Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Thursday has always been Mike’s least favorite day of the week. Apparently, even after the end of the world, this fact remains the same.

It starts when he’s creeping down the stairs for a glass of water. It’s late– must be two or three in the morning. Sleep used to come easy to him; he’d be the last one up in the morning at sleepovers, trudging to the breakfast table after all the good maple syrup was already used up. Always running late to school and stressing his mom out, pissing off his dad, exasperating his teachers.

But things have been a bit different lately. There’s the fault lines running jagged and chasmic through the city. There’s the spores. And the fires. There’s El with her hair buzzed close to her scalp where it used to be long enough to braid and throw back over one shoulder. And there’s Max Mayfield alone in a hospital bed somewhere in the middle of Hawkins Center, hooked up to a machine to keep her breathing because her lungs can’t do it well enough on their own. 

And also, Mike can’t sleep anymore. So he figures that maybe this is what really signals that normalcy is now a thing of the past, if the rest of it weren’t enough.

Anyways, back to Thursdays. Because Thursdays suck.

His first sign that something is wrong is that the TV light is off, and the recliner is empty. Mike doesn’t remember a night in the last seven years where his dad hadn’t fallen asleep in front of the TV, even just turned to white noise static on an empty channel, stretched out across his La-Z-Boy and snoring. He catches this by the time he gets down the third step.

The second thing is that his parents bedroom door is open, and it’s empty. Mike frowns. He’s not really sure where his parents would be, because they’re not really the type to have an evening life, much less a night life, much less a night life in the middle of the– hello– end of the world, so.

He’s down to the bottom of the stairs, nearly turning the corner around the banister, when he hears it:

“No, Ted,” Karen is saying, louder than he’s ever heard her talk without flat-out yelling, especially in the middle of the night. “I’m not going.”

His father’s problem, Mike thinks, leaning against the banister with a sour curiosity building in his gut, is that Ted Wheeler is the kind of guy that assumes people always care about what he has to say. No matter how mundane, no matter how irate, or whatever else in between. So he hasn’t ever really learned how to talk to people– like, how to actually make a point without just yelling the same words louder and louder until the other person just gives in. And that’s, like, the sort of repetitive pattern that makes you think you’re good at things you’re actually really shit at.

Right now, Ted Wheeler probably thinks he’s winning this argument. “It’s my family, Karen!” he’s shouting, and Mike frowns harder. “You think I’m going to let my family rot away in this hellhole of a town? Earthquakes and fires every day and the military can’t do a damn thing about it. Three years of chemical leaks and kids going missing and government cover ups and– and all that nonsense with the Russians.” He pauses, and Mike can hear his breathing even from his spot on the stairs. “We’re going,” he says, like his word is finality, and there’s something very cold and sharp settling to the bottom of Mike’s gut, “we’re going. My brother’s in Ohio. Your sister in Missouri– doesn’t matter. We’re getting the hell out. I refuse to pay for water, taxes, and electricity in a town that can’t even patch me into the pharmacy to buy Tylenol–”

“No,” he hears his mom say, loud and insistent enough for Ted Wheeler to, once in his life, go silent.

Mike sits down on the last step, waiting. Listening.

“No,” his mom is saying, in the same voice she’d use when he plagiarized his essay that one time, or when he’d asked to visit El and Will in California over Thanksgiving, except no one told him that his great-aunt had just died, so it wasn’t insensitive to ask if he didn’t know, okay? “No,” she says again, “Nancy’s eighteen. You can’t make her go. And she won’t– I know it, she won’t. Jonathan’s here. Her friends are here. Everything she’s worked so hard for is here–”

“What about her family,” Ted shoots back, “you don’t think she’d move to be with her family?”

His mom is probably thinking the same thing Mike is: how Nancy’s been working her ass off for all of high school on the off-chance of escaping to Boston and not having to be with her family anymore.

Mike leans his forehead against the bannister, head throbbing. He’s thirsty, and tired, but there’s not much he can do about either of those things now, apparently. “Not with college starting in the fall,” his mom gets out at last. “She’s not going to do all this six months before. Not after everything she’s been through.”

“Holly,” his dad says immediately, and there’s a noise like he’s suddenly banged his fist down onto the table. “Holly, then. What about her? You can’t– you can’t just keep her here, Karen. It’s not safe.”

“Of course I want her to be safe, Ted.” There’s a sound like a chair scraping against the ground, and then a barely audible sigh. “But what are you going to do? Take her with you to God knows where? When the rest of her family is still here? On your own?”

Mike waits for the second half of that thought, the part where his father goes, ‘Well, what about Michael? He’s Holly’s family. What are you going to do with him?’

Instead–

Silence.

A heavy silence, perhaps, but silence all the same.

Mike’s still thirsty. He’s still tired. He’s–

–he’s starting to think that maybe drinking out of the bathroom tap would be fine, actually. There’s something settling weird and low in his stomach, like the gravel that would sink down to the bottom of Nancy’s old fishbowl– scattered, floating aimlessly, rolling with each small movement of the water.

He stands back up and the floorboards shift beneath his feet, creaking gently. Mike takes a cautious step to the left. He’s lived here for his whole life; he knows where the beams of the house have settled and where the wood of the stairs has gone malleable and forgiving with age. This time, when he moves, it’s silent. 

There’s a sound like a second chair being moved back, and another bereaved sigh.

“Karen,” Ted is saying, with all the compassion and tact of a goddamn mortgage collector, “let’s talk about this. Let’s be reasonable. There’s no reason to tear this family apart for nostalgia’s sake.”

“It’s not nostalgia, Ted,” Karen bites out, “it’s my family. It’s my– it’s our kids.”

My kids, Mike thinks, rubbing at his eyes with one hand as he makes his way back upstairs. Our kids. 

He doesn’t stay behind long enough to hear the rest of the conversation.

“I heard about your dad.”

Mike turns around, halfway up his porch with a sleeping bag under his arm and three pillows shoved under his other. He frowns. “What?”

Will’s standing there, at the other end of his driveway, duffel bag slung over one shoulder and suitcase handle grasped in the other hand like he’s just pulling in from the airport to visit over a school holiday. “I heard about your dad,” Will says again, eyebrows tilting up in apology, taking a few tentative steps forward. “I’m sorry.”

Mike looks down to where the gravel is crunching softly under Will’s feet. He shrugs– he’s not going to lie and say it’s like, okay– but Mike would be lying if he said he didn’t see it coming. Not Ted Wheeler running off to his asshole brother’s place in Ohio, the one that’s got a fancy lawyer job in a city where a lot less could get you a four-bedroom house with a three-car garage and a pool. That part was a bit unexpected, Mike’s got to be honest. But the leaving– and, more importantly, Karen Wheeler not trying to make him stay– that’s been a long time coming. 

“It’s fine,” he says at last, watching the careful hunch of Will’s shoulders towards his ears, even with two giant bags in his hands. He shuffles his feet carefully against the tan bristles of the Welcome mat and looks away. “It’s– good riddance, right?”

Will frowns, almost immediately. “Mike,” he starts, making a stilted, half-motion towards Mike like he was going to maybe put his hands on Mike’s shoulder– or worse, try to hug him again, which is something Mike still can’t bring himself to actually think about since that entire fiasco at the airport. And then he stops midway, thank God, hand lifted off the handle of the suitcase and just standing there, in the middle of the porch.

“What?” Mike snaps, maybe a bit harder than he needs to, because Will’s frown immediately deepens. But look, it’s not his fault, okay? None of this is his fault– not his dad, not the Byers moving back to Hawkins, not that weird way Will is looking at him: with the air of someone who’s known Mike exactly as long as Will has, and who’s probably able to read Mike as accurately as Will is. Will, who’s giving Mike the sort of look that makes him want to say, Well, actually– and then immediately spill all his deepest darkest secrets while Will Byers nods on in front of him.

Will shifts the bags in his hands, glancing towards the door. And, oh, right, he can’t exactly go in the house because Mike’s totally blocking the door. “Nothing,” he says at last, “thanks for having us. Forget I said anything,” and then pushes past Mike into the entryway, the duffel bag hitting the door jamb with a heavy thud on his way in.

It’s a Thursday, because of course it’s a Thursday.

The Byers’ stuff is dumped all over the hall, dusty shoe prints from the walk up the driveway stamped over the used-to-be-pristine carpet of the living room. Three weeks ago, this might have been the sort of thing to set Karen Wheeler absolutely bouncing off the walls in an anxious frenzy, but now, when she comes running in from the kitchen, she’s got her shoes on and steps right through a patch of dirt someone’s tracked in, and she doesn’t even blink. And, to be fair, the Byers don’t have a lot of things, but it’s enough for Mike to expect his mom to, like, start ushering people up to their rooms and whip out a broom.

She doesn’t do that. “Joyce,” she’s saying, smiling, holding her arms out for a hug, “how are you all? It’s been so long.”

Mrs. Byers looks a bit embarrassed. “Hi, Karen,” she says, returning the embrace, “so sorry about the mess,” and then, as his mom waves her off, “we’re, uh– we’re good,” she says. “We’re doing alright.”

More out of instinct than anything else, Mike leans back in his chair and glances over at Will, the way he always used to do when people would say shit they weren’t allowed to laugh at out loud. ‘We’re doing alright,” Joyce Byers had said, as if they weren’t currently fighting off the end of the world, as if she hadn’t just broken into a Russian prison to rescue her supposedly-dead boyfriend and former Chief of Police. As if Mike and Will hadn’t just barreled across half the country via I-80 a few weeks ago, in a pizza van no less , to keep a small town in the Midwest from becoming the harbinger of the apocalypse. 

As if things were actually fine.

He’s half-expecting Will to be looking at him already, the way he used to– fighting back a smile with so much intensity that his mouth would get all tight at the corners and his eyes would almost water up with the force of it. Of that half-expectation, Mike is only another half correct– so he’s, like, a quarter correct overall, if you’re trying to do the math. Will’s looking at him, sure, but his expression is so carefully blank that Mike doesn’t think you could get it that way unless you were really trying to not look like anything at all. 

And then he’s so busy thinking about that, about the entirely alien phenomenon of Will maybe not wanting Mike to know what he’s thinking, that he frowns– very visibly, he realizes, just a half-second too late– and then Will quickly looks away.

Mike frowns harder.

“–you can take the guest room, Joyce,” his mom is saying as she surveys the people scattered throughout the first floor, because she doesn’t know any of that, of course– about the Russian prisons or doomsday or why Maxine Mayfield is tucked away in a hospital bed in a medically inexplicable coma. “And Holly and I can share the master, now that– well. And Jonathan and– sorry,” Karen pauses, frowning, “who are you?”

