Chapter Text
There are two kinds of people in this world:
Idiots, and self-aware idiots.
Will Byers considered himself a self-aware idiot as of late considering the… predicament he found himself in. But that was another matter.
Will often wondered which kind of person was worse; was it better to be irrational and ignorant or irrational yet proceeding with your insanity? Will was far from a philosopher, but this was a subject his mind often wandered to. Given he could be described as a loner by his so-very-kind California classmates, he had plenty of time to think.
Will thought about his predicament often. Too often, in fact. So often that these thoughts bled into dreams and paintings, daydreams pervaded his unsuspecting mind the second he spaced off in geometry or lost his train of thought in a book. All roads lead to it, or rather, him.
“Hey, are you listening?” said Predicament— also known as Michael Wheeler— from where he sat on the floor of Argyle’s van. The drifting engine of Will’s thoughts revved back to life.
“Sorry,” he says reflexively. “What did you say?”
“I said that we’re making a pit stop,” Mike repeats. His bangs were fluttering in the wind from where a window was rolled down. Will liked Mike’s haircut. He liked it a lot. Enough that his fingers twitched with the want to hold a pencil and sketch the sight before him. And once again, Mike’s voice grounded Will in reality. “We need to get a map. And Argyle says he needs to…” Mike emphases this with air quotes, “stock up.”
“The purple palm tree doesn’t stock itself, brochaho!” Argyle hollers from the driver’s seat, and Jonathan snorts in acknowledgement. How Joyce remained unaware of her own son’s habits was astounding, but truly, Will couldn’t blame Jonathan; the amount of trauma they all have endured over the past few years would send any psychiatrist reeling.
And so, life went on. Mike somehow slept through Argyle’s comedically off-tune singing along to a genre of songs that Will could only describe as stoner music, and Jonathan busied himself with sorting through the cassette collection in the glove box. No one decided to bring up the fact that they had spent their previous afternoon burying a dead body, or that Eleven was in God-knows-where Nevada or the fact that Will had a very, very, very bad feeling about exactly why Eleven was in God-knows-where Nevada as he figured it was for reasons larger than a deserved roller-skate assault.
As Will’s eyes drift to Mike’s sleeping form on the van’s floor, something familiar twists in his chest. He was so used to the dull ache of this unrequited something that it felt like home, that it was almost nice. Its familiarity was something Will knew. He clings tighter to the cardboard tube holding his too-precious painting. Not yet, he rationalizes, I can’t give it to him just yet. As if Will ever predicted having the guts to give Mike something like this.
A self-aware idiot. Will couldn’t think of a better label for himself.
The van comes to a screeching halt with enough force to make Mike skid across the van floor and crash against the front passenger seats with a hard thump and a following string of curses. “Alright ladies,” Argyle announces, “here we are. The Ritz Carlton itself.”
Will peers out his window to see the Ritz Carlton Itself, i. e. a gas station that looked seconds from collapse, and barely had enough time to open his door by the time Mike was racing inside to interrogate whatever poor soul was manning the cashier for information on how close they were to Nevada down to the minute.
“I’m just wondering,” comes Mike’s voice as the three push open the gas station’s door. Surely enough, Mike had already made himself at home in front of a teenager at the cashier who had eye bags that put racoons to shame. “How far would you guess we are from Nevada? Like on a scale from an hour to a day?”
“Here we go again,” Argyle groans, already making a beeline for the Monster Energy cans, “that little dude seriously never thinks a thought that isn’t about his superhero girlfriend, does he?”
“Tell me about it,” Will grumbles. Jonathan narrows his eyes at him, and Will decides this is a good time to pretend to be interested in the pretzel collection. Jonathan gives up on his one-sided staring contest and Argyle follows in suit, and once again, Will is left alone with the distant sound of Mike’s voice. Something unpleasant was tingling at Will’s nerves, something green and ugly and jealous in the way that Mike was relentless. The guy could hardly handle saying a sentence without the name El and it showed, even to this random employee. Will stared at linoleum as he knew, the dread digging in its claws, he knew. El was Mike’s number-one. Will? He felt like he didn’t make the list anymore.
But then, it happened.
Will felt it before he saw it. It was the other feeling he knew too-well: immortalizing fear. No, terror. His stomach felt as if it flipped upside-down and all at once, his throat squeezed itself shut tight until no air was left in his lungs. Eyes wide, Will felt himself look up to see the gas station’s wide rectangular lights flickering without abandon. Every hair on Will’s arms and on the back of his neck stood up straight, and a chill wracked itself through his body. Suddenly, Mike’s voice was gone, everything was gone, everything was wrong and the lights were flickering, flickering, flickering— Despite every voice in Will’s head screaming at him to run, he felt paralyzed with fear, enough so that his shoes may as well be glued to the ground.
“Will,” rasped a voice he didn’t recognize. Its tone sounded as if it had been through every hell known on Earth, as if the speaker’s vocal cords had been severed and poorly reconstructed. “Will.”
