wants to fall apart. He wants to be seen, and held, and comforted, like the grieving girlfriend. Because everyone who knows them knows how she hurts. Everyone can imagine what she’s going through, if not from life then from tragic movies or heart-wrenching news stories. It’s familiar. Girl loves boy, boy loves girl, one loses the other.

There’s no blockbuster movie for what Will feels. He has no right to more grief than their other friends. No one’s ever going to look at him and just know that his entire world has been thrown out of its orbit. He can never tell anyone how, at fourteen, he feels like his life has already ended a third time over.

He can never tell anyone anything at all.

Side B. 

December 13, 1985

The meager lot in front of Family Video is stark empty when Robin drives up in her mom’s sedan. A thin layer of ice sluices off of the window when she slams the door, the too-early hour palpable in her bones. Her trudge to the front door is a zombie shuffle, pausing only to pick the damp newspaper up from the front mat.

“Hey, Deborah?” The smell of popcorn and carpet cleaner greets her as she pushes through the door, fingers already unfolding the paper. Her target: movie showtimes. She’s dragging Steve to see A Chorus Line if she has to beg. “Have you seen my book-bag? I think I left it last night.”

Her coworker shouts something indistinct from the back room, and Robin starts down the aisle. A poster of Chevy Chase makes a face at her, and she makes it right back.

Then she glances down at the paper in her hands, and her whole body freezes.

“Holy shit.”

The walk back to the front desk takes all of two seconds. She spreads the paper out, eyes scanning as quick as her fingers can punch out seven familiar digits on the shitty phone. There are several seconds of staticky tone, a couple of whispered curses, and-

“Hello?” Slurred, barely awake. Typical Harrington.

“Haul your ass out of bed, dipshit.” She’s practically vibrating in her sneakers. From the desk, a full-color photo of a seventh-grader’s toothy grin looks up at her. “They found Nancy’s brother.”

Chapter Text

❝ When you come back you will not be you. And I may not be I. ❞

E.M. Forster, The Life to Come and Other Stories

Side B. 

December 13, 1985

“Doing alright?”

The couch creaks, dipping minutely. Mike watches his mom sit, his sleep-rimmed eyes behind a paperback from Will’s room; The Hobbit, soft and worn and conspicuously lacking a couple of familiar dwarves. He’s thought briefly about pocketing it, taking it back to his own world as proof for his friends, but it feels wrong. Stealing from Will would surely be a cardinal sin if any of them believed in that sort of thing.

“I’m fine,” he answers, a moment too late and a pinch too dull to be convincing. His fingers fiddle with a lovingly dog-eared corner.

“I bet you could recite those books from memory, by now.” His mom spreads a page of newsprint out in front of her, headed by a coffee-smudged CLASSIFIEDS. One bare nail tracks through the job ads, down to the tiny, black-and-white photos of houses. Then, farther down, the rooms and apartments. Someone’s basement all the way out down in Walton. He looks back at his book, trying not to spy, but the close distance is stifling. Then, blessedly breaking the stretch of silence, “Roosevelt Drive… That’s over by the mall, right?”

For a perilous second, Mike nearly agrees. He catches his chin dipping into a nod, and only manages to hitch his shoulders up into a shrug at the last second. “I don’t-”

“Oh.” His mom at least has the grace to look uncomfortable by the blunder. “Mall’s new. Or it was.”

Mike halfway expects this to be it , the moment she comes out and tells him that she knows, that she’s always known. He isn’t hers, he isn’t the right one, he’s an imposter. His stomach turns, and he gathers his knees close to his chest, pushing down anxiety that’s as familiar as oxygen, and then –

She keeps talking.

“It was over by the Dairy Queen.” A quick reach towards a side table, a perfect circle penciled around one listing. “They built it on top of those old baseball fields. Remember going out there with Nancy and your dad?”

He does. If he closes his eyes and thinks hard enough, he can still feel the scratchy grass at his ankles. He can see the orange sunset over the red trees, coloring the rusting backstop. He can feel his dad’s hands guiding his first pedals on a bicycle, years before he knew what it’s like to stand in front of him and feel utterly invisible. 

“Mom?” It sounds like it’s coming over a radio. He doesn’t look up from his book.

“Hm?” Unsuspecting, but attentive. The paper goes down, flat across tucked legs.

Okay, breathe. You can do this. You can- “How do you know about the Upside Down?”

To his mom’s credit, she doesn’t look surprised. She doesn’t close off or clam up. She just brushes a stray, undyed strand from her eyes, and levels a soft gaze at Mike. Meeting it feels like comfort, like a kind arm around his shoulder.

“Nancy told me,” she finally says, quieter than before.

Mike looks up. “Nancy?” It’s no more surprising than any other option, but he wouldn’t have put money on it. He was expecting Mrs. Byers, or maybe his friends. As much trouble as he’s had getting along with their parents lately, most of it has been through his own silence. Nancy’s never given them that courtesy, arguing back loudly at every turn.

His mom nods, the edges of her face beginning to crinkle up. When she speaks, her voice is unsteady. “That night, after…” After you disappeared, Mike fills in. After you jumped. “She thought, maybe-”

She thought Mike might be there, in the Upside Down. Trapped, the same way that Will had been. His stomach turns, guilt twisting and clawing, and he isn’t even sure why. It wasn’t him who left them. It wasn’t his fault. Maybe the thought had crossed his mind, halfway through grim, sleepless nights, but it was always passing, always brushed off like a mosquito. A curiosity easily ignored. He’d never… He wouldn’t -

But he did.

All he can manage to say is, “Oh.”

His mom sniffs, damp and indiscreet. She folds the newspaper and slips it onto the side table. “I didn’t believe any of it, at first.”

It's unsurprising. “What changed your mind?” Mike asks. He feels a million miles away from his body. In the back of his mind, he almost expects the room to change again.

“Probably Dustin’s imitation of that Demongorgon thing.” She smiles halfheartedly, breaking as if for canned laughter. Nonetheless, Mike feels a tug of fondness. “And I saw how scared your sister was, when she thought you were still in that place. I’d never seen her that scared of anything. We went over to Joyce’s, and she called a big meeting and let the kids act it all out for me.”

He can picture it perfectly: the Byers’ house as it was in 1983, a mess of Christmas lights and painted walls and overturned furniture. His mom in the middle of it, with her sprayed hair and her department store coat, sitting politely on the edge of a ruined sofa. But then, maybe that woman was already gone. Maybe she had already scraped off her makeup and her jewelry, traded her romance novels for newsprint and her satin pajamas for sweatshirts. Or maybe she was never like his old mom, here. Maybe she was always attentive, always watching Mike with implausible tenderness and wrapping an arm around Nancy’s shoulders.

Is it their fault for keeping secrets from her? Is that why she changed, back home?

Mike fiddles more with the book, fingers accidentally ripping the edge of one page. “We thought we’d get in trouble if someone found out.” It seems so stupid, now. Everything about that first year feels small in hindsight, even the Demogorgon. That thing they saw over the summer could have crushed it with one tendril. 

“It’s okay, sweetie.” His mom leans closer, the cushion crinkling under her palm. The corners of her eyes glint with tears, and Mike has to look away. “No one’s mad. I only ever wanted you safe. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

“I know,” Mike replies, but he doesn’t know if he means it. Has he ever really known that? Is that his fault too, for pushing his parents away so long ago? They had shown up at the mall, his mom hovering, bewildered, and his dad questioning the paramedics like they had any answers, but by that point he had been gone from his own head, caught up in El’s grief, in his own grief. Despite their fiercest, ugliest arguments, Hopper had made him feel safer than his parents had ever managed, and the loss had gripped his throat like a fist. 

“Whatever happened, these last two years…” His mom smells like coffee, like the Byers’ dish detergent, like a home Mike’s always known but never associated with her. “You can tell us. We’re all taking your lead, baby.”

The affection in her voice cuts right to Mike’s core. He drops the book, twisting his hands together in his lap. “I know,” he echoes again. “I just-”

A beat of patient silence. “You just what?”

I just don’t want to hurt you. I’m always hurting people. “It’s all mixed up in my head.” Not a lie. “I feel like I’m crazy.”

“We’re gonna figure it out,” his mom answers, and it feels better than it has any right to. He’s not entitled to take any comfort from this, not when he’s an imposter. “It’s gonna be fine, baby.” Then she opens her arms, and she smiles like Mike remembers from so very long ago, and he finally relents to the aching in his chest. He’s across the couch in seconds, burying his face in her too-limp hair, letting her pull him close like he’s a child awoken from a nightmare.

“I’m gonna go get Holly this weekend,” she continues, stroking a hand down Mike’s back. He feels himself shake, and faintly notices that he’s starting to cry, but it’s all through a fog. He’s watching himself from deep in his own head, as if on a movie screen. “I’ll look for a job, and we’ll get an apartment, and we’ll work everything out. It’ll be a little family again. Don’t you worry about a thing.”

Mike breathes in, breathes out, and shudders into silent, earnest tears. His mom’s arms tighten around him.

“I love you.”

Mike opens his eyes.

“I love you so much, sweetheart.”

“I-” He chokes, words freezing up in his throat. The panic in his eyes is hidden in soft cotton, but he knows his mom can feel it, the way he suddenly tenses under her hands. And the thing is, he wants to say it back. He wants that easy exchange, the one he’s witnessed time and time again in his friends’ families, a simple reminder at the front door or over the phone. He tries to remember the last time he heard it from either of his parents; with a shock of anguish, he comes up empty.

“I…” It wavers, and his mom finally starts to pull back, concern in her face, and everything that was so good just moments ago suddenly feels awful, and it’s all Mike’s fault, and-

The front door swings open, letting in a blast of winter air.

“Is that today’s paper?” Nancy is a mess of wind-blown hair and determination, hardly taking in the scene before stomping over to their mother’s discarded classifieds. There’s a drug store bag in one hand and a rolled-up newspaper in the other, twine still tied.

Mike extracts himself and pulls back over to the sofa arm, watching as his mom checks the date.

“Sunday’s. Why?”

Nancy shrugs out of her coat and passes the new one over. Friday morning edition. 

MISSING BOY FOUND ALIVE. The words stretch out over a picture of his face, childish and grinning in front of a middle school yearbook backdrop. The same one sits on his parents’ mantle back home, between matching shots of his sisters.

“How…” Their mom shakes her head, dazed, looking frozen between a million reactions.

“Same person who leaked it to Hawkins High, I’m guessing.” Nancy reaches into her plastic sack and pulls out a pack of cigarettes, slipping it into her pocket while she thinks no one’s looking; Mike does her the courtesy of pretending she’s right.

“Dammit.” Massaging her temple, their mom stands up and starts out of the room.

“At least they don’t know where we’re staying,” Nancy throws in, a Hail Mary called over her shoulder, but it gets no response.

The sound of flipping pages comes from the kitchen, and Mike turns to see his mom hauling the phone book onto the counter, next to drying breakfast plates. “I’m calling Joyce,” she says, voice distracted and anxious, panic seeping in at the edges. More of a disconcerting pantomime Mike has never seen before. 

Sighing, Nancy leans onto the back of the couch and gives Mike’s shoulder a light, tentative pat, like she’s not sure she’s allowed. He tries not to flinch in reaction. “Are you okay?” It’s uncomfortably pitying.

“Is Dad gonna see this?” Mike has been swallowing down that line of questioning for days now, unsure if he actually wants or needs to know the answer: Will Dad find out I’m back? Will he care? Whenever he tries, he can’t quite picture the reunion. A son who’d only been a burden, and a dad who’d given up on giving a shit. All he knows is that there will be no tearful hug, no “baby” or “sweetheart”, nothing that sends a soft, safe warmth through his chest for the first time in ages.

Nancy shrugs, her eyes sympathetic. “He’s up in Gary, with Uncle Rick.” An identically useless man with twin wire-frame glasses and antique political ideals.

“That’s a long way for Mom to bring him dinner,” Mike says, a weak attempt at a joke. Nancy laughs, though, and he knows they’re imagining the same scene: two men nearing fifty, sitting in matching La-Z-Boys and grunting sleepily at the television over TV dinners. Microwaved mashed potatoes and boring prattle about Reagan.

One-sided conversation filters from the kitchen: “leak” and “newspaper” and “privacy”. Mike means to listen, but Nancy bends into his line of sight, something secretive and soft about her half-smile.

“He's not how you remember. I know she isn't either. That’s probably weird, huh?”

Mike tries to hold his face steady, tries not to betray the front he’s been putting forward, but it’s hard. Nancy’s words go right to the tension that’s been stirring in his head for the last few minutes – or maybe longer, maybe since the police station, when this woman who is and isn’t his mother first looked at him like he was the most precious thing in her world.

“It’s not a bad weird,” he admits, hoping to end it there. The whole fucked-up tangle has only hurt because it’s reminded him of what he doesn’t have, what he hasn’t had. It hurts because he knows he has to leave it. He has to leave them , even if he’s not entirely sure he wants to. 

Nancy tightens her grip on his shoulder, giving it an affectionate squeeze. A twinkle in the edge of her smile, she says, “Just wait ‘til you hear how she broke into a secret Russian base over the summer.”

Side A. 

“I think I know what the dog is.”

“What?” Lucas’ voice is muffled over the phone, static with movement.

The paper crumples in Will’s fist, the phone cord a tangle around his arm. He can feel the cold from the door out to the garage, rain seeping in around its crooked edges; mud is still splashed up the back of his jeans, a souvenir of the dash home from the bus stop, but he’s hardly given it a thought. The second he had burst through the front door, El at his side, he had scrambled for the binder tucked away in their closet, one old piece of art nagging him.

“Remember Shadowwind Marsh? When we fought the shambling mound?” In the next room, the murmur of Guiding Light lowers nearly to mute; El is listening in.

“The time when Dustin threw up orange soda?”

“Yeah.” Will tugs on the phone cord, moving to sit down at the kitchen table. With his free hand, he spreads the drawing out in front of him. “And do you remember when we all got separated, and you and me got chased by the blink dogs?” Something in him still swells with self-consciousness, a tinge of childish embarrassment leftover from last summer. It’s been months since he thought of D&D, either by avoidance or by distraction, and longer yet since he’d really talked about it with one of his friends.

Lucas is silent for a moment, then: “They sent me to the Ethereal Plane.”

“Right,” Will says. With his thumb, he traces over the figures on the page. His wizard, throwing out fireballs in vain. Lucas’ ranger, disappearing into a swirling portal. The blink dog, a hulking form in waxy black pencil, snarling across twisted, marshy underbrush. He can still hear Mike’s voice, painting suspense with every word as Lucas tossed aside his unfortunate roll, as Dustin howled in over-caffeinated schadenfreude.

“You think…” Lucas’ voice goes quieter, less assured. Nervous, almost. It’s almost chilling in its rarity. “You think Mike’s on the Ethereal Plane?” He doesn’t know where this is going, and Will’s brain wants to explain more efficiently than his mouth ever could. He’s never been the one with the plans or the theories; he’s usually the one the plans are for, the one being rescued by his friends’ rapid-fire strategizing. This is new territory.

“His bike got hit with something, and he just vanished,” Will explains. “So did the dog, right after Max and Nancy saw it. It just appeared, and then it disappeared. We already know of another plane connected to ours by gates. Who’s to say these things aren’t causing them?”

There’s a rustle into the speaker as Lucas breathes. “Maybe.”

Will’s heart sinks. The world quiets, the kitchen going cotton-muffled for a moment. El is standing in the doorway by now, concern clear on her face.

“Maybe? ” Confusion and grief collide with a deeply buried frustration, something simmering unseen since even before July. Will hates himself for the tears that start to blur his vision, turning the kitchen into a sepia kaleidoscope.

“We’ll look into it.” Lucas is calm, methodical. The de facto captain, in Mike’s absence. “We’ll put it on the list.”

Screw the list, Will wants to say. What happened to the Lucas who went after monsters with only a slingshot and some stones? What happened to the Lucas who stole a shopping cart full of fireworks to save the world? Mike is the leader, and Dustin is the heart, but Lucas has always been the action.

And Will... Will isn't sure what he is, anymore. 

“We don’t have time for that,” he rebukes, fists clenching. He tries to imagine his friends back in 1983, sitting around and jotting items on a list instead of walking out into a storm to look for him. How is this any different? What is there to sit and talk about? 

“Everyone wants to find him just as bad, man.” For the first time, Lucas almost sounds wounded.  

“Then we have to look at all the options, not just the easy ones!” He can feel El’s eyes on him like lasers; she hasn’t heard him like this, but it can’t be a surprise. She’s known him with a monster under his skin, witnessed him killing and terrorizing and destroying. Is it that hard to believe that a little bit of him still burns?

“Nothing’s off the table ‘til we have more clues,” Lucas assures him, still infuriatingly level. “We just have to be logical.”

Logical. Like the Upside Down isn’t logical. Like flipping through a D&D manual for a way to understand a monster isn’t how they’ve always handled crises in the past, year after year. Like Will’s just a kid for defaulting to this, like he’s the one who still can’t grow up.

“So why hasn’t anyone done anything?” He knows the tears are audible in his voice, and he knows he’ll feel humiliated later, but right now he can’t stop himself. It’s like the bat is back in his hands, and he’s hearing the walls of his beloved fort break under each blow. “Why am I the only one who thinks about the Upside Down when it’s not attacking us?”

“That’s not true!” In the background there’s a hum of conversation, fading into silence as Lucas carries the phone farther away. His voice softens, and he repeats himself: “That’s not true, man. We all still think about it. Look, I- I sit outside Erica's doorway every night, okay? Dustin’s mom tried to take him to a psychologist ‘cause he keeps screaming in his sleep.”

Will didn’t know that. Why didn’t he know that?

“We all think about that shit every day,” Lucas finishes. And somehow, it only makes Will feel worse .

“Then why’s it so crazy that Mike could be there?” He wipes his sleeve across his eyes. El pads over in her socks and stands behind another chair, hands steadying on its back; the bags beneath her eyes are nearly as deep as Will’s, now. 

“It’s not crazy.”

Friends don’t lie. “You’re acting like it is.”

“I’m not,” Lucas argues, but it’s weak. It’s distracted. There’s something he’s not saying, something he and the others back in Hawkins know, and it’s screaming behind each word. Will wants nothing more than to climb through the phone and back into their shared world, to find out whatever it is that makes them so goddamn sure Mike left everyone of his own volition. 

“Look,” Lucas continues after a moment. "My dad’s gotta use the phone. I’ll talk to Dustin about the blinks, and then we’ll see you soon. Okay?”

“Okay.” Robotic, almost. Will barely registers the exchanged goodbyes, and the next thing he knows he’s fitting the phone back into its cradle, feeling El’s hand wrap around the crook of his elbow.

Then, finally, he lets the tears come.

Side B. 

The jeep rumbles out of the parking lot, into late afternoon traffic, and Joyce clicks down on her lighter, watching it flicker to life.

“Brighton’ll be driving a desk ‘til he can learn to keep his damn mouth shut,” Hopper says, as if it’s not the third time he’s given her this information. His fists clench around the steering wheel as he turns onto the rough county road, towards home. The day has stretched on and on ever since the call from Karen: Have you seen what’s on the front page of the paper?

“You went out to the Whalens, right?” she asks around her cigarette. Hopper furrows his brow at the change of topic; his tirade against Barry Brighton’s big mouth has been going since he picked her up at the Hallmark store, and sure, she’s just as concerned about the Wheelers’ privacy, but there’s something else she hasn’t been able to get out of her mind. Horses sliced in half, and a startled teenage boy running barefoot into the show. The connection keeps trying to weave itself together in the back of her mind.

“This town couldn’t even give us six months before starting up again.”

“You think it’s-” Monsters, Joyce wants to say, but it feels childish and ambiguous. It’s not a strong enough word for the terrifying howls she still hears in her sleep.

Hopper doesn’t take his eyes away from the road. Ten minutes to five, and dense clouds have the sky already darkening. “Nothing on Earth has a jaw that big,” he says. “A shark couldn’t have done that. Whole front end of five horses taken right off. No blood spatter, single bite pattern. Whatever did it was bigger than them.”

Not one of those demodogs, then. Joyce will never in her life forget the way they tore into flesh, piece by piece, blood painted everywhere. They’re dealing with something new.

“If it’s something from the Upside Down…” She starts, then stops. The first drop of cold rain flattens against the windshield. “Maybe that’s where he’s been. Maybe there’s a gate in the quarry, and these things got out when he did.” The police had dragged it back in 1983, but no one on the force knew to look for anything other than a drowned child and his waterlogged belongings. When he hadn’t been found on the first sweep, only a couple of possibilities had remained: either he’d wound up in some unreachable crevice, undetected by the available equipment, or something else had happened to him after he fell. Whether that something was an accident or a Demogorgon differed, depending on what people knew.

Hopper just shakes his head. “Will barely survived a week in that place, there’s no way- ”

“I’m not saying I believe it,” Joyce argues. “I’m just- I’ve got nothing else.” She takes a harsh drag of her cigarette, and scrubs a dry, cracked hand over her face.

“Look, we both saw his file from the hospital.” A handful of basic tests, just to make sure he was in working order. The only red mark was moderate anemia. “Wherever he was before Gladys found him, he was fed. He was taken care of. He didn’t just come from wandering around in a toxic wasteland for two years.”

And somehow, Joyce can’t help wondering if that’s worse. Just like Karen said, sometimes it’s the known unknowns that keep you awake longest at night, not the creatures whose faces you’ve already seen. The Upside Down is something she’s familiar with, something she can understand. If they knew Mike had been lost in there, just like Will, then they could start the healing process.

But if someone had him, gave him food and clothes and shelter… who? Why? And why can’t he tell them?

“You think they had him?” she asks. There’s no need to clarify.

“Can’t count anything out.” Gravel spits under the tires as the jeep turns off the highway. Freezing rain is starting to come down in earnest now, and Hopper flicks on the wipers. For a moment he’s silent, twitching thumbs against worn leather, but just as the old, white farmhouse appears at the end of the road he continues: “I know he’s like one of your own, Joyce. I know there’s not a single one of us that wouldn’t go to bat for him. But in order to help him now, we need to know exactly what’s going on, whether or not it’s what we want to hear.”

Joyce nods, sniffing back the infuriating threat of tears. Goddammit. As they pull into the driveway, all she can think to add is, “At least we know he’s not a dummy, this time.”

That gets a sideways smile out of Hopper. “Yeah, I don’t think Karen would let us cut him open.” He puts the car in park next to the Pinto, behind Karen’s station wagon and Jonathan’s dilapidated LTD. It’s as much of home as anything’s felt, the last few years. It’s the first time nothing’s been missing.

“She talked to Ted yet?” Hopper asks.

Joyce stubs out her cigarette. A light flicks on upstairs, and a burst of wind upsets the festive ribbons El had insisted on wrapping around the porch columns. “She keeps putting it off. Doesn't want to upset Mike." The careful threat they've been tiptoeing around all week. "You know he and Ted didn't get along." 

“If it makes the Indianapolis Star, the whole state’ll know by Sunday.” He pushes his door open against the rainstorm’s first onslaught and pulls his coat tighter. “The second Ted Wheeler shows up at our front door, I’m putting them all in a motel.”

Our front door, Joyce thinks, unable to keep the smile from her face, even as wet, winter wind goes right through her sweater.

The power flickers for a heartbeat, and Mike bites harder at his lip. He keeps expecting it, at any moment: the room will go dark, fall away, throw him back into the old woman’s house. Each time the storm dims the lights, he feels like he’s on the edge of a precipice, heart pounding with the effort of keeping himself here.

“Are you okay?”

It sounds almost unfamiliar in Will’s voice, and that’s what pulls Mike back, yanks him out of his head. Thin, scratchy carpet. Backs against a plaid blanket. Rain and wind shaking the window of Will’s (new, wrong) bedroom. They’re cross-legged in front of a plastic binder and the air smells like the spaghetti cooking downstairs. 

“Yeah. Sorry.” An old exchange, passed between the two of them over and over since 1983, only this time it’s reversed. Mike can see the resigned disbelief in Will’s eyes, the way he quietly retreats back into observation, and it makes him want to hide. Instead, he looks back down at the binder. It’s the same one that sits on a table in his own basement, a world away; someone must have given it to Will after his death, here. While a lot of the drawings are familiar as old friends, flipped through hundreds of times back in middle school, there are many more that Mike doesn’t recognize. His eyes lock onto one now, a short-haired woman in long, emerald robes.

“That’s El’s druid,” Will explains, noticing Mike’s shift in attention. Druid, not mage. Did she pick that class herself, without Mike to label her? How much else has she chosen on her own without his overbearing influence?

“Max?” he asks, gesturing to the opposite page, where telltale orange hair falls over the shoulders of a woman holding a truly obscene number of knives.

“Rogue.” Will smiles, and turns the page, revealing more drawings. The girls together, the girls with the whole party – minus one.

“They’re really good,” Mike says, voice clumsy and quiet. He pulls his knees up against his chest, hands fidgeting. There’s still a dizzy, anxious spin to his thoughts, even in this quiet moment.

Will’s cheeks flush a bit, and his smile tilts sideways. “No one’s campaigns are ever as good as yours.” And it’s complimentary, but it still strikes through Mike’s stomach like sadness, because the last time he and Will really talked about D&D, Will was angry. Will was angry, and Mike was defensive, and nothing was the same after that, as badly as he wanted to apologize. He still wants to apologize, only he can’t , because the Will in front of him never witnessed that slow slide away from their old hobbies. He never had to watch Mike cast off something that used to draw them together, in favor of a pursuit that made him feel more grown up, more distanced from the boy he’d been when his life started disintegrating.

It’s hard to find excitement fighting monsters on a board after they’ve nearly killed you time and again in real life.

“I miss it,” he finally says, thinking more of the companionship than the roll of a die. Laughter, Cheeto crumbs, tipped plastic cups of soda. A feeling of invincibility that he hasn’t known since.

“You could play with us.” Will rearranges his legs, and his knee brushes Mike’s ankle. “If my mom and Hop let them all come over.”

“Yeah?” Mike looks over, then turns his head back front. It’s been months since he’s sat so close to someone, and there’s a vulnerability to it that pricks right under his skin. His pulse picks up speed. “That would be cool.”

Cool, and full of logistical concerns. How does amnesia work? Is he supposed to remember how to play D&D? A wild, groundless thought floats through his mind, of sneaking out to the library and reading up on his supposed condition.

He flips another page, but barely sees the drawing. Pencil lines, colored patches, and a thought that keeps nagging him, the longer he senses Will’s unease. They came up here to escape their parents’ panicked conversations, the new threat of journalists and phone calls and flashbulbs, but Mike can’t help feeling like he’s no more trusted than Barry Brighton. And why would he be? He’s given them no reason. Hopper already knows he’s lying, and it’s just a matter of time until he’s cast out as a fraud.

He swallows, twisting his hands. “Sorry I scared everyone yesterday, at breakfast.”

Will looks up from the binder, clearly not expecting this. “Did something happen?” It’s careful, like he’s trying not to frighten a fawn. Mike hates it.

“I think-” The light flickers again, and the windows flash white. “I didn’t know what was real, for a second.” The most honest thing he’s said in days, and it feels like vertigo coming out, like he’s a breath from fainting with panic and adrenaline. And on a level that he can’t explain out loud - one that this Will would never understand - it’s as close to a confession about the last few months as he’s come. They didn’t go crazy together after all. Instead, Will moved on with his life and Mike could hardly manage to get out of bed in the morning. One of them was possessed by a monster, and the other was really just broken in the end.

“Do you know now?” Will asks, and his voice is full of so much tenderness that Mike wants to cry. Instead, he just nods, hands wrung so tight that his knuckles have gone pale.

“I’m sorry for everything else, too.” It spills out faster, and he pinches his eyes closed. “For leaving.” He feels like he’ll fly apart if he lets himself breathe, just dissolve into atoms, like El did in a middle school classroom so long ago. 

Will is quiet for a moment, then says, “I thought you didn’t remember.” It’s hardly above a whisper, pointed at the carpet.

“I remember the cliff.” He presses his lips together, trying to keep them from quivering. In a way, his sneakers have always stayed inches from the cliff’s edge, in nightmares or in moments of panic. A knee-jerk impulse to leave , to self-destruct. Is that what he was feeling the morning he left home? Was the cliff behind the incomprehensible whirlwind of ideas that shoved him out the door, into the dark, coatless and thoughtless and so very sure ?

“Jonathan told me you were sad.” Will rests his head on his knees, and Mike wishes he could reach out and touch him, break through his own deadlock. “He said that’s why you did it.”

“I’m sorry,” Mike says again, and it sounds so stupid. He wants to press at his eyes, to tear at his hair, but he can’t stop twisting his goddamn hands, like breaking his knuckles will somehow fix everything he’s screwed up. “Something’s wrong with my head, sometimes.”

There’s only silence for a few moments, but then, without a breath or a sound, Will turns, reaches out, and lays his hands across Mike’s.

“Mine too,” he says quietly. “Can I help?”

It’s "crazy together". It’s a heavy blanket across jittering shoulders. It’s the first words on playground wood chips, and it’s the last smile across the Byers’ kitchen, the one that made Mike’s heart hiccup in that way he’s always associated with his closest friend. Safe, comforting, almost secret. A bond no one else can touch.

“You already are,” he answers, watching as Will gently unravels his fingers. Lightning flashes across the room again, and the bedside lamp dims for a moment, but Mike’s thoughts don’t tumble. He doesn’t have to scrabble for a hold on reality or brace himself to be lost to that other place. He just sits and watches Will, until the anxiety in his chest blurs to an easy pulse, and the storm outside begins to fade into the background.

Side A. 

The front door clicks shut, cutting off the whistle of wet wind outside. Nancy shuffles her tennis shoes against the mat, then toes them off; somewhere, the fuzzy audio of a Care Bears tape signals Holly’s pre-bed routine, and she starts to follow it.

She makes it to the living room doorway, a rectangle of yellow that spreads into the dark foyer, before her mother’s voice stops her.

“Mrs. Rogers called.” Shit. "You were supposed to tutor her son today." 

Shit. Pursing her lips, Nancy turns. The living room is a tableau of tragedy, her mother slumped on the stiff, pristine couch. There’s a glass of wine in one hand, nearly empty; her whole body is a tense line around its stem, held tight like a horse’s bit.

“I was out looking.” She and Jonathan had driven Roane and Carroll and Howard Counties raw, until the sun was going down and the station wagon had run out of gas. No clues, no ideas, no leads. She had left him in Greenwood, and white-knuckled the stormy drive back home. 

Her mother looks up, eyes rimmed by smudged makeup. “You can’t just-”

“What am I supposed to be doing?”

“-ignore everything and-”

“You mean like you are?” Nancy bites it out, and it hits like a fuse being lit between them. Her throat flutters with a hundred tumbling, poisonous words. She sees the moment they strike her mother, a lightning bolt through ceramic. A hairline fracture, behind frizzing Clairol blonde.

“I’ve been trying to find him for two days,” she continues, but there’s something hoarse and strained in her voice now, something that hurts to press through. “And you and dad have just been-”

Her mother sets down the glass, but doesn’t look up. “Your father has a job to keep, and I have your sister to look after.” It’s weak, but terse, a quivering shake of the fist. “We don’t have the privilege to stop our whole lives and-”

“That’s bullshit.” Nancy steps into the doorway. The air on the other side feels like the storm brewing overhead. “That’s-”

“Nancy-” Wide eyes; surprise, tinged with heartbreak. 

“If Mrs. Byers had just sat around and listened to the police, they never would have found Will! He would have been dead!” It’s cruel, contextless, but Nancy can’t bring herself to care. Anger swells in her chest, a kitchen fire under a hot lid, and seeing her mother again is all the oxygen it needs.

“That was different, he didn’t...”

Run away. Take things. All of the bullshit that her parents keep saying, that the police keep propagating. Not for the first time, she wishes she could just spill it all, come out with the whole awful truth. Maybe then they’d understand just how much danger and hurt has been following their children around for years. Maybe they’d see the real danger her brother is in, not just from the world but from himself, from everything he and his friends have been through. It’s not just his girlfriend and best friend leaving, sending him into a spiral of bad behavior. It’s more, and it’s always been more, ever since they picked him up from Hawkins Middle School long after midnight. Maybe since years before then. 

“What about the bike, mom?” She feels herself choke it out, like it’s been pulled right from her chest, and it takes her a moment to realize that tears have welled up in her eyes, hot and unbidden. “What about the bike? How can you keep saying he’s fine?”

Her mother’s hands are trembling, beneath a gaze that deteriorates from discomfort, to sadness, right to despair.

“Do you really think he’s safe?” Nancy wraps her arms around herself, knees locked over the threshold. Her chest feels like ice. “Do you really believe that?” And for a moment it looks like her mother’s going to answer, like she’s going to shatter, and maybe that’s what Nancy’s been praying for all this time. Maybe this is when the dam bursts, and when everything falls apart, she’ll finally find what they’ve been missing. The thing she thought she’d recovered over the summer, that looks like her mother’s bright eyes and warm encouragement. Her own arms wind tighter, like the embrace she so desperately wants, and for just a second she lets herself hope.

But the second ends, and she watches her mother fall back into herself. Manicured fingers wind back around the glass’s stem. “I don’t know what else to do.”

It isn’t nothing. It isn’t enough, but it isn’t nothing.

“Get out there and search with us,” Nancy presses. “We’re going back tomorrow.” She takes a step closer, but she feels like she hasn’t moved at all. What is her mother so afraid of? Is it what she might find out there in the underbrush? Is it her sham of a life splintering right down the middle? Would she rather have no answers than bad answers?

“Holly has speech therapy.”

It’s not surprising enough to be a disappointment. Nancy just clenches her backpack strap under one hand and backs out of the doorway, swallowing down a sharp comeback. But then, as if summoned by the weak excuse, a small shuffle sounds from the far end of the foyer.

Holly, in her pink nightgown, eyes flicking between Nancy and the living room doorway. Their mother’s head snaps up, then turns to the brass clock nestled on the bookshelves, next to dustless encyclopedia volumes that have never been opened, and knick-knacks bought firsthand from department stores.

“Oh, honey.” She stands up, a woozy slant to her movements, and heads towards Holly, slipping right past her oldest child without a glance. “Your SpaghettiOs. Let me heat them back up.” Glancing back at the clock, Nancy wrinkles her brow. Dinner is never served past six in Karen Wheeler’s household, like clockwork under rigorous scrutiny.

It’s a quarter to nine.

Chapter Text

❝ All my stories are about being left, all of yours are about leaving. So we should have known. ❞

Jan Heller Levi, Waiting for this Story to End Before I Begin Another

Side B. 

December 14, 1985

Cold. Hot. Lights. Red sky. Warning. 

He has the dream again. The blur of Highway 29, farms and fields like splotches of paint, like a sunrise photo taken from a carnival ride. Dark blue, messy grey, warm pink.

Red sky. Warning

The bike beneath his feet swerves and swoops, too fast on fresh ice, and he laughs, and the truck that barrels past seems to howl along with the joke. There’s something obvious he’s missing, something that tastes like iron on his tongue, that disappeared when he hit the bottom of the snowy gulch. And if he can just make it a little farther, crest the top of this last hill, he’ll find it.

Cold. Hot. Lights. Red sky.

The barn. The stream. He tries to brake, and he tries not to, and he pinches his eyes closed against the screaming wind, and somewhere in his stomach there's a churning secret he knows he's keeping from himself, and-

Warning.

He turns his head, and he sees it outlined against the splotchy sky for one wavering second. Black as night, a maw full of needles. The too-familiar tang of blood. His bike crunches under the impact, but there’s already cold wind on all sides, an orange-blue-grey-pink kaleidoscope that makes him feel sick to his stomach, and then-

Mike gasps awake, tangled in sweaty linens. The cacophony of the bike crash resolves into pipes rattling, dishes clinking, the rumble of a car outside. Late morning, by the light. He’s safe in bed, not mauled at the side of a highway.

Then, somewhere outside, a dog barks. Mike’s chest goes cold.

Blankets twist and tug as he tries to scramble out of bed, and he hits the plastic blinds with two much force, snapping one when he shoves them aside. Pale light spills in, and he squints out into the yard, expecting to see that the featureless beast has followed him out of his dreams, right into the Byers’ house.

“Hey, get outta here. Go home.”

It’s a scruffy mutt, yapping at Hopper’s ankles along the fence line. The chief nudges it away, cursing puffs of white air. Mike watches until they disappear around the corner of the house, his heart still pounding hard enough to hitch his breath.

Shit. Sweat drips from his lip, and he pulls away, shuffling through his mom’s crumpled, deflating air mattress in order to collect a fresh shirt. Indiana Pacers, picked up on his mom’s run to the Catholic thrift store; it’s scratchy and smells like tobacco, but it’s better than borrowing from Jonathan again.

The kitchen air smells like eggs just south of burnt, and as he trudges in Mike can see the culprit being scraped off onto a chipped plate.

“Still can’t get the hang of your burners,” his mom is saying to Mrs. Byers, tucked in the middle of a sheepish smile. It’s only then that she catches sight of Mike, and the delight reaches her eyes. “Good sleep, honey?”

He hums a noncommittal response.

“Remember, eleven fifteen. We’ve got an hour.”

Eleven fifteen? The face Mike pulls must be a universal signal of confusion, because Mrs. Byers pipes up from the kitchen table with, “The apartment,” and a warm, crinkle-eyed grin.

Mike had quite determinedly not remembered. His mother’s newspaper clippings and phone calls over the last few days hadn’t gone unnoticed, but it was a plan he had hoped, in a childish way, would somehow just disappear. Renting an apartment is an act of permanence, of change. It’s his mother uprooting her life for this game of pretend Mike’s been playing, and it makes his stomach twist.

Do I stay, or do I go?  Will’s voice, high and halting, through the static of the radio.

“More eggs?” Hopper steps in through the back door, bringing with him a burst of cold, clear morning. It snaps Mike out of his mind just long enough to look up.

“I’ll do it,” Mrs. Byers offers, getting out of the creaking chair. She lays a warm hand on Mike’s shoulder as she passes, just a brief touch. It sends a jolt of panic through him, for some reason. “How do you like-”

“Nah, I got it.” The Chief is already opening the foam carton. With a look back at Mike: “Scrambled?”

Mike nods, stiff and mute. In the bright clamor of morning, it’s hard to believe the nightmare that gripped him just minutes ago. It’s hard to make sense of his racing heart or his clammy hands when everyone around him is beaming smiles, offering easy comfort. It’s the closest to home he’s felt in months.

And everything in his body is screaming at him to run.

“Well, this is-”

The door catches on uneven flooring, and Mike watches his mom wrestle with it for a few seconds, heaving her shoulder against the weathered panel. It isn’t until she kicks it with one practical sneaker that it finally breaks loose.

“Nice?” Nancy finishes after a moment’s silence. A sliver of a kitchen opens up in front of them, lit in dim patches from a dirty window. The floor is bubbled linoleum, and Mike can smell mouse shit. On instinct he glances to his mother, waiting for a scrunched nose or a furrowed brow, something to signal her harsh assessment. It doesn’t come.

Nancy steps past them and into the next room, doing all of the nose-scrunching that their mother isn’t. “Three bedrooms?” Wishful, but pessimistic.

“Two,” their mom corrects, a hint of apology already in her voice. “Rental market here’s no Louisville. But the living room’s big, I can-”

Urgent anxiety starts to flare in Mike’s stomach, and he steps forward too hard, the floor creaking atrociously underfoot.  “I-I’ll sleep on the couch. It’s fine.” He wrings his hands, and watches as his mom and sister adopt identical frowns of frank disbelief.

“No, you won’t,” Nancy says, like it’s the simplest exam question in the world.

“You can have whichever room you want, baby.” His mom smiles again. It looks wrong, and Mike hates it, and he never wants her to stop. With a shallow nod, he sidles past them and towards the hallway, swallowing down prickly unease.

“The Big Buy’s hiring,” Nancy says, her voice growing muffled as Mike slips around the corner. “I’m gonna apply.”

“Nancy, you don’t-”

“You said the dealership hasn’t call you back. Neither has the library. At least one of us’ll have a job this way.”

“I’ll find something. I’ll keep asking around, alright?”

Mike wants to cram his hands over his ears; instead, he settles for raising his sweatshirt hood, tugging on the strings until he feels something like safety from his own guilt. How can he stay here, watching people bend over backwards for him? But then, how can he even consider leaving when this damage has already been done? More than anything – so badly he can hardly breath - Mike wishes he could just erase himself from the equation.

The back bedroom is dim, shaded by dense trees that brush against the window screen. Sunken rectangles in the stained carpet mark the last tenant’s furniture, and Mike steps around them like cracks in a sidewalk, moving towards the back wall and away from his mother’s voice. The room is small, too small for Nancy and Holly to share. His, then, if his mom won’t take it. Absently, he wonders if his bunk bed will even fit, or if he’ll need to get a new one.

It takes a moment longer to remember that they probably don’t have it anymore.

Another limb scrapes against the side of the building, and Mike crosses the cramped space to look out the window. He doesn’t remember woods here, so close to the mall. The apartment complex is familiar – a shambled property, housing people his mother would have turned her powdered nose up at – but he doesn’t remember the trees, bare and unsettling in December. Do they stretch all the way to Mirkwood? If he set off through them, could he walk all the way to Castle Byers? Could he walk all the way back to his own world?

All at once, like the yank of a rope, his chest tightens.

Mike recognizes it immediately. Exactly like the other morning, in the Byers’ bathroom, a panic gripping him by the throat and knocking his heart out of rhythm. He gasps in air and stumbles away from the window, fingers brushing dust off the sill. The rope tugs him sideways, like a spin at the summer fair, turning his stomach on end. Darkness tunnels in around his vision; for a moment, he thinks he must be about to pass out, or about to die, or some sequence of the two that would be welcome in place of this vertigo.

Then, it stops. His head begins to pound, and he can feel a swell of nausea in his gut, but gravity seems to have stopped jostling him. The ride has come to a stop.

The only question is – where?

Mike opens his eyes, blinking through blurry vision. One thing is immediately and bafflingly clear: the little back bedroom is no longer dim. Light, clear and bright, streams in from the window, and he has to throw his arm up over his brow to walk back towards it. The morning’s encroaching rain is gone, leaving a sunny sky in its wake. But it’s more than the weather, Mike notices with a jolt.

There isn’t a tree in sight. The woods have long been chopped back, and in their place is a stretch of faded, cracked pavement. A parking lot, spreading up to the front of the Giant Eagle where his mom had stopped for milk just last week, on the way home from Mike’s dentist appointment. 

It’s nearly serene in its unreality, and for a moment Mike only stands there at the window, a breath away from the raised blinds, as though moving would break the spell. Is this some kind of vision, like Will peering unwillingly into the Upside Down? Is it nothing more than a busted ViewMaster, or is he really back in his own Hawkins right now?

