Archive of Our Own ^beta

5.

Will doesn’t know how he ended up here.

It’s nearing sunset, and his hands and jeans are covered in dust. His hair has started sticking to his forehead, the sky is darkening rapidly, and the air has taken on a foreboding sort of metallic tinge. It’s going to rain.

Will knows this– he can feel the hairs on his arm standing up with some kind of static charge. And it’s cold, and the sky is getting darker and the air is sharp and he’s still here– perched on a log in the woods behind the cabin. No cover, no jacket, not even anything other than the thin cotton of the t-shirt he’s wearing to keep him warm.

And yet, for some reason, he doesn’t go inside, doesn’t venture back to where his mom and Hopper and El and Jonathan and Mike and Nancy are all huddled, alternating lifting boxes and sweeping dust across the floor and boarding up windows that had shattered months ago.

He thought it would be weirder for Hopper to come back– to this cabin where El had basically been a shut-in for most of a year, this cabin he’d come back to after returning from the dead, a year of ice and prison-cell-locks. 

He thought it would be weirder for Hopper to be back. He thought it would be weirder for El to see her dad, someone she’d spent their entire time in Lenora mourning. He thought it would be weirder for his mom, because she’d been mourning him too, he knew, even when she maybe didn’t want him to be seeing. But she seems fine.

So it’s great, then. It’s great news, really. Hopper is fine. El is fine. His mom is fine. Everyone is fine.

Everyone is handling it, and they’re fine. Everyone except–

Will doesn’t know how he ended up here, but he knows it maybe had something to do with the stifling claustrophobic tension of eight people crammed into a house meant for no more than two, bumping elbows and shuffling around each other as they tried to clean. The movement and the dust and the broken windows and the stilted, weak flow of sunlight through crooked blinds and dirty glass. Together with the combined exhaustion of the past few days, it was enough to feel like the four wooden walls of the room were closing in on him.

So Will doesn’t know how he ended up here, and it’s going to rain, and it’s cold, and his skin is buzzing with something electric and alive, but the air is fresh and clean and he’s away from the stifling hum of chatter and he’s outside, so it’s good enough for him.

He takes in a breath. One, two. Three, four. Late March and no trace yet of a Hawkins spring, even though spring would usually come early in the year, the first weeks of March bringing a sudden burst of sunshine and thawing the last vestiges of Midwest frost away. Will has always liked the spring– how it wouldn’t get warm or sunny all at once, but tentatively, like it needed to be coaxed out of its shell a little bit.

It was nice to see the sun after the cold, the months on end of double layers of socks and mittens and scarves wrapped end-to-end around themselves, of gas-stove outages and shivering himself awake in the middle of the night. The warmth couldn’t come fast enough, but Will liked it like that– spending evenings outside with his friends, riding their bikes around town without breaking out into a sweltering summer sweat, the midmornings and sunsets and the stretch of time in between.

Springtime was good. Spring was safe, spring was healing, spring was birthday parties and the beginning of the end of the school year. Spring was the polar opposite of all the things he didn’t like– things that were dark and cold and entirely devoid of color. Spring was– 

–spring was usually underway by now. Normally, Will would be spending this stretch of time outside as much as possible, coming back to life like the grass unfurling under his feet, morning frost turning into morning dew, and something inside Will’s chest relaxing in tandem– this hard, anxious thing that would take root inside him during the first weeks of fall. Nestled deep, tucked away like it had burrowed down inside him to hibernate right through the cold.

Maybe no Hawkins spring ever again, he thinks, turning a stone over with one foot.

The bark of the tree log is cold and damp under him, and he’s getting his jeans dirty and his hands caked in soft streaks of soil, but he can’t find it in himself to care. Maybe Hawkins spring is over forever. Maybe things are always going to be like this from now on– dark and cold and devoid of color. Maybe Hawkins is stuck in a perpetual winter, maybe Will and his friends had doomed them to a snowglobe-fate of their worst nightmares, and all that’s left behind is ash and gray and the foreboding taste of waiting rain on his tongue.

At least it’s quiet. At least here, Will can be miserable in peace. And he doesn’t even know why he’s miserable, but at least here he can do it on his own. At least here, he’s not getting in the way.

He pulls his legs up onto the log, wrapping his arms around them. He’s shivering slightly, and he doesn’t like that, but getting a jacket would mean going back inside, so he’s fine, he’s not cold, he’s not shivering, he’s honestly not much of anything at all.

A twig snaps softly in the distance and Will jerks, head snapping up in surprise and legs coming down on instinct. He expects his mom, maybe, who’s always known him better than he’s maybe known himself, or El, who has yet to really talk to anyone since they first saw Max at the hospital. Instead, Jonathan is poking his head around a cluster of small trees, and when he spots Will, his face relaxes in obvious relief.

“Hey,” he says softly. “You ran out pretty quick. Is everything okay?”

Will shrugs. “Just got a bit stuffy inside.” Which isn’t not true, but it isn’t all of the truth.

Jonathan nods. He doesn’t come any closer, just crosses his arms and leans against one of the trees marking the curved path back to Hopper’s cabin. “We got pretty worried when you disappeared,” he says after a moment. “We thought maybe– maybe something happened.”

“Oh,” Will says, kicking his heels back against the rough wood of the bark. “I’m fine. Just needed some air.”

Jonathan nods again. He’s watching Will very carefully, like he knows something, like he’s waiting for Will to open his mouth and confess to whatever it is he knows and Will doesn’t. “Okay,” he says simply. “I know the cabin isn’t very big. Must have felt pretty cramped with everyone in there, huh?”

Will’s not really sure where Jonathan’s going with this, but he’ll play along. “Yeah, sure.”

“It’s going to rain.” Jonathan gestures up at the sky where, sure enough, clouds are gathering– steel-gray and angry, rolling. “You should come back inside.”

“It’s fine,” Will replies. He pulls his knees up to his chest again, teetering slightly before he rights himself. “I think I’ll stay out here a bit longer.”

Jonathan gives him another careful look. He takes a step forward, stopping a few feet away from where Will is sitting. “You sure? It looks like it’s going to come down pretty bad.”

Will nods. “Yeah. I’m sure.”

There’s a moment’s pause, and then Jonathan sighs. He gestures towards where Will is sitting. “Do you mind if I– or did you want to be left alone?”

Honestly, Will kind of wants to be left alone. But this is Jonathan, who won’t push if Will doesn’t want him to, who’ll ease up the second he feels resistance, this is Jonathan, so Will nods for a second time and shuffles over to make room. Jonathan’s pants are getting all dirty too, the moss and lichen streaking the light denim of his jeans with a muddied brown-green, but he doesn’t seem to care either. 

For a minute, neither of them say anything. In the distance, there’s the soft rumbling of thunder. It’s going to rain. Will should go back inside. He should–

“It’s a lot,” Jonathan says suddenly, and Will looks up at him. “Everyone together, I mean,” Jonathan clarifies. “Being back is already– it’s weird, and then being back like this, and then, you know, Hopper and all of that– I don’t blame you. For wanting to get out.”

Will lets out a small laugh. “Hopper,” he starts, then shakes his head incredulously. “Can you believe mom went to Russia?”

“Weirdly, yes,” Jonathan says with a small frown, and then Will laughs again. “I wouldn’t have guessed it but somehow– somehow when they stepped out of that car together, I was like, yeah, alright. Why not?”

“Why not,” Will echoes, even as the corners of his lip twitch. He tightens his grip around his legs. “Mom freaks out when you come home thirty minutes after curfew but she sneaks off to break her boyfriend out of a Russian prison and it’s cool.”

Jonathan pulls a face. “They’re probably dating now, huh?”

“Well,” Will starts, tugging at his shoelace and looking down at the layer of mulch covering the forest floor. “I think– I think you probably wouldn't sneak across international borders to break someone out of a top-security prison unless you wanted to date them.”

“I’d break you out of prison,” Jonathan says immediately. “If you were in Russia and presumed dead for eight months, I’d come get you.”

“You’re different,” Will protests, “you’re– you– you’re always trying to, like, protect me, or something–”

Jonathan just shrugs, as if this small fact isn’t the entire picture of him Will had painted in his head when he was growing up. When he was younger, Jonathan had seemed infallible, untouchable, in a way. He’d seemed old enough that it felt like Will could never catch up– weirdly superhuman in his height and his strength and the way he seemed to have all the answers to the things Will asked.

And then later, when Jonathan started working and Will was in awe of how cool it was to be able to make your own money, to have a paycheck come home in your name, to say things like I’ll be home at ten, mom, don’t wait up, and then disappear out through the front door.

And it isn’t until now, until they’re sitting nearly shoulder-to-shoulder, that Will realizes they’re the same height.

He doesn’t like how that makes him feel.

“I’m supposed to protect you,” Jonathan is saying. “It’s my job, okay?”

Will looks away. “Yeah, well– I don’t know. Maybe it shouldn’t have to be. Maybe you shouldn’t have to, like, take care of me all the time.”

“Hey,” Jonathan says softly, and then there’s a soft rustling noise as he readjusts himself, turning so his body is half-angled towards Will’s. “Do you think it’s some sort of chore for me? Looking out for you?”

The honest answer is yes, Will does feel like it’s some sort of chore for Jonathan. He feels like maybe he got some sort of a blessed reprieve in Lenora when he made a real friend who wasn’t just his girlfriend or his little brother, feels like maybe Jonathan had every right to ditch any semblance of responsibility to go get stoned each night, like it was some sort of reparation for having to deal with Will every day of his life up until then. “No,” he says instead, because he’s a little scared of the expression Jonathan might get on his face if he says any of this aloud, and shrugs. “No, of course not.”

“Because it’s not,” Jonathan says anyway, frowning. “Will, I meant what I said back at– back in the pizza place. You’re my brother. Nothing would ever–”

 “I know,” Will says urgently, half because he does– know, that is, he knows Jonathan loves him and he knows, even if it’s just in words, that there’s not much that would keep Jonathan from loving him– and half because this is a dangerous path to walk down, and he’s better off nipping this talk in the bud before it goes any further. “I know, I know, you love me, nothing would ever change that–”

In the distance, thunder booms again, louder this time. The sky seems to dim, the clouds rolling in and drowning out the last of the already weak sunlight. Will shivers again. He should’ve grabbed a jacket before he bolted, but it’s fine. He’s fine.

Beside him, Jonathan gives a glance up at the sky. “You sure you don’t want to head in?” he tries again. “I don’t want you catching a cold.”

“I’m fine,” Will says again. “I just needed to– I needed to think for a while.”

“Anything you felt like sharing?” Jonathan prompts. It comes out gentle, like he’s talking to a wounded animal, palms up and quiet and coaxing. Like maybe Will is going to bare his teeth at him if he gets too close. “You don’t have to but– I’m here if you do.”

The problem with this is that Will can’t share if he can’t put the feelings into words in the first place. “I don’t know,” he admits. “It’s– like you said, it’s a lot. Being back. Going from being away from everyone to having them all there at once– I don’t know,” he says again, looking away, off into the tree line. “I guess I’m a little overwhelmed.”

