Chapter Text
Mike’s head is spinning. Summer break is finally here, he’s got a D&D game he’s running tomorrow, and it really, really feels like things are going back to normal.
He flinches at the thought, if only because it’s been days now since he’s last had it. Mike wants to be rid of it entirely, wants to have this all so behind him that it doesn’t even occur to him anymore. But, whatever. He swats the thought away like so many summertime mosquitos and focuses instead on tomorrow’s game; the first he’s been in charge of in a while, as well as Jane’s first game ever.
It’s a little daunting. She’s always been curious about “the dice-and-dragons game”, but she’s never been completely sold on the idea. But Mike thinks he’s got enough planned now to show everyone a good time.
And Will will understand. It had been a hard sell to the whole party at first, introducing anyone new into their game’s world. But Will had been particularly vocal about not liking the idea- or as he put it, “not being sure she’d even be into it.”
Well, wasn’t that her decision to make? Mike had pushed back, and eventually Will let up on the whole thing. He’d been able to tell Mike he wasn’t sure about the idea in private, but trying to actually look his sister in the eyes and tell her she wasn’t invited? That had proved a lot more difficult.
Lucas and Dustin had way fewer reservations, the two mostly just adamant that there be no DM favoritism or, as Dustin later put it, “lovey-dovey stuff”. And at that Mike had scratched at his ear and shrugged, not meeting his friend's eyes as he spoke.
“C’mon man, you know that we’re… That won’t be a problem anymore.”
At Mike’s still-wounded tone, Dustin had hissed in sympathy and given his friend’s shoulder a couple of pats as he’d headed for the stairs. “Just making sure.” He’d said.
Mike had watched his basement walls, expression unamused.
“Yeah,” he’d said to Dustin’s retreating footsteps, “Nothing you need to worry about anymore.”
Looking back on it, the thought of everything that had gone on during those months still kind of hits him wrong. It twists his stomach in uncomfortable ways, makes him feel foolish. Back then it had felt like the most natural thing in the world, the next step, the logical conclusion. But hindsight finds him cringing and hot at the ears, willing this entire train of thought to pass along already.
God, he just needs it to be tomorrow. He’s been so caught up in studying for finals and everything else, this is the reward he’s been waiting for. And everyone else is really looking forward to it too. If only Max could make it, that would be - Hey, what the hell was that?
It’s hard to see among the packed-in foliage alongside the road where Mike is walking, a few yards out from the Byers property. The sun’s started falling, and though it’ll be a while before it’s too dark to see, the day’s end shadows make tracking anything through the woodland a challenge. In the place where fear should go, Mike feels a stab of annoyance instead.
There’s no way.
He’s sure he’s just seeing things at first. He takes another five steps down the road, half-convinced to just stare directly forward and keep going. But then the breeze blows, and leaves from the trees all around him part and weave, and the sun bounces off something shiny and bright just beyond the tree line. The thought that comes to him should feel absurd, but he’s seen a lot of weird desperation these last few months, and he can’t say he’s found a line yet they won’t cross.
“Are you serious?” He asks the woods, chest puffing up as he kicks his way into the brush. “Didn’t you guys get everything you need already? What even else is left?”
Hell, most of the Byers-Hopper family isn’t even home. They’re sprawled across town, at their jobs or the grocery store right now. What more do they think they can wring out of just Will?
“Why won’t you just leave them-!” Mike’s shout dwindles in his chest as he whips his head back and forth. He’d been expecting to see another paparazzo or fanatic here, camcorder in hand. But there’s no one, only thickly-shaded woods as far as he can see. “...alone?”
Mike’s hit with a burst of embarrassment as the branches sway above, and he bites his tongue. God, even when he’s pointedly not thinking about it, part of him still is. He hopes he’s far enough away from Will’s house that his friend didn’t hear him shouting at nothing. Though, if there’s anyone who would probably understand, it’d be Will.
Mike’s turning back towards the road when something, probably a fern dipping in the breeze, catches his vision. Then the next thing he knows he’s falling, and then his body is bouncing off the woodland floor.
His ribs hit the ground first, pushing the air from his lungs like a punch. But there’s no time for him to notice this, because in the next second his skull is bouncing off of something hard protruding from the earth; a rock, a root, it’s hard to tell. Especially now, as fire is spreading up the length of his left leg, the worst of it concentrated just below his knee, where something bestial and cruel has lodged its teeth.
Trying to make out what he’s seeing is difficult, Mike’s vision is swimming and the light is dim here under the trees. He sees shapes that should be familiar, an anvil-shaped head, triangle ears, rows and rows of teeth stained red. But the word that comes to mind is wrong, ill-fitting. This thing isn’t a wolf, it’s a monster.
