Chapter Text
“There is a thing about Time and Space which the philosopher Einstein is going to find out. Some people call it Destiny.”
— T. H. White, The Once and Future King
The sky shifts, gently, from black to purple. Will Byers takes out another cigarette on the balcony, picking absently at the flaking paint on the railing. The clouds are growing pale over San Francisco. He watches the empty street snake upwards towards the beginning of the light.
5AM. Dennis is passed out on the couch in the living room behind him, last night’s embarrassment probably forgotten in the haze. Will’s still trying to forget. That’s what the cigarettes are for. It’s not like he hasn’t brought guys back to his place before, but somewhere on their way to maybe sleeping together Dennis got scared and started hyperventilating, I’ve never done this before, I’ve just never done this before, which made Will think he should’ve been scared the whole time too and then they were both kind of freaking out and then… and then nothing, then Dennis had collapsed on the couch and Will had moved to the balcony to cool down and wait out the morning. He’ll walk Dennis home, and Dennis will be gracious, and when they see each other in the office they won’t mention it, and things will be normal again, normal except for the fake name he’s using, and for the high school stories he’s made up out of whole-cloth, and the constant tautness in his belly, and…
He resists the urge to touch the back of his neck.
This was your idea, he reminds himself, as the nicotine hits. Your plan, your risk assessment. Better than the alternative. Alone is better. Alone is safe and free at once. Not that Will feels particularly safe or free, but he doesn’t feel monitored like in those first couple years after Hawkins, doesn’t have reporters in his answering machine begging for interviews, or cultists calling him the Antichrist. Or occasionally just regular Christ. The only people who know his real name here are his boss at the firm and his banker— jerks, but they needed his social security number, and they won’t tell.
He allows himself one call to his mother per month, from a payphone out in Fremont. He doesn’t tell her anything. At first she was confused and then she was pissed and then for a while she wouldn’t stop crying, but it’s settled now, they have a rhythm, and she’s stopped trying to tell him anything either.
Clean cut, was his idea. Leave it all behind.
It’s September, 1994. Cobain’s dead and baseball’s on strike. There’s a tornado outbreak in the Southeast that was supposed to end months ago. Pat Buchanan’s the president, and the hole in the ozone layer is growing every day. The religious sects that sprung into being when the footage leaked out of the earthquake in Hawkins are starting to homogenize, are starting to get violent. Ironically, it was fear of cults that birthed a million more. A quarter of the country’s getting flyers in their mailboxes from the Order of the Inverse. The rich ones buy out billboards on the highways. HELL IS REAL, they all say. SO WHAT NOW?
Will politely takes the flyers when the street preachers press them on him. His friends make fun of the cultists into their drinks, but half of them believe there are aliens living underground, and the other half think the footage was engineered by the government to drive the population towards religious fundamentalism. Will sticks to the official government line. Rogue agents doing unauthorized experiments in power generation using official facilities. A gas leak causing mass hallucinations, an earthquake igniting stored fuel cells, and if the footage shows a gate to another world emerging beneath this one, it’s just patterns emerging randomly in the flames. (Hawkins is rubble now, cordoned off, a blast zone. Nothing to see; mind the electric fences.) His friends inevitably boo and call him a fed. He shrugs. Maybe.
So, San Francisco, 1994. Problems not fixed. Lessons not learned. Et cetera. Scared of his landline, scared of his sink. Of old clocks, and fridge magnets. But he’s making a life for himself; he’s figuring out how to do things on his own. There’s time, he’s only twenty-three, there’s still time, and when he goes out to bars with his friends, his kind, loving, fickle friends, he can look a guy in the eye, just stare, for a really long time, and he isn’t so scared of that. Not like before. Safe and free at once.
The sky is getting lighter, right out there in the distance over the hill. A car is winding its way down, its headlights skittering over the damp asphalt. He takes one more drag, wonders about Dennis, if maybe he should heat up some food or something.
The car pulls to a dead stop in his line of sight, right in the middle of the road. A big black Hummer-looking thing. Hulking and sleek. Familiar that way, with its long shadow. Its headlights start to flash, slowly, on and off, in his direction.
Short, short, short. Long, long, long. Short, short, short.
“Shit,” Will murmurs. SOS. “Shit, shit.” He fumbles to put out his cigarette, staring, frozen, eyes wide and blood cold, and he watches trembling as the code repeats, and then the car revs, backs up, and rams itself straight into the nearest lamppost.
“Shit.”
He books it down the fire escape. The front of the car is fully split down the middle, smoking and sparking up. The door opens and a figure topples out, right onto his knees. The guy lets out a hoarse groan as his legs buckle. Will isn’t even thinking, just bends down, hooks under his arms, lifts him up— “Fucking leg,” the man says— and starts dragging him away from the wreck, and his eyes clear in the pre-dawn haze, and suddenly he realizes who he’s holding, and he almost drops him all over again.
“Dustin?” he manages, when he finally catches his breath. It’s all he can think to say. Not what are you doing here? Not how did you know where to find me? Not why did you just crash your own car into a lamppost?
But it’s not like Dustin was ever the answerable kind of question.
Dustin spits some blood to his left and breaks out into an uneasy smile. He limps forward, leaning on Will’s shoulder. His breath comes out in hasty wheezes. “Been driving three days straight,” he says, like that explains it. “Can I sleep in your bed?”
Then he faints into Will’s arms.