There’s only one way to find out, he thinks, and he turns away from the window on one heel.

Blocking the doorway is a massive, black shape.

His first thought, absurd and detached, is to wonder how the thing could possibly fit into the hall. Its head dips through the doorway, one giant paw prodding forward, as though it’s searching for an angle. Yellow eyes, brighter and harsher than the daylight, lock in on Mike like missiles, and he feels its low, rumbling growl deep in his stomach.

There isn’t a doubt in Mike’s mind – this is the thing from his dream, the thing from the highway, and it’s back to finish whatever it started.

Just get it over with, he begs, throat too tight with panic to speak. The dog’s hot, putrid breath sweeps through the room. It scrapes at the floor, one claw snagging and ripping through the carpet. Mike squeezes his eyes closed and grips the windowsill with clammy, shaking hands. Hasn’t he been ready for this before, time and time again? Hasn’t he been this close, and stared down death like the simplest of equations? Why, this time, does his chest feel ready to implode with terror? Why does he feel like he might be sick right on his shoes?

He clenches his teeth and locks his knees. Behind him, something scrapes against the windowpane, dry and quiet as a whisper.

Oh. That’s why.

Mike opens his eyes. The dark, quiet room is back, and the dog is nowhere to be seen.

“Think you’ll fit in this bathroom?” Nancy’s voice, from out in the hall. She peers around the white-trimmed doorway, and poorly masks concern once her eyes land on her brother. Mike answers with a thin, nauseated smile, desperate to ward off a worried interrogation that he can’t answer.

“I’ll crouch,” he manages. Something still tingles in his fingers, still tugs at his churning stomach. He clenches his fists against it, biting his nails against his skin, as though that could ground him here in this room, safe from sharp, glinting teeth. Don’t slip, don’t slip, don’t sli-

“So,” his mom calls, joining Nancy in the doorframe. “What are we thinking?”

Mike turns his back too quickly, casting his eyes out into the grey-brown woods. “I like it.” Toneless, controlled. Don’t slip, don’t slip.

“Better than the Byers’ floor,” Nancy adds. Mike can still feel her eyes on his back, and it makes him want to scream, or cry, or disappear. The pain in his palms has finally started to overtake the prickle of wrongness, but everything in his body feels wrung dry, twisted in all the wrong directions. He feels like he could sleep for a day, or a week. He feels like he could never sleep again.

His mom’s purse jingles as she hikes it up on her shoulder. “Well,” she says, her voice an approximation of cheer. “How about I go sign that lease, and then we celebrate? Milkshakes?”

As Mike finally turns away to follow, he gives the trees one more wary scan. And for half of a heartbeat, he could swear he sees a pair of golden, headlight eyes in an ink-black shadow, watching him go. 

Side A. 

“Didn’t they look back here?”

It’s early afternoon, but the sun is already throwing long, narrow shadows across the ground, an abstract silhouette of the tree line. Somewhere a field’s length back, a car whistles down the highway, there and then gone, like a fly swerving past Jonathan’s ear. He squints up ahead, trying to spot Nancy’s tan coat bobbing through camouflage trees.

“The search stopped at the fence.” Nancy turns just for a moment, dark eyes still glued to the underbrush. “They didn’t even make it to the woods.” Her tone is sharp and critical, if distracted. Somewhere overhead, a bird calls; she clocks it with all the swift notation of a scientist, before getting back to the task.

Alright, Nancy Drew. Jonathan follows, any criticism of the breakneck pace held dutifully on his tongue. Where he’s careful and prudent, Nancy was born to be a firestorm, sweeping through the landscape of every problem she encounters. Even the treacherous slip of the muddy, melted slow seems to step aside for her.

Jonathan experiences no such luck. His sneaker hits a patch of sludge, and he barely keeps from falling. A dismal cold seeps into his sock.

“It’s practically a swamp back here.”

Nancy doesn’t look back. “I told you to-”

“Wear different shoes. I know.” He tries not to sound as irritated as he feels, but it comes out clipped nonetheless. “’Cause I just have a whole closet-full to pick from.”

Jonathon instantly expects a rebuttal, sharp and biting, and knows without question that he deserves it. He’s been the poorest of companions most of the day. Despite freezing temperatures, they’ve been at this since sun-up, Jonathan running down a tank of gas while Nancy whacks him with the edges of her dad’s state map. She’s a frenzy, a force not to be reckoned with, and Jonathan has let himself be tugged along behind her, trying gracelessly to help where he can. His input is tactless and unwelcome, even though he’s quite possibly the one person in Hawkins who knows precisely what Nancy’s going through.

And maybe – he thinks – maybe that’s precisely why there’s this swirl of shame in his stomach. Maybe that’s why his thoughts feel muggy and self-directed, on a day that should be about supporting someone else’s terror and grief. Did he try this hard for Will? Has he ever had this ferocity in him?

“… Nance?” Too long without a sound. Jonathon peers ahead but sees nothing other than the endless spread of bare trees. Shit. “Nancy!”

A few long moments of forest static, and then, from far up ahead: “Here!” Jonathan follows, trying with middling results to avoid more patches of frigid mud. After a few seconds, he spots the blue of her jeans against the dappled grey-brown of a trunk. When she looks back at him, her cheeks are pale, her eyes urgent. She raises one arm, finger pointing overhead.

Hanging from a branch several feet over their heads is a backpack.

“Is that-” Jonathan knows the answer before he finishes the question, and he breaks off in a scramble for a way up. The lowest limb is still too high to reach, but Nancy is already wedging her foot into a knot by the time he lays eyes on it. She eyes Jonathan expectantly for a boost.

The backpack is light enough that, for a frantic moment, Jonathan thinks it might be empty. Divested of its valuables by some highway robber, perhaps, or dumped to hinder identification. It doesn’t need a wallet or a name tag to link itself back to Mike Wheeler, though. This bag has been thrown about Jonathan’s house every Friday afternoon for the last several years, and he knows every tear, every marker stain, as though they’re household fixtures.

Breathless, Nancy reaches inside – and produces an object even more familiar than the bag itself. A walkie talkie, nearly identical to the one on Will’s nightstand, save for the missing back panel.

“No batteries,” she confirms, before setting it aside.

Next, just as familiar: a postcard, bearing a historic view of Indianapolis. On the back, the Wheelers’ address in thick, jagged handwriting, with the postal code added in by his little brother’s careful print.

“El sent this.” Jonathan had helped her buy it at the gas station, passing her coins to slide over the counter. She’d said it was her first time paying, and he hadn’t bothered to ask how she and Max had acquired new makeup on their last mall excursion. “It’s got our address, here. Maybe-”

“We already know where he was going,” Nancy cuts in, casting the card aside and shoving her hand back into the bag. It comes up empty. Nothing left of Mike in these woods but a useless radio and a scribbled address. Fury welling up to cover grief, Nancy stands up and drops the bag into the dead leaves. “Shit.”

Jonathan tries to keep his breath even, his face calm. There’s no use letting this whole search devolve into panic. “We know he came this way, at least. He was in the woods.”

Nancy doesn’t reply. Instead, she takes a few stomping steps and swings a kick into the next tree, where a low, gaping knot has caught the snow. When nothing happens, she moves on, eyes growing more determined, more frantic, scanning the forest floor for something.

“Nance-” Another kick, a frenzied scrabble against solid bark. “Nancy, come on.”

She whips her head around fast enough to send her ponytail swinging, slapping her cold-reddened cheek. “Just think, Jonathan. It makes the most sense!” There’s a tremble of fear behind her voice, even as she stands with characteristic confidence. “Bike trashed, bag half a mile from the road- and then the thing me and Max saw. How could it be anything else?”

“Hey-” Jonathan raises his hands, fingers spread, trying at assurance. “Maybe you’re right, but just breathe right now.”  

It’s the wrong thing to say. Nancy’s eyes slant in sharp offense, and her chin quivers. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you did all summer!” She steps closer, eyes shining with hard-fought tears in the winter light. “Like I’m crazy!”

“I’m not! I never did!” But even as he says it, Jonathan knows it’s half of the truth, tainted with uncertainty. He can hear his own voice, shooting down her wild, dangerous ideas. He can feel his own frustration, driven by an aching need for things to finally be normal, to finally be safe. “I just think- I think we need to keep our heads clear. That’s all.”

 A quick, boiling moment of silence. Nancy stalks closer, one shaking finger jabbed out towards his chest. “My brother is missing. You know what that’s like.”

It goes straight to Jonathan’s chest, clenching around his heart like a fist. “Yeah,” he manages. “I do. And I know what this shit does to people. I saw what it did to my mom, and I see what it’s doing to you, and I’m fucking worried, okay? I’m just worried.”

“I don’t need your worry. I need your help.”

“And you’ve got it, all of it.” Jonathan steps forward, ignoring the urgent need to wrap a hand around her shoulder, to steady her, to comfort her. However she sways, he’ll wait for her cue. “All I’m asking is for you to step back for a minute so we can talk.”

For a second, he thinks Nancy’s about to leave. She turns on her heel, boot digging into the snow melt, and takes a slow step. Then, with tense reluctance, she leans back against the nearest tree and lowers her head into her hands, fingers massaging at her temples. A shaking breath leaves her like something exorcised, rage disappearing from tired, limp limbs.

A bird calls overhead, and Jonathan waits, holding back words. Only when Nancy looks back up does he finally try again, his voice soft and patient. “The last time you crawled through a tree trunk, you barely made it out alive.” He pauses, waiting for an objection, but none come. Nancy dips her chin almost imperceptibly. “We don’t have any weapons. We’re miles from the nearest town. We have no way to call for help.”

“If this was Will…” Her voice trails off, letting implication carry the rest of the thought.

“It was Will,” Jonathan answers, “and we found him. We’re gonna find Mike too. But kicking our way into the Upside Down isn’t going to help him, not if it gets us both killed. We need a plan first.”

Nancy lifts her hands, flexing fingers uselessly, before sliding them over her face. A soft, stuttering breath starts up behind them, her shoulders jumping in unison, and for a moment Jonathan’s stomach wrenches with guilt, sure that he’s made her cry. He starts to step closer, but at the sharp snap of a twig beneath his sneakers, Nancy looks back up.

She’s laughing.

“… What?” Jonathan blinks, even more perturbed than before.

“The air’s toxic,” Nancy says. Then, louder: “It’s toxic. Your mom and Hopper had to take oxygen tanks in. We wouldn’t have lasted five minutes.” She wipes her coat sleeve under wet eyes, but the laughter only grows stronger. It’s halfway hysterical, but Jonathan’s chest still floods with quiet relief.

“That’s why we need you sharp.” He rests a hand on Nancy’s shoulder, and leans in to press a kiss against her hair. “You’re the brains of this operation.”

Nancy shakes her head, swiping at a leaking nose, but the shaky smile stays in place. “God, I’m a mess.”

“You’re allowed to be. C’mere.” Tugging at her shoulder, Jonathan moves to reel Nancy in. She gives an assenting sniffle and winds her fingers into the fabric of his jacket.

A trembling knot of tears and limbs, feet firmly on the forest floor, what neither of them see is this: far above their heads, in the dappled treetops, a perfect circle missing from the canopy, like a paper hole punched through layers and layers of branches and trees, casting afternoon light on hoarse, knowing birds. 

The oven clock flips to half past five, and Will wants to scream.

“It’s not even raining anymore. And most of the snow’s melted.” He jabs his finger at the window, at the last dregs of sun sinking past the carport, but his mother just shakes her head, swiping a drop of sauce from the formica counter.

“The roads are still a mess, honey.” There’s empathy in every centimeter of her face, and it only makes the words hurt more. “Your brother’s staying up there tonight.”

He’d called not long before dinner, bearing news that had tied Will’s stomach into a permanent knot. A nearly empty backpack caught in a branch. A half-reluctant excuse from dinner. Will had wanted to burst from the house, to chase his brother and Nancy right up the highway in rush hour traffic. He wanted to see the backpack for himself, run his hands along the cold zipper, like its teeth might whisper a story to him and only him, in a language he’d thought he and Mike shared.

“I need to help,” he answers, too choked and pleading to be an argument. “I need to be out there, looking.”

“And you can be, when the weather clears up. I promise, okay?”

“He’ll have been missing a week.” Missing. Dead. Gone, either way, while Will is confined to the endless routine of uninterrupted life.

His mother props her spoon down on the pan. It’s a consolation casserole for the Wheelers, the second in a collection Will knows thirdhand is still sitting untouched in their freezer. “Baby,” she says, voice soothing and earnest, “I know this is so hard. I know exactly what you’re going through right now-”

You don’t, you don’t, you really don’t.

“-but putting yourself in danger isn’t going to help him. You matter just as much to everyone.” She reaches out to soothe a hand over his head, ruffling his hair. Will scrunches his face up to keep from crying.

“He’d be out there,” he manages, shaking his head. “He wouldn’t care if he froze.” And isn’t that just the problem? Isn’t that the reason they’re all in this mess in the first place? Mike Wheeler, paragon of courage and selflessness, throwing himself into crisis for everyone he loves.

“He’d care if you did,” Will’s mom answers, her voice so full of love and sympathy that it makes Will want to run.

She doesn’t know. A harsh, hissing voice, barely his own. She wouldn’t be so kind if she knew.

Will pulls his knees up into the kitchen chair, hating the pathetic pout he knows he’s wearing, wishing he could be stronger. With each day that’s passed, he’s felt himself twist more and more with grief, gnarling into himself like a bramble. He doesn’t remember how his voice sounds without tears behind it.

“I don’t even know if I want to go to Dustin’s, anymore,” he says after a moment, voicing a half-formed thought.

His mom’s eyebrows furrow, her concern re-sparked. “What? Why?”

Will shrugs, even though he knows the answer like his own name. “They all just think I’m some dumb kid, these days. They acted like it all summer, even- even Mike.” He feels his voice hike up at the name, chest spasming in waiting panic.

 “Honey, they don’t-”

“They do!” Will swallows down pure shame, wringing his hands against scratchy sweater sleeves. “Mike does.”

The spoon comes down flat on the counter, sauce splattering, and before Will knows it his mom is crouched on the gritty linoleum, one hand curled around his shoulder. Her face is tight with fierce determination, but her eyes are soft and warm.

“If you don’t think that boy would go to the ends of the earth for you,” she says, her voice gentle, “then we don’t know the same Mike Wheeler.”

Somehow, the words just prod more at the gaping wound in Will’s chest, and he holds back a shuddering sob. He wants to say that he knows, that that’s how Mike has always been, that he doesn’t need anyone to tell him. But blocking the words, trapping them deep down in his throat, is something that tastes a lot like doubt. How can he say that he knows when, in reality, he knows nothing? They’re all fumbling in the dark right now, tossing around baseless platitudes and hoping one sticks for a few hours.

“I’m-” Will shakes his head, voice catching on a buried sob. “I just…”

 “I know,” his mom answers, just over a whisper. “But we’re gonna find him, okay? Just like we found you.”

It’s meant as a comfort, but Will’s first thought is, Please, no, not like that. Not half-dead in a nightmare world, sickly pale and irrevocably changed. Not like me, nothing like me.

“How do you know?” He mumbles it around numb lips, feeling too far away from his body. His mom smiles; a single hand on the string of a sky-bound balloon, keeping him from floating out of this atmosphere.

“Because I know Mike,” she answers, more confident than Will can imagine feeling. “I know he’s strong, and smart, and capable. And I know he’d do anything to get back home to you guys.”

Will’s lip quivers traitorously. “And-” A sharp, trembling swallow. “What if-” What if he doesn’t? What if, this time, the absolute worst is real? Like Bob, or like Billy, or like Hopper?

He can sense his mom struggling with the answer, torn between comforting optimism and heart-wrenching truth, thinking back to her own impossible losses. Then, after a couple of long, quiet moments: “We cross that bridge when we get to it. Alright?”

The retreat to his room feels like a half-awake dream, socked feet creaking the floorboards under threadbare carpet. He hears the buzz of static from under the door even before he reaches for the knob, and it tugs absently on his stomach, like an alarm he’s too tired to tune into.

“You don’t have to keep doing this,” he says, clicking the door closed softly behind him. The lights are off, and the room has already sunk into the dark blue of a clear December night. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

In front of the droning radio, El pushes the bandana up from over her eyes. “She said no?” It’s quiet, just a breath away from hopeless.

 “She said no.”

El’s round face crumples. In the dark, the only evidence of tears is in her soft, wobbling voice. “I’m sorry.” She runs a flannel sleeve under her nose. “I don’t work anymore.”

Will steps over to the dresser and switches off the radio. The silence that follows is nauseating. “It’s not your fault, El.”

“What if it is?” she urges, the words shaking harder now. Something deep inside Will wants desperately to crouch down and wrap his arms around her, but he can’t. He’s frozen in place, crushed by grief and anger and terror.

“It’s not.” Despite the storm in his chest, this is one thing Will knows is true. He looks back at El, hoping beyond hope that she can at least see that truth in his eyes. “No one’s blaming you for it, okay? No one’s upset with you.”

El sniffs, lowers her head, and then says, “Mike was.”

It’s unexpected enough to rattle Will, just for a moment. He feels like he’s fallen into the wrong conversation, like he’s woken up in the middle of a math test he doesn’t understand. No matter how he tries to piece together the words, they don’t make sense.

“…What?”

“On the phone,” El adds, muffled by the soft cotton of her sleeve. Even in the darkness she’s hiding her face from him, and nothing about it makes sense. “He was unhappy.”

Will shakes his head, thumbing through an autumn’s worth of phone conversations. Mike’s mood has always been changeable by nature, but he had always sounded glad to hear from Will, his calls brimming with excited stories and new ideas. “He missed you. That’s all.”

There’s a frantic urgency to the shake of El’s head, like she’s trying to communicate something she doesn’t have the words for. A game of charades, and the hourglass is running down while Will stands dumbfounded, blinking at a picture that doesn’t make sense.   

“Not me.” It’s just above a whisper, quiet and bare as a secret. “You.”

Will can feel the sheer incredulity on his face, brows furrowing as sharp as a caricature. He urges his heart to slow down, his stomach to stop fluttering; it’s all a misunderstanding, and he can’t let El’s words begin to sink in. He can’t let himself imagine. Too fervent, he shakes his head.

 “No, that’s not-” Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it for a second. You aren’t allowed this. “You’re his girlfriend.” A word that still sounds twisted and bitter in his voice, no matter how he’s tried to scrub it clean.

It’s El’s turn to shake her head. “No.” Simple, soft, and serious. “No.”

The room has turned on its axis, and Will grapples for a handhold. “No?” he repeats, voice rasping in a dry throat. “You… broke up again?”

“We never-” El presses her palms flat against her eyes, then finally looks back up, searching for words in the space between them. The tearful swell of her cheeks is clear. “I never undumped him. He never asked.”

Will swallows hard. “That’s stupid.” It’s too loud, too earnest. He’s never hated himself more. “Mike’s crazy about you.” 

“No,” El forces out again, and it’s so miserable that Will can’t ignore the sympathetic twist in his stomach anymore. He drops to the balls of his feet, crouching in front of her, close enough to smell the shampoo they share in her wet curls.

“Well,” he says, working hard to keep his voice steady, “now we have to find him so I can kick his ass.” It feels like he’s borrowing someone else’s words, draping them over a poor match of a frame, but he tries to mean it. 

For a moment, El only blinks, parsing through the offer with damp, shining eyes. “Why?”

Heat floods Will’s cheeks, and he’s suddenly glad for the cover of evening. “That’s what- what brothers do. Beat up guys who make you sad.” He forces it out in an awkward, uncertain rush, half-ready to back away and ignore the overstep. It’s only been five months since the day he peered into his old doorway, watching his mom tack El’s favorite posters onto the wall. They had hardly spoken for the first several weeks, just two ghosts passing each other in the kitchen and at the bathroom sink, lost in the haze of shock too big to speak.

But El doesn’t startle. She doesn’t shy away, doesn’t sneer at Will’s sentimental whim. Instead, the edge of her mouth twitches up – almost imperceptibly – and the hunch of her shoulders seems to ease.

“Then you’re a good brother,” she answers, and Will could nearly cry from the overflow in his chest. Relief, appreciation, all mixed in with the sorrow and the fear, boiling hot in his throat until he can only pull back from it. Fingers tight on the dresser, he stands up with shaking legs.

“Me?” He tries a smile, trembling at the edges. “Jonathan’s the one who buys you ice cream.” Every Friday, even when it’s too cold for the two scoops of syrupy strawberry.

A car rumbles past the house, twin headlights flashing over El’s face through the window. Will can see the widening split of her smile, just slightly crooked with mischief, and it cuts right through the hurt like butter.

“You can buy it next time, then.”  

Chapter Text

❝ This is what I want: I want to grab my brother’s hand and run back through time, losing years like coats falling from our shoulders. ❞

Jandy Nelson, I’ll Give You the Sun

Side B. 

December 14, 1985

“How was it?” 

Nancy clicks the back door shut behind her and shrugs in reply, thumbing a box of Marlboro Lights from her pocket. A mother’s instinct urges Joyce to tut her disapproval, but the ashtray between her own elbows would make it a hollow bluff. Instead, she just passes over the lighter. 

“Walls and a roof,” Nancy says, once her cigarette catches. It’s bitterly cold, and her fogging breath blends in with the smoke. “If you told me three years ago my mom would willingly rent an apartment off Lexington Avenue without a gun to her head…” The lift of her eyebrows fills in the rest of the trailed sentence. 

“A lot’s changed since then.” A pitiful understatement, Joyce knows, and a near-meaningless platitude that everyone in their ragtag mix of a family has uttered more than once, when nothing else will quite make do. 

“I’m proud of her,” Nancy ensures. “Getting through all this like she has… It’s just-” A pause. Her lips open, then close, and she blows out white against the muddy backdrop of the yard. “I’m worried, I guess. I don’t want her to get hurt again.” 

The quiet words resonate all too clearly with Joyce, but she just furrows her brow, gripping her own private concerns close to the chest. “By what?”

It falls flat, and Nancy leans in with quiet obstinance on her face. On either side of the smoldering cigarette, her fingers are rough, her nails dark and chipped. “You can’t tell me I’m the only one who sees it.” 

It. Mike. The questions, the inconsistencies. With each day that passes, Joyce feels more and more like they’re all taking sides in a silent battle, one where no one truly wants to be right. Either they’re being played by Brenner’s people again, or something truly awful did happen to this boy, and he can’t - or won't - come out with it. 

“Hop’s still looking for answers,” she says after a moment. “We’re gonna find out what happened, okay? Just give it time.” 

Patience has never been Nancy Wheeler’s particular virtue, and it shows in the clench of her thin jaw. “Have they-” She shakes her head, like she isn’t prepared to hear her own question. “Have they dragged the quarry again?” 

Joyce feels the air pull from her lungs, but she keeps her face still, her eyes warm. Inside, the clatter of breakfast firing up sounds distant and alien.  “If there’s a scrap of evidence left in that quarry, it’s not where anyone can get to it.” 

Her own words pull at her stomach though, and she swallows hard against them, willing them back down. Because the truth is, she doesn’t know. They dragged it just once, back in ‘83, and a deputy had given the Wheelers every assurance that it need not be repeated. Sattler’s had been mostly cleared out before it was flooded, he’d said, and a boy nearly thirteen would be strong enough to get free of anything left. More likely than not, he’d wound up in an inflow pump or an underground crevice. After that, no one had had anything else to say to Mike’s parents, and while a death certificate couldn’t be issued until 1990, Karen and Ted had buried an empty box just a stone’s throw from where Will’s was being dug up. 

There’s a soft, muffled sniff, and Nancy rubs her sweater sleeve across her face, too slow to hide reddening eyelids. She breathes out, damp and unsteady, and Joyce reaches over to rest a hand on her wrist. 

“It’s okay to have doubts, honey. It doesn’t make you a bad sister.” Why would it, when they’re being presented with such an impossibility? There’s nothing cruel about being wary of miracles. 

Nancy flicks ash into the tray, seeming to struggle with words. “Sometimes…” She shakes her head, presses the heel of her hand to one eye. “Sometimes I look at him and it’s like- it’s like he’s seeing something we’re not. Something awful.” 

Joyce’s chest goes cold. “Did it happen again?” The other morning, a stark white face and bare feet in melting snow. He’d gone into Jonathan’s room and hadn’t emerged for hours, not even for his friends’ wide-eyed concern. 

“I didn’t tell my mom.” A whispered confirmation, and a quick glance at the back door. “She already lost him once, I don’t want-” 

“You lost him too,” Joyce cuts in, voice soft. “You don’t need to pile everything on yourself because you think her pain is worse.” It hadn’t worked for Jonathan, and it won’t work for Nancy. Pain has to be shared, or else it grows and burrows and hollows out. Hopper had said the same thing to her last year, after Bob, when her own grief felt selfish in the face of her son’s pain. And maybe she hadn’t taken it to heart, but she’ll be damned if she lets these kids make the same mistakes. 

The smile Nancy tries for is a close forgery, but too tight at the edges. When she speaks again, her voice is carefully schooled. “Thanks for being there for her, after. During the divorce, too. I never really-” 

Joyce shakes her head without a further thought. “Your brother found my boy,” she says. “You fought the thing that hurt him. A few casseroles could never begin to repay what your family has done for mine.” 

If Nancy believes it, the pinch of her face discloses nothing. She flexes her hands against the cold and starts to take another drag, but a sudden rattle from behind has her scrambling for the ashtray. The back door shoves open, hinges wailing, and a quiet voice rises over the din from inside. 

“Joyce?” Even the arrival at a first-name basis has done little to loosen the way El says her name. It may as well still be “Mrs. Byers” for all the polite hesitance, as though she’s a guest in their lives instead of a beloved resident. 

“Hey, sweetie.” Joyce extinguishes her own cigarette and turns around. “What’s up?” The girl is already dressed, her hair wrangled into short braids courtesy of Karen. A few steps behind her, Mike slouches in another borrowed T-shirt, looking for all the world as though he’d rather vaporize on the spot than ask Joyce for anything.

El curls her toes around the metal threshold. “Can we go to the Citgo?” 

“The gas station?” Nancy raises a brow, and glances back at her brother. He seems to shrink under her gaze. Does he know? Can he sense the doubt spilling off of her? Surely he can sense Hop’s, far louder.  

“Junk food,” Joyce clarifies, pushing off of the railing. “How about I drive you?” 

An unacceptable proposition, clearly. “We want to ride bikes,” El pushes. She’d gotten her own for her birthday, and Max had taught her to ride on the bumpy back roads behind the high school. Every scuffed knee was a new badge of victory, a heroic tale told over that night’s dinner. 

It’s a helpless endeavor from the start, and after a shared look with Nancy, Joyce sighs her approval. “There and right back, okay?” she says. “Do you have money?” 

Mike, still silent, opens his mouth to admit defeat, but El cuts him off with a proud nod, patting the pocket of her overalls. “Four dollars, twenty-five cents,” she announces. Spare change from last week’s trip to the movies. 

Smiling, Joyce feigns surprise at the sum. “Don’t eat the whole snack aisle with that.” El smiles in return, and shuffles over to the jumbled pile of muddy shoes to find her own sneakers. 

“And Mike?” Nancy calls after the two. The boy’s shoulders hunch at the raised voice, and he turns with something like dread poorly hidden behind his eyes. “Nothing with strawberries, remember?” 

A roll of the eyes, pure teenage boy. “I know ,” he answers, hands buried firmly in his pockets. And with that, El is ushering him back through the busy kitchen, leaving the door hanging open behind them. The smell of coffee beckons Joyce, and she shoots down the temptation of a second cigarette. 

“It’s just a few blocks,” she tells Nancy, whose lips are still turned down in quiet concern. “They’ll be fine. Come on, coffee’s ready.” 

Side A. 

The Pinto heaves up the driveway like a horse on its last leg, and Joyce Byers throws on the parking brake with too much verve. It’s been a white-knuckled trip from Indianapolis for everyone involved, but as badly as Will wants to escape the car’s stifled confines, he doesn’t want to do it here. 

“I’ll be ten minutes across town,” his mom says. “If you want to leave-” 

El nods her understanding, but Will just looks down at his knees. “It’ll be fine, mom.” The central theme of his life for the past two years: he doesn’t want her to worry. He can’t let her worry, not after all he’s put her through. 

The assurance is tired and hollow, though, and his mom sees right through it. “They know this is hard on both of you,” she adds, even as Will pinches his eyes closed. “You don’t owe anyone more than you can give right now, okay?”   

It’s a clear, cold day, and only small patches of packed snow remain in the Hendersons’ steep front yard. Lucas’ house had always been the best for sledding, but Mrs. Henderson made the best hot chocolate, the thick, rich kind you stir on the stove. Last December, Mike had burned his tongue so badly on it that he’d had to suck on ice for half an hour. 

The trunk pops with a creak, and Will’s mom scoops out his duffle, army green and worn thin. El’s overnight bag, a recent Kmart purchase in yellow flowers, is newer. Newer like her clothes, and her school supplies, and her backpack. All bought with money left from Hopper, of course, but tamping down quiet, poisonous jealousy had been a daily practice in the early days of fall, when their space and their life became a thing to be shared. 

Will is barely out of the car when the carport door swings wide open, striking the brick behind it. A flurry of faces rush out - some hanging back farther than others. 

“Hey, man!” Dustin reaches the car first, quickly sweeping two strong arms around Will’s shoulders. There’s nothing but comfort in his grip, and Will blinks against the swell of tears. 

“Hey,” he echoes, trying his best to return the hug. When Dustin moves on to El, it’s both a breath of relief and a stark loss. 

Mrs. Henderson bustles over in a blur of pink cheeks and holiday earrings. “Oh, it’s so nice to see you all,” she coos, laying a warm hand on Will’s shoulder. She smells like vanilla, almost cloying. “I just wish it was under better circumstances. Now come on in, we have cookies in the oven.” 

“Thanks for letting them stay here, Cheryl.” Will’s mom hoists a bag over each shoulder and follows Mrs. Henderson into the carport, chatter fading and disappearing as she explains her lodging at the Super 8. Dustin follows, and then Max, calling out for El to join her. 

And finally, all too quickly, it’s just Will and Lucas, the latter framed in the carport door, socked feet fidgeting on the brick steps. He’s taller now, since the last time Will was here, and something about the realization makes his chest ache. 

“Listen, Will...” 

“You don’t have to apologize. It’s okay.” 

Lucas shakes his head, moving closer. There’s exhaustion plain on his face, and his forehead is creased in worry. “Stop doing that, man. I can tell when you’re hurt, and you don’t have to keep brushing it off like it’s nothing. We all care about you.” 

The tears sting again, and Will shakes his head too hard, fighting to keep them back. “You were right, though. I was being-”

“Smart,” Lucas finishes. “You were being smart. You used what you know. It’s just what we did with the Demogorgon, and then with the Mind Flayer, and it’s always worked.” 

It should be a relief, but doubt still clenches at Will’s stomach. He was never there, before. It was always Mike leading the mission, Mike making up the game plans, Mike saving everyone’s ass. 

“I just-” Lucas takes a deep breath, and continues. “He wasn’t himself after you left. It was bad, worse than last time, and none of us knew what to do, and now-” 

There it is again: Mike, unhappy. Mike, wrong. How had Will not noticed?  Was Mike hiding it that well when they talked, or had Will missed something? Is it his fault for letting himself get fooled? Is that why Mike isn’t here now?

All Will can do is nod, sliding a jacket sleeve across his eyes. “Okay,” he finally says, an empty word that fails to cover every indication to the contrary. Lucas accepts it, though, dropping a soft, guiding hand onto Will’s shoulder. 

“All options are on the table, then? Blinks and all?” 

“Yeah.” Will’s voice is too soft to be convincing, and they both know it. “Blinks and all.” 

“Come on, then.” Cracking a sideways smile, Lucas leads him into the carport and towards the waiting door, where low, cheerful chatter rolls out of the kitchen. “Cookies are gonna get cold.” 

Side B. 

The sky is clearing by the time they reach the turn onto Chase Street. Sparse, brown forest lines the road on one side, cut by rusted train tracks; if they followed the overgrown slats, it would take them right to the woods at the south of town, to the closed gates of the lab. 

“I, uh.” Mike clears his throat. His nose is starting to drip from the cold. “I like your bike.” Stupid, stupid. He wants to run off the road then and there, and disappear into the trees. El just smiles, though, clearly pleased at the compliment. 

“It was a birthday present,” she says. “From Hop.” 

“Yeah?” Birthday. Another thing Mike had helped her choose back home, like her nickname and her favorite movies and her closest friends. “When’s that?” 

“September,” El answers, pride in her voice. “Nineteen, seventy.” She still says the numbers slowly, carefully, like it’s a sequence she’s practiced. 

Mike blinks. “Does that make you-?” 

“Fifteen,” she says, her smile growing into a bright grin. The crooked teeth in the corners make his heart hurt with fondness, but not the kind he’s used to. Not an ache to kiss her, but… to hear her laugh. To talk with her for hours, to learn who she’s become here without his clumsy influence. “I’m older than you.” 

“No fair,” he manages, trying for levity. “You’ll get to drive before me.” 

El shakes her head, braids swinging. “I don’t want to yet. I just learned how to bike.” As though she hasn’t utterly mastered it in whatever short time she’s riding. Her balance is flawless enough that Mike nearly suspects her of using her powers - powers she lost, back home, months ago. 

“Has Max taught you to skate?” 

This makes El laugh. “I’m bad at it,” she admits. “Scraped my knees.” 

“Me too. I think I lasted, like, five seconds.” It had been just once, in the high school parking lot, back at the start of the year. Back before Will and El left, when they were still a six-part harmony snatching moments of peace whenever they could. Back before Mike felt himself drowning again, falling deep and untethered. 

El beams. “I lasted six.” 

“Older and better at skating? I knew you were awesome.” His voice sounds too tight, almost playacted, and he cringes inwardly. He’d give anything - anything - to just fall back into himself, to forget the other side and stop having to pretend. 

The anxious swell in his voice doesn’t make it past El. Her bike slows, and she fixes him with soft, earnest eyes, just as she did on that long-ago afternoon in the woods. I understand, she’d told him, and in the years since he’s never stopped believing that. 

“I knew you were, too,” she says, and Mike feels his chest tighten, disagreement heavy on his tongue. 

I’m not, I’m not, he thinks, desperate to argue. I was stupid, I left you. “El…” 

She looks at him for a moment more, as though she knows what he’s thinking. Maybe she does, in this world. Maybe her powers never left, and she can still read him like a billboard. Or maybe she never needed powers to do that. Maybe he’s just that obvious, wearing every thought pinned to his face like an idiot. 

“Come on,” she finally says, as the blocked letters of the Citgo sign pull into view. “They have Twinkies.” 

They do, in fact, have Twinkies, and El purchases four with her half of the junk food funds, sliding two quarters at a time to the sleepy attendant. Mike tears open a packet of Skittles as they leave the store, and passes each red one in El’s direction. 

“You can’t have strawberry?” she clarifies around a mixed mouthful of snack cake and chewy corn syrup. 

“Nope. Allergies.” Sure, it’s all sugar, but the packaging touts Natural and Artificial Flavors, and he’d rather not receive a lecture for coming home red-tongued. 

“Does it make it so you can’t breathe?” 

Mike slides the bag into his (Jonathan’s, borrowed) pocket and shakes his head. “Not like Lucas and shrimp.” 

A silence follows his answer, and for a moment he continues fiddling with the crooked bike stand. Only when he looks up to offer another Skittle does Mike notice El’s still, somber face, and recognize his own flagrant error. 

Lucas himself hadn’t learned about the allergy until this past June, on a family trip to Sheboygan. With just five words, Mike has blown a massive hole through the middle of his own story. He feels his stomach drop, his heart pound out of sync. All he can do is stare at the ground, waiting for El’s horrified admonishment. 

It doesn’t come. She mounts her bike and pedals out of the gas station lot without a word, and Mike nearly falls over scrambling to catch up, watching the sharp hunch of her shoulders with growing panic. 

“El!” Shit, shit. She’ll get home before him and tell everybody, and then… then...  “El , I-”

It’s over. The cheerful meals around the big, round table. The soft press of his mom’s unsprayed hair against his cheek. It’s all over, and it’s all his fault. They’ll- they’ll arrest him, or send him to the lab, or- 

The train tracks come into view just ahead, and Mike gains as El slows down to cross them, thin wheels unsteady over worn metal. The turn off of Chase Street closes in, the green street sign a terrible beacon. 

“El, please, just-” 

Her bike skids to a stop so suddenly that it nearly topples. Mike swerves sharply, clambering to catch himself, but he lands palms to asphalt, gravel in the torn heels of his hands. Feet flailing, he shoves himself up and scrambles towards El- 

El, who’s stock still in the middle of the road, her face a familiar picture of steeled urgency. 

“Run," she rasps, and that’s when Mike’s eyes find it. A hundred yards beyond the dirt road to the farmhouse, twice as big as it was in the empty apartment. Hulking, black, its paws the size of potholes, its fangs dripping onto the pavement. 

Twin headlight eyes, lurid yellow even in the bright morning. Fixed right on Mike. 

Think, think, think-

“Hopper,” he chokes out, pointing down the dirt road. “Get to Hopper. I’m right behind you.” 

If anything, it’s a confirmation of her powerless state that she listens, tearing off on her bike towards the farmhouse’s gabled roof. She can’t rip the monster in half with her force of will, but home has strength in numbers, and those numbers have guns. A brief check confirms Mike is following, and he at least pretends to for a moment, righting his bike while the dog takes a stalking step forward. 

Then, as soon as she’s far enough away, Mike drops it and runs in the opposite direction, towards the dim shade of the woods. 

He knows the dog is on his trail the second he reaches the treeline, by the splintering crack of a power pole at the road’s edge. The ground is sloped and rough, and Mike is hopelessly slow, but this was never about outrunning the creature - it was about keeping it away from the house, away from everyone inside it. Even as gnarled roots and mud-slick undergrowth shorten his lead, there’s a sense of peace in the back of Mike’s mind, a lightness he’d shudder to explain to anyone who asked. 

It’s just as he reaches a rocky creek bank that he feels it again. Just like yesterday in the apartment, and the other day in Jonathan’s bathroom - a twist in his stomach, like a fishhook pulling him backwards, pulling him down into himself. But for the first time, it’s welcome; it’s a gift , and Mike leans into it, lets it pull him, grabs onto it with his heart and his mind. 

The air stills. Somewhere, a bird calls, and Mike lets out a slow breath. 

“Don’t blame us when you get lost! ” 

The sharp, irritated shout of Lucas Sinclair bursts through the air like a gunshot, heralded by the shuffle of quick shoes through wet leaves - two sets, not one. Mike feels his heart skitter and stop, and he keeps his jaw clenched so tight it cracks, as though moving will break the spell before it comes out in his favor. These woods go all the way to Maple Street, to the paths the Party has been bounding down for a decade; it could easily be the other world’s Lucas, not his own. 

“We’re all going the same direction.” Will. That’s Will. He should be back home, still in bed. "If we get split up we’ll still-” 

Two figures emerge from nothing, from air, and freeze in their tracks. 

It takes a second of gaping and gasping for Mike to realize that his jaw simply isn’t going to work. Lucas and Will. His Lucas and Will, with their longer hair and their different coats, and faces slack with shock. Mike’s home - he’s home . These are his woods, and his friends, and they’re looking right at him. 

“Mike…” Lucas all but whispers, and the silence breaks. He and Will rush forward, and Mike tramples back up the bank, arms outstretched, tears already forming in the edges of his eyes- 

His hand goes right through Lucas’ shoulder. 

“... Mike?” Will’s face falls, and he swipes out for contact but Mike feels it this time, like a static buzz through his chest, fingers failing to land on anything solid. Horror floods Will’s face, then Lucas’, and Mike stammers in panic. 

“I don’t- I don’t know what’s- I’m okay, guys, I’m just-” 

But Lucas shakes his head, frightened voice betraying a calm front. “I can’t hear you, man. I can’t hear what you’re saying.” 

“I’m okay," Mike repeats, voice rising. “I’m right here, I’m talking! Just listen!” Better words trip backwards on his tongue, spitting out only a rush of terrified repetition as he watches his friends’ shrink farther and farther into their own fear. 

“Mike ,” Will says again, thick and wavering with heartbreak, and it makes Mike want to scream , to cry, to tear reality apart until he can make this right . “Mike, you’re not-” 

“What if we just do yes-or-no?” A rational suggestion even through the tremble in Lucas’ voice, and the quaking in his hand. “You could just nod, or shake your head. You can hear us, right?”

Yes, yes, I can! But before the question even ends, before he can communicate anything to his terrified friends, space hooks its claws in again. Mike tries to dig himself in, heels hard in the muddy earth, but it’s no use. He’s being tugged, and his friends are standing right here , asking how to help, and Mike feels his face screw up in unbidden tears. 

“I’m sorry,” he shouts, hoping against all hope to break through. “I’m trying to find my way home, I promise. I-” 

“Mike!”

In a blink, the other boys are gone, and a furious El Hopper is calling his name in a stage whisper. Shit, shit . Stunned, Mike scrapes his fists over his eyes, pushing tears aside. Somewhere too close, the dog is still baying. It’s all he can do to stay on his feet now, dizzy with the effort of trying to resist the slip. 

“Mike!” El finally shoves through the underbrush, eyes widening when she sees the subject of her search safe on the creek bed. Safe for now, at least. The dog is still on their trails. Mike’s doomed them both just by being here, by trying to fit back into their lives. 

“You need to hide,” he whispers, voice hoarse with desperation. “It’s after-” 

El shoves his arm, hard enough to bruise despite her drained strength. There’s a wild fear in her face that Mike doesn’t recognize. “Don’t do that. We fight together, Mike.” 

Another howl. They need to move. “You don’t have to fight at all. It’s me that it wants.” Heart racing, he tries to find the hook himself, to slip on his own. It doesn’t happen; he’s stuck on this side for now, with nowhere to hide - nowhere for El to hide. Frantic, he scans their surroundings. 

“What is it?” 

There. Shoving aside the top of a dry bush, Mike eyes a space large enough for El to fit, between thick, brown branches and a sharp cut of ground. “Behind here. Quick.” 

“You first,” El shoots back, grabbing Mike's shoulder. She shoves him into the bush’s cover, then follows with a quick dive borne of experience rather than instinct. Without powers her small body is hardly protection, but she still holds herself like a shield, putting Mike between her back and the muddy drop. 

When the dog lands, it’s with a tremor that rattles the trees. Dead leaves scatter and swirl, catching in the bush’s branches, just yards from where giant, inky paws carve into the soft ground. With each breath the creature almost seems to grow, waxing and waning like a tide, its edges ever-shifting. There’s a wrongness to it, an inconsistency with physics that Mike’s brain refuses to identify. 

