Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I would tell you that I loved you

If I thought that you would stay

But I know that it's no use

And you've already gone away

Boys Don’t Cry - The Cure

Vitals have stabilized. Blood pressure at 110 over 60. EEG is normal. Trial #386. Let’s begin. 

Blinking groggily against the harsh glare of the bare bulb swinging above him, his head swam as he squinted to try to take in his surroundings from his currently horizontal position. Wood paneling adorned the walls, covered in various places with posters of what he thought were bands and movies, judging by their bright titles and flashy colors, but he didn't recognize any of their names. In one corner, a small television sat in front of a horrendously ugly couch. On the other side, a large table surrounded by four chairs sat empty and unused, dust collecting in thick swaths across its dark surface. He couldn't see any windows from his vantage point, and judging by the stomping of feet above his head and the set of stairs leading up towards a much brighter area than he was currently occupying, with its lone bare bulb, he assumed he was probably in a basement of some kind. 

He wasn't entirely sure whose basement he was in, but something about the space made him feel safe and protected. It filled him with a sense of familiarity, although he wasn't entirely sure why.

He tried to draw upon his memories, unsure if his familiarity was because of the warm coziness of the space, despite its mismatched furniture and outdated decor, or of it was because he had spent time there before, but the harder he tried to remember why exactly this basement seemed so familiar to him, the more his thoughts seemed to slip through his fingers like a sieve. 

Now that he was actually giving it some thought, not only could he not remember where he was, but he couldn't even remember how he got here. He tried to picture the last thing he could remember and was coming up desperately blank. 

His breath hitched in his chest as he tried to pull something out of the foggy mess that was his mind. 

His friends? Nothing. 

His family? Blank. 

How old he was? Empty.  

His name? A hysterical laugh bubbled out of his throat the realization that he had no idea who he was. He couldn't remember anything. Another choked laugh pulled itself from his throat and he slapped a hand over his mouth to try to suppress the noise.

How could he not remember his name?

Somehow, despite the fact that he could remember literally nothing, he felt like it was somehow fitting. 

He had a feeling, a tickle in the back of his mind that he had always had a rather unfortunate luck, and it seemed this time was no different. 

It was like some great big cosmic joke that he was laying in a musty old basement with no memories and no idea where he was. 

Maybe he was some kind of axe murderer or serial killer in a previous life, and this whole mess was just some sort of great karmic retribution. It certainly felt like it was what he deserved. 

He heard the faint sound of laughter again, growing louder the longer he listened, sounding ragged and unhinged, tinged with just a hint of a sob. 

It took a surprisingly long amount of time to realize the noise was coming from him. 

Maybe I am crazy…  

It took him longer than expected to stop laughing, his sides cramping with every wheeze, but he was pretty sure if he stopped, even for a moment, he would begin to cry.

When he finally felt safe from an imminent breakdown, he managed to calm his laughter, breaths rattling in his lungs as he tried to catch his breath and forced open his eyes. He was intent on making the most of his decidedly shitty situation, knowing there wasn't really much he could do about the giant gaping hole in his memories, and decided to work with what he had. 

Eyes wheeling around the room, he drank in the ugly wood paneling of  the walls coupled with the dingy off-colored ceiling tiles which looked more at home in a school room than someone's basement. 

Craning his neck to get a better look at the room from his position on the floor, he didn't see any traces of other people, besides the decidedly 'teenage boyness' of the basement's decor. Mismatched furniture, posters depicting action movie scenes, the faint smell of dirty feet and body odor.  

He heard the soft pad of footsteps from directly above his head, and his eyes once again caught on the set of stairs on the opposite side of the room and figured that was a good enough place as any to start looking for answers. 

Pulling himself up into a sitting position, he was finally able to look down at himself to get a bit of a hint as to what he looked like. 

He was wearing a dingy off-white gown that fell just about to his knees. At first he wondered if maybe he was actually some old senile lady until noticed that the gown was tied tightly at the base of his neck and the pieces clicked together. 

It's a hospital gown. 

Unable to help himself, he pulled back the neck of his gown and took a peek at what he was sporting underneath. 

There wasn't much to look at, just the pale expanse of his chest which seemed to toe the line between skinny and underfed, since he could just barely make out the individual bumps of his ribs. His stomach was dotted here and there with moles, and he sported a pink puckered scar about the length of his palm sitting just over his right hip. He furrowed his brow curiously and prodded at it before determining that the scar wasn’t fresh. 

His legs were long and lean, pale and freckled with moles like his torso, with knobby knees both of which sported a smattering of barely visible white scars, much older than the one on his stomach. 

He wiggled his toes a bit, just because he could, and all ten seemed to be in perfect working order. He smiled a bit at the silliness of it all.  

He couldn't see his face, and from his spot on the floor he couldn't see any mirrors, so he made do with running his fingers across the unknown expanse of his face. 

No facial hair, not even a bit of stubble, small thin lips, still turned up slightly in a smile, a nose and two eyes. Running his hand further up his head, he was surprised to find that his hair was just a rough stubbly patch on his head, too short for him to even be able to tell the color. 

With a sigh he dropped his hands, knowing that his cursory body assessment was the best he could do until he found a mirror. 

A set of loud footsteps stomped from above, pulling his attention yet again to the stairs in the corner of the room and to whatever mysteries lie beyond it. 

Determined to at least find someone to talk to to help him understand whatever mess he was in, he placed his hand on the ground to help push himself up into a standing position, or at least he would have, if his hand hadn't immediately gone straight through the ugly shag carpet as if it didn't even exist at all. 

So he did the only logical thing to do when your hand decides to defy the laws of physics and all rational thought…

He screamed. 

Even with the sound of his own screams still echoing in his ears, he was still able to make out heavy footsteps coming from above that were steadily growing louder, likely drawn by his shout. Shoving his hand over his mouth with a muffled cry, he managed to maneuver himself into a half-crouch without somehow phasing through the floor and hurriedly scuttled backwards, desperately gazing about for somewhere to hide. 

Before he had the chance to slip into the strange blanket fort nestled in one corner of the room, a loud bang of the door at the top of the stairs smashing into the opposite wall rang out in the small space. 

"Holly, next time stay the hell out of my shit!" A loud voice shouted at the top of the stairs, slamming the door behind them, and causing him to freeze in terror. 

Utterly frozen, and sure he was about to be caught, he tried to look as non-threatening as possible towards the very angry teen currently stomping his way down the stairs. 

Once the teen rounded the stairwell and he could take him in fully, he couldn't suppress his loud gasp of shock, getting discovered be damned. 

The teen was dark haired, his curly-frizzy locks spilling out messily across his shoulders. He was wearing a green striped shirt that sat baggy on his slim frame. The boy's face was narrow, lips pinched tight in annoyance, only drawing more attention to the harsh line of his cheekbones and a nose ever so slightly too large for his face, but something about the teen absolutely took his breath away. 

He didn't even know this boy's name but he was instantly filled with a sense of warmth and comfort, his fingers itching to reach out and hug the other teen, to wrap him tightly in his grip and never let him go. 

Friend. His mind supplied, rather unhelpfully, as he braced himself for the moment the teen finally noticed him. 

Except, the angry boy didn’t even spare a glance in his direction, mindlessly striding towards the small blanket fort, grumbling quietly under his breath and seeming to completely disregard that he was sitting directly in his path. 

Just as he was about to scoot out of the dark-haired teen’s warpath, the other boy stopped abruptly, veering suddenly off course and scooping up a large black object balanced precariously on a nearby end table.

He was so distracted by the other teen’s sudden about-face, he didn’t even notice that the dark-haired boy was once again approaching his position until the teen was nearly on top of him. With a startled yelp, he tumbled backwards, body tensing for the inevitable impact. But instead of the rough collision he expected, the boy walked right through him. Not even slowing his pace as he watched the teen’s foot plant itself directly inside his own stomach. 

“What the fuck?” He cried, eyes wild as he gazed down at the space the other teen’s foot had just occupied. He pressed a palm to his stomach, almost expecting his own hand to fall right through as well, but he was instead met with the smooth rough feeling of cloth covering his own skin.

Glancing up again at the strange boy, who was now settled cozily in the blanket fort, he realized that the other person hadn’t reacted to his presence at all. He didn’t glance in his direction when he came down the stairs, didn’t scream when he walked through him. Didn’t even look up from the dial on the black device he was fiddling with when he had cried out. 

Almost as if he couldn’t see him at all. 

Before he could try to parse together what his missing memories and invisibility might mean, a staticky crackle echoed out in the small space from the device in the boy’s hand, a radio, his memories supplied ever so helpfully. He couldn’t remember his own name or where he was, but hell, at least he knew what a goddamn radio was. 

“-ike. Come in. Do you copy? Over.” A garbled voice came in through the radio clutched in the teen’s hand. 

“This is Mike. Over.” The angry teen -Mike- called back over the device. 

Mike. His name is Mike. Something about that information made him feel warm, a strange fluttering sensation in his chest as he thought about how well that name suited the dark-haired boy. 

“I managed to fudge the system and put Little Shop of Horrors on hold when it comes into the video store this weekend, which means we get to watch it before anyone else. So I was wondering if we could use the basement to watch Saturday night? You down for a Party get-together? Over.” The voice questioned. A strange look crossed Mike’s face as he watched, the teen drawing in a weary sigh before pressing down the radio’s button, “Yeah. Sure. Sounds fun Dustin. Seven?” 

“Mike, you didn’t say over. Over.” The voice -Dustin- responded. 

For the first time since meeting Mike, he saw the dark-haired teen huff out a quiet laugh and his lips curl slightly at the corners. He couldn’t help but think that the look suited the boy’s narrow face much more than his previous pinched expression did. 

“Sorry, Dustin. Rookie mistake. Over.” 

“Okay. I’ll radio Lucas and El next and let them know.” Dustin began to ramble, “I wonder if Max can sneak us some candy from the convenience store-” 

Mike made a sour face, pressing the button quickly before Dustin could finish speaking, cutting him off, “Hey my mom’s calling. Gotta do dishes before I can have people over. See you at seven. Over and out.”

He hadn’t heard anyone else calling from upstairs, and cocked his head at Mike curiously as the teen retracted the radio antenna and hunched over to drag himself out of the blanket fort, scowl once again firmly etched into the teen’s face, much to his displeasure. He knew that Mike was lying to the person on the other end of the radio but what he couldn’t understand was why Mike had decided to lie to someone who had seemed to be his friend. 

After managing to extract himself from the blanket fort, Mike returned the radio to its place on the table before trudging back towards the stairs and the house beyond. Willing his legs to not instantly fall through the floor, he made to follow Mike. He succeeded in making his way to his feet, wincing only slightly when he attempted to use the wall to steady himself as he stood, only for his hand to clip through the wall and for him to fall face first into the wooden slats, which surprisingly hurt. Why his face didn’t go through the wall too he wasn’t sure, but he didn’t have too much time to contemplate as Mike began climbing the steps, oblivious to his completely invisible struggle to get to his feet. 

Not wanting to be left alone to his thoughts, he managed to right himself, feet firmly pressed to the floor, and quickly ran after the dark-haired teen, intent on not getting left behind by the one facet of familiarity he felt in this whole strange day of confusion, even if Mike couldn’t see or hear him. 

