Archive of Our Own ^beta

but at night, you live it all again.

Will Byers’ descent into madness starts like this.

“And he’s not going to stop. Ever. Not until he’s taken everything. And everyone.”

It starts slow at first. Subtle. Easily brushed off, especially when the world is literally collapsing around them. Unnoticed by most people, amidst the chaos of nearly the entire town of Hawkins fleeing and the storm from the Upside Down spreading and the military descending upon their hometown like a bunch of scavengers. 

But Mike Wheeler is not “most people.” Mike has never been “most people”—not when it comes to Will Byers at least.

Mike notices.

Mike sees what the others don’t see.

And what he sees, he does not like.

It begins not long after their little California gang makes it back to Hawkins. The Byers and Argyle move into Mike’s house, and God. Mike’s never been claustrophobic before, but he thinks he might be after this whole ordeal. The military forces everyone who is still in Hawkins to go under lockdown and only come out for the necessities—groceries, medical emergencies, etc. 

It’s suffocating to be this close to seven other people. 

But it’s never suffocating to be around Will, the eighth person who now resides in the Wheeler household. No, Will is someone who Mike always wants to be around—through the good, the bad, and the ugly. The past several months of not being around his best friend ached more than Mike is willing to admit, and somehow, despite the world falling apart at the seams, being around Will again makes everything feel okay.

But as okay as Will makes Mike feel, it becomes very clear very quickly that Will himself is not okay.

Though it looks bigger on the outside, there’s not that much room in Mike’s house. Joyce ends up taking the only guest bedroom, and Jonathan and Argyle claim the basement, alternating between sleeping on the couch and in the sleeping bag. That leaves Will with Mike as usual, tucked away in the old yellow sleeping bag and Nana’s knitted green blanket that have been designated as Will’s for years now. It feels familiar and feels right, and something in Mike’s traitorous heart flutters with excitement every time he sees Will dressed in his pajamas and climbing into the old sleeping bag from their childhood.

But nothing good ever lasts forever, and barely a week has passed by since the lockdown when Mike is startled awake by the sound of Will’s cries.

This, too, is familiar. It hasn’t been that long since 1983 and 1984 when the two of them spent practically every weekend together. Mike remembers the long nights of sitting close to his best friend and of promising that things will be okay; you’ll be okay; I swear, Will; friends don’t lie even though Mike had no business promising those things. He remembers the terrified gasps and panicked cries; he remembers Will trembling and clutching onto Mike’s shirt as if to remind himself that he’s no longer there .

It hasn’t been that long. 

So, Mike knows exactly what to do when Will’s whimpers echo through the quiet of Mike’s bedroom. He crawls out of his own bed and sits down next to his best friend, and as carefully as he can, he gently shakes Will. 

“Will,” Mike says quietly but firmly. “Will. Wake up. Hey, come on, Will… You’re okay; you’re okay. It’s just a nightmare.”

It takes a few tries to wake his distressed best friend, but that’s nothing new either. Will’s nightmares have always had a vicelike grip on him, and it’s been well over a year since Mike has last pulled him out of one of these. It’s not surprising that Will doesn’t respond and wake up immediately.

Eventually, Will gasps, his eyes going wide as he sits up. There’s a look of complete terror on his face, and he’s practically hyperventilating as he looks around the room. 

His eyes finally land on Mike, and… for a moment, they’re unrecognizing. Confused. Afraid. 

Then just like that, recognition fills Will’s eyes, and he blinks rapidly, still trying to catch his breath. “M-Mike?”

“Hey,” Mike says softly. He reaches out, gently taking Will’s trembling hands with his own. “It’s me… You’re okay. Just breathe… breathe, Will. It was a nightmare. It was just a nightmare. You’re okay.”

It’s dark in Mike’s room, and their only source of light is a silly old night light Dustin once got him as a kid. But even in the darkness of the room, Will’s terror is so clear, and he blinks again, tears welling in his eyes.

“It… it felt so real,” Will whispers, his voice cracking. “I-I… I-it felt so real, Mike.”

He sounds on the verge of a breakdown, so Mike just scoots closer, pulling his best friend into his arms. Though things have been so different between them for the last several months—hell, for over a year now—Will falls easily into the embrace. It’s just like every nightmare and every panic attack that Mike has talked Will down from. It’s like they both know what to do.

“It’s not,” Mike promises, hugging Will closer and gently rubbing his back. Will makes a tiny sort of whimper—quiet and strained—and something inside Mike’s heart shatters. “I promise; it’s not real. You’re okay. You’re right here with me, and I’m not going anywhere. I’ve got you, okay? I’ve got you.”

Will takes a shuddered breath, nestling further into Mike’s arms. He’s still trembling, and he doesn’t say anything. Mike isn’t sure whether that’s a good thing—an indication that Will has accepted what Mike is saying as comfort and truth—or a bad thing—an indication that Will absolutely does not believe what Mike is saying.

With everything that’s going on, Mike supposes it really could go either way.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he repeats softly. “No matter what happens; I’m here. And you’re going to be okay, Will… I promise. You’ll be okay.”

(Maybe if he says it enough, both Will and Mike will begin to believe it.)

when i was a child, i heard voices.

There’s a part of Will that thinks he might be going crazy (again).

The nightmares have returned (not that they ever really left), but that doesn’t come as much of a surprise to Will. He’s had nightmares long before the Upside Down, though they were far less frequent when he was younger. Then, after the whole mess of his kidnapping and imprisonment in the Upside Down, the nightmares were never-ending. His possession didn’t help at all, and neither did the Mind Flayer’s return the following summer.

Being out of Hawkins helped a little bit. The nightmares became a little less frequent—happening only a couple nights out of the week instead of being a nightly reoccurrence. It felt like a step in the right direction and a bit like the light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe, just maybe, after three years of being so fucked up and of never getting a good night’s sleep, Will could finally be normal again.

Ha.

If only.

No, the nightmares come back with a wretched vengeance when Will moves back to Hawkins, and it’s no surprise at all. Luckily, Will has gotten pretty damn good at hiding his problems from everyone. Jonathan has been stoned out of his mind for the last six months, and before that, he was too busy spending time with Nancy to really notice Will’s struggles. Likewise, their mom is dealing with her own problems—first the grief of losing Bob, then the grief of losing Hopper—to truly focus on Will’s problems.

Their distractions make it easier for Will to fly under the radar. To brush off the waking visions that send him to the Upside Down as his head being in the clouds. To act like he is getting a good night’s sleep. To pretend like things are alright until they eventually do become alright again. 

Will has always been good at hiding. It’s kept him alive this long, and he’ll damn well keep doing what he needs to, to survive.

But he’s never been able to hide from Mike Wheeler.

It takes Mike all of one week to catch on to Will’s nightmares, and after that, he always seems to be attuned to Will’s feelings. It’s just like the year before everything began to change between the two of them. It’s familiar. Mike is familiar. He’s like the Mike that Will used to know—the one person who could pull Will out of the terror of the Upside Down and the one person who always managed to calm Will down from his nightmares and the one person who, in spite of seeing all of Will’s ugliness and all of his fears, never made Will feel different or unlike himself.

Mike is like that Mike again, so really, Will should have known that Mike would catch on to the nightmares eventually. And it’s fine. If anyone has to know that Will is starting to go crazy (again), he supposes Mike is the best person.

But the nightmares aren’t the things causing Will to go crazy.

No. 

It’s so much more than that.

Once upon a time, when the two of them were younger, Will had once tried to explain to Mike what… what it felt like to be losing his mind. He’d compared it to being stuck , like how when a View-Master gets caught between two slides. He’s been stuck—God, Will has been stuck for the last three fucking years, caught somewhere in this in between where he’s here but at the same time he’s not.

He’s here, in the real world with his family and his friends. 

But sometimes, he’s not.

Sometimes, Will is back there. One minute, he’s sitting in the basement, talking to Jonathan and Argyle, and then the next minute, Will is there—in the cold, damp, eerie darkness of the Upside Down. 

He’d gotten better at snapping himself out of the visions because of pure necessity. After El entered their lives again and she became Mike’s main priority, Will had to find a way to ground himself, to get himself out of there and out of his own damn head before he actually drove himself crazy. 

Things were getting better. They weren’t great, and sometimes, he’d end up stuck in the Upside Down, huddled in his bedroom and absolutely terrified. But they were getting better.

What’s that saying though? One step forward and two steps back?

Well, for Will, it’s more like one step forward and ten steps back.

The visions return, and whereas before, they happened maybe once a week, now they happen on almost a daily basis. They’re becoming more and more frequent and lasting so much longer than they normally do. No matter how hard Will tries, he can’t snap himself out of the visions. He’s stuck, just like he was as a little, terrified kid, except now it’s so, so much worse. 

He can’t focus anymore. He’s here, but he’s not. He’s there, but he’s not. He constantly feels like he’s being pulled in two different directions in the worst game of tug-of-war, and Will just wants to cry because he actually feels like he’s beginning to lose his mind from the nightmares and the visions and—

And the voices.