The dog doesn’t sniff at the forest air. It doesn’t cock an ear to the wind, or shove its snout beneath a fallen log, rooting out prey. It simply turns, its shining, unbearable eyes landing on the thick brush, on El’s fierce crouch, and Mike knows it’s over. He swallows, too loud in the silent woods, and waits for the inevitable end.

Except, the end doesn’t come. 

“What’s it doing?” El asks, barely a breath. 

There’s a gentle splash of water, a slight shifting of rock. Mike opens his eyes, unclenches his jaw, and watches as the dog crosses the creek, away from their useless hiding place. Its claws dig into the mud on the other side, and as it climbs… something happens. The air around it seems to shimmer and change until it’s almost rippling, like a Magic Eye book of grey-brown trunks. Then, right there in the air: a perfect, silver circle, tracing itself out of nothing. It cuts right through a crabapple tree, carving away branches and berries like a knife. 

“No way, ” Mike whispers. No fucking way. A portal? A gate? He blinks, leaning around El to watch more closely. Is this how he got here? Is this how he can get back? 

The dog steps through, head and paws and hulking body disappearing onto the other side of reality, and as soon as it had appeared, the circle is gone. No shimmer, no ripple, no flickering shadow. Only gaping tracks in the muddy bank, and a hole through the middle of a crabapple tree. 

Side A. 

“So when it lines up with the ‘N’, you’re going north?” 

Dustin hums his distracted approval to Max, slowing to step over a rotting log. “Unless something’s messing with it.” 

The flash of discomfort on El’s face is quick and guarded, but Lucas catches it nonetheless. Two years since that afternoon in the junkyard and a quick, close friendship later, he knows neither of them have forgiven themselves fully. 

“Something like the Mind Flayer?” Max asks. 

“Like a gate.” Will, this time. He’s trailing at the back, feet trudging in the damp leaves; despite Lucas’ attempt at clearing the air, there’s still a discomfort between them, like Will is waiting on pins and needles for another disagreement. Fine, then. If he doesn’t want to accept the apology, that’s on him. They have more important things to do today. 

It was Dustin’s idea, an asinine repeat of last year’s half-baked plan. Pooled allowances snagged a bucket of atrociously raw meat from the Big Buy, and Lucas had dug a sizable bucket out of his dad’s shed. The woods south of town, down by Chase Street and the Sunoco, connect up with the thick forest around Widow Creek, where Nancy had found the backpack. Maybe the police knew where to look, but they didn’t know what to look for.

“I still think we should have brought Steve.” A suggestion Dustin has made no less than five times since they left his house. “Or at least his bat.” 

“We’ll call him if we find it,” Max shoves sweaty hair out of her face. The frigid snap has just barely lifted, but the morning sun is bright overhead, making everyone uncomfortable in their coats. “Assuming he even keeps that thing turned on.” They’d all pitched in to get him a walkie-talkie, and thus far had only heard from him once, when he accidentally sat on the call button during a late shift at Family Video.

Lucas can’t keep from rolling his eyes. “He won’t come. He’s too busy with that new girlfriend of his.” The one with the short hair and the weird jackets, who worked at Scoops before its untimely demise. 

“Girlfriend?” El wrinkles her brow, unaware of the development. Relationships always seem to be of particular interest to her, despite how infrequently she mentions her own. 

Max looks over her shoulder, braid swinging. “Robin,” she clarifies. “From the mall.” 

The noise Dustin makes is halfway between a snort and a laugh, and it nearly propels him right into a patch of icy mud. "Girlfriend? Robin’s not his girlfriend.” 

Even Will looks baffled, frowning at Dustin like the boy has suggested they all eat their own socks. “She’s not?” 

“I spent twenty-four hours trapped underground with them,” Dustin says. “I think I’d know if she liked him back.” Back. Ah. The girlfriend theory had held water, but somehow, Lucas thinks, this makes even more sense. 

The creek had been on the map, but it’s wider in person, trees and underbrush cutting away sharply into a gulch three feet down. Everyone slows, worn sneakers soles perilous on the steep cut-off, and Lucas finds himself grabbing a branch for support. Behind him, Will does the same, before quickly recoiling. 

"Shit.” A rare curse from Will Byers. Lucas looks over his shoulder, already stepping back to help. A knot of dead, brown thorns pricks into the heel of Will’s hand, blood already welling up when he pulls away. 

On instinct, Lucas reaches to unknot his bandana. “Here, wrap this around it.” But Will’s grimace only deepens. 

“Dude, no.” Despite Will’s frustration, it’s missing the edge of their earlier spat. Tugging his jacket sleeve to press against the punctures, he moves past Lucas and starts down the gulch again. “Do you even wash that thing?” 

The jab startles a laugh out of Lucas. “I mean, it’s been washed this year... I think.” 

By the time the two reach the pebbly edge of the creek, Dustin, Max, and El have already scaled the other side, pushing further ahead into the trees on the other side. Max raises a middle finger at her boyfriend, who sticks out his tongue good-naturedly in response. 

“Don’t blame us when you get lost!” he calls ahead, pausing while Will toes hesitantly at the flat, slippery rocks the others must have used to cross. The water is shallow but fast, its banks still outlined with slushy snow. A good way to get your feet wet and frozen, miles from a dry pair of shoes.  

“We’re all going the same direction,” Will points out, touching where the compass rests in his pocket. “If we get split up we’ll still-” 

It happens as simply as this: Lucas takes a step, hears his boot crunching on the rocky soil, and suddenly he’s looking at someone who wasn’t there. A person, where there were just trees and rocks and mud. Two eyes locked onto Lucas’, a mouth gaping in plain shock. 

“Mike,” he starts, barely more than a breath, and then he’s moving, and Mike’s moving, and the entire forest has shrunken down to this creekbed, to the dazed miracle of Lucas rushing at his best friend’s arms, of Mike stumbling on mud and rock, bone-thin hand outstretched-

It passes through Lucas’ shoulder like mist. 

“... Mike?” Will’s face is white, slack with shock. He reaches for Mike - twin terror in the two boys’ eyes - but the result is the same. His fingers slip past a worn coat collar, past the pale slope of Mike’s neck, and out the other side, where Lucas can see the faint line of Will’s knuckles through what should be solid flesh. It’s like a hologram, like Princess Leia beseeching Obi Wan, blue and ghostly against spaceship walls. 

Hologram or not, Mike seems just as startled by the experience. He looks down at his hands in bewilderment, and his lips move in panicked speech, but it’s like listening to a radio stuck between stations, clipped sounds fading in and out through the static: “... don’t… what’s…” 

Lucas’ stomach is ice, but he swallows it down, forcing his voice level. “I can’t hear you, man,” he manages. Next to him, Will’s breath is shaking. “I don’t know what you’re saying.” 

Mike’s face creases in clear distress, his mouth moving faster, but it’s a futile effort; all that Lucas can hear is the faint rustle of the dry leaves around them, and his own heart beating wildly between heavy lungs. 

"Mike-" Will’s voice is heavy with building tears, his hands clearly fighting against the urge to reach out again in vain. “Mike, you’re not-” 

An idea, out of spiraling panic. “What if we just do yes-or-no?” Lucas interrupts. “You could just nod, or shake your head.” Something widens in Mike’s eyes; he understands. “You can hear us, right?” 

But Mike’s eyes only widen further, acknowledgement shifting into anxiety, then into plain fear. His image seems to flicker,  like power during a storm, and Lucas can see on his face that he knows. Whatever is happening, Mike can feel it coming, and his silent words grow more rapid, more desperate. 

Only two come through. 

“... find my …” 

Then, in one stuttering heartbeat, he’s gone. 

Chapter Text

❝ does that make me your bad thing? your wild thing? something worth hunting across the country? ❞

Yves Olade, When Rome Falls

Side B. 

December 14, 1985

“And you’ve seen it before?” 

It’s El’s chin that dips in a nod, instead of Mike’s. From the dim bulb in the overhead light to the stern fold of El’s arms, everything about the scenario feels pulled from the walls of Hawkins Police Department. Instead of Hopper, though, it’s Will sitting cross-legged on the carpet, brow furrowed in concerned concentration. He’s still wearing his rumpled pajamas, and there’s a weekend morning drowsiness to his movements. 

“Just a couple times,” Mike insists. “I swear.” His hands are wrung white, his neck flushed with nervous sweat beneath the collar of his sweatshirt. There hadn’t been much of a fight to lose on the ride back from the woods, but he’d lost it all the same, falling to the universal logic of secret-keeping: if you have nothing to hide, then why are you hiding something? One deep strike from El, and he’d come out with the scantest of truths. 

Of course, telling Will was the natural escalation. 

“Do you know why it’s after you?” 

El had asked it as though she already knew the answer, but Will’s questioning is gentler, his eyes open and curious rather than searching. WIldly, Mike can’t help noting that it’s clear which of the two has spent countless Friday evenings watching Miami Vice, and which hasn’t. 

He shakes his head, face schooled into careful ignorance. “I don’t-” 

"Mike.” El’s gaze could splinter a rock, even without her psychic powers. “No lies.” 

Shit. Shit. “I’ve, uh.” Mike swallows, and tastes metal. Will’s eyes feel like spotlights on him. “I’ve been having these dreams, I guess. About this dog, and it’s- it knocks me off my bike.” 

For all his practiced deception, this much is true. Three nights, now, gasping awake with the tumble of sky and grass still in his vision, the sharp crunch of his bike clear and close. It’s how he wound up in the ditch - Mike knows that, by now. What he doesn’t know is why it’s still after him. 

“And now you’re seeing it awake, too?” Will asks. The soft familiarity in his voice is both soothing and haunting; if any of them know what it’s like for their nightmares to seep out of their heads, into the real world, it’s Will. 

“It was at the apartment.” El, again, as she toes off her sneakers, letting them clunk onto the floor. The bedroom door is closed, but each word still puts Mike on edge, a blaring reminder that their parents are all just a staircase away. 

Will’s brow creases. “You should tell Nancy.” 

"No, I’m not-” 

“You have to tell someone!” Concern flickers into agitation, then tamps back at a clatter from downstairs. “If you won’t tell Hop, then at least Nancy knows how to fight.” 

Mike shakes his head again, eyes scrunched in rapidly rising desperation. "No, just- look, it didn’t even attack me, back there. Maybe it doesn’t want to hurt me at all.” 

Sky spinning. Bike crunching. A phantom pain in his head, skull against hard-packed ground. 

“We can’t risk your life on a maybe,” Will argues, leaning forward on flannel-covered knees, but the fight in his voice is draining, already pure worry seeping in around the edges. It takes Mike aback, a sudden shift he fails to expect, and it takes him a moment to understand why. 

This Will has never truly fought with him. This Will never reached their years of sullen moods, of clashing temperaments, of Mike trying to cast off their childhood like an old skin while Will clung to it as a life preserver. He knew nothing but peace, nothing but the idyllic, unmarred stretch of their elementary school summers. 

And the last he knew of his best friend was an unthinkable bargain on a cliff’s edge. 

Mike breathes out slowly, lips pursed like a smoker, trying to calm the race of his heart. “I don’t want anyone else in danger, okay?” 

But El’s eyes narrow, her brows fierce over a too-knowing gaze. “We don’t want you in danger.” She hasn’t told Will all the details, not about Mike luring the dog into the woods, covering his sacrifice play with an easy lie. That’s all she’s known him as, here - the guy to put his safety down on the wire, in this life and the last. 

She’s not going to let him do it again. If things come to that, he’ll have to be clever. 

Whether Will catches the glint of intention in El’s face, he doesn’t let it show. Instead he blinks, once and then twice, as though something has just occurred to him. The churn of his thoughts is practically audible. Then, distracted, “There’s something I… Hold on, let me-” He clambers on his knees to the cluttered desk, strewn with tattered schoolbooks and stained paint supplies. 

“What?” Mike asks, nerves too frayed and fidgety to watch in silence. It takes only a moment, though, before Will’s fingers emerge from a drawer with an old, familiar volume. 

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Monster Manual. Mike’s copy, with the creased cover and the pancake syrup stain. Last he saw it, it was kicked deep under his own bed, surrounded by spare socks and crumpled papers that his mom had stopped trying to wrangle. Had she been the one to pack it up, here, and give it to Will? How long had she left the remains of that last campaign sprawled across the basement, collecting dust? The thought floods his stomach with nauseating shame, and he swallows it down under careful neutrality, watching Will flip through the book as though he doesn’t recognize its telltale scuffs. 

“You said it opened a portal.” A statement, rather than a question, but Mike and El nod anyway. Finally, with a last, emphatic whip of the glossy page, Will holds the book out. “Here. Read.” It’s El who complies, hands steady and eyes zeroed in, already scanning the black print. 

"‘A blink dog,’” she starts, voice careful and measured, "'takes its name from its ability to blink in and out of existence.'” Her finger slides over a box of stats, a lousy doodle of an ambiguous canine - nothing like the hulking beast they’d seen this morning. Mike wants to jeer, to turn up his nose and shoot the theory down where it stands, but Will is leaning in, pointing to another passage. 

“And look down here - they can use dimension door.” 

A silver circle, cutting through the air. The beast’s shimmering edges vanishing across its threshold. Mike presses his eyes closed tight. 

“‘Lawful good’?” El reads, skepticism heavy in her voice. 

“I mean, it’s not exact.” This science of comparison. The way they’ve always gotten their leg up in the past, always working out their winning strategy against mounting odds. “Doesn’t it sound close, though, except for that?” 

And Mike wants to disagree, wants to scoff at the distinction, laugh off the notion that this snarling monster could be good . Only, the more he dwells on the thought, the deeper its claws dig. 

Strict in their prosecution of law and order. That’s what the manual says, beneath his old earmark. Order and law are absolutely necessary to ensure that goodness prevails. The careful code he adhered to as a playacted paladin. He knows the rules like his own name: follow the laws of the land, so long as they’re humane. Carry out justice, so long as it serves the good of the people. 

The universe has laws. Physics, chemistry, reality. A place for everything; everything in its place. What if the dogs are just trying to uphold them? What if Mike’s the piece out of line, and they’re just trying to put him back? 

What if he doesn’t want them to? 

“Does it say how to defeat them?” El asks, looking up from the page. There’s an eager, energetic spark in her voice, free of all that cautious hesitance that Mike is used to. Another telltale impression of this new world, of her freedom from clingy boyfriends and her close sisterhood with Max. 

Will just shakes his head. “They’re allies, usually. Not adversaries.” A downcast glance at Mike, quietly apologetic. “Sorry.” 

“It’s alright.” There’s nothing else to say, not without choking on the growing fear in the back of his throat. Will’s bedroom is bright with late morning sun, but it feels fake, like a spotlight on a movie set. The only real thing is the encroaching shadow at the edge of Mike’s vision, the inky swirl of the dog’s fur stalking closer in his mind. 

El reaches out, her touch easy on the worn knee of his jeans. “You’re not alone in this, Mike.” 

Beside her, Will nods. It’s uncanny how alike they look; how many years Mike has gone without noticing. A twin force, too far beneath his single-minded radar. The girlfriend, and the best friend. Maybe they’re meant to fall into orbit together. Maybe they will back home, too, down in Greenwood. 

Maybe Mike has always been the piece out of place.

Side A. 

The door hurtles open, knob striking the wall so hard that it rattles. Stumbling over muddy sneakers, Dustin scrambles to catch a dislodged poster, its careworn tape flapping uselessly on the paneling. Max pushes through behind him, forehead scrunched in disbelief. 

“You came to school dressed as the fucking Ghostbusters. How do you not believe in ghosts ?”

From the crumbled poster in Dustin’s hand, the gloss-finished cast of The NeverEnding Story seems to look up in reproach. “Science doesn’t support it,” he argues as the others file in through the doorway. 

Max rolls her eyes, making for the desk chair. It creaks under the force of her slump. “Science didn’t support giant monsters made of people sludge until last summer!” 

“That’s not the same thing!” Dustin’s voice rises, echoing in the blessedly empty house. “Consciousness is made up of electrical signals. Once those signals stop, there’s nothing. Zip, zilch, nada-” 

“Guys. Come on.” Lucas has been listening to the argument since they left the woods, the spark in his friends’ back-and-forth growing sharper with each exchange. Trailing at the back, Will and El have had little to say, and it’s pulled Lucas into the discomfort of mediation, made all the worse by the sickening horror low in his stomach. 

Max pays no mind to the interruption. “So you’d rather him just be gone?”

“He’s not a ghost because he’s not dead!” The certainty in Dustin’s voice barely outmatches the fear; beneath his fight, there’s a low tremble, a sheen of sweat on the back of his neck. “He can’t be, not if Lucas and Will saw him. It’s logic.” 

Shoulders hunched, Will trudges over to the bed, perching on its edge like he’s afraid to make an impression. “He told us to find something.” The first words he’s said since the creek, hoarse after a lengthy silence. 

Lucas nods in agreement. “We just need to figure out what. That’s the next step.” 

This shift in course seems to grab Max’s attention, and she swivels the chair towards her boyfriend. “Exactly. What do they always want in stories?” 

El, a shadow in the door frame, frowns. "They?  Who’s they?”

“Ghosts,” Max clarifies, drawing a dramatic groan. 

Lucas shrugs, half-heartedly buying in. “For you to leave their house?” He’s always preferred fiery action to the slow tension of horror films, but Will’s puzzling taste for them means the whole Party has shuddered through movie night picks of Poltergeist and The Amityville Horror with alarming regularity.

“For you to stop skimping on your employees’ bonuses?” Dustin throws in, derision still clear in his voice. 

Will, his face inscrutable, shakes his head. “Peace,” he answers, barely louder than a whisper. 

“Peace,” Max echoes. She tugs her feet up into the chair, letting the word settle in the room, on furrowed brows and solemn eyes. “Maybe he just wants to rest. What if he meant-” A sudden cut-off, but Lucas knows how the thought ends, what awful words were going to follow, and it sends a cold twist through his stomach. 

What if he wants us to find his body?  

“Or ,” Dustin breaks in, too loud for the cramped room, “he could be trapped in the Upside Down, and he just wants us to find him, alive.” 

Lucas can’t help the flash of annoyance that burns across his own face. “You were the one all worried it might not be the Upside Down this time!” A soft, pained breath from his left tells him that this was news to Will, but Lucas doesn’t have time to react. 

“We have proof he’s okay, now,” Dustin insists, cheeks pink with frustration. “We just need to find out where he’s okay.” 

“He was see-through, dude. How is that okay?!” 

Turning back to the desk, Dustin zeroes in on Max. “You still have that ouija board thing, right?” Something like embarrassment passes over her face, but the line of questioning barrels right through it, Dustin’s eyes alight with revelation. “We’ll take it out to the woods and have a séance, and when no one comes through we’ll know.” 

El looks to Lucas, her face stricken and lost. “Wee-gee? ” she whispers, but it’s drowned out, the conversation barreling past her understanding without a courteous thought.

“Fine!” Max stands up, the chair nearly toppling behind her. “You want a séance? I’ll give you a fucking-” 

Before the words are out of her mouth, the mattress coils squeak; Will is getting to his feet, the open door in his sights.

“Will?” Lucas starts to follow, the air between them a carbon copy of this morning’s tension, but he freezes when he sees the clench of Will’s fists, the quiver in his jaw. 

“What if we’re all wrong?” Will asks, eyes flicking between the rest of them, guarded and anxious. “What if we could be out there saving him, right now?" A gesture to the window, where winter light filters in through dust. It’s still early, hardly lunchtime, and the rest of the day rolls out like an awful void. 

“We’re not giving up,” Max tries, but there’s a doubtful edge to her plea. They’re all blindsided, all groping in the dark for something none of them can understand, and every step feels like a blunder. “We’re just-” 

“Wasting time.” An attempt at outrage, softened by the sheen to Will’s wide eyes; he swipes a sleeve across them, and Lucas allows him the cover of ignorance. 

“We’re following the leads we have, man,” he says. “You’re the one who brought up the Ethereal Plane thing. Maybe this is-” 

But Will’s already gone, the hall an empty stretch of mocking, morning light behind him. When the Hendersons’ front door swings closed behind him, it’s with a resounding slam. 

He doesn’t expect it to be Max. 

Only thirty-seven seconds pass, wind nipping through his jacket, before Will hears the groan of hinges and the shuffle of worn sneakers on concrete. Embarrassment had already begun to bloom in his stomach, knowing he would have to slink back inside to use the phone. Either that, or walk to the Wheelers’ and hope his mom is still there. No route free of shame. 

“I bought it back in August.” Max’s voice, a few feet away. “The ouija board.” 

Will tucks his knees closer to his chest, and stares out at the street as though there’s something to look for, a message in the damp asphalt. Another truck shambles past, Van Morrison playing through open windows; the driver flicks a cigarette into the gutter, and Will imagines it igniting the dead leaves, spreading across brown yards until this whole town is nothing but ash. 

“It was stupid.” She’s closer now, stooping down to the cement; in the corner of his eye, Will can see her pale knees through ripped denim. “I just thought… Billy was an asshole, and I hated him, but some part of me just- wanted to know if he was out there. If he was scared. ‘Cause he was part of my life, you know? And then he wasn’t, and- it fucked me up.” 

The cigarette doesn’t catch, and the truck’s radio fades into silence. “Did it work?” Will knows the answer, but the question slips out anyway, a half-hearted formality.

Max pinches her lips; they’re chapped and chewed to bleeding. “I don’t even know if I believe in that stuff. It just- Sometimes it feels nice to.” 

“Yeah.” It catches in Will’s throat, and he resists the roaring urge to leave , to soar down the driveway and over the street and into the deep woods, away from everyone’s gentle understanding. Maybe, if he fled far enough, he could make it to the scattered rubble of his old hideout, to the Polaroid scraps still buried somewhere in old mud and rotting leaves. 

“Do you?” 

Will blinks. “Do I what?” 

“Believe.” In the sun, Max’s hair is nearly too bright to look at. “In- in an afterlife, I guess.” 

There was a book of children’s Bible stories in the Wheelers’ basement, its spine crisp and Nancy’s name penciled carefully into the cover. Will wasn’t raised to believe in the divine or the angelic, but he remembers thumbing through the watercolor illustrations, eyes wide at the yellow-gold of Heaven’s towering spires, the peaceful blue of the clouds it rested upon. A forever city in the sky, its gates letting in only the good. Only the devout . 

They’d been thirteen when Mike proclaimed himself an atheist at the dinner table, largely for the sake of contrariety. If that gilded childhood dreamland is real, somewhere far over their heads, he isn’t there. Maybe that’s why he’s still here on Earth, a faded image in the in-between. 

A plane out of phase. A place of ghosts and monsters. What if the Upside Down isn’t the only Ethereal Plane? What if the place of ghosts and the place of monsters aren’t the same? 

“It makes as much sense as the rest of our lives,” Will finally manages. His nose is starting to drip from the cold, but he makes no move to wipe it. “I just- I can’t talk about him like that. Like he’s gone.” 

“Sorry,” Max is quick to say, her words puffing out white. “I shouldn’t have brought it up. Dustin shouldn’t have.” 

It wouldn't have made a difference, Will knows. The thought was already hanging heavy in the air, crowding them all as they walked back from the woods, nearly choking by the time they reached the Hendersons’ house. If Max hadn’t brought it up, someone else would have. An inevitability, from the second Mike appeared by the creek; from the night he disappeared, or maybe even before. One of them was always going to be lost, this year or the next, to the monstrous nightmare that keeps opening up beneath their feet. Will just thought it would be him, in the end. Not Mike, intrepid and sharp, a winning plan always at the tips of his fingers. Not Mike, to whom they all look in every moment of uncertainty, to whom Will owes so much more than he can ever say. 

“He never gave up on me,” he says, quiet as a secret, half-swallowed by his own pounding heart. “He went to my funeral, and he still didn’t-” 

The slightest touch on his hand, silent and tentative. It’s okay, Max’s fingers seem to whisper. You don’t need to say it, not if you don’t want to. But he does want to. He needs to, like he needs to gasp in oxygen, like he needs to sit here on the cold cement until his knees stop quaking. 

“He’s the reason I came home.” Damp cheeks, salt on his lips. He doesn’t know when he started crying. “I can’t leave him out there. Even if he’s-” Dead. Bones, scattered in the underbrush. “I have to know where he is. I have to know.” 

The hand disappears from his, and for a moment Will’s stomach drops, learned panic starting to seep into his chest, words fumbling desperately to reel themselves back into his mouth. Was it in his voice? In the tears dripping towards his chin? Could Max see it painted bright across his face? 

You love him too much, a voice taunts in the back of his head. You need him too much. Everyone can tell why. It sounds half like his father, half like Troy, until it doesn’t. Until it sounds like himself, rational and honest, speaking words he can’t argue against. 

Except, Max’s hand returns. In the space of a heartbeat her arm slides firmly around his shoulders, tugging him close, until he can feel the heat of her breath against his cheek, the rise and fall of her chest through two layers of bundled coats. 

“We will,” she whispers, steady and warm. “We’ll find him.” 

Side B. 

Ten minutes hooked to Mrs. Byers’ clunky hairdryer, and the air mattress feels only half-full. Its ends balloon up as Mike flops into the middle, already wrapped in scratchy sheets - Hopper’s, for sure - but he waves off the offer of more air, and watches as Will wraps the dryer cord up. 

It shouldn’t feel this strange, bunking down next to the wooden nightstand, the old headboard, the familiar plaid blanket draped over the bed’s edge. The walls are white and the room is narrow, but the furniture is all the same, just like Mike’s last sleepover on the Byers’ floor, sometime back in August. Even Will’s pajamas are the same, too short above his pale ankles, as he climbs up into his own sheets. There’s a jittering tension in Mike’s stomach, though, something whispering wordlessly that he doesn’t belong. 

Five nights borrowing Jonathan’s room had come to an end when the older boy’s couch-surfing finally turned up empty, and he rattled home with a duffle full of laundry and a one-armed hug for Mike. With the apartment move-in still two days away, space was beginning to get scarce, but one solution seemed too obvious to ignore. 

Mike just hadn’t anticipated the uncomfortable stretches of silence. It’s the longest they’ve been alone - really alone - and his mind flicks desperately through mild, innocuous topics, something that won’t hurt when he sees it reflected back on Will’s face. 

After a slow, restless moment he settles on, “I can’t believe my mom fought Russians.” 

Peering over the edge of the bed, Will grins, clearly relieved. “She was awesome.” He tips up on his elbows. “She helped Hopper turn off this big machine that was trying to open another portal.” 

It isn’t what Mike was expecting to hear, and his face betrays the shock, eyes widening nearly comedically. “Huh.” Where was your mom? Where was the weird guy with the tank top? “I mean, I guess she can be pretty scary, when she wants to.” 

Hell hath no fury like Karen Wheeler dissatisfied with her service at Kmart. 

“Nancy taught her how to shoot,” Will confirms, adding to the already dissonant image, and Mike can’t help the startled snort of a laugh that it inspired. His mom, who grounded him for throwing a defensive punch back during recess last year, has quite likely killed people. What would Mike’s dad say? Does he know? 

“No one got hurt?” Gentle curiosity, only half-fake. Countless factors could have changed what happened at the mall, and his mind is too tired to race through them, to divvy up the algebra of life and death. 

Will’s mouth falls into a solemn line. “Max’s brother didn’t make it.” 

“Oh.” Relief tries to worm its way into Mike’s stomach, and he pushes it back. “That sucks.” And he’s just as surprised as he was this summer to find that it’s not a lie, not all the way. He’s not sorry that Billy’s gone, but the death of others has never been something he could find comfort in, not even in the blood-slick halls of Hawkins Middle School. 

“He was a jerk,” Will says, shoulders crooked in a shrug, “but it was still kind of sad.”

All the same as back home, then; a bittersweet rescue, a guilt that he’s sure El still carries each day. It’s hard to be the one who’s saved, the one who watches the end through flashing lights and comes out the other side still breathing. 

The one who clambers over to the cliff’s edge, and watches as no one swims back up for air. 

“Max, uh-” Clumsy words look to fill the silence, but they stick on Mike’s tongue. “She seems cool.” Stupid, stupid. 

Something changes in Will’s face, the slightest twitch smoothed over in seconds. He shoves a hand through his damp hair, mussing up the ends. “Lucas and Dustin wouldn’t shut up about her when she first moved here,” he says, a feigned interest starting to give way to amusement. “Just nonstop, ‘Max is so cute’, ‘Max is so cool’, ‘Max kicks ass at Dig Dug-’”  

Mike is surprised by his own laugh, clear and genuine. The display had infuriated him back home, caught up as he’d been in his own unhappiness, and part of him regrets the missed opportunity. He and Will could have shared the joke, maybe. They could have shared a lot over the last year, if it weren’t for Mike. 

He looks up, eyebrows raised, chest lighter than before. “You didn’t think she was cute?” 

Silence cuts between them, and Mike hears himself a second too late. It was a meaningless poke at the story, a jab about his past distaste for Max, but he knows that’s not what it sounds like, not after this summer. It’s not my fault you don’t like girls, his own voice says, venomous and vile, and he clamps down on his tongue to quell the self-hatred that follows. Any moment now, Will is going to rush out of the room, and all of this will be over. No more cautious friendship, no more help. Mike will be back on his own, and it will be no one’s fault but his own. 

Except… 

“I don’t know.” Will’s voice is quiet but level. “I mean- I guess. I don’t-” 

And that’s all it takes for Mike to remember: that awful evening never happened here. Will never looked at him with horror and betrayal in his red-rimmed eyes, and Mike never followed the whack of metal and the crunch of branches deep into the woods, feeling like something irreparable - something more than their childhood fort - had shattered. 

“Hey, it’s fine,” he cuts in, shooting an easy smile. “It’s okay if you don’t.” 

Will blinks. There's something careful - almost searching - on his face, as though he’s sorting through a selection of responses. What he settles on is, “Do you think she’s cute?” 

And maybe he would have, in another world - a world without one friend missing and another haunted, and a dark, painful pit in his own chest - but Mike doesn’t even have to think before shaking his head. “I think she’d punch me no matter how I answered that, though.” 

The edge of Will’s mouth twitches upward. “What about El?” Even softer, punctuated by the ghost of a glance. 

“I…” Mike pauses, lips parted around words that don’t come, that weren’t planned in the first place. Is El cute? Of course. She’s- beautiful. She’s amazing. And seeing her here, seeing how different she is, how bold and talkative and assured… 

He knows now, more than ever, that he’s not right for her. That he never was. 

The silence drags, heavy and awkward, until Will finally takes pity. “You don’t have to answer.” Soft understanding, same as before: It’s fine. It’s okay if you don’t. “They just said you had a crush on her, back then.” Dustin and Lucas, he must mean. 

“I was twelve,” Mike says in reply, and up until the words leave his mouth he’s not quite sure what he means by them. He was twelve . He was a child, lost and afraid, and all at once he had needed so badly not to be. Growing up was just over the cusp, just out of reach, but it seemed like the one thing he could do to take back control. Fight back when they shove you. Hurl yourself into the empty air. Kiss the girl. Don’t be a stupid little kid anymore. 

Push away your friends. Push away your hobbies. Put your girlfriend first. Grow up, grow up, grow up. 

Will tilts his chin, opens his mouth to question, but Mike understands now. Why he clung to El like a second skin, like someone lost and frightened and fragile who needed him. She was lost, and she was terrified, but he’d had it the wrong way around all this time. 

“You were gone,” he all but whispers, hoarse with nerves. “You were gone, but suddenly she was there, and-” Wide, panicked eyes, the same color as Will’s, latching onto his every word as a lifeline. “I could help her. I wasn’t- I wasn’t useless, or a total waste, for once.”

“You’re not useless.” The words feel like a platitude, but Will’s face is earnest. He leans over the side of the bed, close enough to smell the tang of his toothpaste. There’s a smattering of moles beneath his gaping collar, and Mike absently wonders if they fall in the same constellations as back home.  “You never have been.” 

It goes straight down Mike’s neck in a shiver, but the tips of his ears burn hot with something he can’t identify, something that makes him shrink in discomfort. He can feel poison clawing back up from his throat, vengeful words aimed inward.

“I am,” he urges, only embarrassed further by his own anger. “If I wasn’t I wouldn’t have-” 

Jumped. Killed myself. The unsaid words hang like fogged breath; Mike screws his eyes half-shut against their presence. Maybe he didn’t die in his own world, in the life he’s lived, but it was pure chance. A roll of dice. El just a few steps ahead, the deus ex machina of his unraveling story. 

Softly, silently, two feet land on the floor. The rest of Will follows, crouching low over the mattress. From below, his split ends look gold, haloed in lamplight.

“Do you still feel like that?” His voice is just as quiet and pained as his eyes. 

Mike blinks, looks away; his thoughts spin haltingly into gear, puzzling through the words. “Like what?” he asks, and instantly recoils, hating the sound of it. Playing dumb, in the face of Will’s raw compassion. 

“Sad,” Will clarifies nonetheless, his face earnest. Then, as though it’s a borrowed phrase, alien to his vocabulary: “Depressed.” 

Oh.

It’s a word Mike knows as little more than a whisper; a folktale about something that happens to adults, something secret and shameful that involves liquor bottles and afternoons in bed. People had said it about Will’s mom back in fourth grade, after Lonnie Byers skipped town, but only the ones who were being gracious. Most just said things like went crazy and lost her mind. 

Most still do, years later. 

Is that what he’d felt, back then? The fear, the anger, the sadness, all tumbling and cycling, all without reason? Even years before the Upside Down, it had hounded him like a bad penny. Finding D&D had been latching onto a life preserver, teaching him to be stronger, braver, but that howling shadow had never quite left. It had only gotten louder and louder, each time it crept from its depths. 

“I don’t know,” he finally manages. The words feel distant, like someone else is saying them from across the room. “Maybe.” 

Of course he was sad, that day on the cliff’s edge. Under his fire of determination, grief had gnawed him to ribbons, and he hadn’t been too young to take notice. But sad enough to leap from the quarry? Sad enough to…

He’d done it for Dustin. Taken stock of the situation, calculated the best course of action, acted accordingly. In the end, he hadn’t even been afraid; it had felt correct, objective, like selecting an answer on a math quiz. 

The bed frame creaks as Will settles against it, a sound so familiar it aches. “I just-” A pause, a softly furrowed brow. “I want to understand. No matter what happened.” 

Mike swallows, his dry throat sticking. “I-” You’ll hate me. You’ll throw me out. You’ll send me back. The reasons flick through his mind like a slideshow, drawing the pause out into plain discomfort, until all he can do is shake his head. 

For another moment, all is still, silent but for the murmur of voices downstairs. Mike expects discomfort, a harsh end to the conversation. Will clearing his throat, saying something polite, dismissing himself back up to his bed and away from the wild, broken stranger he’s mistakenly invited back into his life. 

Instead, there’s a rustle of movement, and two arms wind their way around Mike’s shoulders, cautious but firm under cotton worn soft. 

“Do you trust me?” Will asks, the hesitant words buzzing quietly against Mike’s neck, sending a strange warmth through his chest. He can smell shampoo, a familiar whiff of Mrs. Byers’ laundry detergent. It feels more like home than four walls on Maple Street ever did. 

Even in the palpable comfort, though, shame still stabs low and poisonous in Mike’s stomach, twisting like a knife. He tries to lift his hands, return the hug, but his body stays frozen stiff, a sailor’s knot on the scratchy sheets. 

“Of course I do,” he whispers, but he can’t hide the tight strain in his voice, the panic boiling deep. Will pulls back, seeking out his face, concern plain. 

Even quieter, as though their moms might hear: “Is it something bad?” 

Not the kind of bad you’re thinking. Not the kind of bad where he’s the helpless, innocent victim, in need of rescue. 

“Just-” Mike extracts himself the rest of the way, knees pulling up to his chest. The distance between them feels like meters, rather than inches. “You’re better off not knowing, okay?” 

It’s the wrong answer, judging from the bright flash of hurt across Will’s face. “I’m not,” he urges, loud enough now to bleed through the paper thin walls. “None of us are. We just want to help.” 

You can’t, Mike wants to say, his throat burning with the bitten-off reply. You’ll only get hurt worse. And not from the dogs, with their gleaming fangs. Not from the silver portals slicing through the bare, winter trees. Grief and betrayal can cut worse than anything that’s slithered out of the Upside Down, and all Mike wants is to protect them from it a little longer. 

“You don’t have to say it,” Will adds after a long, taut moment. His gaze has latched on the floor, self-conscious in Mike’s silence. “You could write it. Like, in a story.” 

“Will -” He doesn’t know what’s going to follow, only that his chest hurts with it, with sorrow and regret and affection, and the knowledge that he can’t. He can’t say a word to quell this breach of trust, to batten Will’s unwavering faith in him. 

But Will just shakes his head, eyes bright despite clear uncertainty. “I don’t mean now. Just- when you’re ready. Only when you’re ready.” 

The suggestion sticks in Mike’s mind, repeating over and over, through toothpaste spat in a strange sink, through stilted goodnights over the bed’s edge, through silence falling against a train’s distant clatter. Anxiety, on an inexplicable loop - a story, a story, a story. It isn’t until Will’s breath evens out and the Madonna tape across the hall clicks off that Mike realizes why. 

He can’t figure out if he’s its hero, or its villain. 

Chapter Text

❝ I hope whatever is waiting for you on the other side has all the lighting you need to see how much we love you. ❞

tumblr user judas-redeemed

Side A. 

December 24, 1985

The house smells stale. Cloying perfume and overdue trash, floral curtains drawn against late morning light. Joyce keeps her coat on; no one has turned on the heat, likely in days. 

“Can I get you anything? Coffee?” Karen’s voice chirps back from ahead, where she’s already busying herself in the kitchen. A doll on a track, dancing her circuit at each hour: answer door, fix hair, refill drink, smile. Joyce follows, anxiety building behind sorrow. 

“No, thanks,” she answers, watching as dark red wine glugs out of its half-empty bottle, into a shaking glass. It flows past the halfway mark, towards the brim. “I had some at Cheryl’s.” A chipped mug in a warm kitchen, full of gentle chatter. Karen should be there, surrounded by all of their willing support, not isolating with her dusty porcelain. The only sounds in the house are the muffled theme from a Care Bears tape and the echoing tick of Karen’s glass cloche clock. The chairs don’t even creak when they take their seats at the table, as though any noise is swallowed up by the thick, grieving air. 

There’s a familiar spread on the placemat: crayons, dulled down to round tips, scattered across an array of paper. Scribbles and shapes, for the most part, telling stories Joyce can’t quite make out. 

“Are these Holly’s?” She lifts up a corner, flipping through delicately. Dizzy circles, misshapen and overlapping, yellow and blue and green. A page of black blotches. No, not blotches - animals of some kind, with thick, stumpy limbs. Nothing like what Will was drawing at this age, but Holly has always been… different. Delayed,  Karen had said before, something to do with speech and motor skills, but Joyce had never been offered the details. Another secret closed in the Wheeler house. 

“Dogs,” Karen answers, chin dipping against the slightest wobble. “She’s obsessed right now. We’re already trying to figure out how to tell her we can’t get one.” 

It’s a safe topic, one Joyce can latch onto with comfort and ease. “Jonathan used to ask every Christmas ‘til we got Chester.” Floppy limbed, feet too big for his body. He’d died just before last Halloween, and his makeshift gravemarker now sits packed in a box in Greenwood. 

A generous sip, and an empty chuckle. “Lucky for me, Ted’s allergic. Cats and dogs.” 

Had Nancy wanted a cat, or was that Mike? She can picture it in flashes, a mangy bundle of black and white that they’d wound up taking to the shelter. The boys had still been so small that summer, with grubby hands and dimples in their knees, getting their popsicles all over the kitten’s fur. 

“Where is Ted?” Joyce asks, injecting as much nonchalance as she can. His car hasn’t been here since they pulled into town two days ago. “Working?” 

Karen nods, her lips pulled tight. “He already took two days off.” As if it’s a full explanation, something Joyce can relate to. Except, she can’t. From the day Will vanished to the morning he came home from the hospital, Mr. Melvald hadn’t asked once if Joyce could come in. Surely an accountant - or whatever Ted is - would be offered the same lenience. Surely his boss would hear the news, would hear that his boy is missing, and not even wait for a request. 

“So- it’s just you and Holly?” No Nancy, she knows; the girl’s face has been a presence at the Byers’ house for most of the last week. 

“Oh, some of the girls from Book Club have been over,” Karen replies, too fervent for the tension in her smile. “And the church- I didn’t want to make a big deal, but they put together some food. Just noodle salad, some casserole, but it’s been nice. We’ve been… okay.” 

She tilts her glass, downs too much wine. Over her shoulder, Joyce’s eyes light on the counter - a plastic carton of milk, left out. A bottle of gin at the rim of the sink. From the living room, the tinny murmurs of Cheer Bear and her friends sounds like something ominous, something wrong . The whole house does, and it closes in on Joyce like a fog. 

“Karen…” Her voice catches, held back by uncertainty, but she knows in her gut that she has to say something, that she’ll only regret staying silent. “I-I know we haven’t ever been close. I know we wouldn’t talk if it wasn’t for the boys. But… I’ve known you since ninth grade. ” 

Ninth grade, when the new girl moved from Muncie with her glossy hair and her pink cheeks and her sharp gossip. The talk of the school, squeaky clean for her teachers and her socialite mother, but mousy, forgettable Joyce Horowitz had seen her at parties out by Sattler’s. Three beers in, wet sand in her socks, cheeks red with laughter. She’d thrown a mean right hook at one of Lonnie’s friends who tried to get handsy. 

Joyce leans forward, voice low and earnest. “You can trust me, alright? You don’t have anything that needs hiding, not from me.” 

For a moment, it doesn’t look like Karen’s going to answer. She gazes down, tracing the edge of her glass with one thumb; a single burgundy drop clings to her nail. Somewhere, the clock ticks, one and two and three seconds, all the way to a nervous ten, until Joyce is ready to retract every careful word she’s said, to apologize for overstepping. 

Then, listless and absent, barely leaving Karen’s tongue: “I almost asked for a divorce.”

If Joyce had been listening for any particular response, that hadn’t been it. It strikes like an uppercut, the words failing to make any sense. “You…” 

“A couple months ago. September.” 

The idea is startling, impossible to grasp, but then- it’s not. It’s not, because Joyce had missed all the signs, had always pictured the Wheelers as some thriving, idyllic model - and had made precisely the same mistake with their son. The pattern is glaring and bitter. Maybe it wasn’t her lack of perception, but the Wheelers’ lack of transparency. Maybe every member of this family has been wearing a mask, all these years. 

Maybe Joyce has never truly known them at all.

“Karen, I’m-” 

But Karen isn’t done. Tension roils under her tight lips, her fist clenched quietly around the stem of her glass. When she finally looks up, her jaw is trembling. “I hate it here. This house, this town- I… I just couldn’t do it to the kids, though. I couldn’t do that to them.” 