Mike was nearly at the top of the steps by the time he got to the base, since it was quite difficult to walk quickly when his feet kept sinking through the floor with every other step. But after he attempted to climb onto the first step, once again, his physics-defying body betrayed him, and his foot sank through the step up to mid-shin. 

Pulling his foot back so it once again stood on solid ground he decided to try again, slowly bringing his foot in the air before lowering it back down towards the step in tense anticipation, but, yet again, his foot sank completely through the step. 

The dark-haired teen was now pulling open the basement door, hand hovering over the light switch for the basement. In a rush of fear, he stumbled forward, willing his feet to stay solid underneath him while he took a step forward. Surprisingly, as he took the next step, his foot was met with the plush carpet of the stairs instead of falling right through, but unfortunately, somehow he had forgotten to pull his other foot out from where it was still phased through the first step, so when his body solidified, he had somehow managed to get one leg stuck halfway into the bottom stair, and no matter how hard he tugged he couldn’t seem to get it out. 

Tumbling backward from the force of trying to remove his leg, he sat sprawled in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, the warm-familiar dark head of hair now receding through the open door. At the thought of once again being left alone and forgotten in an unfamiliar place, he couldn’t help but cry out, despite knowing the teen would be unable to hear him. 

“Mike, wait!” He cried, glad that the teen couldn’t see the panicked tears trickling down his face. 

To his surprise, Mike paused, head tilted to the side as he turned slowly, glancing back down into the now darkened basement. His breath hitched in bewilderment, could Mike hear him? But the teen’s dark eyes scanned the room without a hint of emotion before he shook his head with a soft snort and turned back around, softly shutting the door behind him.  Once again trapped in the darkness, he couldn’t help but let out a disappointed sob. 

What did he expect, Mike hadn’t been able to see or hear him before, so why would he possibly think that this time would be any different. He felt so incredibly stupid for that tiny seed of hope that sprouted in his chest when he saw Mike turn back at his call. If anything, seeing Mike turn away from where he lay in a crumpled heap on the floor because there was no way the teen could possibly have heard him, only made the aching loneliness growing in his chest hurt all the more. 

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, one leg stuck up to mid-calf in the first step of Mike’s basement, as he sobbed. Horrible, wet, shaking sobs that caught in his chest and made his face hurt. Just him, alone and forgotten. 

Eventually he managed to finally tire himself out, and with a shaky hand managed to wipe away the last few remaining tears that clung to his cheeks. Glancing down, he was surprised to see that sometime during his crying, his leg had broken free from the top step, his bare feet pale in the darkness. 

It took him a moment to realize why being able to see his feet seemed strange. He was in a basement with no windows, and the only light-source, the door at the top of the stairs, was shut, he shouldn’t have been able to see two inches in front of his face, let alone well enough to make out all twenty toes, which he wiggled just to make sure he was actually seeing them. Gazing around the basement once again, he realized that he could still see. Everything was painted with washed out shades of gray, but he could see the couch, the movie posters, the blanket fort. He could see everything despite the darkness. 

Unable to suppress the slight bubble of curiosity growing in his chest, he slowly, ever so slowly so as not to float right through another solid object, made his way to his feet, chanting silently to himself all the while. 

Stay solid. Please stay solid. Don’t fall through anything. 

In any other situation, it might have even been funny, watching him stumble around like a baby deer, flinching slightly every time his foot fell through the floor, or his hand brushing against something only for it to slide right through. It was convenient the one time he wasn’t paying attention to where he was placing his feet and would’ve accidentally smashed his toes into the leg of the coffee table, but once again his strange intangibility allowed his foot to pass cleanly through, his precious toes completely unharmed. The problem however, arose when he whooped in excitement at not smashing his foot, and instantly caused his entire body to become solid once again, trapping his leg, all the way up to his knee this time, firmly in the middle of the coffee table. 

“Not again.” He sputtered resignedly, already falling backwards at the sudden unsteadiness at having only one usable leg. 

It took him a while, the passage of time only marked by the small bits of light coming and going from the basement door, and Mike’s occasional descent into the basement, bringing about a slight break in the monotony of his existence. But he was fairly certain days had passed since the moment he had awoken on Mike’s basement floor. In that time he also noted that he seemed to have no need for food or water, since he never seemed to grow hungry despite the passage of time, and sleep seemed like more of a novelty than an actual necessity. 

Given all the sudden free time he had with the only distraction from his pitiful life being practicing his strange new abilities, he spent countless hours slowly puttering circles around the basement, using the furniture and walls as obstacles for him to work around, but he eventually got the hang of his permeability. Able to switch between his solid and markedly less solid forms with just a single well placed thought. It wasn’t 100% foolproof, since it seemed that any time he got overly excited or scared, like the one time he saw a shadow move and swore it was a cockroach, he would instantly lose focus and his limbs would become significantly more acquainted with what it was like to be inside the floor. 

It wasn’t perfect, but he deemed it a suitable enough improvement in his maneuverability that he was actively considering attempting the stairs again, when a few pairs of loud feet stomped overhead before the door to the basement crashed open. 

Cringing in fear for a brief moment before remembering belatedly that no one could see or hear him, he straightened up, making his way over to the stairs to see who was coming down. 

Unsurprisingly, he was met with the sight of Mike, the one constant presence in his dark  basement-filled existence. The bounce of Mike’s dark fluffy curls as the trounced down the stairs drew a spark of excitement in his gut, which he attributed to Mike being the only person who currently visited him, even if the teen didn’t realize he had been keeping the company of the ghost haunting his basement for the past several days. To his surprise, Mike wasn’t alone as he descended the stairs. Following the lanky teen, another two teen boys followed, one with an unruly curly mullet covered by a baseball cap with what looked to be a complicated physics equation on it, the other a tall, surprisingly muscular dark-skinned teen with a high-top fade, the pair of boys talking loudly to each other, voices jumping over the top of each other in excitement. 

“Can you believe that we were able to get the first copy of Little Shop of Horrors in the entire town of Hawkins, Indiana?” the mullet teen jabbered, face split in a blinding grin. 

“Shut up Dustin,” the taller teen replied, swatting the other teen playfully. “I know you just want us to grovel at your feet. But I still think it was a stupid idea to work at Family Video. I don’t care what Steve says, I think that job sucks.” The teen’s lips puckered in obvious distaste at the thought. 

Ah! So the mullet kid is Dustin. 

He added that tidbit to his rather short mental list of information he knew as he continued to listen in to the conversation. 

“Hey, you’re just jealous you have no spending money to use on your girlfriend because you’re too busy with basketball practice to have a job.” Dustin snarked back, thumping down the stairs at a jovial pace, his demeanor unaffected by the other teen’s ribbing. 

“Hey! Who said that Lucas has got to be the one making all the money? Girls can work too!” A voice called from the top of the stairs, where two girls, one a vibrant red-head, the other with soft brown curls that brushed her shoulders. Apparently the pair had managed to escape his notice as he was focused on observing the boys, and they quickly trounced down the stairs to join the rest of the group. 

After observing the bickering teens for a moment, he realized the group had dropped him another nugget of information. The tall, sporty teen was Lucas.

He now knew three people’s names: Mike, Dustin, and Lucas. Something about the three boys drew him in like a magnet, just standing near them made him feel more focused, more alive, than he had felt since waking up. He was curious to investigate the matter further, since it seemed he didn’t have that kind of connection to the two girls of the group, but before he could ponder the strange feeling, the group had begun to meander deeper into the basement, and he had to focus on not falling through the floor to trail after them. With no warning, the redheaded girl stomped up to Dustin, swiping the VHS tape out of his hands before shuffling towards the TV and stuffing the tape inside with a surprising lack of fanfare given how much Dustin had been hyping up the movie. 

The rest of the group shuffled along behind her, settling into what seemed their customary seating arrangements for times like these. Lucas pulled off his backpack and extracted what seemed to be a never ending stream of Skittles, Nerds, Razzles, Twix and pretty much every other candy known to man, doling each out dutifully to each member of the group before settling down on the checkered sofa. The redheaded girl snatched up a throw pillow from somewhere on the floor before dropping herself down comfortably beside Lucas, where the taller teen raised his arm over the back of the couch to allow her to scoot closer. Dustin settled himself in the leather lounge chair, promptly kicking his feet up and ripping open his designated 3 Musketeers bar and taking a large bite. In all the commotion, Mike quietly disappeared back upstairs for a few minutes before once again returning with two heaping bowls of popcorn, one he handed off to Lucas and the other to the quiet brown-haired girl who had settled herself down on the floor, a spare blanket wrapped around her shoulders, before he settled himself down in the vacant seat beside the redhead on the couch. 

“Everyone ready?” Mike asked, switching off the lamp on the table beside him, not even waiting for a response before pressing play on the remote, which did not go unnoticed by the other members of the group, who all groaned in near unison at the dark-haired teen’s antics. 

“You do this every time!” Dustin cried, “I haven’t even had time to use the bathroom yet!”

Mike failed to hide his smirk as the TV lit the room dimly, “You should’ve gone before you came. Since I do this every time.” 

The redhead girl rolled her eyes, huffing with annoyance, “Fucking Wheeler.”

But despite her annoyed words, she still settled in next to Lucas, the taller boy draping one leanly muscled arm around her shoulders as she scooched in. 

He couldn’t help but laugh as a pillow sailed across the living room to smack Mike right in the face, accompanied by a stern, “Mouth breather.” called out by the brown-haired girl who had, up to this point, mostly escaped his attention. 

As he glanced about at the group clustered around the small television, the noise of the teens talking over each other, despite the opening credits of the movie beginning to roll, he felt an odd sort of comfort, he could almost imagine actually being there beside the group, eating Lucas’s candy, stealing popcorn from the redhead, trading movie theories with Dustin, launching pillows at Mike with the mousy-haired girl, and with a soft smile, he settled himself down on the floor beside the brown-haired girl, and if he listed to the side to allow himself to brush slightly against Mike’s exposed legs beside him, wishing that the dark-haired teen could actually feel the press of his back against his calves, no one had to know. 

He was content with pretending, at least for a little while. 

The movie was an interesting one, he had assumed from the title that the movie would be a scary one, but the movie was actually a comedy musical, much to his surprise. But after a few minutes of watching Seymour sing and stutter his way through Grow For Me, he found himself thoroughly enjoying himself, and found himself laughing along with the others, even if they couldn’t hear him. 

He swore that he felt a pair of eyes on him a few times during the movie, the quiet girl sitting beside him boring holes in the side of his head. But logically, he knew that no one could actually see him, as evidenced by the rest of the group utterly ignoring his existence, and just figured that maybe the girl was trying to sneak a peek at Mike’s legs, the teen’s pale calves visible in the flickering light of the movie. Even he had snuck a few glances throughout the course of the movie, eyes flicking over the dark hairs speckled over the long lean legs, before turning his attention back to the screen, glad no one else could see his abject staring. 

By the time the movie was over, he had learned the name of the girl pressed against Lucas’s side, Max, courtesy of Dustin’s continued shushing of the redhead. Max had initially talked a lot during the first act of the movie, pointing out numerous plot details, or just general comments about how shitty the songs were, but she had fallen asleep somewhere between the creepy dentist getting dismembered and Seymour proposing, having to be nudged awake by her boyfriend when the end credits started to roll. Dustin yawned loudly before pulling himself up out of the chair with a groan befitting a man significantly older than he was and blearily made his way to the VHS player to eject the tape. Mike, who had been significantly quieter than all other members of the group, beside Max, once she was asleep, flicked on the lights and quietly collected the popcorn bowls before making his way back upstairs without a word to the others.