Because if constant nightmares aren’t enough and if visions of being trapped again in a dimension that’s basically hell isn’t enough, there are voices now too.

Now this? This is different. 

The first time it happens, Will thinks it’s a fluke. He’s sitting at the kitchen table, listening absently as Mike and Nancy bicker about something that doesn’t really matter, and he hears them.

“Will,” a little voice whispers. Every single hair on the back of Will’s neck stands up, and he looks around, trying to find the source of the voice and trying to listen for it again.

The voice says nothing more in that moment. Will brushes it off as a fluke—the unfortunate result of how little sleep he’s gotten over the past several days.

But then it happens again.

And again.

And again.

That voice—small and childlike—calls out for him, and other voices join him. Most of them sound like children, and their voices all meld together into one as they whisper Will’s name over and over again. The voices sound like they’re coming everywhere —like Will is completely surrounded by these mysterious children.

“Come home, come home, come home,” they whisper almost constantly now. Some days, their voices never shut up and are always there in the back of Will’s mind, haunting him. 

“Will. Come home. Come home. Will. Will. Come home.”

They’re almost impossible to ignore. And between the nightmares, the visions, and the voices, Will thinks he might actually be going crazy.

Luckily, no one really notices. Will has always been quiet, and there’s a hell of a lot more going on besides his own problems. Mike notices the nightmares, but he doesn’t seem to pick up on the rest of the mess. 

Good. It’s better this way.

And Will has gotten better at hiding and at solving his problems by himself. Eventually, he’ll figure out how to get all of these things under control again. He’ll adapt, the way he always does. And yeah, maybe it’ll take a while, but… but it’ll be fine. Eventually.

(Maybe.)

i recall it all forever, how it found you where you lay.

Will isn’t okay.

That much becomes so, so clear to Mike as lockdown continues well into the summer. The days drag on and on and on, and everyone holds their breath, anticipating whatever horror will come crawling up out of the gates downtown. For the longest time, all of them just wait . All they can do is wait and try to prepare as best as they can for the inevitable fight. 

Ordinarily, the waiting would be the worst part. Mike’s never been a patient person; everybody knows this. Being forced to sit and do nothing feels like the very definition of Mike’s worst nightmare, except this time, it isn’t. It just isn’t.

Because watching Will slowly pull away and slowly, slowly, slowly break down? That actually is Mike’s worst nightmare.

Will isn’t okay. Yet somehow, he’s managed to convince everyone that he is.

Maybe it’s just because Mike and Will share the same room now. Will has graduated to an air mattress that Mike’s mom had managed to snag from the grocery store about an hour away, but it doesn’t really matter. Will doesn’t ever really sleep. He gets maybe two or three hours of sleep a night, and even then, Mike knows the sleep is plagued by nightmares.

(Consequently, Mike also doesn’t get much sleep at night. How can he when he’s absolutely terrified for Will? No, if Will isn’t okay and if he needs Mike, then sleep can wait. Naps have become a more frequent staple in Mike’s life, and so has a rather fucked up sleep schedule.)

It’s a bit frustrating. Will is a bit frustrating. Because he smiles and laughs behind the exhaustion and behind the fear, and he promises his mom and his brother that things are fine, even though Mike knows they aren’t. He gets the feeling that Joyce and Jonathan know things aren’t fine either and that they’re keeping a closer eye out on Will than he realizes. Good. Mike can’t be the only one trying to make sure Will stays grounded.

Because it’s not just the nightmares anymore—or at least, that’s what Mike suspects. No, there’s… there’s something else that’s bothering Will. 

He’s never… fully there anymore. It’s strange. For as long as the two of them have been friends, Will has always been quiet, but the only time he’s ever like this—distant and constantly distracted and just not fully there—is when something with the Upside Down is affecting him. 

Something’s wrong. Something is very, very wrong with Will, and he’s not telling any of them about it. In true Will Byers fashion, he’s chosen to entirely shut down and do his best to make himself numb to everything that’s happening to him.

(Once upon a time, Mike was the one person that Will would go to with all of these things. Even when Will would try his best to shut down, he always ended up confiding in Mike eventually, and the two of them would work it out together.

But that was a long time ago, and Will doesn’t really need Mike in that way anymore.

Too bad for him… but Mike is a stubborn bastard—too nosy and too worried for his own good. He’ll be damned if he lets Will try to handle whatever is happening on his own.)

So, on one of the hottest days of the year—a whopping 70 degrees in the middle of fucking July, thanks to the icy coldness from the Upside Down—Mike manages to catch Will alone in their shared bedroom.

“Hey, Will,” Mike says, shutting the door behind him.

Though Mike’s voice is fairly soft, Will practically jumps out of his seat, before turning to Mike with wide eyes. There’s a frenzied and distant sort of look on his face, and he’s breathing heavily, as if he’s just run a marathon or something. He looks downright terrified and… and downright terrifying to Mike.

There are bags under Will’s eyes, like he hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in months. (He hasn’t.) He’s trembling slightly and twitching, and his eyes dart back and forth, as if there’s something—or someone —else here in the room with them. (That’s a terrifying possibility, considering the fact that Vecna slash Henry slash One is still out there somewhere.) His face is pale and gaunt, and fuck , Mike has let this go on for too long. 

Will needs help. Will isn’t okay.

“Will,” Mike repeats, and he holds out his hands placatingly, taking a step towards his best friend. “Hey… it’s just me. It’s Mike. Are you… are you okay?”

Will flinches again, and he looks around the room for several long, painful moments before his gaze finally lands on Mike. There’s a glassy look in his eyes. “I-I-I don’t… I-I don’t,” he stammers, shaking his head weakly. “I…”

“Okay.” Mike takes a cautious step towards him, wincing when Will flinches again. “It’s just me. You’re okay; I promise. You’re okay. You… are here. In my bedroom, in Hawkins. Not there. You’re right here with me, and I’m right here with you, Will. Just like I promised, remember?”

Once again, Will just shakes his head, and he covers his ears, biting back a sob. “S-shut up,” he whimpers. “Just shut up, shut up, shut up!”

Will’s gaze is no longer on Mike. Instead, he’s looking just past Mike, as if there’s somebody else in the room with him.

A chill runs down Mike’s spine, and hesitantly, he looks behind him. “Will,” he asks, very quietly, “is… is there… is there someone else in the room with us?”

Silence settles over the two of them for several long, uncomfortable moments. The only sounds that Mike can hear are the erratic, shaky sound of Will’s breathing and the nervous thump thump thump of his own heartbeat.

“T-they’re everywhere,” Will finally says, his voice breaking. He covers his ears again and shuts his eyes tightly. “They-they won’t leave; they won’t leave me alone, Mike. M-make it stop; God, please make it stop, make it stop, make it stop, please, please, please—”

Fuck.

Everything inside of Mike immediately goes into straight panic mode. Fuck, fuck, fuck, this is bad, and he has no idea what Will is talking about or who they are… But this has the fucking Upside Down written all over it, which means the Upside Down has somehow found Will again , and fuck, fuck, Mike should have reached out, should have noticed sooner that something was wrong with Will, should have done more to help—

Will lets out a horrible little noise—something low and pained and terrified—and he sinks to the floor, his eyes filling with tears. He’s still mumbling to himself and to Mike, asking Mike to make it stop, make it stop, make it stop, and God fucking damn it, Mike feels completely sick to his stomach. 

He can’t do this on his own. No matter how badly Will doesn’t want all of them to get involved or how badly he wants to hide these things, Will needs help, and Mike… Mike isn’t enough. Mike can’t help him on his own.

“Jonathan!” Mike shouts, yanking his bedroom door open and yelling at the top of his lungs. “Joyce! Help!”

Will flinches sharply at the cry for help, and he looks up at Mike, his eyes wide and full of tears. “No, no,” he stammers. “N-no, Mike, no—”

“I’m sorry,” Mike whispers, kneeling down next to his best friend. As carefully as he can, he pulls Will close, trying to fight his own feelings of terror and dread. “You… you’re not okay, and… and you need help, Will… It’s going to be okay though. I promise we’ll help you. I promise we’ll fix this.”

Not a moment later, both Jonathan and Joyce burst into the room, wearing equally terrified looks, and Will just chokes back another sob, burying his head in Mike’s chest. “I-I’m scared,” he whispers, barely audible to even Mike. “I-I don’t know what’s happening to me, Mike…”

The words feel like a rusty knife in the heart, and Mike just hugs his best friend tighter, blinking back the tears in his own eyes. “We’ll figure it out together,” he promises, his own voice breaking. “You’re going to be okay… I promise we’ll fix this, Will. I promise.”

they told me all of my cages were mental.

Things change after Mike finds Will in his bedroom on that day. 

Truthfully, Will doesn’t remember much about that day. He remembers feeling exhausted. He remembers getting stuck in the Upside Down multiple times throughout the day and desperately trying to pull himself out. He remembers the voices getting louder and louder—yelling and pleading at him to come back; come home; join us; come back, come back, come back—

Will remembers seeing them for the first time.