The voice made his own name sound like a curse, like a condemnation, like a sentence to death. Will felt condemned as his chest was constricting, and it was suddenly occurring to him that he hadn’t taken a breath in at least thirty seconds. The lights were blinking frantically, and as Will finally forced his eyes from the ceiling to his surroundings, he found that Mike was still at the counter but unaware of the hell his friend, his best friend was enduring— Jonathan and Argyle sorted through the maps, uncaring of the fact that Will was petrified, that he was choking and sobbing to take a breath yet somehow the air evaded his lungs. “Will.” Another chill courses through Will’s body, and he grasps at his own throat, trying to squeeze out a syllable for the world to hear, but somehow, all words disintegrated away on his tongue. How did they not know? How did no one notice?
The dizziness settled in and Will helplessly witnessed his vision give way to spots and stars. His hands were latched on to his neck as if to force it to intake air and before he knew it he was on his knees, suffocating as the room alternated from complete, bitter darkness to blinding light. Will was reminded of all the horrible things he had failed to suppress; of the fateful night he vanished from the Earth, and of the eternity spent in hell where no matter how loud he screamed or hard he cried, nothing could save him; he remembered how even when he returned to reality as he knew it, it was mostly spent choking in front of a sink or being possessed for God’s sake—
Then he heard it. A hum, and then a thunk, and a dim sound that reminded him of the ticking of a second hand. As if summoned by his thoughts, Will looked up enough through his hazing vision to see a grandfather clock in the ceiling, pendulum swinging back and forth. Through the intervals of flickering light, Will struggled to form coherent thoughts as his eyes remained stuck, his lungs remained empty. The room was bathed in darkness once again. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. It was a limbo between darkness and light, all at the mercy of this clock.
Will was too busy gasping for air to suspect the fact he was currently staring at a clock in the ceiling, or the fact that he was hearing a demonic voice in his head— Why me? His tired mind manages to formulate, why is it always me?
And so, Will waits for either death or something worse to come and he holds on to himself, hands clamped over his ears with painful force, and accepts his fate.
____________________
Mike didn’t consider himself to be the most empathic person in the world, but even he could tell that something was going on in Will’s complicated mind.
Aside from the collection of bizarre standoffishness Mike was picking up from his friend, the fact that something was wrong became blatantly obvious in the gas station.
Mike had been busy trying to figure out exactly how long before he would see his girlfriend because he figured if he spent the duration of the trip mentally calculating the seconds before he could see El’s face, it might make the wait more bearable. But, then as all things have in the past few years, it all went wrong.
Mid-sentence, the cashier’s tired eyes were snapped from their tired, spaced-out haze and suddenly fixated on something behind Mike. The gaze was so intense that Mike was turning around without second thought. Briefly, his eyes wander before they settle on the middle aisle where he could see Will standing. At first glance, he didn’t look out of the ordinary other than the fact his hands were twitching feverishly at his sides. But then, as Mike squinted, the dread washed over him all at once. Mike didn’t recall running across the gas station, or practically throwing himself into the middle aisle, but the next thing he knew, he was standing right before Will’s quickly crumpling form. Where the boy was previously staring intensely at the ceiling, he now was a heap on the floor, his violently trembling hands clamped tight over his ears. His breaths were dangerously shallow and rapid, and sounded more like gasps than proper breaths.
Something instinctual possessed Mike in this moment because his hands were grabbing the fabric of Will’s shirt and shaking him with enough force to make his friend’s head bob back and forth. “Will,” he rasps, “Will!” Mike didn’t realize he had company until Jonathan’s hands were on Will’s shoulders, sturdy yet desperate as he mimed Mike’s actions. Will wasn’t responding, his hands gripping tighter onto his ears, his wheezing more incessant— Mike remembered when he was twelve, when there was a time when he felt he was the only one who cared about this boy before him, when he felt it was himself against the world in the wake of his best friend’s disappearance. God, what had he been thinking? Not sending letters when Will moved to California. Suddenly, in this moment, Mike felt as if he made a ground-breaking realization as he shook his friend back and forth.
Then, Will chokes, his eyes snapping open and Mike didn’t realize he was holding his breath until he practically gasped in relief. “Jesus Christ,” Jonathan mutters, slumping back until he was fully sitting on the floor. Mike runs a troubled hand through his hair. The words are you okay sat on his tongue but he figured he couldn’t ask a stupider question. Jonathan was smoothing a hand over his younger brother’s shoulder, and something about the action lead Mike to believe that incidents like this had happened before.
There’s stunned silence. Then, “fucking shit, dude,” chimes the cashier, eyes wide with disbelief, “you should, like, be cast in a horror movie.”