Will does not panic. Okay, he thinks. Cool. He hauls Dustin carefully up the fire escape and through the sliding doors and into his bedroom, and drapes him across the bed, and he flops over and starts snoring, actually snoring, and he feels very proud of himself until he suddenly remembers Dennis in the other room, blasted on the couch, and races over to him but he’s still sound asleep, and then he sort of just paces around the apartment thinking hard for a while, and he does not panic, and he does not lose it, and then he goes back to check on Dustin again.
The sun’s just starting to paint the curtains. He doesn’t look too beat up in the light, but his split lip’s already stained Will’s pillow. They were still teenagers the last time they saw each other. Will doesn’t have a great grasp on the memory, that last day before they started peeling off for college, doesn’t even want to touch it. Dustin’s filled out a little more, he’s wider in the face, maybe. Ditched the multicoloured layers and graphic logos for a white t-shirt and a workman’s jacket. But he still just looks like Dustin.
Will screws his eyes shut tight and sits on the floor. He stops himself— barely— from reaching for another cigarette. If Dustin found him that means he’s findable. Means maybe all of it was for nothing. But how? His landlord doesn’t even know his real name. He pays his rent in cash. And why? After all this time? He rotates the situation around a few times in his mind and can’t find a path out that isn’t catastrophic. He’ll have to move out of the city. Out of the state. Colorado’s nice this time of year, he hears. He’ll have to find a less stupid pseudonym, get all new fake IDs, abandon his friends and his job and whatever rough sketch of a life he’s managed to eke out for himself.
For a moment, he starts to entertain a very bad thought, one he works hard to keep buried. That maybe it’s started over. That maybe it’s all happening again. He scratches the back of his head, before he realizes.
Not enough sleep, he thinks, I’m losing it, but his couch and his bed are both taken up by men indistinguishable from lumps of coal. He microwaves an old burrito. He picks up a pad of paper to busy his hands. He starts drawing complex machinery— a waste when he’s off the job, but it’s a good distraction. He does not think about black smoke, does not think about vines or bats or rains of ash. He does not think about Hawkins. He sits in the warmest patch of sunlight, thinking please, please. But he doesn’t know what the hell he’s pleading for.
This goes on until 9:15, when Dustin lets out a sudden, throaty cough. Will jumps out of his skin. He shifts on the bed, rolls over, sits up, and opens his eyes. Takes a swift look around the room, efficient, like a soldier or something. Like absolutely none of this is weird for him.
“Okay,” he says, stretching. “That’s better. Sorry about the blood.”
“…It’s okay.”
“Cold water. Should come right out.” A totally not unsettling thing for him to say. He squints at Will. “I didn’t talk in my sleep, right?”
“You mostly just drooled?”
Before Will can blink, Dustin gets out of bed. He’s still got that limp from years ago. He hops out of the room without a word. Will doesn’t even bother following. Moments later, he rushes back in and closes the door behind him. “There’s a guy on your couch.”
“Yes,” says Will.
“Why is there a guy on your couch?”
“He’s just my coworker. We were out drinking last night,” he blurts out without really thinking. “He lives across town so he, uh, crashed here.” It’s not a total lie. But he kicks himself anyway. It’s Dustin, c’mon, you don’t need to hide things from him. You really think Dustin’s gonna be a dick about it? He just smiles thinly. It’s DUSTIN!
“Well, we can’t wake him up,” Dustin mutters. “We gotta move.”
“Move?”
“You got a car?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Let’s go, Byers,” he cuts in, turning back towards the door. “We’re losing time.”
“Losing time?”
“Did I stutter? Does my lisp make me incomprehensible? Pack a bag. We’re leaving.”
“Dustin!” Will grabs him by the shoulder and hisses in his face. “What the hell is going on? You can’t just— just expect me to go along with any of this when you won’t explain anything! You crashed your car—”
“It’s important,” Dustin says, quietly, then shuffles his feet. “You know I wouldn’t do this if it wasn’t important.”
“Do I?” But he relents. No way out. His heart seizes up. “Is… is it happening again?”
Dustin looks even more uncomfortable. “Sort of. No. No. Not really. Don’t worry, just…” He wrings his hands. “If it helps, I’m actually here to rescue you.”
It takes a second to process.
“Rescue me,” he echoes hollowly. From what? he’s about to ask. But he worries he knows well enough.
Then there’s a knock at the door.
“Will? Hey, you up?”
He puts his head in his hands. Now? “Dennis. Yeah.” He massages his temples. “One sec.” Without thinking he opens the door. “Dustin. Dennis. Dennis. Dustin.” Please don’t be weird. Either of you.
Dennis’s jaw drops. He’s still wearing his slacks and button-up from the office yesterday. Generously rumpled. Fly unzipped. Fly unzipped? “How… uh… who is this?”
Dustin smiles, genuinely, and has the gall (or the grace) to shake his hand very firmly. “Dustin Henderson. Will’s friend from high school. I was in the area. For some reason. You were asleep. We’re gonna go for a drive in a minute.”
Dennis blinks. Will smiles at him and tries to look like he’s not totally shitting himself. “Cool,” Dennis finally says. “Way cool. Um. That’s fun. Anyway, Will, I’m gonna walk home.”
“Walk home?” Dustin echoes. “I thought you lived across town?”
Shit. Will catches Dennis’ eye and tries to telepathically signal ABORT. “Yeah,” says Dennis, very slowly. “I’m… an Olympic speed-walker. I need to do it. For practice.”