Them . Children of varying ages ranging from Holly’s age to close to Will’s age, all dressed in hospital nightgowns stained with blood. Them. A mother and her daughter dressed in clothes decades too old for Will’s current time. Them. A blonde girl in a cheerleading uniform and a teenage boy in a sweater vest and another boy wearing one of those Hawkins High letterman jackets.

All of them—covered in blood, limbs disfigured, eyes missing from their sockets.

“Come home, Will,” all of them had chanted, a horrific mantra drowning out the last vestiges of normalcy and sanity that Will was desperately trying to cling to. “Come home, come home, come home.”

After that day, there’s no more pretending things are alright and no more hiding from his family and friends. Will sits there, numb and barely able to focus, as Mike tells his mom and Jonathan about the nightmares and about how Will was seeing someone else—seeing them—in the room. 

And of course, everyone goes on high alert after that.

Nancy digs her old walkman out of the closet and forcibly shoves it into Will’s hands, telling him that the music will help keep him away. Her music taste is nowhere close to Will’s, but it will have to do for now. She then demands to know Will’s favorite songs as if Will can even think about that right now.

“The Cure,” Mike blurts out as Will stands there, dumbfounded and still barely able to speak. 

(The voices have quieted and they have disappeared from sight, but Will knows they’re still there. He can still hear them—quiet in the back of his mind.) 

“Will had a poster in his room back in Lenora,” Mike adds, and he gives Will’s shoulder a little squeeze. “So… probably something by them, Nance.”

Will manages to nod. The relieved smile on Mike’s face helps him feel a bit better.

His mom also insists on Will moving into the guest bedroom with her so she can keep a closer eye on him and help wake him from the nightmares. Will is too exhausted and his brain is too fuzzy to even argue, but Mike points out that one person staying up with Will constantly isn’t sustainable. (Apparently, he knows this from experience.) 

They all decide to set up shifts. After that day, Will gets moved down to the basement, which feels a bit like a prison sentence until Mike shows up with a blanket and a sleeping bag and announces that he’s staying with Will regardless of whether it’s his shift or not.

(In spite of it all, the butterflies in Will’s stomach come alive, and he feels just a little better with Mike around.)

But apparently, the music and the new sleeping shifts aren’t the only things Will’s overprotective loved ones have in mind. The day after the Incident (as Will has taken to calling it), Hopper and El show up at the Wheelers’ house, and Will’s mom quietly pulls him aside to explain the plan to him. 

They want El to try and enter his mind—to see if she can find him in there and re-create the piggyback. It’s the best way for El to protect Will and also a potential way for her to confront Vecna and put an end to the attacks from the Upside Down. 

Will wants to say no. The last thing he wants is for anyone to enter his mind—especially his sister who just so happens to be dating the boy that Will is in love with. God only knows what shit El will encounter in the fucked up space of Will’s mind.

But his mom looks utterly terrified for him and this could help put an end to the attacks on Hawkins, so Will can’t refuse—no matter how much the thought of El being in his mind terrifies him.

So, El enters Will’s mind, and it’s… a strange experience. He’s there the entire time with her, though he assumes his physical body is probably frozen in some kind of trance. The two of them end up in a black void of all places, and for the first time in days, Will feels a semblance of peace. 

If this space is his mind, then it’s unusually quiet. The voices are completely silent, and Will can’t even sense the presence of the lifeless corpses that usually haunt him. Likewise, for the first time since coming home to Hawkins, Will can’t sense him. In here, it’s just El and Will.

The two of them only stay there for a little bit. Using her powers like this is still hard on El, and there’s no telling the effects that this type of trance might have on Will if they stay for too long. Besides, it’s pretty obvious that Vecna isn’t here, and so, El releases him from the trance.

As soon as he comes to again, Will is met with the pure chaos of a dozen different voices speaking to him. His presence is back, and though Will can’t see all of them, he knows that they are here with him too.

(Terror fills Will’s heart, but his voice dies in the back of his throat. 

Across the room, a little child with twisted limbs and hollow eyes holds his index finger up to his mouth. Shh, the motion says, and though the words aren’t spoken aloud, Will somehow gets it. Don’t tell.)

So, Will doesn’t.

“Come home, Will,” the child whispers next, barely audible over the sounds of The Cure singing and of El making plans to come back the next day and try again. El says something about not finding anything out of the ordinary in Will’s mind, and Will nearly laughs. 

Maybe he is just going crazy. Maybe… maybe none of this is real.

El and Hopper don’t stick around long that day, but they come back the next day. And the next. And the next. And the next.

El keeps coming back. Keeps trying. Keeps entering Will’s mind. 

Each time, she finds nothing out of the ordinary.

Sometimes, they end up in that same black void from before. The void is Will’s favorite place to end up because it’s the least incriminating—the least revealing. Because sometimes, they end up in other places in Will’s mind—in his memories.

Bike rides with El around their Lenora neighborhood.

Movie nights with Max, Lucas, and Mike the summer that Starcourt Mall was open.

D&D campaigns in the Wheelers’ basement with Lucas, Dustin, and Mike.

Castle Byers with Jonathan or his mom.

A swingset at Hawkins Elementary School with five year-old Mike Wheeler.

(That memory had been particularly humiliating to share with El, and Will had barely been able to look his sister in the eye after coming out of the trance.)

Each day, El comes back and tries again—tries to find Vecna and figure out what’s going on with Will—but each day, she comes back with nothing. The days turn into weeks, and the weeks turn into a month. Eventually, as time goes on, her visits go from every day, to every other day, to once a week. 

And all the while, things go from bad to worse. 

Will barely sleeps anymore. Three or four hours of sleep a night become one to two hours a night if he’s lucky. The nightmares are somehow more vivid than they have ever been before, and it’s a damn miracle that Will doesn’t wake up everyone in the Wheelers’ house with how often he wakes up, an unwilling scream tearing itself from his throat.

The visions get worse too. It’s becoming harder and harder to distinguish what’s reality anymore—whether he’s in Hawkins or whether he’s in the Upside Down. Sometimes the world switches back and forth so quickly around him that Will feels sick with dizziness and completely off balance. He’s caught between this world and another, and he can’t keep either of them straight anymore.

And of course, the hallucinations escalate. The children in their bloody nightgowns follow him around like a shadow. The teenagers from Hawkins High stand beside his friends, and the mother and her daughter constantly hover behind Will’s own mother. They’re always there, always whispering to him, always calling out to him.

“Will. Will. Will. Come home. Come home. Come home.”

It’s crazy—actually completely fucking crazy—that none of them see any of this… that El doesn’t see any of this. He doesn’t get it at all. Sometimes, Will slips his headphones back on, and he pretends not to be listening to his family’s concerned conversations.

They’re worried about him. They’re beginning to think that all of this isn’t connected to the supernatural. That… that it’s all in his head—the result of some post traumatic stress or whatever the fuck.

(They’re starting to think he’s crazy.

And truthfully, Will is too.)

All of it is suffocating, and as summer fades away into autumn, things continue to get worse. It’s to the point now that Will barely feels like he’s even existing. He spends most of his days absently drawing, though everything looks like shit nowadays because his hands won’t stop trembling, and he’s barely able to keep his eyes open, and when he is able to keep them open, he’s half in Hawkins and half in the Upside Down, and—

And… yeah. Nowadays, Will feels like he barely exists. He feels like a shell of a person… a dead man walking or something. Zombie Boy, like the other kids used to say. Not quite gone from this world but almost. Almost gone.

“Will,” a new voice whispers, and Will flinches, dizzily looking around the empty basement. His vision is a bit blurry, so he rubs his eyes and blinks, trying to see who is there with him this time. “Will.”

Finally, Will’s vision clears just enough for him to see the new visitor, and his heart nearly stops.

Because there, standing over at the edge of the steps, is himself—though nearly three years younger. He has the same stupid bowlcut from eighth grade and is wearing that goddamn hospital gown from his stay at Hawkins National Lab, back when Will was first possessed. His younger self’s eyes look darker than normal, and he gazes at Will with a terrifying sort of blankness.

“Come home, Will,” he hears his own voice say, and Will shudders, scooting away as his younger self takes a step forward. “You don’t belong here. You don’t belong with them. You never have. Come home, Will. Come ho—”

“Hey, Will!” comes the familiar voice of Mike Wheeler, and Will flinches sharply, looking away from the younger version of himself. 

His chest is tight, and fuck, Will feels like he can’t breathe. His own voice echoes on a loop in his mind, “You don’t belong here. You don’t belong with them. Come home, Will, Come home,” and Will closes his eyes, clenching his hand around the armrest of the couch tightly. 

It’s not real, they’re not real, this isn’t happening, it’s not real, it’s not, it’s not, it’s not, it’s NOT, IT’S NOT—

“Who says it isn’t?” Will’s own voice taunts. “You don’t know what’s real or not anymore. I’m right here. We’re all right here. We’re with you. We’re part of you, like you’re part of us, Will.”

“Come home, Will,” a chorus of other voices whisper, echoing in the crevices of Will’s own mind. “Come home. Come home.”