“Yeah,” Jonathan sighs. “I get it. It would be hard not to be.”

He doesn’t say anything after that, just pauses and leans into his hand where it’s propped up on one knee, and gives Will another look, like he’s waiting, like he knows something that he isn’t letting on to.

“And,” Will continues, partially against his better judgment but also maybe a little because he wants to, “I don’t know. So much happened while we were gone, you know? The last couple weeks were crazy but also– also everything is different now and–”

Different is a bit of an understatement, because Jim Hopper is alive and he’s dating Will’s mom– even if they haven’t told anyone, it’s totally obvious– and El’s hair is gone now and Max is in the hospital and Mike is–

Will blinks, looking down. Mike is a lot of things. Mike is taller and his hair is longer and his voice is deeper and he’s undeniably, irreparably in love with El. But maybe that last part isn’t such a difference at all. Maybe Mike always has been. Maybe Will’s just been too much of a fool to see it now.

God, what an idiot he was, sitting there on Mike’s bed saying whatever you want to say, you can say it when you see her, not knowing that the thing Mike wanted to say was, apparently, I love you. Not knowing that Mike had, apparently, been mustering up the courage to say it for the last six months. Not knowing that Mike had, apparently, loved El ever since he first laid eyes on her.

So yeah. Maybe different is an understatement.

“Will?” Jonathan says quietly. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Will replies, but this time, it doesn’t sound believable, not even to his own ears. He takes in a breath. The sky whispers angrily above them, and Will feels the faint sting of a cold drop of rain hitting his cheek. One, two. Three, four. He breathes out. “I just keep thinking– what if there was something we could have done? What if, you know, what if I’d figured it out sooner? What if maybe we warned them?”

“Will, stop,” Jonathan shakes his head. “Come on. There was no way we could’ve known. No way you could have known.”

“But there was!” Will exclaims, something bubbling over inside him, hot, bitter, angry. He thinks of El, lying in a tub of water and choking on air, pushing everything off of the table and hoisting her limp body onto it. He thinks of Max, how all the life had drained from her skin, the way Lucas had hugged them when they’d walked in. The smell of ash and decay that’s already begun to settle on everything in the vicinity. Will wonders if he’ll ever be able to get the scent out of his mind, if he’ll ever be able to scrub it off his skin. “If anyone could’ve seen this coming, it was me– if anyone should’ve known, it was me– I should have paid more attention, I should been able to tell something was wrong, I should’ve known–”

“Will, stop,” Jonathan says again, pressing, urgent. Something in his tone makes Will look up, startled. Jonathan’s eyes have gone wide. “You can’t blame yourself for this, okay? You can’t– you can’t put this on yourself, come on, you were two thousand miles away–”

Will ducks his head. “Maybe,” he mumbles, “but–”

The second half of the thought goes unfinished, but what Will wants to say is this: that he’d been useless in their entire drive across the country. He’d been useless while El had been fighting off Vecna in her mind, he’d been useless while Max Mayfield had been dying, slow and torturous, he’d been useless in the desert and while they’d been getting shot at and while Mike held El’s hand and brought her back to life. He’d been useless, but the one thing he’d had was this– this fucked-up connection between him and this entity that had been making his life hell for years, and the one time it could’ve been useful– the one time he could have played it to their advantage–

There’s a hot, prickling pressure behind his eyes, and Will blinks forcefully. All of the pain he’d caused– everyone at the hospital, Bob– “I just wish I could’ve helped more,” he says at last. “I don’t know, I feel like I didn’t do anything. Like I’m–”

Dead weight. The proverbial canary in the coal mine. A mistake.

There’s a few beats of silence that pass. Another raindrop hits Will’s cheek, cold and sharp. And another. Then–

“I don’t care,” comes Jonathan’s voice next to him. It’s strangely sharp. Will looks up again. “I don’t care if you didn’t do anything,” Jonathan says, “you don’t have to– you don’t owe us anything, Will.”

“I don’t think I owe you guys something,” Will insists, even though it feels like a lie the second it leaves his mouth. He does, he does feel like he owes them something– reparations, maybe, for spending all that time looking for him. Spending all that time worrying about him. How he’d been marked for disaster the second he left the womb and for every drop of blood on his hands and his hands alone– he does owe them something, this debt he’ll spend the rest of his life trying to repay. “I just feel like–”

“All I care is that you’re safe,” Jonathan cuts him off. “Get it? That’s all that matters to me. You’re safe, and El’s safe, and mom’s safe, and– and we’re together, and it wouldn’t matter to me if you’d spent the entire time unconscious and we’d had to carry you around everywhere– you’re safe and that’s all that matters. That’s enough, okay?”

It sounds so simple when Jonathan says it like that. He wishes it could be that simple in reality.

There’s something wet on his cheeks, and Will blinks. He doesn’t know if it’s rain, or if he’s finally started crying. Maybe it’s both.

“Yeah,” he says, and his voice comes out a bit hoarse, and it cracks just a little on the edges of the single syllable, so maybe he has started crying after all. Above them, the sky rumbles again, and another raindrop hits Will on the nose, another two on his arms, and it’s cold and it’s started to rain, but he feels wholly rooted to the spot, unable to move, to run for cover, anything. “Yeah, sure.”

It comes out flat. Jonathan looks unconvinced. “Will,” he starts again, then falls silent. “How long have you been feeling this way?”

Will shrugs. How long has he felt like he owes them something? That one’s easy– since the first time he woke up screaming in the dark, twelve years old and afraid, loud enough for his mom to come running and for Jonathan to turn on all the hallway lights and for them to spend the night like that, sitting on Will’s bed with their arms around him, like the combined weight of their bodies might be enough to lull him back to sleep.

And that’s the thing, right, is that when you don’t have anything to offer except the one thing, the one stupid, sorry, pathetic little thing, you try to give with everything you’ve got. And Will doesn’t have El’s superpowers, he couldn’t run off to Russia at the drop of a hat to save someone. He wasn’t even old enough to drive, so Jonathan had to do most of that himself and in the end, all he had was this painting he’d been working on for weeks and a fumbled half-confession in the backseat of the van and–

One, two. Three, four. Will breathes out. The ground suddenly feels a lot less solid under him.

It’s no wonder he got overwhelmed. It’s no wonder everyone is tiptoeing around him– or at least it feels like they are, like they should be, because he couldn’t even–

“Will, come on,” Jonathan is saying, nearly indecipherable over the clap of thunder resonating through the clearing. “Will–”

The choking, hot feeling boils over as Will’s head meet’s Jonathan’s chest, arms wrapping firmly around his shoulders, and it isn’t until the first damp contact of his cheek against fabric that he realizes he’s crying after all. “Will, it’s okay,” he hears above him, muffled through cloth and an unyielding ringing in his ears. “It’s okay, come on–”

“I’m fine,” Will gets out, trying for one moment to pull away, to right himself, “I’m fine, Jonathan–” and then Jonathan’s arms tighten around him and Will feels the fight instantaneously drain out of his body. 

Will is tired. He’s exhausted, and he’s so tired, and it’s been a few days of interrupted sleep but it feels like he’s been running on empty much longer than that. He wants to run away, he wants to lean into the touch, he wants to let the oncoming storm wash him away along with the dirt and the ash and every other bad thing haunting this godforsaken town.

He’s so tired.

“I don’t care,” Jonathan says, repeating it like a prayer. “I don’t care, I don’t care if you couldn’t help, okay, I don’t care if you– if all you did was sit there, I don’t care, you’re my– I love you because you’re my brother, okay, not because of what you can do for me. For anyone.”

Will, rather pathetically, sobs. “I know,” he says, and it comes out choked and awkward and broken in two, right between the syllables. “I know that, I know you love me, it’s just sometimes–”

Dead weight. A mistake. A mistake.

The rain is coming down more steadily now, hitting Will in the shoulders and arms and all down his neck. He can feel the chill down to his bones, the suffocating way his t-shirt is clinging to his skin, and they should really go inside, but neither of them move. Jonathan’s hold on him doesn’t waver.

“I just feel–” Will tries again. “I just feel–”

“You don’t have to say anything.” Jonathan’s arms tighten, almost instinctively, around Will’s shoulders. “You don’t have to, but– I want you to know you can, if you want to.”

Will goes for a laugh. He’s mostly successful. “Yeah, I know, you– you said. Earlier.” 

Earlier meaning somewhere in the back of a closed-down pizza shop. Earlier meaning before the world ended, officially. Earlier meaning before Will learned that apparently, Mike Wheeler’s life began the day Will went missing. Earlier meaning before Will came to the conclusion that maybe– maybe they all felt this way. Maybe he shouldn't have come back.

A mistake. A mistake.

There’s a soft intake of breath above him, then, as if reading his mind, Jonathan whispers, “Will, you’re not a mistake.”

It’s barely audible over the wind, and yet, Will’s stomach plummets. And who knows, maybe Jonathan did read his mind. Maybe this is the hallmark of being an older sibling– intuition beyond comprehension, knowing things about your little brother down to your bones, even without being told. “I know,” he lies, and it’s probably obvious, because this is Jonathan, who’s been around to observe literally every moment of Will’s existence on this planet. “I don’t think I’m a– a mistake, why would you–”

You make her feel like she’s not a mistake.

And Jonathan had heard the whole thing, because he’d been three feet away, and he’d pretended he hadn’t, because Will had cried– embarrassingly, weakly, pathetically, he’d cried. And Will had probably been easy enough to read without saying any of it. Of course he’d been easy to read. He’s always been easy to read, he’s never been good at hiding things, and he’d probably been so obvious that they’d all seen right through him. Jonathan, Argyle, Mike–

“Because you’re not,” Jonathan presses, ignoring him entirely. “You’re not a mistake, you’re– you’re my brother. You’re my favorite person, okay, you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. You’re my brother.”

“The best thing? Not even Nancy?” Will tries weakly, and Jonathan lets out a sharp exhale that might have been a laugh.

“Not even Nancy,” he agrees, and Will blinks, hard.

“Oh,” he says, then falls silent. He doesn’t know what to say to that– the confession that someone’s seen all the dirt-streaked, gnarled, twisted parts of him, and that they still think he’s the best thing to happen to them. Jonathan, whose life he’d been so sure he’d made miserable for years. Jonathan, who’d had to get a job at fourteen to help make sure Will didn’t go to bed hungry. Jonathan, who’d stood up to their dad in all of his five-foot-tall glory. Five feet seemed taller than Will could comprehend, at the time, and now they’re nearly the same height, and Will doesn’t know what to say. “I– okay.”

Something’s uncoiling in him slowly, unfurling its vice grip on his heart, and suddenly, the words are clawing their way up his throat before he can stop them– “Jonathan, I have to tell you something.”

The response is immediate. “Yeah, yeah, of course. Anything.”

There’s a brief pause where it’s just the soft sound of rain hitting damp mulch and detritus. Then the panic sets in.