“Is it just me, or is Mike acting, like, super weird.” Max commented with a yawn, addressing the group as a whole. 

“Mike’s sad.” the brown haired girl responded solemnly. He still hadn’t figured out her name, he thought he heard Max call her Jane, but both Lucas and Dustin had referred to her as El earlier, so the jury was still out. But he did have to agree with El/Jane. Even with his limited contact with Mike it seemed like something was constantly weighing down on the other teen, and the dark-haired boy seemed to only grow more and more tense as the night went on. He was glad he wasn’t the only one who had picked up on it. 

Max cocked her head curiously, gazing back at El/Jane “What, he still upset that you guys broke up? It’s been like three months.” she scoffed, nudging the slightly taller girl playfully in the back with her knee. His heart sparked oddly at the redhead’s words, but was unable to think upon his reaction any further before Dustin butted in. 

Dustin scowled at the girls, annoyance clear in his gaze, “No. He’s not upset because some stupid girl broke up with him.” Dustin paused, seemingly taking note of said stupid girl standing right in front of him. “Er- sorry El, I didn’t mean to imply that you’re stupid.”

“Sure you didn’t.” El whispered under her breath, so quietly no one but him could hear it, since he was still sitting on the ground beside her. He couldn’t help but chuckle softly, glad the seemingly reserved girl had more bite to her than he had initially thought. 

“Today’s March 21.” El responded to Max, eyes flashing with something unreadable in their dark brown depths. 

“And?” Max questioned, obviously fishing for more information. He leaned in closer, also curious as to what could have Mike in such an obvious funk. 

“It’s almost Will’s birthday.” Lucas sighed, refusing to make eye contact with the rest of the group. 

Who’s Will? And why does his birthday make Mike so sad?

“Oh. I forgot.” Max breathed, all the fight suddenly draining out of her. He realized she wasn’t the only one affected by Lucas’s words. Dustin turned away and surreptitiously swiped a hand over his eyes, Lucas was clenching his jaw, lines of his body tight with tension. Even El and Max had taken on a surprisingly somber mood. 

“Yeah I-” Dustin paused for a second, clearing his throat before continuing. “I wanted to plan something for tonight so he wouldn’t be alone. Guess my distraction didn’t work as well as I thought.” He chuckled darkly, eyes downcast. 

The teens sat in awkward silence for a few moments, the tension in the room so palpable, even he was starting to get nervous, and the other teens didn’t even know that he was there. Before the silence got to be too much, Mike came barrelling down the stairs again, this time a smile plastered across his face. But even he could tell by the harsh way Mike’s smile pulled at his cheeks and how it didn’t reach his eyes that Mike was faking it. 

“So that was a really good movie, didn't you guys think?” Mike blustered, a smile stretching too tight at the corners of his mouth. He itched to run his fingers along Mike’s cheeks and soothe tense lines of his face, but he held himself still, knowing whatever that he did wouldn’t amount to anything, since Mike couldn’t see or hear him. 

The rest of the group mumbled quiet assent before once again leaving the room drenched in silence. El spoke first, breaking the growing tension, “Gotta go home. Hopper.” The girl’s smile was wobbly and off-center, but still endearing in a childlike way. 

“I can drop you off on the way home, since I gotta take Max anyways.” Lucas responded, shoulders slumping with relief at having an excuse to leave the event early. 

The girls and Lucas began packing up their things, Lucas shoving empty candy wrappers back into his bag while El and Max folded blankets and brushed stray crumbs into the trash can. He watched silently as the group waved their goodbyes, Lucas giving Dustin and Mike one-armed hugs, while Max seemed to insist upon fist bumps. He tried not to let it get to him when El pressed a quick kiss onto Mike’s cheek, and tried not to think about how good her and Mike would have been together. If he had been paying more attention, and not just thinking about Mike, he might have noticed the way that El’s eyes seemed to snap to where he was still sprawled on the floor, her eyes staring dark and intense for a few long seconds before drifting away, once again waving goodbye to her friends. But he had been too caught up in his own thoughts to notice. 

Instead he was thinking, once again, about Mike. He hadn’t known Mike for very long, and knew next to nothing about the boy, but he something about Mike kept drawing him in, like he was stuck in Mike’s gravitational field and was on a decaying orbit, set to inevitably crash and burn, but he couldn’t seem to help himself as he watched the way the light played across the taller teen’s cheekbones as he waved goodbye to his friends as they climbed back up the basement stairs and into the world beyond. 

Soon only Mike and Dustin were left, the latter scuffing his foot into the shag carpet as if he wanted to say something. Feeling tired of eavesdropping, he pulled himself to his feet and worked his way over towards the blanket fort to give the pair some privacy. 

Most of their whispering was inaudible, but before he got out of hearing range, he did manage to overhear Dustin’s concerned words, 

“Do you want me to come with you tomorrow?” 

Unable to help himself, he turned around, intent on hearing Mike’s reply, but the dark-haired teen only shook his head, whispering something in response that he was unable to hear. 

The pair talked for a few more minutes, until Dustin finally shook his head in exasperation, “Suit yourself man. But if you need me, you know where I am.” Before packing up the rest of his belongings and shuffling up the stairs, leaving Mike standing alone in the basement. 

As soon as the sound of Dustin’s feet on the floor above faded, Mike glanced up at the ceiling, as if to ensure his friend was truly gone, before hastily making his way over to the blanket fort, which he was currently also occupying. 

Quickly scooting out of the way to make room for Mike, even though he knew the other boy could easily just sit inside him, there was just something too unsettling about seeing another person’s body going through his own, so he decided to squeeze himself backwards, pressing slightly into the blankets that made up the walls in order to leave a space for the other teen without having to touch him. 

The dark haired teen settled amidst the blankets, his face looking uncharacteristically unguarded in the low light. Rustling among the blankets covering the bottom of the fort for a brief moment, Mike’s face lit up in triumph as he fished out a dark moleskin notebook, a pen clipped neatly to its cover. 

Flipping open the notebook to a page towards the back, he watched as Mike dated the top of the page before he began to write. 

He quickly realized that this was Mike’s diary, and he probably shouldn’t be looking at it, but after a few minutes of listening to Mike’s pen scratch into the page, he couldn’t help but peek over the teen’s shoulder to see what he was writing. 

Day 1231

I miss you. I guess I always say that, but it doesn’t make it any less true. We watched Little Shop of Horrors today, I bet you would have liked it. You always did like weird stuff like that. It’s your birthday tomorrow. You’re gonna be 16. I think I’m going to try to bake another cake. Hopefully it goes better than last year’s attempt when I nearly burnt down the kitchen. I had to do extra chores for an entire week just to convince Mom to let me use the oven again this year, but I think it will be worth it. I had Nancy teach me a couple of things when she was home over Winter Break so I have high hopes. 

You know, I hate to say it. But sometimes I forget what you look like. I know I have pictures, but they never quite do you justice, you always hated pictures most of the time, so most of the pictures I have of you are blurry and out of focus. But I realized today, that I can’t remember what color your eyes were. Were they brown like Jonathan’s or were they green? Maybe green-brown or hazel? What even is hazel anyways? But I just can’t remember. And it hurts that every day I’m going to forget just a little bit more about you. I can’t even remember your laugh anymore. I used to love making you laugh, and I think I forgot what that sounded like years ago. I’m scared that eventually there comes a day where I don’t remember you at all. You were my best friend, and I can’t even remember your damn eye color. Some best friend I am right? 

Mike chuckled wetly, drawing his attention away from the page for a moment as he scanned the teen’s lean face in concern, but Mike continued to scribble onto the page, so he returned his attention back to the other boy’s writing. 

I wonder if you would’ve ended up being taller than me. You were always shorter than me growing up, but you were always a bit slower than everyone else. I wonder if Joyce would still be giving you those ugly bowlcuts over the kitchen sink, or if you’d just be like Jonathan and start cutting it yourself. 

Mike was full on sobbing at this point, face scrunched up in a way that was sure to be painful as he cried silently, tears dripping onto the page and smudging the ink. Unable to help himself, he reached out, fingers gently caressing Mike’s dark wavy hair in a way he hoped was comforting and not like something you would do to a dog. 

Surprisingly, Mike almost seemed to lean into his touch, his sniffles slowing as his head gently tilted towards his fingertips. Even though he was convinced Mike’s reaction just happened to be a coincidence, he continued to gently stroke the teen’s hair, sliding his hand softly up and down the length of the boy’s long dark locks. 

Slowly, ever so slowly, Mike’s breathing seemed to ease, and the tears dried on the boy’s freckled cheeks, leaving faint tracks only barely visible in the low light. All the while he continued to run his fingers through Mike’s hair. Somewhere along the way, Mike came to be laying on the ground, his dark head pillowed just inches away from where he sat cross legged on the floor. He continued stroking the boy’s wavy hair, the soft delicate strands sliding effortlessly through his fingertips. 

He doesn’t know exactly when Mike fell asleep, but eventually, the teen’s breathing seemed to even out, and when he glanced down he saw Mike’s dark eyes had fluttered closed. He took a selfish moment to gaze at the teen, feeling slightly guilty for intruding on such a vulnerable moment. Mike’s eyelashes brushed softly against one cheek, scattered freckles sprinkled across the boy’s nose and cheeks, as he looked closer, indulging himself in this one moment, he realized even the backs of Mike’s eyelids were speckled with freckles. The teen’s hair fluttered softly where a clump of it had fallen across his mouth, and he took a moment to tuck the long dark strands behind Mike’s ear, his fingers ghosting across Mike’s slightly chapped lips for just a moment too long. 

“Good night Mike.” He whispered to the sleeping boy, and he hoped somewhere in his dreams he was able to hear him. 

Chapter Text

Why don't we listen to the voices in our hearts

'Cause then I know we'd find we're not so far apart

The Wizard - Uriah Heep

He quickly realized after sitting in the dark, bored, for a couple of hours that staring at a sleeping boy really wasn’t all that exciting after the first few minutes. He could only count the twenty-seven freckles scattered across the bridge of Mike’s nose so many times before he felt like it was starting to get a little creepy. Even the boy’s soft hair and sharp cheekbones seemed to be having diminishing returns on his attention the longer he sat stuck next to the dark-haired teen as he slept. Glancing down at the dozing teen sprawled haphazardly across the blanket fort floor, he scooted away from Mike quietly. He wasn't entirely sure why he was creeping slowly around Mike's sleeping form like he was in some sort of spy movie, but just the thought of phasing through Mike made him feel kinda nauseous, so stealthy edging his way between Mike’s sprawling limbs it was. He had nearly made it out of the fort without any mishaps, when in his haste to leave, his hand slipped and managed to fall directly through Mike's shoulder. With a sharp hiss he caught himself on his free hand and hastily extricated his arm from Mike's torso, turning his attention away from the sleeping teen and trying to will away the image of his arm sliding cleanly through Mike's prone body. As he averted his gaze from the sleeping boy, his vision snagged on a familiar sight, Mike's little black notebook spilled across the floor where the teen must have dropped it before he fell asleep. 

If he had the ability, he would’ve liked to pick the notebook up and return it to its place hidden among the blankets, knowing Mike would probably hate that anyone had read it, even invisible ghost boys. But after a few tries of trying to grip the object to no success he eventually decided to give up and was about to continue his escape when his eyes caught on the page. 