The shatter in Joyce’s chest is a palpable thing, like a crack of glass between fingers. She breathes out, slow and sad. They’re the same words she’d told herself for years, right up until the spring afternoon she finally made Lonnie leave; the afternoon she saw him lay a hand on Jonathan, and realized she’d made the worst mistake of her life by trying so hard to keep the peace. 

“Staying together isn’t always what’s best,” Joyce finally answers. “You’re not doing your kids any favors by keeping them in a bad situation.” Closed hand. Bruised cheek. Unloaded shotgun heavy in her hands. " You’re not, okay?” 

Karen is quick to shake her head; her eyes are bright and damp. “It’s not- it’s not bad, not like-” Not like Lonnie. Not like Joyce’s bad. “It’s just- not anything. It’s not a marriage. And I was so caught up with it, I didn’t realize- the kids- ” She presses a hand to her mouth, blinking back delicate tears. A debutante sob, quiet and constrained, swallowing down what’s real. 

Joyce reaches across the table, palm lighting silently on Karen’s wrist. “It’s not your fault. You’ve been doing the best you can.” Honesty pumped in like air, until Joyce almost believes it herself. 

“I’m not, I can’t-” Karen stammers and sniffs. “I’m not like you, Joyce. I’m not built for this.” 

"No one's built for the things we’ve been through.” 

Fingers lace, squeezing gently, but Karen draws back. The clock feels louder than their voices. “I need to be. I owe it to Holly, and- and to Mike."

You owe a lot of things to Mike, Joyce thinks, sharp and poisonous, but she swallows it back down. “He’s a good kid,” she adds uselessly, half-expecting a challenge. Instead, Karen just dips her wobbling chin in a nod. 

“We were too hard on him,” she admits, eyes cast anywhere but across the table. “He changed. He- he was always sensitive, and moody, but it was worse. ” 

Was, Joyce hears, and she holds her tongue, the past tense tying knots in her stomach. 

“Ever since Will- there were these ups and downs.” 

“All the kids had those,” Joyce throws in, leaning over the table edge. “Cheryl told me Dustin still sleeps with the light on, sometimes.” A drowned, bloated body; the incident at the school; the fire at the mall – truths packaged into a story that parents can understand, just enough to know why their kids can’t sleep. 

The glass clunks down onto the table, this time for good, as Karen reaches up to massage her temples. “You can say it,” she says, eyes punched closed. 

Joyce frowns. “What?” 

“That I’m a bad mom.” 

If nothing else had twisted Joyce’s stomach with grief, these whispered words claw in like a vice grip. Words that have been thrown at her for years, tossed around with crazy and incompetent and alcoholic, following her like a cloud of gnats in summer. And for just a moment, a sour tinge colors Joyce’s thoughts. No one is going to say those things about Karen Wheeler, not even the one that is arguably true. No one is going to look at Mike’s disappearance and blame it on his mother, with her soft, coiffed hair and her businessman husband and her tidy home on Maple Street. 

“It’s okay,” Karen adds into the silence, voice damp and choking. “It’s true.” 

The bitterness dies in a heartbeat. 

“It’s not." Joyce has never tried harder to mean something. “Karen, everyone in this town has faced impossible odds these last few years, and our kids- they’ve seen the worst of it, right up close. No parent’s prepared to deal with that.” 

A manicured finger slides across Karen’s cheek and comes back stained gray with mascara. The only answer Joyce gets is a low, stuttering breath, tense against held-back tears. 

“You haven’t failed him,” she continues, softer. “We’re gonna bring Mike home, okay? Then you’ll have all the time in the world to make it up to him.” 

Karen nods, stiff and unsteady, and against the eerie silence, Joyce can nearly hear the porcelain cracking. 

Side B. 

“I’m not wearing a sports jacket.” 

Nancy spreads the fabric, pilled and wooly, until the letters on the back are legible: H-A-R-R-I-N-G-T-O-N. “You used to play tee-ball, remember?” 

He does, faintly: a rusted backstop in a dry, unmown field, and a helmet that had nearly covered his eyes. Early Saturday mornings and his father’s chidings. “Yeah, and I hated every second,” he grouses back. Nearly every second, at least; Lucas had been on his team, and they’d blown bubbles with their gum in the dugout. 

Another jacket shoves his way, this one denim. “Half these sleeves are gonna be too short,” Nancy says, already reaching into the cardboard box again. 

“Not my fault Steve’s got T. Rex arms.” But Mike takes the thing anyway, grimacing as lightly as he can manage. Loathe as he is to wear Steve Harrington’s cast-offs, it’s at least preferable to being dragged out shopping by his mom, especially when he knows she doesn’t have the money to spend. 

“Steve’s arms are normal.” A P.E. shirt, suspiciously off-white. Nancy tosses it away in dramaticized disgust. “Yours are just spaghetti noodles.” 

Mike slides on the jean jacket; Nancy’s predictions are correct, and the worn cuffs stop just before his wrist bones. It’s soft, though, and warm in the stark, cold apartment.

“He was glad to see you,” Nancy continues, just a sharp enough swerve in topic to be awkward. “I know you two didn’t-” 

“It’s fine.” Reaching into the box, Mike tugs out a pair of khakis, hopelessly small just at a glance. “He’s… okay,” 

They’d bummed a ride with Jonathan and stopped by the video store on a two-fold mission. Robin Buckley had slid all the best movies of the last two years across the counter on a steep employee bonus, while Steve had fetched a hefty box from the back of his car, eyes wide and uncertain the whole time. He’d seemed friendly with Nancy, more than Mike had noticed back home. On the other hand, the air between his sister and Jonathan had felt stilted ever since the older boy’s arrival at the Byers’. 

“He thought you didn’t like him,” Nancy says with a huffed laugh. And Mike hadn’t, back then, but not for any reason more noble than being his older sister’s greatest critic. The moment he found out Steve had helped fight the Demogorgon, his view had shifted. 

“How long did you guys date?” 

It almost seems to take Nancy by surprise. “Just a few weeks. We tried, but…” 

But- … Oh. 

“It wasn’t the right time,” Nancy hurries to add, covering any tracks that might lead to an awful, bright afternoon at the quarry’s edge. It does nothing to still the flood of guilt in Mike’s chest. “And we stayed friends. He helped me expose Hawkins Lab, last year. Brought the whole place down.” 

It’s filled with cautious pride, an expectation of Mike’s reaction, but another stray thought slips out first: “What about Jonathan?” 

Nancy frowns. “What about him?” 

Shit. " I- I thought you guys were friends, I guess.” 

“Not really.” There’s nothing remorseful, nothing bitter. Tiredness, maybe, and a smudge of grief. This is something she’s gone over, in her own head. “I wasn’t- … We didn’t really have anything in common after that. We worked together to find his brother, and then he got his brother back, and that was it.” She presses her lips together in an approximation of a smile, as though that makes her words any less devastating. 

“I’m sorry,” Mike says, but his sister only shakes her head, eyes softening further. 

“You have got to stop blaming yourself for our grief.” She tucks her legs beneath her, crouching forward with an earnest stare. Without the tight, coiled perm in her hair, she looks younger than Mike remembers. 

“I’m not, I-" -just firmly believe that it’s my fault and you would be better off if I’d never existed. He bites back the thought, fists tightened around wrinkled khaki. “I just-” 

“Do you know what grieving someone really is?” 

The question comes out of left field - rusted backstop, knee-high grass, popped gum - and Mike swallows down swelling anxiety. His silence seems to serve as a reply. 

“It’s just loving someone a whole lot,” Nancy tells him, “and not having anywhere to put it.” She says it so simply, like a grade school equation, or a remark on the weather. “All that pain was just love. It’s nothing to be sorry for, Mike.” 

He feels his face go warm, and the pressing urge to run overwhelms whatever words he could possibly say in reply. A stroke of luck brushes it away, however: a car door, a familiar voice. Footsteps on the crumbling front walk. 

“Mom’s home,” Nancy notes, recognizing the easy save. Eyes still impossibly kind, she reaches out and pats Mike’s knee. “Come on.” 

They’ve barely reached the kitchen when the door squeaks open, catching on the filthy linoleum as always. Their mom bustles in, a collection of travel bags weighing down her shoulders, and a small hand clutched in her own. 

Holly blinks up from the hood of her pink coat, eyes wide and trained right on Mike. 

“Holiday traffic was a nightmare,” their mom announces, dropping the bags onto the flimsy card table. Mike recognizes a couple - the plaid carry-on he brought to Colorado, Nancy’s grade school backpack. “We had to stop for McDonald’s in Indianapolis. Is there still some pizza in the fridge for you two?” 

“We ate at the Byers’,” Mike says absently, as he watches Nancy kneel to kindergartner height. 

“C’mere, you.” She hauls Holly into a quick hug, smiling brightly, then gestures up at Mike’s awkward, sulking form. “Look who’s home!” 

There’s no response. Holly just blinks, silent and uncertain in her bright snow wear, staring up as though appraising a frightening stranger. 

“You’ve- gotten so big,” Mike tries, stilted and uncomfortable, but Holly only draws back further, looking up at their mom for assurance. 

Whether oblivious or feigned, Nancy’s grin doesn’t falter. “Can you tell Mikey what grade you’re in?” 

It’s not the silence that’s abnormal. Holly has always been quiet, ever since she was a baby, when Mike would creep down the stairs and hear words like milestone and delay thrown over the kitchen phone. Her words came late and sparse, in simple, lisped pairs, and chats with her are still mostly through hesitant, non-verbal cues. 

What does send a flutter of panic through Mike’s stomach is the look on her face. It’s more than surprise, more than confusion. 

It’s fear. 

“She’s halfway done with kindergarten,” their mom cuts in from across the room, where she’s untangling the U-Haul keys from her purse contents. Their whole life is parked out by the curb. Everything left of Mike’s childhood, and everything they replaced it with. 

“Wow,” he manages. “You’re almost as big as me, now, huh?” He puts his best effort into a smile, but it falls flat. Holly’s uneasy stare doesn’t waver, not until she’s ushered away by their mom to be wrestled out of a rain-damp coat. Even then she cranes her head, halfway to the girls’ shared room, and Mike feels sick with panic. 

Nancy’s grin doesn’t break until the two siblings are alone, the dark kitchen encroaching around them. “Don’t worry,” she says, her voice low and soothing. “Holly’s always been shy.” 

“I know.” And he does, as much as anyone. He’s used to one-sided conversations, questioning eyes, blonde pigtails behind his parents’ knees. 

What he isn’t used to is feeling with terrifying certainty that his five-year-old sister can see right through him. 

“-family has not spoken publicly, but the Hawkins Police Department confirmed that they have officially closed their missing persons case. Michael disappeared at Sattler’s Quarry more than two years ago, and was presumed deceased until earlier this month, when-"

" -now been missing for two weeks, and the Chief of Police reported this morning that organized search efforts have been discontinued. Michael’s belongings were found off of Highway 92, in the vicinity of Widow Creek, and he was last seen on surveillance footage traveling south on Wabash-"

Side A. 

December 25, 1985

The first thing Nancy notices is the cold. Her nose feels stiff with it, her toes nearly aching for the fuzzy socks that slipped off during the night. The heater’s still busted, then; no one called the repairman while she was at the Byers’. 

The second thing she notices is the touch of a tiny hand on her arm. 

“Mommy’s sick,” Holly whispers the moment she catches Nancy’s bleary eyes. 

“What?” 

In lieu of words, a clumsy thumb jabs towards the hall. There’s noise from downstairs, wavering and indistinct, and Nancy pulls herself up to follow it, linking one hand with Holly’s. It’s only as she slides her frozen feet into a pair of slippers that she remembers. 

It’s Christmas morning. 

Coffee wafts up from the kitchen, black and bitter. No syrupy sweet lure of homemade pancakes, their mom’s holiday specialty. No muffled music from the living room stereo. They hadn’t baked cookies for Santa, or gone to church for the Christmas Eve service, where even Mike had always enjoyed lighting the little handheld candles. Instead, Nancy had slunk in just after nine and found her mother in bed, her father asleep in his recliner, a lasagna from Mrs. Byers gone cold on the counter.  

“And now you went and woke the kids up.” Her dad gestures lazily at the stairs the moment Nancy leads Holly down to the landing, an intermission in whatever argument has been bleeding up through the ceiling. Bunched around a steaming cup, her mom raises her head and gives a pitiful grin. 

“Oh, Holly, baby." She beckons, but Holly holds fast, eyes wide. “Merry Christmas, sweetie. You want some breakfast? Cereal?” 

The words are drowsy and slurred, and Nancy recoils. It’s barely ten in the morning. “Is everything okay?” Half to her dad, half to her mom, yet expecting a satisfactory answer from neither of them. Wrongness churns in her stomach, begging her to flee back upstairs. 

“Ask your mother.” A classic Ted Wheeler response, but coated with too much ire. 

“It’s fine,” her mom cuts in, waving a hand. “Everything’s fine, I’m just- I’m going to lie down a little longer, okay?” 

The refrigerator door squeaks open, and cartons thump together. “We’re out of milk. You can’t even buy milk, for Christ’s sake.” 

Nancy tugs at Holly’s hand, urging her along faster. The basement, then. It was Mike’s hiding place for years, and now it can be theirs. 

“We have milk, it’s right-” 

“This isn’t milk, this is a goddamn biohazard."  

Dark, cool stairs. Nancy starts a mental list: blankets, from the linen closet; videotapes, from the living room; cereal - no milk - from the kitchen. 

“I went to the store two days ago!” 

“And came back with just a bottle of merlot, apparently!” 

Clicking the lightbulb on, Nancy tries to ignore the deep twist in her gut. Every surface down here is a diorama of her brother’s interests, of how he spent his days and months and years, right up until two weeks ago. An empty glass, sticky with old soda. Will’s crayon drawings tacked over the paneling like wallpaper. A fantasy novel flipped over, propped up like a paper tent, with a Hawkins Public Library sticker along the spine. Absently, Nancy wonders if they’ll have to pay a late fee. 

“Sit tight, okay?” She settles Holly onto the couch, then reaches for Mike’s old radio, fiddling with the buttons and knobs until Bing Crosby fizzles through the speakers, just loud enough to drown out the noise from upstairs. “I’ll be back in just a few minutes.” 

Nancy gathers supplies like she’s planning to run. Dry Fruit Loops, spare blankets, the plastic bag of presents she’d bought with a nicked fifty from her dad’s wallet. Wrapping paper and tape come last, sorted neatly in the hall closet. All the while, the argument ebbs and flows from below, until it finally peters into a closed bedroom door and the rumble of the car starting. 

She won’t be surprised if she doesn’t see them again all day. 

“Hey, bug, I’ve got presents!”  

Holly twists around on the sofa, faint surprise slipping onto her frightened face. Her eyes zero into the wrapped boxes in Nancy’s arms, subdued but interested; there’s a nervous question in her silence. 

“Mommy’s a little tired,” Nancy says, willing her grin not to falter. She tips cereal into Holly’s favorite bowl, ignoring the way her hand shakes around the box. “But we’re gonna have a great time down here, okay? Now eat up so you can start opening.” 

The stupid, plastic dinosaurs seem to watch her as she passes the spoon to Holly, as she spreads out the comforters, as she pops the My Little Pony tape into the VCR. Eyes still, battery-powered voices silent. For an absent moment, she nearly imagines that Mike is watching through them, from whatever unreachable plane he’s fallen onto. She wonders if he’s sad, or if he’s relieved - relieved to be gone, relieved to be free from all of this. 

The radio croons, and Holly crunches on her cereal, and Nancy thinks to herself, Merry fucking Christmas, Mike.

If he hears her, he doesn’t respond. 

Side B. 

“Come on, hold it up for the camera- There, perfect.” 

While his sister displays her new baby doll, Mike slides his hand over the discarded paper, eyeing his mom’s familiar print on the label. “‘To Holly, From… Stuffy Bear’? Stuffy’s got that kinda cash?” 

Holly doesn’t answer, but the slightest of smiles shows her reception to the joke. It’s an old Wheeler family practice, dating back to the kindest years of early childhood: the gifts that aren’t from Santa would always get marked with the names of beloved toys, or favorite cartoon characters. Stuffy Bear himself, worn and lumpy, sits just out of reach to watch Holly cradle his choice of present. 

His ribbon is blue, here. Mike could swear it was red. 

“When did Dad say he’s coming?” Nancy, appearing in the kitchen doorway with a chipped mug of coffee. A nervous twist goes through Mike’s stomach, and he tries to swallow it down, focusing instead on Holly combing her fingers through the new doll’s tuft of hair. 

“Eleven, so-” Their mom glances at her bare wrist, then at the empty wall. When neither gives her the time, she just shakes her head. “Remind me to put more coffee on.” There are only dregs left of the full first pot, a rarity Mike doesn’t remember from back home. Each of his parents would sip one tidy cup, and leftovers would be poured down the sink. Here, they all guzzle it like tap water. 

“Don’t look like that.” 

It takes Mike a moment to realize Nancy’s talking to him, and another to puzzle through the words. “Like what?” He glances at their mom, only to realize she’s ushered Holly back into the kitchen. 

“Dad’s gonna be thrilled to see you,” Nancy says, and the words are so incongruent that Mike can’t help but snort. 

“Dad? Thrilled?" He can barely imagine it, much less believe it. When the call had finally been made last night, it had felt like a hairline fracture. Not too much to patch up, but enough to put Mike on edge. His mother had cried, apologies had been spun for not calling sooner, and plans had been made for a Christmas morning visit, outside of the custody arrangement. 

There’s something serious, though - something deathly earnest -  on Nancy’s face as she leans in. “He missed you, Mike. He’s- he’s human, okay?” Slow words, carefully chosen. “He stopped working so much, after…” 

After his son killed himself, Mike finishes. Guilt, then. Not affection. 

“You should see him with Holly, too. He’s like a whole new guy.” And Nancy seems to believe what she’s saying, as much as anyone peddling absolute fantasies can. Mike can’t buy it, though, no matter how he plies the words around in his head. Their parents had been two sides of the same useless coin, filling in the gaps where the other failed to scold or punish or neglect. Where their mom had always maintained a semblance of affection, however, the harshest cuts would come from their dad, dead-eyed and passionless. He's a missing puzzle piece here, but one who's likely to shatter the whole illusion. 

“More pancakes?” Their mom’s voice breaks in from the kitchen, and Mike hunches his shoulders, winding himself into a knot against Nancy’s searching glances. The conversation is over, and all they can do is wait for the moment of truth. 

“I’ll take some,” Nancy says, finally turning away from Mike. 

Mike scrunches his eyes closed. “Just coffee for me.” There’s an anxious twist in his gut. Something feels… off. Uneasy. Shit. Cold panic starts to seep in, and he squeezes his fists together, as though that will keep it from happening. 

“Mike, you wanna open one next?” 

The presents, his mom means. Presents. It’s Christmas. It’s Christmas Day, and he’s sitting in the living room of his family’s new apartment, and the air smells like pancakes and coffee and old carpet. His fingernails are biting into his palms, and Holly is wandering back in with a cup of milk, staring at her brother like he’s something wrong, and he’s not going to- 

The doorbell rings. 

Creaking floors. Muffled voices. From the next room: “ Holly, come see Daddy!"  And he’s trying to stay - he wants to stay - and he doesn’t deserve to, he doesn’t deserve this, this perfect little Christmas with his mother’s kind smile and his father driving to see him, but fucking hell does he want it- 

Don’t slip, don’t slip, don’t-

Everything stops. 

“Michael?” 

This Ted Wheeler’s voice is soft. It’s gentle, full of wonder, full of feeling, and in half of a heartbeat Mike believes every word his sister had said. He looks up and sees the dad of his childhood, the dad who took him to the baseball field and carried him on his shoulders. Grayer at the temples now, warmer behind the eyes, and looking at his son with more love that Mike remembers seeing at home for years. 

"Dad," he breathes. 

The man who looks like his dad crosses the room faster than Mike’s ever seen him move, and before he knows it there are barely-familiar arms wrapping around him, pulling him into sense memories he didn’t know he still had. 

“You’re alright, you’re alright,” his dad is saying now, in a voice utterly alien, and Mike can only think one thing in reply. 

I am. I really am.

Chapter Text

❝ Sit down. Inhale. Exhale. The gun will wait. The lake will wait…. Stay here. See what the news is going to be tomorrow. ❞

Gwendolyn Brooks, Graves Grow No Green That You Can Use

Side B. 

February 14, 1986

“Okay, that’s it. You should be the one tutoring me."  

Robin’s pencil tucks against the table with a soft clack. Eraser shavings stick to the cuff of her jacket, scattering as she moves to close the binder. 

“Shut up.” There’s no ire to it; Mike is trying not to go red under his freckles. There’s an old, middle school thrill to the compliment, something he hasn’t experienced since before his life got turned on its side. At some point, he had stopped being the smart kid and started being the moody kid, the troublemaker, the boy in the back who everyone avoids. 

Except, that never happened here. In this life, Mike Wheeler never brought home less than a B+ to his mother’s refrigerator. He never quit the AV Club, or mouthed off to his English teacher, or blew off his friends to cower in a sagging blanket fort. 

“Your sister said you were smart,” Robin adds, starting to load up her backpack. The coarse fabric is scattered with pins and buttons, symbols that Mike can’t decipher. 

He sneers, half-hearted. “A smart ass, maybe.” 

“Hey, I’m no snitch.” 

It’s a temporary arrangement, and a precarious one at that. Just until he’s up to speed, the principal had said, and Mike had bit his tongue too hard. Homeschooling, for the rest of the school year - the summer too, possibly - and then they could reevaluate, see if Mike could rejoin his peers at Hawkins High School, albeit a year behind. 

A month in, he’s flying through the front half of eighth grade with an ease he hadn’t managed the first time. That deep, gnawing pit that’s sat in his chest since 1984 hasn’t disappeared - it never will, he thinks - but it’s quieter. He’s surrounded by warm hands, friendly chatter, all the people he loves packed under two roofs, and the change is unimaginable. It’s like taking a test on a full night’s sleep and a cooked breakfast, instead of bleary-eyed and empty. It’s knowing that when he finishes his homework, he can go upstairs and watch Will draw, or help El paint her nails, and neither of them are going to vanish through his fingers. Even the threat of the blinks has eased into a background anxiety, the longer he’s gone between each far-off sighting. There have been no more chases, no more snarling attacks. 

Maybe they’re scared of El, he’s considered. He would be, if he was a monster. 

“Hey, you two. Finishing up?” Mrs. Byers bustles through the kitchen, her course set for the laundry room. She’s trying urgently to pin an earring into place. 

Robin raises her fingers in a polite wave. “He’ll be ready for college before fall gets here,” she teases. Mike half expects her to ruffle his hair. “I’ll be back Saturday, alright? Go ahead and look over the next unit.” 

“Aye aye,” he answers, in a Scoops Ahoy dig that fails to land; as far as Robin knows, Mike is fully in the dark about her and Steve’s summer job. Still, the girl gives him a sloppy, familiar salute as she shuffles out the front door, already puffing fog into the cold night. 

“Told you it’d be a piece of cake.” Mrs. Byers beams - then, she reaches out and does the expected hair-ruffling herself. For a split-second’s time, Mike puts on a show of being disgruntled, and shakes his head to undo the mussing. It does nothing to combat the half-smile that Mrs. Byers’ attention sparks. 

All at once, there’s a burst of movement on the stairs, and Mike looks up to see a sport coat and tie where he’s always expected worn khaki. Even Hopper’s mustache looks trimmed, sitting neatly over an easy smile. 

“You wanna check that my socks match, or should we wait ‘til we get in the car again?” 

Mrs. Byers laughs, bright and full and genuine. “I said it didn’t matter!"

The relationship should be strange, Mike thinks. Back home, he rarely saw the two of them do more than bicker and snipe. Isn’t that what they say about married couples, though? Spend enough time in each other’s space and the harmless barbs become a way of life, an extension of effortless love. 

He and El hadn’t bickered. They had smiled and kissed and clasped hands, buried in each other’s eyes for hours, but their words were always kind, always following a movie script - right up until the moment they weren’t. 

Swiping the Jeep keys off the table, Hopper steals a glance over Mike’s shoulder. “Rocket science?” he asks, seeing the page of equations. His grin is something Mike has only seen offered at El, Mrs. Byers, and the TV. 

“Eighth grade algebra.” Discomfort tugs at Mike’s nerves, and he resists the urge to hunch away from the attention. 

“Will hated those-” Joyce furrows her brow, resting one finger against her mouth. “-those line things, with the graphs.” 

“Linear functions.” Mike had groused with him, the first time. “We’re just about to start those.”

Hopper gives a low whistle, a display of teasing reverence. “You like that stuff, right? All you kids.” 

Before Mike can open his mouth, a fresh clamor on the stairs answers: “Just the boys.” 

Max has her arm looped through El’s, their sweatshirts bright and their hair wrestled into matching braids. From across the living room, Mike can see a smear of blue on El’s eyelids, just like at the Snow Ball. That was the only time he saw it, back home, without Max’s freeing spark. Another interest Mike can’t help worry he stifled. 

“Lucas is coming over,” El announces, a declaration more than a question. 

Joyce narrows her eyes, humming in theatrical consideration. “This sounds suspiciously like one of those wild, teen parties you’re not supposed to throw when your parents are out.” Behind her, Hopper stifles a snort. 

“You have to have at least six people for one of those,” Max says. “It’s in the teenager manual.” 

Mike fidgets, picking at his nails with an inordinate amount of focus. “Dustin can’t come?” Something in his stomach spouts out the question without intention. He thinks of Lucas and Max, linking pinkies at the movie theater, and he thinks of El, in her eyeshadow and her glossy lips, and a picture ripples into focus. An expectation that he’s not sure he can meet. 

“Play practice,” El answers. She says the words slowly, as though it’s something mystical she doesn’t quite understand. 

Hopper jingles his keys, heading for the back door. “C’mon, reservation’s at six.” A burst of cold swirls in; ice is coming, the newspaper had warned, of little concern to a boy who's allowed to go nowhere. 

“Have fun,” Joyce instructs. “Just not too much.” She scoops up her purse, fastens her coat, and follows Hopper out into the yard. 

For one stiff moment after the click of the door, silence breeds discomfort. Mike stares down at his homework, ignoring the girls’ chatter as they crowd into the kitchen, peering through the side window. He smells dizzying nail polish, and traces an equation with his eyes. 

"Aaaaand they’re gone.” Max lifts her hand for a high-five, which El meets with a broadening grin. “Grab the snacks.” El slides potato chips and Keebler cookies from the open pantry, as calculated as a heist, then snatches the Lucky Charms on an afterthought. Her purple polish smears on the box.

“C’mon,” she urges Mike, oblivious to his confusion. He watches her bound back to the staircase, following Max in some mystery mission, and makes an executive decision: seeing what they have planned is better than not knowing. Besides that, Will is upstairs, absorbed in a project for his art class. 

That’s the thought that finally pulls him from the kitchen chair and towards the warm light glowing from the stairs, a curious itch in his stomach.

By the time Mike reaches the creaking boards of the second floor, Will is already poking his head out into the hall, haloed by his desk lamp. He smiles at Mike, cheeks pink, and reaches to scrape paint from his jaw. 

“Did they rope you into this?” he asks, easing the door open wider, but Mike doesn’t have a moment to answer before the girls are racing back out of El’s room, carrying something that sloshes and clinks. 

At least a dozen beer bottles, halfway free of Max’s overnight bag. 

“Neil left them,” she explains, waving a finger at Will’s half-formed protest, “and mom hates it. I said I’d throw them out.” A slight pause, and a shared glance with El. “I just didn’t say where."

“We’re helping,” El clarifies, and then six eyes are on Mike - four mischievous and pleading, two curious, unsure what to expect. And silently, without fanfare, Mike realizes what their question is: none of them know what their Mike would do. They lost him in years of quiet obedience, of wide-eyed childhood. They lost him before he got to grow up. 

He shrugs, trying his best for flippancy. “I’m always down to help a friend.” 

Side A. 

He gets it on the third try, entirely by accident. A cough and a suck around the filter, and the thing finally catches, nearly surprising him into dropping the lighter. It always looks so easy when his mom does it, as seamless and soothing as breathing. 

It isn’t soothing. It burns; one drag in, and Will nearly chokes, hacking the smoke out painfully. The second isn’t any better, and it leaves his throat raw and aching. 

On the third, he blows out quicker, before the sting can set in. By the fourth and fifth, he’s starting to get the hang. 

That’s precisely when the back door swings open, hinges shrieking like a siren. Will fumbles in surprise, turning on panicked instinct, and coughs a mouthful of smoke right into the intruder’s face. 

"Jesus." Jonathan waves a hand through the air. “Give a guy a little warning.”

Will’s heart hammers, and his face floods with deep red. “Sorry,” he manages.

“You’re supposed to blow it away from people, dude. Come on." 

“I’m sorry, I’m-” He rushes to stamp the thing out in his mom’s tray, fingers cold and shaking, but something steady lands on his shoulders. Warm and soothing, like he thought the cigarette might be. 

“Hey.” Jonathan’s eyes are soft and earnest. “It’s fine. It’s fine, okay?” 

Will presses his lips together, nerves still clamoring, try as he might to latch onto Jonathan’s assurance. “Don’t tell mom. Or El.” 

One of Jonathan’s brows tilts up. “You think El’s gonna mind? She lived with Hopper .” A name that still twists in their stomachs, even as they try to acclimate, to speak it with fond memory instead of grief. Its shape still feels like fire in the sky, like the scratch of his mom’s borrowed coat. 

Will shakes his head. “She’d want to try it.” 

Jonathan doesn’t take the cigarette, as Will had anticipated. Instead, he reaches for the box and shakes out one for himself. 

“What’s eating you?” Jonathan doesn’t need to ask, but he asks anyway, whether to fill the silence or request permission. The air is warm for February, and he pushes up his sleeves as he waits for Will’s response. 

“What’s eating you?" An immature jab. Will stares at his sneakers. 

“Nope,” Jonathan cuts in. “The one who stole mom’s cigarettes has to answer first.” He lights his as easily as their mom, and doesn’t cough once. 

“I can’t, I’m-” Will sucks in more smoke, and lets it out with a flat, theatrical choke. "-coughing."

The roll of Jonathan’s eyes is half-annoyance, half-affection, but the slump of his shoulders spells otherwise. Looking out at the small, weedy yard, he shrugs. “Me and Nancy broke up,” he answers. 

Will frowns. “Like a month ago.” Two-and-a-half weeks, at best, but it’s still old news. Jonathan had announced it over dinner, then proceeded to listen to The Smiths for three straight days, until their mom threatened to wash his hair in the sink if he wouldn’t get up and do it himself. 

Quietly, secretly, Will had seethed. He’d watched as his brother grieved another loss that Will wasn’t allowed, as people continued to grip his mom’s shoulder in tender sympathy, or call to check on El. Resentment had begun to simmer deep in his stomach, turning into a shameful funk he knows his family has noticed. 

“Yeah, well…” Jonathan speaks slowly, like he’s explaining a science experiment. “It’s Valentine’s Day.” 

Will tenses his jaw. “I know.” 

“Look, one day you won’t think it’s stupid, you’ll-” 

“I don’t." And maybe he does, more than a little, but he’s not too dense to know why. He can scoff all he wants at hearts and cards and champagne bottles, but he’ll never be able to hide from his calculated disinterest. Why celebrate something he’ll never be able to have? Why not scorn it, until the thought makes him sick? 

“You so do,” Jonathan answers, his voice light and agitating. “And that’s fine, okay? Kids are supposed to think this stuff’s gross.” 

“I don’t think it’s gross," Will bites back. “I’m not a stupid kid anymore.” Words that echo Mike’s a million months ago under the warm patter of rain. “You and mom are always acting like I’m a baby who doesn’t get any of this stuff.” 

If Jonathan is at all taken aback by the outburst, he doesn’t show it. He blinks twice, and then nods, moving to calmly tap his ash into the tray. “Okay,” he says. It’s not enough, and something Will’s chest itches. “You’ve just never talked about it before, is all.”

Will stubs the waning butt of his cigarette out, and sinks to the cracked, concrete steps. They’re gritty and damp through his secondhand jeans. “Maybe I don’t want to.” It feels childish, and he bows his head in faint embarrassment. 

With a soft heave of breath, Jonathan eases down to join him. “It’s okay if you don’t,” he starts, “but it’s also okay if you do.” He slides another cigarette out of the pack, and passes it over to Will. 

Will shakes his head. 

For what seems like minutes, stretched and swirling, the only sound is the roar of cars on the interstate. Sometimes, when Will lies awake at night, he can imagine that he’s hearing a waterfall, or a rushing river, or an ocean surf, someplace far away from Indiana. 

Finally, he murmurs: “Valentine’s Day.” 

“Yeah?” 

“It’s just…” He raises a sleeve, wipes at his cold-reddened nose. “I just keep thinking-" Don’t say it. He’s going to hate you. “I keep thinking how I’m always gonna be alone. Every year.” 

Jonathan leans in, all smoke and warmth and earnest eyes. “You don’t know that. You’re fourteen, Will. You have your whole life ahead of you to meet someone, okay?” 

Jaw trembling, Will shakes his head. “I-I already did.” 

Surprise paints Jonathan’s expression, but he seems to catch onto something in the air, something that makes him hold back his obvious questions. “Yeah?” It’s tentative, leaving room for Will to back down. 

He doesn’t. He can’t. He’s grieved alone for months, and it hurts like he never knew something could hurt before. 

“I did,” he repeats, “-and… and they’re gone. They’re gone, and I’m gonna be alone.”

It doesn’t take Jonathan long to put the pieces together. Even with his face bowed, Will can feel the moment his brother’s posture straightens, and hear the tiny hitch in his breath. A soft huff of smoke billows towards their shoes - four sneakers in a row, nearly identical in size now - and Will braces himself for whatever comes next, for whatever attempt at cordiality he’s going to have to answer to. 

Instead, Jonathan wraps one arm around Will’s shoulders. “You don’t know that, okay?” 

The tremble starts in Will’s chin, and he bolsters against it, voice straining. “I do. I know it.” Mike was the only person in the world who always accepted him, who never saw him as a frail, freakish tragedy. The gaping hole he’s left in Will can never be fixed, and Will’s not sure he even wants it to, because it’s all he has now.  

Jonathan tips his head against Will’s, close enough that his voice is as much a feeling as a sound. “It feels like that now, I know it does." How could you know? How could you- “But it won’t be forever. You’ll heal, and you’ll start living again, and you’ll have this big, long life full of so many awesome people you’ve never even met yet. It’s gonna get so much better than this.” 

Swallowing hard, Will shakes his head. “Not for me,” he manages, voice wobbling. “Not for- not for people like me.” 

“Hey, hey-" A deep, easy breath, like this is the simplest concept in the world. “I’m not gonna tell you you’ll meet someone just like him, who you- who you feel exactly the same about. But that doesn’t mean you won’t meet someone else you like. Get out of Indiana. Get out into the real world, and I swear, there are tons more people who are-” 

“Gay.” 

The word hangs like a cartoon bubble, and Will instantly wishes he could swat it away, keep talking in circles around what they both already knew was true. He’s gay. He liked a boy. He liked Mike, and now it’s written in the air for everyone to see. 

Jonathan nods. “Yeah,” he says, plainly. 

Scrunching his eyes closed, Will forces out his next words: “And you’re- you aren’t…” Upset? Angry?

“Will, there is nothing in this universe that could make me love you any less. Same with mom and El, and all your friends.” A fresh wave of grief starts to sweep through Will - he hasn’t even called them, not since the New Year - and only amplifies when Jonathan adds, quietly, “Mike, too.” 

God, Mike.  “I never told him.” Past-tense, now. There’s not a person who knew him who hasn’t given up by this point, not after that day in the woods. 

“You still can.” 

Will shakes his head, and sniffs. “He didn’t believe in Heaven.” And neither do he and Jonathan, really, but is that the part that counts? If you don’t believe, does it just not work for you? 

Jonathan hums, noncommittal. “Doesn’t mean he isn’t somewhere,” he suggests. 

“Where else is there?” 

“Well, some people think our energy is just kind of- out there, after we go.” 

An aching chill goes through Will’s chest, and for a moment he craves the burn of the hot smoke. “Like… a ghost?”

“Maybe,” Jonathan answers. “Or maybe just- in the air. Up in the sky, just a part of the universe, returning to the whole.”  

For a moment, Will tries to picture it. Mike’s laugh, Mike’s thoughts, Mike’s energy , mixing into the black of space, like ashes into the sea. Would he realize he was up there? Would there be any of him left in all that stardust? Would the universe know that part of it used to be Will Byers’ best friend? 

He chokes out a damp laugh, and leans against his brother’s shoulder. “Hey, universe?” he calls, tilted up to the sky, half-joking. “I’m- I-” 

I’m gay. And, I love you. And, Please come back. 

The universe doesn’t reply. 

Side B. 

“It tastes like…” 

Lucas swirls the bottle around, face screwed up in concentration. His wine-taster impression is passable, marred only by the atrocious English accent he’s decided to affect. 

"Like?" Max urges. Everyone waits on tenterhooks, barely restraining their own raucous laughter. 

“It tastes like-” Finally, Lucas swallows the mouthful of spitty beer, pulling a triumphant face. “Cat piss. It tastes like how cat piss smells.” 

Max looks dramatically appalled. “It does not!"

Beside her, El rapidly devolves into hiccupping giggles. She leans over to Mike with a conspiratorial grin, as though she’s about to divulge a great secret, then delightedly admits, “I don’t know what cat piss smells like.” 

“Just go to Dustin’s house,” Will tells her from Mike’s other side. He’s been somewhat more restrained tonight, nursing his first bottle while the others plow into their second, but his cheeks are just as bright in the window’s glow. His bedroom opens onto the porch’s low roof, shallow and wide enough for the tangled limbs of five teenagers, apparently a habitual escape for any teenage dramatics. Not that they’ve made underage drinking a habit - or so Max had sworn up and down. 

With exquisite timing, Max takes a moment to burp loudly, causing minor hysteria. 

Mike nearly topples over with feigned disgust. "Dude, that was on me!” 

“It was a gift,"  Max declares, her voice carrying into the quiet field. She shoves at Mike, and Mike shoves back, and in a moment the comfortable tangle becomes a five-sided blur of clumsy shoves and hooting laughter, right up until- 

"Guys," Will says, “we’re on a roof."

It quells the play-fight, if not the laughing delirium, and before Mike can catch his breath he finds himself being tugged down to the scraping tiles, between Max’s elbow and Will’s soft coat. The stars stretch out above him, spinning and infinite, and he traces through them with his eyes. 

“Are you gonna go to the dance next month?” Max asks out of the blue. 

For a moment Mike just blinks, piecing the words together through alcohol and distraction. “The what?”

“The Spring Fling.” 

“Prom for underclassmen,” Lucas explains with a certain amount of dramaticized derision. 

Before Mike can stammer out his uncertainty, Max lowers her voice and adds, “El doesn’t have a date.” 

The girl in question blanches, shooting a fraught look over at her friend. "Max!"

Mike shakes his head so quickly that his vision swims. “Dances, uh, aren’t really my thing.” He’s so desperate to ward off the course of conversation that he completely fails to catch his mistake. 

“You’ve never even been to one.” It’s Lucas who points it out, though there’s no suspicion in his voice.

“You can stay home with me,” Will says, and the air quickly shifts, focus instantly pulling away from Mike. 

“You’re not going?"  Max accuses, voice too loud for the quiet yard. 

Will shrugs, his eyes flicking briefly to Mike, utterly unreadable. “They aren’t really my thing either.” And at once, that settles it for Mike. Seeping dread at the dance’s mention is replaced with a relief he can feel in his chest. Just him and Will, then, like old times. Like it’s supposed to be. 

Grinning, he looks over and holds out his bottle as if in a toast. “William,” he says, voice a touch clumsy and overloud, “will you go to the movie night on your couch with me?” 

If a strange flutter goes through his stomach at the words, and if Will’s flush spreads too quickly his ears, it’s certainly the beer’s fault. 

"Yes, you idiot," Will answers fondly, before downing the rest of his bottle and reaching for a second. 

It’s nearing ten o’ clock when Lucas performs an extravagant, neck-popping stretch and announces, “I gotta get home.” A murmur of reluctant assent follows. Hopper and Mrs. Byers will be returning soon, Mike knows, but it’s hard to pry himself up from his comfortable haze. 

They start pulling apart in a slow mess of goodbyes. Lucas disappears to his bike, and the girls disappear to El’s room to don pajamas, and Mike sits up to head back through the open window. Pausing, he looks out at the stretch of dark countryside, and breathes deep when his eyes find nothing. 

“You’re really okay not going to the dance?” 

Propped up on one elbow, cast in warm light. There’s a small, worried crease between Will’s eyebrows. It’s a question that’s been needling him for a while, Mike can guess, and he’s quick to nod his assurance. 

“Why wouldn’t I be?” he asks. 

“You don’t need to keep me company, or anything. I’m okay.” 

I’m okay. A statement that he knows should be met with a certain degree of doubt, coming from Will. “It was my idea,” Mike says. “Seriously. I’d rather be with you.” 

There’s a moment of quiet, of Will worrying at his lip, and then, “... Okay.” Soft, but definitive. His head tilts over and his eyes meet Mike’s, brown on blue in the dim glow from inside, and suddenly the warmth spreads out all over again. It’s like peace, and it’s like anxiety, and Mike doesn’t know if he wants to hide from it or collect it in a jar. 

“What?” Will asks, catching onto the confused lull. 

“Nothing.” Mike runs a hand through his hair, pulling at the tangles. His breath puffs out white, and he lies back down, shoulder bumping up against Will’s. “I just- I missed you, I guess.” 

It was just two months apart, from the day the Byers pulled out of town to the day Mike landed here, but it wasn’t - it was so much longer. It was the whole time he was dating El, trying desperately to distance himself from his fears, to grow up and away and into someone strong, someone brave. It was the black, gnawing year after Will first disappeared, all the nights Mike spent ignoring his radio, all the campaigns he abandoned with feigned stomachaches. 

Everyone thinks of Will as the one who disappeared, but Mike’s done a damn fine job of it himself. 

Sprawled next to him, Will blinks up at the sky, tugging at a loose thread on his jacket. “Did you ever write that story?” he asks. Mike’s mouth goes dry. 

“...You wouldn’t believe it, if I did.” And if by some miracle Will actually bought it, then Mike knows this would all change. He’s the doppelgänger, the usurper. No one would ever trust him again, least of all Will. 

Will doesn’t back down. He rolls over, eyes blurry and timorous and earnest, and he says, “Try me.” 

