Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s hot. It’s not any hotter than California, but something about the way the sun hits the yellow sand of the Nevada desert is different than the way it hits the crisp grass of Lenora Hills.

Motionless cars circle around him and the shiny black SUV he’s sitting atop, one leg bent against his chest and the other dangling down, almost close enough to brush the dust below but falling short an inch or two. He doesn’t remember whose car this is.

Mike is… fine. He’s content, which is more than he could’ve hoped to say an hour earlier, but it doesn’t feel like enough.

He watches as El reunites with everyone. She laughs even as the drying tears on her face glisten and her smile stretches across her blotchy cheeks, unobscured by any wisps of hair. She’s beautiful.

So, why isn’t he ecstatic?

Mike had just traveled over four hundred miles—that’s over six hours hunkered down in the backseat of a goddamn pizza delivery van while sitting a foot away from his best friend, with two of the world’s most obnoxious stoners piloting the thing all the way there—and that’s only a third of what he’s traveled by pizza delivery van in the past few days.

He did all of that willingly just to get El back to safety and into his arms again, but here he sits on the hood of a car, overheated and arms empty.

He watches as Eddie, who’s here for some reason that he really should’ve been paying more attention to when it was being explained to him, punches Steve in the arm for saying something stupid. He watches Dustin punch him too, then Robin.

It’s a really long and stupidly oversaturated story, but they’re all here now. 

Dustin, Lucas, Max, Nancy, Steve, Erica, and Robin are here from back home in Hawkins. Oh, yeah, and Eddie—again, he’s not really sure why. 

Mrs. Byers and Hopper, who, woah, he needs time to unpack that whole ordeal, are here from Russia, apparently. He thinks they’re all wanted criminals now? He’s a little fuzzy on the details.

He, Will, Jonathan, and Argyle are here from Salt Lake City in Utah. Actually, they’re here from California then from Utah… They’re here from both.

Lastly, Eleven has been here the whole time, because the old lab people have been keeping her in a secret underground facility in the middle of nowhere, Nevada, to restore her powers. NINA, it seems, was her friend all along.

Everyone’s crowded around with their cars scattered and abandoned in favor of catching up with each other, and for some, meeting for the first time. There’s a closed or shut-down gas station a few hundred yards from where they stand, but other than that there’s nothing around for miles except smooth fine sand, the slopes of hills, and a nearly clear sky.

It’s been rough for all of them, they deserve this calmer lull. 

Mike’s the only one by his lonesome. 

It’s been at least a few days since he’s had a proper shower—he’s only been able to wipe down his sweaty neck and whatever other visible parts of his body with paper towels in the rare clean convenience store bathroom they came across during their trip. He feels gross, and he probably is gross.

He already said hello to everyone. He just wants to sit right now.

It’s just... He feels weird, and he doesn’t know why. “Weird” has been his primary emotion for at least a year now but it’s been a lot worse the past week. It’s probably just the excitement of seeing El and the stress of everything that came right after it.

God, the sun really does feel different here, doesn’t it? Even the sky seems off.

“Hi.” 

He feels someone plop down next to him on his left, disturbing the hood of the car before it adjusts itself to the new weight, squeaking, and Mike takes a second before he looks over to the source of the sound.

“Oh. Hey, Will.”

“Did I interrupt something? You seemed pretty deep in thought there.” 

Will knocks his shoulder against Mike’s while his arms lay stiffly in his lap and his legs hang down, matching the position of one of Mike’s. Mike switches to put both his legs up against his chest now. 

He keeps forgetting how deep Will’s voice has gotten, and it’s kind of unnerving, but not bad.

“Um, sort of. It’s whatever.” He thinks about knocking Will’s shoulder back, but instead he just shrugs a little.

Will’s eyebrows twitch almost imperceptibly and he asks, “You okay?”

Mike wishes he would break eye contact with him for just a second because he feels a little suffocated. He also feels just a little bit like he can breathe even clearer now. 

He looks down at his lap. “I’m just… I—don’t know.” It’s not dishonest, it’s about the best description of his feelings he can come up with right now. 

He hangs one of his legs back down, the opposite of the one before, and he can almost feel the ground on the toe of his shoe but it’s just not quite there. All the dust he might’ve kicked up is already settled.

“If you wanna talk, I’m here. I mean, I know this shit’s crazy, I’ve been here the whole time.” Will laughs awkwardly. The sunshine grazes his hair more gracefully than it does most things, and Mike’s fingers itch to touch it, but he could never be as gentle as the light.

Mike looks back up at him. “Yeah, um, I don’t really know what to say.” 

Will smiles, small and little sad. “That’s okay. You don’t have to say anything.”

Mike wonders briefly if Will’s legs reach the ground, and if he would hear the crunch of dirt shifting if they did.

Of all people to come by at that moment, it’s Eddie, who walks over to the SUV they’re perched on. He’s almost sauntering, but that’s usually how he walks, to be fair.

“Wheeler.” He nods in greeting. 

“Munson.” As much as he likes Eddie, Mike’s honestly not sure if he’s in the mood for this.

Eddie looks over to Will and gasps dramatically, stumbling back and clutching his chest. “Is this… No, it can’t be!” He looks him over as if scanning him. “Same bowl cut, same birthmarks, same kind aura—This must be the famous William Byers!”

Will furrows his brows and laughs. “Sorry, but, who are you? And why do you know what I look like?”

“Has Michael not told you all about me? For shame, Wheeler!” He points and scolds him. “I, Will the Wise, am Eddie Munson A.K.A Eddie the Banished, Dungeon Master and head of Hellfire Club. It is, of course, an honor to meet your acquaintance.”

He bows so low he almost falls over. 

“ Oh, Mike has told me about you, actually.” Will grins and looks him up and down to take in his full appearance.

Mike’s really sweaty. He wishes he had another shirt somewhere.

He didn’t actually tell Will about Eddie until sometime a few hours into the first car ride when they were trying to think of anything to occupy themselves. He seemed a little upset that he’d joined a new party, but also happy for him.

“I am delighted to meet your acquaintance as well, Mr. Munson,” Will says in a fake fancy voice and bows as well as he can while staying sat on the car. “You didn’t answer how you know what I look like, though,” he says in his normal voice.

“Oh, well, I saw pictures.” Eddie squints and winks at Mike. What’s that supposed to mean? So what, he described how his best friend looks to him, big deal. 

“Anyway, I came over here because according to uh…” He points a thumb behind him. “I don’t know—someone over there, we’re the only two people here that haven’t met yet, so… Pleased to meet, and have met, you.”

“Anyone ever tell you you’re really weird, Ed?” Mike teases and kicks his leg out toward him but Eddie hops back before he can hit him.

“No, me? You must be joking!” Eddie gasps. “Weird? Why, never!” He feigns outrage at the suggestion.

Will looks back and forth between the two of them with a funny expression, like he can’t quite figure out what’s going on.

There’s a few seconds of silence.

Will clears his throat. “Well, it’s great to meet you, Eddie. Always good to meet another player.”

“Are you currently in a party?”

Will opens his mouth and hesitates. “Uh—um, no. Not right now.”

“Ah, well, that’s a shame. I’ve heard many great stories about you, cleric. Perhaps you’ll find one to join soon, or hey, maybe you’ll even start a party of your own.”

Will sputters for a moment, “Uh, yeah. Yeah, maybe I will.”

Mike can’t stop his head from snapping to look at him. He knows it’s stupid and hypocritical and doesn’t even make any sense, but Mike was hoping… Well, Will had told him it’d be impossible for him to join another party, so…

“Anyway, I should get back because those idiots couldn’t survive five goddamn minutes without me. They’re scared I’m gonna go and get myself incriminated for murder again if they don’t keep an eye out.” Eddie looks over his shoulder to where Dustin and Lucas are play-wrestling while Steve cheers them on and Erica begrudgingly keeps score. “Trust me, they need me. ‘Kay, see ya later.”

Will’s glad they have an extra person to watch over them and play D&D with, but he sometimes wishes he could still be that person.

Mike and Will’s “Bye” s overlap as they watch Eddie skip away to his little family of fiends, but he turns back around at the last second to say, “Oh, and Mike?”

“Yeah?”

“Good luck.” 

He winks again and smirks like he knows something Mike doesn’t. He looks back at him, confused—good luck with what?

“He’s, uh, interesting,” Will says after he’s gone, swinging his legs idly. A beam of light falls on his eyes perfectly and Mike can see all the hidden tones and spots sprinkled in his irises. He wonders if anyone else even thinks to look at them close enough to see the little details.

“He’s cool. He’s actually really smart once you get to know him, like, street smart. He sucks ass at school.”

“Yeah, he seems… I’m sure he’s great.” Will sends him a tiny smile.

They sit comfortably in silence for a few minutes and the heat of the sun is slathered over Mike’s skin like gross, gooey Vaseline. Is nobody else burning up right now? He thinks he could peel the warmth off in one big sheet if he tried hard enough. Will doesn’t seem nearly as affected.

In the distance he sees waves of sunlight stirring the horizon into one curving plane of color. He looks at the layers of sand crusted onto the tires of the vehicles around him then picks up his shoe to see if the ground had the same effect on his sole. It did. He closes his eyes and sees yellow splotches of brightness reflected on his eyelids, and decides to keep them closed.

Mike suddenly remembers something and opens his eyes to look at Will. 

“Hey, Will-”

No. No no no no no. They would’ve known if it was going to happen, they would’ve seen the signs, just like what they said happened to Max. There’s no way. 

There’s no way.

On the hood of the car to the side of Mike, Will sits unusually stiffly. His eyes have become reddened and his pupils face upward to the sky, lids fluttering rapidly over them.

“Will? Will!” Mike jumps off, grips his arm and shakes him once, then shakes him even harder when he gets no response. Will faces ahead blankly, unaware of the outside world, and his eyes are so pink and unnatural looking. Mike feels something fall deep, deep down into the pit of his stomach.

 No, how could he not have noticed this was going to happen? Why didn’t Will tell him? Why doesn’t he trust Mike anymore?

“Fuck—Will!”

Only a handful of the people that are still chatting notice his yelling and look over.

“Guys, it’s Will, he’s getting him, guys! He’s—help! Somebody fucking help!” He’s screaming so loud that he already feels the tissue of his vocal cords begging him to stop, but he can’t, not right now. He’s waving his arms around and gesturing wildly to try to get someone to fucking come over here .

Several of them begin sprinting over as soon as he starts yelling, but a few need a moment to compute that this is an emergency and that he needs them here right the fuck now .

“Oh god, oh shit, no, no, not him too, no,” Max says, slipping one headphone off her ear once she gets an unobstructed view of what’s happening. She’s the only one here who’s actually experienced this firsthand.

“Will? Will?” Jonathan pushes between other bodies and bumps multiple shoulders to get up closer.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.” Eddie grabs at his scalp hard enough to pull some hairs free while Lucas and Dustin speak over each other with different variations of “Shit, shit, shit,”, “Oh my god, oh my god,”, and screams of “Will!”

Chapter Text

Bathing in the dry desert sun, Will sways his legs while they hang off the top of a random SUV. They’d just finished talking to the head of Mike’s new D&D party, Eddie, and… he’s alright, strange for sure, but alright. 

He seemed to know a lot about Will, huh? Does Mike talk about him that much back home? Has he really shown people pictures of him?

“He’s, uh, interesting,” Will says after Eddie is far enough away not to hear.

A breeze sweeps Mike’s hair and a few strands skim across his cheek. The new length looks good on him. “He’s cool. He’s actually really smart once you get to know him. Like, street smart. He sucks ass at school.”

He watches another gust of wind nudge Mike’s hair, who moves it out of the way with his fingers this time. Yeah, the hair suits him.

Will smiles, small and genuine and all for him. “Yeah, he seems… I’m sure he’s great.”

The sun reflects in Mike’s eyes just right, a perfect amount of light to illuminate what’s already there and reveal bright yellows and greens and even some shades of blue. Will wonders if anyone else notices all of the hues in there or if everyone else just sees a sea of brown.

Will gets hit with an inexplicable feeling of bravery that he can only blame on the insanity of the past few days—and maybe those eyes. 

“Hey, Mike?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you, um…” He already feels hot under the collar but he trudges on. “You know the painting I brought with me to the airport?”

Mike's eyebrows edge closer together. “The rolled-up thing?”

“Yeah, uh, I actually made it for you, I just didn’t give it to you when I was going to because I was scared—and I, um…” 

Why is he doing this? He didn’t plan on doing this, he could stop right now, he could just give him the painting and not say anything. That wouldn’t have to mean anything.

Mike waits for him to keep talking.

Something’s keeping him talking, and he feels like maybe it’s too late to stop.

“W-What is happening?” Mrs. Byers scurries up to him. “Will, baby, can you hear me? I’m right here, Will?” She runs her palm across his cheek and smooths it over his hair but the only thing she gets in return is the flickering of lids over bloodshot eyes. She turns around to face everyone else but keeps her hand on his head. “Someone tell me what the hell is happening to my son!”

Jonathan seems a little out of it but he manages to come over and put a hand on his mom’s shoulder for comfort, and he whispers something in her ear.

“It—it… oh fuck, the thing that we talked about!” Steve gestures around while he struggles to explain.

When everyone got here they all did their best to catch each other up on their respective situations, but you can only go into so much detail in such a short amount of time.

El walks up and says in a small voice, “Will?” She sidles up next to Joyce and Jonathan then lays a hand on Will’s shoulder, looking into his blank face.

“ What is wrong with my son? ” Mrs. Byers asks again, louder this time, clearly on the brink of something that only her other son is pulling her away from.

“Will one of you idiots grab a goddamn cassette?” Erica yells over all the other chatter.

Mike keeps waiting for him to continue. 

“And I… I painted it because, um…” Will can’t tell if he’s stalling or if he actually can’t find the words he’s looking for, even though he’s the one talking.

“Will, It’s okay, you can talk to me.” Mike puts his hand over Will’s own where it shakes on top of his thigh, and the trembling stops.

He inhales a shuddering breath. Okay, it’s just Mike. It’s just Mike. At the very least he’ll understand and be nice about it.

“Fuck, okay. I’m in love with you, Mike.”

He’s not as nervous as he was before but he still feels that horrible flipping sensation in his heart as he watches Mike’s eyebrows grow even closer together.

He starts to explain himself but it’s more of a ramble than anything else. “I—I think I might’ve always been in love with you, like, since the day we met on the swingset, I just didn’t know it. Actually, that sorta relates to the painting, but um—I know it now, Mike, and I was afraid to tell you because I know how much El loves you and if you don’t feel the same I completely understand, I just-“

Mike takes his hand off his.

“So you’re a queer?”

There’s so much venom in his voice that Will feels his body try to lurch it from his system right away. He feels sick, he can feel himself grow as pale as a ghost and even more invisible. 

No, Mike wouldn’t do this. He can’t do this.

Will watches his face—he looks completely disgusted, and he looks angry. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen that expression on Mike, especially not directed at him.

His body grows colder, no longer a nervously heated blush, just a terrified empty husk, sweaty and much too frigid.

“ Mike,” he whispers and hears his own voice crack. There’s already a hard lump forming just behind his adam’s apple and his nose begins to sting sharply.

“Are you joking? Is this a joke?”

He swears the sun stopped hitting his eyes like it did before, now they’re just dark and chilling, devoid of any color.

“ No, Mike, please-“

“That’s disgusting, Will. Did you seriously think I’d love you back? And what, that we’d get together? Become a couple?” He gets up off of the car and stands in front of him, his anger now palpable in the air.

“No, of course not, I just wanted to tell you,” Will sobs, his eyes prickle as the wind hits them and he blinks the tears out so they fall down his face, creating a slight tickle on his skin when the drops start sliding down his neck. 

“Erica!” Lucas scolds her.

“I’m just being reasonable!” 

Mike is starting to get itchy with panic and his heart is palpitating. He hasn’t said anything and he doesn’t know what to say, his throat is dry and he’s just standing there doing nothing.

Nancy steps in. “Guys, she’s right! What’s Will’s favorite song?”

There’s silence. 

“Come on! What’s his favorite fucking song?” Nancy’s trying not to yell but it’s difficult.

“What the fuck is that gonna do for us?” Hopper asks incredulously.

“I thought this was over, I thought we were done with all of this,” Robin’s voice trembles, speaking without inflection as she flaps her hands around. “Nance, I—I thought…”

“It—it um, he needs to hear his favorite song or else he—he won’t make it out,” Steve answers Hopper.

Mike’s in his own little world, mostly oblivious to what’s going on around him, his vision blurry and bouncing up and down from his tears. He steps closer and puts a shaky hand over Will’s but he gets no reaction. 

“Will…” He says only loud enough for himself to hear—and maybe Will, if he could right now.

“I don’t know his favorite song anymore,” Joyce sounds heartbroken for more reasons than one.

“Do none of you know his favorite song? Nobody?” Steve looks around, he’s in his take-charge-and-fix-the-situation mode, his eyes wide and searching. He turns his gaze where Dustin and Lucas are currently trying not to freak out and they shake their heads sorrily. He looks at Max, who shakes her head, then at El, who sheds a tear as she does the same. 

Lastly, Steve looks at him. “...Mike?”

Mike feels like he can’t get enough air in to breathe properly. He turns his head back and forth minutely with a small, heartwrenching, “No.”

For some reason Steve looks more surprised and disappointed at his answer than anyone else’s, probably because he was their last hope.

Or maybe because he’d expected more from him.

“What did you mean by ‘He won’t make it out’, Harrington?” Hopper says carefully.

“Nance? I—I…” Robin’s running her hands through her hair and repeatedly tucking it behind her ears even when it’s already there. Nancy goes to her then puts her hands on Robin’s shoulders to run them down her arms while she says something quietly.

“How’s it hangin’ dudes?” Argyle appears from god-knows-where, presumably the back of the pizza van based on how red and glossy his eyes are. “Woah, what’s goin’ on with little Byers?”

“ Harrington, ” Hopper repeats sternly.

“It means he’ll die, okay?” Steve shouts with frustration while running his hands over his face.

“Woah, woah, who’s gonna die? I’m not burying another body, bros.” Argyle laughs in a very high way.

“ Another body? ” Someone says, but Mike’s not paying enough attention to know who.

“He’s not gonna fucking die,” Hopper says, either in denial or determination to save him.

Jonathan suddenly waves his arms out, looking like he just had a life-changing revelation. “Boys Don’t Cry!”

“Jonathan, what?” Joyce asks desperately.

“The song!” He runs away so quickly he stumbles over his own feet, kicking up sand that dissolves into puffs of dust as he goes. Everyone watches as he yanks open the driver’s side of the pizza van and sticks his body halfway inside it.

“This kid’s really having a bad trip, huh?” Argyle snaps his fingers in front of Will’s red, seizing eyes. “‘S his first time or what?”

Jonathan pulls his head back out of the van to shout, “Someone find a fucking cassette player, now! ”

“Finally!” Erica says.

Everyone scrambles around to look for one. There has to be one somewhere.

“And some goddamn headphones too!” Jonathan yells as an afterthought.

Steve unlocks and gets inside the SUV that Will’s sitting on and Mike sees the movement jostle Will slightly. He hears the shuffling of random objects inside and he finally snaps out of his sort-of-trance and has half a mind to help them look. He’s still not completely sure whose car it is but he can’t imagine Steve owning something like this.

Mike takes one last look at Will before he jumps into the car with Steve, and he notices it’s very clean and smells new. Steve’s digging through a beat-up cardboard box of miscellaneous items at the foot of the passenger seat.

Argyle steps up to the open door and hunches down to look inside. “Yo, what’re you fellas doin’? Can I join ya?”

“Just open the trunk, dude.” 

Steve tosses his keys to Argyle who doesn't catch them, instead he lets them fall to the ground and looks at them for a second before leaning down to pick them up by the ring and says, “Sick.”

Mike mindlessly follows him out to the trunk and looks around at everyone aggressively searching through their belongings. He sees bags being poured out onto the ground and getting coated in sand, pockets being reversed, and cars being rearranged from the inside out.

“Um, guys?” Max speaks, she’s still standing next to Will and half watching him. Nobody hears her so she speaks a lot louder, “Guys!”

Eyes turn to her to listen but hands continue rifling.

“I… I have a Walkman.” She gestures to her headphones, halfway off, and the huge lump in the front pocket of her sweatshirt.

“I found it!” Jonathan comes stumbling out of the pizza van gripping a cassette tape like it’ll float right away if he doesn’t hold tight enough.

“Max, no, you need to keep listening to your song or he could get you too.”

“Lucas, a few minutes won’t kill me.”

“Won’t it, though?” Lucas gestures desperately with his hands.

“He’s got a point, Max,” Dustin adds, scratching the back of his neck, which he’s been doing over and over this whole time.

“Vecna can’t get two people at the same time, stupid!”

“You don’t know that!” Dustin and Lucas say in unison.

“I found the fucking tape, can we use the goddamn cassette player or not?” Jonathan yells, bouncing around and looking decidedly unhinged.

“Max has to—”

“Fuck! Did anyone else find one? Anything?” Jonathan yells so everyone can hear him.

A harmony of “No,” rings out under the pale sky, so, so far under. Or maybe just barely below; Mike’s not sure if the sky’s even real anymore, yet he feels like he could reach out and touch it.

“Um,” Robin, who’s apparently been pretty close by, speaks gently. “You could put Max’s tape in one of the cars and have her listen in there?” She seems uncertain of her idea.

Lucas raises his eyebrows and turns to Max. “Okay, let’s do that. Okay?” He checks with her.

“Okay, I mean, that should work.” She nods, and it’s obvious she’s extremely stressed but trying to hide it.

“Good idea, Robin.” Dustin points at her while walking backward then turns around to follow Lucas and Max.

Max takes out her cassette player to hand to Jonathan, but Lucas stops her. “Not until we’re in the car, okay?”

She’s so close to rolling her eyes but suppresses the urge and nods instead. Max gets in the driver’s seat of the black SUV (Steve’s?) and starts the ignition while Dustin and Lucas crowd into the passenger seat together, squished. They hear Argyle from where he’s at by the trunk say, muffled and light, “You got some freaky stuff in here, Stevie boy.” 

“We already found what we need! Also, that’s not my car.” Steve replies.

“Then whose is it?”

“I don’t know!”

Well, that doesn’t help Mike’s confusion.

Sometime during Argyle’s struggle to open the trunk, Mike went back to the front of the car to watch Will. It feels like it’s been forever since his eyes turned bloodshot and he became unresponsive, but it’s probably only been five minutes if he had to guess. Everyone’s overlapping panic, including his own, has already drained him of basic cognitive function. He stands in front of his best friend as silent tears form in his eyes, and the effort to not make any noise is hurting his throat.

He sees Will’s expressionless face and thinks about how he’s suffering right now. He wonders what he’s seeing and if he knows yet that it’s not real—and if he does, Mike wonders if he knows they’re going to save him.

He doesn’t know why he’s not panicking harder, he’s fucking terrified but somehow he feels removed from the situation like he’s just looking back on a terrible memory or having a scary dream. He knows that’s not what’s actually happening and that this is real and he’s here right now, but just because he can make himself know it doesn’t mean he can make himself feel it.

Jonathan waits outside the driver’s side of the car while Max gets herself situated, making sure she’s in the optimal position to switch the cassette out and into the player on the dashboard.

As fast as she possibly can she opens the Walkman, passes it and the headphones to Jonathan who runs to Will’s place on the hood, and sticks her Hounds of Love tape into the opening of the player.

It slips through the little hinged door which closes as soon as it’s in, and for a moment the only sound is the bated whirring of the engine and the ringing of ears.

The instrumentals of a new wave pop song start up.

They all exhale.

All is well. Max’s eyes flutter closed with relief and in the passenger seat Dustin and Lucas high-five in a supremely awkward position. 

Suddenly, the music starts distorting and makes awful, grating squeaking sounds.

It doesn’t stop doing that.

Outside the car, Jonathan yells, “Guys! We got everything!” He stands in front of Will next to Mike, and everyone comes back over to observe.

Many hands wring and pairs of lungs halt as Jonathan’s fumbling fingers open the crystalline cassette case with an album cover spanning the inside lid: a multicolored desert landscape topped with a bright sun and sky. It reads, “BOYS DON’T CRY”, and directly below it, “THE CURE”. The cassette itself is clear with a black stripe across the middle that repeats its title and lists the tracks.

Jonathan opens the front of the Walkman WM-8 and makes sure the “1” on the tape is facing up before he sticks it in. It takes a moment to sit in place because of how shaky his hands are, but it’s in place, and he shuts the top of the player.

Mike balls his hands up and squeezes. Mrs. Byers watches her sons desolately while Hopper keeps a grounding arm around her. Steve is making Eddie look away. Erica is standing with her arms crossed but she looks scared. Argyle is staring blankly. Robin is squeezing Nancy’s arm, probably too hard. El fidgets next to Mike. Max, Lucas, and Dustin are still in the SUV.

Jonathan, Mike, Mrs. Byers, and El have the frontmost view.

The headphones were already plugged into the Walkman when Max handed them to him, so he puts them over Will’s ears then tries to shove the player into one of the front pockets of his shirt, but it’s clearly too big.

“Just shove it down his shirt!” El starts bounding forward, ready to take it from Jonathan and do it herself.

“Okay, okay!” He presses play and spins the little wheel that adjusts the volume, turning it up, and tugs on Will’s collar to drop the player down his shirt. His shirt is tucked into his belt, so it should stay.

They wait.

For a moment, the only sound is a low, indistinguishable, tinny stream of music emanating from the speakers on Will’s head.

Nothing happens.

Nothing happens, continuously.

Mike steps even closer to Will and shakes his shoulder. “Will, please, it’s Mike, please wake up, we’re here, please,” he begs, his voice cracking pathetically on the last word.

“Honey, I don’t think he can hear you,” Joyce says gently.

“Yes he can,” Max corrects, “Um, when the music starts you can also sorta hear the people around you, and you can, uh, see them, too. Just a little bit.”

Nobody asks how she knows that because they don’t have to.

They let Max’s words sink in and an unspoken understanding forms that they’re each going to take turns talking to him.

“Mike?”

“Huh?”

“You go ahead first,” Mrs. Byers insists, and Mike looks at Jonathan who makes no move to protest her words.

“But you guys are his fam-”

“So are you. Go ahead.” Joyce interrupts.

Mike turns to Jonathan one last time to see what he thinks. “She’s right. You really mean a lot to him, bud, maybe more than you know. Just do it.”

Mike nods and chews on his lip as he stares into Will’s face, and he thinks if he has to see him looking like this for much longer he won’t be able to take it anymore. He grabs Will’s slack hand and doesn’t let go, holding it between the two of them. He’s unusually cold, and it feels like holding a fish long after it suffocates to death, floppy and icy from the cooler. He shivers but stills himself.

“Will, um, it’s Mike.”

He pauses as if he’s waiting for a response, as if he could expect one. He should probably hurry up.

“If you can hear me, please come back, we all care about you so much.” His voice is thick through the tears that haven’t fully stopped since this all started.