Somewhere in the background, the sound of footsteps running down the stairs fills the silence, and Mike calls, “Hey, you ready to eat? Mom said dinner’s almost—”

Mike’s voice stops short. The voices in Will’s head get louder, and he chokes back a sob, covering his ears with his trembling hands. His cassette has long since ended, and he must not have noticed it. Not that it helped much anyway.

“Fuck,” comes Mike’s voice. It’s louder than the rest of the noise, and it sounds much closer too. Barely a moment later, someone’s hands—warm and familiar—cup Will’s face gently, and Will hears his best friend whisper, “Hey, hey, Will, it’s okay… I need you to breathe for me, okay? I’m right here; I’ve got you… I’ve got you.”

(The voices get a bit quieter. Mike’s voice makes them easier to ignore.)

“Will, breathe,” Mike says again. His voice is soft but firm and steady, and Will leans closer to his best friend’s embrace, forcing himself to take a shaky little breath. “That’s it! That’s it, Will. Just keep breathing for me, okay? In and out… in and out… in and out.”

Slowly—so, so slowly—Will remembers how to breathe. He doesn’t dare open his eyes. No, he’s too afraid of seeing them again—of seeing himself again. At least with his eyes closed, he can just focus on the sound of Mike’s voice.

“Are you okay?” Mike whispers. His hands are still on Will’s face, and he gently rubs his thumb across Will’s cheek. 

And honestly, in the back of Will’s mind, he wonders if this is another hallucination—something his twisted, exhausted mind has come up with as a way to torment him even more. Because while Mike has been gentle with him before and while he has become more like his old self over the past several months, this is a whole new level of intimacy and softness. It doesn’t make sense .

(But then again, nothing really makes sense anymore, so… Will might as well let himself have this.)

“N-not really,” Will manages to whisper back, and he dares to open his eyes. Like he expected, Mike’s face is inches away away from his own, and there’s a worried look on his face. “I… It-it’s getting worse.”

Mike’s face falls. “El will figure out how to help you,” he says, though it sounds like he’s trying to convince Will and himself. “She will. You’re going to be okay again, and we will kill that fucker for ever doing this to you—”

“W-what if it’s not him?” Will croaks. Once again, Mike’s face just falls, and Will shakes his head slightly, tears welling in his eyes. “What if… what if this is all just in… in my head ? A-and that’s… that’s why El can’t find him? What if… I’m just making all this up?”

For a few moments, Mike is just quiet. He looks like he’s trying to figure out what to say, so Will takes another shuddered breath. “I-I feel like I’m going insane, Mike,” he admits, hating the way his voice cracks. “It’s like… like I don’t… have control of my own mind anymore… I-I just feel like I’m… like I’m going crazy.”

This time, Mike’s expression softens, and he moves to take Will’s hands in his own. “Do you remember eighth grade?” he asks quietly. “Halloween… the first time you saw the Mind Flayer.”

(As if Will could ever forget that night.)

“I told you that… that if we’re both going crazy, then we’d go crazy together,” Mike recalls, his voice soft and gentle. “And I meant it. I still mean it. Wherever you go, I’ll follow. I won’t leave you alone. Whatever happens, however crazy you feel, I will always be there with you. I promise, Will. I promise.”

There’s nothing certainty and care in Mike’s eyes, and despite it all, the butterflies in Will’s stomach flutter around nervously. He can’t help but smile at best friend and lean in closer to the embrace. 

“Okay,” Will whispers, and Mike smiles shyly back at him, giving his hands another squeeze. “Okay.”

(The voices get a little bit quieter, and for right now, that’s enough.)

i’d say, “i love you,” even at your darkest, and please don’t go.

Will isn’t getting better.

It’s been months now since the gates first opened up in Hawkins and since the Byers and Argyle first moved into Mike’s house. Will’s nightmares and everything else that has been plaguing him just won’t go away, and no matter how hard El tries, she can’t find Vecna in any of it.

From what El has said, Will’s mind seems… normal. There’s nothing out of the ordinary, and every time she enters Will’s mind, she finds herself in good memories. She never elaborates on what those memories are—preferring to protect Will’s privacy, which makes a lot of sense—but El promises that Will’s mind is normal. Healthy. There’s no sign of Vecna or anything else from the Upside Down plaguing Will.

But clearly, there is. There is something wrong with Will, because Will still barely sleeps and barely talks to anyone anymore and barely draws or paints anymore and barely seems like he’s even alive right now and-and…

And fuck. Fuck, it’s terrifying. Holy fucking shit, it’s terrifying, and yeah, Mike has witnessed a lot of really horrible, traumatizing shit in his lifetime, but this… this a new and different type of terrifying.

They’re losing Will. Mike is losing Will. So, so slowly and painfully, Mike is losing Will again, and God, he’s so terrified that one day, Will just… won’t be Will anymore. That he’ll go past the point of no return—past where Mike can’t follow him, the way he promised to always do. And fuck, that’s absolutely terrifying to think about. It makes Mike feel absolutely sick to his stomach.

And it… it reveals some other things to him.

It sneaks up on him, honestly. At first, it’s just easy to brush off the emotions as… as being worried about his best friend. Why wouldn’t Mike feel like this when his best friend in the entire world is so clearly suffering? Why wouldn’t he be worried out of his mind and desperate to do anything to help Will? Wouldn’t any normal person feel that way? Wouldn’t any person go to whatever lengths it takes to help his best friend?

But then, the months continue to pass by, and Will is all Mike can think about. Yeah, the world is literally going to end and people are suffering and Mike has a girlfriend , but Mike can only think about Will. 

It isn’t much of a surprise, then, when he and El end their relationship in the last days of summer. 

It’s been a long time coming honestly, and even though they’ve technically been “together” this whole time, they really haven’t been. El as good as broke up with Mike with her letter back in California, and then Mike tried to give her—give their relationship —what she needed, even if… even if it wasn’t entirely true.

But El’s not stupid, and she never has been. She tells him that much too, right before she dumps his ass (again), and promises that they’ll always be friends. It feels like a burden lifted off Mike’s shoulders, and now, he’s entirely free to focus on Will.

Summer fades away into fall, and soon after, fall fades away into an especially brutal winter. 

Will does not get better; in fact, he gets worse. 

And Mike? 

Mike gets a wake up call.

It happens entirely by accident. Mike walks in on the tail end of a conversation his mother and sister are having in the kitchen. Nancy is crying, and if Mike had to guess, he imagines their mother is probably hugging her close. 

Then, Nancy says something… something that sticks with Mike.

“I just… I-I don’t want to lose him,” she whispers, her voice trembling and watery. “After all we’ve been through… I can’t lose him, Mom.”

Their mom is quick to reply, and her words are like a bucket of ice dropped on Mike’s head.

“You love him, sweetheart,” she says softly. “That’s… that’s what love is. And you… you not being able to imagine your life without Jonathan? Being so scared to lose him? It’s because you love him, Nancy. You do.”

Oh, Mike thinks to himself, and all at once, it’s like some movie montage of all the moments he’s lost Will—riding back from the quarry after seeing Will’s fake body, standing helpless while Will screamed and thrashed and lost himself to the Mind Flayer’s control, watching as a UHaul truck drove Will away from Hawkins and away from Mike …

Seeing Will’s mind slowly crumble over the past several months, reducing him to nothing but a shell of the person that Mike has always known…

The person that Mike has always loved.

Oh.

Suddenly, it all makes so much more sense, and fuck , Mike’s mind practically shuts down as he tries to process this sudden realization.

He… loves Will.

Mike loves Will.

In the same way he should have been able to love El but could never quite figure out why he didn’t. Mike loves Will that way, and fuck, how could he not have realized it until now? 

How did it take him losing Will to realize this?

Because that’s the harsh reality of this entire situation. Mike is losing Will again, but this time, in a slow, dragged out, and excruciating way. He’s entirely useless and has no idea how to help Will. None of them do. Nothing they try is working. Mike is losing Will, and fuck, he’s just realized that he is so, so in love with Will. 

(Mike doesn’t cry often—though he’s found himself crying more often recently, thanks to this whole situation with Will—but he runs as quickly as he can away from the kitchen and locks himself in his bedroom and just cries.

Cries because this isn’t fair. It’s not fair that Mike is losing Will again, not fair that Will is suffering like this, not fair that even if things were alright, they couldn’t be together because this isn’t normal and Mike shouldn’t love him like that and—

And Mike just cries.)

Not much changes after the realization, as earth-shattering as it may be for Mike. His feelings for Will are the last things that Will needs right now. No, Will just needs Mike to be there for him—to be his best friend, not… not whatever this is. Mike won’t do that to Will. His own feelings don’t matter right now; what matters most is being whatever Will needs him to be. 

As long as Will is still around and happy and safe again, then Mike can be happy. Mike can put aside his feelings and ignore them and just be content to be close to Will. He has no intentions of ever sharing his feelings with Will, especially not now of all times. 

But of course, Mike has always had the tendency to say stuff he probably shouldn’t, especially in times of high stress.

This time is no different.

It happens on a bad day. Honestly, they’re all bad days at this point, but because some days are worse than others, Mike has labeled each day as “good,” “bad,” or “just okay” in his mind. 