Something about it goes straight to Mike’s chest, like a fist tugging his heart out of rhythm, until he’s dizzy and hot in the freezing night. If this is what being drunk feels like, he never wants to stop drinking. “I-I’ll write it. Okay? I promise.” 

“Tell me how it ends, at least.” 

Mike blinks, still breathless. “What do you mean?” 

“The ending,” Will says, barely over a whisper, importance and apprehension lining every word. “The hero came back. Does he stay?” 

“He wants to.” God, does he want to. He’s never wanted anything more. 

“Then make him.” 

“It might not be his choice.” Mike rolls over, turning to face Will. They’re a scant couple of inches apart now, noses nearly close enough to brush. A spell, held close and fragile between them. 

“You don’t have to make it alone,” Will whispers. His warm breath puffs against Mike’s mouth, two pairs of eyes are locked and blown wide, and for a second something feels inevitable, like a toppling of gravity. He wants to follow it, he wants to fall apart, he wants to- 

“Hey, give me the bottles, I’ll-”

The voice cuts off cold, and the boys rip apart in a desperate blur. Mike sits up so fast his head spins, panic wheeling him into dizzy, heart-pounding adrenaline. When he turns, Max smiles with nothing but easy kindness. 

“Come on,” she says, glancing between her friends. “I’ll put them back in my bag.” 

Mike moves like he’s in a dream, wading through air he can’t feel. “Yeah, here’s-” Shit. The vertigo only gets worse as he eases into a crouch, and it takes him entirely too long to realize it’s because he’s hyperventilating. “Here they are. I’ll, uh-” 

He risks a glance over at Will; Will looks back, eyes searching, face white with stark panic.

“I’ll take the food down,” Mike continues, “and then I’ll come right back.” A promise, and an assurance. Whatever this is, it’s fine. They’re fine. He won’t let them be anything but. 

I almost kissed you. I almost kissed my best friend. 

I want to try again. 

Downstairs is quiet, except for the low chatter of the TV and a rustle from Jonathan’s room. Nervous agitation buzzes through Mike with every action - as he wraps a rubber band around the chip bag, as he clicks the pantry door closed, as he grabs a can of Coke from the humming refrigerator. 

I want to try again. I want to. I want. 

He knows he should be afraid, or uncertain, but it’s in the same way he knows that sugar will give him cavities. It’s a thought for later, for once this weightless, drunken bravado wears off. He wants to kiss Will, and he doesn’t care what that makes him, because it makes him feel, for the first time in months. Breath on his lips jolted him back like cold water, like CPR, like those electric paddles he can’t remember the name of- and if his mind is spinning its wheels again, reeling and stumbling with that same frantic energy that sent him out on his bike in a snowstorm, it’s because he’s alive. It’s because he’s alive, and he wants to be alive. 

The answer is Will. Maybe the answer was always Will, when they were twelve and when they were thirteen. When they sat in the basement with their stupid jumpsuits, and when they hugged goodbye on the front lawn, and when they missed their Halloween phone call and Mike felt so lonely that he thought about- 

But he doesn’t have to anymore. He’s going to be okay, and for the first time he truly feels it. This world’s second chance blossoms in front of him, two parents and two sisters and five friends and Will, who’s sitting upstairs and doesn’t know yet that it’s all going to be fine. 

“-back to the main story tonight out of Roane County-"  

The TV draw’s Mike’s attention as he bounds back through the living room, already grabbing at the stair railing. He starts up the steps - one, two, three - glancing absently at the screen- 

And stops cold in his tracks. 

"-have confirmed the discovery of human remains in Sattler's Quarry, just outside of Hawkins. Police and emergency services are on the scene, as well as a dive crew from Kokomo-”

A harried blur, lit in flashing red, too many people milling. The dark stretch of the lake, figures wading with a bright float between them. It’s a nightmare from the past, 1983 in miniature on the Byers’ screen, except- 

“-number of items recovered with the remains, including a small backpack-"

Two years underwater, and he can still recognize the dark green polyester of his coat. 

Chapter Text

❝ There is no help for it. When your name is Antigone, there is only one part you can play; and she will have to play hers through to the end. ❞

Jean Anouilh, Antigone

Side B. 

r    e  w i n d

November 13, 1983

She meets him in the hallway just after sunrise, across shaking hands and a styrofoam cup of stale coffee. Shift-change has nurses bustling back and forth, charts and pens rattling as they pass, but Joyce hears it all through cotton. 

They haven’t found anything. Thirteen hours, and the search has only turned up mud and beer bottles packed into the quarry’s floor, the detritus of parties long over. 

“What does-” Joyce pauses, swallows. Her throat is raw. “Could that be good? Could he have gotten out?” 

Hopper scrapes a hand over his face, as though he could wipe away the night’s exhaustion; another world's dark grime is still packed beneath his ragged nails. “It’s not as simple as dragging the lake. There’s crevices, caves. We don’t have the equipment.” 

“Then get the equipment!” A passing doctor gives pause at the outburst, before shifting her gaze. Even in the early hours, inside the sequestered walls of the hospital, everyone knows the story: a missing boy found, and a new boy missing. Likely dead, though most won’t say it. All but the deepest skeptics hold their tongues, as though the words themselves might have power. 

“Joyce…” It’s gentle, but strained. “What I need you to do is go get some rest. You brought your boy home. Will’s safe, and you should be in there with him right now.” 

And isn’t that the crux of it? Isn’t that why it burns to look at the man in front of her? At the trembling hands and quivering lips back at the station? Joyce Byers fought and screamed and ripped her boy back from the other side, and in the end she won, but everyone around her still lost. The Wheelers, the Hollands, those poor men out hunting; Jim, years ago. She’ll go back into the hospital room, and she’ll cradle her sleeping, breathing son in her arms, and the sun will keep rising over the wreckage around them. 

“How’s Will gonna be okay, after this?” she asks, barely above a whisper. “How are any of them?” 

If Hopper has an answer, he keeps it to himself. 

February 14, 1986

“Bag’s got his name on it. Right on the front, permanent marker.” 

It’s been fifty-eight minutes, and Joyce has long-since decided that this isn’t real. It can't be. Sometime between the burst of static from Hopper’s radio and the crunch of frigid sand under her nicest shoes, the world shifted into a nightmare, blurring past in terrible visions. Spinning lights, garish rubber, the off-blue of decayed denim. 

She shakes her head again. “It wouldn’t have held up. Two years in the water, Hop.” 

“It’s that synthetic shit,” Hopper answers. “Lasts forever.” His face is tilted down into an aggrieved frown, cast red by the emergency vehicles, and Joyce knows what he’s seeing: a scene. A skeleton, a faded name, the clutches of underwater equipment that hid him for years - all clues to flesh out a story that’s been dangling since 1983. The Chief hadn’t known Mike, not like the rest of them had. He doesn’t know what that jacket feels like under an encouraging hand. He doesn’t know the soft, nervous eyes that used to sit in the hollow skull. 

What he does know - what they both know - is that on a sunny November afternoon, Mike Wheeler leapt from the cliff’s edge high above their heads, and he never made it out of the water. His backpack had been hooked beneath old quarry machinery, a piece of the site’s past buried deep in murky water. Whether or not the kid was alive when he sank to the bottom, he hadn’t stood a chance at untangling himself in time to reach air. 

“Should I call home?” Joyce asks. It’s almost unthinkable, breaking their kids’ peace. Sickening conflict tugs at her from every angle. Whether it’s the boy she last saw hunched over math problems with Robin Buckley, or the fragile scrap of a child laid out in the orange raft, there's an imposter in their lives. 

Hopper sighs, heavy and rasping. “I don’t know. I don’t-” He shakes his head and turns away from the water, looking anywhere but at the rescue workers and their haul. “It’s already gonna be on the goddamn news. Karen’ll probably-” 

God, Karen. Karen, of all of them. A woman just piecing herself back together, after years of splinters. This is going to destroy her. 

“I’ll stop at the Big Buy,” Joyce finally cuts in. “Get Nancy in the loop.” A burden she doesn’t want to place on the girl, but Nancy’s been part of this from the beginning, the only Wheeler to fully understand depth of the lab’s manipulation. 

Hopper hums in assent, his face grim. “I’ll talk to the boy, then.” 

It’s a terrible idea, one that fills Joyce’s stomach with instant dread. “Just- go easy. He’s a kid.” 

“We don’t know what he is,” Hopper argues, despite uncertainty laced into his voice. “You said it yourself: he’s different. He’s not the boy Will grew up with, and now we know why.” 

“Are you the same person you were two years ago?” Joyce asks, voice raised in something that sounds like anger, but feels like grief. “Are any of us? We’ve all seen things we can’t explain, Hop. Maybe this is just one of them.” 

Silence follows, creeping in quickly. Hopper wipes at his face, his jaw tipped towards the sky, letting the words come only as he stumbles across them. Down at the rough shore, the clamor of the workers is a discordant murmur. 

“We all wanted a miracle, Joyce,” he finally says, his voice tight and tired. “But whoever’s back at the house with our kids isn’t the boy who jumped off a cliff in ‘83. That boy’s over there, being zipped up in a body bag.” 

Joyce’s eyes well up, choking down any argument she’d been building. She knew - she knew - how unlikely it was, all this time, but she'd loved Mike like her own. Even when Karen and Ted left town, Joyce had stood vigil. She'd tended to the flowers between his parents’ visits. She'd brought the kids whenever they asked, turning her gaze while they whispered wishes and tales to a slab of stone. And all the while, she'd waited for the news to come, for Mike’s childish smile to be splashed across the news again - and when it was, it was more than relief, more than bittersweet peace. It was joy. It was against every odd, and she couldn’t help but latch on. 

“Just hear what he has to say,” she manages, looking straight up at Hopper’s pinched eyes. “We aren’t doing a thing until we’ve got his side of the story.” 

“Joyce-” 

“I’m not saying there’s nothing weird going on, but this is a child we’re talking about.” 

The cusp of fifteen, limbs stretched like putty, smiling at her kids as though they’re the sun itself. Deep, dark circles under haunted eyes, lungs gasping for panicked breaths when he thinks nobody can hear.  

“Whoever he is,” Joyce finishes, “he needs our help. 

The door crashes open, slamming into the coat rack, but Will barely hears the clatter over the blood rushing in his ears. 

“El’s bike is gone,” he says, stumbling into the entryway, and the room erupts into a flurry of footsteps and questions, the girls’ panic competing with Jonathan’s level-headed attempts at crowd control. 

Max, loudest by nature, shoves through with the first coherent suggestion: “We split up. Car in one direction, bikes in the other.” It’s aimed at Jonathan, sole holder of any keys, but it’s not a request for permission. 

“Wait, wait, hold on.” Jonathan looks over at Will. A toothbrush is still dangling from one hand, mint white at the corner of his mouth.“What happened? Did you get in a fight, or something?” A ludicrous thought, they all know, but then so is what happened up on the roof. Shame still roils low in Will’s stomach, a simple explanation for the disappearance that he can’t bring himself to admit. 

“No,” he says. “No fight.” His eyes catch on Max’s for just a second, but he sees only her concerned determination. She’d taken control the second Will raised the alarm, pausing only to give his shoulder an assuring grip. 

The shrill ring of the phone interrupts, and Will scrambles for the receiver. It nearly slips in his cold, sweating palm. 

“Hello?” 

“Hey, kid.” Hopper, his voice distant behind a buzz of static. “Is your brother home?” 

Will glances over at Jonathan, bewildered. “Yeah, he’s-” 

“I need you to put him on.” 

Something is wrong. Something is very wrong. 

“What happened?” Will tries, but he can practically hear the firm shake of the Chief’s head. 

“We’ll tell you when we get back,” Hopper replies, “but first I need to talk to Jonathan.” 

Too breathless with panic to keep arguing, Will concedes, silently passing the phone to his brother. The fear has spread through the house like a gas, and everyone holds their breath as Jonathan takes the phone. 

“Hey, what’s going on?” he asks. Will barely hears the reply, just an indistinct murmur, like an old Charlie Brown cartoon, but the wrinkle of his brother’s brow is clear as glass. Is it Mike? Is it their mom? “No, he- he just ran out, a few minutes ago.” 

Will’s chest turns to ice; beside him, El reaches for Max’s hand. 

“No, we don’t know where he went. I was about to take the car and-” Jonathan stops, and time stops with him. His eyes go wide, and he hazards a brief glance at Will. "What ? What are you-” 

It’s happening again. It’s happening, or it’s already happened, and Will can feel it in his stomach, like a drop on a carnival ride, or a fall through cold, November air. 

“That’s not possible, we just- We’d know, Hop. We would have-” 

Will sinks down into a chair. He doesn’t register the girls moving until Max’s arms are wrapped around his shoulder and El’s cheek is against his head, one tangle of confusion and grief and fear, watching as Jonathan hunches into himself, listening to news none of them can guess. 

A bike crash on rain-slick roads. A driver swerving with wine and celebration. A million possibilities, but one sticks no matter how Will looks at it, because this isn’t the first time. Mike’s left them before, and no one saw the warning then. Why should they expect any different now, two years on?

“Okay, we’ll- yeah, we’ll wait here.” Like shit they will. “I’ll talk to you later, Hop.” The phone clicks, too loud in the sudden silence, and Jonathan lets out a hitched breath, back still turned. 

Max wastes no time, standing straight up like a taut string. “What happened? What’s wrong?” 

Face pale and clammy, Jonathan only says, “They found him.” 

They haven’t found him, honey, they’re still looking- 

Will can’t breathe. 

-but we know that people get hurt really, really bad when they fall there, and usually they don’t- 

He can’t breathe, and there’s bile in his throat, and someone is crying next to him. 

-they're going to keep doing everything we can. We just have to know that they might not find what we all want them to find- 

“Is he okay?" Max, faintly. 

“Where did he go?” El, through tears. 

And Jonathan, plain shock in every word: “No, they… in the quarry. He’s- he’s been there all this time.” 

It’s funny, being back. Two times in as many months, dark buildings blurring past. There are no lines on the road out here, just potholes and cracks that jolt the bike, surging his heart farther into his throat each time. His head spins, torn between two nights - December, February, December. Nothing is right, and everything is right, in a sickening way that makes him want to break down and cry, and for the second time he hurtles through the pitch black, towards how he knows things were always meant to be. 

They have their Mike back, now. They can have a funeral and flowers and casseroles, and they won’t have to listen to anymore lies. Mike - the wrong Mike, the fake - won’t tear anymore holes. They can start the patch job, before he ruins them irreparably. Mike leaves, Mike disappears, and everyone is better off for it. 

And the craziest thing is, he feels it. Something snaps deep in his chest once he’s far enough out, like an old rubber band giving way. As the house grows smaller, a warmth dissipates from Mike’s veins, and a familiar prickle takes its place, sliding along the back of his neck. 

El’s powers have never been something she has, but something she is, and Mike knows the moment he slips from her protection. 

He expects the howls to begin any moment, but they don’t come. They don’t come as he takes the turn onto Wabash, or as he passes the gas station. They don’t come as his legs begin to tire, and his gulps of cold air begin to make his chest hurt. They don’t come, and he should feel relieved, but he doesn’t. The blink brought him here, and it’s the only way he can think of to get back. 

What does he do if he does find it, though? Wait for it to bump him back through dimensions? Let it kill him, like it killed those cows? 

red sky at morning, sailor take warning, red sky at morning, sailor take 

His mind snags, and the thought washes over like a wave in a storm. 

red sky warning red sky warning red sky 

He’d been trying to go to Indianapolis, last time. He’d taken a walkie talkie and a postcard and a coat and he’d tried to bike to Indianapolis, and the blink had thrown him off the road and into a ditch. 

No, he hadn’t taken a coat. He’d been cold, but he hadn’t needed it, because- 

red sky red sky red

He’d been cold, and his radio had been dead, but it didn’t matter, and he knows why it didn’t matter now, and he could almost laugh, because isn’t this what he was always destined to do? He was never meant to save the world or protect his friends. He’s not the hero - he’s the joke. He's the one who falls behind. The pointless tragedy, cursed with something hollow and ringing. 

He was never planning to make it to Indianapolis. 

The houses start to peter into dry, empty fields, and Mike hits the brakes at a four-way stop. His whole body feels wrought and strained, and his thoughts are a frayed wire, sparking every time he touches them. Around him the wind is picking up, and for a moment it seems to pulse in time with his heart. 

He has to get away from Hawkins, but every possibility returns empty. The bus station is south of town, a half-hour’s bike ride past countless risks of recognition. To the west is the quarry, swarming with cops; to the east, his mom’s apartment. North is the only option he sees, as long as he stays off the main highway; they’ll all be looking for him, by now. 

“Come and get me, you assholes.” A halting, whispered plea, as though the hulking, black dog might sense his words and follow them like a beacon. Knock him back through to the other side, or maybe just kill him. Either way, it will fix this mess he’s created. In a desperate reach, he closes his eyes and feels for that tug behind his stomach, the hook that’s threatened to pull him away time and time again. And for one wild second he can sense it, space starting to go weak at the edges, but it’s gone just as quickly, leaving firm, frigid air in its wake. All Mike can hear is the rush of his own breath, and the distant rumble of a train. 

Swallowing down a panicked tremble, he climbs back on his stolen bike and starts to pedal north. 

What Mike doesn’t notice is this: a hairline fracture in the night air, right where his bike had been stalled, where he had tugged at the woven threads of space. Pale against the splintered asphalt and the overgrown yards, suspended like spider’s silk, even as his wheels grind away on the uneven road. 

In the morning, a bird will swoop through it, brown wings spread. 

It won’t come out the other side. 

February 15, 1986

“It’s just- it’s another kid. Or a fake, like with Will." 

Joyce slides the warm mug into Karen’s hands, helping to close unmanicured fingers around the ceramic. The woman’s eyes seem locked on a middle distance, frantic and searching, as though something in the apartment’s air will give her an answer. 

“Hop said we can look at dental records tomorrow.” It feels like feeding poison through a line, right into Karen’s veins, and Joyce regrets every word. “Can you get those?” 

A sharp voice interrupts any coming answer, practically spitting with fury. “Why would they fake this?” Nancy's pinched face holds back a pain Joyce knows intimately. "They had a reason to fake Will, at least." 

It’s true, and they're all aware. Will’s perceived death was incriminating, tied into horrifying secrets the Lab couldn’t risk letting loose. Mike’s wasn’t, though, assuming Dustin Henderson had the story straight. Is it still possible he’d stepped off the cliff and wound up in the clutches of Brenner’s people? Could the bones’ sudden appearance be the Lab’s way of threatening him out of town? 

The answer seems impossibly far away, dragging with it any true sense of optimism. 

“Do they think he drowned?” Karen asks, breaking a long moment’s silence. Her jaw trembles. Somewhere down a dim hall, cheerful music plays from a closed door; a discordant background track, meant to keep Holly from hearing the conversation. 

“I… Hop…” There’s no easy way to say it, and Joyce gives up on parsing for something softer on the heart. “He doesn’t... think anyone could tell. Not after this long.” The best anyone could tell about a cause of death, Hop had told her, was if the impact had broken Mike’s neck, maybe - blessedly - killing him before he got trapped in the excavator. A small comfort, Joyce knows, and not one Karen needs to hear.  

Nancy clenches her jaw, veins practically visible in the dip of her temples. “And we’ve been living with- what? An actor? Some kid the Lab planted?” She’s looking for answers no one can give, and the desperation painting each word makes Joyce’s chest tighten further and further. 

“No,” Karen cuts in. “I’d know. He’s my boy. I’d-” Damp, red eyes seek out understanding. “Mothers know. Right?” 

Joyce isn't sure how to answer. Because the thing is, she had. She had looked down at a waterlogged corpse on a cold table, and she had pressed her palm to the thing’s cheek, and she had known it wasn’t her son, but- 

Would she, if it weren’t for her wild, desperate hope? If it weren’t for the voice on the line, and the letters on the wall, and the glow of the tangled lights? If she’d already thought him lost, would her instincts alone have been enough to clue her in? 

“Hop’s got everyone out looking,” she finally says. A cop-out answer, sitting low and queasy in her stomach. “Whatever the truth is - wherever Mike is - he’s either in the best hands this town has, or- or he’s finally at peace.” 

"Bullshit."

“Nancy-” Karen’s voice is quiet, distraught, looking towards her daughter with a silent plea, but it falls on unwilling ears. Nancy’s face pinches tighter, purple with fierce, wild grief. 

“My brother killed himself. Finding his bones isn’t going to change that.” As Nancy’s voice rises, the words start to hitch with tears; she wraps her arms around her stomach, tight as a straight jacket. “It doesn’t mean that he’s suddenly happy somewhere.” 

"Nancy -” Joyce tries, but it's with no luck. Both women watch as the girl rips her coat from the back of a kitchen chair, keys jangling in its pocket, and makes a stormy beeline for the door. 

“I’m going to help look,” she calls, bitter and halting through swallowed tears. “I want answers.” 

And with a swell of outside sound - the shout of a neighbor, the honk of a trunk - Nancy disappears into the bitter night, slamming the flimsy door behind herself. 

The awful, raw silence lasts only a moment. Joyce’s heart pounds so hard she feels sick, and Karen’s ragged breaths threaten to dissolve into tears. It takes Joyce a second to realize that something is different in the apartment, and another few seconds to determine what it is: down the hall, the music has stopped. Light floods out of the bedroom door now, haloing a small, pigtailed figure from behind.  

Holly Wheeler, clad in her Strawberry Shortcake nightdress, looks up at her mother and asks, “Is the wrong-Mike coming back?” 

r    e  w i n d

November 12, 1983

She knows before they tell her. And she doesn’t know that she knows, but she knows in a way that makes sense later, like a picture coming slowly together. Pegs on a Lite Brite, spelling out a truth she eventually learns not to repeat, because it makes Mommy’s face sad and it makes Daddy tell her the story about the Bad Thing again. And whenever Daddy tells the story about the Bad Thing, the boy in the corner fades and ripples, and sometimes he goes away for days or for weeks or a month and only comes back when Holly cries in her room at night.  

She knows when the Bad Thing happens because Mommy calls over Bethany, Holly’s old babysitter, and then leaves the house at a run. Bethany fixes carrot sticks and Holly doesn’t want to eat them because her stomach feels funny, and then Bethany offers her animal crackers instead and Holly does eat those because she’s hungry, and then they watch Cinderella.

The sun is going down by the time the movie ends and Holly wants to cry because this doesn’t feel right. Someone is always home when it’s getting dark - always Mommy, and usually Mike, and sometimes Nancy, and then Daddy will walk in and they'll have dinner. And as it gets later and later Holly does start to cry, and Bethany looks so sad and fixes her chicken nuggets and lets her eat them on the couch, and Mommy and Mike and Nancy and Daddy still don’t come home. 

It’s very late when the phone rings, and Bethany answers it and gets a strange look on her face, and then explains that she has to leave because she has school tomorrow, and that Mrs. Sinclair is coming by to stay the night. Mrs. Sinclair is nice, and she always asks Holly about preschool even if Holly never answers, but tonight her voice is tired and she smells like the stuff you put on cuts. She tucks a blanket around Holly on the couch and doesn’t ask any questions and doesn’t tell her any answers. 

When Holly opens her eyes, the lamps are off and Mike is finally home. He’s standing in the kitchen doorway with his coat and his shoes and his backpack on, and he looks like he came inside from the rain. He’s watching Mrs. Sinclair drink a cup of coffee and face is twisted up like he’s been crying. 

“Mrs. Sinclair? Mrs. Sinclair, what’s going on?”  

His voice isn’t right. Holly feels it more than she hears it, like it’s a thought in her own head, and she wants to ask him what’s wrong but her words don’t happen and she just looks. She looks at her brother’s soaked hair, and at his trembling jaw, and at the water dribbling from his mouth with each word, and at the way the wallpaper bleeds through like a pattern on his shirt, and Holly understands. 

This isn’t Mike. This is a thing-that-was-Mike, like the thing-that-was-Grandpa who sits in his chair when they go to Nana’s house, or the thing-that-was-Mr. Stanford down the street, who Holly can always see floating under the tree in the backyard. It’s what happens whenever there’s a Bad Thing, and everyone fusses and cries and hugs, and Holly never understands. The thing-that-was-Grandpa doesn’t sound quite like him, and he doesn’t tickle her anymore, but he’s still there. He can still see her and talk to her, and for once she can talk right back, just by wanting to. 

Mommy and Daddy and Nancy don’t see Mike when they come home, long into the night after Mrs. Sinclair has fallen asleep in the big chair. He’s sitting on the couch with Holly, dripping water that doesn’t stay, and he drifts after them with feet that don’t move quite right, and Holly understands. Another Bad Thing happened, and it happened to Mike this time, and Holly’s the only one who can talk to him. 

He doesn’t want to talk, though. He isn’t like Grandpa, who speaks calm words and tries to rustle her hair. The-thing-that-was-Mike flickers like a candle and rages and cries into Holly’s thoughts, and when she tries to tell her parents and Nancy they all get upset too. They tell her that a Bad Thing happened, and it made Mike not be there anymore, but they’re wrong. He’s there when they eat dinner, and when they watch TV, and when his friends ride their bikes past the house. He’s there at Christmas, and he’s there when they mark his birthday. And after a while he doesn’t look as much like Mike, and he doesn’t sound as much like Mike, but she knows that the sliver of shadow is her big brother. His energy fades too fast, burning out and pulling into a thread; he didn’t have as much of it as Grandpa, or as Mr. Stanford, and Holly knows it even if she doesn’t understand it. 

It’s fall again and something is wrong under the ground, and something is wrong inside Will Byers, and the thing-that-was-Mike disappears for days to stay by his side. He comes back a scrap of thought that Holly can barely feel, grasping himself with hands that she knows now are at the bottom of the Quarry, and she understands what he needs, what he’s been waiting for. 

Holly slips her hand through where her brother’s should be, and tells him, It’s okay. You can go now. 

And like a sigh of relief, he does. 

February 15, 1986

The front door swings open again just after six, jolting Will out of a hazy half-dream. A blanket has been draped on him since he last checked the clock, and someone's clicked off the TV. At the other end of the couch, Max tugs down her duct-taped headphones and squints towards the entryway. 

“Did they find him yet?” Dustin practically shouts, pink and gasping from the ride over. 

Max levels a sardonic stare. “We would have told you, dipshit.” By radio, by phone, by a pebble at the window. They’d talked just after midnight and promised as much, before splitting to spend a sleepless night apart. 

“El?” Lucas asks, scanning the room, and Will tips his chin upward. 

“Upstairs.” The static had been emanating from under her door all night, but neither Will nor Max had bothered to step in, recognizing a lost cause. It isn’t as though she can wear out powers she doesn’t have, and besides, it feels like the most any of them can do right now. The streets are more than covered, the police have been contacted, and Mike Wheeler’s alleged imposter is a known fugitive. 

Dustin sits down on the arm of a chair, shedding his coat. “Look, the good news is that Mike’s in, like, the worst shape possible. He can’t have made it far, right?” It’s a useless attempt at raising spirits, but Will appreciates the effort. He cannot, however, speak for Lucas. 

“That’s assuming it’s even Mike," Lucas replies, brows furrowed. 

Max sighs and sits up. “Lucas…” 

“It is,"  Will cuts in. “It’s him, I just- I feel it.” 

A pause, uncomfortable and pitying; Will feels Max’s eyes on him, and looks down at the folds of the blanket. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Any ferocity in Lucas’ face fades, though, and his voice is softer as he goes on. “Hey, man, we all want it to be him. I get that. But Dustin saw him die. We can’t just ignore that.” 

Die. A word they’ve barely used, even two years later. Mike disappeared. Mike left. Mike has been gone, but they’ve never said- 

“I saw him jump,” Dustin argues, voice raising. “I didn’t see-” 

Max stands up with a heave of exasperation. "Jesus, there’s no point in fighting over this, okay? It’s either him or it’s not, and no one’s gonna know ‘til he gets found.” 

Fifty-fifty. Or, more likely, ninety-ten. They could know in a few minutes, or they could never know at all, and Will’s stomach turns at the potentiality. But as the other boys look down, sufficiently chastised, he carefully clears his throat. 

“What if-” Six eyes meet his, ready for any glimmer of hope they can be handed. “What if there’s another option?” 

“... What do you mean?” Lucas’ frown could be nearly comical in its pure skepticism. His brain has always worked best on logic, on black-and-white answers to scientific analysis. 

“I mean,” Will continues, aware of the bewildered response he’s about to receive, “what if they could both be him?” 

For a moment the room is silent, minds chewing carefully through a question they can’t parse, until- 

“The flea and the acrobat,” Dustin says. It sparks vague recollection in Will, and utter disconnect in Max. “The flea and the- Lucas, you remember, right?” 

“Mr. Clarke.” Something is dawning on Lucas’ face, a story coming together piece by piece. “It’s how he explained-” 

“-dimensional travel,” Dustin cuts in, excitement clearly building. “Like from our world to the Upside Down. Our world’s on top, and the Upside Down is on the bottom, but-” 

“A rope has more than two sides.” It all comes back together in a snap: Will eating Jell-O in his hospital bed, his friends spread over the side of the mattress, talking at five miles a minute about gates and government agents. They'd explained it then, the strange metaphor and the clumsy drawing, created over a table of funeral refreshments. 

Dustin leans in closer, eyes alight, and lays a hand on Lucas’ shoulder. “Do you remember what he said when we first asked?” This is an answer Will doesn’t know, and for a moment it might seem Lucas doesn’t either. But then, something clicks. Everything in Lucas’ face softens, warm and sad at the same time. 

“‘A world where none of these bad things ever happened’,” Lucas replies, a paraphrase close enough to cut deep. Will’s death, Mr Clarke had meant then, but maybe it applies here, too. A world, on some side of that rope, where Mike hadn’t died either. 

“Wait, hold on.” Max has been following raptly, her face locked in something between interest and utter disbelief, but she seems unable to hold back any longer. “There are, like, more Upside Downs, only they’re not… upside down? They’re-” 

“Sideways,” Dustin adds. It makes as much sense as anything. 

“Maybe he’s another world’s Mike,” Will finally says. “Maybe he’s from the Sideways, and he got through.” 

“But how?” Max asks. 

“Same way everyone has with the Upside Down - gates.” There’s a professorial air to Dustin’s explanation, like he’s giving a grand lecture on their own brand of pseudo-science, and Will can’t tamp down a swell of affection. "There are probably loads of gates we don't know about, to all different sides of the rope."

“So, Sideways Mike,” Lucas says. “That’s what you think is going on.” It’s not a question, but it’s not a flat criticism either. 

“Is it any weirder than the Lab making an older Mike clone, or something?” Will asks, unable to help the dry incredulity. “I mean, we’ve already dealt with dimensional travel. We know it can happen, unlike-” 

A door creaks upstairs, and his words cut off. Within moments, the silhouette of a frazzled, exhausted El steps onto the stair landing, eyes ringed darkly and still smudged with makeup. No one needs to ask how the night has gone; it’s written plainly in her dejected expression. 

“You okay?” Lucas asks. 

El gives a noncommittal hum, then adds, “Coffee.” Max, most familiar with the coffee pot’s workings, leads the way to the kitchen, and for a moment the living room falls into chilled, uneasy silence. With every passing second Will expects the phone to ring, or the door to fly open again. 

Lucas eventually breaks the silence. “Man, I had the weirdest dream last night.” 

“Hm?” Will just barely tips his head, too busy imagining the impossibility of having slept more than a few minutes. 

“Me and you were in the woods,” Lucas says, “and I guess Mike was there? Only it was, like- sad. Like, he was there, but we couldn’t get to him.”

An understandable dream, after hearing Mike had split. Simply explained, easily decoded. Except, for just a second, a strange sensation pushes through Will’s head. Déjà vu, almost, too faint and too quick to look at clearly. A memory of a memory, barely more than color. He opens his mouth to say something, then closes it, because he doesn’t know what.  

“I dreamed Darth Vader stole my mom's socks,” Dustin says with a shrug, and the moment breaks. With a forced smile and a mind still grasping for something it can’t understand, Will pushes off the couch and follows the scent of coffee. 

Chapter Text

❝ How much can you change and get away with it, before you turn into something else, before it’s some kind of murder? ❞

Richard Siken, Portrait of Fryderyk in Shifting Light

Side B. 

February 15, 1986

The murky gray of morning is filtering in when Mike opens his eyes. Six o’ clock, maybe, a few hours since he tried the flimsy door and staggered into a stranger’s shed. Surroundings he could only smell the night before - gasoline, potting soil, rusted metal - come slowly into view as he rouses, prying sore limbs and stiff fingers out of his huddle. It’s freezing, but not enough to kill. 

He has no idea where he is. Somewhere west of Kewanna, where he’d turned left at the single stoplight, flashing yellow-red-green to no one. Adrenaline had begun to seep from him and exhaustion had spilled back into its place, dizzying and dull, until he felt sick with it. The crouching outbuilding at the edge of a home’s grassy yard was a calculable risk, but it looked large enough to hide himself and his bike from sight just long enough to get back on his feet. 

It’s smaller, in the light. His bike takes up most of the cramped space, shoved between a lawnmower and a workbench, and the ceiling is just high enough to stand. Scattered between is a story told clearly in details: a pair of gardening gloves, green and flowered; a child’s plastic Inchworm; a well-loved hunting knife with an orange handle. 

Mike takes the knife, sliding it clumsily into his pocket. Then, after another second’s thought, he takes the gloves as well. They’re too small and the fabric itches, but the metal of his bike bites less when he pushes it back outside. 

The daylight feels wrong, somehow; muted, dim, like a weak bulb in a familiar lamp. Mike rubs a gloved fist over his eyes and starts off towards the blessedly empty road, hazarding only a quick look back across the property. Smoke puffs gently from the house’s chimney now, and he wastes no time pulling back onto the highway. 

Pulaski County. That’s where he is, judging from the sign that ushers him towards the county fairgrounds. A town begins filling in around him, block by block, more tightly woven than Hawkins. Public library, auto shop, daycare, all starting to wake up. A part of Mike aches at the mundanity. It’s almost like home, when home was something else, and he can imagine that if he just gets off his bike and walks far enough down that street over there, he’ll make it back to a flickering garage light in 1983. 

He won’t. He keeps pedaling. 

It’s at the second traffic light that his first plan pulls itself back into fruition, and it’s in the welcome shape of a greyhound on a faded plastic sign.

“Fucking finally," he mutters to no one. His voice is hoarse and alien, and he feels outside his own body as he turns into the parking lot. An idling bus puffs choking fumes next to a thin line of travelers; no crowd to hide in, then, and no more than a dollar’s change in his pocket to buy a ticket.

On a mildew-green bench in front of the low building, a woman’s purse has been momentarily overlooked, set aside as she wrangles a wailing infant. Mother and child both frown, and the woman’s hand catches a blue diaper bag as she sweeps urgently towards the station door, leaving the rest of her possessions unguarded. 

Propping El’s bike against a fence, Mike’s eyes flick to the bag, then to the door, then to the loading bus. Just the thought brings disgust flooding into his stomach, but his alternatives feel equally grim. Keep plodding along by bike, only for the police to catch up with him? Draw the dogs to his location before his friends and family are safely out of danger? 

He’s already hurt enough people - what’s one more, if it can take him far enough away to stop the damage? 

As he slides the wallet from the woman’s bag and thumbs through the modest collection of bills, he tries not to think of anything. Not his mother, or Mrs. Byers, and the astonishing love they’ve shown him since he came here. Not El, so warm even in her suspicion. And definitely not Will, with his wide eyes and his unfaltering trust and how his fine hair goes static in the winter and- 

No. No. Another thing Mike has now ruined, deep down in a rotten, hollow place he can barely think about.

He slides out the cash and heads towards the ticket window. And when he takes his seat on the bus, two rows in front of the frazzled woman and her tearful infant, it’s with the sense that he’s finally headed somewhere he can’t come back from. 

“Hey, we got a lead. I’m headed to check it out.” 

Hopper bustles through Karen Wheeler’s dim kitchen, punctuating his announcement with a solemn nod. At the table, Joyce sets down her coffee. It’s already cooled in the hour she’s been sitting here, watching the sun rise behind gray clouds.

“What direction?” she asks. The answer barely makes a difference. For a hundred miles in each direction, it’s all the same grid of forest and farmland. 

“North, outside Winamac.” The knob twists with a creak under Hopper’s palm, and frigid air seeps in. “Some guy found his shed broken into.” 

Everything Joyce knows protests at the notion. Michael Wheeler, breaking and entering? 

Of course, he’s never stopped surprising her, not since that terrible, sunny afternoon in 1983. 

“What makes you think it’s-” 

“Bike tracks in the yard,” Hopper answers. “I’ve already talked with Pulaski County, got the cops out looking.” 

And what will they do if they find him? Joyce flexes her fingers around the mug, forcing her eyes away from Hopper’s uniform. When police scuffed their boots through the Hawkins woods in search of Will, she thought of them as rescuers, the first line of hope for a lost child. But give that child a couple more years and a haunted glint in his eye, and fresh fear makes its way into Joyce’s gut. He’s a kid who needs their help, not a criminal who belongs in the back of a squad car.

A gust of wind swirls its way through the open door, upsetting the spread of papers on the table - Holly’s latest work, in heavy wax scribbles. Joyce reaches out to catch a couple: black blobs with triangle ears, what looks like a mangled bus. 

Hopper gives a detached, appraising hum. “Quite the artist.” 

Something about them sends an unsettled shudder through Joyce, and she closes her eyes. The faint pulse of a migraine is starting up behind them, sick and dull. “I called over to our house,” she says. “Jonathan should still be keeping an eye on the kids.” Making sure none of them leave, at the very least. 

“I’ll stop by and check,” Hopper answers. “You heard from Nancy yet?” 

“She called from Kokomo.” A payphone, just before dawn, her voice strained with furious grief. “Police down there have the flyers now, at least.” 

“And Karen?” 

Joyce presses her mouth into a thin, even line, and forces in a calm breath. “Just keep looking. That’s the best any of us can do for her.” 

With a quick kiss to Joyce’s head, Hopper heads out into the bleary morning, leaving the apartment suffocatingly silent. Not even a murmur comes from the early-rising neighbors, as though they can sense the funereal atmosphere upstairs. 

Then, from down the hall, a sniffling breath. 

Mike’s room is still dark as night, the rising sun shielded by a dense treeline, but Joyce can make out the shape of Karen Wheeler hunched on the narrow mattress, face lowered into her palms. The springs squeak when Joyce sits down, hip to hip, taking in the bare walls, the Star Wars figurines, the blue jeans strewn on the worn carpet. A ghost of the cluttered, boyish bedroom on Maple Street, as few times as she’d seen it. 

When Karen speaks, it’s damp and muffled. 

“I’m supposed to be stronger than this,” she says, face pulled into a poor recreation of a smile. “I used to be stronger.” 

Joyce slides a hand over Karen’s shoulder and squeezes, soft and tentative. “You’re not supposed to be anything, right now. There’s no schedule for shit like this.” 

Karen’s breath hitches, somewhere between a bitter laugh and a choked sob. “I keep thinking about it like- like grief, and then I remember…” She trails off, shakes her head. “I don’t know how to hope, anymore.”

“I know,” Joyce says, and she does. For the better part of that autumn week, she held onto her hope for Will, even as the world tried to drain it away. She had hoped for Will in the flickering lights of the laboratory, and by the fire of a dusty cabin. And every time, that fire in her chest got weaker and weaker, replaced by resignation to the truth: horrible things happen. Children die, and boyfriends die, and kind Russian men die, and the best you can do is throw the next punch yourself. 

“Holly told me, a few times.” 

Joyce looks over, caught off guard for a moment. “Told you what?” 

Karen’s lips quiver, her throat working around the words for a second. “That she saw him,” she manages, tensing her jaw to keep a fresh sob at bay. “That he was still there.” 

Is the wrong-Mike coming back? 

Holly had whispered the story to Karen in starts and stops, simple sentences from between hunched, nervous shoulders. Joyce had never believed in ghosts, not even when the world led them to believe in so much else, and she didn’t particularly want to now. Between moving along into peaceful nonexistence or trailing invisibly after weeping family, Joyce would prefer that anyone experience the first. Still, the thought had sent chills down her back long into the night as she tossed and turned on the sofa. 

“Does she still…” An unspoken thought, trailing into horrid imagination. 

Karen shakes her head. “Not anymore. He…he went."

“That’s good,” Joyce offers, meaning it halfheartedly. She has no idea what to think, what to believe, what to wish for. A Mike that moved on from some spiritual plane is still a Mike who died, and where does that leave them now? Is it better to believe Holly was haunted by spirits, or by delusions? 

“She said-” Karen wipes a sleeve across her face and sucks in a breath. “She said he used to talk to her, in her head.” Her words are full of confusion, a tinge of awe, a heavy coating of fear. “And that- that the new Mike couldn’t do it, b-because-”

Joyce slides her hand across Karen’s shoulders, thumb circling. “Hey, it’s alright, you don’t-” 

But Karen just shakes her head, steeling to continue. “She said the bad thing hadn’t happened to him.” Her brows furrow, like she’s first puzzling the words over again. Then, with a hushed, tentative tone: “It’s the most I’ve heard her say outside of speech therapy.” 

Years ago, Joyce would have brushed it off. She would have chalked it up to trauma and tragedy, the same all of them wrestle with daily. 

Doubt is an old friend she has no intentions of revisiting. 

“I’d ask if you believe her,” she finally replies, resting her chin against Karen’s shoulder, “but one of my kids can throw a car, so…” 

The snort that Karen gives is so distinctly un-Karen that Joyce has to smile, despite everything. Between the blinds, pale sun is beginning to dapple into the room.  Across the hall, Holly’s sheets rustle. The first sounds of Saturday morning are beginning to filter up from the Wheelers’ neighbors, along with the smell of burning breakfast.

And somewhere north of Winamac, she hopes a tan Jeep is getting closer and closer to a stolen bike. 

"-a crisp, clear, black-and-white picture from a name you know and trust-"

Click.

"-after last month’s canceled launch, the crew of the Challenger will finally reattempt-"

Click.

"-movin' through the rhythm of a brand new day, ‘cause the vitamins in milk get me on my way-" 

A pause, eyes absently scanning the broad, flannel-clad form of a man lifting hay bales, then - click. The TV blinks off.

Will doesn’t know what he’s looking for. The local news has done its morning spin, the follow-up to last night’s gut wrenching news, and it sounded no different with the sun up. A local boy found dead. A recent miracle proven hollow. No amount of repetition has made the official story anymore palatable. And until someone finds Mike, it’s the only story they have. 

“You okay?” 

He looks up just in time to see Max sit down, close enough to pick out her freckles but far enough that their knees don’t touch. 

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Will answers. It’s the plainest lie he’s ever told, and Max’s stare back is response enough. She sinks back against the cushions, rolling a stiff neck. 

“I can’t even imagine,” she says. “This has all been insane.”  