He knows his words are deceptively empty. They’re cliche and meaningless but he always has trouble finding the right thing to say, if there’s even a right thing to say at all. Writing has always been easier for him—he has all the time in the world to plan out what he’s going to say, unlike talking. He’s also scared of being too honest, that he’ll slip up and say something that’s a bit too true while everyone’s watching him. This is one of the worst possible times to become bashful, he knows.

He internally rolls his eyes at himself and presses on.

“I… You—You’re my best friend, and… and…”

Will’s body starts lifting up off of the car and into the sky, his hand slipping out of Mike’s languidly as it moves up.

Will’s head tilts back and his legs slowly unfold at the knee where they were bent over the car, and they dangle limply from his torso like nothing but an accessory to the rest of his body. His arms have a bit more autonomy, uncurling from his lap and spreading out a few inches from his sides, palms facing forward and open toward the crowd of people.

If Mike didn’t know better he’d say Will was preparing to be crucified, legs down and fingers extended, numbed to the outside world yet so intact and alive, hands and feet at the ready to be pierced straight through like nothing but a barrier between the nail and the wood of the cross.

He would only need to raise his arms a little higher.

Not everyone gets to come back to life after crucifixion. Mike will take it upon himself to make sure it doesn't have to get to that point.

Rows of heads bend upwards to the clouds, eyes following Will’s ascendance. His eyes remain the rolled up, red and fluttering things they were before, and he just keeps going up, up, up in what feels like slow motion. It’s only been around ten seconds before he’s fifteen feet high in the air and the rising ceases. 

He stops in the sky and floats with a screen of neverending blue as his stage, almost completely still except for his eyelids and his slight swaying in place. It’s almost graceful, really, or as graceful as such a horrific thing could get.

“Dude, I’ve ‘ad my fair share of bad trips an’ this’s never happened to me. Real freaky, man,” Argyle speaks slowly, mentally as high as Will is physically, but they all ignore him.

They decide to no longer take turns speaking. They don’t have the luxury anymore.

“Will, baby, it’s mom, we’re right here and we…”

“It’s me, your brother, I know you can get out of there…”

“We really need you here, man, please come back, I’ll let you rent all the movies you want, free of charge, just…”

“I am so proud to be your sister, I need…”

“Will, I love you, please, I love you so much…” Mike’s yells get buried under everyone else's, which gives him the bravery he needs to keep going.

Mike has to tell him. Will has to know. Maybe he can be the one to save him.

“I—I think I might love you more than anyone or anything else, and I’m sorry I didn’t show it, I was scared that would make me a queer and everyone would hate me, but I love you—in—in a different way than I’m probably supposed to…” Tears are streaming down his face and sliding over his chin down onto his neck, leaving itchy streaks in their wake.

It takes him a second to realize everybody else has gone completely silent.

“What… what did you say?” Nancy’s brow is furrowed in a mix of confusion and concern as she stares right through him. He’d never told anyone that before, not even his own sister.

Mike turns his head behind him where everyone is staring at him, every single one of them, and his heart stops in his chest. Nobody’s talking anymore. Nobody’s trying to save Will.

“...Guys, he, Will, we need to keep-” He turns back to look at his floating form, then back to the group again.

“What did you say, Mike?” Robin asks, and Mike thought she… Well, she’s never been confrontational, and he was sort of picking up that she might also be…

“Will, he’s—I’m trying to get him back, we have to save him, look, he’s still-”

“Don’t say that disgusting shit to my brother, man! Keep it to yourself, nobody needs to hear that.” Jonathan pokes a finger into his chest.

Mike looks around to see if anyone disagrees with Jonathan, if anyone thinks it’s actually okay, but all he finds is grossed-out glares.

He looks to find El when he realizes he just confessed his love for his male best friend in front of his girlfriend—though, he’s mostly sure she’d wordlessly broken up with him. Maybe she would understand, she has a looser grasp on societal norms, maybe she wouldn’t even know that being a homosexual is supposed to be bad and she’d forgive him for lying to her.

She looks… devastated, but not only that, she looks angry. Like she could hurt him.

“El, please…”

She shakes her head, and he’s not sure what exactly she’s saying “no” to, but the message gets across.

He needs them to focus back on Will, this is more important right now. Seriously, why is nobody doing anything?

“Please, can we just do this later, we have to save Will, guys…”

Mike turns back around to look up at Will.

He sees his wrists and ankles begin to twist ever-so-slightly then hears the crunching sound of joints being stretched beyond their capacity.

No. No, this isn’t happening. This can’t be happening—there’s no way, they’re playing his favorite song, he should be able to get out. The only way Vecna would still be able to get him is if he—

Will’s right arm cracks with the breaking of his bones and bends at a grotesque angle in a way a human body never should.

—Is if he gave up on trying to escape.

“Will! Oh my god, Will, No, no, no, no, no!” Mike screams.

Max, Dustin, and Lucas watch desperately as the speakers of the car start producing a screechy and warped sound that could hardly even be classified as Running Up That Hill anymore.

“You gotta be shitting me.” Dustin stares dumbfounded at the dashboard and then over to Max.

Lucas looks back and forth between Max and the empty cassette case in her hand. “What’s wrong with it? Is it broken?” He says in the tone he only uses when he needs to get a point across or needs answers.

Max shakes her head. “No, it’s not, it’s been working fine, I—I don’t know why it…”

It worked for a few seconds after she put it in, and she hasn’t been having any problems with it, even while listening to the first few minutes on loop for several days.

“I guess there could be something wrong with the pressure pad, but that wouldn’t happen out of nowhere. Shit, is it-”

She cuts herself off and sticks her head out of the open driver’s side door. “Hey, Steve, is this thing’s cassette player broken?” She shouts in the general direction of where she last saw him.

“Um, it shouldn’t be, it worked on the way here,” Steve yells back from an unknown location.

“I thought he said it’s not his car?” 

“Not important right now, Dustin!”

“Ow, don’t yell, I’m right here,” He tells Lucas. “You know, you’re really cutting off my arm’s circulation, dude.”

“Screw your arm, man.”

Dustin’s arm is trapped under Lucas’s back—they hardly have any room from being crushed together in the shared passenger seat.

“Seriously? Can you please just-”

“Will you two shut up?” Max pulls her head back inside. “Steve said it’s not the car.”

“We heard.”

“Listen, I should be fine, what we need to worry about right now is Will.”

“No! They got it handled, we need to make sure you,” Lucas points at her, “don’t get all crumpled up by Vecna!”

“That could still happen to Will!”

“For god’s sake, just sing to her!” Erica says from outside the passenger's side door.

“When did you get here?” Dustin asks.

“Like, thirty seconds ago. You guys were too busy being dumbasses to notice me.”

“Hey, we are not-“

“You are,” Max interrupts Lucas.

“Did you not hear me? Lucas… Sing. To. Her.” Erica repeats.

“What? I don’t think that’s how it works, and I don’t even know the whole song!”

“Just repeat the parts you know!”

“That probably won’t even-“

“Do you really wanna take that risk?” Erica says.

“Okay! Fine.” Lucas sighs, but he doesn’t start singing, he just clears his throat a few times like he’s waiting to gain the confidence he needs.

“I can help.” El appears outside the driver’s side door.

“Jesus! Where’d you come from?”

El ignores Lucas. “I can use my powers to find a radio station that is playing your song,” she says to Max, “I do not know if it will work, but I can try my best”. She sounds nervous, like she’s trying to distract herself from what’s happening to Will by helping them.

“Oh—okay.” Max scoots over in the seat to let El slide in next to her.

“I still think you should sing to her in the meantime.” Erica smirks.

Out by the front of the car, Jonathan stands in front of Will with Mike next to him, holding the Boys Don’t Cry cassette case in one hand and Max’s Walkman WM-8 in the other. “Guys! We got everything!” He yells so all of them can hear.

Everybody, other than those in the car, comes back from wherever they were and crowds around to watch. Will sits on the hood the same as he has been for the last few minutes, unresponsive and under the spell of Vecna.

Jonathan is just starting to pry open the clear The Cure cassette case when Nancy says, “Oh my god, Mike!”

Most of them have to walk over and around to get a better look at him, but when they do they almost wish they hadn’t.

Mike stands still, all facial features slack except for his eyelids which are rapidly flapping up and down but never closing all the way over his tinted-pink eyes, turned to the sky.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Eddie throws his arms up and down, about to lose it at any second.

“Wait, when did Wheeler smoke? D’ya guys give him an edible?”

“Argyle, they’re not fucking high, they’re being possessed by Vecna!” Jonathan almost jumps in frustration to make him understand.

“Shit, the slimy demon dude? Aw, man. ‘S’there anythin’ I can do to help?”

“You could shut up, for one,” Steve adds. He’s forcing Eddie to look away, because frankly, he’s seen this enough times.

“Tha’s not very nice, man. Be kind, rewind. Wait no, that’s not… Tha’s for VHS, I think.”

“We don’t have time for this!” Hopper’s voice spills over theirs. “One of you better know his favorite song or so help me god, I will strangle all of you.”

“Hey bald guy, kindness is key, alrigh’?” Argyle says.

“I don’t know what kind of music he listens to, we don’t really talk about stuff like that.” Nancy’s eyes are fearfully stuck on Mike, and she and Robin hold each other’s hands in an iron grip.

“If we get Will back first he’ll probably know his favorite.” Jonathan nervously shuffles Will’s cassette in his hands, eager for the go-ahead to put the headphones on his brother.

“We don’t have time! Hey El, What’s Mike’s favorite song?” Steve yells.

El’s busy in the car, her eyes are shut and her hand hovers over the dashboard as she uses her newly recovered powers to try and find a radio signal that’s playing Kate Bush. She files through stations faster than Max, Dustin, and Lucas can comprehend, it just sounds like messy static with random blips of notes.

“Wait, why would they need to know Mike’s favorite song?” Max hears Steve’s yelled question and goes still against El’s side.

“ Shhh!” El tunes her out, trying to tune in to the frequencies coming through the speaker instead. Lucas and Dustin are both singing Running Up That Hill in a terribly-coordinated duet because Lucas was embarrassed to sing it on his own, and Dustin already has experience with singing when someone’s life is on the line.

Dustin sticks half his body out of the open door of the car, leaving Lucas to sing by himself, and turns to look in the direction of the rest of them. He sees figures arguing, people trying to self-soothe and—

Mike, motionless and blinking over and over.

“Found it,” El finally says, wiping off a drop of blood from under her nose. Luckily, it’s still pretty close to the beginning of the song, and Max and Lucas sigh in relief.

“Holy shit! He got Mike too!” Dustin scrambles to get out of the car and ends up falling on his ass on the ground, but quickly gets up and runs over to Mike.

“What? How?” Lucas yells after him and starts to get out of his seat to follow but turns to Max first. “Stay here.”

“Lucas, I can’t just-” 

“ Stay here, okay? I’m serious.” Lucas looks at her until she nods then he leaves. Max turns her head to El, expecting her to leave too because she looks like she wants to, gaze switching anxiously between the open door and Max.

“I have to stay. Soon the song will be over and I will have to find another station.” 

“No, El, just go.” El still looks unconvinced so she adds, “I’ll yell for you when it’s over, okay?”

El nods reluctantly and steps out of the car. It feels wrong to Max to be here all alone and to be the only one who’s not out there helping Will and Mike in some way, but she knows they want her to keep listening, so she does. Kate Bush’s voice rings out through the speakers, crackly from the shoddy signal but just clear enough.

You don’t wanna hurt me

But see how deep the bullet lies

Unaware, I’m tearing you asunder

Oh, there is thunder in our hearts

Max closes her eyes and listens.

Dustin, Lucas, and El have made their way over and are watching Mike where he stands frozen in place. El has to hold back tears just from the sight of him, knowing he’s going through something horrible.

“What the hell…” Lucas whispers only loud enough for himself to hear.

“I do not understand…” A tear rolls down El’s cheek. “How did…” Her voice trails off, not knowing what exactly to ask.

Some of the others have been arguing since before the three of them got out of the car, and Nancy looks around at the group like they’re the stupidest people she's ever laid eyes on. “It doesn’t matter if she doesn’t know his favorite fucking song because there’s no way we’d randomly have a cassette of it on hand, not to mention, we only have one Walkman!”

“Okay, what’s your brilliant idea then?” Hopper asks.

“My idea, is that it’s about fucking time,” Nancy raises her voice and jolts forward to snatch the Boys Don’t Cry cassette and Max’s Walkman out of Jonathan’s hands, “that we play some fucking music for them!” Her face grows red as she screams and she somehow manages to pick Mike up off the hood and into her arms, then heave him over to the desert ground, leaning him up against the grill with his legs spread straight out in front of him.

Everyone gawks at her in awe.

Nancy starts opening the case of the cassette, hands trembling with adrenaline, then looks back up. “One of you pick Will up and put him next to Mike.”

 Nobody moves.

“Now!” Nancy shouts.

Jonathan regains himself and goes to pick him up, placing Will’s arm around his shoulder and starting to put his own under Will’s knees and back. “Jesus, he really had a growth spurt.” He grunts and hauls his brother up and then over onto the ground to Mike’s left, having him slouch against the car next to the headlights.

Nancy puts the tape in the cassette player, shuts the lid, turns it on, spins the little wheel that increases the volume, and places it between their pairs of legs. She turns the headphones’ earpieces so that they both face outward then she crouches in front of Will and Mike to put them between their heads so that they each have one ear against a speaker, and squishes the boys closer together so that the headphones stay in place. 

She stands back up to see the events unfold.

“Um, Nance, no offense but, wouldn’t that have to be both of their favorite songs for this to work?” Robin says from a few feet behind her. 

Nancy turns her head around and her expression softens. “We have to try something, Rob.”

They all stand in silence, watching and waiting.

Chapter Text

Will sits on the hood of the SUV while his best friend stands in front of him, fuming. He’d just confessed his love for him in a spur-of-the-moment decision, and now Mike is furious.

Will is full-on sobbing now, eyes puffy while his throat is thick with strained words and mucus. “Of course I didn’t think that—that you’d—you’d love me back, in that way, I just felt like-”

“You felt like what?” Mike snarls. Will has to suppress how his hands ache to reach up and cover his ears so he can lessen the impact.

He can’t fathom that this is the Mike he loves and has loved since the first day of kindergarten, who asked to be his friend when he was all alone on the swing set. How could this be the Mike Wheeler who believed he was still alive when everyone else thought him dead, who’s always stopped at nothing to make Will feel welcome wherever he went?

If Will didn’t know better he’d almost say this isn’t even the real Mike.

“I felt like I owed it to you to—to let you know, because you’re my best friend, and I just—I just wanted to be honest with you.” 

Will feels like he could vomit, or collapse and not get back up. His whole world has turned upside down again. He rocks his body back and forth to calm himself down, which is a habit he’s had since before he can remember.

“Well, you shouldn’t have, okay?” Mike spits out. “I don’t wanna hear that shit, that’s gross, man, it’s unnatural.” He starts backing away.

“No, Mike, that’s not—how could you say that to me?” Mike’s form wiggles in Will’s vision and he tastes saltwater drip into his mouth, and his eyes are so sticky with tears he can hear his own blinking. “Please, don’t leave, just—god, fuck, I don’t even—“ He shuffles his hands together and digs his nails into his palms.

Mike watches him, unphased.

“I need you, Mike.”

“Really? Well, I don’t need you.” 

Halfway through the sentence, Mike’s face begins to morph and his skin turns thin and papery, adopting a waxy sheen. 

Fresh cuts in the form of red lines appear all over, but most of them are vertical over his mouth like stitches. His eyes develop a milky-white film and his teeth become pointy and brown like a wild animal’s.

“I hope I never have to see you again.” Mike’s voice has changed to become gruff, and it sounds nothing like he’s supposed to.

Will sits with his mouth open and sputtering, then Mike just turns around and walks toward the skyline with no destination in sight, not saying another word.

Without any preamble, the world turns cold and dark. 

The car Will’s perched on disappears beneath him and he falls onto the sand with a grunt. He looks around frantically for his friends and family or even the gas station they were next to, but there’s nothing. 

All he sees is an infinite landscape of blueish-gray, the sky now barely distinguishable from the sand which is colorless as he rakes his nails through it. 

“Hello? Mike? Mike? Where are you?” His shouts don’t echo because there’s nothing around for the sound to bounce off of. He shoves himself up off the ground to stand, coating his knees and hands in gray dust.

“Is anybody here? Mike? Please!”

“Will? Will, is that you?” It’s definitely Mike’s voice, but it’s faint and sounds so far away.

“Yes, yes it’s me, where are you?”

“I—I don't know. It’s dark, and—and cold.”

Will tries to figure out what direction his words are coming from but they seem everywhere all at once. He runs and searches around for something that could lead him to Mike, but doesn’t find anything.

A strange sensation starts in his throat and he coughs, hacking more and more until he has his hands on his knees to settle himself, then something gummy and slick forces its way out of his mouth and onto the ground.

It’s a slug—the very same he saw in the bathroom sink years ago.

No, no, no, no.

His head spins and he’s unimaginably dizzy, then he hears a sound that’s more-so coming from the back of his head than anywhere around him.

The deep chiming of an old grandfather clock.

Somehow throughout it all it had never clicked in his head that this could be what was happening—he hadn’t had any headaches or visions before now, and nightmares are just a regular thing for him. A part of him can’t help but be relieved even through all of this that Mike hadn’t actually said any of those things to him, and he still doesn’t know.

“No! NO!” Will spins in a circle to find where Vecna could be hiding, but he’s not there.

“It is time, Will.”

Vecna’s voice grumbles out from behind him, and he hates the sound of his own name in the monster’s mouth. Will shivers. He’s so close he can just slightly hear the vines of his neck rolling and shifting wetly. He closes his eyes to compose himself.

Will turns around and looks Vecna in the eyes while controlling his facial expression as best as he can. He’s way worse in person than any description he’s heard, raw and rotten with crisscrossing ropes of flesh all around his shoulders. 

“I’m not scared of you,” Will says, his voice trembles but he speaks firmly.

“Oh, but you are, Will.” Vecna tilts his head. “You’re terrified.”

Of course Will’s afraid, but not to the extent Vecna seems to think he is.

“My family’s here, they’ll save me.”

“Will they?” He taunts. “You’ve been here a while already, haven’t you?”

The cold air hurts Will’s nostrils as he tries to keep his breathing steady to look unaffected. He knows Vecna’s just trying to instill doubt to make him easier to kill, but he can’t help but think about what he said. A tear falls down his face, and he stays silent.

“You are out of time, Will. Join me.”

Will’s composure starts to wear off as he backs away, shaking his head as if it would do any good, but Vecna steps forward.

Will turns around and runs faster than he ever could in gym class, faster than he ever could on the playground chasing Mike around the trees, faster than he probably ever will again when he gets out of here. If he does. His lungs already ache and he takes a peak behind him to see Vecna far away, walking toward him no quicker than he was before, then Will turns back around to keep going.

Once he’s far enough he takes a moment to stop and breathe, because if he doesn’t he won’t be able to keep going at all. He knows Vecna was just making him hallucinate when he heard Mike talking, but he thinks…well, he just has to try.

“Mike? Are you still here?” His voice sounds torn to shreds with the effort to yell loud enough.

“I’m here, Will.”

He knows he’s not actually around—or at least not in whatever plane of existence this is—so he just savors the sound while he steadies his breathing then continues ahead.

After what seems like a lifetime, a cloud of red smoke spanning several yards and flashing with white lightning manifests next to him. He’s drawn towards it, and he stops for a moment to observe. 

Then he walks straight into it.

Mike watches Will’s body in the sky as his limbs contort into unspeakable positions, bones and cartilage smash and splinter.

Nobody’s doing anything. Even Will’s own mom and brother are quiet beside him, showing no signs of distress as a member of their family gets crumpled up in front of them.

Mike’s voice has gone hoarse from screaming, racking sobs spilling out while he sees his best friend die. For some reason, he can’t bring himself to look away. 

“Will! Oh my god, Will!” His body shudders with the strain he’s putting on his lungs.

Will’s legs twist until you can hear firework-like crackling, then they snap and bend the wrong way like the joints of a broken doll.

Mike has to turn around and stop looking. He has to see why everyone’s so fucking quiet amidst all of this, so he does.

Every single one of their faces has mutated into a mockery of what they were before, skin bruised and raw like a zombie’s, eyes pearly white and all staring at him.

Mike gasps and steps away until the backs of his knees hit the front of the SUV and he falls to the ground, shaking his head back and forth. His breathing becomes quick as he struggles to bring himself back up on his feet, slipping against the sand. When he looks up to the sky his vision is filled with the brightest beam of light from the sun, blinding him except for the few circular bokeh-like specks of sunshine reflecting off his eyelashes to invade his pure white sight.

He puts a hand on his forehead to block the sun and everything comes back into focus, but it turns out he would’ve liked it better the other way. Nearly exactly above him floats Will, whose limbs are now all disfigured and whose ritualistic killing is almost complete.

“No! No!” He screams louder than he ever has while Will’s jaw unhinges and jerks to the side with a snapping noise.

Mike’s heart lurches so violently he becomes nauseous and his body goes so cold he can’t move, he can only watch open-mouthed as Will’s beautiful, sun-brightened eyeballs are ripped clean out of his skull by an invisible force. 

It all happened so fast, yet took all the time in the world.

His body drops from the air and crashes down onto the hood of the black car, leaving a dent with the force of his weight, then he slides off with a harsh squeak to fall half on top of Mike where he’s on the ground. Mike feels like he’s going to be sick.

He situates Will’s limp form to lay across his lap with one arm around his shoulders and the other under his knees, then he looks down into his mangled face. Will’s mouth is open and slanted like his sideways jaw. The skin of what were once his eyelids is deflated over the crater of his eye sockets, and inside of them is a pink, sodden cavity that once held his eyeballs. The lids are rimmed with blood that drips down in thick red streaks.

Mike's hand shakes as he cups one of Will’s cheeks in his palm, transferring some of his blood onto it. He can’t even speak, he thinks he might’ve lost the ability to, and he’s not even sure if he’s here right now—he feels more like he’s watching himself from above.

A bastardized mix of teardrops and snot falls from Mike’s face onto Will’s shirt, darkening the yellow and blue plaid. All he can hear is the ringing in his ears and his own staccato breathing.

His heart palpitates. This isn’t happening, it can’t be , he’s imagining it, he’s dreaming, he’s-

“This is all your fault,” a growling voice says from above him, and he looks up to see the marred face of Joyce Byers.

He hugs Will’s body closer to his own.

“You’re the reason he gave up. You lost him.” Jonathan’s tone sounds nothing like himself, it’s low and mean and coarser than it should be.

Mike tightens his grip around Will. His skin’s already growing cold with death. 

“You should have kept your distance, Mike. He would still be alive if you would have kept your distance.” El’s white eyes bore into his as her rotten teeth form the words.

“No!” he screeches with all the capacity of his vocal cords, his voice magnifying inside his head.

Out of nowhere, the world shifts around him to darken and grow colder, and he feels the weight in his arms disappear. He looks down and finds his lap empty, then looks back up to see that everyone and everything has vanished and left only a barren land and sky. 

Mike flips his head around to search for everything that had just been there a few seconds ago, but it's all gone. Still, he pats and digs through the sand as if it could all be playing hide and seek under a blanket of earth.

“Hello? Mike? Mike? Where are you?” He hears from somewhere in the distance but the direction isn’t clear, it’s more like it’s everywhere at once but quiet to his ears. It sounds like… No, it can’t be, he’d just held his corpse in his arms.

“Is anybody here? Mike? Please!” 

Now, that was undoubtedly Will’s voice, which makes no sense, but he can’t just ignore it. “Will? Will, is that you?” he yells into the near-nothingness that surrounds him, his heart skipping.

“Yes, yes it’s me, where are you?”

Mike stands up and tries to engage his sense of direction, spinning to try and spot any distinct features, but it’s the same all around. Dark gray sand under a dark gray sky. “I—I don’t know. It’e dark, and—and cold.”

Will doesn’t answer back this time.

Behind him, Mike hears the distinct rippling, neigh-like growl that he only knows to belong to a demogorgon.

No, no, no, no.

Mike steels himself to start running as fast as his legs can take him. He breathes in as silently as possible, about to kick a foot up off the ground—

The low gonging of an old pendulum clock rings out.

It makes no sense. It makes no sense at all, there were no signs. Well, there might’ve… he has been feeling extra weird lately. But he wasn’t…

Does this mean Will’s not dead? That outside of here in the real world, he’s okay? And nobody’s disgusted with him? He almost laughs in relief, but— this is still happening.

He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do but he knows he has to do something, so he just starts running, choosing a random direction because it all looks the same. He’d never been the most athletic even with all the bike riding he did, so the muscles of his legs quickly tire and his breathing turns labored in the icy air. 

He trips even though the ground is entirely level, and he lands on his stomach, coating the front of his shirt with sand.

Mike rolls over onto his back and digs his elbows into the dirt to bring himself up, but when he focuses his eyes he sees the face of Vecna.

Vecna almost resembles a human whose skin and fat were peeled off their body to leave them stripped down to the muscle, but it’s not close enough to that. He’s too drained of blood and discolored, and he has flesh-made snakes twisting all around his body, and one ginormous claw for a left hand.

Mike shifts backward on his back with his eyes wide, but Vecna steps forward to make up for it and keeps staring down at him. Mike shakes his head—more to himself than to the figure towering over him—trying to convince his brain that it’s not real and he’ll be okay.

“It is time, Mike,” Vecna tells him, voice invading every corner of Mike’s skull.

A few aborted attempts at speaking make their way through Mike’s mouth in the form of whines before he can conjure up, “No.”

“‘No?’ But you don’t have a choice, Mike.” He tilts his head, and Mike can hear the sound of his skin moving around.

Mike shuffles back even farther, hastening to get back up on his legs.

“Join me, Mike.”

Mike rushes to his feet and runs, and he’s quicker to get sore this time because he hasn’t recovered from the first bout of running. He gets into the motions and tries to focus only on getting as far away as possible and not what’ll happen if he doesn’t get far enough. Right leg, left leg, right leg, left leg, breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth.

For some reason that Mike can only rationalize as a miracle, Vecna doesn’t follow him. In fact, Mike thinks he hasn’t moved at all.

Mike closes his eyes for a few seconds to soothe them from the wind, and when he opens them back up he sees an expansive cloud of red fog billowing and flashing with lightning. He can’t look away from it. 

“Mike? Are you still here?” Will’s voice finally reappears to say.

“I‘m here, Will,” Mike shouts but doesn’t try to find him, he just keeps gazing into the red smoke.

He doesn’t know why, but he needs to go into it, so he does.

“It’s not working,” Jonathan says after a minute of watching Mike and Will slumped against each other on the ground, “Why—Why isn’t it working, it’s Will’s favorite, it should be working for him, why isn’t it working?” He speaks too fast and crowds the words too close together.