The four look at each other. Argyle snorts like the cashier had said the funniest thing in the world which he kind of had, unbeknownst to him as the man looked ready to push Argyle out of the store with a broom. Despite the generally removed tension from the air as Jonathan was starting to stand up to buy the map and Argyle was returning to whatever abyss he had previously been in, Mike couldn’t take his eyes off of Will. “What was that?” he murmurs, voice careful as if he were worried of scaring Will off. Mike rises to his feet, and for a moment, Will’s hazel eyes absorbed all the light in the world and stared back at him. He gulps.
“Nothing,” Will brushes off with such ease that it made Mike’s brow twitch with irritation. Mike offers a hand, and the other takes it. “I’m just gonna go in the van.” Despite making this announcement, Mike makes a point to follow Will as he exits the store. The other pauses. “Aren’t you going to keep asking the cashier about how far we are from Nevada?”
Mike waves a hand dismissively. Why was Will thinking about that right now? Did he forget about the entire incident that had just taken place? “Forget about that,” Mike rushes, “and don’t nothing me. That was really clearly not nothing.”
The two settle on the floor in the back of the van, and Mike kicks up his legs to rest on the seat ahead. Mike nudges his elbow into Will’s side enough to make him squirm, and the other eventually sounds a groan that Mike knows is the sound of defeat. The look on his face is nothing short of smug. “Fine, I just… I swear, it really wasn’t a big deal, but something isn’t right.” Will takes a breath, “everything was fine, and then the lights started flickering and… I couldn’t breathe and stuff.” He sighs, “but it was weird. The air wasn’t all particle-y like it is in the upside-down, and there weren’t any vines or stuff like that. I think maybe it was a panic attack? I’m not sure.”
“Regardless,” Mike interjects, “that’s not good. If that happens again, tell me, okay?” Will is silent. “Tell me,” Mike grits, and his finger pokes at the pressure point on Will’s side. The other writhes, gives a muffled laugh and says a collection of “okay, geez, I swear!” And Mike knew better than anyone how important it was that Will told someone about what was going on in that head of his. He knew better than anyone because Mike was the voice at the other end of Will’s walkie on those late nights where he couldn’t sleep. Where Will would wake up in a cold sweat and short of breath and he would say Mike, do you copy? in a shaking voice. This happened when they were twelve, after Will first returned from the upside-down. Then again when they were thirteen and Will was possessed by the mind-flayer. It was a tradition to the point where Mike would leave his walkie’s antenna extended before he went to sleep, just in case.
The van lurches as Jonathan and Argyle hop into the vehicle, and though both were stocked with an assortment of snacks that was downright dangerous for their health, they both looked as pale as ghosts.
“Change of plans,” Jonathan says, voice taut, “we’re going to Hawkins.” Mike sits up so quickly that he sees stars.
“What!” Mike exclaims as more of a shout than a question. “Wh- but, Nevada. El. The facility. El.”
“Yeah, About that….” Argyle scratches his neck, “you see that payphone there?” He motions to the payphone beside the entrance to the gas station, “we walked past it and like, dude, I swear this is some mafia shit but it starts ringing.”
“As phones do,” Jonathan contributes.
“And so I picked up and the person just says hand the phone to Jonathan, please and first of all, rude. Second of all, creepy!! Like, how did they see us?” Argyle’s eyes were wide, “dude, dude, it’s the birds. The birds! They’re fucking spying on us! Birds aren’t real.”
“The point,” Mike says dryly.
“The person on the phone, whoever they are, told us that if we want to see El, we need to go to Hawkins,” Jonathan debriefs. Mike’s eyes narrow.
“How do we know this isn’t some kind of decoy?” he starts, and something determined and steely was settling itself in his entire body. He ached at the thought of being apart from El any longer. Imagining her face through the barred glass in the back of that truck was simply killing him. The thought of that being the last time he would ever see her— “this is bullshit!”
“They claim her training is done,” Jonathan says calmly, “and that she is currently being taken to the threat, which is in Hawkins.”
“Hawkins is right on top of hell, I’m telling you,” Argyle starts.
“He’s not wrong,” Will mutters.
Mike opens his mouth, but as if reading his mind, Jonathan raises a calm hand, “they said if we go to Nevada now, we’ll miss our window to see El in Hawkins.”
Mike grits his teeth. They all were backed into a corner, and they knew it.
“Well,” Mike sighs, “better get a new map.”
____________________
After five hours of driving in the direction of Hawkins, the group decided to make a rest stop at a mall where Argyle and Jonathan ran off to satisfy some munchie cravings while Mike and Will didn’t necessarily have appetites at 11 PM. So, the pair decided to crawl onto the roof of the van, take a blanket with them, and look up at the sky.
Crawling on top of a van is harder than it sounds; Mike somehow maneuvered his way on top by crawling out of one of the windows and proceeded to hoist Will up with him. But, after all of the whining and scrambling, Will had to admit it was worth it now that he caught a glimpse of the view.
Given they were in the middle of an empty parking lot, there was no light pollution, no smog or clouds to cast a veil over the sea of stars above them. Will feels Mike scoot closer, closer, until their legs pressed together before he threw a blanket over the two of them. “So,” Will starts, voice timid to break the silence. His eyes gradually adjust to the pitch-darkness.