Shit. Shit. Will didn’t mean for this, but the words came out before he could stop them and Jonathan is waiting and it’s cold and raining and Will thinks he might throw up.

“I,” he gets out, starting to shiver, now. “I– I’m.”

It’s in this moment that it occurs to him that Jonathan knows. He knows, because he has eyes and he’s Will’s brother, and he knows him inside and out and that’s probably what he’d been trying to say, earlier, right before it all went to hell– all that talk about coming to him and telling him things and nothing would change. 

And that feels like half a comfort, and half something else entirely. Because Jonathan knows, and surely everyone else must too. Will knows he hasn’t been subtle. Will knows he’s let his guard down on more than one occasion. Hell, even– even Mike knows, he thinks, feeling all the color drain from his face. Maybe Mike doesn’t know everything– and maybe he does– but he knows enough.

It’s not my fault you don’t like–

God, maybe he is going to be sick.

“Will?” Jonathan prompts. Will’s face is still tucked into his shoulder, but he pulls back, eyes trained carefully on the trees around them, the ground, his hands– anywhere but meeting Jonathan’s eyes. “What is it?”

“I–” Will tries again, then shakes his head. “Sorry, sorry, I– I don’t know how–”

“It’s okay,” Jonathan says. “You– whatever it is, you can take your time. You don’t have to if you don’t–”

“I do,” Will insists, even as his throat tightens. “I do, I– I think you already know, but, I don’t know, I just need to– I think I need to say it anyway.”

Something softens in Jonathan’s expression at this, and maybe he does know, and maybe Will has been obvious, and maybe none of that matters. He shuts his mouth, shaking his head, the tight, frantic pressure in his throat threatening to boil over entirely.

“You don’t have to say it.” Jonathan looks at him, studying, searching, eyes darting between Will’s own. His hair has started to drip water down his face, and Will’s has too– down the back of his neck and the white of his shirt is probably soaked all the way through, but Will can hardly feel the cold anymore. “You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to. It’s just a word. They’re all just words, okay?”

“I know,” Will says, sniffling softly. There’s water running down his cheeks. He reaches up to wipe it away, then remembers his hands are also wet, and lets them fall into his lap. 

And sure, it’s just a word. Maybe that’s all they are– words, arbitrary nonsense– but they’ve held power over him for too long. Will Byers, Joyce Byers’ son. The oddity of Hawkins, Indiana. The boy with the mismatched clothes and the jeans that never fit right. Too nice, too sensitive. Zombie Boy, a freak, a–

He’s sick of it. Of words, of names, of everyone in this town apparently figuring out what he was before he was old enough to even feel it himself. Sick of everyone making it out to be a bad thing, sick of everyone telling him it should be a bad thing, even before he knew what it was.

He takes a steadying breath in. “I,” he says, and then quickly, all at once before his voice can crumble entirely, before he loses the nerve, before Jonathan can say something else or get up or go inside– “I’m gay.”

The pause after that lasts, in reality, not much more than a few moments. But it feels like much longer– minutes passing where it’s just Will and the rain and his selfish, bruised heart, frozen in place.

Then– “Will,” Jonathan says softly, and for a horrible second, Will thinks maybe he understood wrong. He squeezes his eyes shut, turns his face downwards so Jonathan can’t see. Maybe this wasn’t what Jonathan was getting at. Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe he wouldn’t have said all those things if he did, maybe he–

“Will,” Jonathan repeats, voice turning fragile around the edges, and then Will is being pulled in again, the breath knocked out of his lungs. “Thank you for telling me,” Jonathan is saying, muffled against the side of his head. “I– how long were you keeping that in?”

“I don’t know,” Will says, “a long time, I think,” and Jonathan lets out a choked laugh.

“I love you,” he says, for maybe the hundredth time in the last twenty minutes. “I– nothing I said has changed, okay? I still mean all of it. Every word.”

“I know.” Will lets out a half-laugh of his own, grateful, despite himself, for the reassurance. I love you. I love you. I love you.

Jonathan knows. Jonathan does not hate him.

The rain is coming down harder than ever, but suddenly, Will doesn’t feel the cold, or the irritating way his shirt is hanging off his back, or the muddied bark he’s sitting on, the way his clothes are all disgusting by now and he’ll have to boil himself alive in the shower later. The storm and the wind and the pelting sting of rain feel calm, like an exhale, like release.

Jonathan pulls back, eyes darting over Will’s face, where he surely has dirt streaked across his cheeks from wiping at his eyes. “Did you really think I wouldn’t?”

“I– maybe?” Will shrugs weakly. “I didn’t know.”

Love is not always unconditional. If the past year taught him anything, it’s this– that maybe for other people, love was an all-encompassing, unconditional force, but for Will Byers, it would never be. People could give it and take it away as they pleased, however much and whenever they wanted, and that’s just how things would always be for boys like him.

“Well I do,” Jonathan says firmly, with an air of finality, voice raising in volume as the wind picks up around them. “And I’m telling you, okay, there’s nothing you can do that would make me not love you.”

“What if I robbed a bank?” Will tries for a grin. “Or held someone at gunpoint?”

“Yeah, I heard about your plans to commit fraud in Vegas,” Jonathan says, raising his eyebrows, and Will feels a real laugh bubble out of him, sharp and sudden. “I’d love you even if you committed grand larceny.”

“What if I were an axe murderer,” Will asks, swiping a rivulet of water out of his eye and blinking. “Or what if I–”

“Yes,” Jonathan cuts him off, then reaches over to wipe a streak of mud off Will’s cheek. “No matter what. Always, okay? I’d still love you. Even if you were an axe murderer.”

“Okay,” Will says, and it’s like all the fight drains out of him at the words. Always, okay?

And maybe not all love is unconditional, but it feels like this one could be.

Jonathan waits a moment longer, but Will has nothing left to say. This is it, his body seems to be saying. You can breathe now. 

Jonathan knows. Jonathan loves him.

“Let’s head inside, yeah?” Jonathan gestures down at their dripping clothes. “I really hope the cabin has hot water.”

“Me too,” Will smiles. The soil is waterlogged already, the soles of Will’s sneakers coming away brown and muddy, but he can’t find it in himself to care about that either.

Maybe no spring in Hawkins this year, but something about the air feels lighter anyway. And the air doesn’t smell like ash anymore, Will notices, as they climb over the branches scattered across the forest floor. The ash, the burning, the death and decay– all swept away in the downpour.

Maybe that’s not all, Will thinks, his lungs expanding on his first real breath of air in what feels like years. It feels like maybe the rain washed something else away too.

4.

Mike’s second call doesn’t end up coming until Thanksgiving.

On its own, the wait is a torturous thing. The days go slow, and it’s probably a little pathetic of him, but Will’s pretty sure he’s being haunted. The phantom ringing of the telephone follows him from room to room, and it’s definitely pathetic how his heart skips a beat every time it does go off. Because El gets letter after letter from Mike, Will’s own single page clutched loosely in one hand, but phone calls are his. When Mike calls, it’ll be for him and him alone. 

He feels a little guilty for it, for the inane jealousy, for feeling so happy about something El doesn’t get, for being so happy because El doesn’t get it, because Mike will call because he wants to talk to Will, and because this thing– this small, mundane, ordinary thing– is his.

The rest of October crawls by, and the phone does not ring. And then November–

–November catches him off-guard entirely.

“Do you have weather powers?”

El blinks down at him, shoulders hunched up to her ears and peering into the doorway to his room. “What?”

Will doesn’t say anything at first. He feels– honestly, he doesn’t feel much of anything at all. November sixth, nineteen eighty-five, and it’s a miracle Will Byers is still alive.

If you can call it that. He hasn’t felt very alive lately.

He pokes his head out from under the blankets. “I said,” and it comes out a hoarse whisper, quiet. “Do you have weather powers?”

El looks unsure, like this is a trick question. Like Will is leading her into a trap. “Um,” she says, shuffling her feet slightly. “I don’t think I have any powers.”

“It was sunny all week,” Will points out, gathering up the last of his energy to nod towards the window, “and today it’s raining, so.”

El doesn’t seem like she gets it, but maybe it’s Will’s fault for assuming that she knows how playing along with the bit works. “It was not me,” she says earnestly, eyes wide. “I don’t know why it’s raining, I promise.”

Of course she doesn’t. Because El doesn’t have weather powers– the universe just hates him. This is some big inside joke. It must be, Will thinks, watching El look nervously around his room. Because that was the whole thing, that Lenora was warm and sunny and there was no late October chill to send the first tendrils of dread creeping down his spine. Maybe it was his own fault for thinking that this would be enough to keep it at bay. Maybe it was his fault for thinking that he’d have a normal November this year. Maybe the problem was never Hawkins. Maybe it was just him.

“Mom said,” El starts, hesitant and stilted like the words don’t fit right in her mouth, “to see if you were okay.”

Of course he’s not okay. Of course his mom knows that. Will’s best guess is that she sent El just in case there was something El could do for him that she couldn’t. He nods wordlessly. Yes.  

“She said,” El continues, still looking around the doorjamb instead of stepping inside. “She said you were– sick. That’s why you didn’t come to school today.”

Will nods again, makes a faint noise of agreement, and pulls the blankets tighter around himself. He should have drawn the blinds closed earlier, because now the room is being filled with midday light, and his head is throbbing and he feels very aware of his body, all the minute spots where his skin is touching the sheets, and simultaneously like he’s not inside of it at all.

El gives him a searching glance, then looks over to the window. She pauses, taking a tentative step inside. “Can I come in?”

Will nods again, hardly visible over the duvet, he’s sure, but El is crossing the room in quick, hurried steps, and then there’s a soft rustling noise as she wrestles with the blinds. The room dims, and the pressure behind his eyes subsides ever-so-slightly.

“Better?” El asks.

“Yeah.”

El hovers anxiously around the open door. She must know what’s wrong with him. Will is sure she’s haunted in the same way, like they’re two sides of the same jaded, pathetic coin. Maybe it’s different for her. Maybe she’s used to it. Maybe he’s just weak.

“Do you need to be left alone?”

Will kind of wishes she would stop talking to him, because he isn’t really sure how many more times he can shake his head or nod without it getting a bit annoying and maybe a little rude. But talking demands more energy than he has right now, so, commanded by some invisible force beyond his understanding, he just shakes his head no. “You can stay,” he whispers, and then ducks his head back underneath the blankets.

Lucky for him, El’s always been perceptive. “Okay,” she says simply. “You don’t have to say anything, but sometimes– sometimes it helps to have someone.”

She sits down right there, in front of his bed, cross-legged. Mismatched socks and a shirt that might have been Jonathan’s before it was Will’s– it suddenly strikes him how different she looks from the girl that had found him in the tent two years ago. Her hair’s growing out to her shoulders and she’s taller now, but the same steely determination is still written all over her face.

“And I copied down your history notes,” she adds, “so you don’t have to worry about missing class.”