Mike and Will lean against the grill of the SUV with a pair of headphones squished between their heads so that both of them have an ear against one of the speakers, which are turned outwards.

“Just wait! It didn’t work this fast for Max, did it? Nancy looks around to find her, but she’s not there.

“She’s in the car,” Lucas says, “she has to keep listening to her song.”

“And no, it didn’t work this fast,” Dustin adds.

“El? The song’s almost ending!” Max yells from inside the car.

“Coming!” El yells back and runs over with one last look back at Mike and Will.

“Why’s the redhead need the superhero?” Argyle asks, less thrilled now that he knows what’s going on.

“ El has to make the radio play Max’s favorite song so that this, ” Lucas gestures at the pair on the ground, “doesn’t happen to her again.”

Argyle’s expression turns pained and confused. “Shit, again? You guys’ life sucks.”

Robin fails to stifle a laugh even through her anxiety.

They continue watching and waiting, this time with more nervous hair raking and nail-biting.

Mike walks through the mysterious fog and ends up in a different world.

The first thing he notices is that everything is red—even himself, he discovers by looking down at his hands to confirm. Pointy trees varying in size are scattered about and chunks of debris hover tall in the foggy sky. 

The ground is slippery and shrouded in its own haze of smoke, and in the near distance atop a hill rests what looks like the remains of an old house, broken down to its bones. The sky bellows with thunder and flashes with lightning every few seconds lighting up the land, and from where he stands it reminds him of a fallen kingdom—abandoned. Doomed to be reclaimed by nature.

Mike treads toward the house over divots in the ground and what might’ve once been the steps to a patio, and he arrives at a wasteland.

There’s hardly anything left of the home but parts of the structure it was built on. A staircase that leads to nowhere adjacent to an arch of what was probably a wide doorway, a lone fireplace, a broken window, and scraps of wood that had made up the walls. A door levitates through the air and its stained glass rose in the window glints even redder when it catches the light. A grandfather clock floats around above the stairs.

The trees spike up at the end, and instead of bark they have thick twisting and turning vines just like the ones on Vecna’s body.

He doesn’t know where Vecna is, but he has to be around here somewhere. The atmosphere here is cold yet he burns hot on the inside and his hands clam up.

He hears the sound of footsteps sloshing on the ground behind him, and his stomach twists.

“Mike?”

It’s Will’s voice.

Mike spins in place and Will’s right there in front of him with eyes full of fear—but at least his eyes are there where they belong—and his chest rises and falls with heavy breaths as if he’d just been running.

It crosses both of their minds that the other could be a fabrication created by Vecna to mess with their heads to make it easier to kill them, but somehow they know for a fact that they’re standing in front of the real person.

But, if they’re both here, that means…

Holy shit.

They thought it wasn’t possible.

Mike comes closer to Will so he can wrap his arms around him and hold on for dear life, but some force stops him short. He’s sent flying backward several feet, disturbing the tufts of smoke all around him, and he lands on his back with a smacking noise and a cry.

“Mike!” Will sprints over to make sure he’s okay and to help him back up, but once he’s only a couple of feet away from Mike he’s cast backward in the same fashion as Mike just was, falling hard onto the slick ground. One of his arms crushes a big spider egg, breaking its shell and releasing hundreds of baby ones that scatter around.

Vecna appears with a growl, creeping out from somewhere unseen to stand between the two of them while they groan. 

Before either of them have the chance to get up, Vecna jerks his left hand and two slimy vines protrude from the same tree, one going for Will and the other for Mike, curling around one of each of their ankles and tugging them closer. The tentacle-like appendages squelch as they wrap their feet in an unyielding grip and reel them in.

“No!” Will shrieks as he’s dragged and the ground scrapes against his back, pulling up his shirt to chafe right against his skin. Mike tries to plant his hands next to him and dig his nails into the ground but the pull on his legs is too quick and too strong for him to stop.

The vines tug both of them to the tree they came from and shove them upright against the same trunk on opposite sides, and more of its limbs unpeel themselves to coil around Mike’s and Will’s wrists. They hiss as they yank one of each of the boys’ arms to spread out horizontally, then do the same to the other two. 

With the way their arms are curved and pressed to the tree, Mike and Will’s hands almost overlap, and the barely-there brush of their fingers is the only thing still keeping them grounded.

Another two vines snake around their necks and constrict, squeezing their airways just tight enough to cause a struggle, and their rough textures glides deceivingly easy over their throats. Black splotches crowd into Will’s vision as he chokes and a wheeze makes its way out of his mouth in the form of, “Mike.” Will hears the raspy whistle of an attempt to reply before a soft, huffy, “Will.” 

Mike manages to stretch one of his hands out far enough to somewhat cover Will’s, and his skin is so chilled it has to be growing numb, but Will's is too, so he presses back into his touch.

Vecna strides over to stand a few inches in front of Will where he’s plastered to the stock of the tree, and Mike can only hear and guess what’s happening from his spot on the other side. Vecna’s eyes glue onto Will’s and he knows he can see all of his thoughts, he can look straight through to his brain and read every awful and atrocious thing that has ever crossed his mind.

Vecna leans his head to the side as if studying every memory and fantasy hidden deep within his pupils, and Will feels sick, but he doesn’t know if he’s able to avert his gaze—if Vecna would even allow him to.

Mike turns his head as far as it can go and he spots another tree like the one they’re on, but it’s hard to get a good view from where he is, so he strains his eyes. There’s a body attached to it in a similar way as Mike’s save for the fact that it’s grossly contorted and the vines of its captor seem to be swallowing it up, trying to consume the corpse and make it a part of itself.

Mike looks away before it gets any harder to breathe than it already is, and focuses his attention on the feeling of Will’s hand below his own.

“Will.” Vecna’s voice rumbles as he stares him down.

Will labors to push enough air into his lungs. “What,” he hisses and inhales again, “do you want?”

The grip on his neck tightens. “I think you know what I want, Will,” Vecna growls.

Mike trembles from the sound of him and the way his words patronize Will as if he himself has anything to be proud of.

Will has hardly any capacity to speak left but he uses what little effort he can to say, faintly, “Let… Mike… Go.” His breathing sounds like running water coming from another room, pipes backed up and squeaking. “Take… Me… Instead.”

No, Mike thinks, no, don’t you dare, then his heart stutters when he realizes that Will just offered to sacrifice his life for Mike’s. He doesn’t know how to process that right now.

“You would do anything for him, wouldn’t you?” Vecna growls. “But would he do the same?”

Without hesitation, Mike tries to say “Yes, I would,” but his chokehold becomes even stronger before he can. It scares him, how easy it was to decide that.

Will struggles against his binds and he hates the way they feel against his skin, sticky and bumpy and vile; he wants to scream or shut down entirely. He thrashes around while Vecna watches him but he knows it won’t get him anywhere so he stills, then pauses for a moment before spitting in Vecna’s face.

Mike hears the sound of Will’s mouth spewing and isn’t sure if he did what he thinks he did, but the notion that Will’s brave enough to do that makes him swell with pride—and fear.

Vecna doesn’t react, staring straight into him as if nothing had happened, but Will feels the energy shift in some small way. Vecna circles around the tree to Mike and faces him head-on for the first time since he appeared in the darkened desert, and looks into his eyes as intensely as he had Will’s.

Mike feels restless and he wants to wiggle out of the hold of Vecna’s gaze so he can run until his legs give out. He wants to be back in the sand under the beating heat of the sun. He wants to properly grab onto Will to feel that he’s real and alive and never let go.

“Mike,” Vecna snarls, “or should I call you Michael? ”

Only his parents call him that, uttered angrily to scold him or vaguely with a blank tone, always annoyed or uncaring.

Mike doesn’t respond. He doubts anything he could say would do him any good, and he’s too afraid to try. He doesn’t know what he would say—he’s not as courageous as Will is, and he can kid himself, but he probably never has been. Will might be the bravest person he knows.

The tentacles that trap Mike slither and migrate around, leaving trails of ooze across his body, sticky and cold as the air hits it. He hates it. He presses his hand impossibly further into Will’s, who presses back.

Despite his cowardice, he hopes Will is the one to survive this if it has to be only one of them. His lungs seem even tighter now and he’s not sure if it’s a real sensation or because of his thoughts.

“Hmm.” Vecna analyses him. “I see.”

Mike had forgotten he could read his mind.

Vecna lifts his right hand to stroke a finger along Mike’s cheek, examining him. Mike recoils from it like he was burned although the touch is freezing.

He tries to clear the surface of his mind to keep Vecna out but it’s no use, he’s already seen everything.

“Yes, I see everything, Mike.” Vecna sweeps a piece of hair out of Mike’s face in a sick, falsely-sweet manner. “Your thoughts, your dreams, your fears,” he drops his hand, “your secrets.”

No, Vecna can’t say anything, not when Will’s right within earshot. He can’t .

“That secret.”

Mike swallows, his throat prickly, and forces out in a barely-there whisper, “Stop.”

If Will finds out he might hate him and never want to talk to him again, and that would hurt even worse than not making it out of here alive.

“You should be more careful, Michael. Your friend is more powerful than you think.”

What is he talking about? Who is he talking about?

Vecna takes several steps back from the tree, thoroughly confusing Mike. He raises his left hand, shining red in the shocks of light from the sky, and moves it to the side near Will.

“No!” Mike yells, but instead of hurting Will he shifts him around, working with the tree's vines to drag his body over to the other side. The ropes only stop when Will’s pressed right against Mike and they’re stuck side-by-side, tied together on the trunk, giving Vecna full access to both of them at the same time.

“What—what are you doing?” Will pants, visibly shaken. 

Will wonders if it’s wrong that he almost feels better even though he’s even closer to death, because he can feel Mike beside him and hold his hand much easier than before. At least he’ll die next to him, he thinks, and entwines their icy fingers.

Mike’s hand squeezes back so hard that Will feels his circulation cut off, but he doesn’t care because that’s happening to most of the rest of his body anyway.

“It is time, you two.” Vecna walks forward and in front of them again.

Tears inch their way down Will’s cheek. They fall slowly as if they, too, are trying to grasp onto the minutes, maybe seconds, that they’re quickly running out of.

Time is no longer a commodity or a privilege. It’s no longer something to be waited out or waited on. Time is the torturing knowledge that they hardly have any of it left, and there’s not a single thing they can do about it.

Will cranes his neck as far as he can to look at Mike, knowing it’ll be the last time he ever does. Mike’s expression is petrified, mirroring the feelings of inescapable doom swirling in Will‘s consciousness.

Vecna brings his enormous left claw up into the air and hovers it above both Mike’s and Will’s faces, a forked shadow enveloping their figures. Mike closes his eyes and a tear drops out from his quivering eyelids, then he digs his nails into the back of Will’s hand.

Will has to tell him. Mike has to know. He can’t let him die without knowing.

Vecna’s head tips back and his hand draws even closer. Everything is drenched in red: the sky, the clouds, the back of their eyelids, the ringing in their ears, the words they wish they’d said before it was too late. It’s all red.

“Mike,” Will starts. He’s running out of time. Mike opens his eyes and turns them to him.

Will’s never going to forget that face, not even when he’s dead.

“I—“

Will cuts himself off when he sees an opening far off in the sky, a hole tearing its way through the sky and giving them a peek into their own world.

The opening strums of Boys Don’t Cry by The Cure begin to funnel their way through for them to hear.

Mike gasps. They have a chance.

Their friends and family are faintly visible on the other side, standing together in the far more colorful landscape of the real world and shouting encouragement at the two of them to keep going . But it’s not enough. 

Will shuts his eyes. 

Upon the empty canvas that stretches wide across the back of Will’s eyelids, an image appears.

The shadow of a tree engulfs his body and the yards of patchy grass around him, its leaves almost too densely bunched together to allow any specks of light to shine through. Will stares down at his feet and digs the toe of his shoe further into the dirt, but it hardly budges; it’s too dry and packed too tightly. 

He sighs and lazily kicks up off the ground, sending himself backward as he grips the cold metal of the swing set chains tighter. The chains squeak loudly on their hinges and the noise hurts his ears, but he can’t really do anything about that.

Will’s just beginning to accept his fate of being all by himself—he figures there are worse things you could be. He’s halfway through a forward swing, watching how his shoes stay in place even as the world below him rolls back and forth, then he hears a voice call out from above him.

As soon as Mike hears the music and sees the sky give way to the dimensional window, he knows what he has to do. He thinks he’d know, deep down, what he has to do, even if Max’s experience hadn’t been recounted to him many times. 

There’s no contest for what he’s going to picture in his mind. Mike’s eyes fall closed and he immerses himself in a familiar memory.

He spots the small boy in the near distance, head tilted down as he sways around just barely, diminishing the whole purpose of a swing set in the first place. He swings forward a little harder, bending his body and lifting his legs to put more force into it, and Mike feels like he’s beckoning to him.

Mike walks over with certainty, somehow confident about this decision in a way he usually wasn’t—something just feels meant to be. Something feels like fate in motion.

He takes the last few steps up to the swing set, finding himself within a large tree’s encompassing shadow. The wind serenely pets the trunk’s branches the same way it does to the boy’s hair, who’s still looking down and hasn’t seemed to notice him. Mike opens his mouth to speak.

Vecna’s claw remains suspended over both Mike’s and Will’s faces, ready to sink down at any moment, but they don’t see it. Their eyes are clamped shut and their senses are somewhere else, engulfed in memory as they both imagine the exact same thing. Their minds’ eyes paint to life two different vivid pictures, two iterations of the same event from opposite perspectives.

“Hi,” Mike says, “do you wanna be my friend?”

Will’s head lifts up and his eyes move from the ground to Mike’s face. The first thing Will notices is his freckles, and how there are quite a lot sprinkled all across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose like the stars outside his bedroom window. The second thing is his eyes, and the way they don’t look mean or scary like other eyes sometimes do when they’re pointed at him—instead, they look nice. They look like they would point at him while good, non-scary words leave the mouth below them.

What Mike first sees is the mole above the other boy’s mouth, right on the right side—or is it the left? He could never remember. He’s heard some people call moles ‘beauty marks’ before, but he never understood what was so beautiful about them. He thinks he might get it, now. Mike’s gaze moves up to his eyes, which are just as nice to look at. He wonders why you can call marks ‘beauty marks’ but you can’t call eyes ‘beauty eyes’. 

“Yes,” Will replies without a moment of hesitation. For some reason he didn’t need to think about his answer at all, it just came to him like it had always been there.

“Okay.” Mike walks to the empty swing next to him and plunks himself down onto it, causing the chains to rattle and spin him in little half-circles. “My name’s Michael. Well, it’s Mike, but my mom and dad say Michael.”

“What do you want me to say, Michael or Mike?” Will asks quietly, never looking away from Mike’s face.

Mike’s eyebrows scrunch up for a second like he’s deep in thought, and it makes a strand of hair on his forehead move. “You can say Mike, I like that better. What’s your name?”

“Will.”

The corners of Mike’s lips turn up, and Will decides right then that he wants to see that smile for the rest of his life. “That’s a cool name, ‘cause it’s also a real word, like, it means something. I wish my name meaned something,” Mike says, grin fading on the last sentence.

Will gives him a gap-filled smile, and Mike commits the image to memory. “Yeah, I guess it’s cool. It’s okay your name doesn’t mean anything. You can make it mean a thing.”

Mike’s eyes widen with wonder. “Really? You can do that?”

Will shrugs. “All words didn’t mean something until they did. Somebody had to make it mean what it does.”

Mike’s eyebrows furrow again as he takes in what he’s hearing. “Huh. I never thinked about that.” He kicks his shoe up off the ground to swing harder, and he’s much better at it than Will because his legs are longer. Will knows his legs will get longer too though, someday.

“So, what are you gonna make it mean?” Will asks, curious to know the answer.

The tree’s leaves part just enough to finally allow some spots of light through the gaps, creating a window in the shadow for a ray of sun to shine. The light lands right upon Will’s face, giving him his own personal halo, hand-picked by nature to fit him just right.

Mike can see Will even better now, which is good because he likes seeing him. His response comes to him as easily as the decision to walk over to the swing set had. 

He smiles, big and genuine, and says, “I think I will make my name mean ‘Will’s friend’.”

Will grins back, this time with his teeth on display.

They both have a new friend, and they both have a little more meaning than they did before.

Will opens his eyes, returning himself to the present and getting nearly blinded by the resurgence of red in his vision. He’s suddenly filled with fortitude and his entire body feels revitalized just from recalling a time that was nearly a decade earlier. Somehow, that's enough, and it always has been.

Will’s eyes moves to the slippery vines surrounding Mike, and he feels so desperate—and determined—as he watches them try to tighten back up around his limbs. Will scrunches his face up hysterically. 

Mike’s eyes fly open. He found his strength in the same place it’s always been, and always will be—in the best thing he’s ever done. He brings himself out of the memory, ready to do almost anything he has to. He embodies the role of the knight he’s taken on so often before, only this time with a new purpose. A returned purpose.

Will and Mike will probably continue to save each other until the end of time. They'll continue to save each other on purpose—knowingly and willingly—and they'll continue to save each other like this—by just existing. Sometimes the only place one of them has to be to rescue the other is their mind. Just the thought, just the knowing, can be enough.

Beside him, Will keeps staring down the tendrils that hold Mike, he just wants them to let go, he needs them to, they have to, he just has to—

Before Mike has a chance to fight for himself the ropes seethe like they were stung and unwrap themselves from his body like a spell had been cast on them.

Mike falls from the tree and lands hard on his front with a wet slap, the ground giving him a harsh welcome. He stammers and turns his head around as much as possible to look at Will for an explanation, who’s still tied up himself. He says nothing, staring right back down at Mike with just as much confusion.

Vecna snarls loudly, close enough to send prickling shivers down their backs. He motions his hand and sends another vine toward Mike to recapture him, but he manages to bring himself to his feet and leap out of the way right in time, the limb barely licking the front of his shoe before it retreats back. By some miracle, Mike had gotten just far enough that it couldn’t reach him.

“Mike! Go!” Will screams at him even though he’s still trapped himself. “Run!”

Chapter Text

Mike and Will’s bodies rise up off the ground in unison, splitting from their place propped against the car to levitate side-by-side.

In their state of panic, no one in the group had noticed Nancy’s mistake.

The two lift up off the sand, each inch they travel into the air coordinated like a duo of synchronized swimmers, obscuring the sun before taking up its space. Their shadows swallow up the people below, the voids of light bending and reworking themselves to their liking. It’s nauseating. It’s almost beautiful.

The headphones that were positioned between their heads fall to the ground with a soft plunk that’s dulled by the desert floor. The weight of the headphones’ landing causes a tug to their cord, pulling the Walkman sideways.

Several people scream, but the sounds are too overlapped to know who.

“You gotta be fucking kidding me!” Steve yells, curling his fingers into his palms hard enough for the nails to pierce through his skin before moving them to scrub over his face instead.

Lucas’s eyes nearly bulge out of his skull in what could be a bleak prediction of his friends’ futures. “What the fuck!” He shouts.

Joyce bends her head to face up at the boys with a deceptively emotionless expression, blank to the outside world but thinking harder than she ever has before. She’s not taking account of anyone around her except her son and his best friend.

Robin stumbles back with a hand over her mouth, crashing into Eddie who’s stock-still but hyperventilating.

Dustin hurls his arms up and down while yelling like he’s trying to demonstrate the world’s worst version of jumping jacks. “Shit, oh my god, shit, shit, shit, shit!”

A wave of cold terror splashes over Nancy’s body and freezes her up. It’s like jumping into the ocean when your skin’s warmed by the sunshine and the water is as frigid as can be, and you think for just a moment, as it submerges your body, that the temperature will kill you.

Mike doesn’t move.

Will writhes under the tree’s limbs, still stuck in place. “I’m serious, go!” He repeats to Mike, but most of the sound hits Vecna in front of him.

Mike stays where he is, the soles of his shoes mushing deeper into the ground and breaking open another spider egg. “No! Not without you.”

His face is too goddamn sincere for Will’s liking, his spider-coated Converse bouncing around and eager to leave but waiting on him. Always waiting on him. A blob of smoke cuts through the sky from far away giving a glimpse of their own airborne bodies above their loved ones. Mike could just go, but he isn’t. He won’t.

He wants to help but he doesn’t know how. He wants to save him.

Will’s favorite song faintly pours in.

I would say I’m sorry if I thought that it would change your mind

Another vine unsticks itself from the tree and crawls its way to Mike’s feet.

But I know that this time I have said too much, been too unkind

“No!” 

Will sinks his nails into the tendrils around his wrists as hard as he can. They squeal like real creatures and jerk away, then he does the same to the one around his neck with his freed hands, embedding his fingers in its flesh until they lurch off. The one headed toward Mike recoils empathetically.

I tried to laugh about it, cover it all up with lies

Will falls over and his stomach hits the ground with a splat, and his ankles are now the only part of him still bound to the trunk, but the vines start trailing up his legs to keep him there.

I tried to laugh about it, hiding the tears in my eyes

Will shimmies forward on his front as much as he’s able to, sliding centimeter-by-centimeter with grunts of struggle until he can just barely reach Vecna’s feet with the tips of his fingers.

‘Cause boys don’t cry

Will releases a guttural yell that vibrates his entire person—more of a battle cry than a scream of fear—and digs his fingers straight into the meat of Vecna’s ankle, clenches, then yanks with all his strength.

He pulls his hand back with a tearing noise and brings a chunk of Vecna’s skin and muscle with it. The last vines around his feet snake away while Vecna groans in pain as if they were an extension of his body.

Will’s reminded, in a thought that seems to come from the back of his neck, of the Mind Flayer’s physical form dying on the floor of the mall as the gate to its world was closed. The coagulated mass of bodies shaped into the form of a spider being controlled and subsequently killed by the connection to its host. He ignores the thought.

He’s finally free.

Will scrambles to his feet as quick as lightning and wastes no time getting to Mike while Vecna’s distracted. He finds Mike already staring at him with his mouth open, looking confused and… impressed. If Will were more deluded he might even say he looks flustered.

“That was…”

“We have to go!” Will pants, but Mike seems to be anchored to the ground. Will realizes he’s still holding onto the piece of flesh he tore from Vecna’s body and mumbles, “Jesus,”, tossing it down and shaking the gross sensation off then using his other hand to grab one of Mike’s. He’s about to pull him in the direction of the portal but Mike flinches and looks down at their clasped hands, staring, so Will lets go—he doesn’t want to make him uncomfortable.

He thinks about what happened in the vision Vecna gave him, and like the other thought, he ignores it.

Mike thinks about his own vision, too.

“Mike, let’s go!” Will repeats.

Mike snaps out of it to follow his lead, sprinting alongside him and kicking up puddles of liquid that splash onto the bottom of his pants, leaving Vecna behind.

After just a few seconds the doorway to the real world begins to shrink and the fog of its borders closes in, the volume of the music lowering until it disappears, only the scarlet sky remaining.

Mike and Will freeze.

A long moment of silence passes before Mike says, “You saw that too, right?”

On the surface, he’s asking if the gateway had vanished for Will too, but there’s a hidden question underneath asking if he’d even seen it in the first place, just to be sure.

Will nods absentmindedly while his eyes stay fixed on one spot in the sky. It’s as if it were never there at all.

Mike inhales sharply like he’d forgotten to breathe until now. “Why’d it stop?” He bites and licks his lips a couple of times while he shuffles his feet, chest rising and falling. “Why would they do that?”

Will wrings his hands and winces at how close Mike’s voice is to his ears. There’s no good reason for the song to end unless there’s been an accident or something broke, but he doesn’t want that to be the case because if it’s either one of those they’re absolutely doomed.

Will opens his mouth to speak but is interrupted by the peripheral view of a gigantic boulder hurdling down from above, dead-set on landing on the two of them, and by the time Will notices it’s too late to react.

Mike leaps and tackles him to a safe spot on the ground without a second thought, acting on instinct with nothing going through his mind besides Will being in danger. A resonating smack rings out as they land and the mass crashes down, only missing them by about a foot.

Mike cranes his head around from where his body lays over Will’s to see what almost hit them, and he discovers a huge piece of what used to be Vecna’s home, rotting wooden planks breaking to crumble all over the place—including onto Mike’s back. It can’t be any less than ten feet wide and nearly just as tall. He can’t imagine what would’ve happened if it didn’t miss its target.

Mike, planked over Will like a human shield, turns his head back around and is met with Will’s face right under his and close enough to brush noses.

Will can’t breathe for many reasons that have little to do with his ribcage being compressed by Mike’s, though that’s definitely a factor. His eyes are so wide he thinks they might pop right out when he feels an exhale ghost across his lips.

Mike’s not doing any better as he stares back with such unorthodox reverence that shouldn’t be possible in a place like this, a moment so tender it’s uncanny. It’ll never matter where they are or what situation they’re in, though, what matters is that it’s Will who he’s looking at.

Will can’t handle how close Mike is to him—not just close, but actually touching him in a way he’s been trying to avoid doing for the sake of his own sanity.

Will thinks about the memory he chose in order to save himself, an event that’s insignificant in the grand scheme of things but somehow made it possible for him to overpower an interdimensional monster.

Will has no clue that Mike’s having the exact same thought as him.

They stay like that with their heartrates stupidly skyrocketed for a few beats longer than warranted, until Mike gets a grip on himself and rolls off of Will and onto his back to lay next to him.

Without a word, Will stands up and hunkers down to offer Mike a hand, who takes it and gets aggressively tugged to his feet.

“We have to keep going,” Will says, looking a little spooked. Does Mike really make him that uncomfortable?

“But, it’s…” Mike motions toward the sky. His brain needs a moment to catch up after all of that.

Will rolls his eyes before he can think better of it. “I know, but—it’ll probably come back.” He’s barely convinced by his own words but at least one of them has to believe it, hopefully with enough confidence to account for both of them.

He’d been too occupied to notice it before, but the temperature here is nothing like Will had expected and nothing like he could really describe to someone who hasn’t felt it. The air is icy and damp against him yet his insides are burning up, creating the most uncomfortable feeling throughout his body. He simultaneously wants to inject ice into his veins and take a swim in boiling water.

It’s different from the regular Upside Down but similar enough that he has to fight off bad memories that would only end up distracting him.

Mike doesn’t argue with him but doesn’t agree either. He’s so tired and he doesn’t want to keep running, he just wants to curl up and sleep. He just wants a blanket. Or some air conditioning. Or both.

Will reaches out and grabs onto him again—his wrist this time—and pulls. “Come on, before he throws something else at us!”

Will begins to sprint in the same path as before, not letting go of Mike’s arm until he no longer feels the backward drag of him struggling to keep up with the pace.

Mike wishes he would keep holding on.

“Lucas… are they gonna be okay? Lucas?” Erica grabs at her brother’s sleeve as her usual unbothered persona melts away, and Lucas wraps an arm around her instead of responding. Frankly, he has no idea what to say.

Steve spots Robin trying to soothe Eddie even as her own stress threatens to overcome her, and he marches over to them.