It’s a boilerplate check-in, a nicety offered by someone close enough to be a friend but not close enough to truly comfort. An ironic reverse of last summer, when they all sat sweating in their black clothes in Dustin’s backyard. Max had at least had something real to grieve, back then. Something that made a lick of sense.

“We’re gonna find him, okay?” It’s an uncomfortable attempt at breaking the grim silence, but Max’s eyes are deep and earnest in a way she must have learned from El. “He probably hasn’t gotten far.” 

Will folds his legs up against his chest, squeezing tight. “You don’t know that. You’re just trying to make me feel better.” And he can’t, not anymore. Anxiety has pulsed through him like blood since he was old enough to feel it, and the only person who’s ever helped isn’t here. 

“And that’s a bad thing?” Max cuts in, leaning closer. “You’re my friend, Will. I just-” 

“We both know what you saw last night.” 

It bursts into the air and hangs, like smoke from a firework, a pattern holding as it drifts. Will clenches his jaw until it hurts, then clenches harder. He’s waiting for something to break, for someone to shout. Then, in the aftermath, maybe they can all acknowledge the truth of why Mike ran. Maybe they can all blame the right person, this time. 

Nothing breaks. Max doesn’t shout. Instead, her face goes calm, calmer than Will has seen it. There’s no pity in it, no disgust, no disappointment. She looks at Will like they’re leaning across sleeping backs, trading friendly chatter at a sleepover. A story, maybe, or a secret. He wants to hear it almost as much as he wants to run. 

“Did I ever tell you about my neighbors, back in California?” 

Will just blinks, his face slack. 

“Sandra and Jackie,” Max continues, fondness flooding into her expression. “They had a little yellow house and fed, like, every stray in the neighborhood. Whenever I didn’t want to go home I’d just hang out in their backyard and drink lemonade and play with their dogs. And they couldn’t get married or anything, but they still had this big party and gave each other rings and stuff. Me and my dad went. It was pretty cool.” 

Somewhere inside his chest, Will can feel his heart thrumming faster, his breath picking up. Sweat starts to prick at his collar. 

“And then there was my mom’s coworker, Antonio,” Max goes on, sitting up straighter. “He’d gotten divorced, but him and his wife were still super close. She and the kids were always coming by the shop, and they loved his new boyfriend, so they-” 

“Why are you telling me this?” It comes out as a rasp, feeling far away from wherever Will’s mind has burrowed. He blinks, only then noticing the tears that have built up behind his eyes. 

Max shrugs. “Because I want you to know what’s possible.” 

Will doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know whether he wants to burst forth with denial or with relief or with sorrow. And before his thoughts can form, there’s a slow creak on the stairs, sweeping everything aside in a frantic tumble. 

“Dogs,” El says, and the room falls silent. 

“... Dogs?” Max echoes. 

An hour of sleep had done little good for El’s pale, bleary face, but she’s tied up her hair and put on an old, flowered sweatshirt of Joyce’s since they last saw each other in the predawn haze. There’s a glint of determination in her eyes that hadn’t been there before. 

“The dog was after Mike,” she explains. “Back in December.” 

“Wait, the one from the woods?” From the absence of confusion on Max’s face, it’s clear that she’s been briefed on the encounter. “You think he saw it again and bolted, or something?” 

El simply adds, “It was huge.” They’re all aware of how her speech sometimes regresses, slipping back into clipped, stilted phrases when she’s stressed or tired. The immaterial addition seems like such an instance for a moment, a thought that got stuck and jumbled on the way out. 

Then, it clicks. 

“It was huge," Will repeats. “If something that big’s after him, maybe other people are seeing it.” El nods, relieved, and slips down the rest of the stairs.

Max chews on a thumbnail. “Hopper’s been calling around already, right?” Two chins dip in twin nods. “Maybe he can just- ask about giant dog sightings, or something.” 

Will frowns. “You think people would call the cops just ‘cause they saw a big dog?” 

The look El levels at him is dry as a Saltine. “Someone called Hop because they bought bad milk.” Still shaky, but easier, a familiar jab rather than a frantic theory. 

Max manages a laugh. “So they’re definitely gonna call if they see a dog the size of a pickup truck running across their yard.” 

“We just have to hope he listens," Will says. “He’s not exactly Mike’s biggest fan, right now.”

“He’s out there looking, isn’t he?” 

“Yeah, to arrest him.” Not to save him from giant dogs. As pissed as Hopper is at having the wool tugged over his eyes all these months, he’d probably follow the sighting just to throw Mike to the creature himself. 

“Arrested,” El says, “is better than lost.” 

Will opens his mouth to respond - and something happens. Another rush of déjà vu, his mind locking onto a hidden thought he can’t collect. The smell of nicotine on his fingers, the faded pattern of his family’s old couch. Someone that sounds like his brother, leaning close and warm. 

A part of the universe, returning to the whole. 

He blinks, and it’s gone again. 

“Will?” Max jostles his shoulder, just north of gentle. “You good?” 

Will nods. “Yeah, I just-” 

He’s cut off by a familiar sound - heavy tires on gravel, as Hopper’s jeep pulls up the driveway. As a car door clicks open, three pairs of eyes meet over the first breath of a Hail Mary plan. 

“Either he listens to us,” Max says, “or he looks at us like we’re total idiots.” A pause, and a shaky attempt at a teasing smile. “At least we’ll know what it’s like to be Dustin and Lucas.” 

Change from the ticket had been just enough for breakfast in La Porte, if that’s what one could call a gas station hot dog and searing coffee from a styrofoam cup. Mike always anticipated that he’d adapt to the taste one day, like it was some facet of teenhood he’d already watched his sister acquire. One day he would take a drink from one of his mom’s cream-colored mugs and it wouldn’t taste like battery acid, and he’d know he was growing up. 

He tries to stifle his grimace at the first sip. 

The bus pulls away from the station a few minutes late, half of its occupants swapped out. There are more coveralls than business suits now, and Mike halfway remembers the stretch of lakeshore up ahead - Indiana Dunes National Park, where his family had spent many warm, summer weeks, bookended on each side by dreary, gray industry. He’d asked his father once whether the cooling tower was a lighthouse; he can’t recall if he got a response. 

Despite the slow swallows of caffeine, Mike catches himself drifting, lulled by the bus’ ambling movement. The infant behind him has calmed, the frazzled mother now caught in conversation with another passenger. A man across the aisle sneezes, answered by a cheerful chorus of bless-you’s. The driver apologizes for a rough patch of pavement. 

They’re just passing a foggy span of lake when Mike feels it. Not a tug, like before, but a prickle at his neck, faint and shivering, the way Will always describes. Goosebumps spread down his arms, and he comes to in a jolt, sitting up so fast his coffee splashes against his hand. 

He barely has time to see it. Black and broad, spanning the road ahead, eyes like red beacons. 

The next thing he knows is chaos. Movement and sound, faster and louder than he can comprehend - black, then white, then ripping, then shouting. He’s aware of his head against something hard, then his head against nothing, and without thinking he clenches his fists and - 

- he pulls -

- and something rips -

- and he lands, tumbling, once and then twice and then more than he can count, until he slows to a dizzy, breathless stop, back flat against what can only be the ground. 

Mike opens his eyes in starts and stops, squinting at gray-white sky. His head is still spinning, and for a moment he can think only of that cloudy, December morning, frigid and aching in the creekbed. It must have happened again. The dog must have knocked him clear through, back to the other side. 

Only then does he hear the screams. One - a shrill howl - and then more, rising like a chorus over the cold wind. Mike sits up too quickly, vision tunneling at the edges, and sees- 

No, no, fuck-

The back half of the bus is on its side, sliced clean in a gruesome cross-section, spilling ripped seats and bloodied passengers across the asphalt. 

The front half is nowhere to be seen. 

“Shit-” Mike tries to stand, but his sneakers slide on frozen mud and he comes back down hard, hands and knees striking hard on uneven ground. He looks around frantically, hoping to see a twin twist of metal among the bare trees, a dozen more passengers hobbling to their feet. He doesn’t. However he had managed to claw himself out of reality and into safety, he had done it wrong. 

This was his fault. 

Two desperate instincts war in his chest - one to help, one to flee - tangled too tight in fear and panic and pain. Wouldn’t fleeing be helping? Is that not all he’s ever tried to do? Run, hide, remove himself from the scene - and leave the wreckage smoldering behind. 

But the thing about wreckage is this: it can be cleared. It can be pieced back together, when the destruction is over. Cut off the steamroller, bring in the fire trucks, and maybe you can still find something to salvage. 

I’m the steamroller, Mike thinks wildly, mind reeling and tumbling. He’s back at the freezing handlebars, back at the cliff’s edge, and the final puzzle piece is there in his fingers again. There’s no helping, and there’s no running.

The only way through is out. 

“Hey, Hop?” 

The Jeep’s pipe puffs steam into the cold air, its engine still running. Clattering down the front steps on socked feet, Will expects to see Hopper behind the open driver’s door, to hear muttered swears and the churn of his boots on gravel, but instead- 

Nothing. 

“Hopper?” Max adds, peering around like the Chief could be hidden in the shrubs, or calling on a neighbor. Behind her, El’s concern is more stark, seeking out Will’s eyes in a silent question. 

Something isn’t right. 

“Hopper!” Will calls again, stepping closer to the vehicle. A gun glints from the floorboard, a pack of cigarettes sits open and strewn across the front seat, but the picture yields no clear answers. In as many seconds as it took Will and the girls to open the front door, Jim Hopper abandoned his vehicle and disappeared from sight. 

Think logically- Will can hear his brother saying, level and purposely calm. What’s the simplest answer? The adage for many a late-night panic, cowering from the windows of their old house, hearing a monster’s snarl in every gust of wind. 

The trouble is, they live in a town of monsters. 

“Maybe he-” 

Max’s fresh attempt at pragmatism is interrupted by a harsh blare from the Jeep’s radio. Static bursts out, too loud in the morning’s eerie silence, and Will hauls himself up into the cab, reaching blindly for the controls. But just as soon as his hand reaches the knob, he freezes. 

"... wanted to... anything about... wild animals, right?"

The man’s voice weaves in and out of the grating static, coming through like morse code, but Will understands the words plainly. He turns to glance at the girls, but El is already shoving past him and reaching for the receiver. 

“Press down,” she whispers, gesturing to the button. 

For a frantic moment, Will nearly shoves back. He knows radios, even if he’s never used Hopper’s. What he doesn’t know is how to pass himself off as the Chief well enough to get information. In the end, he simply holds down the button and gives a noncommittal, “Mm-hmm.” 

The reply is immediate. "...got a situation up here in La Porte with... crash, multiple casualties... weirdest shit I ever... passenger says she saw a big dog blocking the-"

La Porte. An hour north, if that. Will doesn’t speak. He doesn’t even think, not with more acuity than it takes to work his arms and legs. He hassles El into the passenger seat and reaches for the gear shift, palm flexing over the unfamiliar mechanics. 

“Wait, what are you doing?"

“Going to La Porte.” 

“No, I mean-” Max steps up into the cab and gives Will a shockingly effective shove. “Move over, Byers. You aren’t supposed to use both feet to- oh, for fuck’s sake." Another push, and he tumbles into El’s side, frowning. “Give me the wheel.” 

"Chief?... Chief-" 

El clicks off the radio, looks over at Max, and says, “Drive.” 

In a different world, in a different time, under a pulsing red sky, a light traces through poisoned air. Narrow as a thimble, then stretching wider - a circle of muted gray, a flash of a winter’s afternoon, just long enough for something to careen through. It misses the cracked asphalt, crunching onto the steep tangle of reed grass. For a single, screeching moment it catches on the craggy hill, but the mud is too slick, and the twist of metal too heavy to stop. 

The front half of the Greyhound bus slips into the inky black of the lake, and no one emerges. 

Chapter Text

❝ I have made the obscene decision to do something unforgivable for the sake of our survival. ❞

s.b.l 

Side B. 

February 14, 1986

Space feels like cobwebs. Fragile, but it clings, wrapping around wrists and elbows, itching like static where it touches his hands. It’s cold, like lake water, and he breathes in a mouthful as he tumbles, head over foot over nothing. It’s dizzying, intoxicating - his head is too light, his limbs untethered. He thinks of a glass bottle, of rough roof tiles; he pulls again. Dry grass beneath his sneakers disappears into air, and the gray-white sky flashes ahead. 

Away, away, away. The smell of gasoline still clings to his clothes, and he can hear the sharp slice of metal beneath the whistling wind in his ears. Each jump takes him farther, fills up his lungs with frigid ozone, sluices the invisible blood from his shaking hands. One more, and then two more, muddy field after open sky, until- 

Mike lands hard on his back, and the world rights itself. A gray, swirling murk hangs overhead; pellets of sleet are starting to sting at his face. His thoughts are still howling - away, away - but a deep, thrumming exhaustion has started to seep into him, from his ropy muscles to the hollow in his chest. 

For a brief, bitter moment, he thinks about what he’s just done - not murdering several bus passengers, but the rest. Holding onto space and tearing through it. Teleportation, a weedy, preteen voice offers, and he tamps it down in shame. This isn’t a comic book. He isn’t going to fight crime with his cool new powers. If he saves the world at all, it will only be to fix what he’s broken. 

He’s not the hero in this story.

A fresh lashing of sleet whips across Mike’s face, and he struggles to sit up, propping on a shaky elbow. He can hear the rumble of the interstate off to his right; to his left, a shredded billboard flaps in the wind. Still too close to cars, too close to people. Mike pushes up to his knees, clenches his fists against the strain, and- 

Lands again. The stinging wind is harder here, but the drone of traffic isn’t as close. Instead, there’s another noise, steady and rushing.  

When Mike opens his eyes, it’s to white. For a moment it’s featureless and blinding, but then his vision tracks downward, landing on the source of the noise. Waves. It’s waves . Stretched out before him is the icy expanse of Lake Michigan, tossing and frightful in the wind. 

Mike staggers to his feet, taking a first, crunching step in the frozen sand. The world starts siding back into place, bits of the scenery slotting together. Barren dunes capped with brown grass and muddy snow; the edge of a buried path, sweeping up to an empty parking lot. He’s been here before, in warmer weather, and the twisted juxtaposition isn’t lost. If he closes his eyes, he can almost picture the plastic shovel Nancy was playing with, and their mom’s bright, earnest grin. 

The last time they came to the Indiana Dunes, she’d been pregnant with Holly. 

Mike scrapes his sleeve across his face, blinking away wind and grit. This is it, then. He ran, and he ran, and this is where he wound up, shaking like a leaf at the edge of the world. No more bikes to ride off on, or friendships to ruin. No more superheroes to catch him when he jumps. Just his pathetic self and the consequences he’s had coming for years. Just- 

There’s a flicker. Barely a flicker, barely a sliver of a flicker, but Mike pauses, blinking at the sky. Somewhere in the gray-on-white-on-gray, a spark of light. There. Like a hairline fracture through the clouds, pulsing once and then gone. Mike steps backwards as if in retreat - and finds slick ice. He goes down in a flat heap, breath racing out of him as he collides with the ground. Cold seeps in instantly, soaking through his coat, but he barely gives it a thought. 

Above him, the sky is spread out the ocean - and it’s wrong. Faint fractures spread out like nerves, synapses sparking as his vision darts. Here, then gone, then here again. He scrambles backwards in the sand, swallowing down his rising panic. Is this what happens before they show up? Is one of the dogs about to shatter through and take him? 

It occurs to Mike, almost absently, that he’s never been more alone. No moment of gloomy isolation or terrifying helplessness has ever held a candle to this, to howling wind and frozen rain and everyone he’s ever loved miles or worlds away. A desolation he’s woven himself into with an expert stitch. 

Somewhere, years ago, a small boy stood on another edge of another everything, and thought that he was the fix. He didn’t think of what he was breaking. 

I just want to go home, Mike thinks, more a prayer than a wish. He wills it into his hands, into his fingers, as he feels through space for something more, for a tear in the right wall. He pictures his mom - God, his mom , his real mom - her aerosol blonde and her clicking heels and her cheerful chatter - and tries to pull towards her like a beacon, like a lighthouse across space. He pictures Will - face growing small in the Pinto’s back window - and reaches. El, quiet and wide-eyed, wrapped in soft flannel. Bring me home, please bring me home- 

“Pickle, or no pickle?” 

Joyce works the little jar like a hand puppet, making it peek over the open refrigerator door. The performance holds Holly’s attention long enough to elicit a nose wrinkle, but she turns back towards her drawings without further discussion. 

Tough crowd. 

“Yeah, me either.” Joyce sets the plate down. Ham and cheese, no condiments, no crust. No pickle. Menu provided by Karen, of course; Holly hasn’t said a word since this morning. Her drawings are amorphous and indistinct, now - jagged swirls of yellow, red, black. Joyce doesn’t know if that’s better or worse. 

A soft creak slips from the next room; its accompanying voice echoes seconds later, like the county of thunder: “Joyce?” 

Karen, fresh from trying to sleep off a splitting headache. She hovers on the other side of the doorway, looking lost in her own bathrobe. Her eyes track the surroundings slowly. 

“Hm?” Joyce answers, a simple invitation over the shoulder as she rinses a knife. When the rest of the expected question doesn’t come, she moves to shut off the water. “You okay?” 

“I’m-” Karen works her jaw around the start of an answer, but can’t seem to find the rest of it. “What-” 

“Hey, hey,” Joyce soothes, a second-nature instinct. A bad dream, she imagines. Sleeping too hard in a still-new place, and waking up to the shock fresh again. “Just sit down. Do you need some water? Coffee?”

Some dam seems to break, and Karen shakes her head with renewed energy. “No, no, I-” Another shake, and a harried glance around the room. “I don’t- Is this your house?” 

The alarm is instant. A trigger, someone had once defined for her, but she’d been under the impression they were simple things - dogs, hospital rooms, Halloween decorations. Finding pain in someone else’s disorientation isn’t something she expected or wanted, and for a moment she has to breathe through the memory of Will lost, Will confused, Will detached from his own senses. Whatever this is, it isn’t that. 

“No, it’s-” She furrows her brow, moving closer. “Is your head still hurting?” 

Karen touches her own forehead, as if somehow feeling for an ache. “I was just- I don’t know what happened.” She skirts the doorway and sits on the couch, springs creaking under her. Joyce follows, bewildered. “I think I was buying groceries, maybe.” 

At the table, Holly’s eyes have grown wide and still; her crayon is frozen against the paper, boring a dull point of cherry red.

“Groceries?” Joyce repeats, willing her heartbeat to steady. She wants desperately to call Hopper, but logic argues with experience. This is a woman under stress, not supernatural influence. This could be a mere human crisis. 

“I know, I sound-” Crazy. Karen looks down at her bare nails, and frowns slightly. A new thought seems to eclipse her. “Did you just get into town?” 

“I’m-” Joyce plasters her smile wider, trying to hide the nervous tremble of her lip. “Let me just put some coffee on. I’ll be right back.” She slips back through the doorway and into the kitchen, sucking in a deep, unsteady breath. Her beeline to the phone is stopped by a movement - Holly, sliding out of her chair, conspiracy in the duck of her chin. 

“Wrong,” the girl whispers, and Joyce’s blood runs cold. 

Wrong Mike, Holly had said before, and at the time it hadn’t made sense. It still doesn’t, but something in the back of Joyce’s mind starts whirring, alerting to a plot she can’t quite put together. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong how? 

She feels Karen’s entrance almost as much as she hears it - a quick displacement of air, a sudden blocking of the living room’s hazy light. Holly shrinks back again, clinging to the side of the table. 

“Where did you find this?” Karen asks. Her voice is hoarse and fraught, and Joyce turns to see- 

Mike’s jacket. Wrinkled into a wad from its inelegant deposit on the sofa, some days ago. He’d been wearing a new one, lately, warmer and better-fitting, while Karen endeavored to sew up a torn seam under the old garment’s arm. 

Karen now holds it as though she’s found an injured bird, with equal measures grief and hope. 

“He left it here, I guess,” Joyce tries, watching carefully for a reaction that makes some measures of sense. “He went out yesterday in the new one, remember?” 

The words do nothing to explain or console. Instead, Karen staggers forward, gripping the countertop with white knuckles. “He was here?” 

Part of Joyce wants to bolt. This week - these months - have been confusing enough, and she was finally beginning to settle into the other side of a miracle, believing that perhaps a mystery could be good without being explained. Maybe too many questions would unravel the whole thing, and they’d be left with even less than before. 

But Joyce never was one to ignore loose threads. 

She begins as calmly as she can manage, summoning up that old mother’s instinct against Karen’s wild eyes. “I don’t know exactly what’s happening,” she admits, “but I need you to take a deep breath for me, okay? Just sit down and I’ll try to tell you everything we-” 

“You don’t understand,” Karen cuts in, eyes growing more frantic by the moment. She shakes the jacket, punctuating her words with its waterproof rustle. “He took this with him when he-” 

Wrong, wrong, wrong. 

“I haven’t seen my son in two months, Joyce.” 

The other foot drops. The wheels slam to a halt. 

Quietly, slowly, Joyce reaches out to take Karen’s free hand. The woman’s chest is heaving, her body tense and wild, but she lets Joyce guide her to the kitchen table on unsteady legs. From downstairs, the muffled thump of a radio feels like a faint signal from another world; a message that the people here, locked in their twisting dream state, can’t hope to understand. 

Joyce soothes her thumb over Karen’s hand and asks, “What happened on November 12, 1983?” A date etched in granite and typed in newsprint, never passing with a dry eye. A date Karen Wheeler should know like her own name. 

But whatever Karen was expecting to hear, it clearly wasn’t that. Her brows furrow, first in indignation at the lack of a sensical answer, and then in blunt confusion. 

“I don’t know.” 

Joyce takes a deep breath, and continues. “What happened at Sattler’s Quarry?” 

“I- That-” Karen shakes her head, too bewildered to argue. There’s no grief or sorrow on her face when she answers. “That’s where they found that kid. The one they thought was Will.” She shakes her head, looking utterly lost. “What the hell does that have to do with Mike?”

From the corner, Holly wraps her arms around herself and offers two quiet, solemn words: “Wrong Mommy.” 

The wiper knob snaps off just as the rain begins. 

“Piece of shit,” Max snarls through clenched teeth, squinting as though it will help her see through the accumulating droplets. She fumbles to find the remaining plastic stump on the steering column; when she clicks it down, the wipers scrape across the windshield with a ghastly shriek. 

“Hop’ll make you pay for that,” El offers, a half-hearted jab that barely dents the thick tension, but Max hardly lets her finish. 

“And you-” She jabs one finger at Will. “-need to fucking stop with the leg. Do you want me to crash?” 

It’s enough to pull Will out of his spiraling panic, and he comes back to his thoughts with a dizzy jolt, his leg nearly sore from its incessant bouncing. Nervous energy has been flooding his veins since last night, and the confined space isn’t helping. Every press of the girls’ shoulders against his makes him want to climb out of his own skin. 

“You’re barely going the speed limit,” he says, all too aware of the miserable whine in his voice. 

Max huffs. “Yeah, well, I don’t exactly want to get pulled over in a stolen cop car. Do you?”

Even without the grand theft auto, Will can’t help but think that this may be the least sane thing he’s ever done, including fighting a monster made of people goo with bargain fireworks. They’re hurtling north after someone who may be a complete stranger, based on what? Misplaced trust? The ghost of a kiss that didn’t happen? Two years of Will’s failure to move on? He presses the heels of his palms against his face and lets out a shaking breath. 

“La Porte.” El nudges her elbow against Will, gesturing out the window. A sign blurs past, the town’s name clear as day, and Will’s heart picks up speed. 

He doesn’t know what they’re looking for, but they find it nonetheless. 

The smell of gasoline seeps into the car first, so acrid that Will’s eyes sting. Traffic has slowed in front of them, forcing the Jeep to a crawl, and then to a creep. Up ahead, Will can see the billow of smoke, the flash of police lights. Something is blocking the road, too large to be a car and too small to be a bus. 

Max turns the wheel sharply, pulling them towards a side road. “Real cops,” she explains, and Will is instantly thankful for her sharp thinking. From here, the growth trees and small, manicured houses block the group’s view of the accident scene, but they can still hear the cacophony of clean-up. Neighbors have filtered out of their houses, peering over fences and through woods to catch sight of any carnage. 

“Take this one,” El offers, pointing out a turn back to the main road. Max obliges, pulling the Jeep around a corner and back out to the highway, on the other side of the wreckage. 

It’s worse than Will expected, somehow. 

“Shit, are those-” Max cuts off, letting the others fill in her horrified silence. A fresh stab of panic shoots through Will’s chest as soon as he realizes what he’s looking at. 

Bodies. At least four. They’re covered carefully in blue tarps, sheltered from the rain, but the draped plastic can’t hide the sprawl of a human form, limbs askew on the asphalt, where the twisted lump of metal tipped them out. 

(On the laboratory floor, where the demodogs tore out their throats.) 

Will tries to blink away the memory, to shake it off with even breaths and eyes pressed shut, but the flashes only build. Dark shapes on the floor, dark shapes pounding down the halls. He’s the one chasing, and he’s the one being chased, and he’s put everyone in danger - his mom, Bob, Hopper, Mike- 

Mike. 

“Will?” El touches his arm, and he flinches away, breathless and unmoored. 

Mike in the lab, his face white and terrified. Mike at his bedside, fretting and solemn, at an age Will never got to see him. Mike in khaki coveralls that fail to cover his ankles. Mike griping at Max in front of their middle school. 

“Will.”

Mike in the neon lights of the Starcourt Mall. Mike holding hands with El on a sunny stretch of grass. Mike hugging Will goodbye in front of the Byers’ old house, his shirt absorbing Will’s tears. 

“Hey, dude, are you okay?” Max now, as if from a great distance. Will tries to answer, but he’s tumbling, he’s spinning, he’s lost in pictures that aren’t his own, clattering into his head like hail. 

Mike scrambling away from the burning bus, his breath ragged. Mike gasping for breath in the blinding white of the lakeshore. Mike , sobbing and desperate, reaching into his ragged backpack, hands shaking- 

Will slams back into himself. 

“North,” he manages. “We need to go north.” 

“We are going north,” Max answers, eyes wide with confusion, but Will just shakes his head. 

“Faster.”

Max looks first at him, and then at El, and then, with a considering hum: “I’ll put on the sirens.” 

There’s a moment, somewhere between the slip of reality between his fingers and the whip of the wind across his face, that Mike almost feels it - almost feels them. They’re faint forms across a barrier he can’t break, familiar more to his heart than to his mind, and he tears and tears, reeling them in until he feels like he’s fraying. His mom, his Will, his El, like beacons buried in the frigid sand. He digs until they’re so close, just beyond his fingertips, the wall between their worlds scratched paper thin- 

All at once, space snaps from his grasp, and there’s nothing but the icy wind. 

Mike collapses in one shaking sweep. The world tilts and tunnels, and he barely realizes he’s hit the ground until a gasping breath finds only sand. The next breath shudders, catching on an involuntary sob, and he grinds his jaw to hold it back. 

When he opens his eyes, the air has shattered. 

He doesn’t know what he’s seeing, at first. Hairline fractures of silver, rippling out in time with his frantic, uneven pulse - one, two, three-four, five. He scrambles backwards, hands scraping and numb with the cold, but… 

The fractures follow. They radiate, trailing from his hands like blown-out candles. He balls up his fists, tighter and tighter until his skin mottles white and red, but the shattering doesn’t stop - it only slows, light trickling instead of flooding. And all at once, with a slow-seeping horror, he recognizes it. 

The circle in the woods, back in Hawkins. A perfect loop of silver, expertly traced, vanishing as soon as the dog slipped through. 

Mike pushes wildly to his feet, swaying and lightheaded. He raises a trembling hand, still trailing weak light through the furious wind - and focuses. A closed line, a door, a gate to the right world. He pictures his hand as a knife through space, slicing into soft butter. And for a single moment, hope catches in his throat. 

It all goes wrong in a heartbeat. He feels the cobwebs against the tips of his fingers, but they don’t slice clean - they rip, clumsy and violent, nearly an audible thing below the wintery howl. Mike tears away too quick, leaving silvery gashes through space, fumbling to retreat from his own power. 

“Shit, shit, shit-” He pants and hisses, crumbling again to the ground, curling over his own hands as though that will stop the bleeding light. He can feel the energy rippling, like static through his chest, only this time- 

It’s not slowing. The more his mind reels, the fast his heart pounds, the faster the fractures spread. Has he been doing this every time he’s used these new powers? Has he been tearing this world apart every time he’s tried to leave it? 

“Please,” he whispers, hoarse and unsteady. “Please, just take me.” 

If the dogs can hear his plea, they don’t respond. The only sound is the rushing of wind and the faint, distant wobble of a siren on the highway. 

He’s in this alone, then, and there’s only one option left. 

The fishing knife is rusted, but its edge is still sharp, pricking his finger like a paper cut. It takes Mike a long time to summon up the courage, and even in his hazy panic, he doesn’t miss the irony. There was last December, fleeing home with the half-formed hope that something in the dark of the freezing night would take him. There was the quarry, all those years ago, standing on the edge of a horrific decision, feeling nothing but the cool logic that told him this was right, this was good. And there were countless days and nights between, moments of clarity in the middle of choking grief or irrational fear, moments he was too cowardly and embarrassed to mention to anyone. 

He’s always been willing to die, and sometimes he’s even wanted to. It should be so easy now - like soft butter, like cobwebs - and once he manages it, maybe everything will be fixed. No more mangled wreckage, no more grieving friends, no more reality shattering around his hands. Two worlds can move on from Mike Wheeler, can heal from all of his damage. 

The siren is getting closer. For one wild moment, Mike imagines that it’s Hopper, hot on his trail all this time; for a wilder moment, he hopes that it is. He pictures strong arms in a dim room, a rough voice against his hair, tears on uniform khaki. Instead of relief, though, it only brings a fresh spike of fear. 

Another life that his absence here saved, and another one in jeopardy every moment he remains. 

Just as the blaring reaches an off-key crescendo, it cuts to silence, somewhere back by the parking lot. Mike takes it as his cue, and with a clenched jaw and trembling, freezing hands, he draws the blade up to the soft skin of his neck, and- 

Something hits him from behind.

There’s a moment, somewhere between the breathless collision and the knife toppling to the ground that Will thinks: I’ve killed him. He sees a flash of red on the sand, sees Mike’s chest heaving weakly, and relief turns to ice-cold horror in his veins.

“Mike?” Will fumbles, his hands numb with shock and adrenaline, trying to turn Mike over onto his back. “Mike!” 

The shout is enough to break the spell. Mike flails for a second, arms and legs pushing up against unsolid ground until he’s sitting, mirroring Will’s panicked crouch, nearly feral in his fear. There’s a gash on his throat, but it’s shallow and thin, surface-deep, and Will hates that anything about it can bring him peace. Will hates everything about this, except that Mike is alive. 

He tried to kill himself, he thinks, mind spinning The words feel poisonous, but he thinks them again, searching for something between them that will make sense. He tried to kill himself. 

“Mike …” he tries again, and finally their eyes meet, light on dark. Mike’s chin trembles, and he reaches up to touch his neck, smearing red across winter white. 

“I wasn’t-” The false words die instantly, fading into a shaking breath that Mike hides against his fist. His whole body is trembling, and Will wants nothing more than to make the last twenty-four hours vanish. He wants to be back on the roof, shoulder to shoulder, dizzy with beer instead of shock. He wants to hold him. 

And so, swallowing against the tremble in his chest, Will does. He presses forward, wrapping his arms around Mike’s too-thin chest, settling his chin in the crook of his - bleeding, nearly sliced - neck, and lets out the furious, heartbroken breath he’s been holding in all day. 

“You don’t get to leave me again,” he whispers into Mike’s hair, and Mike only nods in response, over and over, his fingers digging into Will’s back. And Will sees, and Will feels, and Will remembers - a thousand moments he shouldn’t, all rushing in like breath, from Mike’s lungs into Will’s. Brown eyes looking up from Will's bedroom floor, frantic and devoted. A freckled nose leaning close in a dark movie theater. 

A phone call on a cloudy afternoon in December, and the bleak wasteland of grief that followed. 

He pulls back, voice hoarse and cheeks damp, and whispers, “I know who you are, now. I know who you are, and it’s okay.” Mike pulls away just enough to peer up, eyes searching and terrified, but Will answers before the question comes. “Crazy together, right? You remember that?” Please tell me you remember that. 

The awe in Mike’s eyes is overwhelming, almost reverent, like he’s looking at something he can’t quite believe is real. “Wh… How …” 

And in a way, Will doesn’t mind that he can’t answer. He just lifts his shoulders in the faintest shrug, and reels Mike back into his arms, closer and closer, until he can feel their chests rising and falling in time. His hands trace every inch they can find, soothing over knobby shoulders and scraped knuckles. He wants to kiss him, and he doesn't.

“I don’t know,” he admits, barely a breath against Mike’s cheek. He doesn't understand it, but maybe it's not something to be understood. Maybe it's only something to hold onto. “I don't know, but I’ve got you, now. I found you. It’s gonna be okay.” 

Chapter Text

❝ I was a child who only wanted to heal things - now, I want to be an abomination. ❞

s.b.l. 

Side B. 

February 14, 1986

It might be beautiful, if it were something else. A film, or a poster pinned on his bedroom wall. A mix of waxy crayon from the pages of Will’s sketchbook, secreted into a plastic binder. Winter gray chipping like paint, giving way to vast, swirling red, to glimmering black, to thunderstorm green. The sky pulses, splintering more with each great heave, and Mike feels it all in his balled fists. 

He tries to hold his breath steady, but it shudders and breaks, hitching his shoulders against the flannel of Will’s jacket sleeve. For a long time, neither of them speak, letting the rush of waves and the distant static of the Jeep radio fill in the silence. 

Then, a low whisper: “Did you want to before?” Will asks. “In your other world?” 

He speaks as though the very words may relight that spark of morbid urgency, set things back into motion. Mike doesn’t move, though, except to brace back a shiver. He’s not sure if it’s the truth, but even the shallow flex of muscles seems a monumental fight against the tension keeping him in place. He could no sooner get the knife back from the girls than he could take flight into the sky and patch the growing splinters. 

They’re long past white lies. There’s nothing left to spare on this beach, not even grief, so Mike dips his chin in a nod. He thinks of the cliff, and of the bike. He thinks of his bedroom walls, and the bathroom cabinet, and the safe in his parents’ closet. His own mind, careening and unfamiliar, ebbing and flowing and ebbing through three years of endless, solitary months. 

“Yeah, I guess.” They’re the first words he’s spoken since he hit the frigid sand, Will’s arms wrapping tight around his waist. Max had wrestled the knife from his hands, slicing her own in the process; each drop of dark red in the sand makes Mike’s chest clench harder, bile swimming into his throat. He closes his eyes, and listens to Will breathe. Steady and deep, a practiced rhythm against years of panic. Mike’s Will had done that too, whenever the hairs at his nape prickled. 

They start to lapse back into silence, but it’s momentary, broken again by Will’s soft, hesitant voice. He tilts his head down, chin an inch from Mike’s shoulder, but his eyes stay fixed above, the red-black-green reflecting in light irises. 

“I remember all of it,” Will says. His warm breath ghosts against Mike’s neck. “I don’t know how.” 

The same way he knew to drive to Lake Michigan, Mike imagines. The same way the sky is pouring through itself, shattering more with each pulse. He broke something, fundamentally and irreparably. He took too much, needed too much, and this is where it’s gotten them all. Scattered on the last vestiges, watching the tide come in from above. 

It’s Will who speaks again, slow and pensive, as if he’s bearing the strength for both of them this time. “You were there, in the lab. You sat by my bed.” 

“Yeah.” 

He looks over, slow and tentative. His nose nudges Mike’s cheek. “I think… I think you were with me here, too. I- I felt you.” 

Something in Mike’s chest catches, and he swallows against it. He doesn’t believe in the afterlife anymore than he believes in a god, or a God, or anything he can’t stamp down with his finger. Even the last two years haven’t changed that. But he can imagine that if it was true - if he was a ghost - there’s nowhere else he would have been than by his best friend’s side. 

“And-” Will breathes deep; his voice grows stronger, his grip laxer -  a forced lightness, clearly trying to shake Mike out of his own mind. It hasn’t worked yet. “You, uh. You dated El? I remember that, too.” 

Mike presses his eyes closed. He doesn’t want to buy into the stilted shift in conversation, but he can’t bring himself to argue against it. “... Yeah.” 

“And I was an asshole about it.” The forced tilt of Will’s sheepish smile presses against Mike’s cheek. 

It’s enough to wrangle a response from between Mike’s clenched, frigid jaw. “No, you- you weren’t."  Another pulse of static ripples through his wrists, and he focuses in on each word, spitting them out like teeth. “That was me.” 

“Mike, it’s fine." Too tense to be soothing, but Will has always been a balm, whether or not he’s trying. “It was stupid relationship shit. I’m just… I’m sorry we never really made up.” 

And they hadn’t, had they? Will had pushed it aside, and Mike had just let him. He’d let the summer end with those awful words still hanging, and he’d never been able to pull them back down. He’d slipped away from their world with Will still believing that he’d meant them. 

“It wasn’t-” He finally moves, just enough to take a breath, and the world teeters dizzily on its axis. “You weren’t doing anything wrong.” 

Will shakes his head. “You were hurting, and I didn’t know.” As if it’s something he could have fixed, a leak he could have patched before the whole dam splintered wide open. “I want you to get better. We all do. And if you can’t do it in this world, that’s- that’s okay. Go home and do it there.” 

Wet eyelashes brush against Mike’s forehead, and he feels sick. He wants to cry, and he wants to scream, and he wants it all to be over , because he’s not worth any of this. 

“I don’t want to leave you guys.” They were doing fine without you, something poisonous scrapes in his mind, but he’s too tired to listen to it. 

“We don’t want you to,” Will says, impossibly calm and impossibly light, even through the wrenching tremble on his face. “But we already said goodbye. Don’t make them have to do it, too. Let there be a world where Mike Wheeler’s okay.” 

Can there be, after all of this? If he slips back through space, into his old life, will that shatter too? How can he even try, knowing the risk? 

“Besides,” Will adds, his eyes fixed upward on the shifting, cracking horizon, “you already gave me something I didn’t have.” 

Mike looks over, against all restraint. “What?” 

The softest of hands circles Mike’s wrist, squeezing feather-light. “Time. Two whole years of memories with you.” 

Sniffing, Mike dips his chin down. “Some pretty shitty ones, though.” 

It doesn’t land. Will just looks at him, face wind-reddened and wide open. “You don’t get it,” he says, and something in his voice hooks deep in Mike’s chest, too bright to look at. “I want the shitty ones, Mike. I want every last awful memory of you from that world, because they mean you were alive. You got to grow up and be a moody asshole, and talk about your girlfriend too much, and stay by me through the nightmares. Getting to remember all that… it’s a gift."   

Years-long instinct scrambles for a protest, but it sticks in Mike’s throat, shaken still by another shuddering tear from above. Back at the Jeep, the buzz of radio chatter has gradually slowed, then gone silent. He can feel Max and El watching, or trying not to watch. 

“Back home,” Mike starts, eyes carefully fixed downward. “Are they mad at me? Do- Did you get those memories, too?” 

The sound Will makes is somewhere between a laugh and a sob. He turns, pressing his face into the grubby tangle of Mike’s hair, close enough that his next words feel like the faintest of kisses. “Get back there and find out.” 

“North. He’s north."  

The car pulls sharply against a pothole, and Joyce clenches the wheel back center, tight and grinding as her own jaw. “Just stay on the highway?” she asks, halfway rhetorical. “How far?” 

Karen shakes her head, pressing a hand against sweat-damp bangs. “I don’t know, it’s like- a thread. Like something’s pulling, in here.” She taps on her temple with one finger. The same explanation she’d given back in Hawkins. 

In the backseat, Holly follows each gesture with eagle eyes. Her arms are wrapped around the soft middle of her teddy bear. She belongs anywhere but here, and regret stings each time Joyce spots the child in the rearview mirror. Crowded in Karen's dim kitchen though, there had seemed little choice. The wrongness had come first - the memories of a history Joyce couldn’t comprehend, of a child she hadn’t known - but the urgency had spilled in second. A sixth sense only Karen could feel, and which even Karen could barely explain. 

They needed to find her boy, and they needed to go north. 

“December.” The shift is sudden, but not wholly unexpected, given the last hour. “December eleventh,” Karen adds. “That’s when he left. Ran away.” 

Joyce understands what comes next, and dips her chin in a nod. “And when he showed up here.” The ends of the story meld together seamlessly, but there’s no satisfaction in it, not when the story itself is simple grief. 

“I remember him leaving, but I remember him…” Karen sniffs, holding her face straight and still in a way Joyce had thought long forgotten. Buttoned-up, cold beneath painted warmth. “How is that possible? How do I remember both?"

“I don’t know,” Joyce admits. “But we’ve both seen that gate with our own eyes. We know there are other worlds, and we know things can come through. Monsters, and people, and-” 

“Bus,” Holly says. 

It takes a long, dazed moment for the word to make sense to Joyce. She slows the car, barely registering the blue police lights ahead until Karen’s sharp gasp clears her thoughts. One lane is blocked, a free passage metered by a red-faced cop, but that isn’t what Holly’s stubby finger is pointing at. 

Joyce doesn’t need to see the wreckage to know what’s happened. She can see the image perfectly in her mind, scribbled out in crayon - blue, red, orange, black. A bus that’s no longer a bus, leaking smoke and gasoline. Holly had captured it in perfect abstraction. 

“Did you see this, sweetie?” she asks over her shoulder. Holly hums her confirmation, but her wide eyes are no longer fixed on the field. She presses closer to the window, peering up at the swirl of smoke, up at the pre-dusk sky, up at-

“Oh, God." Karen whispers. 

The first thing Joyce thinks of is Will’s drawings, taped to her walls. Piercing streaks of black and blue, a maze spreading and reaching, only this isn’t under their feet. It’s over their heads, cutting across the sky, through the air, all the way back to 1984 and a sweat-soaked hospital gown. 

She doesn’t know where Will is. She needs to know where Will is. 

“He’s not here.” Karen’s voice, hoarse and shaking, thinking of her own son. Her eyes flick between the sky and the ground, from splintering red-black-green to the smoking shell of the bus. “We need to keep going-” 

“North,” Joyce finishes. The car lurches forward in the slow stretch of traffic, and she absently wonders what the other drivers think they’re seeing. A building storm, or perhaps a pillar of smoke from the accident.

"Shit." Karen jolts, all at once arrow-straight in her seat. “Stop, just- pull over, right here.” 

Before Joyce can question the change of course, the answer appears from around the police cordon, waving one frantic hand - Nancy Wheeler, looking sleepless and fierce. There’s a smudge of something dark across her jaw, and the smell of gasoline clings heavily as Karen cranks the window half-down, hands visible trembling. 