Will doesn’t say anything. In all honesty, their history test had kind of been the last thing on his mind, but he appreciates the gesture. “Thank you,” he whispers, blinking a strand of hair rapidly out of his eyes where it’s fallen.

El studies him for a moment longer, then something in her expression softens. “Do you– maybe you should call Mike?”

Will stares. Shock, at least, he can convey without words. Mike doesn’t want to talk to him anyway. This, he’s sure of.

“I mean,” El continues anyway, voice dropping low and soft. She shuffles slightly, moving so her back is pressed up against the side of Will’s bed. “Maybe it will help. Maybe he can help.”

Help. The thought is so ridiculous that Will almost laughs, despite himself. Mike doesn’t want to help him. Mike Wheeler is currently, against all odds, being blessed with a normal November. A November where his only concerns are his weird family members coming over for Thanksgiving and staying warm in case they get hit with a highly unseasonal snow storm again. And none of these things have to do with Will Byers showing up and tearing his life to shreds.

Again.

Would Mike even pick up? If Will called? His mom would let him, he knows. She’d let him interrupt her work day and talk as long as he wanted, if he were feeling up to it. But he can feel the bitter truth of it like a gut instinct: it’s been weeks since Mike called, that one time, and Will is starting to get the picture. No calls and no letters for a boy like him. 

Mike Wheeler is two thousand miles away. Mike Wheeler gets a normal Hawkins autumn, free of the death and blood and decay trailing behind in Will’s wake.

Maybe it’s like Hawkins purged him, or something. Hawkins cleansed its corners of him with salt and fire and every last thing you use to keep the bad things away. And the thing is– it worked. It worked, and Will is gone, and now Mike doesn’t have to spend his November watching Will get strapped down to a bed and scream for his life. Now Mike doesn’t have to watch anyone else die because of him. Now Mike can finally breathe.

Will is a lot of things, and maybe one of those things is a bad person, right down to his core, but he’s trying to be better. Mike is probably relieved he isn’t around. He wonders, briefly, if Mike even remembers what today is.

No need to remind him, then. Will knows when to leave well enough alone.

“No,” he whispers instead, and leaves it at that.

El looks unsure. “But–” she starts. “I’m sure he would–”

She cuts herself off. For a while, it’s quiet. The wind whistles outside the house, rain pattering down soft against the glass and the window panes, and Will suddenly misses the trees outside their old home. The creaking of branches, the gentle rustling of leaves and the jagged shadows across the walls that had always left him on edge when he was younger. Here, there’s nothing. There are no trees in Lenora– or at least, not like there used to be. Back home. Back in– in Hawkins.

This is home now, he reminds himself, the familiar bittersweet pang tugging at him. No point in being homesick for somewhere you can’t call home anymore.

It’s midday, but it might as well be the middle of the night, the way exhaustion is taking over every molecule in his body. It’s ridiculous, because he hasn’t even done anything more than just lie here all day, and yet Will feels twelve years old again, running through the woods for days on end with a monster on his tail. The same kind of exhaustion as he’d felt back then, the same kind of panic running through his nerves from when he’d been hunted, when he’d been prey. 

It’s ridiculous. There are no monsters here today. It’s just him and these sheets and the stupid anniversary effect and the memory of sitting on Mike Wheeler’s basement couch on Halloween night, everything turned orange-gold and hazy in the lamplight.

No monsters. Only Three Musketeers wrappers and arms wrapped around him, helping him up from the ground, carrying him home.

No monsters. Only Lenora and their backyard with no trees and their phone that rings all the time but never with the voice Will is looking for. No monsters. Not much of anything at all, actually.

Maybe it isn’t too late for him to pretend like he’s fallen asleep.

“I,” El starts, slowly, and Will’s window of opportunity slides shut. “I’m sorry.”

“Why?”

El turns away, and then Will can’t see her face anymore, not from where he’s lying down. “I was too late,” she says simply. “I could not save you fast enough, and now you are– you are sad. Because of me.”

Maybe it’s because he’s tired, but half of that just goes straight over Will’s head. He frowns, then shuffles a little bit so he can see her more clearly. “What?”

“I said,” El repeats, a little louder now. Her voice wavers slightly. “It was because of me. I’m sorry.”

And maybe Will doesn’t know a lot of things, but he does know this– El’s only been living with them for four months, and they weren’t all that close beforehand, because she was a fairytale, a half-lucid daydream, a superhero. And if Will’s being honest with himself– totally and completely, one hundred percent honest– maybe there was a time when he would have accepted the apology. When he would have let El-the-superhero take the blame. This girl that Will didn’t even meet until the Snow Ball, this girl that Dustin and Lucas and– and Mike had just simply not shut up about for a year. 

And back then, it would have been like, yeah, okay, sure. If El could visit him in the Upside Down and tear open portals and kill people with her mind, then sure. Maybe she could have helped. Maybe he could have been saved after the first day.

But El isn’t a superhero. Will watches her bring her knees up to her chest, the back of her head just barely in view as she adjusts the collar of her shirt. He knows this now, even if he didn’t back then, in that strange, dilated year where she existed in a sort of half-state. Legendary, mystical, superhuman.

She’s not a superhero. Even back when she had powers, she wasn’t a superhero. She was just a girl. She’s just his sister.

He’s not sure how to try and convey that in words, even if he had the ability to. So he reaches a tentative hand out of his blankets and holds it palm up, fingers grazing lightly against her shoulder.

El startles at the touch, then relaxes, eyes going wide as she looks up at him. “You’re not mad?” she whispers, but reaches a hand up to grasp at his anyway. “Promise?”

Will squeezes once. Promise.

El relaxes visibly, a tentative smile tugging at her lips. “Okay,” she breathes. And then, “Are you okay?”

Another squeeze. And maybe El doesn’t have powers anymore, but she seems to get what he’s thinking all the same.

I will be.

3.

It rains for all of their first week in Lenora.

Will didn’t know that was, like, a thing here. And if Will’s being honest, he hadn’t really been sure what to expect from California at all. He’d never even stepped foot outside of Indiana, and the few occasions he’d left Hawkins at all were one-offs. Nothing luxurious– baseball games with his dad in the city, ones that he didn’t even want to go to. But everyone at school talked about these games– going with their dads and eating the hot dogs from the vendors and coming back to relive the best day of their lives at school, over and over again. So maybe it was worth a try.

And Will might have been young, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew what was happening here, he’d seen his dad take Jonathan out to the backyard, he’d heard the sounds of two revolvers going off in parallel, he’d listened to the shouting, he’d seen Jonathan turn white and lock himself in his room after.

So whatever bad thing his dad figured Jonathan was, whatever bad thing you had to be to get that as a birthday present, apparently Will was even worse. Will didn’t even get rabbits bleeding out on the lawn. He got baseball and hardened anger on the drive back, the car swerving into the oncoming lane because Will hadn’t cheered loud enough at the tie-breaker.

He told his mom about the yelling and the swerving, and then Lonnie stopped taking him to games. Lonnie stopped coming by at all, actually, which was honestly fine by him.

Will didn’t leave Hawkins much, after that.

He’d asked Max about California, even though he’d been getting the feeling she didn’t like to talk too much about it. She said it was mostly warm and sunny where she used to live, the kind of weather that she thought about during a Midwest winter when they’d all show up to school under seven layers of clothing. And that sounded nice– Will could get behind the idea of a tan, although he wasn’t too sure about whatever Max said about the salt and the sun turning you blonde.

He was mostly just happy about the warmth, though. No more seven layers of clothing. No more cars refusing to start in the morning. No more nights spent shivering himself awake.

He hadn’t, however, expected the rain.

“It’s really starting to come down.” His mom frowns, propping the door open with a box, glancing worriedly at the opened-up back of the moving truck. FRAGILE! the box reads. THIS SIDE UP.

“Mom, the boxes are going to get all wet,” Jonathan frets, hoisting what might be a box of Will’s clothes in through the door. “You can’t leave the truck door open.”

Joyce is already halfway down the driveway by the time she answers. “Well, I can’t open it back up every time we go out.”

He’ll probably just get in the way if he tries to help, Will thinks. Plus, his mom and Jonathan seem to be doing just fine on their own, so he meanders his way into his new living room. He takes his sweet time– runs his hands along the banister of his new stairs, inspects every nook and cranny of his new kitchen, tries to commit the loose floorboards to memory. The creaky spots, where the beams and plaster have yet to settle. The wood under his feet groans loudly as he steps onto the landing of the stairs. There’s number four.

Over the next few days, here are the things Will learns about Lenora, California:

One. Max Mayfield is a liar, because it’s not warm, and it’s not sunny, and the scent of ocean-warmed salt is nowhere to be found. His mom had shown them where they were moving, hand splayed out flat against the atlas on their kitchen table. And it was a little far from wherever Max had said she was from, but Will had figured it was all the same. A state was a state, right? And maybe California was big and long and strangely shaped and all the way across the country, but it was just one state. Indiana was the same all across its thirty-something thousand square miles– a fact referenced from earlier on in the same atlas– so he figured California was probably the same.

He was, as it turns out, wrong.

Two. It doesn’t seem that different from Hawkins so far, in all of Will’s five days of experience living here. It’s mostly flat, mostly open. There are some hills and the trees look different than back home– no dense wooded acres for him to get lost in– but for right now, it’s raining and it’s flat and it’s gray. If it weren’t for the people, their bright, colorful clothes, it would almost be like Will never left at all.

Three. In Lenora, Will is invisible.

This last thing, he thinks he might actually be okay with. More than okay, even. In Lenora, he’s not Zombie Boy, or freak, or something infinitely worse than either of those names. He’s just Will Byers, the new kid from a state that most of the people here haven’t even heard of. The new kid who fumbles through awkward introductions to the class on the first day, then hides in the back of the room where no one notices him. And that’s the strangest thing of all– stranger than Jonathan’s new friend with the cool hair and the lack of four distinct seasons and the weird looking trees and plants and all the sun–

Here, Will Byers is not someone who gets jeered at in the halls. Here, Will Byers is not a name ricocheting off of Hawkins’ brick buildings and white picket fences. Here, Will Byers does not haunt Missing posters strung up on community boards. Here, Will Byers is nobody. Here, Will Byers is a little bit of a ghost. Here, Will Byers is nothing at all.

He’s so relieved, he thinks he might cry.

One week after their move, the phone rings.

It’s still raining outside. God, why had no one told him about the rain? He thinks the call might be for his mom, for a moment, but she’s got the day off work, and Jonathan’s upstairs somewhere, and El isn’t allowed to talk on the phone, in case someone’s listening. So it’s his for the taking, apparently.

Will picks it up.

“Hello?” And then, in case it is someone calling for his mom– “Um. Byers residence.”

For a moment, Will can’t hear anything but static, overlaid with the soft pattering of rain on the back door. Maybe it was a misdial, he thinks. He should probably hang up.

Then–

“Hello? Is that– Will?”

Will straightens. His heart, for one horrible second, stops beating, right there in his chest. “Mike?”

