Chapter Text
March 22nd
10:40 P.M.
Mike found El coming out of the bathroom. Her eyes were puffy and her shirt and hair were wet from trying to clean herself off. When she saw Mike she started tearing up again and he immediately pulled her into a hug. Her sobs muffled into his shirt sleeve.
“Hey, it’s gonna be okay,” Mike soothed as he ran his fingers through her damp hair.
“I lied to you, Mike,” she cried. “I know friends don’t lie but- but I don’t think I have ‘adapted’ like I am supposed to!”
Mike’s heart broke for her.
“It’s okay, El. Sometimes friends lie if they’re embarrassed about something. I just wish you would have told me.”
She squeezed him tighter. “Me too,” she admitted.
“Come on, let’s get out of here.” He grabbed her hand and they awkwardly walked/rolled to the area where their shoes were.
Will was already waiting by the exit. Mike slipped past him with barely a glance and said, “We’re going back to your house.”
He could do with that what he wanted. Mike was pretty mad at him right now. What the hell was his problem today? And when they should have been looking for El to see if she was okay, Will decided that was the time to yell at him about some letters?!
El sensed the tension and no doubt saw Will’s own red eyes. She looked up at Mike curiously but he kept his face pointed forward and walked, his hand still in hers. Will came with but stayed a considerable distance behind the couple for the walk home. About halfway there El glanced back to make sure she couldn’t be heard before leaning in and whispering, “Mike, what’s wrong with Will?”
He gave her a sideways look. “I’ll tell you when we get back to your house.”
She looked back again and frowned at Will’s slumped frame.
Xxxx
11:06 P.M.
When they entered the Byers house Will mumbled a quick ‘good night’ before shuffling straight to his room and slamming his door. And then he broke, sliding down the wall onto the ground sobbing uncontrollably, snot running and shoulders shaking and arms wrapped around his knees.
Come on, you knew this would happen, Will scolded himself. At least he figured it out himself and you didn’t even have to say it.
Knowing the storm is coming doesn’t make the impact any less brutal. Will’s heart was breaking into a million tiny pieces. Everything inside him hurt.
I lost my best friend. I lost my best friend. Probably all of my friends soon enough… Will squeezed his eyes shut. Yeah, he knew it was coming but the grief overtook him, consumed him until he nearly couldn’t breathe.
A couple minutes passed before he found the will to stand up and walk numbly to his desk. He could only think of one thing to do, as silly as it was. He grabbed a piece of paper and a pen, and in no time the pen was flurrying across the page, the black ink occasionally smudged with tears.
Xxxxx
El sat cross-legged at the end of the bed, her back straight as it always is, and stared thoughtfully at the wall as she listened to Mike explain what happened. Mike ranted for a good ten minutes.
“…I just don’t understand why he’s making it such a huge deal. I mean, it’s not like I wrote Dustin and Lucas dozens of letters either, and they’re not mad at me, right?” Mike threw his hands up in exasperation.
El waited a moment to make sure Mike was finally done talking before she answered simply, “But it’s different with Will, Mike.”
Mike froze and swiveled around to face her. “What do you mean?”
“For you, it has always been different with Will. When we rescued him from the Upside Down and you all saw him again, I could tell.”
“Tell what?”
“That you two had a very deep bond… More than you did with Dustin and Lucas. Maybe it was because of my powers. It is hard to explain, but I could feel it. Your energies are...” El trailed off. Mike could see her struggling to think of the right word. “Your energies are…” she clasped her hands together and emphasized her fingers locking and twisting. “The word for stuck together…”
“Tangled?” Mike suggested.
El let out a soft sigh. “No its… intined or… or entimed…?”
Mike snapped his fingers. “Oh! Do you mean entwined?”
El’s eyes lit up. “Yes! Yes, that one.”
“So our energies or auras or whatever, they’re…. Entwined?”
El nodded. “Yes, very much. But everyone’s is a little, because all people know all people somehow. It is like a big spider web… but yours and Will’s felt so… ‘bright’ together. I don’t know if I’m explaining it right.. but it was different, see? It’s different with Will…”
Mike would have sworn her tone had turned slightly sad, but that didn’t make any sense.
He sighed and sat on the bed next to her. “So… you’ve never seen anything like that before? Like with other people’s auras?”
El hesitated and seemed to choose her words carefully. Uh… was Mike missing something here, or was he reading her wrong? He was good at that.
“Sometimes,” she finally said. “I’ve only seen it sometimes.”
Okay, Mike wasn’t really sure what to do with that.
Eleven gulped and continued almost in a hurried way. “I think you should tell him you are sorry.”
Mike looked at her incredulously. “What? But he’s been short with you all day and got all mad at me for no reason!”
El pursed her lips again, contemplating something. After a moment she said in a barely audible voice “I think I understand now.”
“What?” Mike asked, perplexed. Did he hear her right?
She looked at him with wide eyes before practically blurting. “Uh, lonely! That’s the reason. You know he’s been lonely, Mike.”
Now he was even more confused. “What? When did he say that?” His tone came out more defensive than he intended.
El blinked at him. “He… he didn’t tell you that?”
“No… I mean, aside from that fight at school back in November, he never mentioned anything was wrong. Not like that…”
“Oh,” El said meekly. “Well a couple weeks ago he told me about it. He said he was feeling very…” El let out a small, frustrated sigh. “The word for very very sad?”
His eyes widened. He almost didn’t want to say it because he didn’t want it to be true. “Depressed?”
El nodded solemnly. “Yes. Joyce was starting to worry because he is tired a lot and likes to stay in his room, so she asked me to ask him what was wrong. For the longest time he would lie and say that he was okay. But a few weeks ago he finally said how sad he is.” El’s eyebrows scrunched together as she looked at the ground. “I thought he would have told you all of this.”