He tried not to look, it felt horribly invasive looking at Mike's private thoughts, but the words on this page were jagged and spiky, lines of ink tearing holes in the paper in a few places where Mike must've pressed the pen in just a bit too hard, and that was enough for him to be immediately drawn in by his ever present curiosity intent on unraveling the mystery that is Mike Wheeler. 

Day 87 

Fuck you Will

Fuck you for leaving 

I

  H

      A

           T

                E

                        You

He was shocked, if Mike had been writing to the same person tonight, this Will person, how had his tone changed so drastically? Granted it had been three years since this entry was written but it only increased his curiosity about who this Will was and why he seemed to be so important to Mike. People don't spend 1200 days writing to someone who isn't important to them, and after seeing Dustin and Lucas's reaction at just the mention of Will's birthday earlier, he knew there must be more to the story than he currently understood.  

Drawing away from the notebook, he caught sight of one last thing written on the page, barely legible, as if it had been written in pencil but hastily erased, leaving only the faintest imprints behind.

Why did you have to leave me? 

Glancing back at Mike, his face slack with sleep, he could imagine a much younger Mike sitting in this same fort, knees pulled up to his chest, his freckled nose scrunched up as he tried to fight the tears while writing those very words, and the thought broke his heart just a tiny bit. 

Tears stinging slightly at the corners of his eyes, he managed to wiggle himself the rest of the way out of the fort thankfully without phasing through Mike, and stood blinking for a few quiet moments, taking in the basement with new eyes. He decided he had a new task to occupy him for the next few hours while Mike slept. He was going to look for signs of Will. 

It took him only a couple minutes before he found his first clue: almost entirely hidden under a Back to the Future poster, he caught sight of a piece of plain white paper covered with bright colors and lines which looked at odds with the teenage boy decor decorating the rest of the basement. Edging closer, he noticed that it was a drawing; a bright red dragon, colored with what looked to be crayon. The dragon's eyes were two different sizes, but overall the picture was pretty decent. At first he thought maybe a younger Mike had drawn it, but when he looked closer he saw a small signature in the corner, its large letters printed by a child's hand: Will.

Now that he knew what to look for, he was able to spot other pictures drawn by the same hand, nearly a dozen of them, covering the wall in various places, all tucked mostly out of sight, but still visible if he looked hard enough; a boy in a purple robe and a pointy hat holding a staff, a shaggy white dog, a dark brown eye that looked like it belonged to Mike, yet another dragon this time in a bright blue, and a dark shadowy spider-like figure silhouetted against a blue sky, all different styles and mediums, almost no connection between the images, but each and every drawing featured the same large print in the bottom corner: Will. 

Just another piece for him to add to the puzzle that is this mystery boy that held so much importance to Mike, and he was determined to solve it. If he understood Will then maybe he could better understand Mike, and Mike was warm and comforting and so intensely sad, and he was burning to know more about him, to be his friend. 

He spent the next couple hours scouring the basement from top to bottom, or as best as he could without being able to pick things up. He was particularly disappointed he couldn't leaf through the large pile of thick books gathering dust in one corner of the basement, which at the very least seemed interesting, even if they had no relation to this mysterious Will. 

Just as he was about to give up, and certain that Mike would surely be waking soon, he caught sight of a bulletin board propped up against the wall in the shadowy corner underneath the stairs. Inching his way over he noticed that the board was covered in an array of faded pictures. 

It seemed to function as a timeline of Mike's life, a baby photo pinned up in one corner followed by a picture of Mike roundfaced and freckled, grinning gummily at the camera and showcasing his absent two front teeth. There were a few other photos of Mike over the years, the pictures slowly petering out as Mike reached his teenhood, with the last photo depicting a sullen looking Mike sporting hair several inches shorter than it was currently holding a much smaller girl in his lap, maybe a sister or a cousin. The rest of the photos were made up of group shots, he could spot Dustin and Lucas in many of the photos, the two boys appearing frequently in what seemed to be Mike's middle school years, but the pair weren't the most frequent guest appearances on the board, that spot seemed to be held by a smaller brown-haired boy with large eyes and baggy clothes who seemed to sport the exact same bowl cut in every picture spanning from kindergarten graduation to one picture labeled 'Halloween 1982' where Mike, Lucas, Dustin and the bowl cut boy all appeared to be in coordinated costumes. 

Much like how he felt when he met Mike for the first time, something about the boy seemed familiar, scratching some hidden memory that his brain just couldn't reach. Unlike Mike though, the longer he looked at the photograph, the more anxious he began to feel. His skin felt itchy and tight, his face hot, every instinct inside of him screaming that something was wrong.

He brushed the feeling of wrongness away with a scowl, of course something was wrong. In the past few days, he had woken up in a stranger's basement with no idea who he was, floated through the floor on multiple occasions, and realized not a single person could see or hear him. Dragging his gaze back to the image of the group on Halloween, he struggled to tamp down the strange nervousness that fluttered in his stomach at the sight of the group of happy pre-teens, certain his strange reaction was just attributed to all the stress and emotions of the past week finally hitting him all at once. He forced himself to ignore it, and finally managed to get control of his erratic breathing.  

Reaching out a shaky hand, he pressed the pad of his index finger onto the boy's head, trying to figure out how this strange boy who appeared in nearly every photo before 1983, was notably absent from every one thereafter, and how that information fit into the puzzle that was Mike. 

"Are you Will?" He asked softly, something inside him churning violently at having voiced the name aloud. The boy in the picture didn't respond, still frozen in time, smiling that same small smile. 

From the other end of the basement, Mike started making groaning noises which signaled he had just woken up, and was probably sore from sleeping all night on the bare floor. Eyes flitting away from the picture, he hurried back over towards the blanket fort, not wanting to leave Mike's side for even a moment. 

"Good morning." He whispered, forcing his fingers to still before he accidentally did something silly, like try to brush Mike's hair out of his eyes. 

"Morning." Mike yawned, his arms and knees popping loudly as he stretched. 

For a second his heart stopped. Had Mike heard him? Was he visible now? Was this nightmare finally over?

But then Mike blinked open his eyes, squinting in the dim light of the basement, and raked his gaze across the room. Will thought for a moment Mike might catch sight of him, but his eyes didn't even slow as they skirted over where he was sitting at the entrance to the fort. Mike’s nose scrunched slightly, the teen looking perplexed for a moment, before he shook his head soundly, sending his dark locks flying, and pulled himself to his feet. 

He tried not to deflate at Mike's blank gaze staring through him, but he didn't know how much longer he could take not being able to interact with another person. He already felt like he was beginning to lose it. 

Was he even a person at all? No one could see or hear him, he had the ability to float through walls, something no one else seemed to be able to do, and he had no memories. Just because he could see his fingers and his toes and they looked human didn't necessarily make him one.

Banishing the dark thoughts from his head, he trailed after Mike who appeared to be heading back upstairs towards the rest of the house. 

He paused for a moment at the bottom of the steps, glancing up cautiously as Mike plodded on, oblivious to his anxiety, and presence, behind him. He had never gone beyond the basement before, and despite his hours of practicing maintaining his form over the past few days, he was still scared that he wouldn't be able to stay solid long enough to tread up the stairs and into the house beyond. What if he lost control when he was upstairs and floated all the way through the ground and back to the basement? What if he was permanently trapped in Mike's tiny windowless basement for all eternity? 

He couldn't afford to think like that. 

Biting the inside of his cheek, he could taste the copper tang of blood in his mouth as he once again faced down the stairs, this time determined not to fail. 

Someone, somewhere, must’ve been looking out for him, or maybe he was just due for some good luck after his current unending string of bad, because he somehow made it to the top of the stairs without a single permeation accident. Breathing out a sigh of relief, he glanced about at his first look into the outside world. 

The outside world looked an awful lot like a slightly outdated middle-class kitchen and living room, but hell, he'd take nearly anything after however many unknown hours he spent in Mike's dimly lit basement. 

It had taken him so long to get up the stairs and regain his bearings that Mike had enough time to sneak off to whichever part of the house his bedroom was located in and change into a pair of cargo shorts and a slouchy gray t-shirt with a stretched out collar. He liked the way Mike looked, all soft and comfortable in his clothes, hair still bushy on one side and flat on the other from where he slept on it, but Mike didn't seem to care, the teen puttering around the kitchen, pulling out pots and pans and a few ingredients from the pantry. 

He followed along behind him, curiosity building as he surveyed Mike's collected haul sitting messily on the countertop. It wasn't until Mike started whisking eggs into the same bowl he had dumped his sugar into that he realized that Mike was making a cake. 

Will's birthday cake. 

He climbed onto the counter, seating himself beside the stove to better watch the dark-haired boy work, swinging his feet as Mike set about measuring and stirring, methodically going about his tasks one by one. 

Somewhere during the process, Mike switched on the radio, and a soft male voice crooned throughout the kitchen. He found himself humming along at a few parts, but he couldn't manage to remember any of the words.

When his attention inevitably wandered back to Mike he saw the teen had combined all his ingredients and was currently dumping them in a cake pan. Mike's dark hair was streaked with flour from when he had run his hands through it absentmindedly, but the teen had an uncharacteristically goofy grin on his face. 

The way the light shone through the windows and splashed across Mike's face, lighting up all the freckles speckled across his cheeks, nearly brought tears to his eyes. Mike looked so alive, so happy, so drastically different from the sad, lonely boy in the basement the night before. And for a moment, if he closed his eyes, he could almost pretend he was really there, and Mike could really see him. Just two friends hanging out and baking a cake together. 

But then Mike slammed the door of the oven shut, his eyes snapping open in surprise. He turned to gaze at Mike and saw the carefree teen of a few minutes before was now gone, his face now shuttered as he gazed about at the mess he had made, and the moment was lost. 

Surprisingly, given the apparent cooking fiasco from last year, Mike's cake turned out halfway decent. The pile of chocolate frosting was a little lumpy and uneven, and the cake leaned ever so slightly to the left, but the small smile on Mike's face showed just how proud he was of his accomplishment, and he found himself smiling right along with him. 

But after an eventful morning of cake baking, Mike's temporary good mood seemed to have evaporated. The dark haired teen retreated to his room, clapping a pair of headphones over his ears and pressing play on his cassette player. 

After waffling near the doorway for a few moments, he decided to settled beside Mike on the bed, his body not even putting a dent in the mattress where he sat. If he listened closely, he was just barely able to make out the sound of Mike's music from where the freckled teen lay sprawled across his sheets, staring blankly up at the ceiling. 

Biting his lip, he debated whether or not he should lay down beside Mike, but one look at the teen's face, which seemed drawn and tired, purple crescent-moons visible underneath both eyes, made the decision for him. 

Despite knowing nothing he did would actually affect Mike, he moved cautiously, unwilling to disturb the other boy, as he carefully scooted closer to the dark haired teen, lying down gently beside Mike, their heads resting just a hairsbreadth apart on the pillow. 

As he gazed up at the ceiling, which to his surprise and amusement was covered with glow in the dark stars, he swore he could feel the warmth from Mike's side pressed against his own, and the brush of his frizzy dark hair tickling the tips of his ears. With a sigh of contentment, he snuggled closer to Mike’s side and felt his eyes flutter shut.

He awoke in the woods, large trees with spindly branches bare of leaves creaking ominously in the lashing rain. Pulling his jacket tighter around him, he shivered against a thick sluice of rain that smacked him right in the face, temporarily blinding him.