In their fashion, both of the Wheeler women begin talking at once. 

"Nancy?  How did you get-” 

“Mom? What the hell are you-” 

Joyce breathes out, and wants a cigarette so badly it aches. “It’s a long story,” she interrupts, already reaching into the backseat to usher Holly, wide-eyed but pliable, across the cluttered bench. 

“I’m taking a wild guess Mike has something to do with this.” The words could be flippant, but for the grim line of Nancy’s jaw. She peers up - and up -  at the display, like she’s waiting for it all to collapse over their heads. 

“We don’t know,” Joyce answers. “But your mom-” 

Karen exhales, a rush of impatience that puffs against the glass. "Please tell me you’re seeing them, too.” 

“Seeing what?"  Incredulous, Nancy jabs a finger skyward. “The giant goddamn cracks in the sky?” 

“The memories," her mother urges. “The other world, where-” 

“The world Mike’s from,” Joyce cuts in, prying through the rising tension. They don’t have time for bickering or misunderstanding, or for Nancy’s bewildered stare. The world is tearing at its seams, and their kids have wound up back in the center of the storm. 

Nancy wipes at the smudge on her face, puzzle pieces sliding together behind her eyes until Joyce can see it all click. The girl's thin chest gives a heave - a shaking breath in, a stalwart one out - and she reaches for the car handle. 

“Okay. First,” she says, wielding all the authority of a stern schoolteacher, “I need to grab something from the station wagon. Then, we’re going to fix my brother's mess.” 

By the time evening falls, the light is nearly too far gone to notice. Only slivers of the winter gray-white remain, and Mike imagines getting the edges between his fingers, peeling it away from the swirling horror beneath. He wonders if he could -  what it would feel like to pull the plug, to just let the world end. 

“Can you feel them?” Max’s question feels lightyears away, like Mike has to paddle through water to listen to it. 

“I guess.” He doesn’t know if she means the dogs, or the splinters, or something else, but it doesn’t seem to matter much. Max accepts the answer with the sharp crunch of an M&M, pilfered from the visitors’ center. 

It’s nearly as cold inside as out, crowded with coarse furniture and mildewed carpet, but there’s no wind here, no bowing sand or icy shards to sting the face. They sit knee-to-knee in the entryway, stolen candy and emergency blankets passed out between them, watching the afternoon grow darker and darker - and not from the lowering sun. 

“But you can’t do it on purpose?” El leans her chin down, trying to meet his eyes; she means the splinters, then. A slow, familiar quiet has crept into her over the last couple of hours, like a shade of her counterpart. 

Mike shakes his head. “I keep screwing it up.” 

To his left, Will adjusts his blanket. “If they can manipulate space, why does it take them so long to find you?” 

Though Mike only responds with a listless shrug, he has an educated guess. He felt it as he pulled away from the Byers’ house, nearly twenty-four hours ago - a pull and a snap, as El’s unconscious protection had left him. It’s how they tracked him so quickly on the bus, he guesses, and why they haven’t yet arrived at the beach. 

If he tells her, she’ll never let him leave, not the way he might need to. 

“Maybe we can just ask them to send you back.” Max crinkles a candy wrapper, the sounds too grating in the eerie nightfall. 

“Because every other interdimensional monster we’ve faced has been so open to polite requests,” Will cuts in. 

“Never said it has to be polite."

Mike takes a breath. The air feels electric, and it stings in his throat. “Blink dogs fix what’s wrong,” he says. “It’s probably up to them how they do it.” 

Next to him, El hums in understanding. “Neutral good,” she recites.

"Bullshit."  A fire passes behind Will’s eyes. “Why do they get to decide what’s wrong and what’s right?” 

It’s a question Mike can imagine himself asking, months or years ago, brows furrowed tight and furious. Staring up at Chief Hopper, or Steve Harrington, or even his dad, digging his feet into a battle he was bound to lose. He tries to reach back and grab that spark of anger, to pull it back into his chest and just care, but all he finds is a blank space. Whatever fuel used to drive him has been drained down to fumes. 

“The universe has a balance,” he says, “and this is what happens when it’s messed up. I broke your world. And if I go back, I’m probably gonna break mine too.” 

He’s made a mistake, and he knows it the second the words leave his mouth. His friends’ shoulders tense, and to one side, El breaths in a sharp gasp. 

“... You aren’t planning on fighting them,” she says, barely over a whisper. It isn’t a question, and in the moments that follow, Mike’s silence answers it. 

Max is the first to cut in, bouncing to her feet in a flurry of anger. "Fuck that. There’s got to be a world with a Mike in it, okay?” 

“There already is," Mike argues. “You guys have one.” The universe certainly doesn’t care if it’s a tangle of bones lying in the county morgue. 

“Mike…” The tremble in Will’s voice is something awful, something utterly wrenching, and Mike immediately closes his eyes against it. He wants to dissolve into the cold wind rather than face the impact of his words, but even that seems to still for a moment. Nausea and shame roil in his stomach, and he can feel the hot pinprick of tears beneath his eyelids. 

“I’m getting more Coke,” Max announces, her footsteps brash and frustrated, already starting to fade down the entryway. “El?” 

A heavy pause, the brief sense of El’s gaze on the back of his shoulders, and then - soft rounds retreat towards the vending machines, until it’s only Mike and Will huddled on the frozen steps. 

“You’re really planning to just - give up. Just like this.” 

Like this. Like he did before, like he’s always been destined to do again. Like a fucking coward, stupid and alone, with no one else to blame. 

It was never going to go any other way.

Mike tugs his blanket tighter, wiping a fist across his eyes. “Look at what’s happening out there. It’s my fault.” 

“It’s not-” 

“It is. And someone has to stop it.” 

Words ripped right from a bad cartoon, from the mouth of a hulking hero about to save the day. Mike thinks of his action figures, scuffed and abandoned. All the men he thought he’d grow up to be, before he thought he might not grow up at all. 

“That doesn’t have to be you." Will’s voice is strained with desperation, his head tilted down, seeking out Mike’s avoidant glance. “Especially not you with the world’s shittiest plan.” 

“It’s not a shitty plan, it’s just a plan you don’t like.” Shoulders hunched, Mike tries to turn away. A hand grips his arm and tugs him back. 

“Of course I don’t like it!” Will blurts out, voice raising. “It ends with you dead!"

“And every other plan could end with everyone else dead! The whole world, Will!” Blood rushes in Mike’s ears, his chest constricting with a rising panic. He turns back, swallowing against tears, barely caring if Will sees them. “You can’t possibly think I’m worth that.” 

Inches away now, Will barely finches. He blinks slowly, quietly, and then asks, “How could you think that I don't?"

It’s so soft, so earnest, that Mike can barely breathe. He wants to unhear it, to force it back into Will’s chest and escape towards the white-capped lake. 

He wants to leave before he has to think about what he’s leaving. 

“This world was better,"  he finally manages. “It was so much better than mine.”

Will frowns, incredulous. "How?"

“Hopper’s alive,” Mike starts, mentally ticking the boxes. “My mom isn’t drinking all the time, and my dad doesn’t hate me. El never had a shitty boyfriend to hold her back. And-” 

“And my favorite person in the world killed himself when we were twelve!” Will’s hand squeezes, tight enough to hurt, to leave fingerprint bruises that Mike won’t be able to scrub away. His voice is nearly a shout, echoing up the hall and across the beach, and Mike shrinks more beneath every word. “Do you even know what that did to me? To any of us?” 

Mike wants to say: Yes, because I lost you too.  And he wants to say: No, I'm sorry, please forgive me,

“There’s no coming back from losing you, okay?” Will’s voice shakes, nearly in time with Mike’s shoulders. Overhead, fresh Lichtenberg figures stretch across the sky, black and silver. “You’re it for me. Just… let there be one world where I get to keep you. Even if it isn’t this one.” 

It’s a little funny, maybe. It would be funny, in a world where the sky wasn’t breaking, and the air wasn’t crackling, and Mike couldn't feel his heart being clawed apart in his chest. Because for so long, he thought it was the other way around. He was the one who didn’t get to keep Will,  who stood dazed and reeling in his funeral blacks, who watched Will’s chest rise and fall under hospital lights. He was the one keeping watch, year after year, wondering if Will would find his way back. 

Maybe, somewhere, there’s a world where they both do. Maybe there’s a world where Will is safe, and Mike is happy, and neither of them leaves. Maybe they sit on a rooftop on Valentine’s Day, or they ride their bikes to high school together, or they grow up and up and up, and they live in a little apartment somewhere, and they draw pictures and they tell stories and they watch TV, and neither of them ever has to miss the other. Maybe, maybe, maybe-  

Mike opens his eyes, leans forward, and presses his mouth against Will’s. 

It lasts only a second - maybe two. Too cold, too stiff, but Mike can almost hear Will’s heart start beating again, can feel the hand on his arm relax and then tighten. He pulls back before anxiety can flood in, and hears Will suck in a breath. 

They’re both silent, for a moment. There are too many words, or maybe there aren’t enough, and Mike feels tongue-tied. He reaches up slowly, aching to cover Will’s hand with his own, but Will interrupts.

“You’re saying goodbye.” It’s unwavering, almost terse, but damp with withheld tears. 

There’s no denial that won’t sound like an admission. 

“That’s not all I’m saying,” Mike answers, barely louder than a whisper. He looks up, fixing his eyes against Will’s, as though that connection alone could channel every thought they don’t have the time for, every story of a future he wishes they could have had. Every dice roll, every phone call, every classroom note. Every school dance, college dorm, road trip. Every milestone, every shared nightmare. 

Will opens his mouth to speak - and Mike’s blood runs cold. 

There’s a chill at the back of his neck, a tug in the pit of his stomach. A prod at the walls of his mind, like a midnight knock in a slasher flick. 

Across the frozen beach, three shapes summit the highest dune, black bodies silhouetted against blood-red. 

Time’s up. 

The apocalypse is quiet, Mike thinks. Wind whips sand into his face as he steps out of the building’s cover, but for all of the churning horror overhead, he hears nothing out of place, nothing to suggest the violent rupture of reality. Just his shoes scuffing on cement, the hollow howl of the wind, and his friends’ nervous chatter yards behind. 

There are three blinks, identical to the eye, but the one in the center looks somehow familiar, in a part of Mike’s mind that he can’t seem to pry open. Its eyes - pure red pinpoints - should be terrifying as he crosses the front drive. 

Come here, boy.

Instead, he feels a strange calm. He feels… an understanding. The energy pulsing through his hands, flooding into the sky - it’s been building, and building. Ever since the accident, back in December. All at once he can sense them: the cracks he’s left behind. The people who have fallen through. The strangers on the bus, the couple whose knife he stole. Chief Hopper. All displaced, ripped across the breaks he’s created, scattered across worlds that can’t save them. 

He takes another step forward, and steels himself. “I surr-” 

“Send him back!" Will’s voice, raised over the wind, steady with resolve. “He didn’t mean to do any of this!” 

Before Mike can protest, the first blink steps forward, its massive paw barely seeming to shift the sand. As it descends the dune, a low growl carries on the wind, then resolves into words. 

"You know we can't do that, its voice says, curling between Mike’s own thoughts. It’s featureless, genderless, devoid of sound and yet too loud to ignore. 

Mike swallows. "I know," he thinks back, clenching his jaw against a tremble. 

"For what it's worth, child, we truly are sorry." The blink lowers its head, an unexpected gesture of deference. "We never meant for this to be your fate."

He feels it more than he sees it - pure images, concepts, flashing the last two months in sense memory. For the first time, the crash comes back to him in full: a black shape in the morning mist, a swerve of wheels, an impact that knocked him from the road. 

No, not quite. An impact that knocked him through space. An impact that knocked him into space, glancing off of the dog’s own source of power. A power he was never meant to have, and certainly never meant to wield. And every time they tried to send him home - every time he slipped -  he dug his fingers in until the walls began to crack. 

"We tried to help you cross back over, Michael. But you are strong of will." Remorse echoes across the mental link. "Your destiny is regrettable."  

Mike shakes his head; the movement lags, like time has slowed and thickened. For the first time, he realizes that his friends have gone quiet, and the gritty wind has stilled. 

"Theirs doesn't have to be," he pleads, sounding weak even in his own head. "You can still-"

All at once, time barrels back into motion. There’s a shrill screech of tires, a chorus of indistinct shouts. Something flies towards one of the blinks, passing right through as the dog escapes into space. Mike stares, stunned, until the scene comes back into focus, and his breath goes ragged. 

Joyce Byers’ green Pinto skids to a halt, and out of the passenger side stumbles… his mom, his sister. Mrs. Byers. The blink reappears, and immediately takes the offensive, enormous teeth bared. 

“Don’t touch them!” Mike shouts, already clenching his fists, tugging on the pulsing energy like thread. He can hear his friends’ protests for only a second, before they’re lost to the rushing slip of space. Brown grass soars to meet him as he tumbles out onto the ground, between the car and the snarling dog. He catches a glimpse of his mother scurrying away, Holly bundled in her arms, and Mrs. Byers uses the moment to rush to her son, but at the trunk of the car- 

His sister never met a problem she couldn’t point a shotgun at, and as she rounds the back of the Pinto with her weapon raised, Mike’s stomach sinks. 

"Nancy, stop, you can’t-” 

The shot lands, but the blink doesn’t even stumble; the bullet simply slips into its flank like a void, and doesn’t emerge from the other side. 

"So," the first blink observes, leveling its red eyes at the scene, "you wish to do this the hard way."  

Mike holds up a desperate hand at his bewildered sister, as he turns back to face the dog. “I don’t, I don't," he says out loud. “They don’t have anything to do with this, I swear, just-” 

"We exist to correct the balance." The not-voice is empty of remorse, now, instead cold with disdain. "The balance is no longer being tipped by your hand alone, child."

The fight was destined to be one-sided, from the start. Nancy manages a second shot before the smaller blink leaps towards her, fangs flashing. The gun’s barrel serves her better, if only to stun the dog. In the second it buys her she pulls a long hunting rifle out of the trunk, and thrusts it towards Mike. 

“I- I don’t want this,” he yelps, stammering with frustration. “You guys just need to get out of here!” He can sense the third blink bearing down on the others, across the looped drive. 

“Then give it to someone who does."  Nancy whacks at the blink’s snout again. “If you think we’re leaving you here, you’re-” Whack.  “-stupider than I thought.” 

Commotion erupts from the front of the building, and Mike makes a snap decision - he takes the gun, takes hold of space, and blinks. This time he falls to the frigid concrete, scraping open his palm as he lands. 

"Mike!   

El is by his side in an instant, reaching for his bloodied hand to haul him up. He covers it in his sleeve and obliges, looking around to orient himself while the world continues to spin. Max is gripping a broom handle like a baseball bat; over her shoulder, Mrs. Byers has a plank of wood from a busted railing. And Will- 

“I know what you’re thinking.” Will’s voice, just behind Mike’s ear. He takes the rifle easily, passing it over to his sister. El rushes off with it, calling for Mrs. Byers. 

“You don’t have to watch,” Mike says. From across the front drive, another shotgun blast rings out. He can’t remember when he last saw his mother or Holly. This is all too much, all more than he planned for, and he has to end it. “They’re coming for all of you now, okay? It’s not just me anymore. If you guys leave- ” 

“Not a chance,” Will begins, but he’s cut off by a sudden snarling, a set of heavy paws tearing into the dry grass. Mike stumbles backwards, towards the stairs of the visitor’s center, praying the red eyes just stay on him.

“Just take me, okay?” he pleads, trying in vain to keep his voice steady. “They’re only fighting to keep me safe.” 

"Your friends will not concede." The blink prowls forward. "This is what you have created. A world in chaos. A universe shattering. A cancer spreading."

Mike is half-aware of fingers sliding between his, of shouts across the dry, frozen lawn, but behind his eyes he can see only one thing: the truth, dripping from the blink’s words. They aren’t here to fix. They’re here to amputate. The second Mike chose this world, he doomed it. 

"Then fix it!" Tears well up in his eyes, furious and horrified. "What's the use of you if you can't fix anything?"

The blink’s lip curls, and red light reflects in its enormous fang. "You overestimate your importance," it says. "Your universe is an ant in the deepest valley. A grain of salt in an ocean too vast for you to comprehend. Every futile choice you make spawns a million more you will never see. We are simply pruning a stray branch."

Overhead, the sky is nearly gone, giving way to blood red and pure, endless black. The fading, flickering street lights are the last vestige against utter darkness. Somewhere, deep beneath his feet - a quaking, almost imperceptible. 

"It's too late for this world. Make your peace, child." 

The psychic link snaps like a cord, and Mike stumbles sideways, ears ringing as time whips back into place. Will still grips his hand, frozen fingers laced and clammy. 

It takes Mike a moment to realize what’s wrong. 

“Where’d it go?” Startled, Will whirls around, dropping Mike’s hand. Across the drive, Mrs. Byers is helping El to her feet, while Max races to the Pinto in search of Nancy. The blinks have pulled back, forfeiting the battle. 

Except, it’s not a victory. Not even close. 

“Will-” Mike starts, head spinning. How does he possibly explain this? How do you tell someone their world is about to end, all because you fucked up? 

He doesn’t get to. 

A gunshot cracks through the air, this time from the visitor’s center, hidden within the depths of its entryway. Mike’s head spins towards the car, seeking out his sister, but Nancy’s shotgun is strewn on the pavement, abandoned. And the only person not accounted for… 

He takes off running, faster than he ever has in his life, the building a dark monolith against the disappearing horizon, its entrance a black wormhole but for a faint cast of silver. Front steps scrape under his feet as the gleam of the portal comes into view, a circle broken only by a scattering of figures: blink dogs (one, two, three), and in front of them, hair wild and rifle shaky - his mother. 

If the bullet met its mark, there is no evidence to show it. The first blink - indistinct, but instantly familiar for the snarling scrape of its mind in Mike’s - pivots around, slow and predatory. Its campaign no longer has purpose, standing in the last hours of a crumbling world, but there’s something dangerous flowing off of it like heat. 

Irritation. Annoyance. 

Karen Wheeler raises the rifle again, and shouts four shaking, strained words: “Leave my son alone."  They echo briefly in the frigid hall, before another sharp crack swallows them. Mike’s ears wince and ring, but before he can move - 

The blink flickers, its edges blurring like oil as it takes a stumbling, stunned step back. There’s a tremor in the air, silent and deafening; red eyes flare, burn, and burn out, smoke coiling around them. Then, with a final surge that Mike feels in his bones - the blink dissolves, its energy crackling and dissipating, passing through his stomach like a wave.

The head, he thinks. That’s all it took. If they can manage two more, and if that portal stays open long enough- 

"Mom," he chokes out, nearly speechless with relief, already rushing forward to pull her away through a portal of his own. They need to get across the lawn, back to Nancy with her deadly aim. They can win this, and escape. Where to, he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t even care. It’s the first ember of hope he’s felt since last night. 

And it only takes a moment to fade. 

The other blinks are faster than him, rushing forward in a blur of black, nearly invisible but for their glowing eyes, headed straight for where Mike’s mom stands frozen and shocked, finger useless on the trigger. 

Mike clenches his fists, and jumps. 

He didn’t expect the blink to be solid, somehow. Its fur is thick and gritty where his fingers dig in, and underneath it burns cold, thrumming like electricity. He pulls,  trying to find the threads of space without losing grip on the creature, but the strain sinks in fast, tunneling his vision and stabbing at his muscles. His heart falls out of rhythm; he feels like he’s breathing in ice, and still the dog doesn’t budge. Instead it rears and shakes, trying to buck him off like a horse, until he can feel his finger starting to slip. Behind him he hears a cacophony of shouts - his friends’ voices, the whump of wood and metal and a rifle’s butt against the remaining blink - his name cried in warning, in desperation. He wants to yell out, to point them through the portal, to tell them they get to live - 

With a final quake of its body, the blink shakes Mike free from its fur, flinging him limp across the room. For a brief, clear second he can only feel air around him - the bike, the sky, the field  -  and the see the cartwheeling blend of the black hallway and the silver portal, and he wonders if this is it: his final trip home, to leave all this to ruin, to see his home crumble at his own hand as well. 

He doesn’t clear the portal. 

Mike feels the second his back snaps across the side - hears the terrible sound like a distant echo - sees a burst of overwhelming white, racing like floodwaters up his body, into glowing veins - erasing something and creating something new. 

Then, there’s nothing. 

And then, there’s everything. 

Chapter Text

❝ It’s dark now and I am very tired. I love you, always. Time is nothing. ❞

Audry Niffenegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife

Side A. 

October 31, 1983

Laughter peals across the lawn - two voices, then three, then a fourth falling into chorus, clear and high under the yellow streetlight. Down the empty street, the last straggling trick-or-treaters are being ushered up front walks, costume pieces shedding onto grass. The high moon warns of a night ending, the approach of a firm curfew. 

“Oh my god, you’re so annoying." 

Mike takes the shove to his shoulder with a badly-concealed smile. In retaliation, he tosses back the crumpled remains of his Milky Way wrapper; the projectile misses Dustin by several inches, prompting a fresh round of laughter. 

“I’m just saying," Dustin continues, “no one wants another Basilisk situation!” Still a lisp, this long ago. A plastic Vader mask dangles from his hand, reflecting the streetlight’s glow. 

“It wasn’t Mike’s fault you failed all your saving throws.” Lucas crunches down on a piece of hard candy. He’s still sorting through his bucket, distributing out the rejects - a Now & Later, a Mary Jane, a spider ring. 

“I’m not gonna spoil the campaign,” Mike says to Dustin. “You guys will just have to trust me.” He scoops up the Mary Jane and passes it to Will, who’s fiddling with his wrapping-paper-roll lightsaber. Mike wanted to go get him a real plastic one from K-Mart with his chore money, but Mrs. Byers had done a good enough job. The perfect Luke to his Han. 

(Would that make El Leia?)

A breath, and a blink, and the errant, nonsensical thought is gone, both from mind and memory. 

“Trust you?” Dustin gestures wildly, toppling his mask. “The last time you told us that was-” 

“The swamp,"  Will cuts in with a dramatized shudder. An infamous campaign of years past, evoked in only the fiercest of debates about Mike’s default position as Dungeon Master. By now it’s nearly a scripted scene, familiar and practiced. 

“That was a great campaign.” Mock offense pours in, accentuated by the rip of a fresh candy wrapper. “You all survived!” 

A snort-laugh from Lucas, on cue. “Only ‘cause of deus ex time travel." His home-sewn Obi-Wan hood falls forward as he adds another peanut-tainted candy to the reject pile. “Or as I like to call it, bullshit."

As if by automation, Mike grabs the peanut candy and again passes it to Will, who gives a hum of thanks. 

“It’s called a Dimensional Door,” Mike argues. “Time is a dimension, too.” 

There’s a sudden slap - a hand on laminated paper. Dustin hauls his D&D binder halfway out of his backpack. “It’s called a manual," he says in a bad imitation of Mike’s weedy, plaintive voice. 

Through a hiccup of laughter, Will leans over to look at Dustin. “You’d rather we all die?"

Straight-faced and incredulous: “Than Mike disrespect the rules?” Dustin says it as if the answer is both plainly obvious and deathly serious. The corner of his mouth only twitches a fraction.

Lucas clears his throat and puffs out his chest. “I say we mutiny! Lucas Sinclair for Dungeon Master.” 

“You have my vote,” Dustin says, clapping him on the back. 

The playact now escalated, Mike wheels around to Will, clasping his hands together. “Will the Wise! You’re my only hope!”

Will presses his lips together, trying to keep a straight face. “Depends on how many of your Smarties you’ll give me.” 

“Traitor!” Lucas howls out. His voice echoes too loud, surely earning a disapproving tut from a handful of neighbors. 

Mike slaps his palm against Will’s in a firm handshake, before turning back to the fray. “I refuse to apologize for using my resources creatively.” 

“You mean misusing?” 

“Just admit it,” Dustin cuts in. “We got backed into a corner, so you made up some shit.” 

“Yeah, I did.” Pride mixing with amusement, Mike kicks his skinny legs out in front of him and gives an easy shrug. "Creatively."

It’s like falling, except in all the ways that it isn’t. There’s nothing below, nothing above, nothing around him that he can see - only, he can't see anymore. He can’t see, and he can’t hear, but he knows. Vision and sound, but it’s on his skin, under his skin, inside his atoms.

He’s moving through something, or it's moving through him. Trees in a forest, threads in a spider’s web. Strings on a harp. Mike reaches out to touch - and immediately recoils, his fingers burning, white and hot. 

Except… 

A flash, but not of fire, or of heat. Something engulfs him, just for half of a heartbeat. He sees: himself, his friends, the front stoop of his old house. The night sky, the orange of a candy wrapper - 

"You guys will just have to trust me-"

He tries again. Shoves his hand into the light, sound, heat, and feels it rippling up his nerves, shooting through his chest. 

A middle school gym. White balloons, crooked ties. Familiar, but wrong. 

Side B. 

December 1984

The table rocks as Dustin fumbles back into his seat, one knee knocking against flimsy metal. He slaps something down onto the table - an assortment of cookies, wrapped in a blue napkin. 

“Oreos,” he says, pointing down at his haul. “One of God’s finest creations.” 

El looks first at Dustin, and then over at Will, her eyes owlish. Then, after a few moments: “I know Oreos.” Blunt, with just a tinge of teasing. It’s an unfamiliar tone in her voice, but not unwelcome. 

Will gently elbows Dustin. “She’s been with Hopper, not foraging in the woods."

This earns a derisive snort. “Does Hopper seem like the kind of guy who buys the good stuff?” Dustin asks, leaning in as though the Chief himself might be eavesdropping over the trio’s shoulders. It isn’t an impossible notion. 

“The good stuff?” El huddles in as well, mimicking the boys in both posture and tone. 

“Junk food,” Will explains. “Like, candy and chips. Not vegetables.” 

(Eight months and I never saw a vegetable in that guy's house.)  

A moment’s pause, a change in the air; Will blinks, and the moment passes. Over the speakers, the song fades and cuts off, and a new one begins. Cyndi Lauper comes in crooning over a synthesizer, and Dustin’s eyes flick out to the dance floor. Will follows, catching a red braid through the fumbling crowd. Max, still with Lucas.

"-in my bed, I hear the clock tick and think of you-"

“Go ask someone,” he tells Dustin, voice almost too quiet under the music. 

Dustin hunches his shoulders. “And get rejected again? Great idea.” Instead, he grabs another cookie from the crumpled napkin and holds it out to El, continuing the demonstration. “Strawberry wafers,” he explains, smiling over a false front. “Old people always have these.” 

El takes a tentative bite, showering crumbs down the front of her dress, and gives an ambivalent tilt of her head. It’s the same judgment she granted to Sprite and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

"-sometimes you picture me, I'm walking too far ahead-"

Will wraps his hands around his elbows, unable to ignore a tug in his stomach. “Mike liked those. The chocolate kind.” 

For a moment, it seems like a mistake. The silence that follows is too loud, the tension in his friends’ lowered gazes too dense. A chorus of laughter echoes from a nearby couple, and it sounds alien, like a misfired transmission from another world. 

When was the last time Will laughed? 

Then, like a lifebuoy through rough water, Dustin cracks the slightest smile. “He’d hate this,” he says, and at once it cuts the atmosphere, loosening the hold on Will’s breath.

“Can you imagine him trying to dance?” Will offers, stilted and slow. Across the table, El’s pink lip trembles, and she picks apart the rest of the wafer with absent focus. 

"If you're lost, you can look and you will find me, time after-"

Time.

It bursts through him with each touch, a fresh spark of electrocution. He’s in time, and these are… 

-a back stoop, a train whistle, Will coughing around a cigarette- 

-Mike's father, shoulders tired, dropping clothing into a waiting suitcase-

-headlights on a stricken face, the Chief's familiar gravel in duplicates, another world accidentally tipped on end by a child's fumble- 

Shit. Mike reaches back in, further this time, trying to get a grip on Hopper and pull him back from the misplacement. His fingers brush around thought more than sensation, a gruff, well-meaning voice slipping past him. Like pages he thumbs backwards through the timelines, fumbling for the right Chief, dipping into them for fractions of seconds at a time.

-his mother, huddled on the Byers' back porch, eyes meeting briefly as frozen grass crunches under his feet- 

-Lucas, deathly still between stark white sheets, dwarfed by tubes and casts, a pair of worried orange braids hanging low over him-

-the Mind Flayer's words seeping into Jonathan Byers, his eyes and veins inking black, 

-headlights, gravel, the dirtied brim of a tan hat- 

He grabs, and pulls, not with hands but with something inside of him, something around him, until the sliver clicks like a puzzle. Satisfied, Mike lets go, and lets himself get swept back up in the tide, back into the past, the present, the-

Side H. 

June 1985

“I’d choose the future,” Max announces. She tilts her popsicle, aiming a melted droplet onto the grass. Even the breeze is warm today. “Bring back a hoverboard and make, like, a million bucks off selling it.” 

“See, that’s what you can’t do, though!” Next to her, Dustin hauls up onto his elbows, his objection ripe for a courtroom. “You can’t mess with events.” 

Unimpressed, Lucas looks over the top of the comic book he’s sharing with Eleven; between them, their hands are laced together, palm to palm. “You just told us about how you’d adopt a pet dinosaur,” he says. 

“Not a pet - a subject." 

Across the picnic blanket, Will gives a half-distracted laugh, barely following the dialogue. Just two more days before Mike returns from computer camp, and he can stop being the fifth wheel to two sets of honeymooners. 

“Past or future, Will?” When he doesn’t answer, Max repeats the question, prodding at his ankle with her bare toe. Her tongue and her fingers are raspberry-red.

“Oh, uh.” Will swipes a hand through his bangs, heavy with sweat. “I’d pick the-” 

Side K. 

August 1986

“Pass.” Max holds out her fingers like a pincer. Her pearl-white eyes can’t track Mike’s movement, but she feels the second he places the dwindling joint against the pad of her thumb, and clamps down. 

“Don’t get it so spitty this time,” Mike complains, and stretches out dizzily as Max promptly dampens the paper as thoroughly as possible. 

An inhale, and exhale, and then, “I can hear your face, Wheeler.”

“Fuck off.” Just in case, though, he carefully schools away the plain discomfort. It’s a million degrees under the bleachers, even shaded from the baking sun, and he doesn’t like saliva when it’s outside of mouths. He can’t bring himself to go back inside, though. Not until the pinched, glazed look smoothes back off of Max’s face. Back in the glowing days of last summer he might have kissed it away, gentle and chaste, but that’s an age that faded with the light in her stepbrother’s eyes, and in her own over the months that followed. 

He swallows back the need to reach for her hand, and pretends that it gets-

-easier each time. Less like exploring, and more like aiming. He sweeps through the timeline, zeroes in on the hurt. Shoves his older sister from the oozing grip of the Mind Flayer; drags a demodog’s maw from around Dustin’s neck; knocks a rattling bottle of pills from between Max’s fingers, casting it into nothing. Each world - each side of the tightrope - is like a deck of cards, with one or two always missing, always out of place. He’s the dealer, the acrobat, flitting on intuition. 

Hauling Erica Sinclair from a roaring, splintering fissure. 

Prying Billy's steeled fingers from around El's throat. 

He knows, somewhere in the back of his mind, that it can’t last. Time burns through him. He can’t quite tell if he has a body anymore, if he’s ever had one at all, or if this is what he’s always been, what he’s always been doing. A formation of thought and intent, pure power zipping between worlds - helping, saving, fixing.

A paladin devoted to his holy cause, to a constellation of scattered faces and voices that will never know he was there. 

Whittling down towards nothing, like an asteroid through atmosphere, Mike stretches out into one final act.

Side B. 

November 12, 1983

It isn’t how Mike thought it would be. 

Dying, that is - or rather, being about to die. There’s no swell of music, no slowing of time. Fear is a distant thing that pumps in his veins, but doesn’t quite make it to his thoughts. Dustin’s strangled shouts feel worlds away from the rocks beneath his shoes, from the glint of sunlight far below. There’s no sorrow in the thought of his friends’ grief - only a strange curiosity at the story’s twist. A relief that he gets to give himself for Dustin. A passing regret, just as he steps over the edge, that he didn’t get to see Will again. 

And then, he’s falling. Fast at first, and then- 

His fall hiccups.  The wind stops whistling, and the world comes to a stark halt, before bursting back into a brief embrace of color and sound. 

He enters the water at a gentle slip. No bones shatter as if on concrete. No brain matter dashes red against rocks. His vision goes murky and dim, but only with lake water. Thoughts wild and reeling, he kicks blindly towards the surface. For a moment the drag from his backpack is a hindrance, but then he feels it lift away, unseen hands sliding it off of his shoulders. 

There’s no one to see with his eyes, but Mike knows all the same that he isn’t alone. Somehow, he can see it with his mind. A form in the dark water, thin as a streak, black hair haloed in light. A grip that Mike can’t feel tows him towards shore, and as it does so, it thinks at him, in flashes of feeling that he won’t remember later. Warmth, and belonging. A kindness that feels too sharp, that cuts through the numbness which propelled Mike over the quarry’s edge. 

He’s in the sand before he realizes it, the silence of the water giving way to distant, echoing cries. Dustin calls out, hysterical, his words lost in Mike’s bleary confusion. He closes his eyes, sucks in a deep, trembling breath, and wonders at the one, alien thought repeating in his head: 

Don't make them lose you, kid.

He’s barely a flicker of himself, now. The last spiraling flame of what was once a bonfire, hurtling blind through deep space. Here in the last vestiges, quiet overtakes the rushing wind. Chaos begins to trickle away into calm. 

It’s only then that he finally senses it. The steady pulse of a beacon through darkness, flashing with faint familiarity. 

Home.

He isn’t sure if he can make the jump. Maybe he’ll burn up on reentry, sink to the bottom of the sea like wreckage. Part of him is okay with the thought, of resting in the stardust at the edge of his own world. The other timeline has their Mike back now, and he can rest knowing he finally set something right, after so much destruction. 

It’s not like before, pulling recklessly on threads. Whatever he is now, it’s as much blink as it is human; he reaches in with a practiced hand, clean and easy, and catches himself on the edge of the doorway. It resonates through him, a warm hum of vibration, and he can see them - his own friends, his own family, like pinprick points of light on a world far below. 

Home, he thinks desperately. Home.

And for the last time, he jumps.

The first thing Mike feels is the scratch of grass, damp against his cheek. Hard soil beneath it, packed cold, earthy in a way that makes his heart ache for something he’s too groggy to grasp. The swing of a windowed door, the baying of a friendly dog. 

Home. The thought ambles past again, and he tries to place it against the sensations: a backyard, familiar and loved. A low house in moss-green, the windows glowing. 

He opens his eyes, and stark unfamiliarity rushes in. 

For a sharp, dreadful moment, he thinks he’s back in Michigan City. The stretch of grass ends in craggy rocks, crouching under gray sky; when he pushes himself up on shaking arms, he sees only sea beyond them. But then- 

Down the shoreline, the pointing tops of boats. Wooden planks - piers - arranged around them. There was no marina, before. Only ice, cracking and merciless, and lightning tearing through a terrible sky. He sees none of that, now. The scene is peaceful, quiet except for the distant clamor of a town somewhere behind him. 

He tries again to push himself up, but fatigue pulses through him like nausea, and he’s forced to settle back into the grass. Something in his chest - deep, behind his ribs - feels like safety, in a way he can’t explain to himself. Home, the threads had shouted, and the sense hasn’t left. It’s in the ground beneath him, in the air he gasps in. 

And, when it comes, it’s in the voice that calls from across the field. 

"Mike?"

And just as Mike closes his eyes again, unable to hold off the need for rest, he swears that he sees Will Byers’ face come into view, peering down with wide, beautiful eyes. 

Chapter Text

❝ Don’t make a noise, don’t leave the room until I come back from the dead for you. I will come back from the dead for you. ❞

Richard Siken, You Are Jeff

The second time, Mike awakens to warmth. Warmth in the air, and in the soft cloth around him, tucked up against his neck. There’s a low voice drifting from somewhere, a murmuring he can’t make out. Something in the cadence feels soothing, like a hand on his forehead; a parent easing him to sleep. He tips his head to the side, against an impossible softness, and falls back asleep.

In the gentle dark that follows, he dreams of a steady, gentle hand atop his own.

The third time, it’s to the sharp smell of coffee. Clarity rushes in quicker, and Mike opens his eyes to a stretch of darkened ceiling. Bands of yellow light filter across from a wide doorway, where he hears the shuffling sounds of someone moving about. The rattle of a drawer, the pop of a refrigerator door opening. He tries to sit up, and discordant springs squeak beneath him.

He’s on a couch, in someone’s living room. Stranger still, he’s been tucked in quite efficiently with a thick quilt, now unpleasantly damp with sweat. Grimacing, he peels it aside, just as the stranger finally exits the kitchen.

“Hey, you’re awake.”

It’s not a stranger. It’s Will Byers.

“How are you feeling?”

It’s Will Byers, but he’s- different. He’s broader, taller against the doorframe. His hair, when he turns to click on the lights, is too long, the back almost resting against the collar of his shirt.

It’s Will Byers, but he’s older.

“I’m fine,” Mike somehow manages. His voice feels hoarse and strained, his tongue pulling from the roof of his mouth like tape. He casts his eyes anywhere but at the young man in the doorway, landing absently uneven floorboards, on the sunset’s fading glow behind crooked blinds, on a line of sneakers and rainboots next to the door.

Will eases closer, like he’s approaching a skittish animal. “I brought you inside,” he explains, with a calm that Mike can’t begin to summon up. “You were pretty out of it.”

Freezing grass. Rolling sea. A voice calling his name. The memory seeps back piece by piece, and Mike nods in a display of understanding, despite understanding nothing at all. He feels like he’s been thrust onto a stage without a script.

All he can think to ask is, “Is this your house?”

Will smiles, seeming delighted by the question. “Well, apartment, yeah. Cheapest rent in town with enough room.” He sets his chipped mug of coffee down on a bookshelf, right next to a creased copy of The Hobbit. Mike wonders whether, if he opened it, he’d find the oil-slick peanut butter stain on the fifty-first page, or the old bubblegum wrapper Will sometimes used as a bookmark.

“Can I get you something?” Will continues, easy as anything. “Water? Coffee? We’re all out of Orange Crush right now, but-”

“Coffee.” Maybe, with the hum of caffeine through his head, something about this will make more sense. “Please.”

Will dips his chin in a nod and heads back into the kitchen, towards the clatter of a coffee pot. In his absence, Mike leans back against the sofa arm and just… looks. He scans the titles on the shelves - books and films he knows, and ones he doesn’t. A VHS of The Thing, which piques his attention only because he knows Will despises it. There’s a matched pair of Rubix cubes in a windowsill, one solved and one still in chaos. On the coffee table, a pack of cigarettes sits atop an X-Men comic. A graduation cap hands on a peg in sleek, green satin.

A lump grows in his throat, and he feels his shoulders pulling into a hunch. By the time Will reappears, a second steaming mug in his hand, Mike is pinching his eyes against prickling heat.

As much as it hurt to see the other Will’s life without him, something about this one strikes harder. Not just a few years, but a future. An adulthood.

“You don’t have to talk about it, yet.” While he sets the mug down on the table, Will stays a careful distance away. It makes Mike feel like a time bomb. Like an animal, expected to bite. “How you’re here, I mean. I know it’s probably a lot for you.”

It’s so patient, and so kind, and something finally seems to boil over in Mike’s chest. He shakes his head, scrunching his eyes closed. “I was trying to go home,” he says, voice close to trembling. “I was- I wanted to go back.” He doesn’t even know if it makes sense, if he’s in the right world for it to make sense, but the words spill out either way, leaving Will to piece them together in a way Mike is unable.

There’s a quiet creak as Will kneels down, leaning against the coffee table. His voice is impossibly gentle. “I know.”

“You don’t-”

“I know,” he repeats, reaching out to rest a hand on the sofa cushion. “It’s okay, Mike. You made it.”

And it’s what he wants to be true, more than anything. It’s what he’s felt since the moment he woke in the grass, that somehow he’s slid back into something he’s left. But how can he trust that, when something is still so wrong? How can he look at Will’s face, too broad in the jaw and too thin in the cheeks, and accept that this is home?

“What-” He swallows, almost afraid of the answer he’s about to ask for. “What year is it?”

Will is the perfect painting of empathy when he replies, “1993.”

Side ? 

Spring 1993

Bar Harbor, Maine

Will Byers is twenty-one years old. He’s twenty-one years old, and he’s cooking scrambled eggs in the kitchen of his own apartment - states away from Indiana - while Mike watches from the living room, sipping on cooling coffee.

Mike is not twenty-one. He’s fourteen, and the years that stretch out between him and his best friend taste like bile on his tongue. A million questions sit frozen in the back of his throat, but he can’t make himself ask anymore of them. Some, Will couldn’t even answer, and Mike can only breathe his fears into the black of his mug.

When he gets up to pee, he sees two toothbrushes sitting in a plastic cup.

“You know,” Will begins, once the eggs have been deposited on the table, “I shouldn’t be surprised you were the one to figure out time travel.”

There’s something about it that prickles at Mike’s nerves, in a way Will has seldom managed, and certainly never intends. He feels patronized, somehow, like a child appeased or consoled. He upended his life and nearly destroyed the universe, but wasn’t it cool? Wasn’t it clever?

“On accident,” he says, around a bite of egg that he can hardly stand to swallow.

“Which just makes it even more impressive,” Will pushes. Mike truly tries to feel annoyed by it, even furrowing his face in an exercise at method acting - but Will just smiles, genuine and familiar, and Mike can’t ignore the way his stomach spins.

In any world, at any time, he knows he would do anything to see that smile. And if he’s truly honest, he isn’t sure how he didn’t know that sooner.

“I got some kind of superpowers, or something.” The words sound stupid and childish coming out, like he’s voicing a make-believe role. “But I didn’t realize, and I used them wrong, and- and I fucked everything up.” A complete understatement, and one he isn’t eager to explain to anyone, much less Will. A boy who’s stared down his own world-ending demon, hearing about how his best friend became one.

“Not any less impressed,” Will says simply, as if that is that.

“You don’t even know what they are,” Mike tries to argue. “I could be lying out of my-” Before he finishes, though, he’s cut off with a little huff of a laugh.

“Mike,” Will says, “I saw you drop out of a hole in the sky. You were fucking glowing.” And… well. That’s certainly something he hadn’t realized, at the time. “It took me so long to get you inside ‘cause it was, like, touching a comet, or something. I had to go find gloves.”

Inexplicably, Mike can feel his face reddening, in some strange concoction of embarrassment. “Sorry,” he finds himself saying.