It’s a stupid question. He’d know Mike Wheeler’s voice anywhere. Even through a couple thousand miles of telephone wires and a storm, it’s like his body’s on hair-trigger autopilot at the sound.

Will doesn’t know how to feel about that.

Another pause. “Yeah,” Mike says, sounding almost– relieved? “Yeah, it’s me, sorry, I know this is super out of the blue, you’re probably busy–”

Will glances at the clock. It’s four o’clock on a Thursday. “No, it’s okay,” he says, “I just– um. I just got back from school a while ago, so–”

“Oh.” Mike sounds a bit surprised. “Right, I forgot– you know, the time difference. I’m just about to, uh, eat dinner, actually.”

“Oh,” Will parrots. “Um. Right. Do you need to go or something?”

“No! No, I don’t, I– sorry, is this a bad time? Do you want me to go?”

Will shakes his head, even though Mike can’t see him. “No! I mean, sorry, I’m glad you called. But, um, El– she can’t talk on the phone, remember?”

“El,” Mike starts, then pauses. “Oh. I know. I mean, I remember. I called to talk to you, actually.”

It’s a bit ridiculous, the way that sends his stomach leaping, like the ground got swept away right under him. He thinks, for a second, that maybe he heard Mike wrong. “Me? You called for me?”

“Um. Yeah.” Mike clears his throat, and there’s a soft sound of an inhale through the phone line. “I was trying to reach you all week, but I couldn’t, so I thought maybe your phone wasn’t set up, or–”

I was trying to reach you all week. “Oh, no it was set up by the time we got here,” Will says. I was trying to reach you all week. “I think maybe the storm just knocked some lines out until now. My mom had a really hard time calling in for work this week. She’s, um. She’s got the day off today.”

“Oh. Okay, cool, that makes sense,” Mike says, sounding so relieved again that Will fights back the sudden and inexplicable urge to cry.

I was trying to reach you all week.

They’d left things in a bit of a weird spot, which felt like something completely out of his scope because things with Mike had never been weird before. Mike was the one person Will could count on things not being weird with, not ever. And it had been his fault a little, he knows, for avoiding Mike so much for the rest of the summer. He probably hadn’t been too subtle about it, because every time he’d excuse himself early or beg out of plans, Mike Wheeler would get a bit of that kicked puppy look on his face, and it would take everything in him to not run back through the Wheelers’ front door and agree to stay another ten minutes.

Not that it mattered. Until now, until this– I was trying to reach you all week– he hadn’t even been one-hundred percent that Mike even cared.

Really cared.

The phone line won’t reach far enough for Will to sit down at the kitchen table, so he leans against the wall. “Yeah, it’s been super rainy all week. Literally no one here owns a raincoat, so I was the only one in class that wasn’t dripping a puddle onto the floor.”

Mike laughs, sudden and quick, and the sound is tinny and metallic and ten sizes too small over the phone, but Will’s heart still stutters in his chest. “That’s funny,” Mike says, even though it’s not really that funny. “So, um. You started school? How was it?”

Will shrugs, and then pauses when he remembers that Mike can’t see him. This is weird. This is really, really weird. “It was alright,” he says. “Probably not that much different from your first day.”

This is a lie. Back in Hawkins, Will Byers would have been called enough names before lunch to fill up a thesaurus. Here, Will Byers is nameless, faceless, and not much of anything at all.

“You were there for my first day,” Mike points out, which is true enough. “You know how mine went.”

Will had been there. He’d been at home, under the covers in bed all day, waiting for them to bike back and catch him up. Lucas had his first practice of the season that day. He hadn’t been able to come. 

“Right. Um. It was okay. I like my art teacher, but the rest kind of suck.”

“You’re taking an art class?” Mike’s tone sounds suddenly brighter, even through the receiver. “That’s so cool!”

The art class is, actually, a school board-mandated requirement, but he doesn’t say this. There’s something about Mike’s awe that he selfishly wants to keep for himself. “Yeah, it’s fun. I mean, I think I’m one of the only people who actually, you know, want to be there, so–”

“Well, that makes sense,” Mike says immediately. “You’re crazy talented! Like, your art and stuff, I don’t get how you do it.”

“I– oh. Um. Thanks, Mike.”

“Yeah,” Mike says softly, voice going strangely quiet. Maybe the connection is getting disrupted. “I, um. I think it’s really neat. Your art, I mean. You’re the best artist I know.”

“You– really?” Will isn’t sure exactly how many artists Mike knows, but he still feels himself going warm at the words. Is he blushing? He might be. God, this is so embarrassing. He’s suddenly relieved that Mike can’t see his face. “I am?”

“Obviously,” Mike scoffs. “I still have all the stuff you drew for our– wait, hang on.”

Will waits. And yeah, okay, he’s definitely blushing, the way his face feels about a million degrees out of absolutely nowhere. What’s wrong with him?

Scratch that. He knows what’s wrong with him.

There’s a pause on Mike’s end, then distant voices in the background. Mike’s voice sounds stifled, indecipherable, like he’s talking with one hand over the phone. “Hey, listen,” Mike says after a moment, sounding much closer now. “I’m sorry, I’ve– it’s dinner and my mom’s kind of in a bad mood, so I’ve gotta go.”

“Oh.” Mike does sound apologetic about it, like there’s nothing he’d rather be doing than huddled over the phone in his basement talking to Will Byers, two thousand miles away. He lets out a breath. “It’s okay, don’t worry, we can– we can talk later, yeah?”

“Of course,” Mike says easily, and then, again, “I’m sorry, I would’ve called earlier but I figured you’d be in school still, and the calls just weren’t going through until now–”

“Mike,” Will cuts him off with a small laugh, “seriously, don’t sweat it. We can talk again soon.”

He pauses. The thought feels unfinished, somehow, and Mike hasn’t hung up yet so it feels like maybe he’s waiting for something too. “I’m glad you called,” Will gets out at last. “I– thank you. El and I– we miss you guys.”

“Of course,” Mike says again. “I’m glad you picked up. And, um. We miss you too. All of us.”

We miss you. I miss you.

Will hasn’t said it. Mike hasn’t said it either. Still, it hangs, unspoken, in the artificial air between them. Thousands of miles of distance, and somehow, the three words seem to take up all that space with no effort at all.

I miss you.

Will could say it, if he wanted. He does miss Mike– this is irrefutable, and Will Byers is a lot of things, but he’s not big enough of an idiot to pretend like he could keep this from himself. He misses Mike something fierce, something pathetic, something stinging like salt in a reopened wound. But it’s been a week since he’s seen Mike and he can’t say it out loud. He’s got years to go ahead of him, so he can’t say it now. Not already.

Maybe next time. It’ll be more normal next time. He doesn’t want to scare Mike off before he calls again.

“Bye, Mike,” Will whispers, “I’ll talk to you soon.”

He hangs up before he can catch Mike’s response. It doesn’t matter, anyway. Now that Mike knows their phone is working, they can talk more, and things can go back to normal. As normal as they can be, with most of the continental United States between you and the person you’re talking to.

Jonathan clears the bottom step of the stairs just as Will is lifting his hand off the phone. He raises his eyebrows. Somehow, Will gets the distinct impression that Jonathan knows exactly what happened, who Will was talking to. And for some reason, the thought makes him feel warm, guilty, like he was caught doing something he shouldn’t have been.

“Phone call?” Jonathan asks. Will snatches his hand back like the plastic of the landline turned to scalding hot metal under his palm.

“Um. Yes. Is that– okay?”

Jonathan stares for a moment longer. He’s got two books tucked under one arm, an empty cardboard box broken down and flattened clutched in both hands. “Of course,” he says, and Will lets out a sudden breath. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I don’t know,” Will shrugs, “maybe you and mom don’t want to be paying for long-distance calls all the time?”

“Oh?” Jonathan puts his books down on the table, bending the cardboard remnants in half before stuffing them into the recycling bin. “Who were you calling long-distance?”

Will doesn’t say anything. Maybe that’s a bit of an admittance on its own. 

Jonathan’s eyebrows creep further up his forehead. “Mike called?”

“Maybe,” Will says, immediately on the defense. “Why?”

“Nothing! Just wondering! Why?”

“Why did you say it like that?” Will crosses his arms. “Like–”

Jonathan looks absolutely bewildered. “I didn’t say it like anything, Will. Why? Did something happen?”

The answer is no, nothing happened. Maybe that’s the issue, is that Will wanted something to happen. And he doesn’t know what it was that he was expecting– maybe for Mike to call him on the phone and talk to him into the long hours of the early morning, through dinner and family time and homework and everything else that wasn’t Will. But Mike’s got things to do. Family dinners, apparently, even though it’s Thursday, which is meatloaf night at the Wheelers’, and Mike usually begs out of meatloaf night and hides in his room.

But it’s fine.

“No,” Will says at last, then hops onto a stool and watches Jonathan wrestle with the overflowing trash. “Nothing happened. We just– he just called to say hi.”

Maybe Jonathan is giving him a weird look. Maybe Will is just paranoid. It’s okay. Either way, Mike will call him back soon, and they can talk. Actually, properly, really talk.

Maybe things are looking up after all.

2.

Will seriously doesn't know how he got here. He’s also not sure he cares.

It’s raining, and Will’s still in just shorts and a t-shirt, and his bike is soaked and it’s going to rust if he doesn’t dry it off later, and it’s raining and it’s cold and it’s raining.

These are things Will is vaguely aware of, way in the back of his mind, that it’s cold and raining and cold, except the burn in his legs overpowers any semblance of chill he might have been feeling otherwise. He’s pedaling faster than he thought he was able to, speeding past 8th Street and Leary Way, past the hospital and the school and Melvald’s, where his mom is probably still working the closing shift. Past Union Avenue and 12th Street, then 13th, 14th, all the way to the other side of town until Maple Street is dead and buried behind him.

God, how could he have been so stupid? So– 

So– 

Stupid doesn’t even begin to cut it, he thinks, rain stinging at his face and arms and legs. He lifts an arm off the handlebars to wipe at his cheek, but to no avail. There’s something stinging behind his eyes, too– angry and prickling and stupid, stupid, stupid –

He feels the sound leave his chest more than he hears it– choked and cut off and jagged around the edges, nearly indecipherable over the rain hitting the concrete of the road and the shrieking metal-on-metal of the bike chains. Left on 22nd Street, four blocks down Anderson, swing a right. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The porch light is on when he rounds the corner into the driveway, but no one’s home. The living room is dim, and so are his mom’s room and Jonathan’s, and he’s so relieved he could sob. Maybe he does, he doesn’t know– he can’t hear anything over the rain, can’t feel anything over the burn in his legs and the vice-grip squeezing around his heart.

It’s a good thing no one’s home. He doesn’t know what he’d say if Jonathan were to see him like this– or his mom. How to explain why he’s soaked from head to toe. How to explain why he looks like he’s been crying.