"-ill. Wi-" a voice called out, and he strained to make out their words as it faded in and out over the din of the thunderstorm.

"Hello?" He called into the darkness that surrounded him. The blackness was so dark even the flashlight clenched tightly in his fist couldn't pierce it. "Is anyone there?" 

As if materializing out of the storm itself, glowing against the crushing tide of darkness, a form appeared like an angel. If an angel had shorn hair, and wore a grimy hospital gown covered in dirt and -was that- blood? 

The child, because that was what the figure was, a small girl, no older than 13, with just the barest hints of curves visible under her boxy hospital gown, was absolutely soaked to the bone and shivering heavily, her trembling noticeable even from a few feet away. 

"Hey. Are you okay?" He stumbled towards the girl, ripping off his jacket, steeling himself against the icy rain that immediately soaked his shirt through. He held his jacket out as an offering, noticing how the small girl stiffened when he approached, her eyes wide and pupils dilated in fear. He froze, not wanting to startle the girl, extending his hand instead and leaving his jacket hanging as an olive branch between them. 

The girl stumbled forward hesitantly, like a startled deer, fingers outstretched, just barely fingering the worn edges of his hand-me-down flannel jacket, when his eyes caught sight of a shiny red patch just beneath the girl's nose. 

"You're bleeding!" He cried, forgetting the girl’s earlier hesitance, and immediately rushed forward with the intention of wiping the blood from the girl's face. But as he stepped closer the girl's face hardened, her brown eyes growing dark and angry, but she made no move to pull away. 

A resounding crack echoed throughout the woods, discernible even over the thunder, and they both sprang apart, eyeing each other with mute horror. 

The girl broke eye contact first, the trickle of blood leaking from her nose growing into a steady stream as her eyes flicked between the woods and him. After a few tense moments, she turned away from the trees with a look of tired resignation much too old for such a small girl's face. 

"No…back." The girl gritted out, her jaw tense and words falling clumsily from her lips as if speaking was an immense effort. The girl raised her palm in his direction and let out a piercing shout… 

And then nothing.

He awoke panting and breathless, flailing upright with a gasp, eyes wheeling about the room in a panic. 

The lights flickered violently, pulsing in and out in time with his rapidly beating heart. A loud screech echoed in his ears as Mike flew upright, wrenching his headphones off his ears and tossing them across the room with a grimace. The cassette player clattered to the floor, the speakers screeching loudly, as Mike rubbed at his ears cursing quietly under his breath. As he got to his feet he stormed to the light switch, flicking it back and forth angrily a few times until the flashing lights ceased. 

"Stupid cheap Walkman. Stupid electricity. Stupid fucking day." The teen grumbled, stomping towards his closet and beginning to rifle through his clothes huffily. 

He sat stunned on the bed, nightmare momentarily forgotten, as he gazed up at the ceiling lights, now glowing serenely. Had he done that? Glancing at the floor, he noticed Mike's headphones had gone silent. Did he make the lights flicker and the stereo go haywire? 

How? 

What the hell was wrong with him? 

Trying to shake off the ever growing feeling that there was something he was missing. He decided the best solution would be to make a mental list. 

Something he had learned in his brief time without memories was that making lists, no matter how short, of things he knew, made him feel more grounded and in control of his frankly out of control situation. 

Following blankly behind Mike, who had managed to tug on a light-blue button up shirt and was now struggling with a tie in the mirror, he started with the easiest information first: 

1. He had no memories
2. He woke up in Mike Wheeler’s basement
3. No one could see or hear him
4. He had a nightmare (maybe a memory)
5. He may have made the lights flicker

Glancing over at the lamp on Mike’s bedside table as he contemplated the last item on his list, he realized that he had seen Mike react to the lights flickering. Mike had been able to see the lights. 

Maybe he finally had a way to communicate! He wasn’t entirely sure what he did the first time, since the flickering seemed to have been a reaction to his nightmare, and he'd rather not have another one of those, but he figured if concentrated on the bulb hard enough, maybe he could induce the same effect. Glancing over at the lamp on Mike’s bedside table, he tried to imagine the electricity flowing through the bulb, bathing the room in its warm yellow glow. But as he stared and stared he just felt, nothing. 

It wasn’t like before where his heart was pumping and his hands were shaking, and the lights throbbed in time with his chaotic thoughts, instead his brain felt empty and his heartbeat was slow and the lightbulb remained stubbornly unlit. 

If he wasn’t afraid of potentially falling through the floor, he would have stomped his foot in annoyance at the lack of reaction from the lights, instead, he turned his attention back towards Mike, hoping the other teen would provide him a decent enough distraction. 

He was in fact, correct in his assumption, Mike somehow managing to double knot his tie, and was now vigorously trying to get it unstuck, his tongue poking out slightly as he focused. 

Fighting back a chuckle, he had to force himself not to intervene, not that it would do him any good, since he wouldn’t be able to touch the tie in the first place. After watching Mike struggle for a few moments, a tall blond woman strode into the room, a basket of laundry balanced on her hip. 

“Mike dear, you’re going to have to get going soon if you’re going to meet up with the Byers’ at noon.” The blond woman turned to face her son, a small smile picking up the corners of her perfectly made-up lips. 

“Oh, honey, how in the world did you manage to do that?” The blond woman abandoned her load of laundry on the bed, her focus redirecting towards the absolute mess that was Mike’s tie. 

“Here let me help.” The woman’s deft fingers batted Mike’s hands out of the way and made quick work of undoing the knotted tie. He tried to suppress a giggle at the sight of Mike towering over his mother, still needing her help to fix his messy tie.  

“Mooooom!” Mike sighed with annoyance, but stood still, allowing his mother to continue unhindered, his desire to have a properly tied tie seeming to win out over his embarrassment that his mother had to tie it for him. 

He glanced between Mike and his mother for a few moments, watching the woman patiently slide the loop of fabric through the knot before straightening the tie around Mike’s neck. He didn’t really see much resemblance between the blond curvaceous woman and Mike, who was freckled and dark haired and gangly in comparison, but he could see the affection in Mrs. Wheeler’s eyes which spoke of a true mother-son bond. He wondered if he had a mother. It would make sense, everyone has a mother, so why shouldn’t he? He just hoped his mother was as nice as Mike’s. 

“Okay, you’re all good to go.” Mrs. Wheeler patted Mike gently on the shoulders before spinning him towards the door with a flourish. “Make sure you say hi to Joyce for me. I hope she’s doing okay.” Her voice grew softer towards the end, tinged with a strange sadness, but he didn’t stay long to contemplate her words, hastily following Mike back to the kitchen to grab his cake and then rushing straight out out the front door. 

Mike pulled open the door of a blue station wagon, precariously placing the birthday cake in the passenger seat, even going so far as to fasten the seatbelt around the cake before skirting around to the other side and hopping into the driver's seat. 

Not wanting to be left behind, he floated through the car door and settled himself down into the backseat, silently hoping that he had a good enough grasp on his permeability that when Mike started driving he wouldn’t just fall right out of the car and onto the pavement. 

Palms sweaty and teeth clenched, he didn’t actually look out the window for the first few minutes of the drive, so intent on not phasing through the car and getting left behind, especially since he had no idea how to get back to Mike’s house, so when the car pulled to a sudden stop after only a ten minute drive, he was surprised to look up and see a sign for Hawkins Memorial Cemetery.

What a strange place to have a birthday party.

Sliding out of the car, he sidled up next to Mike as the teen slid the cake out of the passenger seat and began striding across the pristine lawn, a strange look plastered across his freckled face. 

A few other people milled about the cemetery, more than one nodding to Mike solemnly, but the taller teen ignored them, his jaw clenched as he strode past. One older couple even devolved into intense whispers after the teen walked by. Glancing at Mike to see if he had heard, he saw that the cake in the boy’s grasp was quivering slightly, Mike’s hands shaking beneath it as he struggled to maintain an impassive face. He was suddenly glad that he wasn’t able to physically touch other people, because in that moment he was sorely tempted to strangle the old windbags for making Mike feel like that. Even knowing that Mike couldn’t feel him, he instinctively took a step closer to the other boy, hoping that the teen may feel some residual comfort from his presence. 

Mike slowly approached a corner of the lot, the area he walked through slowly growing less and less well maintained. Weeds poked up between the gravemarkers, and most gravestones lay empty, no flowers or decorations adorning them like many of the stones at the front of the cemetery. 

As Mike’s pace began to slow, he caught sight of two individuals, a man and a woman, dressed entirely in black. The man was young compared to the woman, but the pair bore a striking resemblance, from their thin brown hair, to the worn expressions pulling at their faces. If he had to guess, a mother and her son. The woman was small, but something about the droop of her shoulders, and the way she curled towards her son like one side of a parentheses, made her seem downright diminutive. The man didn’t seem to be faring much better, his eyes holding a sadness that seemed much too heavy for his age. 

Mike approached the pair, holding up a hand in a subdued greeting. “Hi Jonathan, Mrs. Byers.” He spoke softly, but the words had an effect on the pair, both mother and son seeming to drop a heavy weight from their shoulders for a moment and flashing Mike a genuine smile. 

“Mike, I’m glad you could make it. And you should know better by now to call me Joyce.” The mother, Joyce, replied, pulling away from Jonathan to envelop Mike in a tight hug, despite the teen’s many inches on the woman. 

As Joyce pulled away, he caught the faint edge of lavender and linen, probably from the detergent she used, and he felt himself lean closer, drawn towards the scent, even as Joyce pulled away. He tried not to be disappointed when she retreated back to Jonathan’s side, leaving him feeling cold and empty. 

“Er- I made a cake.” Mike stuttered, looking awkwardly between Joyce and Jonathan, fishing for something to say. 

Jonathan stepped forward, leaning in close to inspect the cake with its lumpy chocolate frosting and its slightly off-kilter layers. He smiled widely, the expression lighting up his face, “Well it’s certainly an improvement from last year. Will’s gonna love it!”

Will? They were meeting Will here?

He was confused, but he followed after the group as they plodded deeper into the cemetery. He didn’t really understand why someone would want to go to a cemetery for a birthday party, but hey, maybe Will was a bit of a weird kid. The group walked in silence for a few moments before coming to an abrupt halt a few feet from a headstone. 

“Hey Will.” Mike called, his voice gentler than he had ever heard it.

He whipped his head around, scanning the rows for another figure, desperately looking for Will. It didn’t really click until Mike stepped forward and knelt beside the grave, placing his perfectly imperfect cake in front of a well-kept headstone. 

William Byers

March 22, 1971 - Nov 6, 1983

Beloved brother and son

Gone but not forgotten

He distantly heard Joyce and Jonathan begin to speak, their voices taunt and tear-filled, but he couldn’t hear anything over the sound of blood rushing in his own ears. 

“Do you want to be my friend?”

He looked up from his position on the swings, and saw a boy. A boy with two skinned knees and a smudge of dirt on his face, with more freckles than he could possibly count. The boy was smiling, hand outstretched confidently, but if he looked closer he could see the way the boy’s small hand shook, and his eyes were wide and terrified. 

They looked just like his. 

This boy was so scared, but he still came up and talked to him, the weirdo kid on the swings by himself. And at that moment, he could imagine it. He could see this boy pulling him by the hand at 6, and 8 and 12, same wide smile spread across his face. And him following along behind, just being glad that this boy chose him. 