Good days are ones where Will seems a little more alert. He eats more on these days and can focus on drawing more. He’ll laugh with Mike more and listen to whatever stupid little story Mike has come up with this time to entertain the two of them. Sometimes, they watch old movies together. Mike likes the good days.

Just okay days are just that—not good but not bad. Will is normally quiet these days, off in his own little world, but he’s okay with Mike or the others staying close to him. Sometimes, he’ll draw on these days. Other times, he’ll just try to rest. The just okay days are fine, and they’re the most common. Mike can work with that. 

Bad days are… becoming more frequent, and they range in different types of bad. Some bad days are marked by near constant panic attacks from Will, wherein Mike or one of the others will find him huddled on the floor, covering his ears and quietly begging the voices to stop. Other bad days are defined by a complete numbness on Will’s part. He doesn’t speak to any of them and barely acknowledges them. It’s like he’s in a whole other world—far, far away from them. 

Then, there’s the angry bad days.

To this day, Will has only had one of these bad days, and Mike wasn’t there. His mom had dragged him to the grocery store, insisting he needed to get outside and get some fresh air. By the time they came back, the tension in the house was palpable. Mike learned later from Nancy that Will had ended up in a screaming match with Jonathan and eventually Joyce that had reduced every single member of the Byers family to tears.

Mike can count the number of times that Will has screamed at anyone on one hand. At least two of those times, he was under the Mind Flayer’s influence.

So, the angry bad days are probably the worst of the worst, in Mike’s opinion. He’s not religious, but he finds himself praying to whatever supreme being that’s in charge of everything that he never has to be present for one of those days.

(The supreme being does not listen. Go figure.)

It happens in the dead of winter, when the snow and the spores from the Upside Down mix together to form some fucked up blanket of slush on the ground. It’s been snowing (sporing?) for the last day at least, and for some reason, everyone is just a little bit more antsy and a little bit more irritable.

Joyce suggests they all watch a movie together, and Mike’s mom agrees. They end up watching some cheesy dumb movie that’s age appropriate for Holly, and all nine of them pile into the living room, sitting close together and munching on popcorn and other snacks. It’s fine. It’s not like they have anything better to do.

Halfway through the movie though, Will gets up without saying a word, and he walks towards the basement.

Immediately, everyone (with the exception of Mike’s dad, Holly, and Argyle for obvious reasons) is on edge, and Mike finds himself locked in a battle of wills with Jonathan and Joyce. All three of them want to go after Will. But Mike is nothing if not a stubborn bastard and they all know Mike is the best at reaching Will in bad moments, so he wins the silent argument and follows his best friend down to the basement.

“Will?” Mike says softly, walking down the steps and looking around the basement. It’s dark, save for the dim glow of an old nightlight, and Mike spots his best friend, sitting on the floor and away from the light. “Hey, it’s… it’s me. You okay?”

For a moment, it’s silent. Will is silent. 

Then, in a very uncharacteristically harsh voice, Will snaps, “I’m fine. Just… just go away, Mike.”

He doesn’t seem fine—not with how his voice is trembling and sounding a bit watery. Mike takes another step towards Will, frowning slightly. “Will,” he repeats, voice quiet. “Come on… I… I know something’s up. What’s wrong?”

There’s a beat.

Then:

“I said I’m fine, Mike!” Will shouts, standing to his feet and turning to look at Mike. There’s a manic look in his eyes, and he glares fiercely at Mike. “Just leave me the hell alone! Go away! Just go away!”

Mike can’t help but flinch. For a moment, he just stands there, eyes locked on Will and heart pounding inside his chest. 

He doesn’t react.

So, Will does instead. 

“I said leave!” Will screams. He takes a step towards Mike, then another, and another until he’s right in front of Mike and close enough for Mike to see the tears in his eyes and how badly he’s shaking. “Just leave! Leave me the fuck alone! Leave me alone! Go away! Go away!”

Somehow, Will steps even closer to Mike as he yells—completely manic and so, so unlike himself. It’s like the person that Mike has always known and always loved is just gone and has been replaced by… by someone else.

Is this it? Mike can’t help but think to himself as a pit forms in his stomach and tears sting his eyes. Is this past the point of no return? 

No… no. No. There isn’t a point of no return—not for Mike and Will. Not when Mike made a promise to follow Will wherever all of this hell might take the two of them. There’s not a world where Mike gives up on Will. He’ll keep fighting until his dying breath to be there for Will and to bring him back from the brink and to not lose him. No matter what it takes, Mike isn’t breaking his promise.

“No,” Mike says softly, because it’s as simple as that. 

Confusion spreads across Will’s face for the briefest moment, before it melts away into anger again. “Just go, Mike!” he shouts, and he actually pushes Mike this time. He’s a lot weaker than he used to be, so it doesn’t do much good. “Just leave me alone!” 

“No,” Mike repeats stubbornly. He takes a step towards Will, meeting his eyes. “I’m not going anywhere, Will. Not when you need me.”

For a moment, Will just stands there, staring at Mike in a mixture of surprise and anger. The two of them stand at an impasse with neither one willing to budge.

“Why?” Will finally demands, his voice cracking. He still seems angry, but the tears in his eyes betray the angered look. “Why do you keep doing this?! Why-why are you… why are you acting like this and-and acting so nice to me? Why do you… why do you care so much and always… always show up and… and try to help me? Why would you do that? Why won’t you just leave me alone?! Why?! WHY?”

He shoves Mike again, and this time, the familiar fire of frustration and passion ignites in Mike’s heart. He’s never been the type of person to think before he speaks, and well… some things never change. 

“Because I love you, Will!” Mike shouts.

Shit.

The room goes dead silent, and Will freezes, all anger draining from his expression. What’s left is a mixture of surprise, disbelief, and exhaustion.

The two of them stand there, unable to break eye contact, and Mike swallows the lump in his throat. Will still needs him. Accidental confession or not, Will still needs him.

“I’m not leaving,” Mike says softly, and he reaches out, pulling Will into a careful hug. “I’m not leaving you. Not now and not ever. I promise. Okay, Will? I need you to understand that. Anything else you need, I’ll do, but… but don’t ask me to leave you. Please.”

Mike’s voice cracks on that last word, and Will just tenses in his arms. Still, Mike doesn’t let go, and eventually, Will relaxes, carefully lifting his own arms to wrap around Mike.

“Okay,” he mumbles, burying his head in Mike’s shoulder. “I won’t… I won’t, Mike. I promise.”

(It’s a promise that Mike hopes Will actually keeps.)

coming to take me to where i’m from; i want to go home.

Will hates the cold.

And it’s… it’s always cold nowadays.

He’s always cold nowadays. And things are… dark. Fuzzy. Hard to keep track of and focus on. But the cold is always there. It never leaves him alone. It never lets him rest. 

The others notice the cold too but not as much as Will does. Outside of the safety of the Wheelers’ house, the cold rages on. The Upside Down bleeds into their world. The others notice it too, but it doesn’t affect them. Not the way it affects Will.

“It’s you, Will,” the voices whisper. The loudest voice comes from himself —tiny and… twelve? Or thirteen? Will… Will can’t remember. It’s hard to remember most things nowadays. But the loudest voice comes from himself—younger than he is now and dressed in… in one of those… gowns from the… the hospital. 

“You’re different from them,” Will’s younger self whispers. He’s always around Will now—when Will’s awake and when Will’s sleeping (dreaming). He never leaves, and he follows Will around like a shadow. “You don’t belong here, Will. Come home. Come home.”

Isn’t this home? Will thinks, but he isn’t so sure anymore. It’s… hard to keep track of nowadays. He’s caught between two worlds constantly, and he can’t focus on either of them. Which one is home? Which one is where he belongs? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know. 

Will’s head hurts. There’s always a dull ache nowadays, right behind his eyes, and it makes it even harder to focus and to see what’s going on. He spends a lot of time trying to rest nowadays. Doing too much else hurts too much, and it just makes everything get worse. At least when the visions come and go rapidly and almost constantly throughout the day, he’s lying down on the couch or on his… his mattress?  

(Is that the word?)

At least when the visions come, he’s lying down. He doesn’t trip and fall and suddenly end up on the ground in one of the worlds. That had happened too often. It’s easy to lose his balance when he just can’t focus and when he’s barely even awake anymore and when he doesn’t even know where he is half of the time. 

The days all pass by in a blur, but they’re slow in the moment. Each day moves at a painfully slow speed, now that Will can barely do anything and feels like he’s barely even there . He’s long since given up on drawing anything. What’s the point anyway, when the paper is there one minute but gone the next? The same is true about watching TV or trying to read a book.

The only thing that works—that makes the visions slow down and the voices go a little bit quieter—is Mike’s voice. He sits with Will most days, and he talks for hours and hours. Sometimes, he reads books—old ones from their childhood and new ones that he, Lucas, and Dustin have been exchanging. Other times, he tells his own stories, like they’re five years old again and dreaming up new worlds together.