Dead silence.
“Okay,” says Dustin.
“Um, bye,” says Dennis.
“Bye,” says Will.
“Bye,” says Dustin, grinning.
“Thanks for the drinks, Myers,” Dennis finishes, somewhat shyly, and then, finally, blissfully, he leaves, and closes the front door behind him.
It takes a second before Dustin goes, “Wait, Myers?”
Will can’t help it. It’s all so totally absurd. He starts laughing out of nowhere and he can’t stop. He slides down the wall and hides his face in his hands.
“Your fake name is Will Myers? Are you terminally insane?”
He feels insane. He feels completely out of his freaking gourd. “I panicked,” Will gasps, “and then I was stuck with it.”
“You’re not serious.”
“I wish I was kidding.”
“That was your brilliant plan.” Dustin’s smiling over him. “That was how you were gonna evade the government of the United States of America and live off the grid. Will Myers.”
“Ugh, when you put it like that…”
Dustin offers his hand. Will takes it gingerly and gets hauled up. “Well, it didn’t work, Einstein. That’s why I’m rescuing you.”
“What?”
“You honestly think they didn’t keep track of you?”
“The government’s coming after me,” he says, and then it starts to feel real. “You’re serious? The government?”
“Of this very country, yes.”
“How do you even know that?”
“Well,” Dustin says. “No easy way to say this. I joined ‘em.” Will just stares at him. “It’s a three day drive to Concrete, Washington. Two if you don’t give a shit about your own safety. Pack for a week. I promise I’ll explain everything once we’re in the damn car. I will. Meet me out front in five. I need to get my shit out of my trunk.”
Okay, Will thinks as he leaves. Cool.
So he packs. Tries to ignore his heart pounding. Tries to just focus on what’s in front of him, and not think about his life imploding, or about him needing imminent rescue from the fucking government, or about Dennis, who lives two and a half blocks away.
Then he finishes the damn pack of cigarettes.
Dustin’s waiting out by Will’s car when he eventually makes it down. It’s a very ugly red Toyota with no distinguishing features. “Way more than five,” he says.
“If the threat was urgent they’d have sent a SWAT team by now,” Will grumbles, tossing his dinky little suitcase in the trunk. Then he remembers that they actually did send a SWAT team after them once. Great. Awesome. Fun childhood memories. “What actually is the threat?”
“Capture. Testing. Probably invasive testing. Probably other things. Things best avoided.”
“Oh, okay. So the standard, then.”
Will gets in the driver’s seat; Dustin takes shotgun and throws his own duffel bag in the back. “My own car’s standard issue for our department. So they’re tracking it. Probably bugged it too, but I haven’t been able to confirm that. That’s why I crashed it. They’ll register that. I’m meant to be taking you in to our facility at Mount Shasta, discretely, without you realizing. Convince you it’s a road trip or something. So you don’t kick up a fuss.”
“How do I know you’re not doing that right now?”
Dustin scoffs. “Yeah, that’d be smart. Tell the guy who dropped off the face of the earth that you work for the government, he’ll totally trust you then. Can you please start driving?” Will does so. “They’re not tracking your car by GPS, obviously, but they do have the plates, so we’ll probably abandon it somewhere in Oregon before they realize we’re not coming to their welcome party. I think I know where I can get a new one.”
The ridiculousness of it all crashes over him again. He wants to cry or laugh or maybe crash his car, too. “Don’t I have, like, rights? Or something?”
“Good one.”
His grasp on the steering wheel is getting damp with sweat. “Dustin.”
“Will.”
“I’m sorry.” His throat is closing up. Bad timing. They stop at a red light. “It’s just. I’m kind of really scared right now?”
“Right. Yeah,” Dustin says. “Yeah, of course you are. Okay. Look at me.” He does. “Take a deep breath.” Ever the pragmatist. But Will does it, lets it rattle around in his chest, focuses on Dustin’s earnest face. There’s a crooked part of his nose that looks like it got broken at some point in the last four years. “In and out. That’s it. In and out.” He squeezes Will’s arm. “You gotta trust me, Byers. Because there’s no chance in hell I’m gonna let anything bad happen to you, okay?”
“Okay,” Will manages.
“They’re not gonna hurt you.”
“They’re not gonna hurt me.”
“We’re gonna get through this.”
“We’re gonna get through this.”
And the crazy thing is, he actually believes him a little.
Someone honks. Light’s green. Will eases Dustin off and pushes forward. “So. Um. Washington.”
“Got an active case up there. Yeah, so, I’m gonna need you to sit down for this one.”
Case? “I’m already sitting down.”
“So,” Dustin blazes right past him, “you know how we defeated the Mind Flayer and sealed the Gates for good, and the pathway to the Upside Down was lost forever, et cetera, et cetera?”
“Yes.” Not that he remembers that year very clearly. It’s all a blur now. Rubble, like Hawkins.
“Well, no. That’s not what happened at all. That’s what it looked like had happened, to us, at the time.” Yeah, story of our lives. “But actually— and this is gonna sound very weird— the nature of both our worlds shifted pretty utterly. And actually, when the gates disappeared, the planes sort of… pulled themselves closer together. The membrane, the space between, had.. not cracked, not opened, but it got… thin. Really thin. Not enough to breach. But you know how water moves through plants? Transpiration?”