“I’m Argyle,” says Argyle. Thankfully, he doesn’t really seem high anymore, just maybe a little generally out of it. Which is fair, honestly– Mike’s been feeling generally out of it for the better part of the last nine months at least, so.

Karen looks to Joyce like who the hell is this in my house, and Joyce shrugs and says, “That’s Jonathan’s best friend,” and his mom must come to the same realization as the rest of them: that Jonathan Byers hasn’t really had best friends before, so this, coupled with Joyce Byers’ approval, must count for a lot. 

“Okay,” Karen continues, “Jonathan and Will can take Mike’s room, if that’s all right, and– sorry, Argyle– do you mind if we put you in Nancy’s?”

“That’s perfectly all right, Mrs. Wheeler,” Argyle says, looking a little less out of it now, “I mostly sleep on the sofa back at home anyway.”

His mom shoots Joyce another puzzled look, but must eventually decide that it’s not worth asking about. “Mike and Nancy, you two please move your things down to the basement,” she says instead, already leaning down to grab the bag closest to her and heading up the stairs.

Years ago, maybe, Mike would’ve put up some giant fuss about having to live with Nancy for the foreseeable future. But in the grand scheme of things, not having his own room anymore isn’t, like, the worst thing that could be happening. Like, their house is still intact. His family’s still alive. Will is here– and the rest of the Byers too, of course. And Argyle.

Plus, Nancy’s kind of snooty but at least she doesn’t demand lights off at nine-thirty anymore, and she’ll probably still snore– and deny it– but that part doesn’t really matter. It’s not like Mike’s sleeping much these days anyways.

“I’ve never been so happy to have a couch and a spare mattress,” Nancy says, yanking on the sofa cushions until they start unfolding with a soft creak. Mike doesn’t know why she’s making the bed, because it’s barely four in the afternoon, but alright. She nods towards the extra mattress their mom had already tugged out from storage. “Never, ever thought I’d be so happy to see that, either.”

Mike hums, eyeing the layer of dust covering the bed with mild trepidation. But, you know, he has a bed. And an intact house, and living loved ones, so he can’t complain. “Who gets what?”

Nancy eyes him, and then the pullout couch, and then the twin mattress on the floor, and then lets out a sigh. “You can have the couch,” she offers, with a long-suffering roll of her eyes, as she makes her way over to the mattress and dusts it off. “Your freakishly long legs won’t fit on this bed anyway.”

Mike should probably be offended, but he decides to maybe keep his mouth shut for now. “Probably,” he agrees gratefully, sitting on the edge of the sofa bed so the springs shift under him. He watches Nancy for a few minutes, watches the methodical way she pulls the corners of the fitted sheet over the mattress, watches her smooth out the wrinkles and dump the spare blankets on top. He’d offer to help, but one of the hallmarks of having an older sister is knowing when to shut up and back away so they don’t immediately take your head off for saying the wrong thing.

“Don’t you want to room with Jonathan,” he tries at last, as Nancy flops down onto the bed with a soft grunt. “He’s your boyfriend, isn’t that something you do? With– with significant others?”

Nancy peers up at him. “Mike,” she says, “what the hell are you talking about?”

“Uh.” Stop talking, Mike. “You know,” he says, instead of shutting the hell up, “don’t you guys want some space? Some alone time? Wait, no, not like that!” he adds after a second, waving his arms frantically in front of him as Nancy’s eyes widen. “Ew, no, I meant to, like, talk or something–”

“Mike,” Nancy says again, except she’s narrowed her eyes a dangerous amount and he’s starting to think he’s going to get his head taken off after all. “Stop talking.”

“Right,” he says weakly. “Sorry.”

Minutes pass by where neither of them say anything, where they just look around the basement as if it isn’t a room they’ve been in almost every day for most of their lives. “I do want to talk to him,” Nancy says at last, eyes still a bit narrowed. “But I don’t– well first of all, Mom would never let us stay in a room alone together,” she says, rolling her eyes, “it might be the end of the world, but it’s still mom. But also– I don’t know, I haven’t really seen him for nine months now, and there’s– you know– when you’re apart that long, you might– we have some things to talk through. And I don’t think the answer to that is shutting ourselves together in my childhood bedroom for an indefinite amount of time. I feel like we have to go slow for a bit. Not overwhelm each other.”

“Sure,” Mike says, not feeling very sure about it at all. Maybe he knows, maybe he doesn’t. What he does know is that Will had been standing in his driveway earlier, looking at him as if that week in California had somehow driven them further apart than eight months away from each other had ever managed to do– which was a lot to begin with. And that made Mike feel– well he didn’t know exactly what it was that he was feeling, but it sure wasn’t good. 

He’d been about to take the bedding inside and come back and say Hey, do you need help with those bags, and then Will had opened his mouth and said, I heard about your dad, with his shoulders all hunched up and standing hesitantly in the driveway like he thought he had to be invited inside, or something. 

Mike hasn’t invited Will to come inside his house since the second grade.

And that was kind of the whole point: that sometime between last October and now, something had settled between them, tangible and significant enough so that Will had started hearing things about Mike’s life from other people. Meaning that for the first time in ten years, Mike wasn’t the first one to tell Will something. And now Will is doing things like waiting for Mike to ask him to come inside the house, as if he’s one of his parents’ work friends or Nancy’s study date and not Will Byers. As if he’s not Mike’s best friend anymore, but someone else entirely. And that’s making Mike feel–

His head is starting to hurt.

“Did you miss him?”

Nancy blinks. “What?”

Mike waves a hand around in the air. “You know,” he starts, “when Jonathan was gone. Did you miss him?”

Nancy’s face softens. For a moment, she looks less like Nancy Wheeler– badass who’s handy with a shotgun, machete, and for some reason, according to Dustin, a molotov cocktail– and more like Nancy. “Of course I missed him,” she says quietly, picking at her fingernails, “I thought about him every single day. Every day, like, all the time. It was kind of ridiculous.”

“Right,” Mike says. He thought about Will a lot when he was gone. Probably also every day, now that he’s really stopping to consider it, but it’s a little hard to tell because it feels like thinking about Will when he was gone was pretty much his resting metabolic state for the better part of a year.

Nancy’s watching him now. “Did you,” she starts, very carefully, “you know. Is this about Eleven? About you missing her?”

Mike looks down, and then shakes his head slowly. “No,” he says, and Nancy frowns. He takes a deep breath, lets it out. “We– we broke up, actually.”

If Nancy is surprised, it doesn’t show. “Oh,” she says, eyebrows raising almost imperceptibly, and then her face goes back to normal. “Why?”

With most other people, Mike probably would make some sort of excuse– like, oh, it’s too much right now, or we’re too young, or she’s not actually into me like that– and maybe those are all a little bit true, but that’s not really the glaring issue here. “I just– I couldn’t say I loved her,” he admits, falling backwards onto the bed with a loud, creaking thump – and this is Nancy, who’s kind of weird and a pain in the ass and irritatingly aloof most of the time, but at least she has enough tact to keep her mouth shut about it if he needs her to. “She wanted me to tell her I loved her and I couldn’t– I couldn’t say it. I don’t know why.”

That’s a lie. He does know why. If someone’s begging and crying and pleading with you to say you love them– throwing every single letter you wrote them back in your face, your own panicked, half-hearted scrawl of a signature staring up at you from the floor like it’s an accusation and admittance at the same time– if they do that and you still can’t just say it, then there’s only one reason why. Only one reason why Mike couldn’t.

He’s expecting Nancy to scoff, maybe, to roll her eyes and say something about ruining a perfectly good relationship with a perfectly badass girl. Instead, her expression softens almost immediately, and she leans forward. “Yeah,” she says, eyes wide and a bit surprised, “no, I get it. That sounds– that’s a really tough situation to be in, Mike.”

“Oh,” Mike says simply, because Nancy hasn’t been this, like, nice to him in a very long time. “Okay. Um. Cool.”

“Okay,” Nancy repeats, looking a bit caught between smiling and saying something else. “Well. Are you– okay?”

Mike takes another deep breath in. The basement smells a bit musty, unfamiliar somehow. He hasn’t been in it much in the last few weeks, but it feels like it’s been a lot longer than that. “Yeah,” he says at last. He blows a soft cloud of dust off of the side table and sighs, watching the particles drift away in the lamplight. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

“Will?”

Will startles, probably harder than he should have, but Mike can’t blame him for being a bit jumpy. He’s rifling through his duffel bag, a few t-shirts folded neatly on the bed– Mike’s bed– but not much else to indicate that he’s pretty much moved in for the time being. He spots Mike in the doorway, eyes wide, then visibly relaxes.

“Oh, Mike,” he says, laughing a little nervously, “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you coming.”

“I know.” Mike offers a small smile, still dawdling with one hand on the door jamb. “I mean, I know where all the creaky spots on the stairs are, so.”

“Oh,” Will says again, hands stilled from where they’re folding the last of his clothes. He watches Mike walk from the door to the edge of the bed, unmoving and kneeling on the floor.

Mike gestures to his bed. “Can I– can I sit?”

“Oh, please,” Will nods, “I mean– it’s your room.”

“Yeah, well,” Mike shrugs, eyes darting over the small pile of Will’s belongings. “It’s yours for now.”

Will looks at him, unmoving except for the slow drag of his teeth against his lower lip, looking very much like he wants to say something but is holding himself back. “Yeah,” he says, finally putting a shirt down onto the bed and smoothing down the folded collar. “Yeah, I guess.”

“You have a lot of flannels,” Mike remarks. He spots the blue one Will was wearing the day he arrived in California, remembers that first moment walking out into the terminal like it happened just minutes ago– how he’d been looking out into the crowd and it had been like his eyes had spotted Will before his brain could properly catch up. It had been a whole lot of nameless faces and moving bodies and the dry scent of warm California air. And then, before he could even process, his vision had tunneled in on Will Byers in his blue plaid shirt, tucked neatly into his pants with his sleeves rolled up his arms, his eyes wide and searching, searching. He reaches out, rather absentmindedly,  to touch one of the buttons on the shirt. “Did it get very cold there?”

“Um. Not really.” Will reaches out to touch the button right below Mike’s hand, like he doesn’t realize he’s doing it either. “It got a bit breezy during– during wintertime, but it was alright.”

Mike was supposed to visit over Christmas. He was supposed to visit over Thanksgiving, before that, but that didn’t happen. So then he was supposed to visit over Christmas, and that didn’t happen either, and then before he knew it, it had been eight months and Will Byers hadn’t written or called for almost six of them.