He stuck his hand out, grasping the other boy’s small palm in his own. Relishing in the warmth the boy’s touch brought. 

“Yeah! I’d like that!” 

“I’m Mike”! the dark haired boy crowed, puffing out his chest in excitement. 

“Will.” 

“You like it?” Jonathan is nodding his head to the beat, looking over at Will as they listen to the mixtape. 

“Yeah” He nods, bobbing his head in time to the music. 

Darling you’ve got to let me know

Should I stay or should I go?

“Well then, you can keep it. It’s got all the best stuff on there.” Jonathan had a glint of excitement in his eye, eager to be sharing one of his interests with his younger brother. 

If you say that you are mine

I’ll love you till the end of time

“It’ll totally change your life.” Jonathan flashed his brother a quick grin, which Will couldn’t help but mirror, the older teen’s excitement nearly infectious. 

“It was a seven.”

Mike glanced back at him, confused, “Huh?”

“The roll, it was a seven.” Will smiled ruefully, “The demogorgon. It got me.” He couldn’t help it, he never could seem to lie to Mike, even if it was over something small. 

Mike was continuing to stare at him, tilting his head as if surprised Will had told him. He opened his mouth to speak, but Will cut him off.  

“See you tomorrow!” He called over his shoulder, hopping onto his bike and riding off towards home, leaving Mike standing at the end of the driveway, staring after him. 

With the sudden influx of memories, he nearly toppled over in surprise. All this time he had been trying to figure out who Will was, when it turns out he was Will the entire time. 

But- 

Will was dead. He was dead. 

Will had been dead for over three years. 

The reason no one could see him and his legs sometimes fell through the floor was because he was dead. He was a ghost. 

He was a ghost haunting Mike Wheeler’s basement. 

This couldn’t be happening. Why now and not three years ago? Did he have unfinished business? Or was this just some divine punishment for how he acted in real life? Glancing up at his mom and Jonathan and Mike all crowded around Will Byers’ tombstone, his tombstone, he realized it all felt too real. It was all too much. He just wished he were home, somewhere safe, somewhere where he didn’t have to be faced with his mother and his brother and his best friend grieving for him. 

He was right in front of them! And he wished he could be anywhere else. 

Scrunching his eyes up tight, he breathed out heavily. If he was a ghost, maybe he could teleport. He was sure ghosts didn’t always occupy the mortal plane. Or was it spirits? It had been a while since he last read a D&D handbook, Mike and Dustin were always the know-it-alls with that kind of thing. Either way, he was determined to try. If only to be anywhere but here. 

I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home.

Will bit back a groan as his head began to ache, a sudden pressure began to building behind his eyes, but he was determined to keep going. 

I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home.

With a sharp pop that felt like all his bones were simultaneously pulling from their sockets, all the pressure was suddenly released. With a gasp, he opened his eyes… 

Only to find himself sitting once again in Mike Wheeler’s basement. 

“Fuck.” Will muttered, kicking at the coffee table, his foot phasing right through, causing the teen to unbalance wildly and crash to the floor. 

Wiping a stray smear of blood from his nose, he didn’t know ghosts could bleed, Will gazed up at the ceiling, and wished instead it was one adorned with dozens of glow in the dark stars. 

He wasn’t sure how long he lay there, staring up at the ceiling of Mike’s basement counting the dots on the ceiling tiles, and desperately trying not to think about what his existence might mean. 

2386… 2387… 

What his death was doing to his mother, his brother, and Mike. 

2388… 2389… 

How he was such a coward that he ran away instead of facing his family’s feelings. 

2390… 2391...

A large crash echoed throughout the house above, noticeable even to Will secluded in the basement. Sitting up suddenly, Will hustled up the stairs, momentary existential crisis averted. Mike was standing in the doorway, tie askew and hair messy from where his hands had been tugging at it. The same nervous habit his friend had as a kid. Mike’s eyes were red and swollen, likely from crying, and Will felt himself swallow harshly.  

It’s my fault. Will thought to himself, unable to look away from Mike’s tear streaked face as the teen trudged up the stairs, roughly tugging the tie from his neck. It’s my fault he’s like this. 

Mike pushed his way into the bathroom, Will trotting along behind him, his guilt not allowing him to wander far when confronted with his best friend in such a state of distress. 

Mike started to unbutton his shirt, and Will was about to exit the bathroom realizing his friend was changing and not wanting to intrude, when Mike let out a strangled sob, collapsing bonelessly against the bathroom sink. 

“It’s my fault. It's my fault you’re gone.” Mike sobbed, chest heaving, as he clutched desperately at the sink. 

“No!” Will cried, “It’s not your fault!” Completely forgetting his predicament, he reached out to grasp Mike on the shoulder, only for his hand to fall directly through, Mike completely oblivious. 

The dark haired teen began to sob even harder, each gasping cry like razor blades in Will’s ears. 

No. 

He wouldn’t let Mike hurt like this. Not because of him. 

Maybe this was his purpose. Maybe this is why he was sent back, to help Mike. Help his best friend one last time. Let him move on. 

With a sad watery smile, Will reached out, positive that this time, things would be different. 

His hand shook as he reached for Mike, his fingers tingling the closer he drew to the other teen, as if he and Mike were magnets, inexplicably drawn to each other. 

Closing the gap, Will placed his hand on Mike’s shoulder, and it stayed there. He could feel the smooth fabric of Mike’s dress shirt under the pads of his fingers, and Will grasped tightly, unwilling to let the feeling go. 

“Mike.” He breathed, his voice barely above a whisper.

Mike’s head flew up, eyes alighting on the mirror. For a split second, it almost seemed as if time stopped when Mike’s deep brown eyes met his in the reflection. Mike could see him. They could have been standing there for hours, or just mere seconds, gazing at each other in the mirror. Mike’s eyes wide with surprise, tears brimming on the edges of his eyelids, and Will couldn’t help but smile. 

“Will?” 

Chapter Text

Will you stay in our lover's story?

If you stay, you won't be sorry

'Cause we believe in you

Soon you'll grow, so take a chance with a couple of Kooks

Kooks - David Bowie

He was hallucinating. He was having an anxiety attack. Undiagnosed PTSD. Or whatever the fuck else his psychiatrist labeled his "outbursts" during his court mandated therapy sessions after he tried to beat Troy Walsh’s face into a pulp on Will’s birthday last year. That was the only possible explanation for seeing Will Byers in his bathroom mirror. 

Three years, four months and 16 days after Will went missing biking home from Mike’s house. 

Three years, four months and 13 days after Mike, Lucas and Dustin accidentally happened on the Hawkins police force dragging Will's waterlogged body from the depths of Quarry Lake. 

Three years, four months and 11 days after Will's funeral. Where Mike spent the entire time clinging to his Mom like a toddler, unable to look up as they lowered his best friend’s body into the ground. 

Will Byers is dead. 

He couldn't have possibly seen him. 

A trick of the light, a momentary grief stricken delusion, nearly anything else could explain what he just saw. But Mike knew, it was Will. 

Mike had always been an imaginative kid, able to create D&D campaigns given enough time, inspiration, and his trusty field guide. Even when he stopped creating campaigns after Will died, the Party unwilling to finish an adventure without their trusty cleric at their side, his imagination never ceased. 

During the day it allowed him to fill page after page, notebook after notebook with his creative ramblings. On good days, his notebooks were stuffed with stories of wizards and knights, dragons and treasure. On the bad, he could barely touch his pen to the page, and when he did, he made sure to destroy the evidence, especially after the time his geometry teacher found a snippet of a rather dark poem he wrote on the back of a homework assignment and sent him to the guidance counselor. But at night, his imagination was so much worse. 

Nightmares tore him from sleep on a near weekly basis, leaving him heaving and panting, tangled violently in his sheets and completely unable to remember what left him in such a state. 

But even his imagination, as twisted and creative as it was, never could've imagined Will like this. 

The boy he saw in the mirror wasn't the same twelve year old boy who biked away from his house on a Sunday night in November for the last time. No, the boy he saw in the reflection was older, no longer did Mike have to look down to make eye contact, instead, the boy stood nearly equal in height to Mike himself. 

The first thing he noticed was that the boy's hair was shaved, buzzed nearly down to the scalp, and he was wearing a dingy hospital gown, sprinkled with small drops of blood that oozed lazily from the boy's nose, as if he didn't even notice it was bleeding. 

At first glance, there was almost no way he could've mistaken this strange boy for Will, but in the brief moment when Mike's eyes met the boy's in the mirror, he recognized them immediately. 

He couldn't believe he could've ever forgotten the exact shade of brown-green-hazel of Will's eyes, one look at it was like he was transported back to Kindergarten, facing down that same pair of large sparkling eyes and asking to be his friend, what has gone down as the best decision he had ever made. And he knew, in that moment, that somehow, someway, his best friend had come back to him. 

"Will?" The name fell from his lips like a prayer. 

Will's fingers clenched tightly into his shoulder, and he swore he could feel the warmth of his palm through the material of his shirt. In the mirror's reflection, Will cocked his head to the side, mouth opening to respond when-

All the lights in the house blew simultaneously.  

"Shit!" Mike squealed, ducking down in shock and covering his head with his hands against the shower of glass above him. When he was finally certain nothing else would explode on him, he chanced a glance back up at the mirror, searching for a familiar flash of green-brown-hazel, but Will was gone, and only the reflection of Mike's own shell-shocked face greeted him. 

He tried to write it off as nothing, attributed the power outage to a transformer blowing, seeing Will's face in the mirror as a anxiety-induced periodic hallucination, or whatever other psych bullshit words his therapist had thrown around. 

But despite trying to pretend he hadn’t just seen Will in the mirror, he couldn’t seem to take his mind off the image of hazel-brown-hazel staring back at him, it kept bubbling up, no matter what he was doing. 

Forcing himself to ignore his father's annoyance at having to replace every single light bulb in the house only reminded him that something had to have blown all the lights. Was it really Will?

Feigning nonchalance when Dustin and Lucas stopped by his house later in the evening to make sure he was doing okay after going to the cemetery was nearly impossible, and he was nearly certain the other two boys seemed to clock that he could barely pay attention to their conversation, too focused on watching the reflection of the TV to try to spot any movement in it’s dark surface, but luckily his two friends were kind enough not to comment. 

Mike even went so far as flipping over the group photo of him, Dustin, Lucas and Will from Halloween 1982, it was the year they all decided to dress as characters from Star Trek and Will had drawn the short straw and had to go as a red-shirt, which damn wasn't that ironic, just hoping without the photographic evidence to look at, his brain wouldn’t instantly go to Will. 

It hadn't worked.

Despite his best efforts, as he lay tossing and turning in his bed that night, gazing up at the stars he and Nancy had pressed to his ceiling when he was 10, he couldn't seem to forget Will. 

His brain was warring with his heart, his logical side telling him that what he had seen was just another product of his overactive imagination trying to send him on another wild goose chase much like it had when Will had first gone missing and he had forced the rest of the Party out in the middle of the night to go and look for him. Which had ultimately ended with the lifelong trauma that only seeing your best friend's waterlogged body being dredged from the bottom of a lake at age 12 can bring. 

But there was another part of Mike, the part that knew there was more to the world than what it seemed at first glance. The part that knew a girl with psychic powers, who could slam doors with her minds, and flip cars without a passing thought, held out a tiny inkling of hope that maybe this whole thing wasn't in his head, maybe Will was really out there, trying to get back to him. He just needed to have proof. 