“So,” Mike echoes. There’s a pause. “Y’know, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about earlier.”
“Earlier?” Will questions, because at this point, he wasn’t sure about which earlier they were talking about. There was the earlier where Will had a panic-attack-possession-thing in the gas station, or the earlier where Will had a deserved melt-down in the skating rink, or the earlier at the airport when Will went in for a hug and Mike did not.
“The rink?” Mike clarifies. Will tenses. “Look, I know we already talked about this but… I just keep thinking about it.” Me too. “Sitting in this van for so many hours has… forced me to think.” Me too. “Do you remember last summer?”
“Yeah,” Will starts, “what fun we had. Remember when there was that gigantic monster that tried to kill us all?”
Mike laughs dryly, “best summer ever, huh?” A nearby streetlamp flickers to darkness. Will shivers. “Well… we got into that fight, right before everything went down. We never had time to talk about it because we were busy saving the world and then you moved to California and…”
“We lost touch,” Will adds, trying (and failing) to mask his bitterness. “But seriously, it’s fine, I mean, it was a year ago. We’re good.” No, we’re not.
Mike sighs, dissatisfied. “You say that, Will, but we essentially had the exact same fight back at the rink.” He props himself up on an elbow, the sound making a hollow clunk against the metal of the roof. Will can feel the other’s intense gaze on the side of his face, but he can’t bring himself to meet it. He gulps. “Are you… mad that El and I are dating?”
Will suddenly feels very, very nauseous. The whole point of the unrequited love trope was that the heartbreaker was oblivious and dense. Mike was putting the pieces together when he wasn’t supposed to. How was this fair? “No,” Will manages to squeeze out of his closing throat, “why would I be?” That question was hilarious. Will could think of about a thousand reasons.
“I dunno, maybe…” There’s a pause, a long pause, and finally, Will forces himself to turn to Mike. The other only stared upwards at the sky, the star’s dim glow illuminating his side profile. “Is it that you like El?”
Truly, Will was temporarily shocked to the bone.
Then, he snorted. And it could be the sleep deprivation or the insanity of the past few days, but Will started laughing. Laughing laughing, the kind that makes your head hurt afterwards, and if his eyes weren’t squeezed shut tight, he would get to see Mike’s astounded expression for himself. “Seriously?” Will manages. “No, no no no. We’re like— basically siblings now. That’s practically incest!”
“Dude, gross,” Mike says, hand swatting at Will’s shoulder, and in the heat of the moment he seemed to be laughing with him. “Then, what is it?”
What is it, he asks?
Will thinks of the times where it felt like the only people alive were him and Mike. When they would stay up late talking on their walkies, way before El was in the picture. And when El was in the picture but they still made it work, still played D&D and chased each other down the street and rode their bikes to the pool on summer days. Will thinks of the look in Mike’s eyes when he looks at El and aching to be in her place, thinks of how being with the two of them was slowly killing him.
Will says none of this. Instead, he says, “I guess I just miss how it was.” This wasn’t an entire evasion. “I miss when I wasn’t a third wheel but… I know that isn’t fair to put on you, so. I’m sorry for making a scene at the rink.” He left out the bit where it was his birthday as he felt that was too tragic to weave into his explanation.
“I miss how it was, too,” Mike echoes. “Not to make this about me, but El and I haven’t been the same lately.”
“I overheard your fight,” Will admits meekly as after all, overheard was an understatement (putting his ear to the door was more accurate).
Mike sounds tired as he says, “I don’t get it. I mean, I still care about her. Really care about her. But signing all of my letters with love Mike just doesn’t feel right? Is that normal?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Will mutters. He doesn’t have to look over to know that Mike cracked a flash of a smile. And Will hated himself for it, but this uncertainty was leading to that tiny sliver of hope. Maybe it hadn’t all been in his head. Maybe Mike really would like him some day. The scenarios were nothing short of torture.
“It’s whatever, but, that’s not the point. The point is, you’re right. I should’ve written you letters and I should’ve done anything other than what I did. And… Will.” Mike’s hand brushes against Will’s, intentionally or not, and it’s enough for him to turn his head and find the other already looking at him. Through the darkness, Will can see how Mike’s eyes are filled with stars. “I really did mean it when I said you’re my best friend.”
Call him weak, because he is, but an army of butterflies found themselves in Will’s stomach. Will knew the explanation wasn’t perfect as El had a stack of letters on her desk and Will had none, but he didn’t need perfect. They were accident-prone teenagers, and in this moment, the explanation was enough.
“Good,” Will whispers, not daring to break their eye contact, “let’s keep it that way.”
Mike’s lips curl upwards. “You can’t get rid of me so easily, Byers.”
Then, that was the end of the heart-to-heart. They settled into lighter conversations, like music and Nancy’s dating life and Hawkins High students, and once again, Will felt like he and Mike were the only ones in the world.