And Mike hadn’t– well, Mike had tried. He’d tried, really, but then the words had come out all weird and pleading as soon as he’d gotten them down on paper, like he was asking a lot more than Will surely had the capacity to give. And it had all been fine in his head, when he’d been thinking it– things like, I miss you, and It’s not the same here without you, and I’m counting down the days until I get to see you again, and the casual Love you he’d scrawled at the bottom without even thinking about it, even when it had made him feel all funny inside to try and write the same thing on El’s. And then he’d seen it all down on paper and Will’s letter had been three times the length of El’s and ten times as real, and Mike had ended up just shoving them all into a box in the corner instead. Out of sight, out of mind– or whatever.

It was fine, he had told himself then, dropping the singular letter into the mailbox and trying to ignore the swooping burn of guilt growing inside him, ugly and parasitic in its persistence. He’d written in El’s letter to say hi to Will from him, and that– that had to be enough, right? Will would be able to tell that Mike missed him. Will had always been able to tell– he’d always been able to read between Mike’s lines in a way that no one else could. And it would be fine, because Mike would call as soon as the line was finally free, and then they’d talk, and then it would be–

Will’s saying something. Mike’s totally spaced out.

He blinks. “What?”

Will raises his eyebrows. “Is that why you came in here?” he repeats, looking back down at the blue flannel. “To ask me about the weather in Lenora?”

“Kind of,” Mike says, and then, “well no, not about the weather specifically. I just– I wanted to talk to you.”

“Oh.” And Will looks a lot more surprised at this, actually, than the idea that Mike might have just wanted to come to his room just to make small talk about unseasonably frigid California winters. “Okay. What about?”

“Anything.” The response is embarrassingly immediate. “Everything. I don’t know. I missed you.”

“You saw me just a few weeks ago,” Will laughs, “remember?”

“Well yeah,” Mike flails, “but– I don’t know. It feels weird being back, you know?”

“Yeah, I get it.” Will stacks his shirts carefully on top of each other, folded with the collar at the top like they have them in the good department stores. He makes to get up, before pausing. “Sorry, I didn’t want to assume– should I put these in the–”

“You can take the dresser,” Mike nods, “or the closet, or the– I mean, you’re taking this room now, so you can put them wherever you want. Wherever Jonathan doesn’t want, I guess.”

“Oh.” Will’s been saying that a lot today. He doesn’t get up though, just sets the clothes back on the bed. “I’ll figure it out. It’s not like I have much anyway.”

“You can borrow some of my things,” Mike blurts out, before maybe stopping to properly assess the sort of damage that seeing Will in his sweatpants and jeans and sweaters might cause. “I mean, if you– you know. You need to.”

Will doesn’t say anything for a few moments. Mike taps his fingers against his bedspread– these sheets he’s had for most of his life now somehow seem so alien compared to the quilted cotton of the Byers’ new house or the smooth leather of the backseat of a pizza van.

And then: “Why are you really here, Mike?” Will asks, watching him a bit warily, with a polite but entirely unenthusiastic smile. He looks tired. “What do you– what is this?”

Mike gets hit with the most sudden and intense deja-vu of his entire life– sitting on the bed while Will Byers packs his clothes on the floor, trying to work up the courage to say something– anything– that’s actually significant. Watching Will duck his head to look away, like the eye contact is physically hurting him to maintain. Stealing skating glances at Will’s frame, still new and unfamiliar to him from what it was nine months ago: his hair shorter in the back than before, revealing the solid curve of his jaw and the slope of his neck. His slight tan. The soft lines of his shoulders broader now where they didn’t use to be. 

It’s all so familiar: how that day, Mike felt like maybe if he stared hard enough, he’d be able to see right through this new Will– the one that barely talked to him his whole first day in California, who snapped at him about El and couldn’t even look at him at dinner– and he’d be able to find his friend.

And now it’s like this, right, like Will is here– he’s here and physically present and he’s making small talk with Mike and asking him about his family, but that’s not stuff Will does. Will’s never made small talk with him in his life.

“I wanted to, you know– I wanted to say I’m sorry,” Mike starts, and the weird deja-vu feeling only grows. “For snapping at you earlier, when you got here.”

Will just keeps looking at him. “What?”

“You know,” Mike says, “you were trying to be nice and I was being totally rude–”

“Mike.” Will lets out a small, incredulous laugh. “You’re apologizing for that?” Mike nods, and Will  laughs again.

“Don’t,” he says, “it’s okay, seriously. I ambushed you–” he didn’t– “and it was totally insensitive–” it wasn’t– “and you don’t need to apologize for that. You already– we’ve already had this conversation, remember,” he adds, turning a bit pink.

So maybe Mike isn’t the only one dealing with some deja vu, here.

“Yeah,” Mike smiles weakly, “but– after that I was so preoccupied, you know, with, uh– with El and the– all of that. That wasn’t fair to you.”

Will’s fidgeting with the buttons of his shirt. “You had every right to be preoccupied,” he says, looking down again, “your– El was in danger. Real danger. You wanted to keep her safe. I wasn’t– it wasn’t about me.”

“There’s no reason it couldn’t have also been about you,” Mike insists, something like that weird sinking feeling fluttering around his gut again at Will’s sudden insistence that he, what, shouldn’t be a priority in Mike’s life anymore? “I just feel so far from you now, is that weird? Even though you’re here and we’re together again, I’ve never felt so far away from anybody. Like, what is this? Small talk?” He huffs out a laugh. “We’ve never made small talk before. Ever.”

“That’s true.” Will’s smiling a bit more now, which feels like a pretty big victory. “Yeah that was– please don’t ever ask me about the weather again,” he says, which makes another laugh start to bubble up in Mike’s chest.

“Deal,” Mike agrees, “and uh.” He hesitates, plucking aimlessly at a loose thread on the sheets, wrapping it around his index finger and letting it fall slack again. “I know I said this before, in California, but I don’t think it really stuck– you’re my best friend Will,” he says, trying to sound as earnest as possible because it’s felt like best friend hasn’t really been cutting it lately, but Mike isn’t sure what else to call it or how else to say it to convey the entire, heavy truth of the fact. “I’m sorry I ever made you feel like you weren’t.”

Will takes in a breath, barely audible even in the quiet of the room. “Mike, you already– I already said it was okay.”

“Yeah, you said,” Mike points out, “and then I was an asshole all over again. Not about the thing earlier, about my dad, but all the parts in between California and, like, coming back here. You wouldn’t even look at me the entire time we were driving through Iowa. And El wouldn’t either but that’s– you know. I’m sorry I upset you.”

“It– that wasn’t you,” Will shakes his head, “you didn’t do anything wrong. That’s on me. I was just being–”

He stops. Another deep breath.

And then Will gives a minute shake of his head and looks up, a pleasantly surprised smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Thank you, Mike. For saying all that. It means, uh. It means a lot. To me.”

Mike heart does a surprised ba-bump in his chest. “Of course,” he says, nodding rapidly, “yeah, of course– and I meant all of it, I hope you know, I wasn’t just, like, saying it for the hell of it–”

“Yeah,” and Will’s nodding too, and then, “I’m– I’m really glad to be back here with you.”

With you. Mike’s heart trips over a second beat. He grins. “I’m glad to be back too. With you, that is,” he adds, “because, like, come on. There’s really no reason I’d want to be here otherwise. Now, especially.”

Will blinks. “Oh,” he says, and then the slow implication of what he’d just said dawns on Mike in a flush that’s surely spreading from across his face right down to the hem of his socks. 

Will is looking a bit stunned. “Um,” he says, ears turning steadily more pink by the second, “you–”

“I didn’t–” Mike starts, “I mean–”

There’s a soft knock on the door, and Mike startles, pitching himself back fast enough to almost topple over the long side of the bed. He gets it now, why Will had jumped so hard when he’d come in.

And the door’s actually already open, but apparently Jonathan Byers finds it necessary to knock anyway. He’s holding a sleeping bag and a pillow under one arm, and a small bag of his own in the other. “Sorry to interrupt,” he says, not looking very sorry at all. “Mom was asking for you, Will,” he says, still looking right at Mike.

“Oh,” Will says, scrambling up from the floor, “yeah, okay, is–”

“Everything’s fine,” Jonathan says. He narrows his eyes, almost imperceptibly, and Mike figures maybe that’s his cue to haul ass out of here.

“Sorry,” he says for good measure, and climbs off the bed, making his way towards the door. He feels oddly flustered for the interaction in question, dusting his pants off as he turns back to look at Will. “Um,” he says. “Let me know if you– if you need anything. Or, you know, if you remember where something is just feel free to, like, get it. Um.”

Will looks caught somewhere between amusement and mortification. “Thanks,” he says, smiling a bit, still standing awkwardly by the bed with his body angled towards Jonathan. “I’ll– I’ll let you know, yeah?”

Mike nods again, backing slowly out of the room.

Jonathan hasn’t stopped squinting at him.

Things are…

Well, Mike isn’t going to lie and say they’re great. The sky is kind of falling down around them in showers of ash and mysterious spores. The town is kind of split four ways by chasms running straight through concrete and dirt and brick. The world is kind of ending. A little, maybe.

But relative to everything else, things are pretty good in the Wheeler household right now. The Wheeler household, minus Ted, plus the Byers, and also Argyle. And also Will is here– so even if it were just the two of them sitting in a leveled field watching the sky catch on fire, it could be worse as far as Mike is concerned.

Time passes slowly.

It’s like when Mike was little, and he’d try to walk along the bottom of the Hawkins Community Pool from one end to another, spending seemingly forever with his muscles straining and lungs aching, fighting buoyancy with every molecule in his body, just to come up for air four feet away from where he began. It’s crazy how much time seems to go by without actually passing at all.

On Saturday, they help make dinner. On Sunday, they reorganize the bathrooms so everyone’s things can fit. On Monday, they discover an old VHS tape of Snow White and watch it with Holly. She watches it another two times after that, but Mike and Will have both exhausted their daily quota for princess movies by then. On Tuesday, they find a VHS of Robin Hood, but Holly decides she likes Snow White better.

And on Wednesday, Will helps Mike clean out the garage. Some of the stuff they have can definitely be donated, but mostly, Mike just needs something to do. And Ted Wheeler took the car with him when he left, so there’s a lot of empty garage space and not a lot of things for Mike to keep himself occupied with. Other than Will, of course.

“I’ll help,” Will had declared twenty minutes ago, when Mike had poked his head into his– Will’s– room to see what he’d been up to. He’d been sitting on Mike’s– Will’s– bed, sketchbook open to a blank page and twirling a pencil absentmindedly between his fingers.