“Eddie, you need to look away, okay?” Steve puts his hands on both his shoulders and then moves them to cup Eddie’s face when he doesn’t make eye contact. “Hey, look at me, they’ll be fine, okay?” Steve says gently, and Eddie shifts his eyes to his, but only for a moment before he turns back to the hovering bodies.

“No, Eddie, jesus—” Steve grabs him by the shoulders again to spin him around, pushing him over to the SUV to shove him in the backseat behind Max.

“Steve, what—”

“Just—stay here. Please. I don’t want you to see this again,” Steve says from outside the back door, not slamming it closed until Eddie nods.

“Why’re you in here?” Max asks, spinning halfway around in the driver’s seat and opening her eyes after having them shut to the music for a while.

Eddie slowly recovers from his trance and wipes away some stray tears that he didn’t realize were there. “Um—I-” He starts, still trembling, then pauses. “...Is this Kate Bush?”

Max scrunches up her face. “You know Kate Bush?”

She’d mostly tuned out the muffled speech of the rest of the group to focus on the song, but Eddie reminded her that there's a world outside the one she‘s built for herself in this nest of leather upholstery. “Shit, are they floating already?” She turns her head to the windshield and sees the jumble of panicked bodies.

“What happened?” She asks, gaze stuck to the pane of glass separating her from the full scope of reality before she moves to look back again. “Eddie, what’s going on?”

“They—the…” He can’t think, his brain might be fried from feeling all that stress in such a short amount of time.

Max raises her eyebrows expectantly.

“Fuck—sorry, I don’t know if I should swear. How old are you?”

“Eddie!”

“Right, sorry,” He grabs at his hair, making it frizzier than it already was. “The… headphones. Nancy put headphones between them… and… they fell.”

She just blinks at him, her eyebrows a lot closer than they were before.

Eddie fills his cheeks up with air and blows it out while he wills his mind to form coherent words. “Like, the music stopped—and they don’t know how to put it back on, ‘cause, they’re in the sky.” He grimaces at his own explanation.

Max seems to get the memo though, because her expression shifts from irritated to horrified before he even ends his sentence. She jumps out of the open car door without a farewell, leaving Eddie all by himself with only the sound of Max’s favorite song to distract him from the impending disaster beyond.

Lucas spots her right away and shouts, “Max, get back inside!”

She ignores him and begins searching for clues to make up for what Eddie wasn’t able to say. Mike and Will in the sky with bare ears, no music except for what’s seeping out from the car radio, and a pair of headphones attached to a Walkman on the ground.

“What the hell happened?”

“For real, go back inside!” Lucas treks over to get her attention but she’s too distracted to really hear what he’s saying.

“But—how did… What’d you guys…” Max whispers, starting to empathize with Eddie as her mind tries to grasp onto everything around her.

Lucas’s face softens and he steps closer, lifting a hand to put on her shoulder but lowering it on second thought because he’s not sure where his and Max’s relationship stands right now. “Hey, we’ll handle it. You have to keep listening to your song.” He says.

Max moves her eyes from the Walkman and over to him. “Lucas, I have to do something, I can’t just sit on my ass while they’re up there about to die!”

“They wouldn’t want you risking your life for theirs. You know that.” His tone stays calm but he can only hope it’s assertive enough to get through to her. “Look—here…” he walks away to grab the cassette player off the ground along with the headphones, and shakes off as much of the sand as he can. “Here,” Lucas says again and hands the items to Max.

“What? But—Mike and Will…” Max trails off.

“It’s not like they’ll be coming back down, is it?” Lucas reasons, then regrets what his words imply. He circles around to the driver’s side of the car and glances inside. “Where’d you put your cassette?”

“It wasn’t working, remember?”

“I just wanna try.”

Max watches him and chews her lip. “I think it’s still in the player.”

He hunches down by the door to stick his torso in far enough to reach the dashboard, then presses the eject button next to the entrance of the tape drive. 

“Lucas? What’cha doing here?” Eddie asks after seeing him dive inside his line of sight.

One end of the clear cassette slides through and Lucas snatches it out. “I could ask you the same thing,” he replies.

Nearby, Max feels a warm hand lay on her shoulder accompanied by a soft voice. “Max, are you okay? Why are you not in the car?”

She turns and finds El by her side, eyes still puffy from crying, who apparently cared enough to come and check on her amidst all of this.

“Um… It’s okay, Lucas is taking care of it.”

El looks confused but doesn’t mention it, she just moves her hand to wrap around Max’s waist instead and holds her snugly against her side. Max eases into the touch and tilts her head to lean on El’s shoulder.

Lucas appears in front of them and grabs the Walkman from Max to remove what’s inside and replace it with the Hounds of Love tape, rewinding to the beginning and then handing it back.

“Just try it. Please.” Lucas says.

Max lifts her head back up and puts her headphones on after making sure the earpieces are facing inward, then clicks the play button into place.

The music starts. Inexplicably, it doesn’t obscure or stop the way it had earlier—it continues on the same as it ever did.

“It’s working.”

Lucas breathes a sigh of relief and Max feels El’s arm squeeze tighter around her.

Max knows they’ll always take care of her.

It isn’t as peaceful a few yards away where Hopper and Nancy are at each other’s throats, or mostly, Hopper is at Nancy’s throat.

“How could anyone forget, oh, I don’t know, just the most pivotal part of this whole thing? That you start levitating like a goddamn wizard?” Hopper shouts.

“You forgot too! You didn’t stop me. Nobody did!” Nancy defends, but a part of her mind is nowhere near here, still lost in the wave of cold that enveloped her.

“You didn’t exactly give us a choice, did you? You just had to go and be their knight in shining armor before we could get our heads on straight!” Hopper yells, and it reminds El of the fights they used to have after he took her in a couple of years back—the way he towers over Nancy and doesn’t realize how scary he can be, like he needs someone else to tell him to ease off.

Nancy’s chest rises and falls with angry breaths. “What should I have done, then? Just keep standing there wringing my hands?”

The iciness of the oxygen in Will’s lungs is almost a relief to his overheated insides even though it dries out his throat.

There’s no sign of the music reappearing anytime soon, but they keep running anyway. Trees and boulders pass by in a blur, but they ignore everything other than the ground beneath their feet.

Mike stays by Will’s side and is mostly keeping up to his speed, legs pumping harder whenever he starts to lag behind. Truth be told, Mike’s not sure he’d be trying so hard if Will weren’t here with him, encouraging him to keep going even though it’s not clear if it’s worth having hope anymore.

What Mike doesn’t know is that Will probably wouldn’t be so determined to get out either if it weren’t for the sound of Mike’s footsteps, assuring that he’s there and isn’t going anywhere without him.

Suddenly, Will trips over nothing and is sent plunging to the ground, falling onto his stomach. He’s pretty unfazed and wastes no time getting back up, rolling over onto his back to be met with a worried Mike whose arm is outstretched toward him.

“You should’ve kept going,” Will grunts as he grabs the hand in front of him and pulls himself up, “I would’ve caught up.”

“No,” Mike says a little too soon after Will finishes talking. “Uh—” he licks his lips then glances down at Will’s own, “I mean, that would be silly, c’mon,” he scoffs. It’s a good thing everything is red, otherwise the blush on his cheeks would be obvious.

Will gives him a puzzled look for while he brushes off the damp front of his shirt, then starts to sprint again.

Of course, Mike follows him, because he always will.

“You two, shut up!” Joyce yells, startling Hopper and Nancy out of their argument. “Mostly you, Hop! For Christ’s sake, she was only trying to help her brother!” She shouts at him while waving her arm from Nancy to Mike to illustrate her point.

Joyce had been silent up until now, just gazing vacantly while the thoughts racing around her head tried to find any crumb of a helpful idea. She had shut out the rest of the world with only one goal in mind.

“Jonathan, where’s Will’s cassette?” Joyce shifts her eyes to him.

Jonathan looks to where the Walkman had landed but he finds nothing, just an empty spot with a small pit in the sand. “It—it was right there, I don’t know what happened, it…”

Lucas overhears him and says, “I have it! Here—” then jogs over and hands the tape to Jonathan. “Um, Max is using the Walkman, so…” He trails off, scratching the back of his neck even though it doesn’t itch.

Jonathan slips the tape into his back pocket, but before he can respond Joyce starts to speak again, her tone commanding. “Okay, someone needs to find a car with a working cassette player and loud speakers,” she addresses everyone now, “ very loud speakers,” she amends.

Not everybody was paying her their full attention, so she ends with a yell, “Go!”

People scramble around to different cars scattered all over the place, ready to test their sound systems. Keys can be heard twisting in the locks of doors that are then yanked open, the keys getting switched to the ignition right after.

Argyle, who most people had forgotten was here, makes himself known. “The pizza van has a bumpin’ sound system, my dudes. Like, legit bumpin’. Can feel tha’ shit in, like, my bones. ”

Several heads snap in the direction of the voice to discover Argyle lying on his back on the ground, limbs spread like a starfish, and eyes clamped shut to protect from the sun rays.

Jonathan stills. “Does it have a cassette player?” He asks, too stressed to remember.

“Uh’course, man! Surfer Boy doesn’ skimp out on its ‘mployees, they know what we need. Well, ‘cept that one time I asked for a raise…” Argyle looks as contemplative as someone trying to avoid burning their retinas can look, brows creasing above shut eyelids. “But like, yeah, y’can put tapes in there. For sure.”

It’s unclear whether he’s still high enough that he forgot what’s happening, or if he’s decided he’s best suited basking on the desert floor, but it’s not likely he plans on going anywhere.

“Jonathan, hurry!” Joyce says.

“Okay! Uh…” He pats his palms over the front and back of his jeans, then up to the pockets of his overshirt when he feels no key-shaped objects. His chest tightens when those turn up empty too, but right in time it hits him—he’d left them in the van when he first grabbed Will’s tape.

For the second time that day, Jonathan runs to the pizza van in hopes of saving his brother, and for the second time, a crowd watches as he goes, all hoping this will be the last emergency they have to deal with.

Jonathan can feel his heart clunking as he slides the car door open urgently, not unlike when they’d dragged that dying agent into the backseat as their house went up in gunsmoke. He sees the keys where he thought they’d be and breathes a sigh, then pauses, thinking.

“What do I do now?” He shouts at his mom from just far enough away for his volume to be necessary.

“Seriously?” Joyce shouts back, questioning her parenting skills, then yells again desperately, “Drive, Jonathan, drive!”

It still takes him a moment to understand what she’s asking him to do, but as soon as it clicks in his mind he leaps into action.

He plops down into the driver’s seat and files through the trinkets on Argyle’s keychain until he gets to what he’s looking for, then jams the key into the ignition, twisting it and waiting for the telltale thrum of the engine. It takes a few tries to start up—because of course it does—but after a moment of Jonathan muttering “C’mon you stupid piece of shit,” the salvational sound of rumbling is heard.

He shifts gears to reverse then cranes his neck around to peer out the back windshield, mentally filtering out the red of the Surfer Boy Pizza logo, then he floors it backward. As he spins the steering wheel to the left he realizes he has no real plan, acting on adrenaline rather than logic. On queue he whips the wheel even further to the left when he grasps just how fast he’s hurtling toward the side of the SUV, careening just enough to avoid crashing into it.

Jonathan hears a muted “What the hell are you doing?” from outside, but he’s not processing much other than the engine’s vibrations shooting up his spine and his end goal. He’s never been the best at going backward, much less when his brother’s life is on the line.

He’s at such an angle that if he backs up very carefully he can move out of collision territory, so he inches his way until he clears the path of destruction. He hears more bewildered spluttering.

Jonathan takes stock of the situation, turning his head to the front before he steps on the gas and sends the van backward without looking at the stretch of land behind him. Once he’s far enough away he jolts the gear stick and speeds forward so hard it jerks his body, then he whirls around to the side of the SUV, kicking up sand that spews out from under the tires and sticks to the side of the other vehicle. Finally, he parks at an awkwardly slanted angle to get as close as he can to Mike and Will.

As soon as he slides the door open Joyce is right in front of him with Nancy close by, the rest of them lingering a short distance behind. 

“Cassette,” Joyce says, “the cassette, where is it?”

“Oh! It’s, uh…” Jonathan steps out of the car and pats over his pockets like he’d done before, grazing over his shirt, the front of his jeans, then—

The back.

His back pockets.

He shuts his eyes as his fingers sweep the outline of something rectangular, and he gives a silent prayer before reaching in. His heart lurches when he hears a crunch the moment his hand wraps around the tape, loose from its case, and he brings it into view to survey the damage.

He’s not sure how he could’ve missed the feeling of plastic breaking right against him when he sat on it, or even the sound it must’ve made when it snapped, but he did. There’s a crack all the way across the cassette starting near the bottom left corner and darting up horizontally to the middle-right, perfectly crossing over the title text to obscure the ‘Don’t’ in Boys Don’t Cry.

Nancy can sense Jonathan’s panic and softly speaks up, “Uh, can I see it?”

Jonathan hands it to her as Joyce watches them with confusion. Nancy studies the tape and flips it over, running a finger along the breakage. To everyone’s surprise, she grabs one end in each hand and bends while watching for the plastic’s resistance—it hardly gives in at all. Nearby, Dustin talks quietly to Lucas while Steve and Robin share a strange look.

“It’s fine. It’s only cracked on the outside, it’ll still work, see?” Nancy passes it back to Jonathan and points at side one. She’s right—it’s still as solid as ever, it just looks a lot worse than it is.

“‘Tis but a flesh wound,” a voice comes out of nowhere to say. They turn toward the sound to see Eddie, who has apparently returned from the back of the SUV to join them.

Argyle chuckles from a few yards away, still spread out on the ground, and yells, “Hey, Monty Python!” He’d probably give Eddie a high five if he bothered to move.

“The quote’s actually ‘Just a flesh wound’.” Dustin near-whispers.

“I thought it was ‘’Tis but a scratch’?” Lucas mumbles back.

Dustin shakes his head. “Well, yeah, but no. They’re two different quotes, people get them mixed up.”

Max shushes them.

Steve slips past a few shoulders to reach Eddie then grabs his arm, saying, “Hey, what’re you doing out here?” His tone is rigid but his eyes are so soft that Eddie feels like he’s made of mush.

Eddie opens his mouth to speak but no words come to mind. He moves his head all around and then turns it up to the sky where Mike and Will are, fidgeting with the rings on his fingers. “It’s just… Before, when—you know, it…”

Steve waits for him to continue, still holding his arm. The coldness of the metal making up Eddie’s rings quickly warms as it steals the heat from his opposite hand, which spins the jewelry around and around.

Steve glances at the movement—he sometimes grumbles that the rings leave Eddie’s skin permanently reeking of metal, which is an exaggeration, but Eddie secretly likes the smell. That, and the cold, reminds him of all the time he’d spent alone on the swings as a kid, his hands going numb from holding onto chains for so long.

“I…” Eddie begins again, “I want to see someone survive it, just once. Just one time, I need to see it.”

Eddie looks away from the sky and back to Steve, whose eyes soften even more. He has a look of sad understanding, almost regretful about something; maybe about asking, or maybe the fact that he even had to ask in the first place.

Steve nods. “Yeah, okay,” he says gently, so quiet he can barely hear himself, “okay.”

Eddie nods back, and that’s that.

“Open the doors,” Joyce says from nearby, “including the back, don’t forget the back!”

Nancy sprints to the other side of the pizza van and hitches the trunk up. Eddie decides to make himself useful by sliding open the passenger’s side door, leaving an empty passage across the front seats for sound to escape. Everyone else follows the commotion with their eyes, as silent as an innocent bystander watching a street fight from the sidewalk—as is their right, because they’ve done all they can at this point.

“Jonathan!” Joyce pokes at his still form, “The cassette!”

Jonathan realizes the tape is still in his hands, then he lunges back into the seat from outside the driver’s side door, grateful that he’d kept the engine running. He looks across the dashboard for the cassette player, which is hard to spot among all the other fancy radio features, and once he finds it he slides the tape in with the “1” facing up. Joyce, and Nancy who’s back from the trunk, observe him as he turns the volume dial enough to tell when it starts playing.

Jonathan groans when the album’s eighth track begins instead of its first. “Goddamn cassette players!” How many times can things go wrong before they inevitably have to go right, he wonders.

“What’s wrong?” Nancy asks, trying to get a better look over Jonathan’s shoulder to see what happened.

“Wrong side,” He says while pressing the eject button, then grabs the tape and flips it over before pushing it back in. “They’re never the same…”

He’s bracing for another disaster or mistake to delay their efforts to save the boys. It feels only a moment away from everything that’s happened getting proven futile. If for some fucking reason this doesn’t work then they’ll have nothing left to try—they’ll be doomed. Truly, undoubtedly doomed. 

Jonathan closes his eyes and takes calculated breaths in the way he’d learned to do during times when reality becomes too much—too narrow, too wide, too cold or quiet. In through the nose, hold it, out through the mouth, in through the nose, hold it, out through the mouth.

The music starts. The title track plays through the admittedly immaculate speakers and Jonathan rotates the volume control to almost as high as it’ll go, wincing at how loud it is. He doesn’t really mind, though, because The Cure’s assault on his eardrums is the worldly confirmation of Mike and Will’s rescue. God does it hurt, does it quake in his ribs, but he can’t be bitter at a sound that brings this much relief.

Nancy and Joyce put their hands over their ears, and even those farther away grimace, but nobody complains. After all, the noise needs to be able to reach high into the air without distorting too much. Jonathan jogs a bit away from the van to see how it fares over there, and like an answer to his call, the first lyrics of the song play out.

I would say I’m sorry if I thought that it would change your mind

“Ya see?” Argyle yells, somehow able to be heard over the music. “In my bones, man!”

Jonathan sprints back over to join everyone else. Once again they’ve all descended into silence, becoming hardly anything more than members of an audience watching a morbid play, rooting for the characters to make it to the end but knowing they can’t affect the outcome. 

They’re still not sure if the song will work for Mike, or if Will’s favorite song has changed, or if another thing will go wrong before the boys have a chance to get out. 

There’s no way to know if there’s a chance for them at all—if either of them, considering all the shit they’ve been through, can find a memory that’s happy enough to save them. Or, if they’ll even try to save themselves. Maybe they’ll just deem this as the world taking the burden of choice off their shoulders, and they’ll succumb to the piercing of a claw into their skulls. Maybe they’ll consider it the easy way out.

Regardless, they watch. Jonathan, Nancy, Joyce, Hopper, Dustin, Lucas, Max, El, Erica, Robin, Steve, and Eddie all have their heads tipped back to the sky, faces twisted up and hands over their ears. Sunlight phases across their visions and music hammers in their chests, which combined with the heat and fear creates a sensory explosion. The sun is sinking, rolling down to balance dead-center behind Mike’s and Will’s bodies and peeking out from between them.

It hurts, but regardless, they watch. They watch, and they hope.

Mike and Will’s footsteps beat against the ground in sync, mimicking the sound of a racing heartbeat—or just as relevantly, a ticking clock.

The longer they run while the sky stays empty the more Will can feel wordless questions pass back and forth in the air between them. A puff of breath by his side asks: Is there really any point in this? A grunt from Will conveys: Just keep going, Mike.

It turns out there is a point in it. The spot in the sky they’ve been chasing after splits open again, and a break in the redness reveals all the people in the real world who are waiting for them to come home.

Mike and Will know what it’s like to wait, and to be a far cry away from where you’re meant to be. Sometimes you have to stop being patient, and sometimes you have to fight to come home.

They don’t stop to get a better look through, but there’s a strange lapse while they try to process it all—a small blip that exists outside of time and without the cold, the hot, or the fear that’s wound around their joints like corrupt ligaments. It’s a stasis that both of them feel, but on the outside it seems like nothing’s changed. There’s a new determination in them that’s different than before, more desperate because this time they don’t know if the portal will stay. They’re on the brink of getting saved but their fate teeters on the edge of whether they run quite fast enough or avoid Vecna efficiently enough.

Regardless, they keep running. 

I would say I’m sorry if I thought that it would change your mind

Will’s chest may just combust from trying to breathe in more air than his lungs can fit, and his ankles feel like they could roll out from under him. He could’ve sworn they’d been closer to the exit than they are now, but his mind might be playing tricks on him.

But I know that this time I have said too much, been too unkind

Mike’s body feels too heavy for him to carry, like there are weights strung to his legs and he has to lug them around instead of simply moving forward. Without slowing down he turns his head to Will, who senses this and turns to look back at him, both their faces shining with sweat.

I tried to laugh about it, cover it all up with lies

Will’s brows are scrunched and his eyes sink into Mike’s like they want to be buried in his skull instead. It’s intense, but Mike returns the intensity so much that he’s not sure he could look away if he tried, and he doesn’t want to. It feels like they’re talking to each other but whatever they’re saying can’t be said in words. The messages are sent past their eyes right to their subconsciouses, and deep in there somewhere, they understand.

I tried to laugh about it, hiding the tears in my eyes

Their gazes are locked so tightly that they forget to pay attention to their surroundings. Mike nearly collides with a boulder but is saved at the last second when Will grabs his arm and yanks him out of the way.

“Oh, shit!” Mike slurs as he’s pulled toward Will, crashing into him as a much better alternative to solid rock.

“Be more careful,” Will says, not having to speak loudly because he’d tugged Mike against his side.

Mike’s body starts leaching some heat from Will’s and they both shiver at the contact. It’s not skin-on-skin, and they’re colder than they normally would be, but it’s one of the most human things that has happened here.

It’s not really about any of that, though, is it? It’s really about who they’re pressed up against, sharing with what little warmth they have. It’s about who they’d give all their warmth to in a heartbeat if they asked for it. Who they’d willingly become cold-blooded for if it meant keeping them comfortable.

“Sorry,” is all Mike can muster when he finally replies, continuing to stare at Will who stares right back. 

Will notices he hasn’t let go of Mike’s arm yet and starts loosening his fingers, but Mike's other arm bolts up to stop him, putting his hand over Will’s which goes still under his touch. Will looks down at their hands then looks back up to the set of eyes focused on him, then slowly curls his fingers snugly back around Mike’s sleeve without breaking his gaze.

Mike gulps, and he feels like he’s on fire. He wonders if Will can feel his palm grow hotter against his skin.

“Um—we need to keep going,” Will says quietly, still pressed to Mike’s side and keeping a grip on his arm (and mind, and heart). Will’s own mind feels less squeezed and more empty like it chose to go blank instead of trying to analyze anything. There’s… something there to analyze, though.

Mike slowly pulls his hand off Will’s and takes a step away. “Right, let’s… yeah.”

They don’t move.

A loud crashing sound from behind startles them to reality. It’s weird, Mike thinks, that they’re able to stop running at all without Vecna getting to them. It’s like there are little bubbles of time between sprinting where everything becomes less urgent and all that exists is the two of them together—which doesn’t really make sense. A lot of things don’t really make sense to him.

Will’s the first to start running again before Mike follows suit, catching up so their steps are in tandem like before. Will peers through the portal to see himself and Mike hovering in the now multicolored sky, and his stomach churns. The view is from an emotionally disconnected perspective, but he couldn’t feel more connected to the panic of his mom and siblings who watch them. Will’s airways suddenly feel a lot smaller.

The people he loves have done a lifetime of worrying about him, and he doesn’t want to make them worry a second longer than they have to.

Will moves his legs harder, pounding louder against the ground, then he reaches around and grabs Mike’s arm to bring him along. He may want to escape as soon as possible, but he’ll be damned if he gets out a moment before Mike does.

“Faster,” is all Will breathes out as an explanation, and Mike pants a little “huh,” as he’s dragged along but tries to keep up with the new pace. His legs are longer but they don’t have much leverage over Will’s muscle, considering how twiggy Mike is.

Mike expects Will to let go of his arm now that he’s caught up, but he doesn’t. It’s unnecessary and could slow them down if they’re not careful. Will hangs on anyway.

It’s harder to keep going the longer they exert themselves and their muscles resist it more and more. The air is sticky in their throats and contaminated with god-even-knows-what, but it’s definitely something they shouldn’t be breathing in. Maybe their heads are being screwed with, but it seems like they should’ve made more progress by now—the portal barely grows as they get closer.

A huge chunk of glass lands right behind them and cracks into smaller pieces that shoot all over the place. They manage to miss the brunt of it but tiny shards get caught in their clothes and hair, stinging and itchy. Mike tries to shake them off his head to no avail, the particles clinging to him like birds to a nest.

Will slides his hand further down Mike’s arm to his wrist before wrapping his fingers around it. Mike doesn’t flinch or look down but his eyelids flutter shut for a moment too long.

For the first time, they start to hear the words of their friends and family over the song. It’s muffled and not super clear, but they can tell who’s talking by their voices.

“Will! Mike! Please come home,” El shouts, and they can sort of see her through the fog with her head tilted back.

Now I would do ‘most anything to get you back by my side

“We need you here!” Lucas yells.

“C’mon, guys!” Dustin says from next to him.

“I know it’s hard! Don’t you fucking dare give up, I swear to god!” Max shouts, almost angry with conviction.

All of the figures they can see are more like silhouettes, and they can only guess which person each human-shaped blob belongs to.

“Come on, you two! I know you’ve got it in you!” Hopper yells.

But I just keep on laughing, hiding the tears in my eyes

“Mike, you are seriously an asshole if you don’t come back soon,” Nancy says sternly, but Mike can tell that she’s been crying.

“Keep going, guys! I’m so proud of you, Will, I’ve always been proud of you,” Jonathan says.

Will feels a sting deep in his nose and behind his eyes, and Mike tries to blink away the blurriness in his.

It sounds like everyone’s talking now, but some of the words are too stacked on top of each other to understand—still, they’re all trying. They all care.

“You can do it, babies! Will, Mike, you always make each other better, I really believe that, I’ve believed it since you first met! You can do this together,” Will’s mom yells, voice projecting far and wide.

‘Cause boys don’t cry

Tears slide down Will’s face, and Mike’s own already has a few streaks making their way along. They just need to be home. Everyone they love needs them home. Everyone who loves them needs them home.

Will moves his hand one last time, releasing Mike’s wrist to move it lower so that their palms are pressed together. This time, Mike doesn’t look down at their hands or turn his head to watch Will, instead, they both look forward at the promise of safety ahead. Behind them, things crash down from the sky and smash into tons of pieces, but they don’t move their eyes away. Mike slots his fingers between Will’s so they’re properly holding hands. He squeezes, and Will squeezes back.

The exit finally seems to be growing as they get closer to it, but it keeps getting harder to run at the same rate as before. Every step is more difficult than the last, and Mike thinks his body might be turning into jello. Will is pretty damn sure Max hadn’t said it had taken her this long.

The air around them feels thicker and thicker. It feels like their legs are trudging through water—then not long after that, a vat of honey—next, they seem to be marathoning in a pool of molasses. 

Dull pains shoot up Will’s legs in bursts that almost force him to stop, but he powers through it while more tears fill his eyes. He squeezes Mike’s hand just to feel him squeeze back.

Just then, Will realizes something.