____________________
For the maybe the first time in three years, when Will blinked his eyes awake, he felt… peaceful.
He’d become accustomed to waking up in a cold sweat or with the too-familiar sensation of panic, but at this moment, he felt calm. As his consciousness gradually shakes itself awake, Will yawns and takes in his surroundings. He’d fallen asleep mid-day again, probably due to the fact he hadn’t slept a wink the previous night following his strange episode in the gas station. Mike attempted to stay up the whole night with him, a brave endeavor that was nearly successful until he hit four in the morning. Will yawns again. Maybe he could sleep just a bit longer. He turns his head to further bury it into the seat cushion…
But the seat cushion tensed. And smelled vaguely like cedar cologne.
Disoriented, Will was ripped out of whatever sleepiness was left in him and all but tore his head away from what he discovered to be Mike’s shoulder. Did he wake up in some twisted romantic comedy? The pace of his heartbeat had to be unhealthy.
“Uh,” Will stammers, and he was sure his face resembled a tomato. He doesn’t miss the goddamn smirk his brother shoots him in the rearview mirror. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to-”
“It’s fine,” Mike interjects, and for some reason, he seemed bashful. “Really, I…” his voice trails off and he mumbles, “I didn’t mind.”
Well, great. Just great. This was going to be a scene Will mentally replayed for about the rest of his life.
Will pursed his lips before he could incriminate himself further, trying to ignore the fact that his entire body felt as if it were on fire, and watched as Argyle pulled the van aside at a rest stop. “You should call your mom,” Jonathan addresses to Mike. “We’re gonna ask to crash at your place.”
And, just like that, Mike was hopping out the van with a handful of quarters to use the payphone, and within the millisecond he was out of earshot, Argyle and Jonathan turned around to face Will at light speed. “So?” Jonathan prefaces.
“So?” Will mimics.
“Did you finally tell Mike how you feel?” Jonathan says in a stupidly loud voice. Will was sure he was turning all shades of pink as he said,
“What? Are you- What do you mean?” It was a good thing Will never considered pursuing acting. Or lying.
“Oh come on,” Jonathan groans, “it is so painfully obvious.”
“For serious,” Argyle chimes, “I mean, you fell asleep on his shoulder and he might as well have been giggling like a little girl.”
“That is not-” Will pauses. Then, in a hopeful voice, “wait, really?”
Before Jonathan could attempt to act wise and give any Older Brother Advice, Mike was hiking up the van’s steps to find the trio staring at him like a collection of deer in headlights. He blinks. “What, were you just talking about me?”
“No,” they say too-quickly in unison. Mike narrows his eyes.
“Okaaaay,” he says slowly. “Anyways… my mom said that she’s happy I’m coming home because apparently there’s some kind of police investigation going on?”
“Police investigation?” Will prods.
“Yeah, like… she said Nancy and Steve and everybody ran away from the police?? It’s all really confusing-”
Before Will could listen any further, that dread took control once again. The world as he knew it faded away, and all that was left was him and his own terror. His throat felt tight, his lungs felt small, and he felt as if he was slowly sinking to the ocean floor. He forced his eyes open from where they were squeezed shut, his first mistake as he was faced with the sight of that grandfather clock from earlier, but this time being mantled within the overgrown grass on the side of the highway. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. There was something ominous and out-of-tune in the way the clock chimed. Like a bell signifying an execution. It was the sound of doom, Will decided, as he watched the hair stand up on his arms.
Then, he was surprised to turn and see Mike looking directly at him. His breath catches as that kind look that was once in Mike’s dark irises was wiped clean, and it was as if he were staring into two bottomless pits. Will gulps. “Mike?” he whispers hoarsely.
Mike’s head tilts at an unnatural angle before correcting itself. His eyes were unfocused until suddenly, they snapped in on Will with such intensity it actually made him jump. Mike looked like a predator in the way he stared at Will with such fury and disgust and desire to see his demise. “Look in the mirror, Will,” he says, voice so ugly and so gritty it sounded almost inhuman. “Look in the mirror,” Mike hisses. Out of fear, Will obliges, shaking as he turned to face the rearview mirror. His jaw clenches at the sight he was met with: across his forward was the word FAGGOT written in red sharpie. Suddenly, Will’s breaths feel very shallow, and he was too stunned to say a word.
“You deserve it,” Mike jeers, lips twisting in a sadistic smile, “and you know you deserve it, don’t you, Will? God, you disgust me.”
Will feels himself trembling from head to toe as he remembered that day, that day when he was thirteen when he was pushed against that locker, when those bullies took a marker to his forehead just like this, when Mike found him sobbing in a bathroom stall refusing to come out. But the Mike he was looking at now had no such compassion. “After all,” Mike continues, voice low as he leans forward. The shadows completely over his face until he looks demonic, and Will flinches, backs away, his exhale coming out as a scared whimper. “You’re nothing better than an ugly fag. A disease.”