“You sure?” Mike had frowned, “you’re our guest, I don’t want to, like, put you to work or anything–”

“Mike, please,” Will had said, eyes wide, “if I have to listen to Jonathan singing The Smiths for one more second, I don’t know what I’ll do with myself.”

“You love The Smiths,” Mike pointed out as they made their way down the stairs.

“Yeah,” Will had scoffed, watching Mike jump the last step and laughing as he skidded a few inches across the hardwood floor, “but I don’t love Jonathan’s singing.”

The garage is mostly full of junk: Holly’s baby clothes that they never got around to handing off to relatives, old water-stained books and moth-eaten shirts that are probably older than he is, even. Mike isn’t sure whether the people at the donation center would even want this stuff, whether it would be, like, offensive to show up with a box of his mom’s stuff from the literal fifties.

“Ew.” Will wrinkles his nose, holding up a ball of black fabric by the very tips of his fingers. “What is this?”

Mike prods at it with the end of a metal rod from a disassembled shelf. “I don’t know,” he frowns, “but the real question– why is it damp?”

They make their way through the boxes slowly, most of the stuff they find getting tossed as trash. Mike isn’t really sure if the trash services are even running at this point, but honestly, who even cares? And some of the other stuff they find– spare towels, old blankets– gets set aside. Mike finds a whole bunch of cheesy old romance books that Nancy swore she never read, even though they’re in a box marked Nancy, so he’s definitely remembering that for later.

It’s also just kind of disgusting work. Things are dusty and dirty and they find multiple dead mice in the corners of the garage, the parts that really haven’t seen the light of day since his parents moved into this house. Mike, though he’d have to have this tortured out of him before he told anyone, might have screamed like a little girl when he saw the first one. And then Will had to run over to make sure Mike hadn’t gotten, like, cornered by a Demogorgon somehow, and then– after he finally stopped laughing– he’d grabbed a broom and dumped the poor thing on the lawn.

Plus, Mike definitely smells horrible. He’s probably sweat through this shirt three times over, because it’s mid-afternoon on an April day in Hawkins, and the garage door is kept tightly shut (except for the mouse incident) so they don’t, like, let in any more of the noxious maybe-spores than strictly necessary. “Okay,” he says, maybe three hours after they’ve started, when the garage is spic and span but that’s also probably because Mike’s attracted all that dirt onto his own body. “That’s probably good.”

Will doesn’t appear to be faring much better. Or– well, he’s just as sweaty as Mike is, but it looks better on him, somehow. Can sweat be worn as an accessory? Mike isn’t sure, but it seems like Will’s doing it anyway. “You sure?” Will puts down the last of the boxes he was moving. “I can help some more if you need me to.”

“I don’t care about that,” Mike says, gesturing down at himself and pulling a face. “I need a shower.”

“Yeah,” Will snorts, looking him up and down,  “you really do.”

Mike throws his dirty rag at him, which Will dodges much too easily for his liking. “You’re not looking that much better yourself,” Mike grumbles, which is a flat-out lie. Will is– he’s looking a lot better, actually.

Will wipes at his brow with the back of one hand, and sighs. “I haven’t been this gross in– well, not since our cross-country drive,” he says, contemplatively rubbing at a stain on the thigh of his jeans. 

“Oh, God,” Mike lets his head fall into his hands. “No. I don’t want to talk about that.”

It’s weird, now that Mike’s thinking about it, that this is the first time Will’s bringing that up. Their drive across the country– and Mike hadn’t wanted to push, because Will had somehow managed to speak a grand total of maybe fifteen words across six states, so he’d figured maybe that was enough of a cue to shut up and let Will talk when he was ready.

Except Will hadn’t talked; he’d almost disappeared entirely in the weeks between their return and moving into the Wheelers’, when Hopper’s cabin got too big for six people– two of whom the government presumed to be, like, dead– and they’d decided maybe it was a bit too conspicuous to have the other four people going to and from the same abandoned spot in the middle of the woods all the time.

“Yeah, well.” Will drops his hand, coming to sit down next to Mike on the threshold steps. “Sometimes– maybe this is totally off, but there were times I’ve been thinking– maybe we should talk about it. The trip, I mean, not the– not the grossness.”

“Oh,” Mike says simply, watching Will lean forward with his elbows on his knees. He’ll talk when he’s ready, he’d told himself. “Um. Okay. What’s up?”

Will doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Mike watches a bead of sweat make its way down the back of his neck, disappearing down the back of his not-so-white-anymore shirt. He’s got a smudge of something dark gray right behind his ear. Mike wants to– he wants to maybe reach out and rub it off. 

There’s something about Will that Mike can’t put his finger on, the strange magnetism surrounding him that Mike is sure hadn’t been there before. The way Mike can feel his own body gravitating towards Will when he’s nearby, the sudden urge to press his hands firmly to Will’s arm or shoulder or neck or cheek, even if just to confirm that what he’s seeing is real and in front of him. Mike is sure none of that was there before Will moved away. He would’ve noticed if it had been.

“You were apologizing to me the other day,” Will starts, “but that’s not– you didn’t have to do that.”

Mike frowns. “Of course I did, are you kidding? I upset you, I must have hurt your feelings because I was being a total asshole, and you didn’t even say anything to me, like, the whole drive back to Hawkins, and you wouldn’t have done that if you weren’t–”

“Mike, stop,” Will gets out. It comes out a bit strained. He’s closed his eyes, drawing his knees up to his chest. “Can you please– can you stop that?”

Mike stops. “What? What did I do?”

“You’re– you keep saying sorry,” Will says, “but it’s not your fault. You said sorry back in Lenora, in my room. And that was– that was fine. You said best friends, so we– so we’re best friends again, that’s fine. You say, like, one maybe-rude thing to me in your driveway and then you’re in front of me apologizing again, saying we’re best friends again, and it’s–”

“Okay,” Mike says slowly, leaning forward so he’s level with Will’s face. Will’s saying a lot of things, but– “I’m– I don’t think I get it,” Mike shakes his head, “sorry, what’s– what’s the problem here, exactly?”

Will’s still got his fingers pressed against his temples, looking away into the opposite corner of the garage. They’d cleaned that one last, leaving behind mostly an empty shelving unit and a few copies of X-Men that Mike thought maybe Lucas would get gross and sentimental about. “I get it, okay,” he says at last, “we’re best friends. I get it.”

What? “What?” Mike’s head is spinning, something tugging sharply at his gut. “Will, what– you were the one who was stuck on it, remember,” he gets out, watching Will watch the far corner like there’s something there Mike isn’t seeing. “At the– at the roller rink place,” Mike points out, “what happened to ‘we used to be best friends,’ I mean, I thought this was what you wanted. I’m trying to apologize because I was an asshole, but–”

“It was,” Will responds, “I mean, it is. It is what I want. It’s–”

Sometimes, Mike thinks he’d like to grab Will by the shoulders and shake. As it is, it’s a close thing because his hand is already moving, not even bothering to maybe consult the motor skills region of his brain first, and it lands somewhere on the top of Will’s knee, right under the unidentified stain on his jeans.

Will jerks back, like Mike just took a swing at him.

“Whoa.” Mike pulls his hand away. Shit, shit– he’s messing this up. He’s really messing this up. Will is upset, upset at him– and Mike doesn’t know why Will’s upset at him but it’s putting something bitter in his chest and sour down the back of his throat to think about either way. “I didn’t– sorry, are you–”

Will stands up, fast. “I’m fine.”

“Will, what is this? Everything was– we were good a second ago. We were better than good, we were–” 

Maybe it’s a bit desperate, but he doesn’t even have enough of a grasp on the situation to yell. He doesn’t know what’s going on enough to get mad about it. He might have, if this hadn’t happened so fast– if Will hadn’t gone entirely zero to a hundred faster than Mike could even process his first protest about it, he might have yelled. Might have called bullshit, maybe, except he doesn’t know what the hell Will is yelling about, so maybe he can’t really call bullshit in the first place.

It’s just like back at the roller rink, Mike thinks, watching Will tap nervous fingers against his thigh. It feels like Will is always doing this to him. It’s like the roller rink, and that entire mess of a night last summer in his garage, rain coming down in sheets outside and the soft clicking of Will’s bike chain as he pedaled away. Will’s always doing this– this thing where Mike thinks they’re okay, and everything is fine, except apparently they’re not. And he never catches on until things are really not okay, and they’re really not fine, and by that point, he’s gone and put his foot too far in his mouth to take it out again.

Why can’t Will just– why doesn’t Will just talk to him anymore? A year and a half ago, Will would have told him the second something was wrong. And it never would have grown into this– words boiling over on a hair trigger that Mike never even knows about until it’s too late.

When Will finally meets his eyes, his expression is very carefully calm. “We’re still good,” he says, trying for a nonchalant shrug. And his voice has mostly gone back to normal, but the giveaway is written all over his face: the set of his jaw, the tightening of his lips. “It’s just, sometimes I think– Sorry. It’s been a long day.”

He’s right about that. It’s barely six and Mike feels like it’s been Wednesday for at least a week. “Are you sure?” Mike tries. “You can– if I did something, you can tell me. You should tell me, because you’re kind of stuck here with me for the foreseeable future, so.”

Will seems to come to this realization at the same time Mike does. Still, he shakes his head. “No,” he says, and tucks his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “It’s– nothing. It’s nothing. I think I’m just a little tired.” He glances towards the door to the house, and then back at Mike, unmoving.

Mike waits.

“Do you– do you think I could shower first?” Will says at last, “I might go lie down for a while.”

“Oh,” Mike frowns, and then steps out of the way of the door. “Yeah, of course– sorry, I hope I didn’t make you, like, overexert yourself.”

Will shakes his head again. “No,” he says, a bit more earnestly this time, “no, it’s not that, I promise.”

“Okay,” Mike says simply. He doesn’t know what else to say. “Okay, um. Yeah.”

Will’s got one hand on the doorknob when Mike says it– because he’s sick of it, so sick of that look Will gets on his face when he’s trying not to say something, so sick of wanting to grab him by the shoulders and yell, Talk to me!

So sick of this repetitive ebb and flow– having Will and losing him again. Fixing things and breaking them again. Things falling into place and then apart again. He’s so sick of messing things up, of Will’s inexplicable magnetic pull being countered by nothing but parallel repulsion, like every time he tries to get closer, they just end up farther apart than when they started.

He’s so sick of it.

“Will,” Mike blurts out, still standing there by the garage steps, arms hanging by his side. He curls his fingers up into fists, lets them slacken again.