Mike couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“What do you mean ‘for the longest time?’ How long has this been going on?” he asked desperately, still trying to absorb it all.
El slumped, finally breaking her perfect posture. “I think maybe since November or something like that.”
The blood drained from Mike’s face. November? Will had been suffering like this for at least four months and Mike had no fucking clue?
“Why wouldn’t he tell me about this?” Mike groaned. “He never mentioned feeling lonely or depressed once to me. Not once. Why?!”
El tilted her head at him quizically. “Well you said that sometimes friends lie if they feel embarrassed about something, right?”
Mike frowned at that. “But… why would he be embarrassed about something like feeling sad? Especially with me… I mean, if I had known, El, I would have reached out to him more this whole time!” He raked his fingers through his hair, his leg bouncing frantically. Guilt was threatening to bubble up and overtake him. “Why would he feel like he has to hide this?”
A knowing look crossed El’s face but only for a split second. Mike wondered if he’d imagined it. “El?”
She bit her lip nervously before saying “I don’t know, Mike…”
Mike bounced back to his feet and walked toward El’s door. “I need to talk to him. I need to explain- God, I’m such an idiot!”
El also stood. She placed her hand on his cheek and forced him to look at her. “You are not an idiot. Go. Talk to him.” She smiled.
When Mike left the room she finally let out a few tears. In the pit of her stomach she knew… she knew that she was going to get her heart broken soon.
xxxxx
11:30 P.M.
“…You, El, and Jonathan are all within yelling distance yet I’ve never felt more completely and utterly alone.
Just… alone.”
Will's pen had barely lifted from the page after writing this when it happened. That chill, that… signal from the Upside Down spread from the back of his neck through his entire body, tickling like spiders all over that left ice cold venom in their wake.
No.. no, this hasn’t happened while he was awake since… he must have fallen asleep again, that’s all. He merely cried himself to sleep while writing his stupid feelings.
Will took a deep breath. He would wake up soon, though his waking life was a nightmare right now, too, so he supposed he couldn’t win. He opened his desk drawer and placed his latest rant in with the rest of the papers.
His lamp flickered. The chill got worse. Will stood ramrod straight, paralyzed with that familiar dread that he experienced in every nightmare.
Wake up. Wake up. Wake up!
The air in the room was completely still. Cold sweat dripped down Will’s temples.
With a sudden whoosh he was shoved into the wall next to his window by an invisible force. He fell to his knees, panting. As he scrambled back up he could feel something trying to pull him back down. He grunted and huffed, straining to get his arms out of these invisible ropes. He managed to reach his desk with his fingertips.
“Help!” he tried to yell, but no sound came out of his mouth. “Mike! El!”
Silence. He could feel the words being spoken in his throat but they were muted. The only sounds were his feet kicking wildly against the floor as they fought the unseen, and the banging of his hands as he tried to get a good grasp on his desk. In the scuffle his lamp cord got yanked out of the outlet and the room went dark.
The force was winning.
Will lost the feeble hold he’d had on his desk and his upper body fell to the floor. The ground started to emit a low rumble and the chilling sensation in Will’s bones intensified, his connection to the Upside Down…
Suddenly a quiet flash of red lightning illuminated his room for a second, blinding him. When it was over Will saw that the lightning had left a crack in the floor, a glowing orange crack with tiny white particles seeping through.
His eyes widened in horror. How…? How could there possibly be a gate to that place in California?!
The force started dragging him to the gate and he strained even harder to break free, the tendons in his arms and neck protruding from the effort. His nails dug painfully into the hardwood floor as he scratched, desperately grasping for something to hold on to. It was all pointless. The pull was too strong. Will was but a tiny piece of metal being attracted a gigantic magnet down below.
“Nooooo!” he tried to yell again. He was getting closer, closer, closer… so close he could feel the cold emanating from the opening.
“Please, no!” he begged, but it was nothing but a silenced plea.
And in the next second the orange crack and Will were gone, leaving an eerie calmness in the aftermath.
Will Byers had vanished once again.
Xxxxx
11:32 P.M.
“Will?” Mike knocked gently on his door. “Will, can I come in?”
No answer.
Okay, Mike deserved that but it wasn’t going to stop him. “Will, I’m coming in!” he warned before twisting the doorknob.
He was met with complete darkness.
“Will?” He felt around the wall for the light switch and flipped it on. He expected to see Will’s sleeping form on the bed, but it was empty.
Mike frowned, trying to ignore the icy feeling that started to spread through his veins. He walked toward the bathroom. “Will, are you in there?” he called.
Nothing.
“Will?!” he called again to the empty hallway.
Quiet. Too quiet. That feeling inside started to mount to panic. His heart was beginning to race. He hurriedly walked to Jonathan’s room and basically busted the door open.
Jonathan was standing at his window and jumped about three feet at the disturbance, coughing out weed smoke and scrambling to put out his joint. “Dude, knock next-“
“Have you seen Will?” Mike asked breathlessly.
Likely due to his current state of mind, it took a moment longer than it should have for him to comprehend the question. “Didn’t he come home with you guys like half an hour ago?” he asked lazily and pulled his window shut.
Mike wanted to punch him. “Yes, but he went to his room and now I can’t find him anywhere.”
Some awareness finally dawned in Jonathan’s glazed eyes. “No…” he breathed. “No, no, no… not again.” He whisked past Mike and they both ran to Will’s room hoping for a miracle, but it was just as empty as before. The two boys shared a petrified look.
“Mike.” El’s voice behind them made them both jump.
“El! We can’t find Will-“ Mike stopped short when he noticed the way that she was trembling. Drops of blood seeped through her fingers that she held up to her nose. “El!” He ran toward her, but before he reached her she had already collapsed to the floor.