Has he been crying? He can’t tell. He can’t tell much of anything right now, apart from the shame coursing through him, red-hot and liquid and suddenly, the idea of going inside is too much. Sitting in their living room with their secondhand blankets and the dishes in the sink and the worn leather of the sofa. Will feels claustrophobic just thinking about it, like the walls are closing in on him even here, where he’s standing in the driveway, bike clattering pathetically onto the ground, and it’s stupid, stupid, stupid–

And Will doesn’t know how he got here, but he’s here anyway, the peeling tree-branch walls of Castle Byers putting up a valiant fight against the rain. It’s useless, Will knows. It doesn’t usually rain in the summer, and they don’t have tarps, and Castle Byers never stood a chance.

Will doesn’t know how he got here, but it’s funny, he thinks, something bitter and desperate sparking to life under his skin. It’s funny, because the walls are lined with drawings, pictures, stories, memories of him and his friends, and somehow, he’s never in his whole life felt more alone than right this second.

He’s starting to think that maybe the Upside Down was better than this– where Castle Byers was little more than a shadow, haunted by his cowering, half-dead, twelve-year-old form. At least then, it was supposed to be that way– cold and empty and wrong. Because it feels cold and empty and wrong now, too, except he’s not in the Upside Down anymore. He’s real and he’s alive, and that’s probably why found his way here, on some kind of instinct, like a homing beacon in the dark .

He remembers Jonathan building it, the day Lonnie left, his shoulders gone tense but eyes softened in obvious relief. He remembers Jonathan lugging the branches off into the clearing, remembers standing proud and declaring Right here! He remembers trying to hammer nails into the wood and he remembers Jonathan’s laughter ringing off the trees at how bad he’d been. Taking the hammer back from Will’s unpracticed hands before he could hurt himself. He’d wondered why Jonathan hadn’t cried that day, not even once.

A safe place, Jonathan had announced. Castle Byers hadn’t had much more than a couple of worn-down pillows and a blanket for a while, but it didn’t matter. It was his. It was the first thing that was his, and his alone.

Not anymore. Maybe the Upside Down was better after all, and maybe that’s the point. Maybe things are wrong now, because Will is wrong, and maybe he came back wrong and fucked up and maybe everyone moved on without him, and maybe Mike was right. 

Did Will think they were going to sit around and play games in Mike’s basement forever? Did he think Mike would want to spend time with him forever? Did he expect them to wait for him? Did he think Mike would want to–

Yes, he thinks, for one stilted second, tossing aside the comic book he’s gripping in one hand, Lucas’ X-Men #43 going wrinkled from the rain. Yeah. Maybe he did.

“Stupid,” he mutters aloud, hears the sound dissipate the second it leaves his lips. And then, louder– “Stupid. So stupid.”

So maybe that’s the point. Maybe Will is stupid, and maybe this, all of this, is stupid too. Maybe Castle Byers has served its purpose.

His eyes land on the photo in the corner. Last Halloween, the Party in their Ghostbusters costumes. It’s so ridiculous, Will feels hysterical laughter bubble up inside his throat. 

Stupid. God, he’s so stupid. Had they all just been indulging him with their group costume? He hadn’t thought so at first– Mike and Dustin and Lucas had been so excited about it, and then their stupid squabble about being Venkman. You don’t do that if you’re just playing along. Right?

Doesn’t matter. Will grips at the glossy photo paper, wrinkling under his fingers. Mike is smiling in this one, which is rare. He can count on one hand the number of photos where Mike is smiling, but there he is, right in the middle of the frame, next to Will, eyes crinkling up at the corners. 

That had been a good day.

That doesn’t matter either. If he were to guess, none of the other members of the Party keep photos like this around. They’ve all moved on.

Why can’t he? Why can’t Will move on too?

“Stupid,” he says again, and in one swift move, before he can second-guess it, he rips the photograph right down the middle.

Fine. He’s moving on. This is Will Byers, moving on. The photograph flutters to the ground, Will on one half, Mike on the other.

It’s strangely fitting. Did you think we were going to sit in my basement and play D&D all day?

Maybe he did. He didn’t know until now that that was something to be ashamed of.

His hands are wrapping around Jonathan’s old baseball bat before he knows it, propped against the corner collecting dust from the last time it was used, months ago. He feels the static thrum of something bursting to life under his skin, frustrated and raring to go, an itch that can only be scratched with something harsh, something physical, something violent.

Maybe Castle Byers has served its purpose. Maybe Will needs to grow the fuck up.

God, and he can’t stop thinking about Mike and Lucas’ faces earlier. Pity. He never wanted Mike to pity him. Mike was the one person who would never pity him. Until now, Mike was the one person who understood. Who would never, ever hurt him. Mike was the person who would hold his hand and look into his eyes and help him off the ground and tell him how everything would be okay.

He doesn’t know what to do with Mike’s pity, but he doesn’t want it, and he sure as hell doesn’t need it.

He’s outside again before he knows it, and the rain is coming down on him harder now without Castle Byers’ meager attempt at shelter. And it hits him as he’s shifting the bat in his hands, trying to remember how to hold it–

Wrap your hands like this, Lonnie had sneered, before dragging Will out to another baseball game he never asked to go to. Feet like that.

Fine. Will can play. He’s always been good at this, pretending to be something he’s not. A good friend, a good son, a normal boy.

He shifts his feet, moves his hands like it’s a practiced dance.

He swings.

The first blow lands squarely against Castle Byers’ right wall. Again, he thinks numbly, rain flattening his shirt against his chest, the cotton starting to go translucent against his skin. He shivers, teeth rattling, hair dripping, fingers going numb against polished wood. Again.

It’s not his fault. Can they blame him? Mike and Dustin and Lucas get to be fourteen– they get to experience the uniquely fourteen-year-old experience of hating being fourteen, of being simultaneously desperate to grow into your body and waiting with bated breath to grow out of it and into something else entirely. 

They get to want these things, Will thinks bitterly, blinking water furiously out of his eyes and squinting against the downpour at Castle Byers’ dilapidated silhouette. Mike and Dustin and Lucas can want those things because they’re fourteen, and Will is not. Will is something else entirely.

He feels older than he really is. Will doesn’t know how long he was down there, sometimes. They said it was a week, maybe a little more. It doesn’t feel like a week, though. Sometimes it feels like hours. Sometimes it feels like years.

All he wants is to be fourteen again.

The ache in his shoulders and the fingernail marks carved into his palms come nowhere close to this kind of pain, come nowhere close to how it felt standing in Mike Wheeler’s garage not even thirty minutes ago, words stinging like an open-handed slap across the face. He raises the bat again, brings it down again, waits for the telltale shock of the recoil against his bones and the heated, stinging pressure behind his eyes. Again, again, again.

The impact is welcome. Tethering. Will Byers is maybe-fourteen years old, and he’s caught between planes of existence.

He’s being hunted, he’s scared, he’s prey–

No.

He swings, feels the wood splinter and give way, the contact barely audible over the following crack of thunder. It feels good. It’s nowhere near enough.

Again. Again.

Will Byers is fourteen years old, and he’s real, he’s here, he’s an idiot and a coward but he’s alive– 

No. He swings, again and again and again– 

The sign comes crashing down first. Castle Byers. All friends welcome. 

Will Byers is fourteen, except he’s not. What he is– what he is, is angry. 

He’s angry.

He never used to be this angry before, but maybe that’s the point. Maybe he did come back wrong, and maybe he did come back ten degrees of totally-fucked-up, and maybe Mike has been completely, entirely justified in ignoring Will for the better part of the last year.

Will is definitely crying now. He can tell without even being able to hear himself, can feel his throat constrict around an inhale, can feel his lungs stutter as he tries to breathe back out. In, out. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

He was never violent before, either, but maybe that’s the point. Maybe Will Byers is so far beyond normal that they don’t even have a word for it. Normal boys don’t feel what he feels. Normal boys don’t need to be sedated before they kill a room full of people. Normal boys don’t have now-memories or sixth senses or disappearance anniversaries. Normal boys don’t come back from the dead.

Will grits his teeth hard enough for his jaw to get sore with it. The roof of Castle Byers is next to cave in, branches clattering to the ground.

Good.

“Stupid,” he screams, because it is, loud enough now for it to be audible over the rain and the wind. “Stupid, stupid– fuck!”

Each downswing feels like due diligence. Like cutting his losses and letting go. One for saying yes. Two for the best thing Mike ever did. Three for rolling a seven, four for paper hospital gowns, five for his stupid Will the Wise costume, childish and dumb and stupid, stupid, stupid.

Six for–

Will pauses, breath coming out in ragged, desperate bursts, bat hanging limply at his side. Six for–

Crazy together, Mike had said, not even ten months prior, their knees bumping together on the Wheelers’ basement couch and the stale scent of bulk-priced Halloween candy filling the air. Crazy together, Mike had said, giving Will a smile like he was safe, like he was protected, like he was home.  

Crazy together, Mike had said, except now Will is standing alone in the middle of the woods, fingers white-knuckling the handle of Jonathan’s baseball bat, nails sinking into the tough flesh of his palms, shifting his stance in the waterlogged soil and trying his hardest to breathe. 

God, suddenly he’s not sure he knows how.  

He’s pretty sure he’s losing his goddamn mind– you’d have to be, to be out here in the rain like this, soaked through to the bone and not even feeling the chill. Crazy together, Mike had said. Except now the moment of reckoning has arrived, and Mike isn’t here. Crazy together, Mike had said– and Will, like an idiot, caught up in the blinding torrential swing of his own childish naivety, had believed him.

Maybe that had been too good to last. Maybe Mike’s love wasn’t as unconditional as Will had thought.

Suddenly, the baseball bat isn’t enough anymore. It’s not fast enough, not mean enough. The exhaustion isn’t cutting as deep as he needs it to. He tosses the bat aside, grabbing for the open archway, yanking. Will needs to– he needs to feel wood splintering under his palms, he needs to touch, he needs to be the one to tear Castle Byers to ruins with his bare hands.

See, he wants to say. I can let go, Mike. I can move on.

He knows normal boys don’t do this. Normal boys don’t–

It’s not my fault you don’t like–

Branches come crashing down, and his palms are stinging, maybe, somewhere under the paralyzing chill. It’s good. It’s better like this.

“Stupid,” he says, one last time, for good measure. To drive it home. “So stupid.”

Will doesn’t know how they got here. Ten months ago, things were good. They were good. Mike was his friend. Mike was the one person who treated him normally. Like he was his old self again. 

But then again, normal boys don’t die for a week and come back. When normal boys die, they stay dead.

Will thinks back to it all– remembers screaming on a gurney, to CLOSEGATE, to his mom sitting him down and saying, Honey, it’s about Bob –

Maybe Will can’t even blame him. No one in their right mind would stick around after seeing all that. Maybe they’re not going crazy together after all.

His palms are getting scratched up, his chest burns, his eyes are stinging, and suddenly, his legs give out from under him and his knees make contact with cold mud. His hair is dripping wet rivulets down his cheeks, the back of his neck, but for some reason, he tastes salt on his lips.