It only earns another laugh, this one disbelieving. “For what?”

“For-” Stammering at first, stuck against a tense jaw and shifting eyes, but then - the dam cracks, and Mike’s chest shudders. “For everything, just- For leaving, and-” He sucks in a breath, and his jaw trembles. “I’m just sorry.”

There’s a rustle, then a creak, and Will’s hand folds across Mike’s shoulder, thumb kneading into steeled muscle. “You don’t need to apologize for that.”

“No, I- It was stupid.” The words are spilling forth now, churning out in a way Mike can’t control; he imagines them like vomit, like searing acid on the back of his throat. “I should’ve just talked to someone, instead of-”

“Someone should have been paying attention.” Soft, even in the face of harsh desperation. Will was always good at that, at soothing down Mike’s storms. “It’s the rest of us who should be sorry for that.

Mike shakes his head. “You moved,” he urges, voice shaking and damp. “You couldn’t-”

“I know about the cliff.”

For several moments, neither of them speak. Chatter filters in from outside - downstairs neighbors, bickering; a car backing into the gravel parking lot. Mike notes them with scrambling focus, like they’ll somehow help him make sense of Will’s words. The cliff, he hears, and he thinks of the world he’s just tumbled from. A boy at the bottom of a lake, and friends with holes in their hearts. His jaw locks, unable to reply. Except-

“Dustin told us,” Will continues. “About how El saved you. How close we came to losing you, even back then.”

No one had said anything. Not in ‘83, and not in the years that followed. The moment was allowed to slide out of sight, buried in the rest of the awful day, and Mike had believed it forgotten. Even in his own mind it had been a blip. A passing strangeness that just fit into the rest of the ways he was wrong.

“We should have been paying attention for years, Mike.”

They hadn’t had years, in the other world. They hadn’t had time to notice. And part of Mike wants to say something about it, to tell him how much worse the story could have been, but he can’t put together the words. He pulls his arms around himself, tightening them against a spinning hurt.

Easing onto the couch, Will moves his hand until it’s tugging Mike into a one-armed hug, loose enough for him to pull away. He doesn’t.

“And you know what?” Closer now, Will’s voice quiets. “We didn’t blame you for a bit of it, after.”

Mike sniffs, and grimaces at the sound. “After…?”

“After you. Without you,” Will explains, and the words sink into Mike’s heart like a spear. “It sucked, but the only thing we were mad at was whatever made you leave. Whatever you’d been feeling.”

He makes it sound so simple. He makes it sound like there’s some thing in the back of Mike’s head - something deep and insidious, like the Mind Flayer - that forced him out into that cold morning, instead of Mike’s own thoughts, twisting and aching.

In the absence of a response, Will gives his shoulders a careful squeeze. “We didn’t stop wanting to help. And we never stopped trying to find you.”

It feels fantastical, like something from a movie that Mike can’t quite believe. Even as he answers, doubt colors his words. “For eight years?”

The quiet slant to Will’s answering smile is unreadable, as though he’s holding back. When he speaks, though, it’s full of tender honesty: “You’re a hard guy to give up on, Mike Wheeler.”

And somewhere in Mike’s stomach, below his racing heart and his bated breath, the bubble pricks open, and he heaves the first sob. Under Will’s grip his back finally shudders in earnest, tears welling up against a miserable keen. He has so much he wants to say, so much he needs to say, and he feels utterly powerless.

“I tried,” he finally manages, plaintive as a child. It earns a glance of pity from Will, souring in his stomach. “I really tried to come back. I tried to fix it.”

It feels like an eternity passes, still and unbearable, before Will replies. He pulls his arm from around Mike’s shoulders and moves to stand; still hunched on the sofa, Mike tenses at the loss, expecting criticism that he should know won’t come.

Then: “Let me show you something.”

The last orange of an early sunset is just spreading across the room. Much of the space is taken up by an unmade bed, which Mike’s eyes refuse to linger on for too long. Two pillows, just like the two toothbrushes. Two books on two cluttered side tables.

“It’s okay.” Will steps inside, tipping his head towards the scene. “He’s in Boston, visiting his sister.”

Mike gives a shallow nod. His hands shoved firmly into his pockets, he follows Will farther into the room, stepping on a strewn sock as he goes. The floor creaks, and he can’t shake the feeling of intrusion. It spreads a light pink across his cheeks, and he’s thankful for the fading sun.

“Here,” Will says, gesturing to a chest of drawers. Or, above the chest, tacked to the thin walls.

A He-Man poster, painfully familiar. Other than a few tears, it’s as though it’s been pulled right from Mike’s childhood room. He watches Will smooth a hand over the wrinkles, smiling fondly as he goes.

“He had it in his bedroom, growing up. Admitted later that he liked looking at He-Man’s muscles.” Something about Will’s glance is sly, nearly knowing. “As soon as we moved in I put it up on the wall to tease him.”

The story lands strange in Mike’s chest, almost uncomfortable. Before he can parse through the reaction too much, though, Will moves further to grasp the closet door, and tugs it open. The accordion panels rattle, and the sight brings another pang to Mike’s chest, unbidden. Twice as many clothes; twice as many shoes.

A brief press of mouths under a sky spitting apart. The dizzy lilt of champagne on a cold rooftop.

He swallows, and carefully schools his face.

“He’s always been a pack rat,” Will goes on. Cardboard scrapes as he opens up a box, duct tape pressed over sloppy labeling. “Half his shit is still back in his mom’s attic, but we keep the important things here.”

The first: a Darth Vader action figure, the same dime-a-dozen model Mike had as a child. He gives a hum of acknowledgement, absently wondering where his own wound up. His initial discomfort - briefly replaced by faint curiosity - is now petering into restlessness.

With a plastic clatter against the box’s other contents, Will pulls out something larger. “I don’t even think this thing works anymore.”

A walkie talkie.

Nostalgia swells through Mike, and he quickly blinks it away. It’s the same one all of them had, back in middle school; he can picture it perfectly, bound to the front of a bike or shoved in one of four familiar bookbags. It feels strange to imagine Will’s boyfriend in the same idyllic setting, a stranger who could have been right alongside them, fitting into the cut-out that Mike left. He supposes he should be happy that Will found someone who shares so much in common.

He just can’t help the poisonous, fruitless wish that it had been him.

“And of course,” Will is saying now, “he had to keep this.” He hauls out the largest item yet, taking two hands to pull it free from the depths of the box. A plastic binder, stuffed overfull with papers, behind a familiar design slid into the front cover: the red-orange of Mike’s old D&D manual. Another point for commonality, he begins to think to himself, until he sees the letters printed on the plastic in scuffed marker:

MIKE

His eyes trace them once, and then again, and then a third time for good measure, hanging onto every angle and line. When Will pushes the binder closer, Mike is almost afraid to take hold, as though his fingers meeting the surface will ruin the illusion. Because it truly can’t be. He has to be wrong about this, the way he’s been wrong about so many things. It’s some other boy’s book, creased and dented in the same ways, and-

“He told me you’d show up, sometime in the ‘90’s.” Will’s voice sounds like it’s filtering through water, drifting distantly to wherever Mike has fallen. “Not that you’d fall out of the sky, though. I guess he wanted to keep that a surprise.”

Mike blinks. Between his hands, the book still hasn’t disappeared. “What…?” It’s the only word he can think of, the only word that makes sense.

Will stands up, and leans in closer, as though he’s about to tell a secret. “You know why I keep telling you it’ll be okay?”

Frozen, full of trembling tears, Mike shakes his head.

“Because it was.”

( red sky at morning, sailor take warning )

( red sky at night, sailor’s delight )

“You came back, Mike. You came back to us.”

Sometime around dawn, Mike steps out onto icy grass, bundled up in a coat that he doesn’t yet own. Behind parting clouds, stars are still out - white pinpricks against a beautiful navy.

Will hadn’t told him much. Not about the eight years, or when among them he managed to return. Some questions had sprung forth naturally, as soon as he got over the shock - What’s my job? Where do the others live? Do they ever make more Star Wars movies? - but even those had been brushed aside with excuses straight out of science fiction.

Other questions stay stuck on the back of Mike’s tongue, even hours later.

Are we safe?

Am I happy?

“Just relax.” The frost crunches as Will walks up beside him, instantly reading the tension in Mike’s shoulders. “Deep breaths, okay?”

It feels almost laughably impossible, given the circumstances.

“What if I fuck it up?”

Will just hums, and shrugs his shoulders. “Then you’ll un-fuck it.”

His doubt hardly needs expressing, given how much of it Mike has babbled through in the last few hours, between poor attempts at sleep. Will had put his foot down at a third cup of coffee, and urged a balanced breakfast instead; the echoes of Joyce Byers have never been clearer in his voice, and it had made Mike smile.

“Look,” Will says, steady and sure in a way that Mike can’t imagine feeling. “You’re so much stronger than you think, okay? I’ve had years to learn that.”

Mike bites down against the reeling of his head. If there’s ever been a moment not to let his nerves get the best of him, it’s right now.

He breathes deep, and flexes his hands, and-

“Just-” A last, panicked thought spills out, and he opens his eyes, letting the first touch of the threads slip away from his fingers. “If I don’t see you again-”

Will shakes his head. “You will.”

“But-”

“Good things can happen to you. I swear. You get to be happy, okay?” Will’s eyes are almost too bright to look at, spilling with adoration and pride that Mike can barely understand. And for once, he thinks he can almost feel it. A palpable warmth in his chest, spreading down through his arms, into his palms.

“Thank you,” he manages, hardly more than a whisper. “Thank you.” He presses his eyes closed again, before the tears well up any further, and-

He barely has to reach for them, this time. It’s like dipping his hand into water and finding just what he’s looking for, the timelines flowing past his skin effortlessly. Not just space, but time, with its lightning heat. Except it doesn’t burn away at him now, not with the simplicity of the jump. The energy bends within his control, and-

He pulls, and he jumps.

And just as time bends him sideways, he hears Will’s voice one more time through the light:

“See you eight years ago, Mike.”

r e w i n d

The bike is gone.

It isn’t the first thing Mike notices, or even the second, or the third. He doesn’t notice it at all, in fact, when he steps out of time and out of space, and into a ditch ankle-deep with muddy snow-melt. Coughing out a string of curses, he scrambles up the incline and onto level ground, and sees-

There. The highway shoulder. The bridge, low over Widow Creek. Across the street, a squat, mildewing building housing a shuttered business. Fog hanging low in the next field over, filtering in beams of morning light.

The last time he left the creekbed for the modest sprawl of Hawkins, it was in the passenger side of a stranger’s truck. Now, what feels like an impossible eternity later, he hits the pavement at a run. Each breath of cold air thrums with the same familiar chord: home, home, home. He can feel it, the same way his fingertips trace a surface, or his tongue recognizes a taste, even as a wordless anxiety tries to claw back into his mind.

He makes it nearly a quarter mile on pure adrenaline before he has to slow, already reeling from a stitch in his side. Behind him the bridge has just barely disappeared behind a curve in the highway, and the distance ahead is dizzying. It’s warmer this time, at least, the night’s snowstorm apparently having resolved into a milder morning, but his soaked sneakers more than make up for it.

Steeling his jaw and trying to ignore the discomfort, Mike picks back up the pace, and-

The trees blur in an instantaneous slide. The sparse houses shift. When he turns to glance over his shoulder, the highway’s curve has vanished. No tearing, no pulling of time, no light trailing from his hands - just a simple intent, a wish strong enough to step through space. A nervous thrill goes through Mike’s stomach, resolving into something that’s almost-

… assurance.

He feels it like a hand on his back. A whisper, but not.

More blink than boy.

Mike looks up at the sky, as though he’ll find the answers scrolling there. As though the dogs will be peering down at him from across the worlds, waiting to pounce. Except - he doesn’t, and they aren’t. And when the soft touch finally pulls away from the edge of his thoughts, it leaves only the faintest understanding.

The power he scraped away from the universe’s sharp edge, settled now into his own atoms; the giver’s wordless blessing brushed against the back of his mind.

A gift he’s strong enough now to use without a child’s desperate, fumbling destruction.

He looks back up the road and pictures it again - the warm houses and leaf-lined roads, the clean lines of his front door - and jumps. Once, and again, all effortless, barely more than a step, grinning wide with adrenaline and relief, until-

Honk, hoooonk.

Mike stumbles backwards out of the road, throwing an awkward wave of apology to the swerving driver. The car speeds off without a pause, communicating only a single-fingered salute through the back window. Heart settling back into rhythm, Mike looks around to get his bearings - and can’t help the laugh of optimism that escapes.

The place has never looked gloomier, all off-white metal below a drooping sky, but he could walk up and kiss the trailer hitches for all their blessed familiarity. He crosses the street at a jog, tracking mud up the crumbling drive as he tries to remember which lot is the Mayfields. It’s the sight of a familiar bike tipped against metal steps that clues him in, and he’s scrambling up to the front door in seconds, knocking without a second thought.

A brief pause, then a slow shuffle of movement, and-

Max opens the door with a slow uncertainty, unsurprising for the unannounced visit. Also unsurprising is the bleary squint of her eyes, the mussed tangle of her twin braids. There’s no sparkling polish on her nails, no healthy tan to her cheeks. It’s just how she looked before he left, both a single day and two long months ago. How she’d looked ever since the grim end of the summer.

“Hey, sorry,” he starts, excitement overtaking any explanation he had planned. “Can, uh. Can I use your phone?”

That’s when the surprising thing happens:

Finally registering the sight, Max’s eyes widen, and her jaw goes slack, and a look of devastated bewilderment replaces any trace of exhaustion. The door swings open, its knob slipping from her hand; she seems torn between stepping onto the porch, or retreating back into the house.

And a moment, Mike’s stomach sinks right to his feet. He feels like an idiot, having let himself relax into certainty from just a feeling. He’d raced forward like he knew he was home, like he had no cause to doubt it. Just another world where he’s a figure from a nightmare, a bad memory that’s grown too-long legs. Another set of friends to break and-

He’s staggering backwards before he can finish the thought.

“What the fuck?” Max shoves him again, hard enough to bruise even through his coat; Mike grabs onto the stair rail to keep from falling. “What the fuck, Wheeler?”

“Hey, I don’t-” He raises his hands, palms flat in defense, unsure what excuse he’s even trying to stammer out, or what he’s excusing himself for. “I’m sorry, I just-”

When the third hit comes, it isn’t a shove - it’s a pair of fierce, skinny arms, wrapping desperately around his middle.

“You asshole,” Max rasps against his coat collar. “We thought you were dead. We thought you were dead for a fucking year.”

Chapter Text

❝ This is the ending where you finally find your way home and the ancient terror inside of you is stomped out for good. ❞

Jonny Bolduc, Ending

Side A 

December 7, 1986

This December is warmer than the last. Two weeks before Christmas, the first snowfall has already melted, leaving puddles outside the trailer. In the corner of the room, a plastic tree stands spindly and undecorated, a couple of gifts tucked beneath it.

The first phone call is to his house, and it goes unanswered. Mike leaves a message on the machine, just a stuttered apology and a promise he’ll see them soon. He tries to picture his mom listening to it - or stranger still, his dad - and can’t quite grasp the image, his expectations too torn between anger and grief. Soft brown, double-exposed with stiff, blonde curls.

“You sure you don’t want to ride over there?”

Over the formica table, Max is winding up the cord of her hairdryer, laying out Mike’s freshly dried socks in front of her. There’s still an uncomfortable kindness to her voice, one that makes Mike want to cast his eyes away. She’s barely taken her eyes off of him since he walked in.

A year. He was off by a year.

“They’ll freak out.” An understatement, for sure. It’s a scene he already knows the lines to, even if the actors are slightly different.

Max fixes him with a glare, plainly unimpressed. “Yeah, and they’ll still freak out if you put it off. They’ll freak out as soon as they get that message, and they’ll start ringing my phone off the hook.”

It’s the logical argument, but one Mike can’t quite bring himself to accept. Instead, he sits down at the table and busies himself with pulling back on his socks, now stiff with dish soap. There’s a fresh tension in his chest now, waiting for the sound of the phone.

The silence stretches nearly into discomfort before Max sits down across from him. “Are you going to talk about it?”

Mike nods, trying to convey something like honesty on his face. Part of him wants nothing more than to talk, to go ahead and quell the worst fears he knows they must have. The other part is too tangled in anxiety to fathom sorting it all into words.

“... Is it something bad?”

For the thousandth time in the last two months, Mike isn’t quite sure how to answer.

What he is sure of, though, is this: he can’t lie anymore. If there’s one thing he learned on the other side of the tightrope, it’s the incredible, unwavering love these people somehow have for him, no matter how he fumbles and wastes it. And the more he hides, the more he runs-

“There are bad parts,” he finally settles on. He wrings his fingers to keep from tearing at a hangnail, already bleeding. “Look, I swear, I’ll tell everyone once-”

The phone rings, and his heart shoots into his throat.

Max stands up and answers it with another firm glance, conveying something that feels inescapable. Whatever is on the other end of the line, he’s about to face it. No running, no bluffing. He watches the receiver pull away, hears Max answer with a clipped act of politeness, and then -

“Yeah,” Max tells the tinny, urgent response. “Yeah, he’s still- Hey, slow down. He’s okay, I’m not letting him go anywhere.” She rubs a hand across her brow and shoots Mike another stern look. “Yes, I already called the others, while he was taking a piss. They’re on their way.”

Mike responds with a litany of stage-whispered objections, which only earn him an exasperated eye-roll.

“Okay, okay, yeah,” Max says, trying to hurry the call to a close. “I’ll see you in fifteen.” Then, with a click and a sigh, she hangs up and turns back towards Mike, every atom of her expression making one statement: Time to face the music, Wheeler. Beneath it, though, her eyes soften as she asks, “Breakfast?”

They’re halfway through hand-scooped bowls of dry Apple Jacks when the knocks come, punctuating a rapid scuffle up the front steps. Mike’s shoulders tense, both at alarm and sheer volume, but Max is already sliding easily out of her seat, wiping green crumbs onto her pants.

“It’s open, Jesus fuck-”

The door swings in hard enough that Mike expects it to splinter. Amidst the cool damp that follows are precisely the faces he’d expected to see.

“Holy shit.” Lucas breathes it like a marvel, only to be shoved aside by burly shoulders.

“Holy shit!” Dustin echoes, rushing forward without the same awed hesitation. He grapples Mike into a firm hug, broader and stronger than it used to be. When Lucas trails over, his wide eyes tilt farther down than before.

A year. A year. A-

Mike swallows around a dry throat. “Hey, guys.” It’s a double exposure, a carbon copy of a different morning in a different kitchen, except… Except it’s not. Not really. He keeps expecting his stomach to sink, and his heart to twist, but they don’t. Instead, something else catches in his chest, something he can’t quite identify. It creeps up into his throat, prickles behind his eyes, warm and trembling.

“We missed you so much, man.” Lucas’ arms replace Dustin’s, his stubbled chin settling against Mike’s cheek.

Behind him, Dustin sniffs through his permanent grin. “You’re- are you okay?”

Mike blinks, trying to nod. “I’m- I-”

“Come on.” A shuffle of socks, as Max runs interference. “Let him breathe.”

Lucas’ grip loosens, and for an unexpected second Mike’s reflexes want to pull him back in. “Yeah, sorry, just- God, dude…” He’s smiling too, his eyes round and watery, and it’s then that Mike gets it. He gets the aching warmth in his chest, and the itch in his shoulders, begging to be held closer. He gets how this is different, even with his friends speaking the same wondering words, shedding the same tears.

He doesn’t feel their pain, this time - he feels their love.

“Okay, shoes off.” Max tugs the guys away, gesturing down with an empty cereal bowl to where they’ve trailed muddy slush on the linoleum. “Cavemen, I swear.”

“Sorry, sorry.” Dustin scoots back, toeing off his sneakers, but doesn’t take his eyes away from Mike, still joyful and appraising, latching onto details in a way that should leave Mike feeling uneasy. Instead, he just smiles back. “Your hair’s shorter,” Dustin finally settles on. “You cut your hair.”

“You look good,” Lucas adds, tucking his shoes neatly next to Dustin’s tumbled pile.

Mike tucks his chin down, eyes glancing between his friends. “Thanks. I, uh. I am.” It doesn’t even feel like a lie. “I’m good.”

The words are nearly swallowed by another flurry of noise from outside. He hadn’t turned at the puttering approach of a car, but the burst of muffled voices catches his attention, and the rush of feet on the front steps strikes through his stomach with anticipation. He thinks back to Max on the phone, saying that she’d called the others, and realizes with sudden certainty that she hadn’t been speaking to Dustin or Lucas. Someone else is out the door, and he thumbs through a split-second list of possibilities, starting with the Hawkins Police and culminating alarmingly in his parents.

“It’s open!” Max turns to shout, but the door is already flying open before the word is out. And on the threshold, against the cold, bright morning-

“Mike,” Will gasps.

Time seems to slow. Mike’s heart freezes, and his head spins, filling with a thousand tumbling thoughts that he can’t begin to give voice to.

Weren’t you in Greenwood?

Are you as tall as me now?

Do you remember any of it?

Before he can speak - before he can sort through and make sense of any of it - he’s being knocked back by something soft and shaking, digging fingers into Mike’s back and shuddering out breaths against his neck. Will smells like toothpaste, and he isn’t dressed for the weather, and he’s getting tears all over Mike’s forehead, and it’s all Mike can do to wind up into his arms and let himself break, and break, and break and-

“Mike???”

He lifts his head with great effort, just enough to see-

Nancy crosses the room in a heartbeat, bed-headed and wrapped in a coat he knows is Joyce’s, already reaching out to tug Mike into her arms. Behind her, El is clambering up the stairs too, eyes awed and bloodshot.

“Hi.” Barely a whisper as he lets his sister tuck him fiercely against his chest, as he reaches a hand out to grip El’s shoulder.

“Oh my god, Mike.” Nancy’s voice, murmured into his sweater, amidst the bustle and warmth of six pairs of arms wrapping in, six soft voices whispering relief. “You’re- you’re actually-”

“I’m okay,” Mike answers. “I’m okay.”

He turns just a bit, meeting Will’s unwavering gaze - and for a moment, for a flash, he catches something he can’t name. An awed confusion beneath Will’s tearful joy, like he’s trying to put a name to a distant face. Then, the moment passes, resolving back into a wide, trembling smile.

Mike smiles back, closes his eyes, and feels.

The questions don’t stop, but by the time the station wagon turns onto Maple, they’ve at least slowed from their rapidfire urgency. Nancy keeps glancing over, face cycling through emotions Mike gives up on trying to name. Relief, mainly, but also surprise, like she’s still stepping onto the Mayfields’ porch in a loop.

“God, I can’t believe…” She says it for the third - or maybe the tenth - time, shaking her head.

“I know,” Mike answers. He tired quickly of the routine, but can’t find it in him to be annoyed. Maybe not for a few more hours.

“You’re really-”

“Look at the road, Nance. Jesus.”

The brakes slam on, uncharacteristic of Nancy’s usual driving. Skirting the speed limit, sometimes, but as precise as everything else about her: her handwriting, her vocabulary, the pleats of her clothing.

Under the borrowed coat, she’s in a mismatched pair of sweats. Her hair is flat on one side, and there’s a smear of makeup under one eye. He thinks back to her arriving with Will and El in tow, and doesn’t have to wonder where she slept last night.

The Byers’ weren’t in Greenwood anymore, he was quick to learn. They’d barely made it into the spring before breaking their lease and trucking back up north. No one had yet told Mike why, but his stay at Max’s house hadn’t extended long past their tearful greetings. Karen and Ted were at church, Nancy had told him, and beating them back to the answering machine was in the best interest of their mother’s cardiac health.

“Stop sign.”

“Shit.” Another jolting brake, and a polite wave to the crossing driver. They’re halfway across town now, and Mike feels every block as a new butterfly in his stomach. The day is still bright and blue, melting the rest of the snow down to asphalt.

“What can you tell me?” Nancy asks, breaking a few more moments of quiet. It’s a gentler approach, over her own journalistic prodding.

In his gut, he knows where this is going. Nancy is going to know. His friends are going to know. And after so much time walled inside himself, he wants to come clean. He wants to let them in on what he’s been through - not just since the crash, but in the dark stretches before that. Only-

“It’s… It’s hard to explain.”

Nancy levels an utterly unimpressed look at him. “Mike.”

He gives a soft huff of a laugh, in spite of himself. There isn’t a thing they've been through that wasn’t bordering on impossible to explain, and he can’t begin to imagine what it would take to not be believed. Still, there’s a flicker of doubt in his thoughts.

Maybe it’s not about being believed. Maybe it’s about being judged. He can still see it behind his eyelids - jagged lines like dark matter, stretching across the sky, sparking from his own hands.

Scribbled, black crayon on printer paper. Spider legs filling the horizon, ripping through the earth.

The likeness isn’t lost on him. The Mind Flayer’s creation, and his own.

“Was it the Upside Down?”

Nancy’s voice is quiet. Hesitant. She pauses the car too long, until another driver sends a quick blast of their horn.

Mike takes a breath, shakes his head, and answers: “More like… the Sideways.”

He thinks he might say more, now that the first, quiet crack has split through the dam. Nancy’s eyes widen, taking in the answer and instantly seeking more, but there isn’t time. The roofline of their house peeks into view, and Mike’s heart picks up pace, eyes scanning for-

They’re just getting out of the car, underneath the shaded carport. His dad’s legs in familiar khaki, his mom in a belted coat and heels. Holly, her hair too long and her legs too knobby. Three heads turn to track Nancy’s car down the driveway, and Mike has to force himself not to crouch out of sight, steeling back against the headrest until-

“Michael?!”

The station wagon has barely slowed to a stop before Karen Wheeler is kicking out of her shoes, racing on hosed feet to grapple for the door. And even after she’s tugged him from his seat - after she’s held his cheeks in her palms and pressed lipstick into his hair, after he’s looked over her shoulder and into the startled, wet eyes of his father - his mind is still trying to catalogue. Blonde hair, but soft against his face, instead of sharp with aerosol. A dizzy panel of spot-the-differences, pulled from a children’s magazine. He gives up, wilts into her grasp - blinks against tears when his dad wanders over, stunned, and pulls them both in.

It’s after more kissed brows, after more clamoured assurances and tugging hands, while the rest of their family bustles inside, that Mike finally leans down to meet Holly’s careful, calculating gaze. She’s a full head too tall now, chewing on the skin of a chapped lip.

“Hey.” Mike smiles, trying to match her own quiet, gentle language. “I missed you.”

He isn’t sure what to expect in response. She’s had an extra year of growth, of being shuttled around to speech therapy, but he’d never thought to imagine her any different. He’d never pictured her with a louder voice, or longer words.

Now though, with her eyes steady and solemn, Holly leans up on the toes of her buckled shoes and whispers, “Did you save him?” The words are soft, but unhalting, and utterly unexpected.

“Save- who?”

She fixes him with an impatient gaze borrowed straight from Nancy. “The other Mike,” she says simply, as though the words don’t send a shock right through Mike’s stomach. He can only stare back for a long moment, mouth gaping, waiting for something to make sense.

And yet, something does. Scraps through space that he can’t quite translate, flashes of worlds that only just brushed his hands. Somewhere, timeless and distant, there’s a pair of blonde pigtails, and there’s a boy dripping on a foyer floor. A sister who he doesn’t always know is something more.

“I think I did,” he finally answers, and he hopes with all he has that he’s right.

It’s cold in the house, but Mike can hear the heater starting up, buzzing in the vents. Over it, his parents’ voices - his dad, hovering by the kitchen phone, swiftly begging off of work. His mom, harried but joyful.

“Does Joyce know?”

“The kids might have told her by now.” Nancy is starting up the coffee pot as Mike walks in. She pauses to lift up a mug in his direction, a silent offer that he turns down.

Karen closes the fridge, setting a carton of half-and-half down on the counter. “I’ll call over there in a bit. Unless she’s down at the station, with Jim.” She crosses, reaching to give Mike’s shoulder a squeeze on the way, but he’s frozen under the touch, one word echoing in his ears.

“Jim?”

Another déjà vu, another moment of cold, creeping doubt at what world he’s landed in, until-

“Oh, shit!” Nancy finishes pouring her coffee, and steps over to slide a tight, warm arm around Mike’s shoulders. “Let me catch you up, come on.”

December 31, 1986

“Okay.” The engine stutters off, and Nancy pulls the keys out with more force than necessary. “I made sure Jonathan got plenty of sparkling grape juice. You can have one sip of champagne, okay? Not a drop more.”

Annoyance at least takes the place of anxiety, for a few blessed moments. “Thanks, mom,” Mike huffs, reaching to open the door. He’s stopped by a tap on his shoulder.

“Hey.” Nancy’s voice softens, the authority seeping out in favor of affection. “It’s okay if you’re not ready for this.”

It must be plain on his face. It certainly was last week, the first time he pulled up to this house, with its old, white clapboard, its muddy front drive, the scraggly stretch of field out back. They’d moved in just before Thanksgiving, and Hopper - still slow and thin from months that Mike was learning in careful pieces - was working on a battery of repairs. Fixing the stairs under the last owner’s wheelchair ramp was next on the list, El had explained during Mike’s first tour.

She hadn’t been surprised when he already knew the layout.

“I’m ready,” he answers. “Or- I’m ready to be ready.”

Nancy smiles, teasing and amused and so, so fond. “Okay, weirdo.”

Seeing Hopper hasn’t gotten any less staggering. Even against the familiar backdrop of the farmhouse, the look in the man’s eyes when he opens the door is a stark contrast to the long months on the other side. It has been ever since their reunion in the Wheelers’ kitchen some weeks ago, bustling through the door with Joyce with wet coats and held breath.

He hadn’t had to think hard to know what the difference was. Across that vast, unnamable space, the other Chief had greeted him with doubt, with a mourning too long past to give way to hope. A pain that felt like anger, instead of love.

What he hasn’t figured out is what’s different, here - the others, or himself.

“Hey, kid.” Hopper claps a hand on Mike’s arm, stepping aside to usher him over the threshold. “Good to see you.”

The warm air of the house smells like dinner rolls and tomato sauce, and he barely makes it a step inside before an excited clamor explodes from the living room. He registers Nancy pushing past, but otherwise the tangle of greetings is nearly indistinguishable. He accepts a one-armed hug from Jonathan, a hair-ruffle from Steve, a cheery fist-bump from Robin. A stranger with shaggy hair and a fiercely patched jacked - Eddie, he thinks - offers a theatrical bow, and an assurance that he’s heard only good things about Mike.

Then, just as soon as he’s fought his way through the first wave, Mike is swept into the quick, fervent grasp of Joyce Byers.

“Oh, sweetheart.” She pulls back, and tugs his head down to plant a firm kiss on his snow-dusted hair. He can feel her grin, even when he can’t see it. “How are you doing?”

It’s a question he’s heard over and over now, and even if he can’t fault this big, beloved family, it never gets easier to answer. Because there’s relief, and there’s joy, but there are other things behind them, things that still nip at his heels between breaths. The sheer overwhelm, at the whirling, gripping attention. The fear every time his stomach tenses, or the light changes, or a dog barks down the street.

And under it all, the root that still sits tight around his ankle. The ghost of the hollow in his stomach, the once-nameless thing that never went away, that may never go away.

“I’m okay,” he says, and he knows that Joyce knows. Her smile turns soft, her eyes earnest.

“Tonight goes however you want, okay? All at your own pace.” She squeezes his shoulder. Then, her smile quirking upward: “The others are upstairs. Go let them know dinner’s in ten.”

If the kitchen table had been crowded before, on that first, nervous morning, it’s overflowing now, leaving plates to be gripped in hands or balanced on knees. A few eat standing over the counter, in the spare gaps between hot dishes. Lucas, draped across the back of Mike’s chair, has already slopped a meatball down his own T-shirt.

The chaos is comfortable in a way Mike wasn’t expecting. He’s the center of attention, but it doesn’t feel cloying or suffocating. Instead, mouths full, the others clamber to fill in the holes they’ve left over the last few weeks. A harrowing battle against flesh-eating bats, recounted enthusiastically by Dustin and Eddie. A vivid description of his sister’s machine-gun victory, retold by a wide-eyed Robin, who will never remember teaching him math.

And with each story, he listens, and he catalogues. Parsing through the faint flashes he can feel in his memory, deciding what’s familiar and what’s new. Max, her eyes blue instead of a half-remembered murky white. Eddie Munson, part-friend and part-stranger, making it out of the Upside Down. Things he shouldn’t remember - happening this way, or differently - brushing against his mind nonetheless.

Next to him, El doesn’t say much. Mike feels her gaze, though, flicking to his reactions after each story. It’s a physical touch, a faint, questioning nudge against his thoughts. A transfer of concept, more than words, like he’d felt with the blink dogs. There’s never any suspicion from El, though - just patience. She sees what’s there, feels the way he’s different, and trusts he’ll explain it in his own time.

An assembly line of dishes are clattering into the sink when his parents get there, the doorbell’s chime somehow prim in its announcement. They’re greeted with an affection that Mike isn’t yet used to - Joyce squeezes his mom in a tight, grinning embrace, while his dad laughs openly at something Hopper has said. Robin lifts a smiling Holly up into her lap, asking about her gymnastics lessons. Another reminder of missed months, but it doesn’t feel like poison in his stomach the way he first expected. It feels like something beloved, like something he wants to be a part of.

Eventually, they settle into the living room, pulling in dining chairs and leftover moving boxes, stacked pillows and step stools, all dragged in a circle. Mike doesn’t sit up front. Instead, he tucks on the sofa between Nancy and his mom, elbows and knees knocking. Someone refills his orange soda, and a crocheted blanket drops into his lap. He sees Will’s eyes land on him from across the room, full of an understanding that he reads immediately: this doting and attention is going to get old fast, and as soon as it does, Will will be there to listen.

The room finally falls quiet. Mike clenches his fists, steadies his chest. Nancy gives his arm a quick squeeze; El lends another palpable sweep of comfort into his thoughts, wordless and clear.

Then, with a deep breath, he begins:

“So, it all started with this giant dog.”

“I still can’t believe it.”

Will’s room is dim and hushed, the desk lamp’s glow barely reaching the bed. Muffled chatter drifts from downstairs in occasional swells, more frequent as the clock gets closer to midnight.

“It’s like-” Will continues, giving a faint shake of his head. “It feels like I’m going to blink, and you'll be gone again.”

Mike looks over, eyes tracing Will’s silhouette in the moonlight. “I won’t. I promise.”

He’d followed him upstairs half an hour ago, dizzy and pink-cheeked with laughter. Will had needed a sweatshirt, or maybe a blanket, and he had looked at Mike with something unreadable. Hesitant, but beckoning. And once he’d wrestled into a warm sweater, Will hadn’t turned back towards the door. Instead, he’d landed on the creaking mattress, back against the bent plastic slats of his blinds. He had needed quiet, Mike knew innately, and joined him without a second thought.

“How, um- How was your appointment?” Will asks. His voice is soft and lenient, leaving room for Mike to refuse the question.

He wants to, for just a moment, but he doesn’t.

“It was fine.” And it’s maybe a little bit of a lie, so he adds, “Could’ve been worse.”

The office had been cold, with a sterile light that flickered, but Dr. Higgins was nice. Young, with a curly ponytail and a soft smile. Not the way he expected a psychiatrist to look. There were no imposing leather armchairs, or judgmental frowns from behind scribbled notepads. Instead, Mike had squeezed a foam ball in his hand and been offered questions to answer at his own comfort level. He couldn’t talk about all of it, not about the fear and the monsters, but he let himself talk about the rest. The black hollow under his ribs, the spinning in his brain. The sleepless weeks, the thoughts about jagged cliffs and bottles in bathrooms. And when they were done the doctor had called in his mother, and Mike had hunched up in his chair and listened.

Depression, like he’d once talked about with Will, back on a bedroom floor that looked just like this one. And there was something more - something not yet diagnosable, though long-since studied and discussed. Karen Wheeler had balked and teared at the word “bipolar”, but Dr. Higgins had done her best to explain the variation, this unfamiliar sequel that didn’t quite meet the rules of the first. Hypomania, she’d said, and Mike had tried his best to understand, to pluck memories and fit them into her description.

He isn’t sure how to feel about it. The books in the library had mostly been frightening, but he can’t ignore the sense of control that comes with having words for it all.

Will pulls his legs up, crossing them; his knee prods against Mike’s. “Are you gonna keep going?”

“I guess.” Mike shrugs, fiddling with his sleeves. “She gave me some medicine.”

“And you’re gonna take it?”

“Yeah.” He says it with certainty. “I- I want to feel better.”

And just like he hasn’t yet told them his diagnosis, he hasn’t told them yet how bad it was, either. They know some of it, of course - they know he was sad. They know that he wasn’t talking, that he was failing school, that he felt shitty enough to run away. He hasn’t talked about being suicidal, though. Not yet, but maybe one day. His therapist, set up by Dr. Owens, says he needs a support system.

“I want you to feel better too.” Will is quiet for a moment, but in the low light Mike can tell that he’s not done, that there are more words coming. Something secret, something important.

It comes in a soft breath: “I’ve… I had a dream. A few dreams.”

Mike looks over, heart skipping to a pause. “About what?” And somehow, he knows the answer before it comes. He knows it like his own memories, shaking him awake in a cold sweat every night.

“The sky,” Will says, barely over a whisper. “A beach.” He pauses. “Dogs.”

Blood rushes in Mike’s ears as his heart rushes back to life, nervous and punishing. He tenses, pulling his knee away from Will’s like it might burn. “I- I, uh.” His voice sounds too loud, like their friends downstairs might hear his guilt, and he lowers it. “I did something, I think. I sort of- I think I-”

“It’s okay,” Will starts to say, but Mike shakes his head.

“I pulled you across.” And not just Will, he thinks. His mom, too. El, maybe. He could see it in his eyes, both in the other world and here in his own. Moments of knowing, of skipping a breath and looking too long. “I didn’t mean to, I swear.”

“I don’t mind.” A hand reaches to rest on his, thumb rubbing against his knuckle. “I like knowing.”

“It was stupid, I could have-” Hurt them. Killed them. Made everything so much worse. Destroyed everything he was trying to return to, just because he couldn’t keep himself from needing.

But Will’s voice stays steady, his hand firm and soothing through Mike’s sweatshirt. “You didn’t, Mike. You didn’t hurt anyone. You made it back.”

Maybe the words flick a switch, or maybe he’s just out of fight, but all at once Mike feels himself crumble inward on a shaky exhale. A string cuts, and he tips towards Will without thought. Just an unconscious need for rest, or for comfort.

Will leans into him. His hair bunches against Mike’s cheek, and his hand twitches, and-

It’s the sight of the roof that does it, somehow, moonlit through the blinds. He can see the rough edges of the shingles, and the peeled paint of the gutters, and something flutters through his chest. Because if he pulled in the shattering sky, and the blink dogs, then maybe-

“Do you-” He shifts away just enough to glance over, guarded and uncertain. “Do you remember…”

For a moment, Will looks as though he’s trying to. Face still and mouth open, thumbing through something half-forgotten.

Then, all at once, he pulls in a deep, sharp gasp. His cheeks flood pink, and he turns quick enough to tweak his neck. Once his wide eyes land on Mike, they don’t leave.

“Yeah,” he breathes, gaze flicking over Mike like he’s seeing something for the first time. “Yeah I- I think I-”

There’s a sudden sound in the hallway, the excited chatter of voices and the creak of the old floors. El and Max, laughing as they dip in and back out of El’s room, never stopping to pay mind to Will’s closed door. Then, with a cheerful pair of shouts and clattering footsteps, the girls head back down the stairs to rejoin the party.

Over Will’s shoulders, Mike catches the time on his alarm clock. 11:57.

He reaches his hand back out, just a fraction of an inch, until the very edge of his finger brushes against Will’s. A gesture easily passed off. An option presented silently.

“Do you want to go back downstairs?” Will asks. He doesn’t move his hand.

Mike blinks, and breathes. “If you want to.” He’s not sure the others are expecting them, by this point.

With a slow, faint rustle of movement, Will turns towards him.

“Is… Is there anything else you want to do?” His words are slow and soft, warm against Mike’s cheek.

Mike knows the answer. He’s known the answer for a long time, far longer than he’s understood it. He’s known wide eyes and cold rain, his friends’ jeering insistence turned inward. He’s known clawing grief, bound up in a person on the other end of a useless radio, a person he thinks can fix him. He’s known the fierce, devastating need to grow up, grow up, to be someone else, someone who’s normal and okay, with a girlfriend on his arm.

But he’s also known relief, at a pale, smiling face in a hospital bed. He’s known a quiet promise over candy wrappers, an understanding he can’t find in anything else. He’s known a pretty girl leaving him outside the mall, but he’s known a boy pedaling away from him in the rain, and how it hurt so, so much worse.

And after it all, at the very end - he knows a quiet future on the edge of the ocean. He knows a rumpled bed with a shared blanket. A closet with two sets of clothes, and a bathroom with two toothbrushes. And it can all be his if he just lets it.

He looks over at Will - at his dark, nervous eyes - and he says, “There’s something else I didn’t tell you guys.”

For a second Will just freezes, his face falling in poorly hidden disappointment. He pulls back a couple of inches, and Mike misses the press of his shoulder instantly.

“What is it?” Will asks.

Mike barely has to try. He doesn’t have to clench his fists, or close his eyes. His eyes flick to the stretch of roof outside, and he thinks - and he’s there, snow-flecked shingles under his palms. There’s a moment of silent stillness from inside, and then the blinds are shoving away, snapping at the force as Will’s face comes into view, staring in plain shock. Mike looks back with a wide, daring grin, and helps him muscle the window open, just far enough for Will to shove his way out on hands and knees.

“Holy shit!” He gives an awed huff of a laugh, eyes flicking over Mike as though he’s going to find the answer somewhere in his unruly hair or his dirty socks. “How did you-”

“ -Seven, six, five-”

The voices are quieter up here, but they still make it up the stairs: the last half of a countdown, the final ticks towards midnight. His family, his friends - everyone he loves, everyone who loves him - just steps away in cheerful unison.

“-Four, three, two-”

Mike smiles, and says, “I’ll tell you later.” And as the first fireworks stir up across the frozen fields, he leans in and kisses Will.

If their first was a goodbye, rushed and stolen on a dying beach, this one is a hello. A hello, and another hello, and then they’re pulling back and smiling, and laughing, fingers reaching to lace and tangle. Bright red lights up the sky, in shimmers instead of fractures, and Will leans back in-

Side B 

January 1, 1987

-to kiss him again, and then again. Another pop of a firework pulls them apart, but only enough to breathe, their smiles pressed close from edge to edge.

“Happy New Year,” Will says, in words felt more than heard.

And like a steady warmth in Mike’s stomach - like a light filtered through water, a saving breath of air - he knows that it’s going to be.