“Vaguely?”
“Sometimes,” Dustin says, “the Upside Down bleeds through to our world. Just a little bit, just enough to be visible. And all over, not just Hawkins. More concentrated on this continent, but we’re still kind of figuring that out. And um, these events, they’re really just harmless phenomena, they’re usually like mirages, weird weather patterns, stuff like that. And they’re always transient, pass right on through. No gates, no nothing. They only last a few days at most. Maybe you’ve noticed an increase in ghost sightings. Aliens. Whatever.”
“I thought that was just paranoia, or something. Satanic panic, Order of the Inverse hysteria kind of stuff.”
“To be fair, they’re not wrong about where it’s coming from. They’re just wrong about literally everything else.”
Will chews his lip. “But it’s harmless?”
“Essentially. No deaths or disappearances that we’re aware of. The mirages themselves can’t really touch this world, or change anything; we just need to keep an eye on them.”
“Okay,” Will says. “Sure. Okay.” Dustin’s too bad a liar to not be telling the truth. It’s too big, too much. Makes too much sense. Of course it wouldn’t all just go away. His head’s already hurting and they’re not even out of Little Saigon. “And how are you involved, exactly?”
He almost looks embarrassed. “We’re called the Energy Anomaly Commission. I know it doesn’t abbreviate into anything cool, I’m sorry. It’s lame. Mostly they just call us the Geek Squad. They recruited me after I dropped out of college— yeah, yeah, I know— to lead a team of investigators.” He throws up his hands. “Not a lot to investigate, honestly. Once we got the patterns figured out, these days we just monitor for relevant calls, roll in, make some measurements and wait it out. Mostly we rope off weird-looking areas, reassure cops that we’ve got it under control, keep kids away, stuff like that.”
“And you joined… the government… because…?”
Dustin grits his teeth. “This is why. This shit is why. So that when they try something sketchy I can be there to stop it. Look, I didn’t join up because I was desperate— well, I was desperate, but that’s not why. Can you honestly think of anyone else, in the entire continental U.S., who’s more qualified to deal with anything to do with the Upside Down? If something goes really wrong again? Do you trust them to do it without at least one of us on the team?”
Fair play, but it still stings. “I guess.”
“Sorry I’m not Engels.” He smiles wanly. “I know— it’s a lot to swallow. And I know it sounds crazy. But just because you want to do everything in your power to forget what happened doesn’t mean I do.” He lets that sit for a second. “So we’ve got a team. People at base digging for cases, tech developing new monitoring gear, front-facing investigators like me who go out and cover it up. Oh, and we’ve got Nancy in Washington, keeping tabs just in case. We keep it small and tight and leak-proof.”
Been a while since he last thought about Nancy. He wants to ask about everyone else, but he’s not sure he’s ready, and to be honest he’s not sure he trusts this new Dustin. “So… you’re like the X-Files.”
“Yeah. Good show. Think they’ll renew it?” Rhetorical question, obviously. “But we’re not FBI.” He ruffles in his pack, retrieves an overstuffed wallet, tosses it into Will’s lap. “Technically we’re listed as a shadow branch of the Environmental Protection Agency.” Will rifles through it at a red light; sheriff’s badge, federal police, Canadian RCMP. Even a card for the Department of Education, god knows when he’d ever need that.
He holds up one of the IDs and it flips open. In the photo Dustin is threatening to smile. “Oh, you’re not FBI?”
“Like I said. Shadow branch.” He grins. “Not illegal to impersonate government employees when you are a government employee.”
Will puts his head in his hands. “I can’t believe you’re a fed.”
“I know…” Dustin cringes where he’s sitting. “I know. It’s bad. You don’t even know how bad. That’s why I have to be there. Making sure they don’t blow up the whole fucking world while we’re still trying to patch it up.” His frown deepens. “And definitely making sure they don’t take any of you guys in.”
“You do realize you basically just kidnapped me?”
“Aw,” Dustin says, “forced into catching up with your old best friend who is genuinely super nice and charming on a fun road trip. Real sad. I’ll call the Hague.”
Refusing to be guilt-tripped, Will merges onto the highway heading north. “Okay. You said they want to take me in. Why?” The sun’s bright, catching at the edges of things. “I’ve been totally normal since Hawkins. No neck thing. No dreams, no weird drawings, no anomalies.”
He’s not sure what he would’ve done if he had felt anything. Who’d he tell? He’d deliberately lost everyone’s numbers, thrown his old radio out. He can’t imagine telling his mom. Not since his brother went on his forever-bender, not since he left. Too much trouble. Too much worry. The only old friend he still sees every so often is Lucas, adequately playing basketball through a TV screen. He caught Max in a crowd shot once, that was nice.
“That, my woe-begotten friend,” Dustin says grandly, “brings us to Concrete, Washington. Little town by the mountains an hour from the Canadian border. That’s where I was three days ago. We get some calls in from the local cops. Reports of a hooded figure wandering the streets at night, disappearing into thin air. But the town’s small, right? They don’t have a homeless population. All the other patterns check out. Unusually hot weather. Weird cloud patterns. Issues with magnetism, objects where they shouldn’t be, a couple people seeing lights in the sky. But we don’t really get figures. No people, no Vecna, nothing. The occasional demodog or three. We usually say they’re wolverines; they dissipate. This was different.”
It feels like they’re twelve again and Dustin’s telling him a ghost story around a campfire. “It’s not some idiot in a cape pulling a prank?”