“Mike,” Will croaks through the roughness in his throat, “the song, it’s about to—“

The song ends, this time having played out in its entirety.

The real-world portal starts to shrink around the edges, and Will can feel Mike lagging beside him. “Oh, don’t you dare,” he says, tugging on Mike’s hand so he can’t slow down even though Will’s own body hurts like hell. “Keep going, they’ll restart it.”

“Yeah,” Mike pants, trying to convince both Will and himself.

“Yeah,” Will affirms.

Neither of them truly doubts that the music will restart soon, but lots of things have gone wrong today. 

They’d quickly gotten used to the sound, and now the stomping of their footsteps and the roaring of the sky seems even louder than it was in their last bout of silence.

“It’s fine—hey, it’s fine !” Jonathan says to the scared faces around him, slipping by to step into the driver's seat of the pizza van. “All we gotta do is…” he reaches out to the dashboard before the next track can begin, pressing down on the rewind button, “...restart it.”

The song plays from the beginning. If it weren’t for the volume, sighs of relief would be heard.

Jonathan walks back over to stand with everyone, staying in a spot next to his mom. “We’re all good,” he says to nobody in particular, “not everything has to go wrong.”

Eddie himself isn’t really sure why, but he laughs at that. Maybe it’s a mixture of nerves and being so close to this all finally ending that he can taste it on his tongue, and his tongue chose to turn it into a chuckle.

Eddie looks up at the two boys, and he thinks they make a good pair—even levitating in the sky while under a deadly curse, which isn't a good look for anyone. It just seems like… if it were going to happen to them anyway, it would have to happen together.

It’s true, though. Not everythinghas to go wrong.

For the third time, Mike and Will hear the music start.

“I told you,” Will says, watching the portal expanding in their lines of sight to offer relief from the blinding red.

They’re getting so close they can almost breathe the fresh air of the outside, can almost feel the setting sun’s heat grazing them one last time before it disappears under the earth. Will knows exactly what colors he’d need to paint that sky, and can imagine mixing the oils on his palette, whereas forherehe’d only need one shade. What’s the use in living in monochrome, anyway? Light refracts the whole rainbow for a reason, and we’re meant to look outside after the rain.

Their hands have somehow shared enough heat to make them clammy despite the coldness, but you’d have to pry them apart to get them to let go. For now, they’ll hold on tighter so the other doesn’t slip away.

Mike’s legs are operating on autopilot while he tries to will himself not to throw up. He’s no athlete, but he doesn’t think he’d feel this horrible just from running in the real world.

Will’s muscles still have sparks of pain that flash like lightning, and he swears it sometimes lines up with the real bursts of it in the clouds. Neither of them slows down. 

Right leg, left leg, right leg, left leg, breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth.

I would say I’m sorry if I thought that it would change your mind 

The music and voices are getting even louder. Will’s listened to this song so many times that its presence almost slips past his mind; it’s become more like a part of him than a separate entity he interacts with. He’s spent so many hours drawing and painting with the track on loop, so many nights sobbing alone in his bed, unmoving unless it’s to reach down and rewind the tape, that it’s intertwined with him.

Their shoes and the bottoms of their pants are soaked with whatever liquid covers the ground, their clothes are wracked with tiny shards of glass, and they’re slathered with goo that the tree’s vines left behind. That’s all the least of their worries, though. 

They’re only a few yards away.

Suddenly, something slimy snakes around one of Will’s ankles and grips it tightly. It’s a vine—just like the ones that had tied them to the tree—and it extended itself all the way over here in some final scheme to recapture him. It’s hard to see through the fog but it looks like it has no end or source, just drawing backwards indefinitely.

But I know that this time I have said too much, been too unkind

Will gets the air punched out of him when the vine yanks on his foot, probably planning to drag him all the way back to Vecna’s house. Mike feels a pull on his hand and turns to see Will using him as an anchor, one shoe fighting to stay put and the other being hauled up off the ground.

“Mike, it’s—”

“What the hell?” Mike tugs Will toward himself, causing him to be stretched taut in both directions. 

The rope gives an answering pull, and Mike nearly has to crush Will’s hand to keep a hold on him. Will’s planted foot begins to slip and he struggles to keep himself down, trying to dig his heel into the ground without much success. He shakes and kicks his captured leg but the grip only gets stronger.

I tried to laugh about it, cover it all up with lies

A noise somewhere between a grunt and a growl escapes Mike’s mouth and he shouts, “Something has to go right! Just one thing!” He whirls around to the other side of Will and stompson the vine, making it hiss. “Give us,” Mike stomps again but it doesn’t relent, “one,” he digs the toe of his Converse into it while it squeals and tries to jerk away, “goddamn,” it wails as he steps on it over and over, “thing!”

Mike presses his weight into the vine one last time, crushing it and swiveling his foot around like he’s killing a bug. “Die, you stupid fucking gross tentacle piece of shit!”

It doesn’t die, but it lets out its loudest screech so far and releases Will’s ankle with a crackling sound, withdrawing into the fog and out of sight.

Mike turns back to face Will, whose hand he hasn’t let go of this entire time, and he’s already staring back. His eyebrows are hitched up in the middle with a look of surprise and… something else, and a bit of light from the portal illuminates his face. Mike can finally see some of the real colors of his eyes again, not just the same hue of red.

I tried to laugh about it, hiding the tears in my eyes

“...Oh,” Will says softly, a little breathless. He won’t stop looking at him like he’s trying to figure something out, but Mike can’t look away for the life of him, either.

“‘Oh’— ’Oh’, what?” Mike asks, then shakes his head as if saying ‘ nevermind’, “are you good? Is everything—are you—”

“I’m okay,” Will replies, “we’re okay.”

Mike heaves a breath that moves his whole chest, nodding. He feels kind of dizzy. “We’re okay,” he repeats back to Will, then again, “we’re okay.”

Will squeezes his hand. Mike squeezes back.

‘Cause boys don’t cry

They keep running, and they’re so close they almost wouldn’t even need to run anymore if they didn’t want to, they could go slower. It would certainly be easier.

As if they’d ever choose to do that.

Will puts his right leg ahead of him, and Mike does the same with his left. Will breathes in through his nose, and Mike breathes out through his mouth. The air in their lungs is becoming more and more clear than before, and surprisingly, it’s getting less difficult to sprint. It’s less like moving through molasses and more like moving through honey again.

They pass a threshold where the real world’s light engulfs their bodies, washing them clean of the redness as they go, and it feels like being redeemed. Not like beginning again, though, because there would be no point in anything they’ve ever done if they just started fresh with a brand new life. Why even start over if you’re not willing to push through what’s already happening?

Boys don’t cry

The world isn’t going to change if you’re reborn and promise to be better for it, and it’s not going to be better for you. You have to be better for yourself. You have to push through. You have to be better for the people you love, and the people who love you.

Left leg, right leg, breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth.

Will wonders if that’s the moral to all of this—working through your problems without trying to be someone you’re not, and improving yourself for virtuous reasons. He wonders if, maybe, this was all supposed to teach him a lesson.

Then, Will thinks as he pumps his legs faster, fuck that. Life isn’t some stupid morality lesson or a warning meant to be heeded, it’s just stuff that happens.

He and Mike aren’t an ‘example’ of anything. They didn’t deserve this, and it isn’t because of anything they did. The bullshit they’ve been through isn’t at all indicative of who they are as people.

Who they are as people is enough, and neither would trade the hand in their own for the world.

Home is right in front of them, they’re right there and they only have to go a few more steps.

Will closes his eyes, and Mike does the same.

Mike squeezes his hand, and Will squeezes back.

Holding on to each other like it’s the only thing keeping them on the ground, they take the last leap, bounding through the portal together. All they see on the backs of their eyelids is a wave of light.

Chapter Text

The first thing Mike and Will see is the horizon.

The two of them open their eyes right away and are guided to the real world by the colors of the Nevada desert sunset.

The second thing they see, before they can think not to look down, is the ground below them getting closer and closer as they fall towards it.

As fast as if they’d never been in the sky at all they crash down onto the hood of the SUV, hammering two craters into the spots where they had sat earlier that day. On instinct both their arms had sprung out to soften the landing but ended up colliding with the car’s grill, slashing their skin on the metal while they slide down the front and onto the ground.

The sound of people calling their names, the clearness of the air, and the increasing aches in their bodies—it all trickles into clarity as reality comes back to Mike and Will, and they come back to it .

Instead of the freezing hot/burning cold they’d just left behind, and instead of the petroleum-sticky heat of the afternoon, it’s warm like a well-loved blanket freshly removed from the dryer. It hugs their disorientation yet makes it worse by keeping them bobbing above and below the surface of their dreamlike state.

Will whips his head all over the place. His eyes are wide and searching while his hands feel for proof that the ground below him is, in fact, the actual ground.

Mrs. Byers sinks down in front of Will and cups his face in her hands to cradle him as gently as the newborn he once was. “ Oh, Will ,” she speaks through tears while wiping Will’s own off his cheeks, “you’re okay, baby, I’ve got you.” She gathers a not-yet-fully-lucid Will into her arms and holds his head under her chin as she whispers reassurances into his hair.

The volume of Boys Don’t Cry gets turned down, but not enough to make it disappear.

The rest of the Party crouches around them while Steve, Eddie, and Robin stand close behind, and Mike is confronted with the rare sight of his older sister crying. Nancy swipes at her eyes like she’s angry at them for betraying her emotions, fixing Mike with a hard stare. “You scared me, you asshole,” she says with no real malice then hesitates for a second before scooping Mike up in a half-kneeling hug. “I’m really glad you’re alive, though.”

Mike thinks with what little faculties he’s regained about responding with something snarky or feigning repulsion, but instead he sighs deeply and doesn’t say a word, letting the moment define itself.

Mike and Will’s friends linger nearby while they wait their turns to talk, none of them wanting to interrupt the family reunions—even though, really, they’ve all earned the title of family by now.

Jonathan is invited into the Byers’ hug to add to Will’s swaddling. Eventually, Nancy lets go of Mike and the others see that as their way in.

“You alright, man?” Lucas says, shuffling closer on his knees and putting a hand on Mike’s shoulder. Dustin does a stooped waddle over, his eyes moving between Mike and Will, while Max squats down beside him.

“Shit, yeah, did you get hurt?” Nancy asks, but Mike has a feeling that’s not the only thing Lucas meant by the question.

“Uh, I dunno—I don’t think so?” Mike replies. He’s not fully back in touch with his body yet.

Max chews on her lip to calm the urge to make fun of him, and Lucas looks at her appreciatively, knowing it took self-restraint.

Facing Will, El crawls forward and is abruptly pulled into the huddle. Will tries to say something but ends up mumbling into someone’s clothes, so the pairs of arms around him loosen to let him speak.

“What’d you say, buddy?” Jonathan asks gently. Any other time Will would complain about being babied but he knows the treatment isn’t just to quell himself .

Truthfully, Will barely remembers what he said, so he settles on the next thing that comes to mind: “I’m thirsty.”

Jonathan and Mrs. Byers give a small, somber laugh. “Yeah, I bet,” Jonathan says, “we’ll find you something to drink, okay?”

Will nods and looks over to El who’s watching him closely. 

Mrs. Byers suddenly turns her head to ask, “Mike, sweetie, are you alright?” but her voice doesn’t reach him.

“Mike,” Will blurts as he remembers, jolting to sit upright, “is he—where—“ his head turns all around but his view of Mike is blocked by the rest of his friends.

“Baby, try not to move so quickly.” Joyce puts a hand on his arm to still him. “You fell from pretty high up, you’re probably tender.”

Normally Will would listen to anything his mom had to say, but these aren’t normal circumstances.

“Mike?”

Mike hears Will calling his name and he shoves Dustin out of the way in his groggy state to get to him.

“Ow—the hell?” Dustin mutters, but Mike has already scooted past him—and past all the Byers’ who knew there wasn’t much of a point in trying to stop him.

Mike kneels down in front of where Will’s sitting and grabs both of his hands in his own. He tries to signal that he’s there by squeezing his fingers but they both end up wincing in pain from scratches left by the grill. A jagged red line slices across Mike’s left palm and Will has a similar cut on his right palm, creating an unintentional blood oath as they press together. 

Mike doesn’t let go and Will makes no move to either, so he keeps holding on through the sting. He sees some blood that smeared onto Will’s sleeve, and Mike knows not all of it belongs to him. An image flashes in his mind— Will’s limbs contorting—Will’s dead body in his lap, eye sockets empty—Will’s blood in his hands—

“Mike?”

—Will’s blood on his hands, his death on him, while everyone watches on.

“Mike, you’re shaking. Are you okay?” A voice says.

He snaps out of the flashback to see Will looking at him with concern, his eyes reflecting the golden sky. Mike’s hands are trembling around Will’s and slipping in shared blood but they keep their grasp tight.

Mike takes an uneven breath. “Hey, you stole my line,” he laughs weakly, swearing he sees the corner of Will’s mouth twitch up but otherwise he remains serious. Will is shaking too but he probably doesn’t know it.

Mike opens his mouth to talk again but he draws a blank. His mind is heavy with everything that has just happened; he can barely think in full sentences, let alone speak in them.

Will feels Mike’s fingertips slide up to graze over his wrist, dragging blood, before pressing down as if he’s searching for a pulse. Will’s sure he finds one because his heart rate hasn’t dropped since they fell, and the fingers on his skin soften. 

Mike doesn’t ever answer if he’s okay. Will doesn’t ask again.

A pair of eyes dart up, down, and side-to-side over Will until they land near the collar of his shirt. “You—You're hurt,” Mike says, and then the cut on his palm throbs to remind him that piece of information had been established.

Will looks down to find a tear in the shoulder of his button-up and the long-sleeve underneath it, the fabric soaked red, and he realizes that spot has been hurting this whole time. “Oh.” He cranes his head around to the SUV and sees a scrap of yellow plaid clinging to the crooked hood ornament, a trail of blood running from there to the bottom of the grill.

“I’m fine,” Will decides because he’s not actively dying anymore. “Your hand—”

“My hand? Will, yours is hurt too! And your shoulder is really—”

Will lets go of Mike’s left hand and then flips it over so he can display his own right hand beside it, both palms facing up and cuts aligned like they’re one continuous slash.

For some reason this shuts Mike up and neither of them speaks while Will inspects their injuries. At first glance it seems like their hands are two of a pair—roughly the same size and close in color—but when you look closer the subtle differences become more noticeable. Will’s fingers are shorter than Mike’s, whose skin is paler than Will’s, whose nails are more square while Mike’s are rounded. 

Mike thinks they balance each other out in some artistic way that Will probably knows the technical term for. They’d certainly make for an interesting study of contrast with the smattering of red.

“Yours is deeper,” Will says, “it could need stitches.”

“I don’t think it’s that deep…” Mike glances down at his cut, and—yeah, it is pretty deep, but Will’s hardly looks any better. “It’s—I’m fine. We’ll take care of it,” he assures, “don’t worry about me.”

“Can’t stop me.”

“What?”

“From worrying about you,” Will whispers.

“Oh.” Mike’s eyes lock on his. “‘Kay, well, we’ll just keep worrying about each other, then.”

“Good.”

Mike’s brows twitch under Will’s scrutiny and he forces himself to shift his gaze before it becomes too raw for him to handle. Mike nods his head and swallows, agreeing, “good.”

Will looks to the hood ornament of the SUV again and reaches up to grab the torn-off piece of his shirt. “Hey, here,” he says, wrapping the fabric around Mike’s palm to cover the cut and tying it securely. “A temporary fix.”

“Uh, is that sanitary? Your blood’s, like, all over it,”

Will pauses then replies confidently, “You don’t actually care.”

Mike can’t argue.

After a moment of silence a throat clears and Mike and Will remember that they’re not the only two people in the world.

Jonathan, now standing above them, leans down. “Here—this was the only unopened one in the van, you’re gonna have to share,” he says apologetically while holding a water bottle out to them.

Mike snatches the bottle from Jonathan, unscrewing the cap, but instead of drinking it himself, he hands it to Will.

Will was accustomed to Mike taking care of him like that when they were younger, and the reminder of what he’s been missing tastes bittersweet on his tongue, strange yet familiar like the water he gulps whose plastic overheated in the sun. He’s never found a lukewarm drink to be so refreshing.

Will stops himself before he can accidentally down the whole thing. He passes the bottle back to Mike, who stares at him for a second before bringing it to his mouth.

Will notes that their friends and family are still settled nearby on the ground, just not as close as before. Hopper, who he doesn’t recall being there a few minutes ago, towers over them, but his usual air of authority is nowhere to be seen.

“Everyone’s gonna check their cars for any drinks or food they have left,” Hopper says with the regretful tone of someone who already knows they won’t find much, “just hold tight, kiddos.”

Will scrunches his eyebrows up in thought. “Gas station,” he mumbles.

“Huh?”

Will’s stream of consciousness is apparently a lot more coherent now than it’s been so far, and it comes rushing out of him. “The gas station mart, over there.” He doesn’t gesture but he doesn’t need to considering it’s the only building for miles and is only a few hundred yards to his right. “It’ll have food and drinks.” Will pauses, looking down at his palm once again, “and hopefully bandaids,” he says a little quieter.

“Wait, yeah, that’s a good idea,” Mike pipes up.

Hopper looks wary. “I don’t know about that,” he sighs, not wanting to outright turn them down, “It sorta seems closed, maybe for good. Wouldn’t want you two eating decade old Doritos.”

“Were Doritos even a thing a decade ago?” Mike squints. 

Hopper feels old.

“It’s only closed temporarily,” Erica pops out of nowhere to say.

“How do you know that?” Lucas asks, cross-legged on the ground next to Max and Dustin, who watch on intently.

Erica shrugs. “I got bored while you guys were being all sappy,” she tells him as casually as one would report the weather to a colleague. “Anyway,” she turns back to Hopper, “According to a sign on the door it’s only closed until next week. Something about scheduling conflicts.”

Mike’s and Will’s eyes flick back over from her to Hopper for his response but they end up hearing from someone else.

Argyle strolls over and peers down at them. “‘Sup Little Byers,” He nods at Will then at Mike, “Little Wheeler.”

“Uh, hey?”

Argyle smiles at Mike, unoffended by his tone. “So, Jonny asked me to look for some snacks an’ whatnot. Said you guys were hungry—I get it, I could totally destroy a medium pepperoni from Surfer Boy right now, maybe even a large,” he says, like a walking advertisement. “Uh, this is all I found, though, hope it’s alrigh’.”

He holds out an opened, crumpled packet of Peanut M&M’s. Mike appraises it with mild disgust and Will reaches out to take it before he can say anything rude.

“Thanks, Argyle,” Will says, and he really means it even if he’s not going to eat the candy.

“Sure thing, man.” Argyle ruffles Will’s hair before walking away.

Mike wrinkles his nose in irritation. Will tells him, “Let it go, Mike.” He drops the stink-eye but still seems to be annoyed by something.

“So,” Mike starts, looking up at Hopper, “can we go in?”

Hopper scratches his chin, his nails making a velcro sound against his stubble. “We’re gonna need a way inside.” The answer is as good as a ‘yes’.

“Maybe the door’s unlocked,” Dustin says, fidgeting with his hat.

“It’s not,” Erica replies.

“And how do you know that?” Lucas asks her.

“You get three guesses.”

Lucas tssks.

Eddie appears, chiming in, “I know how to pick a lock.”

“Same,” says Max.

“Me too,” Nancy adds.

“It was a keypad lock,” Erica says.

There are a few groans of discontent and a grumble of “Who the hell even does that?”

Argyle shouts from a small distance away, “I dunno how ‘xactly you’d use it, but there's a crowbar in Harrington’s trunk. An’, like, loads of other weird things.”

Steve shifts his weight to his other leg, then back to the original, just to have somewhere to put his nervous energy. “Again, not my car, not my trunk!”

“Yeah, uh, I’m not sure how that would help us,” Hopper says.

Nancy suggests, “We could use it to smash the window.”

“No, no permanent damage,” Hopper asserts.

Eleven, sitting on the ground with her knees to her chest while drawing patterns in the sand, joins the conversation. “I do not see the problem. I can just open the door with my powers.”

Many “ohhhhhh” s are heard in unison along with stifled laughter.

It’s abruptly clear how exhausted everyone is; the adrenaline seeps away from all of them and leaves nothing but weariness in its wake. It’s visible in the way Dustin, Lucas, and Max slump against each other, how Joyce leans her side against the car, and how Eddie lies on the sand with his head in Robin’s lap. There’s an atmosphere of comfort in it too, a celebration of the fact they can rest and that everyone’s safe.

“Sorry kid, I don’t know how that slipped my mind,” Hopper tells El, “we’ve all had a hell of a day.”

“Yeah, and you did only just get your powers back, so.” Dustin scratches the back of his neck sheepishly.

Mike looks at El with an unreadable expression, saying, “Why didn’t you say that earlier?”

El appears pleased with herself for unknown reasons. “I do not know—it was fun to watch all of you talk.”

Will hums in understanding. Mike again looks annoyed about something.

“Alright, well,” Hopper crosses his arms in a manner that suggests finality, “Will, Mike, let us know when you’re ready and we’ll head over.”

“What?” Mike springs up off the ground then hisses in pain from moving so quickly. “‘We’?” He mimics Hopper’s crossed arms, staring him down. “Will and I are gonna go alone.”

Will, still sitting with his back against the grill of the SUV, darts his eyes back and forth between Hopper and Mike.

“And me,” El adds, laying her chin on her knees.

Mike splutters for half a second before correcting, “ And El, but only to unlock the door, then she’s coming back here.”

El sniffs with an impressive amount of tonal inflection.

Hopper sighs and does his best to ignore Mike’s attitude. “It’s just to keep you both safe so that if anything happens we’re there.”

“What, so you can take forever to play a song and then turn it off a bunch of times? We can keep ourselves safe.”

“Mike,” Will warns.

“Mike, honey, I know this must be frustrating, and you and Will are more than capable of taking care of yourselves, but that’s not always enough,” Mrs. Byers says, “we want to protect you.”

Mike’s face and tone soften at Will and Mrs. Byers’ words. “It’s just—” he concedes easily, his posture loosening, “how are you gonna protect us anyway if we can’t listen to the song?” He doesn’t mention its name as if doing so would be some sort of admission.

“Take my Walkman,” Max offers, shamelessly eavesdropping.

“What about your…” Mike waves his arm towards Max’s headphones.

Max squints. She gestures at the pizza van, an exaggeration of what Mike just did. Music continues to flow out of the car at a low volume, settling under the conversation like the hum of a household appliance.

Mike scowls at her because that’s how he and Max communicate. He doesn’t say anything or argue any further though, only standing there pitifully while Will observes him.

A beat of strained silence passes. If Will’s being honest he also wishes he could be alone with Mike in the gas station mart. He needs solitude to process everything—or near solitude, save for the only person he really wants to be around right now. 

Will can’t afford the self-preservation that comes with silence anymore. It’s not working for him. He and Mike need to talk about something that matters, with any sort of truth to it, because Will won’t wallow in his thoughts by himself anymore—he can’t. He can’t let Mike wallow either.

Lucas breaks through the quietness to say timidly, “You know, maybe if you guys really wanna go in there by yourselves you could take a walkie talkie with you.”

Curious eyes land on him.

Lucas continues, “We could keep the other one and check up on you every once in a while to make sure you’re okay.”

Mike and Will look at Hopper, this time glancing at Mrs. Byers too, recognizing her to be just as much of an authority figure as the other.

“I guess I don’t really see a problem with that,” Hopper says. “But only if you use the cassette player and the radio at the same time, and say something right away if anything goes wrong.”

“Hop.” Joyce gets up to her feet to face him. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“Mom,” Will pleads, sending her a desperate look.

Joyce exhales and closes her eyes, taking a long pause. She’s not completely sure why it matters to Will so much but she knows her kid, and for some reason or another he needs this. “Okay.”

Strangely, Mike doesn’t seem any happier even though he was the one who asked for this in the first place.

Will focuses on the chattering voices around him, proof that they’ll be in good hands if the worst-case scenario does happen again. He doesn’t blame anyone for the music issues. He’s actually grateful that they fixed it quickly and didn’t give up until he and Mike were saved. 

But there’s a gnawing question in the back of Will’s brain that’s gradually making its way to the front so it can’t be ignored: How was Boys Don’t Cry able to save Mike too, instead of just himself?

Will stands up, sweeping the back of his pants clean and announcing, “I wanna go. Soon, if that’s okay.”

Hopper and Joyce share a glance. She tips her head at him in a way he somehow understands. “Yeah, that’s fine kid,” Hopper says.

“We’ll get the walkie talkies,” Dustin interjects and goes with Lucas to the car they came in from.

Mike stares down at his feet with his hands shoved in his pockets. A sickly feeling rushes over Will as he remembers what happened in his Vecna vision and he has to steady himself against the car. His mind supplies the pictures— Mike glaring at him with rampant anger—Mike calling him disgusting—Mike telling him he doesn’t need him—

“Will?”

— Mike walking off into the distance, saying he hopes he never sees Will again.

“Hey, Will, you ready?” Mike asks.

“What?”

Mike looks back and forth between each of his eyes, searching. “We can go now, we just gotta wait by the van first so they can switch the tape to Max’s Walkman.”

Will blinks. “Okay.”

They stand by the open driver’s side door while Jonathan swaps Will’s tape from the console to the cassette player, putting the Hounds of Love tape in its place. He hands the Walkman to Will, unplugging the headphones and passing them to Max so that the music can play out loud.

Both songs clash together unpleasantly and they each have to try and concentrate on hearing only one at a time.

“Hey, be careful with that, if anything happens to it my death’s on your hands,” Max says, pointing at the Walkman.

“If anything happens to it we’ll probably be dead, anyway, so.” Will cracks a morbid grin. “Our hands would be clean.” He holds a palm up in mock-surrender but puts it back down when he realizes it’s the one with a cut on it.

Mike’s throat tightens. He swallows the sensation down.

Max puts a hand on his arm. “Try not to die then, would you?” She gives him a soft smile. “And uh,” She turns to Mike, “you too.”

“We’ll do our best,” Mike replies, noting how that may be the nicest thing she’s ever said to him.

Dustin and Lucas bring the walkie talkies, giving one of them to Mike and keeping the other.

Hopper strides over, saying, “Okay, we’re gonna check on you pretty often so always be ready to respond, ‘cause if you don’t we’re gonna assume it’s an emergency and burst right in.”

“Got it,” Mike confirms  right as Will says, “Okay.”

Mrs. Byers comes and wraps Will up in another hug. She lays her head on his uninjured shoulder. “Be safe, alright? My heart can’t handle any more today.”

“I’m just getting something to eat, mom, nothing life-changing is gonna happen in there,” Will says, but he sinks into her embrace.

“And, Mike,” Mrs. Byers turns and puts her hands on his shoulders, “take care of him,” she glances at her son and then back at Mike, “take care of each other, okay?"

“We will,” Mike says earnestly, “always.”

Mike, Will, and El set off towards the gas station, relatively unhurried since they can hardly lug their lethargic bodies around as it is.