“Please,” Will whispers, and he doesn’t know what he’s asking for, only that he’s remembering that day too well. His eyes beg to tear up, but he’s too scared to cry. All he can do is cover his eyes with the palms of his trembling hands. He feels himself spiraling into the darkness, lets it swallow him whole. A disease. Hearing those words leave Mike’s mouth was a worse sentence than Will’s worst nightmares. Just go away, he thinks, hands pressing harder against his closed lids, go away go away go away-
Then, the ticking and chiming were gone, but Will didn’t care. He didn’t take his hands away from his eyes until he felt someone shaking him, grabbing at him, calling his name. The van had come to a screeching halt.
He abruptly lifts his head fast enough to see Mike’s eyes, no longer bottomless pits, staring at him and filled with endless amounts of concern. “What’s going on?” Mike murmurs, voice soft, gentle. Will didn’t realize he was hyperventilating until he entirely returned to reality, enough to feel how his nails dug into his palms enough to leave marks, enough to see how Argyle and Jonathan looked both concerned and terrified. Will didn’t realize his eyes were filled with unspilled tears until the world became blurry and his throat felt tight again.
“Nothing,” Will squeezes out, but it sounded pathetic, muddled, drowning as he stood and ignored Jonathan’s sounds of alarm and Mike’s attempts to pull him to sit beside him. Will instead ignored them altogether. “I need to go,” he finds himself whispering, the words slipping past his lips before he realized it, “I need, I need to go-”
“Will, just- hold on, would you?” Jonathan was pleasing, and he was wearing that fearful look Will had seen too many times. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t possibly sit in this van a second longer, the very thought was making him shudder with dread. He felt the sweat gathering on his brow slide down the side of his face as he stumbled down the van’s stairs onto the hard surface of the empty highway the van had haphazardly come to a stop on thanks to Will’s antics. His vision was coming and going, as if he were about to faint, yet he didn’t feel lightheaded. The sun was too bright.
The sounds of his friends calling after him and scrambling to catch up were in his periphery, as if he were underwater. Will trudges onwards, and in the distance he can see a “road closed” sign along with an assortment of caution tape. A gust of wind shakes the tall trees lining the highway, but before Will could investigate further, he blinked, and opened his eyes to a world he knew all too well.
No.
No.
The horror immediately took over his body as he looked backwards and forwards, squeezed his eyes shut and prayed this was a hallucination or anything other than reality, but no matter how hard he pressed against his closed eyelids, his circumstances remained. Will didn’t have to look hard to know: he was in the upside-down. Dark vines snaked along the road and lead into oblivion, distant shrieks of nightmarish creatures ringing into the ashy atmosphere.
“Will.”
There was that voice again, the voice he’d heard in the gas station. He whirls around, but is met with nothing aside from the start of an ominous forest. He gulps. “Will. It’s time.” As if on cue, the dreadful sound of the grandfather clock invaded his senses like a sinister alarm, begging for him to escape. Will feels his lungs deflate as he tries to force his oxygen-deprived brain into comprehension.
Before he could find an escape route within the few seconds he was given, he felt a strong force grip his wrist, strong enough to make him cry out. Forcibly, he is turned around to face his attacker.
The dread drops to Will’s stomach so fast he felt nauseous. The person, the thing that had a grip on him wreaked of despair with such intensity that Will’s entire body went rigid. “I’ve waited a long time to see you,” the man, the demon hisses in that low, agonizing voice. His pale lips part to reveal a row of black, sparse teeth. The talons of his hand dig into the flesh of Will’s wrist, and he flinches. “But now, it’s time for your pain to end.”
“No!” Will squeezes out, and tries to look anywhere, anywhere but those hallow eyes and that inhuman form before him. He gives his arm an experimental yank, but as he does so, the demon hums a displeased sound and digs in its talons further until Will hears himself screaming, writhing as the pain was blinding, making him see spots. He had half a mind to feel the blood dripping onto his shoes. “Please,” he sobs, and the piercing stops only for the claws, covered in his own blood, to be replaced at his throat. His body was limp, giving in to the cruelty of his situation as the demon’s black pupils bore into his own.
“Give in,” the demon hisses, and Will chokes as he feels the claws snake around his throat, cold and slimy, unforgiving. Weakly, his hands try to grab at the long fingers, but he was so feeble that the demon sneered at his attempts. He feels his feet leave the ground and watches as the creature extends his arm into the air, hand still tight around Will’s throat, leaving Will’s form dangling. “I know how hard it’s been for you,” the demon purrs. “But you know they’re better off without you.” The grip tightens, and Will sees stars. “You’ve been nothing but an outsider ever since your friends went to hell trying to save you all those years ago. For what? Just for you to be left out?” Will chokes. “Did you really think that boy would ever love you? I’m doing you a favor, Will. You will always be an outsider.”
Will feels his arms slowly slump to his sides as his body was too exhausted to keep up with his frantic thoughts until all that remained was the feeling of terror settling itself deep in his bones. He felt a mixture of tears and sweat pour down his face as he heaved his final attempt at a failed breath before his eyes slid closed on their own accord, and the world went dark.