“Well, that’s the thing. I drive in thinking the same, no partner, just a standard paperwork round. We get false flags all the time. I start interviewing. Half the witnesses are kids. They keep telling me they saw the guy…” He sighs laboriously. “Casting spells. Lightning out of his hands or whatever the fuck. And all of them talk about the same distinctive hat he was wearing.”
Will squints. “Let me guess, it’s a cone.”
“With stars on it.”
“You’re losing me.” It’s starting to feel more plausible that this is some kind of bizarre elaborate bit Dustin is pulling. But maybe it’s the lack of sleep.
“Yeah, how do you think I felt?” Dustin kicks his good leg up on the dash. “Kid in a wizard costume. They were totally fucking with me. Except…”
“You’re really dragging this out, huh?”
“This is gonna sound really crazy,” he says, voice low. Dustin’s serious-voice is pretty rare. “But it couldn’t have been a prank. Our monitors were through the roof. We’re a little more advanced than compasses and walkie-talkies these days. Some serious shit was going on. So we put everyone on curfew as a precaution and I go out late at night. And I see it. The spirit. Plain as goddamn day, Byers. Full on wizard, sparks coming out of his hands. And…” He swallows. “Dammit, he had your face, Will.”
Will pulls the car over.
He is not going to have a stupid panic attack about a stupid wizard. Not on the road. “Will the Wise.” He laughs out loud. “You saw a mirage of Will the Wise.”
“Well.” Dustin fidgets. “No. Not exactly a mirage.” He lets that sink in. “Because when he saw me, he attacked me.” He pulls up his shirt sleeve to show white scar tissue snaking across his shoulder. His voice lowers to a mumble. “Lightning Bolt, if I had to guess. Maybe Eldritch Blast.”
“Shit.” Will brushes his fingers over the scar. “You’re not lying.”
“Which is why,” Dustin explains, shrugging him off, “you’re involved. Because I fucked up. I put all that in my initial report and then my supervisors thought it would be best to bring you in. Hive mind crap. To see if what affects you affects the mirage. Or if this was another gate or something. We’ve kicked around some theories… Look, we’re experts, but fundamentally we don’t know all that much about whatever’s left of the Upside Down. And this throws a pretty supersized wrench in whatever we thought we knew before. The wizard’s still there. It should be gone by now, but it’s obviously a special case. Hasn’t attacked anyone else yet— maybe it recognized me, I don’t know. I’ve got contacts up there who’ll let me know if anything changes. But I thought my best bet, if you are connected to all this, was to get you up there sans governmental intervention and handle it together. Like the old days.”
“The old days.”
“If we get there first and solve the case for them, the whole thing is nixed, they don’t need you, you get to go home and get drinks with Dennis and change your name to Bill Fryers.”
He says it like it’s so simple. But then again he’s always been like that.
Will abruptly gets out of the front seat and into the back. He curls up across the seats. “You drive, Mr. Infodump. I need sleep or I’m gonna pass out. Wake me up in four hours. ”
He dreams of a road that goes on forever, a black line in an endless sprawl of white. When he wakes up, California is already halfway behind them.
“Afternoon, sleepyhead,” Dustin calls out from the driver’s seat. The radio’s playing softly, just mumbling.
The early fall light is filtering in, warm like Sunkist. They’re crowded in by green pine and dusty mountains. “Where are we?”
“Detour. Just switched routes right around Redding. The I-5 takes us too close to the lab at Shasta, so we’re heading around to the coast to go north from there. Takes longer, but less risk.”
Whatever works for him. “You know your stuff.”
“I’ve spent the past three years driving across the country.” Dustin grimaces in the mirror. “Look in my duffel? There’s a plastic bag in there. Pick some music, I can’t listen to baseball talk anymore or I’ll cause another car crash.”
Will rifles past the boxer shorts (gross, Dustin) and tangles of wires to find the bag, stuffed with dozens upon dozens of assorted CDs. Dustin’s music taste is inscrutable. Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Meat Loaf. Hip-hop, experimental ska, Bee Gees. Def Leppard, Salt-N-Pepa. The Mamas & the Papas, The Essential Simon & Garfunkel, Simon and Garfunkel separately. A handful of hand-burned playlists. Elton John. Counting Crows. Sting. “Sting?”
“Don’t patronize me, Byers.”
“You do realize you listen to dad rock, right?”
“Shut up.”
Will crawls carefully forward into the passenger seat. He opens the glovebox. His own music collection isn’t much more consistent. R.E.M., Nirvana, The Cure. The Smashing Pumpkins. New Order. Mariah Carey (from a half-ironic gay friend), Tori Amos (from a very serious lesbian), R.E.M. again (from Dennis, late to every trend). Edie Brickell & the Bohemians if he’s feeling light. The Replacements if he’s feeling edgy. But he reaches back and grabs Dustin’s Springsteen album, if only because he thinks that’ll make him happy.
“No Clash?” Dustin asks, as the opening chords kick in. Will flinches. “Got tired of it?”
“Something like that. Not in high school anymore.”
Dustin’s expression shifts into something unreadable. “I’m the same,” he says, after a pause. “No metal.”
Will looks up at him, surprised, then he thinks he understands. “Right.”
They’re quiet for a while after that, just listening to the music play, watching the hills open up into wide plains, then sparse forests, following the winding of the road. They stop briefly at a gas station for snacks and directions, then it’s back on the freeway. They pass a few billboards. THE END IS HERE. ARE YOUR KIDS SAFE?