Will doesn’t turn around, but he does pause. “Yeah?”

“Are we- are we okay? Actually? Because if we’re not– you need to tell me. Just tell me right now if we’re not okay,” Mike says, all at once, watching Will’s shoulders creep up towards his ears, something hammering away in his chest. “I don’t– I can’t do this with you again. Not now. So if there’s something I need to do, something I didn’t say–”

Will takes in a deep breath, then looks over his shoulder. “You don’t need to–” he says with a small smile, but it’s not quite reaching his eyes. “Seriously. I’m just tired.”

Mike doesn’t believe him in the slightest. But Will Byers is stubborn and resilient and he’s standing at the door like every muscle in his body is tensing with the effort to not throw it open and run inside. And that was the whole reason Mike hadn’t even said anything in the first place– because you’d be hard-pressed to get Will to talk about something he didn’t want to talk about, so Mike knows that this conversation will end the second Will turns the doorknob.

“Okay,” he says at last, because there’s nothing else to say, really. And his head is spinning so rapidly that he isn’t sure he could form words if he tried. 

They were– they were good, just a few minutes ago. They were better than good, even. Mike had been thinking, just now when he’d been tossing his dirty towel at Will and watching him dance out of the way to avoid it, that it had been nice to see Will laughing, to see some of the tension slough off his shoulders from where he’d been carrying it around for weeks. Mike had thought– well, Mike had felt something go loose and pliant in his stomach watching Will work, making easy talk about their moms’ cooking or Holly’s Snow White tape. It had felt, for a while, like the world wasn’t crumbling to ash around them. Like his best friend had come back to him. Like they were Will and Mike again.

“Okay,” Mike repeats, “sorry, yeah, you can have– you can get dibs on the shower.”

Will nods, turning back around, and then steps inside the house without another word.

Will’s always been good at hiding.

That’s been great for Will, given the whole Upside Down thing, but it kind of sucks for Mike. He isn’t sure how Will’s managing to make himself scarce in a house that’s packed to the brim with seven people, but he’s doing it. When Mike checks the dining room, he’s in the bathroom. When he checks the bathroom, Mrs. Byers says he’s in Mike’s– Will’s– room. And there, Jonathan’s already fixing him with the sort of look that makes Mike think maybe it’s time to give up for the day and go back to the basement.

The next day is a Thursday, because of course it is. 

Mike hates Thursdays.

It used to be because he’d wake up every Thursday thinking it was Friday, get excited, then have to do it all again the next day before the weekend arrived, dragging his feet through the halls and trying not to fall asleep.

Now– well, it’s probably just a subconscious nostalgia thing, because Wednesdays, Mondays, Saturdays, Fridays– time’s running all over itself until Mike can’t really make sense of days anymore, much less, like, hours or minutes.

He knows today is Thursday though, because his mom’s trying to fight through the battered phone lines to have her weekly settlement call with his dad. Another reason to hate Thursdays.

“Why is mom yelling at the phone?” Holly’s sitting on the living room floor, peering up at him.

“Uh,” Mike starts, because he’s not really sure how to get into the intricacies of separation and loveless marriages to someone who was ordering off the kids menu at a restaurant a month ago. And then their mom’s voice carries in louder from the kitchen, and Holly frowns, and Mike quickly says, “Hey, do you want to watch Snow White again?”

That was a mistake. Mike is so fucking sick and tired of this movie, but Holly must be on her tenth rewatch by now and still going strong. “That’s weird,” Mike points out, when the kiss scene is about to come up again, “don’t kiss someone when they’re passed out in the woods. That’s weird, okay?”

Holly slowly chews on another cracker. “But it’s so romantic,” she protests, which it’s really not, “it’s true love. I wish I could have a prince.”

Mike snorts, reaches for a cracker himself. “That’s not romance, Holly,” he says, with the air of someone a lot more knowledgeable about this topic than he really is. “Kissing an unconscious stranger in the middle of the forest is not true love. It’s just weird.”

And it’s not like Mike’s some expert on grand romantic gestures or anything but he knows this much. Mike had told the girl he was dating that he loved her– which was a complicated enough thing on its own– and then the next thing he knows, one of his best friends is in an irreversible coma, the world is ending, and Will Byers is currently avoiding him in his own house. 

So maybe it’s best Holly ask someone else for dating advice in the future.

There’s a sudden creaking on the stairs and Mike looks up, teddy-bear-shaped cracker halfway to his mouth. 

“Oh,” Will is saying, “I didn’t know you’d be here.”

Mike frowns. “It’s my house,” he says, but it doesn’t come out nearly as sharp as maybe it should have. As sharp as he maybe wanted it to be, a little. “Where else would I go?”

“Right.” Will shakes his head. “Sorry, I meant– here watching the, uh, the Snow White movie again.”

That’s fair. Mike didn’t expect himself to be watching it again either, but here he is. He darts a quick glance over to Holly, who’s entirely enthralled by the screen, and turns back to Will. “My mom was on the phone with my dad,” he offers, and Will’s eyebrows shoot up.

“Ah,” he says, like he understands immediately, and then falls silent.

“So,” Mike starts, feeling weirdly nervous. “Are you–”

“I just came to, uh, get some water,” Will says, nodding quickly towards the kitchen, and then gesturing back to the stairs. “And then I’ll–”

“No!” Mike blurts out and, and Will’s eyebrows climb even higher up his forehead, if that’s even possible. “I mean,” Mike continues, the weird nervous feeling heightening, “water is important, you should– you should do that. But don’t go back upstairs. Please?”

Will looks unsure, and Mike sighs, gesturing to the TV. “I really don’t want to watch the rest of this,” he admits, lowering his voice so Holly can’t hear, even though she probably wouldn’t care. “And I’m so sick of sitting inside,” he says, “do you– do you want to go for a walk, maybe? Or something?”

Will shifts his stance, sticks his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Oh,” he says, “I mean, I thought we weren’t supposed to spend a lot of time outside–”

“Ten minutes,” Mike promises, “fifteen, tops. It’s calm out right now. I just– I need to get outside so bad. I think we’re all going a bit stir-crazy and it’s only been a week.”

Will bites his lip, unsure. “I don’t know,” he says, hesitating. He’s looking over to the kitchen like he might be able to make a break for his water when Mike isn’t looking, then run off and hide again.

Mike’s not letting that happen. Not today. Not again. Not when it’s this or more princess movies with Holly. But, if he’s being entirely honest, he’d choose Will over a lot of things. He’d choose Will even if no one was asking him to make a choice. 

“Please?” Mike scrambles to his feet from where he’d been cross-legged on the floor. Will watches him move, expression unchanging. “I know you probably want to get out for a bit too,” Mike says, “I’m sure you’re getting a bit antsy cooped up in here.”

Will bites at his lip some more. Mike’s giving him an out– whatever he was feeling yesterday, he can just chalk it up to confinement, isolation, agitation. And Will’s not an idiot– he’ll take the offer while it’s on the table. Mike knows it. 

“Okay,” he says at last, and Mike grins, pleased. Will takes his hands out of his pockets and rocks back and forth on his heels. “Yeah, okay, maybe for just a little while.”

The nervous thing inside Mike’s chest swells. “Okay,” he echoes, smiling back. “Yeah that’s– we don’t have to go far,” he adds, “just, like, down the block, into my backyard, wherever, anywhere–”

“O-kay!” Will lets out a startled laugh. “Yeah, I get it, we’ll go, just, uh– just give me a second, okay?” And then, turning back to the TV, “Do you want to, uh. Finish your movie?”

“No,” Mike snorts, “God, no. No, let’s go. Now, please.”

Will comes back downstairs with a backpack and a Walkman in hand. Mike’s already waiting by the door.

He blinks. “Is that my sweater?”

Will looks down at himself, turning the faintest shade of pink. “Oh,” he says, “sorry, it was still hanging in the closet and I don’t– it’s not like I had a lot of stuff to bring with me, you know?” And then, at Mike’s responding pause, he frowns. “Sorry, is that not okay? I thought–”

“No,” Mike shakes his head, “I mean, yes, it’s okay, no it’s not not okay–”

“So it‘s good?” Will smiles, hitching his backpack up higher on his shoulder. He presses the Walkman into Mike’s hand. “Here,” he says, “this is for you.”

Mike stares at it, frowning. “Why are you giving me this?”

Will looks a bit incredulous. “Don’t tell me you forgot.”

Mike rolls his eyes, watching Will bend down to tie his shoes. “I didn’t forget,” he says, “but why do I get one and you don’t?”

“Mine’s in the bag,” Will says simply, tugging hard at one shoe. “And it’s good to have a backup. You know, if one breaks.”

They’re both thinking the same thing at that moment. Mike can tell it even without seeing Will’s face– that Max might still be here if her Walkman hadn’t broken, ribbing them and teasing and beating their asses at Pac-Man instead of being hidden away in some understaffed hospital wing, with the fiery red of her hair all washed out in the cold blue of the hospital lighting. “Right,” he manages, slipping the Walkman around his belt, “okay, yeah. Good plan.”

He reaches out a hand without really thinking about it, just as Will moves like he’s going to get up from the floor. Will pauses. “Oh,” he says, slowly reaching up and gripping at Mike’s forearm, letting himself be hauled up most of the way. “Thank you?”

“Yeah,” Mike says, arm gone weirdly warm and tingly where Will had been holding it. He’s pulled Will up right in front of him, close enough to see the tired smudge of purple under his eyes, the slightly rumpled collar of his t-shirt poking out through Mike’s sweater, and simultaneously starts to feel a bit dizzy. He wonders if that’s a symptom of a stroke– the arm thing and also the dizziness– or if maybe that’s a heart attack. He can’t quite remember. Is he about to have a heart attack right now? “Yeah, let’s– let’s go.”

It’s strangely calm outside, just like it had been fifteen minutes earlier. And on any other occasion, this might have been a given, that the sky wouldn’t start raining down spores and hell-debris in the ten minutes it took for the two of them to step out for some air and come back, but historically, they haven’t had a lot of luck with givens, have they?

“You know,” Will says, kicking aside a loose pebble, “this isn’t as apocalyptic as I imagined it would be.”

Mike picks his way carefully past an overgrown bush. They’re walking to the old park a couple blocks away. “Don’t jinx it,” he says, shaking a particularly thorny bramble out from where it’s caught in his jeans. “Please don’t jinx it.”

“I’m just saying,” Will insists, “it’s a weirdly nice day. I thought that if the world ended, there’d be more, I don’t know. Fire.”

“Will,” Mike gets out, “please stop talking. Please.”