Mike would scream, were there air in his body to scream with. He would fight if he had any bearings whatsoever. His body responds in the only way it knows, kicking, writhing, gasping pained and terrified noises. The shape currently gripping him hardly takes notice.
Mike scrambles, and the wolf-like beast responds with a deep, hollow snarl. Adrenaline feels like lightning in Mike’s veins, sending every nerve ending, every blood cell more fight and vigor than he’s ever felt. Even as the wolf tries to drag him deeper into the woods Mike is fighting, bouncing rabbit kicks off its shoulder and mane. He’s aware it’s not working, he knows he is going to die, but that’s not enough to stop him.
It’s a strike of pure luck that does it, the heel of his shoe managing to crash down atop the thing’s snout at just the right angle, causing it to reel back. It’s a heartbeat, less than a second for Mike to react, but he takes it. He claws his way backwards, reaching desperately for the space where his head had been just moments ago. If there’s not a rock there, a branch, something other than his soft little human hands, he’s screwed.
Relief sings through his body when his fingers find the cool glass of a beer bottle, palpable only for a second before the wolf’s after him again.
Mike rolls under the weight, tossed aside as the beast tries to gain a fresh hold on him. He drags himself on further, until weight attaches to his foot, teeth like razors cutting easily through the shoe leather. And although it’s a new well of pain and everything already hurts so much, it’s also a relief. Mike can feel that the grip is bad, and with another hard kick the thing gags, shoe shoved hard down its throat, Mike freed once more.
It’s a battle of inches, every new stretch of ground Mike can make to the roadside its own victory. It doesn’t feel real, dragging the upper half of his body across the treeline and on to the side of the road. Any second now the wolf will reappear and drag him back, beyond eyesight, beyond hope.
But then it’s his chest dragged over the grass and weeds, then his waist. And just as Mike’s about to heave the last of him through, the weight returns. It looks as though the wolf’s given up on extremities all together, as Mike barely takes in the sight of it preparing to lunge.
Mike swings with every ounce of strength he can gather, a wet, garbled battle cry leaving his throat as he throws his arm not in the wolf’s face, but towards the side of the road, the pavement. Broken glass goes flying but the beast isn’t slowed, its weight pinning him as teeth make contact with his throat, warm blood soaking into his shirt's collar.
Mike swings again, desperate, and is rewarded this time with a delicious high-pitched scream as the jagged glass hits home. He thinks most of the bottle had lodged itself in the thing’s upper-cheek, but the shaking, the bucking, the retreating tells him he’s hit enough of the eye to count.
The beast rears back, spitting a vile sound as Mike returns to his escape plans, which, now that he’s actually reached the road, have come to an end. Will’s house is the only answer, and he moves as fast and far as his hands and knees will let him. Standing up is out of the equation, he already feels like he’s dragging dead weight under his left knee. So crawling it is.
He doesn’t look backwards, only keeps an iron grip around the neck of the bottle, knowing full well the attack won’t have the same effect twice. But it’s all he has, it’s his only hope until he can reach safety.
Pure instinct drives him, crashing headfirst into the underbrush on the other side of the road, then to make the loudest noise he’s been capable of yet. Part cry for help, part terrified scream, Mike hardly hears it over the sound of his own heartbeat and the crashing of leaves and twigs around him. It’s not too far back to Will’s. If he can just cut through this short stretch of woodland, it’s a flat crawl across the lawn and to the house. He can make it, he just has to…
Another snarl, more hot breath. Mike wants to wail as the beast comes staggering back towards him, heavy head tilted with one eye shut tight. Mike readies the bottle again, but in the next instant it’s gone, the wolf having done what Mike can only describe as swatting it out of his hand. The movement’s so clean, so directed, that Mike almost forgets he’s about to die.
Mike draws himself up best he can as the beast regards him, vision still wobbly and unable to even stand. His legs hurt, it all hurts, and all he’s left with are his skinny little fingers and his shaking, cracking voice.
“Help!” He screams it and it comes out jagged, desperate. “Please, help!”
The wolf strides forward, lip curled in an ugly sneer. Mike fumbles backwards, stomach lurching at the fast, uneven movement. His mom’s gonna be so upset. And his dad, well, he’ll probably be more upset by the funeral bills. He hopes this doesn’t make the national news, after everything else. Jane and Will, they don’t need their faces in any more newspapers.
Damn, and he was really looking forward to tomorrow’s game, too.
“Hey! Hell-Oh my god, Mike? ”
Will’s voice sounds like music. Stressed, taut, terrified music. Mike can just loll his head to the side and see Will approaching from the other end of the woods, not twenty feet away, footsteps slowing considerably as his eyes adjust to the shadows.