Eventually Dustin whistles, faux casual. “So. Last five years. How’ve you been?”
“Been?” He tries to sit up straighter. Tries to cobble something together. “I don’t know. Fine, I guess.” Great start.
“Fine enough to go on the lam.”
“It’s not weird to go live on your own.”
“It is weird to not tell anybody about it.” Dustin softens. “To be fair, I don’t talk to the others so much either. Like, basically not at all.”
That actually is surprising. Dustin’s the pinky-promise-to-call-every-day-for-the-rest-of-our-lives kind of guy. “Huh.”
“Lucas and Max I get calls from… maybe once a year?” he explains. “But all of us are always on the road. Steve I catch up with when I can, Nancy I work with, we only talk on conference calls. Robin went to Canada, not sure what she’s up to.” He conspicuously doesn’t mention Jonathan. “And, uh. El and Mike are in Europe, so.”
Will stiffens. “Europe.”
“Crap,” Dustin mutters. “I guess you don’t know.”
“Know what? What’s in Europe?”
He shifts in his seat. “Right around the time I first got hired, must’ve been less than a year after you bounced, there was a turnover in leadership. Started calling El a sentient weapon, having risk assessment meetings about her, you know the drill. It was testy before, but I knew it’d keep building. I warned ‘em and… well, they got the hell out of dodge.” Dustin’s voice is remarkably flat. “They don’t risk contact.”
Will feels like he’s sinking into his chair. “All this happened after I left? Why didn’t…” Why didn’t my mom say anything? About El? Just another lost kid; add her to the pile. Maybe Joyce gave up trying to stop it. Maybe she thought telling him would just make everything worse— or would make it real, somehow. Europe. He imagines blustery beaches, the coast of Spain, maybe. Rural France. Maybe it’s nice. Like San Francisco.
“You know,” says Dustin, “Mike said you probably had the right idea, leaving the way you did. But he was going a little crazy by the end there. El was just sad she couldn’t say goodbye to everyone.” To you, were the unspoken words. “But they’re safe, is the important thing. I think they’re safe. I keep my radio on in case of emergency, but it never rings, so… I just assume.”
He sounds miserable. There are no happy endings. He almost says as much, but thinks better of it, and anyway Dustin probably knows that full well. Will doesn’t have the heart to tell him about his own radio, broken to bits in some junkyard somewhere.
“It actually got even worse with the new administration,” he continues. “Apparently when they briefed Buchanan on all this he freaked out, wanted no part of it. You know he’s a member of the Order of the Inverse, right? Half the senators in Washington are, or else they’re funded by ‘em. It’s actually good I got the others out before then. They want to go scorched earth on everything connected to the Upside Down, anybody with… a history, anybody that could be exploited by a foreign power… It was probably just a matter of time, with you. I don’t know if that helps.”
“It doesn’t.”
“I’m actually kind of fucked, too,” Dustin admits, his voice turning hoarse. “Dunno what they’d do if I tried to quit. I know too much, and they’ve got too much dirt on me now to let me just leave. If you haven’t noticed, I’ve kinda got a mouth on me. I’m not disposable yet, but…”
IT HAPPENED IN HAWKINS, a billboard says in blocky black letters. There’s a grainy picture of that Munson kid beside the text. IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU. Below, in smaller letters: WILL YOU COME INTO THE LIGHT? Dustin’s fingers tighten on the steering wheel.
It’s only then that Will realizes that what Dustin did wasn’t a betrayal. It was a sacrifice. A type of sacrifice. He wants to… he’s not sure what he wants to do. Stop the car? Tell him he’s sorry? That he forgives him? “You shouldn’t have to do this,” he manages. “You basically sold your whole life to protect us.”
Dustin keeps his eyes trained on the road. “Hey, I’m protecting the world, buddy. Don’t erase my philanthropy. You just happen to be a part of that world.”
His heart aches. “Still.”
“It was my choice. Don’t worry about me.”
“You could’ve done anything else.” He feels slightly sick. “Whatever you wanted. You could’ve had a life.”
Dustin smiles weakly. “Who says this isn’t a life?”
There’s nothing to say to that that won’t make it worse. They drive on.
“I’m an assistant product designer,” Will tells him, finally, just to break the silence and change the subject and stop thinking about France. “Drafting machinery at a firm. It’s really boring and the pay sucks. I have friends, though. And it’s nice. The calm. I don’t think… at the start… I was going to leave forever. I was just scared.” He swallows thickly. “And I thought if I just started over, gave myself as normal of a life as possible, I’d have less to be scared of.” He lifts his head. “And you know, I was kinda right.”
In the distance, they see the blue glimmer of the coast. “And I'm just calling one last time,” Springsteen mumbles. “Not to change your mind, but just to say I miss you, baby… Good luck, goodbye…”
“Normal,” Dustin repeats. “I mean, none of us were ever normal.”
Oh yeah? Because you were playing D&D once a week? It’s an unfair thought, but one he likes to indulge in to feel better about himself. “No. This was different. It was… something else.” The irony of how many conversations like this he’s had in cars fleeing the feds isn’t lost on him. “I mean, I felt like there was something really wrong with me, all the time. And then to have all that shit on top of it, the powers and the monsters and everything…” He holds his voice steady, somehow. “Everything.”