It’s comforting. Mike is comforting. Sometimes, it feels like Mike is the only thing grounding Will to reality—reminding Will that this is where he belongs. Because the other place doesn’t have Mike. So… so this must be where Will belongs. Because Will belongs with Mike.

“Because I love you, Will!” Mike’s familiar voice plays on repeat in the back of Will’s mind. It’s like… like… oh! like a lifeline. A lifeline. Will’s only lifeline pulling him back home .

“This isn’t home, Will,” his younger self whispers right into Will’s ear. “You don’t belong here. You’ll never belong here. Come home. Come home.”

“Come home,” the other voices echo, and they all materialize around Will, filling the Wheelers’ empty basement with nearly a dozen people. It’s darker, colder in the basement. There are vines everywhere. Is he there again? Or has it always been like this? Will… Will can’t remember… He can’t remember.

“Come home,” the voices repeat. Will clutches the blanket in his hands tighter, and he scoots back, breathing heavily as they all move towards him. “Come home. We need you. We need you—”

“Will!” 

(The voices quiet. They disappear, until just Will’s younger self is left. The Wheelers’ basement gets brighter, and the vines disappear. But it’s still cold—so, so cold.)

Will looks up, trying to catch his breath and find his voice. “Y-yeah?”

The sound of footsteps running down the stairs replaces the silence, and soon, Mike comes into view. There’s a smile on his face—bright, just like the sun. “Hey,” he greets, walking over and plopping down next to Will. “You got a minute?”

It’s such a casual question that Will can’t help but laugh. Leave it… leave it to Mike to always make him smile. “Not like I can do much else,” he reminds softly.

Mike’s smile dims just a little bit. In front of them, Will’s younger self tilts his head, looking directly at Will. “He’ll never be yours,” he reminds. “You don’t belong here. He’s not like you.”

The words send a chill down Will’s spine, and he wraps the blanket around himself tighter, taking a shallow breath. Mike says something, though Will doesn’t really process what that is. Still, he nods weakly. Forces a smile. Even manages to say, “Yeah… yeah, sure.”

And Mike smiles at him again—all warmth and joy. He wraps his arm around Will. “Here, let me help you up,” he says, gently pulling Will to his feet. Will still feels unsteady, and for a moment, the room spins.

There’s vines, then there’s not. They are there, then they aren’t. Images flicker back and forth at dizzying speeds, and Will stumbles forward, nearly tripping over the coffee table.

Mike’s arm pulls him closer. “I’ve got you,” he promises softly, leading Will upstairs. “Slow and steady… We’ve got this. You’ve got this.”

Somehow, they make it upstairs, but not before Will’s vision switches back and forth between here and there probably a dozen times. His head feels like it’s being split in two, but he doesn’t say anything. He’s fine. He doesn’t want Mike to feel bad. Will would give anything to keep seeing that smile.

Mike leads him to the kitchen, and honestly, by now, Will can barely even focus. There’s vines covering the Wheelers’ kitchen table one moment; then the next moment, there are… balloons? And… and streamers? A cake?

“Happy birthday, Will!” everyone in the room says loudly. Will flinches, nearly stumbling again. Luckily, Mike catches him, and Will blinks, trying his best to get his vision to focus. 

In addition to the Wheelers, everyone in Will’s family—including El and Hopper—is here. And not only that, but Lucas and Dustin are here too. They’re wearing silly party hats and… and holding those… um, those… things that… that make noises. At parties. Those things. 

“Happy birthday,” Mike says, turning so the two are looking at each other now. There’s a smile on his face, and he squeezes Will’s shoulder gently. “I… we… figured you deserve something good after this whole year. Especially for your sweet sixteen!”

Behind him, the younger version of Will walks closer to the two of them. There’s a terrifying look on his face, and he meets Will’s eyes. “They’re lying,” he whispers. “Don’t you remember how they forgot about you last year? They’re lying. You don’t belong here.”

“You don’t belong here,” the others agree. They’re standing around the table with Will’s friends and family, staring at Will with those empty, lifeless eye sockets. “Come home, Will. Come home. Come home. Come home.”

The chanting gets louder, louder, louder until they’re practically screaming at Will, and Will stumbles back. Panic fills his heart, and he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe, he can’t, he can’t, he can’t—

Suddenly, Will isn’t here anymore. He’s there. 

It’s dark—so, so dark. 

It’s bitterly cold, and Will wraps his arms around himself, shivering and trying to find a way out. 

But worst of all, he feels his presence. It’s everywhere. He’s everywhere. All around Will, suffocating him. Inside Will, tearing him apart from the inside out. He’s everywhere .

“It is time, Will,” a voice—new but still somehow so, so familiar—says, low and deep. “Time for your suffering to end. Time for you to come home.” 

Will shivers, and he stumbles backwards, tripping on one of the vines and crashing to the ground in a painful heap. There’s no one else here with him—at least not from what he can see—but Will knows that he is here. Will can feel him. 

“I can make this all stop, Will,” the voice whispers again. He sounds closer to Will now, and Will flinches as he feels a cold sensation like someone running their hand on his cheek. Still, Will sees no one in front of him. “I can make your suffering end. I can set you free. You merely have to come home. Come home, Will. You do not belong with them. You belong here. With me. With all of us.”

“Come home, Will.” The other voices are back, chanting their mantra over and over again. “Come home, come home, come home.” 

That invisible person runs their hand over Will’s face again, and pain explodes in Will’s head—worse than it’s ever felt before. He cries out, doubling over as the world around him spins and spins and spins and the voices grow louder, louder, louder until they’re absolutely deafening and his eardrums feel like they might burst from the noise, and Will feels like he’s going to be sick because it’s too much, too much, it’s all too much, he can’t he can’t do this—

“Come home, come home, come home—”

“Please,” Will manages to gasp. 

“Come home, come home, come home—”

“Make it stop,” he begs.

“Come home, come home, come home—”

“The gates,” he whispers to Will, low and menacing. “Tonight. Come home, and the pain will stop. Your suffering will end.”

“Come home, come home, come home—”

The hand lifts from Will’s face, and Will gasps weakly, sitting up.

The vines are gone. Light has replaced the darkness. There’s actually someone sitting in front of Will now—Mike. 

But the voices are still there, still screaming into Will’s mind. The excruciating pain caused by him has not subsided, and Will feels so, so cold.

“I can make your suffering end.”

“Come home, Will.”

“The gates. Tonight.”

“Will?” Mike gasps, his eyes wide. His arms are on Will’s shoulders, and he looks terrified. “Are you okay? What happened?” 

Behind him, Will’s younger self lifts his index finger to his lips. Somehow, the pain in Will’s head gets even worse, and he bites back a cry. The message is clear. Don’t tell anyone.

“M-my head,” Will mumbles, blinking rapidly and trying to focus on Mike. He can barely hear anything over the loudness inside his own head. Something wet and sticky slides down his face, and Will sways, nearly falling onto Mike. “Head… hurts.”

Mike catches him, his arms steady around Will, and he curses. “El,” he says, voice trembling. “It’s him . It has to be him… Look .” 

Before Will can even process it, Mike pulls his sleeve down and gently wipes whatever is on Will’s face away. His sleeve comes back bloody.

It’s too late, Will can’t help but think, even as his sister runs over and sits next to the two of them. He’s already gone.

El enters Will’s mind anyways, and all Will can do is give in to the familiar feeling of weightlessness. 

“She’ll never find us,” his younger self whispers as he and the others fade away. “She’ll never find us, Will.”

Of course, the void is empty when El arrives. There’s nothing out of the ordinary there, and for a moment, Will even gets a moment of peace when the voices quiet. El stays longer than usual. She takes them through at least three or four different memories, but she never finds him. It’s like he’s completely vanished from Will’s mind. Somehow, despite the fact that Will knows things aren’t alright in his mind, everything seems fine.

El doesn’t find anything. She never does. The pain returns as soon as El releases him from the trance, and it takes everything in Will not to throw up from how sick he feels. The voices return, louder than before, and Will barely processes it as someone carries him over to the Wheelers’ couch.

The pain doesn’t go away for the rest of the day. Everyone else leaves, or so Will thinks because he really can’t focus on anything. The only thing he can focus on is the deafening sound of the voices screaming inside his head, repeating those same three words over and over and over again.

“Come home, Will. Come home, Will. Come home, Will.”

I will, Will thinks, or rather pleads. Anything to make it stop. Anything. Please. Please just make it stop. Please. Please. 

It takes a long time, and Will feels painfully aware of every single hour, minute, second ticking by at an agonizingly slow speed. The voices never stop, and the pain never goes away.

Until they do.

Eventually, long after the party and after nearly everyone has gone to bed, the pain subsides just enough for Will to sit up. His brain feels a little less fuzzy, and the voices go quiet.

“Now,” Will’s younger self says eerily. He’s standing by the front door. “It’s time to come home, Will.” 

“Come home, Will,” the others whisper. They’re crowded by the door too, broken limbs outstretched towards him. “Come home.”

Will stands to his feet, and slowly, he makes his way to the door. He still feels unsteady, but the pain is a mere dull ache now. His mind feels clearer—freer—than it has in months.