Will throws his hands up in the air, but he looks like he might be fighting back a smile. “Fine,” he says. “It’s a nice day. Full-stop.”

“That’s better.”

Mike used to laugh when his mom would say all that stuff about going outside– like how fresh air and movement and sunlight would be good for a growing body. He’d thought that was ridiculous back then, just like how eating a certain amount of vegetables per day was supposed to make you live longer or something. Now, though, after spending even just a week inside, stuck in the same repetitive cycle of having to find infinite ways to kill time– Mike’s starting to get it.

And he’s not about to go, like, backpacking across the East Coast, but this is nice. Outside, with Will. It’s nice.

“So,” he tries, as they approach the clearing of the neighborhood park. It’s nothing fancy, just a slide or two off in the distance and a few benches next to them, but it’s empty and open, blessedly bramble-free. “How are you?”

Will turns, looking a bit baffled. “How am I?”

“Yeah, you know,” Mike waves a hand in the air, “how have you been?”

“You’ve been stuck in a house with me for a week, Mike,” Will says, sitting down on a bench. “You know how I’ve been.”

Does he? Mike thinks he does, sometimes, thinks he’s getting better at reading Will, like he’s finally bridging the ever-growing gap between them, and then Will does things. Things like pulling away. Things like– like exploding at Mike and not telling him why. Things like–

–things like going back to acting as if everything is fine between them when it’s clearly not.

“Well, tell me anyway.” Mike slides in next to him. “It can’t hurt.”

Will takes in a breath. “Okay,” he says, “I’ve been– I’ve been fine, I guess.”

“Fine,” Mike repeats, shifting so they’re facing each other. “What’s fine?” 

“It’s just– fine,” Will repeats, wholly unhelpfully. He’s looking off somewhere in the distance, into the trees. “I mean– it’s a lot. Everything just feels like it’s happening at once, you know?”

Mike knows. “Yeah,” he nods, thinking about how Will hadn’t been here for so long and now he is; how Mike had gone eight months trying not to forget about the way Will’s eyes crinkled up when he smiled and now Will’s borrowing his clothes and eating dinner with them every night; how it had been radio silence and two thousand miles and now Will’s sitting next to him on a park bench in a wide-open circle of trees, doing something that’s just a half-step up from making small talk. “Things are a lot right now.”

Will takes another deep, steadying breath, fingers fidgeting with the strap of his bag. “Yeah, you could say that.”

There’s a heavy pause, which is the first thing that strikes Mike as weird. Him and Will– they don’t have heavy pauses. At least they didn’t before Will moved away. “I feel like,” Will starts, hesitant, “I feel like I should apologize. For yesterday.”

Maybe that’s true. But that’s the thing– Mike doesn’t even know what the problem was. He doesn’t know what to fix. “You don’t need to apologize,” Mike shakes his head, and Will looks up. “Just– just talk to me. Just tell me what’s wrong.”

Will looks like he’s about to protest again. Watching him frown, something climbs up and out of Mike’s throat, frenetic and hot and desperate. And before Mike can even think about it: “No more apologies, okay?” he blurts out, “we’re– we’re done with apologies. You and me, this is it.” He gestures between them. “Just tell me what’s wrong and I’ll fix it, okay? And then we’ll be good again, for real. But this is it. No more apologies.”

“Mike,” Will starts, stiff around the edges. “You can’t just– there are some things you can’t fix, okay? Sometimes, that’s just how it is.”

And maybe that’s true, but it doesn’t mean Mike likes thinking about it– about the possibility of something that’s making Will’s mouth curl downwards and and his shoulders tighten that he can’t make disappear with a wave of his hand. He wants to. It’s scary, almost, how immediately willing he is to shoulder this burden on Will’s behalf. “Maybe,” he says quietly, “but it doesn’t mean I can’t try.”

Will doesn’t say anything for a long moment. It’s very quiet outside; the wind is rustling the tree branches a bit, but it’s almost silent other than there. There aren’t any birds around, Mike notices, a bit absently, as he looks up into the trees. The absence of the usually constant chirping is almost startling. The ash and soot must have driven them away, or something.

“Did you mean it?”

Mike looks down from the trees, back at Will, who’s studying his shoelaces with unyielding fascination. He frowns. “What?”

“You said– you told El, back at the pizza place, that– that your life began the day you found her. The day I–”

Oh. Oh.  

“Will,” he starts, the guilt settling over him in an acrid wave, “you know I didn’t–”

“I don’t know, actually.” Will digs the toes of one shoe into the soft dirt and grass at their feet. “That’s the problem, since you– since you want to know so bad, for whatever reason. I feel like I don’t know anything anymore.”

“I didn’t mean it,” Mike says, and it comes out pleading, “you have to– you have to know that. I was just trying to– she was going to die if I didn’t–”

Because he didn’t mean it– how could it be possible, in any variation of any universe in which Will exists, that Mike’s life without him could be anything more than miserable, unfulfilled, and heavy with the sort of longing that nothing else could possibly satisfy?

And maybe Will would believe him if he knew about the bike ride home after that day at Sattler’s Quarry– how Mike had been crying too hard to see even two feet in front of him, how he’d swerved off the road twice, how his knees and palms had gotten scraped up and bloody but the grief had numbed his entire body too much to feel any of it. How he’d been fighting back the swell of bile up his throat the whole way up the driveway. How he saw Will every time he closed his eyes for months after that, how he still does, sometimes– the dragging weight of his waterlogged clothes, the vest he wore every single day during the cold stretch of weeks before Thanksgiving, the unnatural blue-white of his hand, dragging limply along the water’s surface.

Will sounds tired when he answers. Resigned. “I know,” he says softly. “I’m not– I get it, Mike. You were saying what you thought you had to. It’s just– I guess I’m just a bit confused.”

“Confused,” Mike repeats. “About what?”

Will looks up at that, eyes darting briefly between Mike’s, something flashing across his face in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it beat, and then it’s gone. “We should go,” he says at last, looking away again, as disappointment swoops low in Mike’s chest. “We’re not supposed to be out here too long.”

“It’s been, like, twelve minutes,” Mike protests, “Will, just– just wait a second–”

“You said fifteen tops, Mike.” Will’s already standing up. “I’d prefer to keep it on the lower end. We should go.”

“Will,” Mike presses, reaching a hand out to grab Will’s wrist on instinct, just below the hem of his borrowed sweater, “seriously, one more minute won’t kill us, just wait– you can’t just–”

Will stops, looking down at Mike’s fingers curling into the bones of his wrist, and then back up. Mike holds his gaze like it’s a challenge– talk to me. Come on, talk to me. Don’t run away.

And then Will tenses. 

“Mike,” he says, urgent, eyes darting over the treeline. Mike’s grip falls slack. “We really need to go. Now.”

There’s alarm in his voice that wasn’t there before, and Mike frowns. “What? What’s wrong?”

He looks up. The sky looks normal, and there’s nothing immediately barreling towards them, which are two of the immediate signs of danger he’s gotten used to being on guard for. And then, after another quick survey– no smoke, no fire, no chimes of a grandfather clock in the distance. Mike stands up too, one hand drifting towards the Walkman on his belt on instinct.

“Will,” he says again, watching Will watch the trees, tension carving his face into something set firm and stiff. “What are you looking at?”

A moment passes, the clearing still and silent around them. Mike shivers slightly. Even though the breeze has died down, it suddenly feels colder than it should be. A lot colder. The sun hasn’t even dipped behind the clouds, he notices vaguely, letting his eyes dart over the canopy of gold-dappled green.

Then–

“There’s something there,” Will says, voice dropping low into a whisper. “Mike– I think there’s something there.”

Great. That’s– that’s great, really. “Okay,” Mike starts, “what– what kind of something?”

Will shakes his head slowly, but he takes a careful step towards Mike, one hand twitching slightly at his side, the other going immediately to the strap of his bag. “I don’t know,” he replies, still whispering, which is– that’s really great, actually. Awesome. “I don’t know, it could be anything.”

“Anything,” Mike repeats flatly, “like– a bear, or–”

There’s a sudden rustling in the bushes surrounding them, maybe twenty feet away, right in the direction Will had been facing. Simultaneously, they stiffen, Mike’s hand curling around the hard plastic of his Walkman.

“Will,” he starts, “do you have–”

“It’s in my bag,” Will says immediately, without turning around, eyes fixed straight ahead. He takes in a shaky breath. “My tape and my headphones. If you– if you need them. And my walkie. Jonathan has the other.”

“Okay,” Mike whispers, feeling a bit nauseous thinking about it, the possibility that Will might–

No.

He gives his head a minute shake. “Do you– do you think we could leave before it notices us?” 

It might just be a deer. It might be.

Mike’s not trying to take chances today.

“Maybe,” Will whispers, but he seems to be thinking the same thing Mike is. “I guess we’re about to find out.”

“Okay,” Mike repeats, “should we, like, turn and run, or–”

Will shakes his head. “Back away,” he says, “and then we can– we can book it to your place.”

“My place,” Mike echoes, “yeah, okay. We’ll book it.”

Will takes in another shaky breath. “On three,” he says, as they both start to take slow, careful steps backwards, over the yellowed grass of the clearing and towards the opening in the trail they’d come in from. “One. Two–”

In the second pause before Will says three, Mike realizes several things at exactly the same time.

One.

It’s cold. Way too cold. It had been warm enough when they’d left, but now Mike’s shivering hard, even through the heavy denim of his jacket. 

Two.

It’s quiet. Way too quiet. Mike had been trying to clock it before, what it was that had been feeling a little off, but it doesn’t hit him until now, with time slowing to a near-stop around them: the birds have stopped chirping. There had been birdsong ringing through the air on the way here, reminiscent of any other spring day in Hawkins. But now– nothing. There’s nothing. Not even the breeze.

Three.

As if in slow-motion, he hears the heel of Will’s shoe come down on a twig. A snap! echoes sharply through the air. The sound is much louder than it should be for something so small.

Four.

The thing in the bushes is big. It’s really big. And it’s definitely not a deer.

“Shit,” Will hisses, panic creeping audibly into his voice. The rustling gets faster, closer, and is one hundred percent moving in their direction. Mike can make out the vague shape of it, hunched over and stumbling with a crawling, sinuous movement that’s distinctly unlike any human or animal he’s ever seen before. “Shit, shit, shit.”

Mike figures they have maybe twenty seconds to make a move, if they’re lucky. And, because they never are, he figures it’s probably more like fifteen.

Fifteen seconds. They’ve got fifteen seconds, tops.