“You had to get away.” Dustin looks askance. He starts jiggling his leg. “No, I get it. I get it.”
“I had to start thinking about saving myself,” Will says carefully, “and not about saving the world.” And it’s not something he’s even been able to tell anyone, and maybe it’s not even something he’s been able to articulate to himself, and maybe Dustin needs to hear it a little too.
“That’s a nice sentiment,” Dustin says flatly.
“You think I’m naive.”
“No,” he mutters, “no, I just… I couldn’t do what you did. I just couldn’t. It was brave.”
Will’s voice rises. “Brave, but not good, is that what you’re saying?”
“That’s not what I’m saying. I hope you know that’s not what I’m saying.”
He’s angry but he doesn’t really know why. He should have that right, at least. It’s Dustin’s fault he’s in this mess in the first place, he’s the one that named him in the report, he should’ve known better, he should be grateful Will hasn’t brought that up yet. It’s not really a rescue if you’re the one putting people in danger. But he looks at Dustin, who’s hunched over at the wheel, every muscle tensed, brows furrowed morosely, and he can’t say that, can hardly bear to think it.
“I’m not like you at all,” he says. And shivers. “And you don’t get it. You just don’t.” But the words come out weak, and feel wrong in his mouth.
“I know,” says Dustin wearily. “We both did what we had to do.”
The sun dips behind the hills behind them. The world is thrown into swathes of deep blue, like the colour of a new bruise. Will doesn’t want to notice that. Not now, not here. He sighs. “Sorry. Sorry. I’m just drained and freaked out. I didn’t mean to be a bitch to you, that wasn’t fair.”
Dustin gives him a strange look. “Why would you need to apologize?”
“Now I'm ready to grow young again… and hear your sister's voice calling us home, across the open yards…”
Will shakes his head and stares out the window.
They arrive in Crescent City, flat up against the edge of the coast. It’s not much of a city. A little harbour town flattened by sea spray, ramshackle, nestled between temperate rainforest and distant lighthouses dotting the Pacific. Dustin pulls them in to a whitewashed motel on the edge of town and checks them in. Cash only, no traces.
“Float like a butterfly,” he explains in a stage-whisper.
“That’s not… that’s not what that means.”
The room’s small, two little beds, an anchor hanging on the wall beside an abstract painting. Quiet, but they can hear the sea even from here. Dustin’s studying a big foldout map he had stashed in his duffel and tossing a hacky sack in his other hand idly. Will’s washing his face in the bathroom with bar soap, wishing he was home.
Suddenly he hears a thud. He pokes his head out. The hacky sack’s on the ground and the map is fluttering out of reach. Dustin has his head buried in his hands.
“I am so stupid,” he groans.
“What?”
Dustin leans back to lie across his bed. “Your friend didn’t live across town.”
Will freezes in place. “Um.”
“I mean I knew he was lying. Obviously. Didn’t really have time to piece it all together…” He pauses (for drama, Will assumes), then gasps giddily. “You were sleeping with him.”
It’s just Dustin, he tells himself again. You were gonna have to tell him sometime. But that’s not really true. He walks out of the bathroom and puts his hands on his hips, staring expectantly. “What.”
“Will!”
“What.”
Look— it’s not that he likes hiding. He’d rather he didn’t have to. He just hates making a fuss. Having to talk about it. More comfortable to never say, to live in implications, to dance around the subject. Safe and free at once. No emotional parked-car conversations, no high school melodrama, no fucking monologues. No need to expend the energy. His friends have been trying to beat the instinct out of him, but it’s different in San Francisco. You can take the boy out of Indiana, but…
“I mean,” Dustin says, sitting up, “him, though. With the face, like…” He makes a gesture. “Him, really? Dennis!”
Will wants to hit him. For some reason all he can think to say is, “I didn’t really sleep with him.”
“Hence the couch. God bless Dennis.”
“And you’re making this into one of your little investigations… why, exactly?”
Dustin looks mortified. “I got over-excited. I’m so sorry.”
“Well, now you know,” Will monotones. “The whole big secret.”
He looks like he’s about to say something, then closes his mouth. A moment later: “I mean I suspected.”
“You don’t have to say that.”
“Should I not have?”
“I’d prefer you didn’t.”
“Sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize.”
Dustin gives him a pointed look.
The sea crashes on. They get ready for bed in stilted, carefully moderated silence, painfully aware of the size of the room, the loudness and closeness of each other’s breathing. Dustin kicks back and sprawls across his bed. His shirt rides up above his stomach, showing a little flab. Will catches himself looking, and feels strange about that for a second, and then forgets to. Who cares? It’s just Dustin.
“Thought the feds would have you on a workout regime, Scully,” he says out of the corner of his mouth.
Dustin scoffs. “All I do is drive around and point at things and occasionally solve logistical problems. What part of that requires abs?” He wrinkles his nose. “Scully? You’re Scully. I’m Mulder.”
“Yeah, but you’re always, like, the skeptic who does all the equations and looks for actual evidence and wants everything to be rational all the time. And I’m, like, the idealist, haunted by my past supernatural experiences.”
A snort. “Not anymore, dipshit. I don’t know if you want to admit this but you are no longer twelve years old. And I’m affable. Like Mulder. Meaning no offence, Byers— but now that you’re an adult, you’re kind of a bitch.”
“Scully is not a bitch, you misogynist.”