“I can make your suffering end,” he had whispered to Will, hours ago. “I can set you free.”

“Come home, Will,” his younger self whispers, and he holds out his hand. “You don’t belong here. We don’t belong here.”

Will nods numbly. He takes another step towards the door and nearly trips over something.

Or rather—someone.

Mike.

Mike, who, up until a moment ago was… still awake. Mike, who hadn’t left Will’s side the entire day. Mike, who is sitting up straight, with his eyes staring blankly ahead of him.

A cold chill runs down Will’s spine, and he turns to his younger self, his eyes wide. “No… no,” he whispers. “Let him go. Let him go. ”

Will’s younger self just tilts his head, dark eyes cold and unfeeling. “We will,” he promises. “After you come home.”

Will swallows the lump in his throat, and he glances back at Mike, tears filling his eyes. He doesn’t really have a choice anymore, does he? This… this is the only way to… to end the pain… to be free from all the suffering he’s experienced these past several months. 

And… and it’s the only way to free Mike and his mom and Jonathan and everyone from… from the burden of having to be there for Will. The burden of having to look after Will. He’s ruined their lives, and he knows it. 

Will doesn’t really have a choice.

So, taking another shuddered breath, Will slowly kneels next to Mike, and he hugs his best friend tightly, blinking back the tears in his eyes. 

Will's mind feels clearer than it has in months, though it’s still weighed down by the exhaustion and his presence lingering inside.

But even that can’t stop Will from speaking the truth—from giving Mike the goodbye he deserves.

“I love you too, Mike,” Will whispers, and he kisses Mike’s forehead gently, letting his lips linger there for another moment. “I love you so much.”

If this is goodbye, then what else does he have to lose? Will wishes he could just freeze time—or better yet, turn back the clock to before all of this even happened.

Suddenly, pain explodes in Will’s head again, and he doubles over, letting out a weak gasp. 

“It is time,” his voice whispers, low and ominous. “Time to come home, Will.”

“Come home, Will,” the others echo. “Come home.”

“Okay,” Will whispers, and despite the pain, he stands up, stumbling to the door. “I’m coming. I’m coming home.”

Then, without another thought, Will opens the Wheelers’ front door and begins his journey to the Hawkins gates.

To the Upside Down.

To home.

all these people think love’s for show, but i would die for you in secret.

Whatever is happening to Will isn’t from the world. 

Mike knows it. He’s always known it. Sure, maybe there’s an element of Will’s trauma and the post traumatic stress or whatever that Hopper talks about at play here. But Vecna literally targets people who are emotionally vulnerable and who have trauma. Everything… all of the shit that’s been happening to Will since last year? It isn’t from this world. Mike knows it.

And he’s never been more sure of it than he has today.

Because for the briefest moment, when Will collapsed at his party and began mumbling to himself again, Mike could have sworn he heard something— someone . He could have sworn he heard an unfamiliar voice in the room with all of them, low and threatening and terrifying.

“You cannot stop this, Michael,” the voice had whispered, right before Will had snapped out of his episode. “You cannot stop me this time.” 

The words had sent a chill down Mike’s spine but were quickly put aside once Will came to once more, his nose bloody and his eyes distant yet terrified. It hadn’t taken much for Mike to put two and two together that this had to have been an attack from Vecna, and so, El had entered Will’s mind shortly thereafter.

Once again, though, she had found nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing .

And so, Mike had been forced to sit, helpless as fucking ever, next to Will the entire day, desperately trying to figure how to fix thing. It’s been hours now, but Mike hasn’t left. Mike doesn’t plan to leave. If the others want to sleep after their shifts end, that’s fine. But Mike’s not sleeping. 

Honestly, he’s not sure he can sleep at this point.

Because Will is not okay. No amount of music or protection from El is going to be enough to help Will, which means that Vecna is going to rip Will from their hands—from Mike’s hands—once again. It’s only a matter of time now, and fuck, fuck, fuck, Mike is so angry and terrified and upset and guilty because he just doesn’t know how to help.

He had once promised Will that he would follow him anywhere , and Mike had meant it. He’d also promised Will that they would fix things—together. As a team. But fuck, here they are, an entire year later, and Mike hasn’t done shit to help Will. No matter how much he’s tried, Will just hasn’t gotten better. 

Mike is going to lose Will, and it’s going to be his own damn fault.

Behind him on the couch, Will makes a small whimpering sound, and Mike flinches, looking up. It’s probably to 1 AM now, which means it’s technically Mike’s shift (not that he plans on sleeping at all tonight), and everyone else is asleep. 

“Hey,” Mike says softly, sitting up and kneeling in front of the couch. “You okay, Will?”

Will just makes another choked little sound. His eyes are wide and unfocused, and he stares blankly up at the ceiling. There’s a cloudiness over his eyes, and Mike’s heart sinks to his stomach. 

Bloody nose.

Waking visions.

Nightmares.

And now… now a trance.

Fuck.

“Will!” Mike shouts, gently trying to shake his best friend out of the trance. “Shit, Will! Snap out of it! Will! Will!”

Of course, it doesn’t work. Will just lies there, his eyes completely cloudy and his body twitching every few seconds. Fuck, fuck, fuck, Mike knows how this ends. If he doesn’t fucking figure this out, Will is going to start fucking levitating, and then he’ll end up like… like Max and like the others—

“Will!” Mike screams, and he pulls Will to a sitting position, desperately trying to wake him up. “Will, please! Snap out of it! Wake up! Please, Will! I can’t lose you! I can’t! Please don’t leave me; please, Will, please, please, please…”

Mike keeps shouting. He doesn’t know how the others aren’t hearing him, but nobody comes. It’s just him and Will, trapped in Vecna’s grasp, and Mike is sobbing because he can’t lose Will, he can’t, he’s not ready to let him go, he can’t lose Will—

Suddenly, a familiar voice whispers, “I love you too, Mike,” and Mike freezes.

“Will?” he whispers, looking at his best friend. 

Will’s eyes are still cloudy. He’s still unresponsive and frozen in place—caught in…

In Vecna’s trance.

“I love you so much,” Will’s voice says again, and oh.

Oh.

“Shit!” Mike swears, scrambling to his feet and looking around in horror. 

Will isn’t caught in Vecna’s trance.

Mike is.

“Shit,” Mike curses again, and he runs to the closest door, yanking it open roughly. The door is boarded up, and Mike swears under his breath, grabbing the pieces of wood and trying to pull them away roughly. “Come on! Come on!”

“It is no use, Michael,” that voice from before says, and a chill runs down Mike’s spine. “It is too late for him. You cannot save him.”

Wet, squelching footsteps make their way towards him. Mike dares to turn around and look him—look Vecna—in the eye.

He looks just like Nancy had described him—clearly humanoid but with scarred, worn flesh, a gaunt face, and distorted limbs. A feeling of pure evil hangs in the air, and Mike can’t help but shudder. 

A cold smile forms on Vecna’s face. “Michael Wheeler,” he muses tauntingly. “The paladin, noble and brave. The Party’s unofficial leader. The heart. We meet at last.”

“Rot in hell,” Mike spits harshly, and he clenches his fists tightly. “You’re not really here. You’re not.”

“Perhaps not,” Vecna agrees. “But the mind is a powerful thing. I may not be here with you, physically, but I am more real than you realize. Just ask Will. He understands that better than anyone else.”

A fire ignites inside Mike’s chest. “Leave him alone!” he shouts. Against his better judgment, he takes a step towards Vecna. “Leave him alone, you fucking asshole!” 

Another cruel smile forms on Vecna’s face. “You won’t have to worry about Will for much longer,” he promises, his voice low and ominous. “Will is coming to where he belongs, Michael. He is coming home.”

Ice cold dread grips Mike’s heart. For a moment, he feels like he can’t breathe because… because once again, Mike is powerless, he’s fucking helpless to do anything to help Will, he’s entirely useless, and he’s going to lose Will because of it, he’s going to lose Will—

“I love you too, Mike,” Will’s voice echoes in Mike’s mind, and Mike shuts his eyes tightly, blinking back his tears. “I love you so much.”

He has no music, no friends to snap him out of the trance, no El to piggyback inside his mind and fight Vecna. 

But Will needs Mike. Will needs him.

“I love you too, Mike,” Will’s voice whispers again, and Mike shuts his eyes tighter, thinking back to all the best moments he’s spent with Will over the past decade of knowing each other.

When he opens his eyes, Mike isn’t in his home anymore.

Instead, he’s at a playground—a familiar playground with a swingset where two boys are sitting next to each and smiling brightly.

And there , just past the swingset, is what looks like a portal—leading back to Mike’s house. His real house.

Mike doesn’t hesitate. He sprints as fast as he can towards the portal, all but throwing himself through it, and for a moment, the strangest sensation of weightlessness captures him, turning everything upside down and off balance. Mike squeezes his eyes shut tightly, and he braces himself, and—

And with a gasp, he opens his eyes, looking around the living room quickly.

Sure enough, Will is gone.

And Mike knows exactly where he’s gone.