He just needed proof. 

Eyes instantly snapping open, Mike threw his blankets off in a hurry, flinging himself out of bed, completely uncaring about his current state of disarray as hustled down to the basement, knowing he couldn't rest until he found the evidence he needed. 

He hadn't had the heart to throw out any of his D&D stuff, much to his mother's dismay, despite the fact that he hadn't played in years. He just couldn't seem to toss one of the few pieces of Will he had left. He still had all the terrain pieces and the custom figures Will had painted for the whole group for what would become their last campaign. But after Will's funeral, he couldn't bear to look at them, so brightly colored and vibrant, when everything else in Mike's life had gone to shit, so he boxed everything up and left it to collect dust in a forgotten corner of the basement. 

So here he was, at 1:37 in the morning, currently ripping open cardboard boxes, pulling out books and manuals and pieces of old boards, all on the off chance that something, anything , in one of these boxes will have some sort of proof that he’s not going insane. 

“That’s it! I give up!” Mike sighed, flopping onto his back, scattered remnants of his frenzied search scattered around him. The floor crunched loudly beneath him as he uncaringly smushed some of the various notebook pages littering the floor, filled with his scrawling juvenile handwriting, one-shots he had dreamed up for D&D campaigns or just the odd short story or two. They were all shit, the ramblings of a preteen, but he wasn’t sure what things might be useful, so he skimmed them all. He had also gone through nearly his entire D&D collection, scrounging through old dice sets, guides detailing previous campaigns, and of course, all of Will’s hand painted figurines. 

He had also spent over an hour meticulously trying to recreate the setup of their final D&D campaign from memory on the unused table in the corner of the basement. He was sure he missed a few details, and for the life of him he couldn’t seem to find the demogorgon figure, but he thought it was a decent start. He sat himself in his regular DM seat, gazing about at the scene before him and tried to picture the last day. Will, Dustin and Lucas all crowded around the table, spending 10 hours of their Sunday playing make believe in his basement. 

He could almost imagine Dustin making some dirty joke, much to Lucas’s annoyance and Will’s embarrassment, while Mike tried to wrangle his friends back into the game, with little to no success. He couldn’t remember what they said that night, but for some reason, he could still picture the faces. Lucas’s cough-laugh as he snorted water out of his nose, Dustin doing some god-awful character voice, and Will’s small quiet smile. 

“Ugh. What am I even doing?” Mike scrubbed a hand across his face, sitting up and dispelling the memory. “This is pointless.” 

Stumbling to his feet, feeling more tired than he had felt in weeks, and too exhausted to bother carrying himself back up to his room, Mike managed to drag himself across the basement to the blanket fort nestled cozily in the corner, scooping up an old ratty blanket and wrapping it around his shoulders, and for the second night in a row, fell into a blissfully dreamless sleep. 

Blinking open his eyes, Mike was assaulted by the watery daylight filtering down from the basement door at the top of the stairs. Sitting up, he rubbed the crustiness from his eyes and stretched his limbs, relieving the stiffness from having spent yet another night in the blanket fort, something that might have been passable for him as five foot nothing 11 year old, but considering he was now five years older and ten inches taller, was rapidly becoming a worse and worse idea. Clambering awkwardly, he shuffled his way towards the entrance of the fort when a sharp pain stabbed him in the knee. 

"Fucking hell!" Mike cursed, springing up to his feet and nearly collapsing the blanket fort in the process. 

Sitting proudly at the entrance to the fort, as if it hadn't personally tried to stab Mike in the kneecap, was the demogorgon figurine. The very same demogorgon figurine he had been fruitless searching for the night before.  

How did it end up all the way over here? 

Bending down for a closer look, he saw that the figure wasn't the only thing out of place. His notebook, which he swore he had meticulously hid the night before, was now sitting boldly in the middle of the carpet, serving as a makeshift stand for the demogorgon. 

Picking up the two objects, his eyes darted back and forth between them, his brain whirling violently as he tried to process what he was seeing. 

One object appearing where it shouldn't was just a coincidence, but two seemed borderline supernatural, unless...

Will! 

Dropping to the floor excitedly, Mike snapped the pen off the front of his journal, flipped to a random page near the back and furiously began to write. 

March 22, Approximately 6:20 PM

       -Heard strange voice and saw boy (approx age 15-18) in mirror 

       -boy had short cropped hair and brown-green-hazel and was wearing a hospital gown and had a bloody nose (like El?) 

       -Suspected identity: Will Byers

       -Lightbulbs exploded and boy disappeared 

March 23, 9:23 AM

       -Demogorgon D&D figure and notebook found inside blanket fort where they were not the night before (moved?)

Looking down at his haphazard scrawlings, barely legible with his frenzied writing, Mike frowned. It wasn't much to go on, but he was determined to document everything that could possibly be related back to Will. He was gonna prove that he wasn't crazy, that he really saw Will, and he wasn't going to give up on his friend, not again. 

He spent the rest of the day searching for signs of Will. Something that did not go unnoticed by the rest of his family. 

"Why the hell are you staring off into space?" His dad groused, stabbing at his scrambled eggs with vitriol. "Your mother made this delicious meal and you'd rather stare at the wall than eat it!" 

"Ted!" His mother chided, shooting her husband a look of annoyance, which was completely ignored since his father had his nose buried in the paper. 

Safe from his father's scrutiny by whatever bullshit front page headline the Hawkins Post had written about today, Mike turned his attention back toward the light in the kitchen which was flickering occasionally. 

Is that Will? 

Mike was attempting to see if the light had any sort of pattern, counting the time between the flickering in his head. 

"So honey, do you have any plans for your Spring Break?" 

Mike's gaze was unwavering from the light. 

"Mike?" His mother prompted. 

"Huh?" Mike started as he realized the entire table had turned towards him while he was blankly staring off into space, counting noiselessly under his breath. 

His mother sighed, "Spring Break, Mike?" 

Pretending he hadn’t just been completely zoning out, he grasped at the first thing he could think of.

"I think Dustin and Lucas wanted to hang out at the mall tomorrow, and maybe catch a movie…" he trailed off, hoping that was enough to keep his parents off his trail. Luckily he was correct in his assumption, his mother nodding politely before fixing her attention on his youngest sibling. 

"And what about you Holly?"

He had already swung his head back around by the time his sister began to speak, affixing his gaze on the light blinking rhythmically in the kitchen, counting the time between the flickers silently in his head once again. 

Three. Three. Two. Two. Three. Two. Three. Two. 

Three. Three. Two. Two. Three. Two. Three. Two.

He wasn't sure how long he sat there, gazing at the light, but it was long enough for his toast and eggs to have long grown cold, the rest of his family now vacating the table and piling their dishes by the sink. But he couldn't stop staring. The longer he looked at it, the more there seemed to be a pattern in the pulsing. But why? 

What could Will be trying to tell him?

He fought down the urge to bang his head on the table in exasperation, desperately trying to come up with a message within the blinks, and that’s when he remembered. 

Ms. Walthorp’s third grade class when they were 8. It was the first and only time Mike had ever gotten Will in trouble in class, he remembered leaning over to whisper in Will’s ear during craft time that Ms. Walthorp’s tent-like gray dress made her look a bit like a Bulette from the new D&D manual he had just picked up that weekend. Will had snorted so hard in response he had knocked over an entire bottle of glue and the Land-Shark herself had to separate them for the rest of the school year.

Despite the punishment, Will had been determined to find a way to speak with him from across the classroom, and one day Will had pulled him aside after school, excitedly explaining that he had found a solution. He nearly dragged Mike’s arm out of its socket as he pulled him home from school, enthusiastically laying out a large poster in his room filled with strange dashes and punctuation marks. 

“It’s morse code Mike!” Will was nearly vibrating in excitement, his face stretched into a wide grin. 

“Morse code?” He questioned, trying to understand how a bunch of random lines somehow equaled a letter. 

“They use it in the military to send messages and stuff!” Will reached forward and snatched up Mike’s arm, holding it tightly in his grasp before settling a finger directly in the center of his palm. 

“So the dashes are long presses.” Will demonstrated by pressing his finger firmly into the center of his palm. “And dots are short.” Will repeated the same motion, this time just barely tapping his palm before releasing his finger. 

“And you can use it to spell words?” Mike asked, unable to peel his gaze away from where Will’s hand was curled gently around his own, one finger pressed softly to the center of his palm. 

“Yeah! Like this!” Will’s face scrunched in concentration for a moment, his eyes darting to the side to peek at the morse code poster for a moment before turning his gaze back on Mike. 

“Dash Dash. Dot Dot. Dash Dot Dash. Dot.” Will’s eyes remained focused on Mike’s palm as he pressed a delicate fingertip to the center of his hand, a long press for a dash and a short press for a dot. 

“That was your name.” Will’s eyes flickered back up to Mike’s face intent on observing his reaction and Mike was caught in the familiar gaze of green-brown-hazel, and found himself unable to look away, only the tight feeling in his face telling him that he was smiling. 

“Will! You’re a genius!” He crowed, leaping forward to squish his best friend's cheeks together in excitement. 

“It’s morse code!” He cried, jumping up from the dining table and nearly knocking over his chair in his haste as he bolted for his bedroom. 

“Mike!” His mom cried after him, which he ignored as he flew up the stairs towards his bedroom, repeating the pattern over and over in his head. 

Three. Three. Two. Two. Three. Two. Three. Two. 

Slamming into his room, he darted for his desk, covered in scattered bits of homework and other loose papers. Opening the drawers and rifling through the detritus littering the inside of his desk, he searched desperately for familiar lines and dots scattered across a page. 

Finally, finally, after digging past old homework assignments, random band fliers hoarded away where his parents couldn't see them, and even a stray orange peel withered and crusty with age, he finally found what he was looking for. 

Morse Code Field Guide 1976

It was old, curled and yellowed around the edges, but when he cracked open the spine, he was hit with a wave of nostalgia, of him and Will huddled around the very same book tapping out messages on every available surface; the desk, the bed, each other's arms and legs and feet. 

Shaking his head, determined not to get lost in another memory, Mike got to work. 

If the long pauses are dashes and the shorter flickers are dots then… 

Mike's eyes darted across the page, trying to match up the pattern he saw in the light bulb with the letters on the page. 

Three. Three. That's an M. 

Two. Two. That's I. 

Three. Two. Three. K. 

Two. And lastly, E. 

Mike paused, looking at the large print scribbled on the back of an old history paper. 

M-I-K-E

It was… his name. The very same message Will had first tapped out to him all those years before. 

"Will?" His voice cracked, as he leaned back in his chair, scrubbing harshly at his face, gazing up towards the ceiling with burning eyes. "Is it really you?" 

He wasn't entirely sure what he expected, for Will to suddenly appear before him, or maybe he didn't expect anything to happen at all. But when his ceiling light started to flicker, he nearly fell out of his chair in surprise. 

"Will?" He questioned, his voice edged with cautious excitement. 

The light flickered again, rapidly, almost as if it was excited too. 

The light was continuing to strobe quickly, much too fast for Mike to be able to make out any sort of pattern with only a rudimentary knowledge of morse code at his fingertips. 

"Whoa, whoa, slow down! I can't keep up!" Mike waved his hands around in front of him, even if he wasn't entirely sure if Will could even see him. 