The sun has almost fully set. The only color left in the dark sky is a reddish glow that could be stomach-churning if it weren’t for the ceiling of stars that tells them they’re where they’re supposed to be.

Will, walking with Mike and El on either side of him, takes surreptitious glances at them both as they avoid looking at each other. They’ve barely exchanged a word this whole day and Will doesn’t know what to think of it, if there’s anything he should be thinking at all.

The door to the gas station mart is around a corner along with the actual gas pumps themselves. There’s a note taped to it just like Erica mentioned, hand-scrawled and curling at the edges. 

El steps ahead of Mike and Will to hover her hand over the keypad lock, closing her eyes, and it falls face-first to the ground with a clunk . She tests to see if the door will open and then she nods to herself when it does, backing away.

Already returning, El says, “There. It is unlocked.” She wipes her nose on her sleeve which comes away with a deep red stain on the cuff.

Will spots something on the back of the lock and he goes to pick it up. He discovers a piece of torn masking tape stuck to it horizontally.

El lingers behind and watches Mike while he watches Will. She has a knowing expression on her face unlike the wistful one on Mike’s, who looks lovesick enough to be bedridden.

The tape has ‘1976’ penned on it in dark ink, Will finds out.

“Mike,” El says, and he startles like he got caught doing something illicit.

“What?” Mike spits, preemptively defensive.

Meanwhile, Will frowns at the lock and flips it to the front, reclosing the hook that secured it to the door and eyeing the rows of numbers.

El nods in Will’s direction. “Go. Tell him.”

“Tell him what?” Mike barely hears himself over the blood rushing in his ears.

A long silence passes as El considers the situation. 

She loves her brother. She loves Mike even if it’s not in the way she’d thought she did. There’s little she wouldn’t give for his and Will’s happiness, but that’s beside the point—this won’t be a sacrifice. It’ll be just as good for her as it will be for them.

Will punches in the number from the tape and a small light above the keys he hadn’t noticed flashes green with a beep signaling the lock clicking back open.

El knows she doesn’t come across as observant. People judge her intelligence by how well she can communicate verbally which isn’t fair because she probably pays more attention than most. The word ‘repression’ may not be in her vocabulary yet, but she’s very familiar with its definition.

“I think you know.” El watches for Mike’s reaction on the off chance that she’s wrong about this.

“You don’t know what you’re talking—“ Mike cuts himself off. He opens and closes his left fist around nothing like he could catch an excuse in the air, but he’s running out of energy for lying. “But, what about—we’re supposed to be…” ‘ Together’, he’d say if he could get his thoughts straight, ‘ a couple’.

“Do not worry about that, or about me. I am okay. We are okay.” El’s not helping any suspicions about her being a mind-reader. “We can talk about this later—as friends.”

Mike’s expression is honest to a fault, open and hopeful in a way he’s usually too guarded to let show. “Yeah? Friends?”

El smiles. “Yes. I think we are going to be great friends.”

A laugh shifts their attention to the door ahead. “They wrote the code on the back of the lock. Who even does that?” Will says. “Sorry El, guess we didn’t need to drag you here after all.”

El hums. “I am not sure you would have figured it out without me.”

“No, we would’ve,” Mike cuts in, “but it’d take a hell of a lot longer, so thanks.”

“You are welcome. Now that I have solved all of your problems I will leave you alone.” She smirks.

Will rolls his eyes fondly and comes over to give her a hug. “We’d let you stay, but…”

“I do not want to. I am going to take a nap in one of the cars. Do not wake me up when you are done.” Anyone else would mistake her for being rude but Will recognizes she’s just tired and needs a break.

“Noted,” Will tells El.

“For any reason.”

“Got it.”

“If you have news, wait until I am done sleeping,” she says into his shoulder with her eyes shut.

Will pulls away to give her a look. “What news would I have?”

She shrugs and they say their goodbyes. Mike and Will start heading for the entrance to the mart, but El snatches Mike’s wrist before he can go.

“Wait,” she says quietly, “Just—be careful. Do not scare him off. Do not rush.”

Mike’s brows knit and his lips tighten. He’s closing himself off again. He’s afraid. “I don't think I should—he probably doesn’t—I mean, how do I know you and I are even talking about the same thing?” He forces a laugh and his voice turns to a whisper. “What are you telling me to do, anyway?”

“I am telling you to do what you think I am telling you to do.”

“That doesn’t help me.”

She sandwiches his hand between both of hers, squeezing tightly so he’ll listen. “Mike, I am telling you that the way you feel is the way Will feels.” He stares incredulously so she adds, “Do not be an imbecile.”

“Imbecile? Really?”

“Max taught me that word. I-M-B-E-C-I-L-E. Do you know what it means?”

“Yes, El, I know what it means.”

“Then do not be one.” She relinquishes his hand. “I am going to leave now. Do not wake me from my nap. We will talk when we are both ready.”

Mike nods and she nods back. She says goodbye to her brother and turns to walk over to the circle of cars and pick the most comfortable one to doze off in.

He and Will are finally alone together for the first time in days, and suddenly neither has a single thing to say to the other.

Will’s mind goes blank and he has to work to remind himself what he’s here for. “Uh, we should…” He flicks his head towards the door.

“Oh! Yeah.” Mike clears his throat and steps closer, seeing that Will’s holding the lock in his hand and the Walkman under his arm. He’s had to rewind the tape a few times already because of how short the song is. Mike admires his discipline.

“What’re you gonna do with that now?” Mike asks, pointing at the lock.

“Probably just keep it with me until we leave so we can put it back on. Wouldn’t want anyone burgling the place,” he jokes, but the air is tense.

Mike, God help him, can’t find it in himself to laugh. Everything feels more real with only the two of them here.

Will pushes the door open and Mike follows him inside. The small building is unlit except for the glow of the buzzing refrigerators until Will flips the lightswitch, making the florescents flicker on above them and add to the background hum.

“Shit! Too bright!” Mike says.

Will squints and slams the lightswitch back down. They return to the freezers’ soft light which is enough to see well without burning their retinas, and they blink away the white afterimages dancing behind their eyelids.

“Thanks,” Mike mutters as if Will did that solely for his sake.

They both jump when the walkie talkie in Mike’s hand shrieks to life. “Will, Mike, It’s Dustin, do you copy?”

Mike brings the mic up to his mouth. “Yes, we copy.”

“‘Kay, good,” the walkie talkie says, “everything alright over there? Over.”

“Yup, just peachy. Over.”

“Cute. Let us know if anything changes. We’ll be checking in often, so be ready for that. We’ll try to make it quick, though—“ A shuffling noise and murmuring comes through the speaker. “Uh, Argyle says ‘hi’. Now he’s laughing for some reason. Over.”

Mike and Will share a look. “Is that all? Over.”

“Yeah, that’s all. Talk again soon. Over and out.”

“That’s gonna get old quick,” Will mumbles to himself. He walks to the fridges and yanks one open to grab a water bottle with a shiny blue label. “Oh, that’s nice,” He says at the puff of cool air, leaning his forehead against one of the shelves.

Mike opens the door next to that one, which puts itself between him and Will, separating them with a glass pane. Mike grabs the first thing he sees—lemonade Gatorade—and chugs it without dignity.

Will takes a gulp from his drink and watches Mike who’s panting and finishing his own with a burp.

“Mmm. Hot.” Will says.

Will’s teasing, he’s very obviously joking, but the prospect of Will finding anything he does to be ‘hot’ is too much for Mike right now. He at least needs another Gatorade before he can think about that. He grabs another one.

Will looks ready to crawl into the freezer and take a nap, so Mike taps on the door to get his attention.

“Hey, um,” Mike starts, “we should probably clean up our cuts and stuff. Wouldn’t want them to get infected.”

The shadow of Will’s eyelashes is heavy on his cheeks. He looks ethereal in the low light but his breath fogs up the glass wall until Mike can only see his own reflection. 

“Yeah, probably,” The blurry image of Will replies and he peels himself from the display of beverages.

They split up to sweep the aisles which consist of everything from food to batteries, painkillers, and cleaning supplies—a standard convenience store basically. Mike’s distracted by a pack of questionable-looking multivitamins when he hears the whir of the cassette player rewinding again from a section away, and then the words, “Found it.”

He follows Will’s voice and finds him cross-legged on the floor, clutching a first aid kit with the Walkman and discarding the empty water bottle off to the side. Mike could swear Will was humming along to the music before he showed up, and he’s weirdly disappointed that he stopped. He sits down across from Will, who undoes the clasps on the case and digs through it, pulling supplies out.

“Come closer, I’ll patch you up,” Will says, speaking quietly as if sharing a secret.

“No—I wanna do yours first, the one on your shoulder is pretty bad.”

“And how are you gonna do a good job with an infected hand?” Will eyes him like he made a point Mike can’t possibly refute.

Mike sighs and scoots forward so that their knees are pressed together. Will reaches out for his hand to untie the fabric wrapped around it—a scrap that was once part of his shirt but became a rag to soak up Mike’s blood. He rips open a little packet from the kit and brings an isopropyl alcohol wipe down to the cut, making Mike wince.

“Sorry!” Will blurts. “I forgot to warn you.”

Mike shakes his head to say it’s okay even though Will’s not looking at him. But he’s looking at Will.

They carry on in silence while Will takes his time to dab at Mike’s palm, cleaning out all the sand and dried blood. Mike's gaze shifts between Will’s face and their laps, mesmerized at the focus and care he uses—an artist’s approach, he guesses.

Meanwhile, Will’s mind is buzzing, but it’s a sort of buzz he’s so familiar with that he can ignore it for now. It’s getting louder though, quickly, and he wonders what kind of noises Mike’s brain is making and whether he’d let Will have a listen.

Most of Mike’s buzzing is being wrangled under control by the memory of El’s words: ‘Be careful. Do not scare him off. Do not rush.’

“Gonna put some antibiotic stuff on it,” Will says, making sure to warn him this time. It still stings, but it helps to know it’s coming. 

Feeling Mike tense up, Will instinctively rubs his thumb across his wrist to soothe him, which would help Mike more if he didn’t want it so badly.

Will applies butterfly bandages—tiny strips of medical tape—in lieu of stitches to keep the wound shut, and then tapes a pad of gauze in place. “There. All done.”

“You gonna kiss it better too?” Mike jokes, but it accidentally comes out more mocking than playful.

Will gives him an inscrutable look and swiftly lifts Mike’s hand to his mouth to do just what was asked before letting Mike’s arm fall as quickly as he raised it. “Better?” He asks, face turned away with a somber expression.

“Um. Yeah, uh-huh. Totally.” Mike responds, hoping he doesn’t sound like a complete imbecile. ‘I-M-B-E-C-I-L-E,’ El says inside his head.

“So I should do yours now, yeah?” Mike asks after a moment.

Will nods and pushes the first aid kit over to him, holding his own hand out willingly, but Mike can tell something has shifted in the air.

He gives Will’s cut the same treatment, letting him know before he gently wipes it down. “Looks like it hurts,” he says, seeing its irritation from being uncovered. He’s reminded of the raw flesh of Will’s eyelids in his vision. He shakes his head to get rid of the thought like an Etch A Sketch.

Will doesn’t reply but his eyes are watering, turned towards the windows at the front of the shop to count the constellations. They’re much brighter out here than in Lenora where you’d be lucky to find twenty stars in the night sky, much less hundreds of them.

Mike’s fingertips are warm and almost too light as they apply ointment and bandage him up.

“Okay, now—“

“It’s Dustin again, do you copy?”

Mike picks the walkie talkie up. “We copy.”

“Everything good? Over.”

“We’re fine. Over.”

A pause. “Okay, well, Mrs. Byers wants to hear from Will real quick, so… Over.”

Mike holds the radio up to Will instead of passing it to him. 

“Hello?” Will says.

“Hi, sweetie! It’s your mom.”

“Hi, mom.”

“You guys okay? I hear your song playing, that’s good, make sure you keep it on the whole time.”

“Yeah, we’re okay. And we will.”

“I’m glad. I love you both!”

“We love you too, mom.”

There’s another pause, and then Dustin’s back. “Thanks. That’s it for now. Don’t get too comfortable, though. Over.”

“Right. Over and out.”

Mike sighs. “How often do you think that’s gonna happen?”

Will shrugs then regrets it when his shoulder pangs painfully.

“Oh, let me look at that,” Mike says.

Will spins around so that he’s facing the shelf to give Mike access to his other injury. 

“I, uh, I’m not sure how well I can clean it with your shirts, y’know,” Mike’s voice comes from behind him.

“I’m not taking them off,” Will says.

“No! Yeah, I just mean— maybe just this sleeve, so I can get to it better?”

He feels too warm anyway, so Will undoes his button-up and removes one side of it, revealing his blood-soaked gray long-sleeve.

“Okay, you’re good now.” Mike moves the collar of Will’s undershirt out of the way and inspects the damage, grabbing another alcohol wipe. “Gonna sting,” he whispers, and Will almost shivers at how close to his ear he speaks. Will is claustrophobic being crowded up against the shelf, hardly getting any of what little light the refridgerators provide.

Mike repeats the same process as before—probably adding more butterfly bandages than needed—and finishes up by taping on the biggest square of gauze they have. “Done.”

“You gonna kiss it better too?” Will quotes Mike, expecting to be brushed off or get a friendly chuckle and pat on the back.

He starts to get nervous at the lack of response but then he hears Mike say, soft and slightly wobbly, “It’s only fair, right?”

Mike’s hair tickles Will’s neck as he leans down to plant a kiss on the bandage—or Will can only assume that’s what he’s doing because he can hardly feel it under the gauze. Regardless, he has to stop himself from gasping.

Mike scoots backward and Will turns around to face him again, head tilted down while he pulls his overshirt back on. “Thanks,” Will mumbles.

“‘Course. You too.”

The conversation lulls. Realistically, there are only a few directions it can go from here, and none of them are easy.

Will pokes at his palm and thinks.

Chapter Text

They’ve both done what they came here to do, and there isn’t anything stopping them from pretending this was just another day and packing themselves into the pizza van for another grueling journey. They could go home, part ways, and never address a single thing, fading into the background of each other’s lives once again.

Will can’t let that happen. He needs answers.

Mike can’t let that happen either. He needs to give those answers.

“So—”

“Do you—”

They both cut themselves off.

“You go first,” Mike says, and Will can’t bother to pretend he doesn’t want to.

“Do you know why the song worked for you? I mean, I know it’s my favorite song, but I didn’t think you even knew it.”

Mike looks like he got caught doing something nefarious. “Uh, yeah, I,” he starts, playing with his shoelaces, “El mailed me a picture of you and her, and I guess she said it was taken in your bedroom, and there was a poster of the album on the wall behind you. I saw it at the store a little while later and was curious, so.”

What Mike doesn’t say is that is that he barely noticed El was in the photo too, and that all he could focus on was Will’s smile and how his eyes crinkled up in the corners. He fails to mention he only recognized the album while shopping because of how long he’d spent studying the Polaroid, and had decided to buy it because he craved anything that could connect him to Will while he was so far away.

“And Boys Don’t Cry became your favorite song?”

“Mhm.” Mike chews his lip.

“Oh.” Will doesn’t know if he’s touched by it or annoyed that the closest they ever got while he was in California was because of El. “I guess you probably wanna go see her now, huh?” He tests the waters.

“What? El? No.”

“But you’ve barely even spoken to her since we got here, and she’s, you know, your girlfriend.”

“Not anymore.”

“What?”

Mike takes a deep breath, gathering himself before saying, “We sorta broke up.”

Will can’t keep the surprise off of his face. “You—wow, okay.” He shifts his sitting position, suddenly uneasy. “Well, I’m sure you guys will work it out like you always do. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Mike stills. “I don’t want reassurance.”

Will’s not following. He saw El holding Mike’s hand outside and speaking to him comfortingly. They seemed, well, normal. Better than normal, even. He wracks his brain for words, settling on, “Can I ask why?”

“It’s,” he hesitates, “complicated.”

“Complicated?”

Mike nervously folds and unfolds the half-full bag of peanut M&M’s that Argyle gave to him, which he’d apparently brought with him. “There’s just a lot of different reasons. It’s hard to explain.” 

Mike changes the subject. “It’s weird, I had no idea Vecna could go after, like, more than one person at a time. Did you?”

“No, I didn’t know.”

“And I didn’t have symptoms like Max, like, seeing stuff that wasn’t there or anything.”

Will doesn’t reply.

“You would tell me if you did, right?” Mike asks.

“Of course, just—I already get nightmares and headaches sometimes so I don’t think I’d notice if they got worse.” He scratches the back of his neck absently.

“Oh. Yeah, me too.”

Mike can’t stop thinking about what he saw in his Vecna vision. His brain keeps showing him grotesque snapshots and it’s like his subconscious hasn’t been told that Will is alive and in front of him, breathing steadily and bones where they’re supposed to be. He’s itching to find out what happened in Will’s own hallucination.

“So, uh,” Mike begins, “when all of it first started for you, when we were sitting on the car, what did you see?”

Will knew the question was going to come up eventually. He has a few options: he could lie, or stall, or maybe fake a case of acute voice loss, but he doesn’t actually want to do any of those things. He’s so sick of hiding and keeping everything inside. 

Ideally, Mike lets him down easy and they figure out how to navigate their friendship going forward. Worst case scenario, Mike does what he did in the very vision he’s asking about—except he wouldn’t. They might have grown apart lately but Will still knows his best friend, and he’d never do that.

Will’s still terrified, don’t get him wrong, but he needs to do this for himself.

Will fiddles with the creases in his jeans, saying quietly, “And you’ll tell me what you saw in your vision after, right?”

Mike goes cold. Even with the conversation he had with El and the commitment he made, it didn’t occur to him that he might have to share his vision with Will when all he wants to do is forget about it. The confidence drains from his body, replacing itself with an inscrutable need to avoid and evade.

“No. I don’t want to tell you.” Mike speaks sternly, an open-and-shut case.

Will stares in confusion. “Then, maybe I won’t tell you mine, if you won’t,” he says halfheartedly, trying to figure out what’s going on.

“What? That doesn’t even—c’mon, just tell me, you were gonna anyway.” 

“Seriously?”

“What?”

Will’s getting irritated by the sound of that M&M package Mike keeps moving around. He’s kind of getting irritated by Mike, too. “So you expect to hear mine but I shouldn’t expect to hear yours? Is that how this works?” Will crosses his arms, glaring.

Mike huffs, running his fingers through his hair. “It’s different.”

“‘Different’? Just like it's ‘complicated’ why you and El broke up?” Will feels anger simmering under his skin, rising fast and threatening to boil over, an anger that’s been there since he first felt Mike pulling away months ago. It’s too much. 

“Yes!” Mike half-shouts.

“How? How is it ‘different’? How is it ‘complicated’? Explain it to me, talk to me!” Will hopes he doesn’t sound as desperate as he is.

Mike sputters. “It just is!”

Will scoffs.

“What?” Impatience laces Mike’s voice.

Will goes silent. “You talked to her.”

“Who?”

“El,” Will answers, “you talked to her, she has pages of letters from you to prove it, but you didn’t talk to me. And, still, you won’t talk to me.”

Mike tilts his head away sheepishly. “We’ve been over this,” he says, referring to their fight at the roller rink.

“Have we? Really? Because I don’t think we have.” When he doesn’t get a response, Will continues, “You won’t talk to me, and you’re keeping secrets from me. Since when do we keep secrets from each other?” He knows the question is hypocritical, but he’s trying to press where it hurts.

Mike stands, too worked up to stay on the ground, and Will gets up after him.

“Secrets? You wanna talk about keeping secrets? What the fuck was that when you untangled Vecna’s vine things from me?” Mike says, pointing at him accusingly.

Will freezes. “What?”

“You know what I’m talking about. So do you suddenly have powers too, now?” Mike yells, waving his hands around. 

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“‘ Don’t be ridiculous,’” Mike repeats. “This whole thing is ridiculous, all of it! Everything about this stupid situation! Everything about today and Vecna and secrets and whatever the hell is going on here!”

Will can’t argue with that.

“Like, what about the girl back in California you have a crush on? You weren’t going to tell me about that?”

Will is genuinely stumped about that one. “Huh? What girl?”

“Stop playing dumb! The one you made that painting for.”

Mike’s lip is curled in annoyance but Will doesn’t miss the flash of hurt in his eyes, and it hurts him that Mike’s meaning is lost on him.

“I seriously don’t know what you’re talking about, and what does that have to do with my painting?” Will sputters. “And you’re changing the subject—at Rink-O-Mania you told me the reason El has a ton of letters from you and I don’t is that she’s your girlfriend, but suddenly she’s not your girlfriend anymore? And you can’t even tell me why?”

“Why should I tell you why when you won’t even tell me about the girl you like?”

Red-hot frustration rolls through Will. He doesn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or topple all these stupid shelves to the ground. “You think I like—honestly, do you even know me? Did you ever?”

It’s meant to sting, and it does. 

Mike digs his fingers into the bandage on his palm, the pain acting as a pressure point for the sick feeling in his gut. It’s soothing in a rotten way, but still, the words hurt worse, so he flips them around. “Do you even know me?”

“Stop dodging my questions!”

“Not until you stop dodging mine.”

“There’s no girl! Maybe you’d know that if you’d stopped ignoring me and hiding things from me. Maybe I’d tell you stuff if you told me stuff, or even, I don’t know, acknowledged I existed in the past year.”

The crease between Mike’s brows starts to smooth out and his defensive stance weakens.

Do you even know me? 

“I wasn’t ignoring you, or trying to hide things from you," Mike says, a touch softer than before. 

Did you ever?

He doesn’t have it in him to fight anymore. “It’s not like that, okay? You just don’t understand.”

“Then make me understand, Mike!” Will’s anger shifts into grief. “I miss you! I miss us , I miss you telling me everything and feeling like I could do the same.” He peers down at the floor and sees himself in the shiny linoleum, vulnerable, and swallows the stinging feeling behind his nose. He didn’t realize he was shouting. “Because, sometimes I don’t anymore. I don’t feel like I could tell you everything. Lately, I feel like I can’t tell you anything at all.”

Their favorite song persists in echoing off the walls, oblivious to the switch that just got flipped in their world.

“I did talk to you," Mike says slowly.

“Like once or twice, maybe.”

“No, I mean—I did talk to you, you just didn’t hear it.” 

Will blinks cluelessly.

Steadying himself, Mike goes on, “I wrote letters. I wrote down everything I was thinking or feeling, but it never really sounded right, and I wasn’t ever brave enough to send them when it did.”

Will opens his mouth to speak but ends up closing it again. Why would Mike need bravery to send a letter?

“And I wrote to you, for you, over and over again. I just never finished that last step.” He sniffles. “And—And I called.”

Will hangs on to every one of his hushed words, listening like missing a single second of it could mean life or death.

“I called a lot but the line was always busy, so I gave up after a while, but before I gave up I talked to you. This only happened a handful of times ‘cause I was embarassed, but I spoke into the phone while the busy tone played like you were really there listening—usually for just a minute before I felt stupid—and I told you about my day, and the Party, and school, and,” Mike tilts his head down at the ground. “And how much I missed you and wished I could see you again, and that we could go back to how we were.”

Will feels like he got slapped in five different directions. “I had no idea.” He says, heart in his throat. Mike’s honesty is refreshing, but it’s such a sudden change that it unsettles him, too.

“If my mom and dad or Nancy ever eavesdropped on one of the other phones they probably thought I was going crazy.” Mike laughs humorlessly. “And I felt crazy. I didn’t want you to know.”

Will regrets not being there to go crazy with him.

“So, yeah,” Mike continues, “I talked to El. I sent her a bunch of letters and she sent a bunch back, but I promise I talked to you even more and told you things I wouldn’t tell anyone else, even if you weren’t actually there to read it or hear it. And maybe if we can figure things out I can tell you those things for real, and maybe you could tell me things, too.”

“You really did all that?”

“I swear.”

A moment passes before Will says, “I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t be.”

“I should’ve called you. I mean, I knew about my mom’s job and all the calls she had to make all day. I could’ve written—”

“Don’t,” Mike says quietly, sounding dejected, “Just—don’t. A lot of it is on me. I could’ve tried harder to write a letter that I was happy enough with, or—”

“Don’t blame yourself, it’s—”

“Listen,” Mike cuts him off, “What I’m trying to say is I miss you too, I miss all the things you said you miss, and…”

Mike fights against his instincts begging him to retreat and hide himself away. He’s already shared this much, he might as well share some more, if not all of it. He steps closer and whispers an agonizing confession:

“I lost you, Will.”

Will looks like a kicked puppy, eyes glossy and boring into him. He thinks back to when Mike said he felt like he was losing him, not that he already had, and wonders what changed since then.

“You didn’t lose me. I’m right here, aren’t I?” Will tries to smile but it doesn’t work very well. He replies faintly enough that Mike can only understand because of their proximity, which is also the reason Will’s lungs are robbed of air.

“No—I mean yes, but, I lost you.”

Will watches him, confused. Mike chews on his lip before plopping down onto the ground in the same place as before. Will gets the memo and sits across from him, returning to the spots where they were a few minutes ago, and he waits while Mike collects himself.

“In my Vecna vision,” Mike begins, “well, I’m not sure exactly when my vision started, it sorta blended into—he’d already started, um, getting you. You were next to me sitting on the hood and you went quiet, and your eyes got all…” Mike plays with the peanut M&M’s bag again. “So, that part might’ve been real, since, you know. So we put on the song, and I was talking to you, but—but then you started floating up.”

Mike’s heart stutters just from recalling it. Will can see how difficult it is for him so he moves his leg to rest his shoe against Mike’s, offering his support in an unobtrusive way, and Mike presses back.

“You don’t have to tell me. You can stop now, I won’t hold it against you.”

“No, I want to tell you. I want to.”

Will nods.

Mike inhales deeply. “So, we all—”

Dustin announces himself through the walkie talkie for a third time, and they exchange the usual back-and-forth before Mike cuts him short.

“You guys—“

“Uh-huh, doing great. Over.” Mike says, his patience wearing thin.

Dustin laughs. “Hey man, I’m not thrilled about having to do this either. I’d rather be passed out in the back of Steve’s car like El, but alas… Over.”

“The car’s not—whatever. Make someone else do it, then. Over and out.”

Mike scrubs a hand down his face roughly enough to turn it pink. Mike lets the walkie talkie slip from his hand and hit the floor, making Will flinch, and Mike apologizes with a grimace.

“So, um,” Mike starts again, “We all—your mom and Jonathan and all of us—started talking to you because Max said you’d be able to hear it. We were, like, asking you to come back. Telling you how much we… care about you, and stuff. But then you started floating.”

Will thinks of what he was told about when the same thing happened to Max, how she lifted up and away from everyone’s reach, all of just them as helpless as she was. He wishes he could say he doesn’t know what it’s like to feel that out of control.