“You’re the one who didn’t want to be Scully!”
“I never said that! It’s Gillian Anderson, who wouldn’t want to be Scully!”
“So you admit that you’re definitely Scully and I’m definitely Mulder.”
“This is totally braindead. You’re the smart, distanced one and I’m the more emotional, less hyper-competent one.”
“Okay, that is an incredible misread of those characters. Mulder is smart! Scully is deeply emotional!” A pause. “How am I distant?”
Will flops onto his back. The bed creaks, but it’s not uncomfortable. “Not distant. I just mean… I don’t know.”
“What, Byers?” He actually looks kind of hurt.
“I just mean sometimes I can’t get a read on you.” But that can’t be it, either. Dustin’s an open book. “I guess it just feels like your brain works differently than mine. You’re so… direct about everything.”
“Huh,” Dustin says. “Huh.”
“It’s not a bad thing. It’s just been…”
“A really long time.”
“And we’re not—”
“Kids anymore. Yeah, you said.” A very long pause. Will almost thinks Dustin’s going to get mad, or introspective, or turn the conversation into something it’s not. But all he says is, “Scully’s like a cat. Mulder’s like a dog. I’m obviously more of a dog than you are.”
Will rubs his temples. “Fine. Jesus. You’re Mulder.”
“Thank you.”
He reaches over to the wall and turns off the light. He squeezes his eyes shut, tries to pass out. The Pacific rolls in and out glacially. Cicadas take their last breaths outside. He concentrates on Dustin’s inhales and exhales. The shuffle of his body beneath the sheets. So neither of them can sleep, then. They listen to each other fidget for a while. It’s dark and it’s muggy and Will thinks for a time about how in a different world, one where his old friend from middle school didn’t still care about him so damn much, he’d probably be in the back of a van right now, blindfolded, getting plugged into wires by faceless men in black tactical gear.
It doesn’t make it any easier.
“I don’t trust you,” he murmurs finally, to the ceiling, to Dustin, to the dark. “But I do. Explain that.”
“Schrodinger’s Cat. It’s this thing where—”
“I minored in Pure Math. I know what Schrodinger’s Cat is.”
There’s a long pause. “For the record, I don’t trust you either.” Inhale, exhale. “And I trust you too.”
It’s quiet for a while. Dustin appears to fall asleep. Will’s still jittery. He ruffles in his jacket pocket for a cigarette and grabs two, then gets up on light feet and squeaks his way out of the door and into the night. It’s cool out here, and the air tastes like salt. He leans against the motel’s one vending machine and takes a few drags.
It’s not like he has options. He could get in his car and take off running, right now, but then what? Some traffic cop somewhere would take down his plates and he’d get in a high speed chase for no reason and get a charge for resisting arrest. Even if he did manage to score a different car, where would he go? His card purchases and withdrawals are probably tracked, and whatever cash he has now won’t last. If he went to his mom, she’d get pulled into all this (again). Hopper at least might be able to scrounge up a hiding place somewhere, but then Will would be a fugitive, and for what? Fear of needles? Might just be better to submit to all the tests. Maybe it’d be fine, and they wouldn’t find anything, and they’d let him go. It’s a new world, anything’s possible. Maybe not, though, a tiny part of him argues. You know what they did to El. And to you. Then there’s what Dustin said about the new administration. Scorched earth. Are you really going to take that risk?
But what does Dustin expect? Even if they did pull a Scooby Doo and sleuth out their little wizard problem, he’d still have flagrantly disobeyed his own direct orders. Wouldn’t that get him in deep shit? Best case scenario, they still take Will in at the end of this, and they blacklist Dustin, with bonus arrests for treason or espionage or divulging top secret information or whatever the fuck. But at least we’ll have the reassurance that the formless mirage of a wizard won’t be terrorizing the streets of a small town no one’s ever heard of. And the rekindling of a beautiful friendship, or whatever.
He crushes the cigarette butts under his shoe, and turns to go back inside.
But he doesn’t quite make it. Out of nowhere, a wave of nausea sends him to his knees. He crushes his eyes closes and clutches his stomach. His head swims. For a second he panics, but he doesn’t feel any prickling across his back, nothing with his neck, no eyes on him. As soon as it arrives, the feeling clears away, so fast he wonders if he’d imagined it.
Unsteady, he gets back to his feet. Looks wildly around. He clenches his fist, slowly. Not really thinking about it. And over in the corner, the light of the vending machine dims, and keeps dimming, and then shuts off, and Will feels cold, very cold, very much like he wishes he was home, and not here at all.
Here, alone, in the new dark.
He unclenches his hand. Holds it out. The machine starts humming and powers back on. As he stretches his fingers out, the light glows, and gets brighter, and brighter, and then so bright that he has to look away, and then it stops and goes back to normal. Like something out of a dream.
He whirls around and stumbles back into the mildewed motel room and crashes into bed and does not think about it, and does not freak out, and does not feel the lightning crackling through his veins, here, in this shadowy town by the sea, where he expects that things like this must happen all the time.
And when Dustin rolls over and mumbles, half-asleep, “You good?”, Will does not respond, just keeps his hands splayed flat and tries to regulate his breathing. Inhale, exhale. Simple. Easy. Normal. Like it never happened.
And when he dreams, he dreams of a dark street framed by purpling mountains, of skies bigger than any sky should be, of ruins and rubble, and figures drawing breath, deep down beneath the stone.