“Shit,” Mike swears, scrambling to his feet. 

As fast as he can, he runs to the door, grabbing Nancy’s keys hanging on the back of the door. He has no idea how long he was in Vecna’s trance or how much of a headstart Will has, but Mike isn’t taking any chances. He has to catch up to Will—has to make sure Will doesn’t do this.

Sure, he’s never really learned how to drive, but it can’t be that difficult.

The streets of Hawkins are empty, just like they have been for nearly a year now, so Mike speeds towards downtown Hawkins, carefully keeping his eyes out for Will. He can’t have gotten that far on foot or even on bike, so surely, Mike will catch up to him and help him and stop him before…

Before Will goes to the Upside Down.

After what feels like an eternity, Mike arrives at downtown Hawkins. There are still barriers cutting off the town from the wreckage, so he parks Nancy’s car right in front of the barriers and climbs through a tiny opening. 

Will is still nowhere to be found, and the dread in Mike’s heart only increases.

“Will!” Mike shouts as he runs towards the center of the gate rupture. It’s eerily quiet downtown, save for the sound of Mike’s own cries, and he searches desperately for any sign of his best friend. “Will! WILL! ”

(No, no, no, he can’t be too late; he can’t be; he can’t lose Will—)

“Mike?” a familiar voice says back, and fuck, Mike nearly bursts into tears from relief.

“Will!” Mike shouts again, sprinting towards the sound of Will’s voice. And there —just up ahead and standing over one of the gates by the library—is Will . He’s still here. He’s still here. 

Will’s eyes go wide, and he shakes his head. “W-what are you doing here?” he asks weakly. “You… he… he had you, Mike; how—”

“You needed me,” Mike says breathlessly. “And I told you; I told you, Will. Anywhere you go, I’ll follow… but I’m not letting you do this. I… I don’t know what he’s told you or what he’s promised, but you can’t trust him. You can’t listen to him, okay? We… we need to go now. We have to get out of here.”

There’s a broken look on Will’s face. “It’s the only way to make this stop,” he whispers, his voice cracking. “I… I can’t… I can’t anymore, Mike… I… I’m losing my mind, and-and it’s… it’s too much. It’s the only way. That’s the only way he’ll stop.” 

Mike shakes his head and takes another step towards Will and towards the massive gate. “Will, no,” he says softly. “He… he’s a liar. Do you really think he’ll stop just… just because you go to him? You’d be giving him exactly what he wants, and then what? You said it yourself! He’s not going to stop . He won’t stop, Will. You can’t listen to him… We’ll find another way. We will. I promise you, Will. We’ll figure this out and figure out how to beat him, so you can be free again. But you can’t listen to him… you… you can’t give up, okay? Please, Will.”

For a moment, Will is completely silent. There’s a look of complete anguish on his face and tears welling in his eyes. His entire frame is trembling, and he shuts his eyes tightly, forcing himself to take a shuddered breath.

Then, Will takes a step towards him, and Mike breathes a sigh of relief.

“Come here,” Mike whispers, and somehow, as if gravity were pulling the two of them together, both he and Will move towards each other, colliding into a desperate, relieved hug. “I’ve got you, Will… I’ve got you. You’re going to be okay. I promise. You’re going to be okay.”

“I’m sorry,” Will sobs, leaning his head on Mike’s shoulder. “I-I’m sorry… I didn’t… I don’t know why…”

Mike just hugs his best friend tighter, shushing him gently. “It’s okay… You’re okay,” he reassures. “I know, Will… I know.”

Will hesitantly looks up, and for the first time in a long time, there’s clarity in his eyes. He still looks exhausted and terrified, but he also… he also looks like Will. 

“I love you,” Will whispers, reaching up and placing his hand on Mike’s cheek. “I… I love you too. I do. I do.”

For a moment, all is right with the world, and Mike’s heart just soars. Because Will loves him. Will loves him. There’s so much still left to figure out, but Will loves Mike and Mike loves Will, and that’s all that matters at this moment.

But nothing good ever lasts forever.

For Mike, it’s like everything happens in slow motion. He opens his mouth to tell Will that he loves him too—God, Mike loves him so much—but he never gets the chance.

Because suddenly, Will is yanked out of Mike’s arms, and he falls to the ground with a pained yelp. Then suddenly, Will is being dragged backwards—right back towards the gate. And suddenly, Will is screaming Mike’s name with sheer terror in his voice.

Suddenly, Will is pulled into the Upside Down and disappears right before Mike’s very eyes.

Time works at its normal speed again, and a scream tears itself from Mike’s lips.

“WILL! ”

Mike runs towards the gate as fast as he can, his heart pounding inside his chest.

There’s no hesitation. No question, no doubts in Mike’s mind. 

Where Will goes, Mike promised he would always follow.

So, without giving it another thought, Mike jumps through the gate and into the Upside Down.

but i feel something, when i see you now.

Will’s descent into madness ends like this.

A moment of clarity—of peace—finally breaking through months and months of turmoil and brokenness. A moment of freedom from this… this evil that has lingered over him like a dark cloud for so long. A moment of light finally breaking through the darkness. causing the voices to quiet and the visions to stop and his mind to feel at ease.

A moment of love becoming Will’s saving grace, and Will all but collapsing into it—safe, protected, cherished, and so, so loved by the person whom he has loved for years now.

Safety. A lifeline. Something—no, someone—to ground him back to reality. A promise that everything will be okay, and for the first time in a long time… a hope that this promise will be kept.

Then:

A new descent.

A descent twelve months in the making. A descent which was the end goal all along, Will realizes now. 

A descent back into the Upside Down.

The vines wraps themselves around Will’s ankles faster than he can even realize it, and they pull, ripping him out of the safety and the warmth of Mike’s arms. They pull, knocking Will off his feet and dragging him painfully across the pavement. They pull, dragging Will through the familiar, sticky membrane of the gate to the Upside Down.

The poisonous membrane burns as it touches Will’s skin, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he wonders if that’s new—if somehow, like a virus, the Upside Down has adapted and made itself more deadly. The Upside Down’s strange gravity pulls him in, and Will’s stomach completely turns as the vines drag him in, all but throwing him aside.

He lands on the ground with a pained groan, and for a moment, Will just lies there, trying to catch his breath. Already, the air feels heavier and harder to breathe in, and Will curls in on himself, dread filling his heart.

No, no, no, he can’t… He can’t be back here. Oh God, oh God, he can’t be back here. No, no, he can’t… he can’t do this again; God, he can’t—

A crash startles Will out of his thoughts. It’s followed by a pained groan, and Will’s eyes shoot open in complete surprise.

“Mike?”

“Will!” Mike shouts, his eyes wide. There’s a dazed look on his face, but he gets to his feet, stumbling over to Will. He, too, is covered in the sticky goo-like membrane from the gate, but he all but throws himself at Will, hugging him tightly. “Holy shit, you’re okay… Shit, I’m so glad you’re okay.”

For a moment, Will just sits there, completely stunned and unable to process what’s going on. Though his mind feels much clearer now and… and free from whatever had been happening to him, he’s still completely exhausted and not entirely able to think straight.

“Mike,” Will whispers, once his brain finally catches up. He wraps his arms around his best friend, and Mike’s arms tighten around him in response. “You… you came after me? What the hell were you thinking?!”

Mike pulls back. There’s an exasperated but serious look on his face. “There’s no way in hell I wouldn’t come after you! I’m not letting you get stuck here alone again!”

“Yeah, but…” Will looks around, shaking his head, and that feeling of dread washes over him like a tidal wave once more. “Now… now we’re both stuck here, Mike. You… you shouldn’t have… You shouldn’t have come after me.”

“Will,” Mike says. His voice is soft, but he gives Will a look. “I told you. Wherever you go, I’ll follow. That includes the Upside Down. There’s no chance in hell I would’ve left you down here alone, especially … especially since that’s what he wanted.”

There's a nervous look on Mike's face, and Will shudders at the reminder, leaning close to his best friend. “We have to get out of here,” he whispers. “Shit, we need to get out of here before… before he figures out we’re he—”

Will never gets the chance to finish the sentence.

The hairs on the back of his neck stand up straight, and a chill runs down his spine. An overwhelming feeling of darkness and of evil fills the air around them—so palpable that even Mike tenses.

“It is time,” an all-too familiar voice says slowly, and Will looks around, trying to find him. 

Above them, lightning crashes. Both Mike and Will look up instinctively.

And Will’s heart nearly stops in his chest.

Because there, in the sky above them, is the shadowy figure of the Mind Flayer.

“O-oh God,” Will whispers. His chest feels tight, and he can’t breathe. God, he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe because he knows what's coming next, and he can't, he can't, he can't—

Mike’s arms tighten around Will protectively, but he’s trembling too, just as terrified as Will is. 

“It is time,” Vecna whispers again, as the Mind Flayer begins to descend from the sky, faster, faster, faster than Will can even process.

And as the shadowy particles of the Mind Flayer collide with Will once again, filling up his entire being and overtaking everything, the only thing he can hear is Vecna’s voice whisper three familiar words.

“Welcome home, Will.”