“And that part was definitely the vision—the floating, ‘cause…” Mike trails off, not finishing the explanation. “But it didn’t work. The song and my—our words—it was like none of it mattered. Some of it’s hard for me to remember, which might be for the best, but…” 

Mike’s hands tremble and he forces them to stop, digging his nails into his jeans instead. Will wants to hold them and never let go.

“Everyone went quiet so I turned around, but their faces were all fucked up like something out of a horror movie. Your arms and legs were just snapping and bending. Your face, your jaw and eyes, it all—they were—God, your eyes, Will.” Mike presses his fingers into his bandage, making a fist and slamming it onto his knee like a judge reaching a verdict.

“Mike,” Will whispers. An objection; conveying I’m here, that wasn’t real, we’re safe.

Mike nods, understanding that somehow. Sustained.

“You died.” Mike’s voice wavers. “You died, and it was because I said—because what I said wasn’t enough. None of what any of us said was enough.” He skirts the truth closely enough that it doesn’t feel like a lie. “You fell down, and I just grabbed you and held you in my lap. Nobody was saying anything, but then your mom and Jonathan and El—they started telling me it was my fault, that I was the reason you were dead.”

Will is overcome by the need to reach out and grab onto Mike so he can prove to him through the sheer force of his grip that it was all bullshit. He needs Mike to understand that whatever he had, whatever worries Vecna used to shape his hallucination, were unfounded.

But, without the cover of mortal danger, Will’s hands can’t bring themselves to act.

“I held you in my arms and looked into where your eyes should’ve been, but there was nothing. Your blood got on me. It all felt so real, and I just can’t stop thinking about… holding you in my lap, knowing I’d never hear your voice again.”

The only response Will can come up with is, “I’m so sorry.”

Mike shakes his head. “It was like when I watched them pull your body out of the quarry. No matter how badly I needed you alive, both times—” He pauses before he speaks as light as air, “Tell me I won’t have to see that again. That you won’t go die on me and leave me here all by myself.”

Will sits up straight. “Hey, I’m here, okay? I’m alive. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“That’s not what I said.” Mike’s voice is heavy, swaying like a pendulum. “I said, tell me you’re not gonna leave me, that you won’t—”

“I’m not gonna leave you. Not if I have any say in it.” 

It’s unquestionable. 

It promises nothing other than his devotion.

“And, for the record, you didn’t lose me in any way,” Will says, “you have me.”

A corner of Mike’s mouth lifts. “Promise?”

“I promise. You’ve always had me.” Will knows how that might sound, but he has no interest in backpedaling.

Mike hides his reddening face with a nose scratch before he breaks the stretch of silence. “So, yeah, um, after that everything sorta disappeared and I was in the dark. It was freezing. That’s when I heard your voice.” He glances up uncertainly. “Maybe it was just Vecna messing with me or something, I don’t know.”

“No, no, I called out to you. The same thing happened for me with it going dark, and you were there just a second before, so I yelled for you. I didn’t know if it was real when you replied, but it honestly helped either way.”

Mike nods his agreement. “After that, this red fog appeared. For some reason, I just felt like I had to go into it, so I did, and—you were there. You were alive—you are.”

Will nudges his shoe against Mike’s again, an invisible line connecting them.

Mike clears his throat. “You being there, uh, really helped me. To know that I wasn’t alone and you were counting on me too. It sounds dumb, but it kinda saved me. Obviously, you literally saved me a few times—thank you, by the way—but that also did a lot.”

Will’s heart swells. By Mike’s standards, at least as of late, those words are a big show of vulnerability. 

“You saved me too you know, in the same ways. I’m not sure I would’ve fought as hard if you weren’t there. And, I know you probably don’t actually think otherwise, but—whatever you said to me in your vision, it would’ve been enough.”

Mike gives a doubtful smile. “Yeah, well, I hope that’s true.”

Will doesn’t push the matter.

They sit in a wavering quiet that can’t decide if it’s comfortable or not as they wait for the next shift in conversation. Mike tears at the edges of the M&M’s bag only enough to disturb its perfection, leaving barely-there slivers.

“Uh, you don’t have to tell me about what you saw, by the way, if you don’t want to,” Mike says. “You don’t, like, owe it to me or anything.”

“I know, but like you said when I said the same thing, I want to.” 

Will doesn’t look as sure as he sounds. Snapshots of fake-Mike’s disgusted reaction circle in his mind, and while he’s not expecting real-Mike to react at all similarly, he can’t purge the reminders.

Will wrings his hands. “But, well, I don’t know if I can while—” He turns his head away, the fluttering of stars outside the gas station windows suddenly becoming fascinating. “Can we face away from each other?”

Mike’s face hides none of his confusion. “Uh, do you mean like…”

“Back to back?” Will finishes for him. “If that’s okay with you.”

“Okay, sure.”

Mike eyes him one last time, trying to see through and pick his brain, but Will looks away before he can. Will scoots forward and turns to face the refrigerators in the back of the building, sitting criss-crossed with a shelf on either side of him, and Mike does the same in the opposite direction. Their backs pressing together is the only sign left of each other’s presense. 

“And don’t say anything until I’m done talking, please?” the voice behind Mike asks.

“Okay, I can do that,”

Mike feels, but doesn’t hear, Will drawing a deep breath. “Okay, so, mine also started with us on the hood after Eddie said hi—or, I’m assuming that part was real.”

Mike nods before realizing Will can’t see him, so he opens his mouth to reply instead before remembering he’s not supposed to and snapping it back shut.

“We were sitting there and suddenly this feeling just came over me that I had to tell you something. Like, had to. It was almost like I couldn’t control it, it’s hard to explain.”

This is a lesson in verbal self-restraint for Mike, something he historically hasn’t been the best at. He wants so badly to tell Will he gets it.

“So, I asked you if you remembered the painting I brought with me to the airport,” Will’s voice wobbles embarrassingly and he scrubs a hand over his mouth like he could shove the panic back in, un-wobble his words. “Because that painting’s for you.”

Mike goes still.

“It’s not for some random girl you don’t know about, and I don’t know where you got that idea, but, I asked you—fake you—and you remembered. I said I didn’t give it to you when I first planned to because I was scared, which is true.”

But Mike loves Will’s art, he always has. What is there to be afraid of?

“You, uh, saw that I was getting nervous so you put your hand on mine like you always used to when we were little, when I was upset or scared.” Will looks at his hand—injured and unheld, but only bandaged because Mike cared enough to do it for him, only empty because Mike’s facing the other way.

It’s quiet except for the Walkman and the humming fridges. Will’s mouth is as dry and unforgiving as the desert outside, face as deathly hot and eyes as sparkly as its night sky.

“And then I told you that I painted it for you because I love you. Or, really, because—because I’m in love with you.” Will squeezes his eyes closed, counting the heartbeats he can hear over the ringing in his ears. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. “Which is true,” he whispers.

Mike‘s brain short circuits.

Mike doesn’t speak. Not because he remembers he’s not supposed to, but because he’s stopped functioning in any way that matters.

“You took your hand off mine.” A tear slips through Will’s shut eyelids even though they’re clamped hard enough to break bones. “And you asked if I was joking, and when I said no you called me disgusting.” His voice breaks on the last word. He sniffs and the teardrop catches in the corner of his mouth, making itself at home.

In this moment all Mike’s disjointed mind knows for sure is that Will shouldn’t be crying.

“Then you asked if I thought you would love me back and I said no to that too. I—I said, ‘of course not’, that I just wanted you to know, but you said I shouldn’t have told you, that it was gross , all of that.” 

Will’s breath trembles and his chest moves up and down with it. Mike can feel it against his back, the pain rippling through Will’s lungs. Will’s not supposed to be in pain.

“You started walking away and I begged you to stay, told you I needed you, but you—you said you don’t need me. Your face changed and you said you never wanted to see me again—“

Mike turns around.

“Will.”

Will opens his eyes but pretends not to hear Mike. The soft lights are even hazier through the droplets there, buffering reality. “You left, and that’s when it all went dark, but… You just looked so angry at me the whole time, after I—“

“Will—“

“Mike, please,” Will says quietly and shuts his lids again, making the world dark by choice this time.

“Look at me.” 

Will doesn’t.

The walkie talkie screeches.

“Hey, it’s me again, you know what I’m gonna say so—”

Mike scrambles to grab it, his hand sweeping across the floor.

“We’re good! Shut the fuck up!” Mike yells at Dustin, pausing before he finishes with “Over and out!”, slamming the antenna down like it personally offended him.

He refocuses his attention back on Will.

“Will, please, just look at me.”

After a moment Will slowly turns in place, incrementally revealing himself and leaving them face to face again, their criss-crossed knees brushing. He doesn’t meet Mike’s gaze, his features painfully scrunched up in hopes it could somehow protect him from whatever’s about to happen.

Mike can feel the cogs spinning in his head and his heart working overtime to pump blood. He can feel Will trying his best to keep his composure.

“I didn’t tell you everything about what I saw,” Mike starts.

Will almost scoffs. “What’s that have to do with—I asked you to stay quiet, why’d you…” He’s humiliated; his skin is probably hot to the touch and he still can’t look at Mike. He only asked for one thing.

“I know, just let me—” Mike combs a hand through his hair, getting his thoughts in order. “I left some parts out when I told you what I saw.”

Will lifts his head a little as if telling him to go on.

“You didn’t die from me not saying enough. It was because of what I said. Everyone told me it was my fault because they were—well, they were disgusted with me.”

Will’s head jerks up and his eyes find Mike’s.

“Because what I said was that,” Mike swallows his fear. It doesn’t serve him anymore. “I love you. Not how everyone probably thinks I’m supposed to. You’re my best friend in the world, but I don’t just love you like a friend, and that’s what killed you.”

Mike leans closer and carefully reaches out, hand unsteady but confident, and waits to make sure Will’s not going to pull away before cupping his cheek. Shock is etched into every inch of Will’s face including his wide, shiny eyes, which move between Mike’s like he’s checking to see if they’ll start changing—because this can’t be real, right?

Will whispers almost too quietly, “Mike.”

Will pushes his cheek further into his palm and Mike brushes his thumb across Will’s skin, wiping a teardrop away. They’re staring at each other like it’s a lifeline. Will’s eyebrows are pitched up in what’s not disbelief, but not quite belief either, a restrained hopefulness.

Mike leans in a bit, causing Will to let out a tiny gasp. They can feel each other’s breath ghosting across their lips.

“I’m in love with you too, Will. Don’t you ever doubt that. Don’t ever think for a second that I don’t need you or that you could do anything to make me leave. When Vecna asked if I would die for you like you would for me I tried to say yes, but he choked me.”

Will watches him, speechless.

“He didn’t want you to know, but you need to know. When he was about to kill us, before the portal thing opened, I was gonna tell you I love you.”

Will’s heart might pound out of his chest. He thinks it could break through his ribs right now. It would be a nice way to go.

Will leans in more. He’s close enough that even in the dimness of the building he could count Mike’s freckles. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven—

“Say it again,” Will says.

Mike doesn’t have to ask what he means.

“I love you, Will. I’m in love with you.” Mike presses closer.

“Again,” Will whispers.

“I’m in love with you,” Mike says, softly but surely.

Will leans in impossibly further while Mike looks back and forth between his eyes and lips. They’re sharing the same space, the same thoughts, the same oxygen, just drinking each other in.

Will’s eyelids are heavy, getting ready to fall. “Again.” Mike feels the word hit his lips more than he hears it.

“I’m in love with you.” Mike will tell him as many times as he wants.

The corners of Will’s mouth lift slightly. Mike puts his bandaged hand on Will’s other cheek to fully cradle his face, and Will moves his own to the back of Mike’s neck, the gauze on his palm tickling the hairs there.

“I’m in love with you too, Mike Wheeler.”

They don’t make the last move yet, just grazing their noses and running fingers along skin, feeding milkweed to the butterflies in their stomachs. Mike’s nose nudges Will’s who closes the distance between them by delicately pressing his lips to Mike’s.

Somewhere in the Upside Down a tree’s slimy vines wither and turn to dust, having been touched by a love that’s too pure to not retaliate against its evil.

“What’s taking the boys so long?” Joyce wonders nervously, double-checking the time on her watch. “I think we should go check on them.”

She’s heard more than seen, the only light sources in the night being from the heads and tails of cars and the near-distant gas station. The cars’ interior lights are off so they don’t disturb the people sleeping inside, heads slumped onto shoulders and limbs splayed haphazardly.

“I’m sure they’re fine,” Hopper huffs, his head hanging halfway out a car window where he rests in the driver's seat. “They’ve been on the walkie talkie, right? They probably just want a moment of peace after that shitshow.” Under his breath he adds, “God knows I could use one.”

Right, the walkie talkie. Dustin, lying supine in someone’s truck bed, looks down at the device that’s been mute since Mike’s final send-off. He has this strange sense that Hopper’s right about them being fine, like a gut feeling but more pleasant—a heart feeling, maybe. He knows Mike cut the line intentionally, for whatever reason. He’s not worried.

Even so, his job is to maintain regular contact with the Gas Station Unit, as he’s secretly dubbed them, and he takes his duty seriously. 

“Mike, Will, do you copy? Over.”

Nothing.

“Listen, I know you guys are probably just, like, stuffing yourselves with roller-grill hot dogs or something, but I am actually gonna need you to respond. Over.” Dustin says lowly into the mic, not wanting to raise suspicion.

Quiet.

Dustin is the slightest bit worried.

“You better be really enjoying yourselves in there, ‘cause seriously, nobody wants to walk all the way over there to retrieve your asses but we won’t have any choice if you don’t pick up the damn transceiver. Over.” 

Absolute silence.

He’s gearing up to go tell Mrs. Byers and Hopper their boys are MIA, which will no doubt go as well as it sounds.

“You know I’m really happy you’re both okay and all, and I love you guys, but we’re all tired as hell and wanna go home.” He sits up and rests his head against the truck’s back windshield, the cold glass easy on his looming headache. “You must love each other a lot more than us if you’re willing to pull this crap.”

It’s as perfect as a first kiss can be, which is to say, delightfully imperfect. Will has no idea what he’s supposed to do so he trusts in Mike to guide him, but there’s a big difference between being experienced and having experienced something.

Will almost shivers, so electrified he’s scared he’ll give Mike static shock and ruin the moment, but there’s a tremor in the hand on his cheek that tells him he’s not the only one affected. They may just fry each others' brains. Oh well.

Just when it seems as good as it can get, Mike parts his lips, and, oh. Will makes a surprised noise in the back of his throat and Mike swallows it down, putting in its place all the words that ever sat unspoken on the tip of his tongue.

Will tries to follow the pace but he falters, breaking into giggles as their mouths separate with a click.

“What?” Mike asks, laughing only because Will is. He unconsciously dips his head forward when Will pulls away, drawn to him—less like a moth to a flame and more like a ship to its anchor.

“Uh, could you slow down a little? It kinda feels like you’re trying to eat me. Not complaining, but I've never done this before, remember?”

“Right. Of course.” Mike’s eyes don’t move from the lower part of Will’s face.

Blushing, Will threads his fingers into Mike’s hair and pulls him in by the neck for a slower, unrushed kiss.

“You taste like Gatorade,” Will speaks against Mike’s mouth.

“You taste like, uh,” Mike smacks his lips, “salt.”

“That’s probably the tears.”

“Oh, really?” Mike brings out his ‘about to make a corny joke’ voice. “You sure? ‘Cause—‘cause, Will,“ he points at the crooning Walkman, waiting for the exact moment to close his eyes and sing along, “boys don’t cry!”

Will rolls his eyes but his smile betrays him. “You’re ridiculous.”

“You love it,” Mike pauses to reply, which Will neither confirms nor denies. He grabs Will’s hands and maneuvers his arms into uncoordinated dance moves.

For a moment Will pretends to be exasperated by Mike’s—harassment? Serenade? But he quickly gives in to his heart’s desire to join Mike for a duet.

“I try to laugh about it, cover it all up with lies,” They sing to each other.

Mike’s hand slips down to wrap around Will’s wrist and an image flashes in the latter’s mind: The cold vines snaring his limbs and plastering him to the tree, wriggling and leaving slick trails in their wake.

It feels wrong, in some twisted way, that the trails didn’t come back with him to the real world. His brain isn’t equipped with the tools to reconcile what happened to him—to them.

Will’s expression turns serious. “I have to tell you something.”

Mike goes still at the change of tone. “Okay,” he says, carefully steady.

“I haven’t been completely honest with you.”

Mike traces the lines in Will’s bare palm with the pads of his thumb, feeling the valleys like they’re full of secrets.

“Earlier you said something about me getting Vecna’s vines off of you, and, I know more about that than I’ve said.”

“What do you mean?” Mike inquires.

Will looks away, wondering how he could explain what he doesn’t understand himself. There’s an unfinished puzzle in his head and he needs to somehow show Mike the picture.

“Did you ever feel, when we were in Vecna’s world, time would seem to slow down? Like, for these moments everything was separated from us and we were in some sort of, I don’t know, capsule?”

Mike’s surprised, and weirdly relieved, to hear him voice it. “Yeah, I did feel that.”

“So, um, that might be my fault, but I wasn’t doing it on purpose. It would just happen ‘cause I was really scared or just feeling too much, and recently stuff just—“ Will cuts himself off, realizing he’s probably not making much sense. Time to dump all the puzzle pieces on the ground.

“Sorry, it’s hard to…” Will trails off.

“Don’t be sorry.”

Mike shows a patience for his ramblings that he’s likely never granted, or will grant to, anyone else. Mike’s eyes are curious but demand nothing. The warmth of his skin crawls up Will’s arm and into his veins.

Will starts over. “Lately I’ve been feeling a connection to him , and it’s growing.”

Mike manages to not freak out, if only for Will’s sake. “For how long?”

Will pauses. “I don't know, maybe a couple of weeks?”

“Seriously?”

“I know, I know, I should’ve said something, but it started super small, and I honestly thought I might’ve been imagining it.”

Mike squeezes Will’s hand sympathetically, and Will squeezes back.

“Do you mean you were having hallucinations and stuff, like Max?”

Will shakes his head. “No, I didn’t know this was gonna happen, I’ve just sorta been feeling his presence, like,” Will unconsciously touches the back of his neck, “kinda like before.”

Mike doesn’t have to ask what he means by ‘before’.

“He’s not controlling you or anything, right?” Mike holds his breath, which is at least better than hyperventilating. “Because if he is—“

“He’s not. Nothing like that.” Will assures. “But, uh, I don’t necessarily think that’s for lack of trying.”

Mike looks increasingly concerned, so Will elaborates.

“I’ve been having ‘now-memories’ again, the past few days. Do you remember those?”

“Of course.” As if Mike could ever forget something like that.

“Well, they’re mostly like, I just know things all of a sudden without even thinking about it—but only some things. It’s just there in my head as if it’s always been there, and I know that this connection to him is why I was able to get those vines off you. It seems like I can only do stuff like that when I’m feeling strong emotions, and I can’t—I’m not El. These, I guess you could call them ‘powers’, I think they’ve been there a while.” Will pauses, mind cycling through all the strange instances he’s brushed off over the past few years. “I just wasn’t really aware of them, you know?”

Mike doesn’t know, but he nods anyway.

“What I’m positive about, though, ‘cause of my now-memories, is that once Vecna dies—once we kill him—my powers will be gone. This attachment I have to him is the reason they exist, so when it’s not there…” Will trails off, gesturing a hand around. “So if you only love me for my wizard magic prepare to be disappointed,” he jokes to lighten the mood.

Mike doesn’t laugh. “You don’t really think that, do you?”

“No! Of course not, I’m just kidding—“

“I don’t want you to feel like that at all, not even as a joke.”

“I don’t feel like that. I’m just teasing ‘cause with El, she was like, your superhero.”

Mike cringes internally. “I didn't even know you had any sort of powers until today, and El—I didn’t actually like her like that. I wanna be with you, powers or not, and when they’re gone—because we will kill him—it won’t make any difference.”

Will smiles. He didn’t need to be reassured. He was honestly just trying to be funny, but it was still nice to have any lingering doubt squashed.

“So, you didn’t actually like -like El?” Will asks and then wrinkles his nose. “Sorry, I sound like a five-year-old.”

“Yeah, you kinda did, but it’s fine.” Mike laughs. “And, no, I don’t think I did. I think I just thought I was supposed to.” He quiets, shifting in place. “Because when I first met her everyone was asking if I did—have a crush on her, I mean—and little twelve-year-old me thought I must’ve if everybody said so. I thought maybe movies and songs and everything were just exaggerating about how love feels and it was all really just ‘meh’. I mean, it explained my parents.” His mouth curls into a smirk.

Will notices Mike is poking at the stupid peanut M&M’s bag again, splitting one of the edges, but he finds he doesn’t mind anymore.

“And it’s just like, obviously I liked El,” Mike continues, “I love her, we all do, but I didn’t know the difference between that and like -liking her, or being in love with her, which I never did. I never was.”

There’s a telltale rip of paper being torn and the soft pattering of candy scattering across the ground. 

“I only knew how being in love actually felt when I realized I’m in love with you.” Mike blushes as if he hasn’t said the last few words half a dozen times already, and Will blushes as if he hasn’t heard them just as many.

Will’s gaze shifts to Mike’s hands which peel and apply leftover butterfly bandages to the back of the M&M’s packet, making a suture to mend it even though he caused its injury in the first place.

Will chuckles. “What are you doing?”

Mike lifts the packet up and turns it around to show off his handiwork. It had been torn in half just after the ‘&’ symbol and the ‘’S’ was discarded, the right side of the bag flipped upside down and reattached using the bandages.

Will just stares at it, his drowsy eyes not cooperating with his brain.

“Whaddya think, should they rebrand? Has a much better ring to it if you ask me.”

Will reads it again.

M&W

‘M&W’, according to Mike, has a better ring to it. 

It looks pretty wonky. The letters aren’t aligned and it’s obvious where it had been ripped apart, but the message is clear.

“God, that’s so fucking cheesy,” Will groans, snatching Mike by his shirt collar and pulling him into another kiss.

The thus-far unused ceiling lights audibly crackle to life, flickering on and off like fireworks beyond their closed eyes.

The fluorescents let off a charming little pop as one by one they settle back into darkness, the last one going out right as the boys separate to look up at them.

A beat of silence passes.

“I, uh,” Will clears his throat, “I might’ve done that.”

Mike’s eyebrows shoot up to the lights. “You—you might’ve— that?” He stammers, pointing upwards.

Will flushes. “Yeah, it’s just sort of been happening lately when I feel something really strongly, but it’s not usually that dramatic! I don’t know why that just—“ He reddens even more, “Well, I guess I know.”

To Will’s eternal gratitude, Mike’s not freaking out. On the contrary, he’s oddly delighted. “So, technically, I did that.”

“Well—“

“By proxy,” Mike adds, looking incredibly proud of himself.

Will focuses hard on not spontaneously combusting. He wonders if he’ll ever get used to this closeness and flirting and kissing, and hopes he never does. He hasn’t let go of Mike’s collar, the fabric undoubtedly wrinkling in his grip.

“Does it only happen with lights?”

“Lights, TVs, radios, toasters, whatever’s nearby and electric, I think.” Will answers.

“So I don’t have to worry about getting us in a car crash if I hold your hand on the way back?” He threads his fingers through Will’s as if to illustrate his point, but nothing happens.

Will rolls his eyes. “You’d have to do more than hold my hand, but no, no car crashes.”

“I’m almost disappointed.”

Will chews on his lip so he doesn’t laugh.

“Hey,” Mike reaches forward and pulls Will’s lip out from between his teeth with his thumb. “No biting that, that’s my job now.”

He bites Mike’s thumb instead.

“Ow—hey!” He says, pulling away even though it didn’t hurt at all. “Not fair!”

“Whatever,” Will acts peeved but he has the biggest, most blinding grin on his face. “Bite me,” He teases.

So Mike tugs him in by the collar this time, smiling along with him.

The front door of the gas station slams open so hard it hits the wall, its glass planes clattering like they’re shivering in fear.

“It’s 10 PM, do you know where your children are?” A theatrical disembodied voice echoes in an impression of a newscaster.

Mike and Will spring apart in surprise. From here, on the ground between shelves, they can’t see whoever came in, but they don’t need to.

“Be quiet Eddie, you’re gonna scare them,” An invisible Robin says, then louder, “It’s not 10 PM, guys. Not that I think you believed him, y’know, just making sure. Um, where are you, anyway?”

With a click the lights above flash on again, blinding them all.

“Ah—What the fuck, dude!” Eddie shrieks.

“How was I supposed to know it’d be that bright?” Robin defends, but she sounds equally pained.

They bicker indistinguishably for a few seconds before Eddie shouts, “No, seriously, where are you rapscallions hiding? We’re solely responsible for making sure you’re not dead, so.”

“Hey, don’t joke about that.” Robin chides.

“Too soon?”

“No—I mean yes, but we’re not the only ones responsible.”

They hear a muffled snort and a soft smacking noise, then Will finally declares, “We’re over here!”

Their vision is still recovering as Robin and Eddie turn the corner. They appear as blurry colors when Will peers between his fingers. “Oh, hey,” he says as if he didn’t know they were there.

“You’re not dead,” Robin announces triumphantly.

“Oh shit, did we worry anyone?” Mike asks, glancing at his watch.

“Language, Michael. I raised you better than this.” Eddie puts his hands on his hips, offering his best disappointed dad look, which is more convincing than any he’s been subject to.

Mike wrinkles his nose. “Don’t call me that.”

“No one’s exactly worried, just wondering what’s taking so long and why you haven’t been answering Dustin.” Robin’s gaze moves to the walkie talkie with its antenna retracted, then to the first aid wrappers and beverage bottles, then the M&Ms decorating the ground. “What, uh, have you two been up to?”

A silent moment passes.

“Just talking,” Will replies.

Eddie notes their subtly swollen lips, the candy wrapper art piece, and the giddy sparkle in their eyes that didn’t exist before.

“Right.” Eddie draws out the i, sharing a half-second look with Robin. “Well, I don’t wanna be a party pooper but we’re all itching to get out of here, so could you,” He points behind himself with his thumb and clicks his tongue, “get a move on?”

“Right, yeah.” Mike stands with a sigh, stretching, and then reaches down to help Will up to his feet.

“Thanks.” Will smiles up at him fondly, giving his hand a long squeeze.

Mike grins back the same way. “Anytime,” he whispers.

“Wait, don’t forget this.” Will picks the M&Ms— M&W wrapper up off the floor and places it in Mike’s palm, moving his fingers to curl around it.

“Keep it,” Mike insists, slipping it into the pocket that lies over Will’s heart and pressing it flat against his chest.

Will hopes Mike can’t feel how fast his heart is thumping, and then he thinks, ah, whatever. Let him know.

Robin pretends not to notice all this, feigning interest in some over-the-counter painkillers. “When did they start putting foil and crap on these?” She asks, having scarcely managed to remove the plastic seal and child-safety lid.

“Like three years ago, after some nutcase poisoned a bunch of bottles and people died,” Eddie answers.

Robin drops the lid. “Are you messing with me again? ‘Cause I can never tell with you. Or anyone.”