“Get behind me,” Mike says without thinking, barely half-aware of his own body and trembling like a livewire. It’s too late to run. They’re too exposed. It’s forty feet to the nearest cover, then a thirty second sprint to get out of the foliage and back into Mike’s neighborhood. And then– and then what after that? They run all the way to Mike’s house? And after that? What if it tries to get inside? To his mom? To Holly?

Mike can barely think over the panic. He moves one arm out to his side on instinct, like he’s halfway to an attempt at bodily blocking Will from harm’s way. His hand might be shaking. “Will,” he says again, trying to sound calm and collected and self-assured, even if it comes out sounding anything but, “get– get behind me.”

Why Mike says that, he doesn’t know. He’s not even holding anything, save for the headphones dangling limp around his neck and the cold plastic of the spare Walkman jutting into his hip. He has nothing. Not a rock. Not even a really sharp stick. Nothing.

Not that it makes a difference. Not to him. Because Will’s next to him, wearing Mike’s sweater with the sleeves draping down over his fingers where they’re too long for his arms. Because Will’s next to him, eyes wide and looking like a mirror image of himself three years ago, scared half out of his own mind. Because Will’s next to him– and that’s it. That’s all that matters.

His hand is definitely shaking.

And then, with his eyes fixed steadily ahead, Mike feels fingers brush against his own– cold and a bit clammy, but surprisingly still. Will takes in a sharp breath as his hand finds its way to Mike’s wrist, squeezing gently. Grounding.

“Mike,” Will says, voice laced with fear but still steadier than Mike would have expected. He hears the soft sound of a zipper coming undone, the thud of Will’s backpack dropping against the grass. “I'm going to do something. And– and you’re going to need to trust me, okay?”

Five seconds.

“Of course I trust you,” Mike gets out, still trying to angle his body towards the line of bushes, trying to coax Will’s hand off his wrist so he can wedge his shoulder in front of him, “but–”

Mike doesn’t get to finish his sentence.

The thing crashes out of the bushes, momentum sending it skidding a couple feet into the open air, stumbling a bit over its own legs. It’s– 

It’s–

“What the fuck,” Will whispers next to him, “is that?”

Honestly, Mike couldn’t have summed it up better himself. It looks like a Demodog– it could be a Demodog– except it comes up to the middle of Mike’s chest, its usually dark hide gone a pale white-gray. And these– whatever these are, they live in the depths of desolation, so it’s not like they see much sun as is, but this one– this one looks sick. Diseased. Starved and hungry, the corded muscle of its torso drawn up taut as it turns its head towards them.

There’s something crawling viscous and thick across Mike’s skin looking at it– looking at it looking at them– and then it moves, almost imperceptibly, weight shifting onto its hind legs like it’s–

“Will,” he hears himself say, “it’s going to–”

It’s funny how the heartbeat between one second and the next can stretch into something this long, long enough that Mike starts to wonder whether he can even trust his own body to tell the passing of time. Human physiology is a fascinating thing, fight or flight instantly making an unreliable narrator of him– his synapses firing so fast that realization doesn’t come down over him until later. The flooding of his arteries with adrenaline in a rapid, sour rush, the juddering beat of his heart as it contracts, much more instantaneous in reality, surely, than it feels. He’s frozen in place, watching. One heartbeat, then the next.

Maybe it’s not scientifically possible for a sequence of events to happen simultaneously, stacked one on top of each other like a deck of cards– but the laws of nature never seemed to apply to Mike Wheeler.

It seems simultaneous, at any rate: the quick, jolting movement of the Demodog in front of them, the way it seems to be there one second and then vanished the next, caught unseen somewhere in the wide-open space between the green line of trees and where Mike is standing, shoulder-to-shoulder with Will, feet rooted and unmoving in the ground. A flurry of movement, the sudden feeling of cold air against his wrist where Will’s fingers have lifted away.

The shape of something big, moving through the air barely five feet in front of them. A slight glimpse of blue out of the corner of his eye. Mike’s sweater. Will, in Mike’s sweater, one hand coming up to push Mike bodily away from him. Mike falls backwards, the heel of one sneaker catching on an errant tree root, and watches Will raise an object up to the stiff line of his shoulders in one fluid motion–

Of course, it’s at this moment that Mike finds his voice. “A gun?” he hears himself say, voice gone high and panicked and on the verge of an embarrassingly delicate crack, “you have a gun?”

“Mike,” Will says, still somehow loud enough for Mike to hear over the cyclic repetition of words in his head, “ Mike, not now.”

“Will,” Mike starts, mind reeling, snagged on this one fact– a gun. Will has a gun. Will, with his gentle artist’s touch and hands that were made to create, never to hurt or bruise or take away. Will, with a–

And then, in the half-moment where Will looks over at him, the hazel of his irises visible to Mike even from here, it all happens at the same time.

Will’s eyes snap back in front of him, one crucial beat too late.

The sound of flesh colliding firmly against something else– earthier, slick, inhuman. And then, louder– a bang ringing through the clearing just as Will lets out a startled yelp, the Demodog falling away with a cut-off shriek as Will stumbles backwards, catching himself on one foot. The end of the gun lets out soft white smoke as one of Will’s hands comes up to press against his side, just under his ribs.

Mike feels as if he’s watching the whole thing from somewhere vaguely outside his body, screaming at his feet to move, move! Physiology is a funny thing, how helpless it’s rendered him, how his muscles have all locked up and his neurons are all going rapid-fire against his own will–

Until now.

Until now, when Mike sees Will’s fingers come away streaked in red, mouth dropping open in soft shock, the dark blue of Mike’s borrowed sweater going almost black around the midriff. The fabric torn open in a sharp gash from teeth or nails or something else entirely, the pale sliver of Will’s stomach underneath quickly being overtaken by red, red, red–

It’s this, strangely enough, that propels Mike into action, brain caught on a staggered loop of these last four facts– Will wearing Mike’s sweater, standing there, red blooming rapidly over the curve of his fingertips, wearing Mike’s sweater, all torn up and almost not blue around the middle anymore.

The gun slips out of Will’s slackened fingers, landing softly on the ground.

“Will!”

Mike feels himself scream it more than he actually hears the sound, feels the rough rasp of his throat forming the words, feels his lips moving around the shape of Will’s name, feels his legs finally get kick-started into action, stumbling once, twice, catching himself on his knees in the soft layer of grass and dirt before he’s there, grasping at Will’s bicep like this touch alone might be enough to snap him out of it. “Will, what the hell– what– are you–”

He’s babbling, he knows it, because Will’s not okay, and Mike’s sweater is getting darker and darker by the second, and Will is still staring down at his fingers with a shell-shocked expression, like he hasn’t fully processed what happened– and Mike hasn’t either, you know, so it’s not unexpected, but–

“Mike,” Will says, and just that– just his name, once, voice cracking halfway through, hand still held out in front of him in stunned silence.

There’s a rustling movement behind them.

Mike whips around, one hand still holding onto Will’s bicep. The Demodog is climbing to its feet, slow but steady, black blood spilling from its side where Will’s shot had landed, its hulking silhouette gone asymmetrical and awkward from the missing chunk of flesh above the joint of its shoulder.

Mike’s heart stops.

It’s not over yet. And Will’s hurt.

“Mike,” Will says again, eyes wide, “I have to–”

He makes a movement towards the ground like he’s about to reach for the gun again, but then he gasps– pained and sharp and all the blood draining so visibly from his face that Mike’s stomach lurches, immediately catching Will over the other bicep with his other hand– “Whoa,” Mike says, glancing back and forth between the Demodog and Will. “Don’t move,” he says, hands fluttering nervously, “Will, you gotta– just stay still, okay, just– just hang on, we’ll–”

Here’s the thing, right– Mike doesn’t know how to shoot a gun, and he’s sure as hell not about to learn now, not with Will leaning all his weight on him like his own legs are halfway to giving out, turning paler by the second, with Mike’s sweater going darker, darker, darker–

“Wait,” Mike says desperately, the Demodog crawling closer out of the corner of his eye, “Will, can you hang on for just– just one minute, okay? Just stay here, just– just stay still, just stay out of the way–”

Will nods, apparently putting some kind of blind, trusting faith in Mike, who doesn’t actually even know what he’s going to do or what it is that Will has to stay out of the way of. “Okay,” he says simply, taking in a soft, sharp breath as Mike maneuvers him back upright, “okay, just–”

Physiology is a funny thing. The same heady chemical rush that had him so frozen minutes ago now has Mike moving with a sort of decisiveness he couldn’t have mustered up through conscious thought, even if he tried. He grabs the gun by the smooth metal of the barrel, turning on his heel and swinging it just as the Demodog clears the two feet of space in front of him, the butt of the gun colliding harshly with leathery flesh and gristle in a sickening crunch of a sound. The creature is heavy– two thirds of Mike’s height and definitely weighing more– but the gun is heavy too, weighted and solid in his hands from where he’s gripping it so tight that it’s leaving indents in his palms. It can do damage even without Mike pulling the trigger.

“Shit,” he pants, watching the Demodog reel back, the petals of its mouth unfurling in a high-pitched shriek. He raises the gun as it comes back again, “shit, shit–”

Mike’s never been an athlete, but he’s starting to think maybe he shouldn’t have skipped gym every day of the softball unit. As is, he’s not trying for aim and accuracy, not trying to hit the ball as far away from home plate as he can, not trying to do anything except keep this thing away from Will– Will, somewhere behind him, wearing Mike’s sweater and bleeding right through it, and the singular thought on replay in his head is just that. Will. 

The gun meets twisted flesh again and again, dark blood and dirt spraying down the front of Mike’s shirt, the sleeve of his jacket, all over his hands, but these are all things he’s noticing secondhand, moving on autopilot now. The heel of the gun cuts sharply into the corded muscle of the creature’s throat and it lets out a yelp, strangled and awful in the disrupted peace of the clearing, falling over its own legs as it stumbles back.

But Mike’s not done.

It’s funny, he thinks faintly, as the gun comes down– again, again, again– how he’s supposed to be the paladin of the Party. The paladin, the fighter, the heart was what Will had called him, all those weeks ago in the back of a van hurtling through state lines at top speed. A master of combat, a source of good, the protector. 

And Mike Wheeler isn’t a lot of things– he isn’t the bravest, maybe, and he isn’t the kindest and he isn’t a very good friend– he hasn’t been a good friend in a very long time– but he’s a protector. If there’s one thing he is– one thing he has to be now, it’s a protector.

His next hit lands directly against the gaping wound Will’s shotgun blast left, and the creature goes down with a rattling shriek.

But Mike’s not done.