____________________
When Will was twelve, he and Jonathan exchanged a moment he would never forget. It was after a session of Dungeons & Dragons in Mike’s basement where Will’s cheeks still ached from smiling and his stomach hurt from laughing. As Will slipped into his brother’s car, he hardly had the chance to shut the passenger’s door behind him before his brother spoke.
“There are two kinds of people in this world, Will,” Jonathan starts. Even through the darkness, Will could see the crease to Jonathan’s brow even as he was faced away. The radio wasn’t on. Jonathan always had the radio on. “Idiots, and self-aware idiots.”
Quiet, Will followed his brother’s line of sight that lead him to the Wheeler’s front door. Nancy Wheeler and Steve Harrington stood, seemingly parting for the night. Even from yards away, Will could sense the laughter and warmth between the two as neither seemed able to say goodbye to the other. Will had never heard Jonathan talk about Nancy before, and he before this moment, he wasn’t aware that the two had even interacted before. But suddenly, he understood it all, it was written on Jonathan’s face plain for him to see.
“Which are you?” Will starts, voice timid. He was twelve; he didn’t fully grasp the intensity of Jonathan’s gaze and the want and yearn that was imbedded within it.
“It depends,” Jonathan says dryly, “but right now, I’m feeling pretty self-aware.” If looks could kill, Steve Harrington would be dead on the floor. Even Will could tell that much.
____________________
After living a life out of a Stephen King novel, Mike was pretty accustomed to things being fine one second and very not fine the next.
This moment was the latter.
“Holy shit! Holy fucking shit!” Argyle was wailing, successfully communicating Mike’s current thoughts. One second ago, Will was walking down the street, as pale as if he’d seen a ghost (which would honestly be a lot more normal than what was currently going down). Then, suddenly, his eyes were rolling back in his head and he was thrown up into the air. It was something out of a movie, so sudden it was almost humorous if it weren’t for the dread thick in the air.
Through the panic and through Argyle’s progress in cursing his way through the alphabet, Mike forced himself to think. His best friend was currently levitating in the air after having two kind of panic attacks. Then, it clicked. The answer was in the phone call he shared with his mother just minutes ago. Frantically, Mike closes his eyes and tries to recount the information shared.
A police investigation. Of course, any investigation in Hawkins, of all places, should not be overlooked. She mentioned his friends being over. Dustin, Lucas, Max… that girl won’t stop listening to music, she says. Then it clicks.
Music. Maybe that wasn’t a coincidence.
“Jonathan!” Mike finds himself screeching, “go to the van! Play Will’s favorite song, now!” After being in enough life-or-death situations, Jonathan doesn’t question the demands, and instead scrambles to the van while Argyle stared up at their levitating friend.
Mike follows after the other, practically throwing himself in the back seat to look for anything that may be of use. He throws aside his bags, his heart racing in his ears. Then, as if by fate, he felt a cardboard tube roll across the floor and bump against his knee. Open it, something told him.
Maybe this could be a tool to help him, he rationalizes as he tears the painting out of its tube. A note flutters out and falls on his thigh, and if he weren’t in such a hurry, he decided he could stare at this painting for hours. The meticulous paint strokes, the care. It was beautiful, and it didn’t take long for Mike to realize he was staring at a portrait of his own face.
He forces himself to set the painting aside and run his eyes over the note.
I hope you like this! I swear I’m not trying to be creepy, but I guess I just wanted to give this to you as a thank you? How weird am I, giving someone else a present on my birthday… Mike’s heart sank. But anyways, I wanted to thank you for sticking with me, through all of the stranger things that have been thrown at us. I’ll keep this short, but turn over the note, please?
Hands shaking, Mike obliged.
I like you.
If Mike wasn’t pumped with adrenaline and desperation, he would’ve stopped and stared at the ceiling and kicked his feet and squealed and screamed into a pillow for at least a half hour, but now he had no time. He felt as if he could implode after absorbing this information that his friend was about to die, but also that said friend liked him? And gave him a painting? And that it was his birthday and Mike forgot?
But life was cruel, and there was no time to think. Mike tried to push down his infinite list of questions and use his curiosity as a source of determination. His hands enclose around a golf club.
Finally, Jonathan’s fumbling with the music tapes relents, and there’s a click of the track playing before Jonathan turns up the volume knob to the max.
Darling you’ve got to let me know
Should I stay or should I go?
No one takes a breath as the gritty guitar blasts through the van speakers, yet Will remained suspended in the air. But Mike was noticing something dripping down from his body onto the road.
Blood.
“It’s not working!” Mike screams over the music, but he doesn’t wait for Jonathan’s confirmation to all but throw himself onto the street. His feet were racing, slapping against the pavement in desperation as his eyes settled on a row of caution tape ahead.