So he is crying, then. Might as well. There’s no one here to see him. All friends welcome, reads the sign, sticking up out of the dirt in a pathetic kind of plea for attention.

That’s fucking hilarious, actually, because Mike and Lucas are probably off chasing after El and Max, now that Will’s been dealt with. All friends welcome, except it’s just Will and his dirt-streaked legs and the splinters in his palms and the bleeding scrapes across the back of his knuckles and he’s crying. 

It always ends like this, doesn’t it? Just Will, the cold, the dark, and the desolate. Totally and completely alone.

1.

Will is toweling off his hair when he hears the knock.

Apparently the cabin did have hot water, by the way, and even if his shower was limited to five minutes and a single bar of soap, Will feels relief in a way he hasn’t in a long time. Not just the reprieve from cold. It feels like something’s been lifted off of him, like years of quiet guilt and stifled anxiety have been sloughed off his shoulders, swirling down the drain with the dirt and the mud.

Jonathan knows. Jonathan loves him.

Maybe things can be okay after all.

Jonathan’s in the kitchen when it happens, heating water over the stove. He looks up, frowning. “You expecting anyone?”

Will tosses the towel into the back of a chair and shakes his head. Who would he even have to expect? “Mom or Hopper, maybe?”

“No. They’d have keys.” Jonathan turns the stove off, wiping his hands on his pants as he makes his way over to the door. “Wait here.”

Will waits.

Hopper’s cabin is sadly lacking in most sorts of food items, but they have tea. And he’s never really been a tea person before but he’s assuming this is what Jonathan had been warming up the water for. Warm showers after rain. Tea. It seems like the sort of thing you’re supposed to do. 

He pulls down a box of English Breakfast, gives it a tentative sniff.

Yeah, that’s tea. It’ll do.

There’s the soft sound of muted conversation drifting in from the doorway, so Will figures it’s probably Nancy coming back to drop something off, maybe grab something she forgot when they were all here earlier. It was a full house, after all. 

And he’s rooting through the cupboard for a mug, pushing aside cans of tinned spaghetti and beans and other very– very apocalyptic foods, he thinks, with a stifled laugh. Because of course they are. Of course they’re rationing out beans and alphabet soup, because Will’s life is straight out of a comic book and the universe has a really fucked-up sense of humor.

The tea is good. As good as it can be with no milk, no sugar. But it’s warm, and Will’s in a better mood than he’s been in a long time– a really long time, probably since he’d seen Mike Wheeler stumble out of the arrivals gate at the airport in that  godawful yellow monstrosity of a shirt.

He feels– not good, necessarily, but better. He feels like he could be good, someday. Maybe even soon, if he plays his cards right.

And then, like he summoned it into being with the sheer power of thought–

“Will?”

Will looks up, and nearly drops his mug. “I– Mike?”

If Mike Wheeler had been looking ridiculous at the airport terminal, said monstrosity of a shirt and all, it’s nothing compared to how he’s looking now. Drenched from head to toe, cheeks red, eyes wide, dripping a puddle of water onto the floor of the living room.

“Hi,” Mike says, sounding a bit out of breath, like maybe he ran the whole way here– 

Will frowns. This is Mike they’re talking about. Maybe he did run the whole way here.

“Sorry,” Mike is saying, shivering slightly, “I– I couldn’t find my bike in time and we were at the school and Nancy needed the car so I just– I walked,” and yeah, okay.

“You walked?” Will sets his mug down before he really does drop it. “It’s pouring, Mike, why would you–”

“Can we talk?” Mike blurts out, wringing his hands, and Will’s resolve softens, just a little.

He walked here in the rain, a little voice in his head chimes in. In the rain.

“I– yeah, okay,” he finds himself saying, albeit rather weakly. “What’s going on?”

“I just,” Mike starts, fiddling with the zipper on his jacket, hesitating. “Can we– is there somewhere, um.”

He casts a nervous glance behind him, and Will’s eyes fall on Jonathan, still leaning against the doorway, watching. His expression is held carefully blank, but Will can read him. Maybe this is part of being a younger sibling too. Maybe it’s not a one-sided thing, knowing someone this way. 

He hadn’t said anything about it, about Mike, but it’s not a surprise Jonathan knows. And he hadn’t said anything about it, but maybe he doesn’t need to. Maybe some things can remain unsaid.

Jonathan’s eyebrows twitch upwards, ever-so-slightly, and it means Are you sure? It means Are you okay? It means I’m here for you, if you need me. It means I’m supposed to protect you. It’s my job.

And Will does– Will does need him– but not right now. Not right this second.

He nods, once– it’s okay– and Jonathan straightens.

“I’m going to pick up mom and Hopper,” he announces, grabbing the car keys from the table. “And we need groceries after, too, so it might take a while.”

“Okay,” Will says, stomach immediately starting to twist itself back into knots. He doesn’t know why he’s so nervous. It’s just Mike. “Drive safe.”

Maybe that’s the problem though, is that it’s Mike. Just Mike.

It’s never been just Mike, though.

Jonathan’s eyes don’t leave Mike the whole time he’s putting his shoes on, and it’s not until the door closes behind him that Mike visibly relaxes.

“I don’t think Jonathan likes me very much,” he admits, turning back to Will. His hair is still wet, and it looks even longer now than it did before, disappearing down under the collar of his jacket, bangs swept away from his face. It makes him look strangely vulnerable. It makes him look his age, for the first time in a very long time, fourteen, going on fifteen. Not untouchable or awe-inspiring or a figment of Will’s imagination, thousands of miles away.

Just Mike.

Will looks away. 

“Don’t be ridiculous. He likes you fine.”

“No,” Mike says with a wry laugh. “No, I seriously think he, like, hates me or something. It’s scary.”

At this, Will frowns. “He’s known you forever, Mike. You’re my– why would he hate you?”

“I don’t know,” Mike says immediately, in a way that makes Will think that he does know. He shifts his weight onto his other leg, still standing awkwardly in the living room. “I just– I’ve been a really shitty friend to both of his siblings lately, so. You know. I get it, if he hates me.”

“I,” Will starts, and then decides this is a very dangerous path for Mike to be leading them down. He stares down at his mug. It’s gone cold already. “Do you want some tea?”

Mike blinks. “What?”

“Sorry,” Will says. “I don’t know if you like– we don’t have any coffee or anything, you know, Jonathan just said we needed groceries, so uh. It’s tea. Or, um. Beans. That’s all we have.”

“Oh.” Mike shuffles his feet. “No, tea is good. Thanks.”

Despite himself, Will feels himself smiling as he makes his way to the stove. “What, no beans?”

Mike smiles at this too, small and tentative. “Maybe next time.”

The cabin is quiet for a while, the cabinet hinges creaking softly from disuse as Will grabs another mug, tosses the dregs of his first down the sink. 

The rain is still coming down outside, and Will had been there just barely an hour ago, sitting on a log in the woods, but he suddenly feels so far away from the storm. It’s warm inside, and it’s dry, and Mike is here, which is maybe the most confusing part of this whole day.

“Okay,” Will starts, setting Mike’s mug down in front of where he’s climbed onto one of the chairs, the white ceramic chipped around the edges. “Here’s–”

“I broke up with El,” Mike says, apropos of absolutely nothing at all, and Will almost drops his second mug of tea too.

“I– what?”

“Sorry.” Mike worries at his lower lip. “I just– I didn’t know how to bring it up so I thought I might as well just, like, say it.”

Maybe this isn’t real. Maybe Will is back in the Upside Down, or trapped in Vecna’s mind, somewhere, with his grasp on reality slipping right out of his fingers. “What?”

“Sorry,” Mike says again, eyes widening. “I know she’s your sister, but if it makes you feel better, I think she was also technically breaking up with me, so I promise I wasn’t–”

“I don’t get it,” Will cuts in, and Mike’s mouth snaps shut. “You– you love her. Why would you break up with her if you love her?”

I love you, Mike had said, over and over and over. I love you. I’ve loved you ever since–

Mike taps one fingernail against the table, restless. “I– I don’t think I do, actually. I mean, I know I don’t, that’s why I– well I do, just not like– I’ve just been confused,” he finishes, all in one big breath, like he had to get the words out before they started eating away at him from the inside.

Will stares. “You’re confused? You’re confused?”

“Yes?” Mike looks down, hair dripping little wet patches onto the wood of the table. “I just– I thought I loved her. And I do, but– not like that, you know?”

Will doesn’t know. Will most certainly does not know, because Mike loves El– he loves her, he loves her enough to bring her back from the brink of death and to–

“I think,” Will says slowly, heart tripping over itself, “I’m just having a little trouble understanding.”

Mike takes in a breath, long and steadying, fiddling with the handle of the mug. “You said,” he starts, “you said El needs me. That she’ll always need me.”

“Yeah, so?”

“She doesn’t, though.” Mike frowns. “I don’t think El has ever needed anyone like that, ever, and– and definitely not me. No one’s ever needed me like that.”

“I– that’s not true,” Will says immediately, something warm and insistent rising up in his throat. The immediate instinct to protest, and the second half of the thought gets caught there, between his tongue and his teeth. That’s not true. I need you. “Don’t say that, Mike.”

“It is,” Mike insists, and Lord help him, Will forgot, somehow, who exactly it is he’s dealing with here. “You said I make her feel like– like she’s not a mistake. But that’s not true. That’s all I make her feel like. A freak. A mistake.”

“You don’t,” Will tries, but the words trail off before he can get them to sound halfway convincing. “You–”

“I do,” Mike says, and Will feels himself getting increasingly closer to just clambering over the table, wrapping his hands around Mike’s neck, and squeezing some sense into him. “You said I make her feel like she’s not a mistake, and that she’s better for being different. And I don’t know why you would say that if it wasn’t true.”

Will feels a little faint. “You remember all of that? What I said?”

At this, Mike looks up, frowning. There’s genuine confusion in his voice when he speaks. “Yeah? Of course I did.”

“Oh.”

“I mean,” Mike says, frown deepening, “of course I remembered, Will, I– I thought about what you said every day, I was– I spent months tearing myself apart, convinced El didn’t need me anymore, and you were, you know, you were saying all these things about how she did and she always would and–”

Will isn’t getting any less confused, but he is starting to feel a little overwhelmed. “I’m sorry, I–”

“I just don’t know why you would say that,” Mike says, and his voice cracks right there, right on the last syllable, “if it wasn’t true. I don’t know why you’d lie to me like that.”

“It is,” Will says, suddenly frantic, because Mike Wheeler doesn’t do this, he doesn’t ever get upset like this, he’s– in Will’s mind, he’s still the Mike he knows from eight, nine years ago. Confident and loud and infallible to a fault. “It is true, Mike, please don’t say that–”

“Yeah?” Mike holds his gaze. “If it was true, El wouldn’t have–”

“Just because they weren’t El’s words,” Will gets out, “doesn’t mean no one feels that way about you.”