Mike’s not the only one distracted, and he realizes this around the same time he notices the felled branch near his wrist. He moves with renewed vigor, swinging it in a wide arc that threatens the monster backward. He looks back, hoping to see Will having moved in closer. Instead, Mike sees nothing.
His stomach drops. Will… left?
There’s no way Mike hallucinated it. The wolf had turned and looked too, Will was there. And now he’s not. But that, no. Will wouldn’t run. He wouldn’t just turn and leave Mike for wolf-food. That’s unthinkable.
Except it’s way too thinkable now, as the wolf starts back in on him once again.
Mike gives another swing, not nearly as strong as the one before. At his first swipe the wolf pulls back, but the second is almost comically slow, and the creature easily snatches one end of it with its teeth.
Mike holds the branch out like a sword, using everything left in his power to push those fangs away from their inevitable end. The wolf almost seems to tease him, yielding to the push for a single moment before tossing its head and sending the branch flying. Then it’s just Mike’s fists, raised for a last dejected pummeling. The wolf regards this with something almost like humor in its bright, glinting eye, and then - CRAK.
Some feet away, branches and underbrush explode in all directions alongside the unmistakable, ear-splitting sound of a gunshot. Both Mike and the wolf jump and scramble as Will’s voice follows the sound.
“Hey! Get back, get back!”
Mike hadn’t even known the Byers still had their guns, or maybe Hop had brought his when he’d moved in. But there Will is; hunting rifle held steady in his hands, muzzle raised. The wolf reacts with point-blank recognition, which Mike might think to find odd if he wasn’t in the midst of freaking the hell out. As it is, Mike takes the chance he’d been given and scoots back while the wolf snarls, showing its teeth as it tries to inch closer.
“Get the hell out of here!” Mike screams, if only to do something with the ball of terrified energy in his chest.
“Go! Get back! Go!” Will joins in, aim tightening as Mike puts distance between himself and the beast.
Mike sees the way it’s watching them, with an expression he can only label as hate. But with only one good eye to track the two of them, and now one of them fully armed, this quick meal has turned into far more trouble than it’s worth. With a final disgusting snarl, the beast finally turns tail and runs.
There are a few drawn out moments where Mike’s just waiting to see if it comes back. But as the seconds tick on his body slowly collapses, his skeleton a dead weight on the leaf mold below. His fingers are drawn to his throat where, yes, there is blood, but not in the torrent he’d feared. He moves his hand to the back of his head, hissing and yanking it away as his fingers graze against the bump. But it’s only a bump, no blood there.
Mike’s messed up in a dozen different ways, but he’s alive. He actually made it out alive.
Will collapses beside him, grabbing frantically at his hands, at his throat, panic etched into every inch of his skin. “Oh my god. Oh my god, what happened?”
Mike gasps for words, but with the immediate threat now gone he can’t think or move, his mind a busy, sloshing fishbowl. He manages to breathe out stuff like, “Attack,” and “Hospital,” words threaded together with tiny mumbles that stand in for details, all while Will just looks at him with increasingly nervous eyes.
“Okay, uh, inside. We’ve got to get you inside.” Will says, moving Mike’s hair out of his eyes. “Where’s the worst of the blood, is it your neck? Or is- oh, Jesus.”
Mike’s reaction is similar, if a bit more pained, as the two of them look over Mike’s blood-wet jeans. They’re sliced clean through where the bite is, and underneath is a mess of torn skin and flayed muscle, red and ugly and gushing.
“Bleeding.” Mike gasps. “The, the bleeding.”
“Shit, right.” Will flails. “Okay, okay, okay.”
Mike watches Will’s hand reach for the torn jeans, and he knows perfectly well that his friend is trying to pull back more fabric, show himself where to even begin with this. He knows it’s possible that Will's hand might brush the wound, and he knows it’ll hurt when he does. Mike doesn’t mind this, as the entirety of him feels like it’s in a meat grinder anyway. So when Will does accidentally nudge up against the meat of his torn leg, Mike’s ready to flinch.
He’s not ready for the pinprick of pain that blooms, echoes, spills out from that nudge. He’s not ready for the sight of his blood on his friend’s hand to suddenly arrest his attention, for his focus to become that blood, and that pain, and the fear of being here, and the want to survive. It hits him like a wallop to the face, like a wave receding to build and then crashing all at once.
Will sees this. He sees Mike spasm, sees him open his mouth to scream. Mike sees Will draw back in turn, throwing his hands over his mouth and, in doing so, drawing a line of blood down his cheek. He sees his friend’s eyes grow wide and fearful, sees his mouth open, lips forming the word, "What...?”
And then Mike’s head is still spinning, but he’s not seeing anything at all.