If you say that you are mine
I’ll be here ‘till the end of time
Mike could feel the darkness of the upside-down before he approached the caution tape bordering where the road gave way, where the red tissue embedded itself within the concrete. Before Mike could let any fear penetrate his iron will, he remembered why he was doing this: for Will. For Will— God, he was realizing he would do anything to get him back to safety—
And so, Mike raised his gold club high over his head, and let it drop with all the force he could muster.
So you got to let me know
Should I stay or should I go?
____________________
The darkness was fading in and out of Will’s vision, washing over him like a dark veil before retracting like a wave. He could still feel how his feet were suspended in the air, how his blood was dripping onto the ground. He felt something within him popping, breaking, but his screams and cries died in his throat. The pain was so plentiful that it felt dull altogether, numb. Will was sure it was only a matter of time before he died.
He swore he could see the light forming before his eyes—
Until suddenly, he was falling, falling from where he was suspended and his knees were on the hard concrete. Will was grasping at his own throat, choking, hardly having time to process the confusion before there were hands grabbing him by the shirt and yanking him to his feet. “Will!” The voice was bright, new, and so full of life that it somehow gave Will enough energy to forget the fact that he probably had a broken bone somewhere and that he was a second away from death. His hazing vision cleared enough to see Mike, Mike, his knight in shining armor with a golf club held with such determination that it may as well be a deadly weapon.
Will’s mind was waking up as Mike still had fistfuls of his shirt, and he watched as his friend took heaving breaths that made his chest rise and fall, his bangs sticking to the sweat of his forehead.
It’s always tease, tease, tease
You’re happy when I’m on my knees
The demon makes a guttural, displeased hiss that signified that Mike had likely hit him with the golf club whilst Will was being choked to death, and the questions of how there was music playing, how Mike got here, and why Will was here in the first place faded away as Mike motivated him with a final cry, “run!”
Will feels Mike’s hands pressing against him, pushing at him to run towards the breach in the dark haze of the upside-down.
Well, come on and let me know
Should I stay or should I go?
He ran, forced his tired legs into submission as he raced to freedom where he could somehow see his own suspended body with his brother and Argyle screaming at him. He jumped over vines, dodged as their inhuman hands groped at him, begging to take him down into their misery. But he was full of life, so determined to return to the world as he knew it—
And just as he penetrated through the breach, his vision fizzled away.
The world returned to him in layers. First, with the sound his own body made as he impacted the ground. Then, the prickle of pain, in his ankle, in his arm, in his neck. There were arms, a sea of them, of his brother practically clinging to him in desperation and of Argyle having a death grip around his good arm.
His eyes fluttered open, and suddenly, his entire body felt heavy, like he had run a thousand miles. Jonathan’s lips were stretched over the most relieved smile in the world while Argyle looked about ready to pass out, and Will feels himself relax in their hold.
“Wait,” Will says, voice raspy, probably from nearly being choked to death, “where’s, where’s Mike?”
Jonathan and Argyle meet eyes. “He went after you,” Jonathan says calmly. He squeezes his hand. “He somehow found an opening into the upside-down and…”
Before Will could spiral into the umpteenth cycle of horror, he heard the sound of metal hitting the ground. He cranes his neck, then winces, as he strains to see behind him where Mike had dropped his battered golf club and was racing to the others. Will tried to lift himself, and failed as his body was too exhausted, but he didn’t need to as Mike was racing to the other, dropping himself to the ground where Will laid and practically throwing himself on the other.
Will had so much to say. So much gratitude to pour out, so many apologies, so much, but it all muddled in his throat as he felt Mike’s arms wrap around him tight. He felt his friend’s cheek press against his hair, a sign this hug was one that was going to last, and he feels his body relax further. The shock wore off, and the truth slowly settled in. Images of the thing, and its talons, and the waves of pain hit him all at once. Will buries his face further in Mike’s shoulder, lets the smell of him and his cologne wash over his senses.
Maybe it was childish, and maybe it was naive, but Will felt safe here, in Mike’s arms. Mike, who risked everything to save Will. Mike, who would always be the first to catch him when he fell. Will clings tighter, and he didn’t realize he was crying until he felt himself shaking, and felt his chest constrict. Mike didn’t let go, didn’t question it. A hesitant, warm hand traces his spine, and Will can’t do anything but hold on and cry. No one says a word as Will sobs, and the sounds are physically painful as they leave his throat. “I’m, I’m sorry,” Will whines, his body trembling in Mike’s arms.
“Shh,” is Mike’s response, voice slow, gentle. “You have nothing to be sorry about, Will. Nothing at all.” And that was reassuring enough. For now, this was perfect; Mike was rocking back and forth, and slowly, Will’s hiccups and cries dissipated. His fears and insecurities melted into the ground, and even as it was cold and his entire body hurt and ached, he felt safe. He could stay here forever, he thinks.
Will let his eyes drift closed, peacefully this time, thinking about nothing other than how softly Mike said his name, and how warm his arms were.