Mike’s eyes widen. Will thinks he might be sick, right here on the kitchen floor.

“I,” Mike whispers. “Okay. Then who?”

Will blinks. “What?”

“If not El,” Mike repeats, “then who needs me?”

Will waits, one second, then two, then three. He’s certain Mike can hear his heartbeat from here, the traitorous fluttering of his pulse dodging his attempts to reign it in. “Us,” he says at last, and maybe he imagines it, but Mike’s face falls, just a little. “We all do, Mike. The Party, Nancy, Max–”

Me, he thinks. Me. I need you.

He doesn’t say it, though. Maybe it’s admission by omittance anyway.

“What about you?” Mike says, suddenly, and Will thinks he’s maybe one second away from throwing up, right then and there. Where’s Jonathan when you need him?

“What about me?”

“Do you– you don’t need me?”

“I,” Will swallows. “Of course I need you.”

The statement on its own falls flatter than Will could even imagine. Of course I need you. Of course he needs Mike. Of course he needs–

“Right,” Mike says, leaning back in his chair a little. He shrugs his arms out of his jacket, and then it’s just him, black jeans and the blue long-sleeve he’d been wearing earlier, damp around the collar from the rain. “I just– it didn’t seem like it, sometimes. I was– you’re very–”

“I’m what, Mike?” Will frowns, the first tinge of annoyance running down his spine. “Just say it, whatever you’re trying to–”

“Confusing!” Mike exclaims, bordering on a shout, and Will makes a hasty movement backwards. Mike blinks, eyes widening. “I– sorry, I didn’t mean to shout,” he adds quickly, but Will’s already shaking his head.

“I’m confusing? I’m confusing? You– you’re the one who didn’t call or write for months, Mike, I thought you decided you were done with me, and now you’re running across town in the rain and marching in here asking me if I–”

The fight seems to leave Mike’s body as quickly as it came. He frowns, breathes out. “What?”

“You didn’t call,” Will says pointedly, looking away, over at the broken windows, hastily boarded up. The shards of glass they'd swept into a corner. He and Mike had been looking for somewhere to toss the trash when he’d run out earlier. “You didn’t call, and you didn’t write, and you’re asking me if I need you?”

“Of course I called,” Mike says simply. “Will, I called you almost every day for months, what the hell are you talking about?”

“You– no,” Will points out, “no you didn’t. I was waiting, Mike, almost every day, I would’ve known if you–”

“They never went though,” Mike says, and then Will’s train of thought proceeds to grind to a sudden, screeching halt.

“What?”

“They never. Went. Through.” Mike punctuates each word like it’s a sentence, slow and intentional. Driving it home. “Your mom’s job. She was always on the line. I called. You never picked up. I– I got the idea, after a while. ”

“I– really? You really called?”

Mike stares at him, disbelieving. “Yes. Yes. Of course I did, Will, you moved across the country and you’re my best friend and I missed you–”

“Oh.”

Suddenly, Will feels like an idiot.

Mike called. Mike called almost every day. Almost every day for months, and Will never– “I didn’t know. I thought you just didn’t want to talk to me. I thought–”

“You never called back,” Mike says, “so I thought– I figured you were moving on. I figured you didn’t want to talk to me anymore, that you were starting over in Lenora, that you didn’t–”

I figured you didn’t need me.

Mike doesn’t say it, but maybe he doesn’t have to. Will can read between the lines. “I’m sorry,” he says on an exhale, and something loosens in his chest at the apology. “I didn’t know. I thought you were done with me.”

“I thought you were done with me,” Mike says, and then he’s choking out a laugh and dropping his head into his hands. “God this is so– this is so stupid.”

“Yeah,” Will says, tamping down a shocked laugh of his own and rubbing at the bridge of his nose with two fingers. “Yeah, this is so– this is weird, and I don’t know how to do weird with you.”

“Right?” Mike smiles at him, relieved. Something warm takes flight in Will’s chest at the sight, and he frowns. “I just– I thought you were done with me, I really did, I’m sorry–”

Will shakes his head. “Why would I be done with you?”

It’s Mike. It’s Mike. Will had thought Mike hadn’t tried to call in six months and yet, he’d seen Mike Wheeler walk out of the arrivals gate and it had set something alight in him, bright and new and hopeful against every molecule of better judgment. Clutching that stupid painting like maybe seeing it would make Mike forget about the distance and the silence and look at him again. Really look.

He could never be done with Mike. For better or worse, this is it for Will Byers. Here, in this cabin, while the world falls apart around them.

Mike looks down, picking at the skin around his fingernails. He doesn’t look back up when he says, “I meant what I said before. I was– I was really shitty to you, and El too, but– you were my best friend, Will, and I was just– I seriously think Jonathan hates me.”

“He doesn’t hate you,” Will says immediately, without thinking. “He just–”

“See!” Mike exclaims, throwing his hands up in victory. “I knew it! I knew there was something. He was giving me funny looks the entire drive here, I swear.”

“He doesn’t hate you,” Will says again, looking down at his feet. “He’s just protective, sometimes.”

“Protective?” The implication being, of course, that Mike is a dangerous thing. Mike is a dangerous thing with the potential to hurt, to damage, to ruin. “Over– against me?”

How do you explain to someone who turned the city over looking for you, the week you’d disappeared, that he was the big bad thing your older brother was trying to shield you from? How do you explain to your best friend that there were the nightmares, and there were the monsters, and then there was your older brother catching your eye in the rearview mirror as you’re talking to the boy you love, trying to hold back tears?

Mike isn’t a dangerous thing, of course. It’s just Will, and his thin-skinned, overeager heart to blame.

“Don’t take it personally,” he says instead. “It’s been a weird year.”

“A weird– yeah,” Mike breathes out, and then a strange expression flits across his face. “I missed you. A lot.”

“Me too.” Will’s spent the better part of the week lying through his teeth, but this, at least, is not one of those mistruths. He’s surprised at how easily the words escape him, saying them out loud and face to face. It’s nothing like the phone– no hiding behind the distance, no semblance of faceless anonymity. Things that seemed impossible to say out loud six months ago feel like they’re approaching second nature now. He draws his legs up to his chest on the chair, watches Mike’s eyes dart across his own face. “I missed you too, Mike. I– it was–”

It’s Hawkins. It’s not the same without you.

“If Hawkins wasn’t the same without me, for you,” Will says, hesitantly, in case he’s messing something up by saying this, “then Lenora was– Lenora was nothing.”

“I– oh.”

There’s a moment’s pause, where Mike just looks at him, hair finally starting to dry and curling up around his jaw, eyes wide. And then he’s standing up fast enough for the wooden chair to go clattering to the ground, and then Will finds himself on his feet too, before he can really register what’s happening, and Mike’s arms are wrapping around his shoulders.

It’s so unexpected that Will finds himself out of breath, half from the impact and half from pure shock. He lifts his arms up, tentatively, bringing them to Mike’s side, and Mike’s hold around him tightens. “Mike?”

“I’m sorry,” Mike says, muffled, voice fragile. “I’m sorry it happened like this. I’m sorry about– you’re the last person who deserves this, okay? I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Will says faintly, “I–”

He doesn’t, if he’s being honest, know what to say. Will closes his eyes, breathes in the scent of rain and Mike’s shampoo, soft and faded where his hair is brushing against his cheek, still damp and trapped under the darkened collar of his shirt. Mike is solid under him, warm and a little unsteady in his hold, and suddenly, it’s like Will is nine years old again, stumbling and falling on the rough asphalt of the playground, knees skinned and bleeding right through the denim of his jeans.

Will is a lot of things, he’s foolish and hopeful beyond his means, but he’s not enough of either of those things to think he can have anything more than this– Mike Wheeler’s stubborn comfort when he shouldn’t have to be the one doling it out. He has this, he has two mugs of tea going cold on the kitchen table, he has the way Mike’s fingers twitch and tighten on his shoulders, like he isn’t sure whether he should grip harder, hold tighter.

“I’m sorry too,” Will gets out, and it isn’t until he speaks the words that he realizes they’re coming out choked up, too hot– “I thought you hated me, I thought you– I thought you were tired of me, of all of this, I thought if I called, I’d be bothering you, I thought you were happy to finally get a break. I thought you deserved–”

“No,” Mike whispers, “never, Will, never,” and there’s something warm and damp pressing against Will’s neck, and Mike makes an odd noise as he pulls back, and maybe Will has this too– fumbling, tearful apologies with a boy he used to know like the back of his hand. “I thought you hated me, I thought I messed everything up, I thought– when you said you were moving, I thought you were happy about it, that you’d be starting over, without me–”

“Why,” Will starts, pulling back, “would I ever be happy about being somewhere without you?”

Mike blinks, the dark smudge of his lashes made impossibly darker, eyes watery and bright. “I thought I messed everything up,” he says again, “I was– I was a horrible friend, I–”

Will has this too. He has Mike Wheeler walking halfway across town to get to him, no car and no bike and nothing but a fistful of hardheaded desperation. He has Mike Wheeler three years ago too, biking to Will’s house in the rain when the whole town was on lockdown, battery-operated walkie-talkie in hand, water-slick handlebar clutched in the other.

Neither of those are insignificant things. Will’s heart lurches painfully in his chest.

“No,” Will parrots, and Mike laughs softly. “No, you’re– it’s okay.”

“Okay,” Mike says simply, and then presses his face back into the curve of Will’s shoulder, clutching. Their height difference isn’t much, but it’s apparent in the way Will has to lean back to accommodate the easy, lilting press of Mike’s weight against his own.

“Okay,” Will repeats, a little breathless. If you’d told him, a year ago, that he could have even this– hell, if you’d told him even a week ago that he could have this, it would have been too much. “Okay.”

Mike takes a deep breath, like he’s steeling himself for something big. “I love you,” he says.

Oh, Will thinks.

“I’m sorry if I– if you ever felt like I didn’t,” Mike continues, “for anything I said that made you feel like– you’re not a mistake, okay, Will? You’re my best friend. I love you.”

Will doesn’t remember deciding to open his mouth, but he hears himself saying it all the same. “I love you too,” he says, and it’s a little thinned around the edges, a little weak, but it’s there. “I do, Mike.”

And maybe Will can have this too, in whatever form it comes in. There was Lenora with the matching furniture and no trees and the house that hadn’t settled yet. There was their old house here in Hawkins, the kitchen with the dishes and Jonathan’s record collection piled up in the corners of his room.

And then there’s this, a dilapidated cabin in shambles and Mike Wheeler’s frame pressed bodily into his own. The sort of thing that makes him close his eyes and hold on for dear life before it can escape him again. “I love you,” he whispers, and that’s that.

Mike squeezes him harder. Maybe some things can remain unsaid, but that feels like a bit of a response all the same. “Are we okay?”

“Yeah,” Will says, swallowing back a desperate, relieved laugh. Outside, the rain is coming down against the boarded-up windows in heavy, unrelenting sheets. “Yeah. We’ll be okay.”