“Scouts honor.” Eddie raises three fingers. “Could’ya give me a couple of those? My head is pounding.”

“Might be poisoned,” Robin says. She shakes two of them out. “Here, catch!”

She throws the pills in his vague direction and he deftly swerves to catch them in his mouth, swallowing them dry but triumphantly.

“Hell yeah, go Munson! This is just like sports!” Robin cheers, going in for a high five and almost missing.

Mike ruins their fun with, “Are we going?”

Eddie grabs at his throat sourly, regretting not washing the meds down with something. “Yeah, just gimme that real quick.” He points at the walkie talkie and Mike passes it to him.

Eddie yanks the antenna out and switches on the mic. “Dustin, it’s Eddie, do you copy?

“Fucking finally! Yeah, I copy! What’s going on over there? Over.” Dustin’s voice comes through.

“Everything’s fine, your friends were just, uh, bonding, I guess. We’ll be back in a flash, ‘kay? Over.”

“I thought as much. Do you have proof of life? Over.”

“I’m alive,” Will speaks loud enough for it to reach the mic.

“Me too,” Mike adds helpfully.

“That’s good enough for me. Hey, Ed, don’t forget the coffees. Over.”

“Yeah, yeah, I won’t. Anything else, Your Highness? Over.”

“Just, like, a shit ton of food. Whatever they have, I don’t care, just don’t let us starve. Over.”

The walkie talkie is rudely snatched out of Eddie’s hand and he lets out a little “hey!”, helpless as Mike takes over.

“Dustin, it’s Mike. Sorry about earlier, for telling you to shut the fuck up. It was for a good reason—Will can vouch for me—but it’s a long story. Over.”

Eddie gawks at him. “Wheeler!” He clutches his chest, channeling a maiden with delicate sensibilities.

Robin snorts from across the shop where she’s stuffing random snacks and water bottles into a plastic bag.

“No hard feelings, buddy, it’s been a long day. I do expect to hear that story, though. Over.”

Mike locks eyes with Will. “Yeah, maybe someday.” Forgetting to sign off, he shoves the radio over to Eddie, who gives him a strange look but accepts it back.

“Okayyyyy,” Eddie says to both Mike and Dustin, “if that’s all then we’ll finish up here and be on our way. Over.”

“Yeah, man, that’s about it.” A staticky yawn breaks his sentences apart. “ Make it quick, would’ya? Over and out.”

The line disconnects, and Eddie becomes aware of the Walkman’s subdued presence alongside the squeak of his shoes against the floor. He finds Robin by the coffee machine where she fills steaming to-go cup after steaming to-go cup and puts them in cardboard takeout trays, yelping when a splash of the drink hits her.

Eddie takes a couple of coffee stirrers and lifts them high enough above his head for Mike and Will to spot from another aisle. “Kids, no offense, but if I have to hear this song one more goddamn time I’m gonna shove these in my ears.” 

Robin winces at him over her shoulder, grabbing handfuls of little creamers and sugar packets. “Sheesh, is there that much animosity between goths and metalheads?”

“What? No. We’re practically cousins. I’ve just had enough of this track, specifically.”

“Cousins…” Robin contemplates. “But you said you wanna—um, kiss Robert Smith, and you shouldn’t kiss your cousin.”

Eddie clears his throat at an unsettling volume. He turns and sees Mike and Will, who’ve apparently left their aisle to accompany him and Robin in the open area.

They all stand there, frozen, until Will tentatively asks, “Did she say you wanna kiss Robert Smith?”

Robin drops a creamer. “I messed up, didn’t I?”

The two boys look at him with a complex mix of deep-seated fear and hope, and Eddie thinks he knows the reason for both of them. As someone who’s felt enough of the first one to last ten lifetimes, he only ever wants them to feel the latter.

Eddie sighs and steps closer. “Listen, yes, she did say that, and she’s not lying, but have you seen Robert Smith?”

They shake their heads.

“No? Well you like his voice, right? His face is a similarly acquired taste. Man, I’d let him leave his lipstick marks on me—“

“Lipstick?” Mike interrupts meekly. “I thought he was a guy?”

Eddie tries not to groan. “You poor, sheltered boy. He is, and he can wear lipstick ‘cause he wants to. Will, you like Bowie, right?”

“Yeah, how did you—”

“Have you seen the cover of The Man Who Sold The World? That dude loves a fancy dress, and he can wear it, you know why?”

“Because he wants to?” Will answers like he’s been called on in class.

“Spot on. And I heard through the grapevine he might like to kiss dudes, too.”

Will’s eyebrows shoot up. “Really?”

“Absolutely. You can do whatever you want, and people are gonna say you can’t for whatever bullshit reasons because they're scared of what they don’t understand, but you two have seen things a lot scarier than a couple of queers and you’re a hell of a lot braver than those cowards, okay? Don’t forget that.” Eddie points with the coffee stirrers still in his grip.

Mike and Will stare at him. 

“Uh, thanks,” Will says softly, “really, thank you.”

Eddie remembers he barely knows the kid and hopes he didn’t overstep. “It’s what I’m here for: to guide the youth,” he shrugs it off but gives a genuine smile.

Sensing the moment is over, Robin calls out, “Eddie, come get the coffees.”

“Can’t you just—actually, no, I’ve seen you carry stuff. I got it.” He goes to the counter and stacks one cup holder on top of the other, holding the shaky tower against his chest and propping his chin on a lid for more security.

“Do you need us to—“ Mike starts.

“No, I got it. Not making the cursed children perform physical labor today.”

“That cannot be safe,” Robin mutters, then adds, “Oh, hey, we are gonna pay for this stuff, right?”

Eddie flounders under the weight of the drinks, his arms full. “I knew you’d say that so I asked around for some change. Back right pocket.”

Robin puts one of the snack-stuffed bags down to reach into Eddie’s jeans, coming up with a handful of crinkly bills. “That’s it?”

“Hey, I contributed a couple Washingtons, I can’t control the economy.”

Robin swats him on the ass and sets the money down next to the register before picking the bag back up. “Hopefully no one else breaks in to steal before the owner gets back.” She thinks for a moment. “Should we leave a note?”

“And say what? ‘Sorry for robbing you, two teenagers got possessed in the middle of nowhere and were reasonably hungry after, here’s some pocket change’?”

“Well, no, ‘possessed’ makes it sound like The Exorcist.”

“Yeah, I think we’re good, Rob,” Eddie says. “You ready to roll, fellas? Anything else you wanted to commandeer?”

Mike glances at Will, who shakes his head. “No, we’re ready.”

Eddie shoulders the door open and holds it in place with his back to let the others through. He glowers at the cassette player as Will goes past him, remarking, “Of all the Cure songs you could’ve picked… I should buy you pornography, show you the good stuff.”

“What?” Will splutters.

“Pornography, the album. What’d you think I meant?”

Will goes red. “I, uh, I don’t—“

Eddie laughs. “I’m just messing with you, Will the Wise. I’d playfully elbow you right now if I could. But seriously, it’s a great record.”

Will looks suspicious. “Is it metal?”

“Nope! I’m versatile like that. Now get a move on.”

Robin hits the wall’s switch on her way out. The only lights remaining for miles ahead are on the gathered cars, and the only remaining for lightyears above are freckling the sky in shuttering dots. They all feel close enough to touch, the stars and the headlights an equal distance from their fingertips if they would just reach out.

Will secures the keypad lock onto the gas station mart’s door, the handwritten ‘1976’ safely out of view on its back. He ponders the number’s significance until it’s thrown onto the wayside of his tired brain.

Fatigue befalls Mike in slow, syrupy waves as the pizza van takes shape, his body remembering there’s a semi-comfortable place to sit, and hopefully to sleep.

The four of them walk, the world asleep apart from the sound of faint music, plastic bags crinkling and shoes crunching the dirt. A thought hangs in Mike’s head and he just has to ask, “Hey, Eddie, how did you know?”

“Know what? That I’m gay?” Eddie says very casually for a man trying not to spill liters of hot liquid all over himself.

Will’s head snaps over to him. Neither he nor Mike has ever heard anyone say the word so nonchalantly, as easy as ‘hello’ or ‘goodbye’. Like it’s not something to be ashamed of.

“No, I mean, how did you know that me and Will are, you know.”

Eddie pauses, mulling it over. “Honestly, it’s how you talked about him.”

Will becomes exceedingly interested, almost giddy. “Really? What’d he say?”

“What didn’t he say? It was always ‘ Will this, Will that, that’s Will’s favorite movie, man I wish Will was here, Will told me blah blah blah—“

“You’re—He’s exaggerating.” Mike attempts to save face, but Will’s grinning ear to ear.

“Awww,” Robin adds unhelpfully.

“What really sold it for me, though, was the look in your eyes when you said it,” Eddie continues. “There’s no mistaking it. Then I met Will and saw the way he looks at you and I knew it was mutual.”

Robin awww s again.

“‘Kay, cool.” Mike blushes furiously at the ground. “Thanks for that.”

“I think it’s sweet,” Will assures, grabbing his hand briefly to give it a squeeze. Mike squeezes back.

Robin bids her own assurance. “Mike, if it makes you feel better, Eddie knew I was into your sister before I did. He has some freaky sense for that sort of thing.”

Will snaps his head once again. “You’re…?“

“A big ol’ dyke, yup.”

“Sure, I guess that helps, but why Nancy?” Mike grimaces.

Robin sighs wistfully. “The heart wants what it wants.”

They’re greeted with silence when they step foot into the rally of cars. Almost everyone has retreated to a seat inside—or in Dustin’s case a truck bed—all being lulled into slumber by the engines’ low harmony. The only ones still awake are Joyce and Hopper, who rush to meet them.

“Finally,” is all Hopper offers.

Joyce lays her hands on Mike and Will’s shoulders. Her exhaustion is evident. “You two have raised my blood pressure more than enough for one day,” she laments, but a gentle smile adorns her face.

“Sorry, mom.” Will’s nose wrinkles. “We got distracted.”

“Lots of interesting stuff in there,” Eddie corroborates, setting the trays down on the ground before handing Hopper and Mrs. Byers each a cup. Joyce thanks him while Hopper grunts his acknowledgment.

Robin leaves the bags on the hood of the SUV, the thin plastic nestling into the dents made by Mike and Will’s crash landing.

“I feel bad about the car,” Will speaks to the oxidized blood that decorates the hood ornament and grill, unsure who he should be apologizing to.

“Eh, it’s no skin off my back. The guy I stole it from, on the other hand…” Eddie trails off.

Mike blinks. “Nothing can surprise me anymore.”

“He’s kidding,” Robin butts in, “it’s Steve’s parents’. Don’t worry about it, they’re loaded. To them this is the equivalent of a torn shirt.”

Will skims the tear in his button-down with his fingers, a strange homesickness gripping him. Would his mom stitch it shut for him? Would she wring the blood out and steam it flat, returning it to his closet good as new? Would he even want her to?

“Can we go home now?”

“Of course,” Will’s mom tells him.

They can’t go home. At least not yet. 

It’s been dangerously long since any of them got a good night’s sleep, and nobody’s up for a road trip right now. The few still outside shuffle themselves into their respective vehicles while Hopper goes around knocking on the doors of those asleep in the driver’s seats.

“Follow Harrington. He saw a place to stay on the way here.” Hopper recieves grumbled affirmatives chased by squeaking hand-crank windows. They mostly cheer up when he slips a coffee over the glass panes.

Mike doesn’t care to look around at the scene they’re about to leave behind. Instead, he watches dust swim in the headlights’ beams, thinking about how those particles are everywhere but rarely ever visible, how they’re still there when they disappear into the dark. He fills his lungs with them and gets in the van.

If there’s anything new to see on the way backward they wouldn’t know; even the monumental sky beckons less than the weight of their eyelids.

The little arrow on the fuel gauge floats over ‘E’ by the time they reach the motel. The building is on the outskirts of a diminutive town where the desert begins to stretch to the horizon, a haven for lost adventurers and Vegas hopefuls alike. Each car streams into the parking lot like ducklings after mama Steve, filling all but one of the empty spaces left.

“Christ Almighty!” The guy at the reception desk jumps when the door opens, watching in horror as more and more people barrel through until a total of thirteen strangers stand across from him. One of them rings the call bell.

“I’m sorry, um, welcome. Do you have a reservation?” He knows they don’t.

“I have to whiz,” Erica states.

“Excuse me?” The man says.

Lucas clarifies, “She needs to use the restroom.”

“Oh, silly me. Well, it’s behind you to the right.”

Hopper works out the specifics with the man—George, according to his name tag—and he books the last four available rooms: three two-beds and a one-bed, meaning they’ll all pair up except for whichever three unfortunate souls will have to squeeze into a full mattress.

“Oh, there’s two more of us outside. You don’t charge per guest, right?” Joyce asks. “And we’re gonna need something that can play a cassette.” That part isn’t a question.

Jonathan has the door propped open, keeping within his eyesight the car that Max waits in with Nancy, the stereo on as always.

George hides his bewilderment enough to slip away. He returns with a desktop cassette player/recorder that’s almost certainly for work purposes, but he seems to sense that there’s some bizarre gravity to the situation. Jonathan brings it to Nancy and Max who soon arrive inside with the sound of Kate Bush in tow, mystifying the receptionist even further.

Once everything is settled, Hopper drops a key in Will’s hand. “Your mom and I figured you and Mike deserve your own, after everything.”

“Plus that song needs its own quarantine zone,” Eddie leans over to mumble, yawning.

“Uh, if we’re alone we won’t have anyone to rewind the tape for us,” Will points out.

“Oh shit,” Max says, “let’s trade. This one has a track loop button.” She says of the George-provided cassette player. “They’re all used to constantly rewinding for me anyway. We have a whole system.”

They switch out the tapes, finally giving Max her Sony WM-8 back. “It probably needs new batter—“

“I literally have a bag full of double A’s,” Max interrupts Mike, “but thanks.” She really means it, too tired for snark.

Everyone trudges through the patently smoke-coated hallway to their assigned rooms. El, who can barely be considered awake, stops by on the way to hers. “Goodnight, Will. Goodnight, Mike,” she says sleepily, then, addressing Mike head-on, “Were you an imbecile?”

“Not in the way that matters,” Mike avows.

El needs no other proof than the way Will stands much closer to Mike than he would’ve dared the last time they’d talked. “Thank you for not waking me, then.”

Will’s eyes dart between them. “What am I missing here?”

She whispers something in Will’s ear that makes him stammer. “Okay, goodnight El, see you tomorrow,” he says hastily, snatching Mike’s arm and rushing them through their door.

It’s a perfectly standard, inoffensive motel room. Quaint, with outdated decor and scarce space for walking from one end to the other, complete with stained but acceptably clean shag carpet. 

They get ready like it’s any other day, taking off their shoes and discarding their overshirts—Will taking the M&W wrapper out of his pocket and putting it on the side table for safekeeping. They brush their teeth—the brushes and toothpaste compliments of George—and splash their faces with water from the sink. The intimacy of the easy silence and routine isn’t lost on either of them.

Once out of the bathroom, their only light source comes from the nightstand where they left the cassette player, on which also rests a faint yellowish lamp hailing them over like mariners lost at sea. 

Will makes himself comfortable, tucking himself in bed and reaching over to yank the lamp’s cord before pulling down the corner of the blanket so Mike can get in. It’s so sweetly domestic that Mike can’t help but imagine a world where this is their home, their blanket, and their lamp, and the scariest thing in that imaginary world is the darkness when they turn it off.

“When’s the last time we shared a bed?” The mattress creaks when Mike adds his weight. It seems weirdly loud in the pitch-black room.

Will turns on his side to face Mike, whispering, “I don’t know. When we could both still fit in a twin, probably.” He remembers the exact last time, actually, but that’s not important.

Their eyes slowly adjust with some help from a gap in the window’s curtains, both of their faces taking shape under the moonlight one feature at a time. They just look at each other and keep looking, and looking, neither of them shying away from the scrutiny. Their reverie isn’t broken until the AC noisily announces itself.

“Is this weird?” Mike asks.

“Is what weird?”

“I dunno, just, all of this.”

“I mean, yeah, it’s definitely been a strange day,” Will agrees, a slight question in his voice.

“No, like, this thing between us.” Mike scoots closer. “Do you think this was supposed to happen?”

His meaning clicks in Will’s head. Fear hits him in an instant. “Do you not want it to?”

“No! I mean, yes! I do want it to, like, embarrassingly bad,” Mike corrects. “I really thought I made that clear.”

“Then what are you asking?”

Mike is quiet, face contorted in thought. “Do you think—it’s stupid, honestly, but—do you think it’s, like, fate? Destiny, or whatever?”

Will says nothing.

“I know, super dumb, right? But it’s just that, when I think about it it feels like something was trying to keep us apart. Everything since you moved and since I visited, and everything today, and all of the random shit that went wrong—“ He sighs, snapping out of it. “Never mind, it’s dumb. I don’t even believe in that stuff.”

Will processes for a moment. He grabs the comforter and pulls it over their heads, completely confining them underneath. “Do you remember when we used to do this, when we could both fit in the bed?”

Mike laughs. He can’t see a thing, but Will’s words surround him. “Yeah, we pretended we were suffocating, for some reason. Why were we so morbid?”

“We kinda still are.” It quickly gets warm. “But I almost believed it, that we were suffocating, ‘cause we kept saying we were, and it really feels like it when you don’t know better.”

Will used to imagine this was what it’s like to be a caterpillar in a cocoon, but now he knows that caterpillars digest themselves and turn into goo to become a butterfly. Well, the discomfort is still there.

“Is this an analogy, Will? Are you tricking me into a literary device?” He wants to be annoyed, but unfortunately his heart swells in his chest.

The air might be getting thin, it’s hard to tell. Logically, they’re fine.

“Maybe?”

It was nice for a little while, the swaddled solitude, but their breath is coming short.

“I’m guessing this is the part where we come up for air?” Mike asks.

Will takes the comforter off their heads and a wave of cool, abundant air flows over them. Their lungs are and have been fine, but they both have the urge to pant.

“Okay,” Mike speaks to nothing in particular.

“I get it. I get why you’d think that, it’s not stupid,” Will says, referencing Mike’s doubt. “But I think you’re under the blanket.”

“Profound.” Mike smiles.

Will rolls his eyes. “Seriously though, I could even argue that all of that was bringing us together, not apart.” He wiggles even closer. “But honestly? Fate is overrated. I realized that, like, today. I thought it was some sort of destiny that we met and became friends, it felt like it when we did, but what’s special about that? If it’s set in stone our choices would mean nothing.”

Will plays with Mike’s hair just because he can, because he chooses to. Mike happily allows it, listening to him intently.

“I’m not sure how to explain it,” Will continues, “You chose to come up to me on the playground, and I chose to say yes when you asked me to be your friend. We choose each other, over and over. Even when it’s the hardest thing to do. It doesn’t feel like fate to me anymore—I mean that in the best way possible. I feel like I’m choosing you against all odds and forces, and the other way around.”

Mike’s a bit stunned. “Okay,” He says again, and he does understand, but infatuation confounds him. “Yeah. Sorry, I don’t know how I can follow that up. I choose you, fuck fate. Am I getting this? I kinda just wanna kiss you right now.”

Will laughs. “Do you choose to do that?”

“Yup, that’s all me, baby.”

So he does, and it’s a lot different lying down, logistically. Will opts to keep his hands in Mike’s hair—a good choice—and Mike’s just sort of go where the road takes them, finding nice parking spots on Will’s waist and cheek. It gets better every time they do it.

The lamp switches itself on and off a couple of times—or, rather, Will switches it on and off, but it’s pretty much Mike’s fault.

Mike fist pumps, whisper-yelling, “I did that!”

“We should probably go to sleep before I break the cassette player,” Will says begrudgingly. He’s never actually broken anything that way, but he’s not willing to test it.

“You mean before I break the cassette player?”

“By proxy.”

“Let’s settle on ‘we’. ”

Mike plants a few more smooches, some on the beauty mark above Will’s lip that he’s secretly always admired, but he concedes.

There’s one final goodnight kiss then Will turns over to face away from Mike, the sheets swishing around as he gets situated. “I usually sleep on this side.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

Mike also makes himself comfortable, shifting around and fluffing his lumpy pillow until he’s content. “Oh, hey, what did El whisper to you in the hall?” He asks Will’s back.

Will shakes with silent laughter, a few puffs of air escaping his nose.

“What? What is it?”

“Okay, it’s—she said, ‘ask your boyfriend’.”

“Did she actually?” Mike’s face grows hot.

“Yes!” He manages between laughs. “Mike, what did you tell my sister?”

“If you’re asking me does that mean I’m your boyfriend?”

“I really thought I made that clear,” Will echoes him.

Mike’s glad Will can’t see his ridiculous grin. It’s reputation-ruining. “I’ll explain it tomorrow. Goodnight,” and, realizing he’s free to say it whenever, “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Will responds without hesitation.

A few minutes pass with only the sound of their breathing and the low-volume cassette player. The headlights on the occasional passing cars shine between the curtains for fractions of a second, barely there reminders of the outside world, but they don’t have to worry about the outside until tomorrow. 

It’s hard not to let uneasiness creep up, though, when they finally have nothing left to do or say, when it’s so peaceful and undemanding that any surprise would find them wholly unprepared. The pain, the confusion, the fear—all they’ve suffered today is in the center of their minds and they have to fight to keep a healthy distance from it.

There’s another distance which needs closing first.

“Hold me?” Will asks.

“Of course.”

Mike wraps himself around Will’s back, arms circling his middle and head nestling into Will’s nape. Mike lays a palm over Will’s heart just to quell the part of him that needs to be sure he’s alive. He is, as evidenced by the soft pulses under Mike’s hand that quicken when he kisses the back of Will’s neck, right on the spot where he usually dreads to feel anything.

“Why do you think he got us both?”

Mike sighs. “I was hoping you’d have an idea.”

Will says nothing. He breathes in the uncertainty, defying fate.

“We’re gonna be okay.” Mike’s words vibrate against Will’s skin, and he hopes the air-waves don’t carry his uncertainty. “Soon we will be, and we won’t ever have to listen to this song again if we don’t want to.”

“I know, but it doesn’t feel like it to me.”

“Then let’s not feel like it together.”

Will puts his hand over the one Mike keeps on his chest, and together they close their eyes.

The tree’s leaves part just enough to finally allow some spots of light through the gaps, creating a window in the shadow for a ray of sun to shine. The light lands right upon Will’s face, giving him his own personal halo, hand-picked by nature to fit him just right.

The tree is bigger now, of course; its limbs reach higher up into the sky and stretch farther away from the thick trunk, which surely has ten more rings than the first time they’d seen it. Its leaves remain as densely packed as ever, so it’s lucky chance that they’d move in such a way to let Will feel the warmth of summer on his skin.

“Get back over here! What are you doing?” Will shouts.

“Just a second!” Mike yells back, crouching in the grass again for some top-secret reason.

Mike’s just a bit too far for Will to be able to tell what he’s doing from his place on the swing. He deems that investigation a lost cause and turns his attention to kicking up off the ground, sending himself into the air—it’s not too bad to be up there when gravity’s tethering you down. He keeps his grip tight on the chains just to be sure, even though he knows he doesn’t have to.

A few birds pass overhead, and Will finds he doesn’t envy their ability to fly.

Finally, Mike comes trotting up, prompting Will to slow to a stop. He recognizes the scheming expression that Mike tries to hide but grants him the grace to not mention it, or the fact he’s clearly holding something behind his back, instead waiting for him to speak.

“Hi,” Mike says, “do you wanna be my boyfriend?” He unveils a makeshift bouquet of enough bright yellow dandelions to put a landscaper out of commission, handpicked from all across the playground.

“I’d say yes, but I already am.” Will accepts the bundle of flowers with a huge smile on his face, cheeks red not only because of the sun. He can’t believe this is his life now. “You’re so sappy,” he observes with nothing but affection, “thank you, I love them. C’mere.”

Mike leans down, and Will reaches up to tuck one of the dandelions behind Mike’s ear, positioning it just right.

“By the way, I don’t think that’s quite how it went, but it’ll do.” Will cups Mike’s jaw and plants a soft kiss squarely on his mouth, which seems to be the intended reaction.

“I wasn’t going for accuracy as much as capturing the essence of it, you know?” Mike explains once they reluctantly pull apart, plopping down in the swing next to Will’s just as he had on the day in question. 

The swing set, like the tree, has changed a lot too. Much of the paint on its frame has chipped away revealing rusted metal, and its hinges squeak at least twice as much as they used to. However, the wear and tear adds more to its charm than it could ever take away.

“Was that the essence?” Will asks while carefully placing the bouquet in his shirt pocket like a corsage, which Mike delights in.

“Mhm. You asked me what I wanted my name to mean, and I said ‘Will’s boyfriend.’” His voice conveys the utmost seriousness.

“Oh, right, I remember. What took you so long to see that through, anyway?”

Mike grins and shrugs, swaying in little circles and deliberately bumping his swing into Will’s. “I’m surprised we got there so soon, actually. And all it took was the most traumatic experience of our lives.”

Will bursts into laughter despite himself.

Mike switches gears, “Oh yeah, I wanted to show you the album Eddie bought me—well, us.” He picks his bag up and rifles through it, pulling out a cassette with a reddish case and a Walkman—one that belongs to him, this time. “It’s, uh, Pornography by The Cure. He mentioned it to you a few months ago on that day, remember?”

They’ve been calling it that day for a while. It makes it easier to talk about and the phrase has become so commonplace between them that they always know what it means.

“Is it any good?”

“It’s incredible. He said it’s for both of us, so it’s yours too.” Mike puts the tape in and presses play before leaving the Walkman on the ground between them. “Just listen.”

And they do.

The perfect leaf shifting eventually gains Will’s notice again, reminding him of something. “Did you hear they might be chopping down the tree?”

“Yeah.” Mike frowns. “Does anybody know why?”

Will allows the light to sting his eyes a bit before looking back at Mike. “No, just guesses. It makes me kinda sad though, with all the memories.”

“See, you’re sappy too. No pun intended.” Mike lets go of one of the chains to offer Will his hand. Will happily threads his fingers into his and Mike responds with a squeeze. Will squeezes back.

“Maybe it needs to be chopped for safety reasons, like falling branches? Or infestation? If that’s why then it should come down.” Mike gives it a once-over while talking as if to diagnose the issue.

Will brings Mike’s hand to his face and kisses it, a bit hard to do while on the swings but worth the effort nonetheless. It’s not visible from this side but Will knows there’s a thin scar across Mike’s palm that wonderfully complements the one on his own, and they’re connected right at this moment. 

“Yeah, it’s probably for the best. Besides, then we can count the rings on the stump,” Will says, then allows himself to be carried away by the music.

“This is my favorite track,” Mike declares, rubbing his thumb across Will’s skin.

My head falls back and the walls crash down

And the sky and the impossible explode

Held for one moment, I remember a song

An impression of sound

Then everything is gone forever

A strange day