He’s older now, bigger, taller than he was all those years ago, but this Demodog is larger too. Meaner. Hungrier. Suddenly, Mike is thirteen years old in the hallway of a hospital again, frozen in shock and too unaware of anything except Will’s fragile, sleeping form in his paper-thin hospital gown to do anything but listen to Mrs. Byers scream. He knows what these things are. He knows what they can do.

Some protector I am, he thinks bitterly, far off in the depths of his own head. What a joke. What a fucking joke. 

If he were a protector, Eddie would be alive. If he were a protector, Bob would be alive. If he were a protector, Hopper never would have been taken. If he were a protector, Max would be here with them. If he were a protector, Will wouldn’t be–

The gun comes down, again, again, again– until the creature goes limp and unmoving under him, until Mike’s hair has gone matted and sweaty against his forehead and the back of his neck, until he’s clutching the barrel of the gun hard enough for his knuckles to flash white up at him from under a layer of dirt and blackened blood. Until his breathing is coming out uneven and catching on each inhale, chest heaving, the white soles of his sneakers unrecognizable under the grime.

He waits for the rush of pity to come, looking at the maybe-once-living thing at his feet, no longer twitching and no longer breathing and the white-gray of its skin gone bruised and grotesquely mottled from impact. He waits for the pity to come, like dissecting frogs in fifth period biology right after lunch– the formaldehyde-soaked guilt of putting them under and cutting them open before they can come to again, the twinge of seeing a leg twitch when he hit a nerve in the right spot, even when his teacher assured him they were gone long before he even made the first cut. He waits for the pity, breathing heavy and open-mouthed as he takes in his surroundings: crisp air, clouded-over sun, silence. One dizzying breath in, then out again.

It never comes.

Mike probably could have spent hours standing there, coming to with the adrenaline slowly leaving his system, but it’s a small noise behind him that snaps him out of it. “Mike,” Will is saying, taking a tentative step forward as Mike turns around, face gone deathly pale and clutching at his side with both hands. He looks up, eyes impossibly wide. “Mike–”

And then he stumbles, pitching forward.

“Will,” Mike gets out, more on an exhale than anything else. “Are you–”

Maybe it’s strange that it’s coming to him now, but Mike remembers this much from physics class, in between midday hours spent droning on about coefficients of friction and constant force– objects in motion stay in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. Bodies in motion must work the same way, because Will makes no move to right himself; he just keeps falling and falling and falling–

The gun drops from Mike’s hands, dented all down the barrel and across the heel, the wood and metal gone dark with blood and sweat and dirt. “Will,” Mike says again, crossing the distance between them to catch Will under the arms just as his legs give out under him. “Holy shit,” Mike gasps, stumbling slightly under the combined weight of their bodies. Will is a lot more solid than he looks– which is already pretty damn solid– but it’s not until now, until the warm weight of him is leaned entirely against Mike’s torso, that it hits him just how much momentum a body in motion carries. “Holy shit,” Mike says, “holy shit, holy shit–” and it’s a litany of this, of stifled curses on the off-chance that maybe hearing them will make Will start to panic. Mike’s brain isn’t exactly working at peak capacity, so any semblance of eloquence beyond this is immediately off the table.

“I’m fine,” Will is saying, except he’s white as a sheet and looking on the verge of throwing up or passing out or maybe both, and there’s blood all over his hands and the sleeves and front of Mike’s borrowed sweater and down the tops of Will’s jeans– “I’m fine,” he’s saying, except his breathing is starting to get faster and his eyelids keep fluttering, and Mike– and Mike is–

“Hold on,” Mike presses, dizzy, “Will, please, just hold on a second–”

“I’m fine,” Will insists again, even as Mike lowers him to the ground with as much grace as he can muster. “Mike, I’m–”

“Yeah,” Mike nods, “yeah, you’re fine, you’re– you’re okay.”

“Not like that,” Will gets out, even as he follows Mike’s gentle nudge and leans back against the grass, “not like how you’re saying it– not ‘you’re okay’ like I’m not okay. I’m actually fine–”

“Okay,” Mike says slowly, “I think you’re a little–”

He doesn’t finish that thought, because it was going to end in something like out of it, or entirely delirious, and both of these would mean acknowledging the way that Mike’s hands have started shaking, a bit, where they’re hovering over the now entirely black midriff and hem of Will’s– Mike’s– sweater. He presses a tentative hand to the fraying edges of the ripped cloth, and Will lets out a stilted, punched-out exhale of a groan.

“Shit,” Mike says, staring down at the red coating his fingers now, too, “shit, shit, just– just hang on, Will, just–”

Will’s craning his head downwards. “What? Is it bad?”

Personally, Mike doesn’t think it’s so great that he can see any blood at all, but maybe that isn’t the most tactful thing to say. Nancy had donated blood at the high school a couple weeks ago and there had been signs everywhere– about how there’s maybe about five liters of blood in the human body, affording you a couple pints of wiggle room to generously give away to those in need. 

And this doesn’t– this doesn’t look like a couple of pints, but what does he know? He’s no doctor. Mike Wheeler is fifteen years old, and he knows math and Newton’s Laws and how to DM damn near the best game of Dungeons and Dragons you’ve ever seen, but he doesn’t know what the hell to do with Will’s blood running all down his hands.

“No,” he says at last, looking around for Will’s bag, “no, it’s– it’s okay. You’re okay.”

He’s not sure if it comes out convincing, but it doesn’t matter. He’s never been a good liar, and he’s especially never been good at lying to Will Byers. “Okay,” Will says anyway, the same unyielding faith from before hitting Mike full-force with the weight of it. He leans his head back against the grass. “Okay.”

“Do you– we have to get you to a hospital,” Mike starts. He spots Will’s bag ten feet away, and scrambles to his feet, grabbing for it. “We have to– can you walk?”

That’s a stupid question. Will can’t walk. He can barely even move without his face twisting up all in pain. But Will Byers is stubborn and he’s resilient and Mike knows immediately as the words leave his mouth what Will’s answer is going to be.

“Yes,” Will says immediately, still unmoving, “just help me up– I think I can walk, your house isn’t far–” and then he twists, like he’s about to get up, and the sound that comes out of his mouth has Mike’s heart squeezing in on itself so tight that his stomach lurches with sudden nausea.

“No! Oh my God,” Mike says, placing two frantic hands on Will’s shoulders, “Will, don’t actually move, oh my God, this is so– you’re so– why would you move, that’s so stupid–”

“You were just saying– you can’t call me stupid,” Will interjects, but he’s stilled, at least. “I’m the one bleeding out, remember?”

Mike’s hands are shaking so hard that he almost can’t undo the second zipper on Will’s bag. “You’re not– you’re not bleeding out,” he says, a shocked laugh escaping him anyway, even though– well, Will’s bleeding but he’s not– “you’re fine,” Mike insists again, thrusting a desperate hand into the bag, searching, “just hang on, you’re fine, you’re fine–”

Will’s watching him with a vaguely amused expression that Mike thinks no one but Will Byers would manage to have on their face in a situation like this. You’re fine, he thinks, as his hand curls around the cold plastic of the walkie-talkie at last, you’re fine, you’re fine, you’re fine. And Mike doesn’t know who he’s thinking it about, him or Will, but his mind is stuck on the limp, lolling motion of Will’s fingers as he adjusts the angle of his arm so it’s resting against Mike’s knee, grasping lightly.

You’re fine, he thinks, you’re fine, you’re fine. Will’s hand, as pale and cold as it is now, reaching out of the water at Sattler’s Quarry as they lifted him onto the gurney. He’d been so pale– that had been the first thing Mike had noticed, even as far away as he had been standing– the shock of Will’s hair, water-darkened and plastered across his face made even more vivid by the bright red of his vest and the startling, translucent white to his skin. He’d known it was Will immediately. He’d know Will anywhere– even on a stretcher in the middle of the water, already blue and cold and gone.

He blinks, hard. You’re fine. You’re fine. “Are you okay?” Will is asking, fingers clutching at Mike’s knee. He frowns slightly as Mike looks away and down, flipping desperately through the channels.

“I’m– you’re hurt,” Mike says, incredulous, “and you’re asking if I’m–”

“Mike. I’m fine,” Will says, even though his breathing is picking up even faster and his eyelids are fluttering like he’s trying very hard to keep them open. Mike keeps missing the channel on the dial; his hands are shaking, shaking, going too far past and then not far enough– and then he’s there, heart in his throat as he waits–

“Code red,” he bites out into the mouthpiece, all but yelling, “code red, someone come in, please!”

Will’s pulse is going a bit thready. Mike presses his fingers in harder into the line of Will’s wrist, like this touch might be enough to single handedly revive him. “Will,” he says, desperate, “just hold on for two minutes, alright– code red!” he says again, this time not even trying to keep the panic out of his voice, “anyone, come in, code red!”

There’s another moment of awful, crackling static, where Mike’s thinking that maybe he needs to pull Will to his feet and somehow haul him the entire walk home without either of them passing out, and then–

“Mike? Is everything okay?” Jonathan’s voice comes through at last, laced with concern and barely audible, but there.

“Jonathan,” Mike all but sobs, clutching at Will’s hand in relief. “Oh my God, Will– Will’s hurt, we need– he needs help, can you–”

Maybe it’s a Byers trait, to be able to decipher Mike’s incoherent stream of words without any further explanation, or maybe Jonathan Byers has some kind of hyper-affinity for things where his younger brother is concerned, because Mike hears a sharp intake of breath on the other line, and then a rustling noise like Jonathan is moving around very fast with the walkie still in hand. “Where?” he says simply, “where– where are you?”

“The park down the block,” Mike gets out, “bring– bring a car, he needs–”

“I know,” Jonathan says, and then there’s the faint sound of a door slamming, “I know, I’m coming, I’m on my way, just hang on–”

“Yeah,” Mike says, rolling his eyes down at Will and trying for a smile like, see? “Just hang on,” he repeats, walkie still held up to his mouth, “Jonathan– he’s on his way. Just two minutes, okay?”

Will clutches at his hand and nods weakly in response, eyes trained, unmoving, on Mike’s face. “He better not be going the speed limit,” Will scoffs, and it’s this– not the shock-filled delirium of anything else– that makes Mike finally start laughing. Real, surprised laughs, dropping his head down into the hand still grasping onto Will’s and shaking softly.

“You’re unbelievable,” Mike gasps, but there’s a tendril of hope there, beneath the words, that he clutches at like a lifeline. Will’s fine. He’s going to be fine.

You’re fine, he thinks, squeezing Will’s hand in steady intervals until the screeching of Jonathan’s tires is audible around the corner. You’re fine, you’re fine, you’re fine.