The light pulsed once, slowly, in response. 

He leaped up from his chair, grabbing the morse code booklet and his notebook from the desk and settling himself down on the bed to give himself a better view of the overhead light. Mind already swirling with all the questions he could ask now that he knew Will was real. 

"Okay, how about this." Mike pondered aloud, gazing up at the ceiling, "I'll do yes or no questions. Blink once for yes and twice for no. Got it?" 

He waited with baited breath for a moment, eyes glued to the light in anticipation before one bright flicker lit up his room. 

"Hmmm. Question one." He pondered, shoving the end of his pen in his mouth and flipping to a blank page in his notebook to record all of Will's answers. "Did you move the demogorgon statue last night?" 

Eyes fixed on the ceiling Mike caught the telltale sign of one slow blink. 

“That’s a yes then.” He scribbled the response down in his notebook, babbling aloud to fill the silence even though he knew he wouldn’t receive a verbal response. “Ya know, you’re not very subtle for a ghost. Usually they just move chairs a couple inches, or write creepy steam in the bathroom mirror, shit like that. But no, you got yourself discovered almost immediately.” 

The light winked twice above him. No. 

Mike stopped, running back through his words through his head. “Wait. Have you been trying to signal to me before last night?”

One blink. Yes. 

He felt his heart break just a little bit over the thought of Will trying to get his attention sometime over the past couple of days and Mike either not noticing or completely ignoring the other boy’s signs. 

“How long?” Mike’s voice was barely above a whisper, but he knew the other boy could still hear him in the quiet stillness of the room. He waited with baited breath as the lights began to strobe, Mike’s eyes flashing down to the morse code booklet in his lap as he translated Will’s message. 

W-E-E-K

“A week?” Mike’s voice cracked slightly, his emotions getting the best of him as he stared hopelessly around the room, wishing he could make eye contact with the invisible boy. His fingers itched to reach out and comfort his closest friend, but he knew that was impossible. 

“Will, I’m so sorry I didn’t notice you sooner.” 

The lights flickered again, drawing Mike out of his self-pitying state for a moment. One hand rapidly recorded the pattern in the blinks while the other flipped through the pages of the guide trying to find the corresponding letters, trying to find comfort from a now-dead friend.

H-E-R-E-N-O-W

Mike smiled wetly up at the ceiling, still unsure of Will’s relative position in the room, but decided on an arbitrary point on the ceiling to speak towards. “You know, I thought I was going to be the one comforting you, since you’re dead and all. But it seems like ever since I noticed your existence all you’ve done is comfort me.”

Sniffing loudly, he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and firmly decided to shove all his unresolved feelings that Will’s presence managed to dredge up back down into a deep corner of his mind that he refused to think about and dampen what should be a joyful reunion.

“Okay back on track. Question 2…” 

Mike and Will went back and forth for hours. While it was mostly a one-sided conversation, since Will responded almost exclusively with yes or no and only the occasional one word response, it was more excitement that Mike had felt in months. 

Eventually though, the sky outside his window began to darken, and after two days of sleeping in the basement, Mike was beginning to feel the siren call of his warm, soft bed more and more. Letting out a loud yawn, Mike pushed himself back up into a sitting position, unsure of when he had laid down on the bed. 

T-I-R-E-D

One good thing about his and Will’s ongoing conversation was that after a few hours, Mike had nearly memorized all the morse code booklet, or at least all the useful bits, but really, how often would X or Q come up in conversation. 

“No, I’m not… tired.” Mike tried to argue, but his statement was interrupted by yet another loud yawn. 

R-E-S-T

The lights flickered again, this time even the lamp blinked on his bedside table, emphasizing Will’s point. 

“Okay! Okay! I get it.” Mike huffed, rolling himself out of the comfort of his own bed to scrounge up a pair of sleep clothes from the floor in the corner of his room. 

G-R-O-S-S

“Hey, I’m a teenage boy, I’m supposed to be messy! And I know for a fact that Jonathan was just as bad as me when he was my age, so you have no room to talk!” 

Walking down the hall to the bathroom, Mike kept his gaze focused on the lights lining the hallway, which flickered as he passed, and paying little attention to the rest of his surroundings. 

“Now just because you can float through walls doesn’t mean you can watch me shower. So I better not see any creepy messages on the mirror when I get out, you here.” He joshed, wagging his finger towards the empty hallway behind him. 

“Who are you talking to?” A childish voice called out from the end of the hall. 

“Holly!” Mike nearly jumped out of his pants as he whirled around to see the inquisitive gaze of his younger sister. 

“I-er I was just- uh..” Mike stammered, racking his brain for an acceptable excuse, and coming up empty. 

The shorter blond girl just rolled her eyes obnoxiously, “You’re weird.” she called over her shoulder as she strode off back towards her room, leaving Mike alone in the empty hallway once more. 

“Jeez. Warn a guy next time.” Mike whispered under his breath, chuckling as he saw the overhead light in the bathroom flicker once before going dark. 

“And what did I tell you about staying out of the bathroom!” Mike cried, rushing into the bathroom and shutting the door firmly behind him with a laugh, feeling lighter than he had in years. 

He finally had Will back. 

Chapter Text

Well, that’s the way I want it to stay

And I always want it to be that way for my Lola

La-la-la-la Lola

Girls will be boys and boys will be girls

It’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world, except for Lola

Lola - The Kinks

Leaving Mike to shower in peace, but not after leaving the boy an ominous message in the mirror steam, Will slowly inched his way back towards Mike’s room, not wanting to wander far from the other boy. 

He stood awkwardly in the empty space, unsure if his presence was seen as an intrusion. He couldn’t help but gaze up at the walls, trying to spot the differences between Mike’s walls now and the walls of Mike’s room from his memories. 

Current Mike had different posters on his walls, gone was The Dark Crystal poster by the door, long since replaced by a Back to the Future poster sitting proudly in its place. No more Star Wars VHS tapes stacked up on the bookshelf; he remembered how excited Mike had been when Return of the Jedi finally came out in theaters, he dragged Will along to see it no less than four times, oftentimes having to pay for both of their tickets because Will couldn’t afford it. No longer were there countless toys and legos strewn across the floor and Mike’s dresser, the floor was just as messy as he remembered it, only now covered with dirty clothes and scattered papers from what he assumed were homework assignments, and Mike’s dresser now carried a dusty stack of cassettes instead of toys. 

It seemed while Will was still stuck in 1983, Mike had moved on without him. It’s not like he had expected life to stand still after he died, but it was jarring nonetheless to see how much Mike’s life had changed in just a few short years. Will barely recognized the room he was in. A room nearly as familiar to him as his own childhood bedroom. Above the desk, Mike had taped up a poster for a band he didn’t know, and scattered along his bookshelf sat pictures of Mike’s life after Will, which were nearly too painful to look at. 

Fortunately, the one thing that seemed to have changed the least between kid Mike and teen Mike was his taste in books; bright colored fantasy novels decorated Mike’s shelves, many whose titles Will was able to recognize. The entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Riftwar Saga, which apparently had released two other books in the series since Will had last read them, and even a few he didn’t recognize, but seemed to fit Mike’s same high fantasy taste. 

In between a few thick paperback volumes, Will caught sight of a ragged green binder filled with sheaths of paper sticking haphazardly in all directions. The label on the binding was written in marker, by a much younger Mike, but the handwriting was still painfully familiar to Will, who felt like it was only a few days since he had last seen the large spiky letters. 

Will

Curious as to why Mike had a binder with his name on it, Will reached out a tentative hand, unsure if it counted as snooping if it was something meant for him, but also unsure if he would even be able to physically grasp the binder in the first place. 

He wasn’t entirely sure what the rules were for being a ghost, of what things he could and couldn’t touch. At first he thought he could only touch objects he had interacted with in life, like the demogorgon statue, but he was able to pick up Mike’s notebook, which he was certain he had never seen when he was alive. Every time he thought he understood the boundaries of his life as a ghost, something just had to come along and upend everything he thought he knew since he had started haunting Mike Wheeler's basement. 

He had initially assumed that Mike wouldn’t be able to see him, after days of trying to get the other boy's attention, but that has suddenly been proven wrong the night before when he somehow appeared to Mike in the mirror. So maybe there were no hard and fast rules for being a ghost, and he was just kinda making this whole thing up as it went along. 

Willing himself into physicality, Will shakily drew his hand towards the bookshelf determined to not let the cheap binder slip right through his hand. To his surprise, his hand wasn’t met with empty air, but instead the feeling of cool smooth plastic sparked along the tips of his fingers. 

Letting out a gasp, Will surged forward, tugging the binder from its place on the shelf, too excited about being able to grasp the object at all to pay attention to the way the other books on the shelf toppled over into the empty space vacated by the binder. 

Carrying his quarry, Will settled himself on the bed, setting the binder down carefully on the bedspread, not wanting to push his luck by attempting to hold it too long. His nose was already starting to feel tender, as if it was moments away from a nosebleed, but still Will pushed on, his curiosity bubbling over at what could possibly be inside. Nearly shaking with anticipation, Will flipped open the cover, his eyes widening when he saw the contents on the inside.

Oh. 

They were his drawings. Way more than the half a dozen scattered throughout Mike’s basement, there had to be dozens, spanning years of Will’s life. Each page small enough was slid neatly into a plastic sheet protector, regardless of if the original drawing was a hasty doodle on notebook paper, or a full color sketch drawn on one of the few sheets of decent paper Will had gotten as a birthday present when he was ten. 

Flipping rapidly through the pages, Will’s eyes scanned the contents, drinking in the years of shared history his drawings represented. 

Of course there was the obvious, dragons and elves and wizards and knights, scenes from books or parts of various D&D campaigns. One that caught Will’s eye was funnily enough doodled on the back of his third grade spelling test. He had drawn his teacher, Mr. Hawthorne, getting torched by Will the Wise’s fireball spell because he had given him a 76 on the quiz. All because he never could quite figure out how to spell ‘exercise’. 

He couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face taking in the drawings, from hand-drawn Valentines and birthday cards, to the earliest, drawn on construction paper with heavy handed crayon stick figures resting on what seemed to be swings with his own sloppy, child-like handwriting written proudly at the top ‘Thanks for being my friend!’ Except the b was backwards and the friend was missing the i, so it actually looked more like, ‘ Thanks for deing my frend!’

As he rifled through the pages, it was like being pulled through a time capsule of important memories, and the fact that Mike had kept them all this time only made Will’s heart ache all the fiercer. 

He finally came across the last picture, this one half-finished, depicting the demogorgon with its sharp teeth and tentacled arms squaring off against the outlines of four figures, Will remembered that they were eventually supposed to be the members of the party: Will the Wise, Lucas’s Sundar the Bold, Dustin’s dwarf, Nog, and of course Tayr, Mike’s paladin. He had planned on finishing the drawing after their last D&D session as commemoration for defeating the most difficult boss the party had ever faced, but, as evidenced by the unfinished drawing sitting before him, he was never able to complete the picture. 

He was sitting there, hand stroking gently over the lightly sketched geometric shapes used to approximate his friends’ characters when Mike finished his shower and made his way back into the room, towel draped over his head as he rubbed harshly at his scalp to dry off his curls. 

“So, I saw your drawing in the mirror. You know, isn't drawing penises in the shower steam a little childish?” Mike chuckled, smile shining bright on his face as he pulled the towel down off his head. 

“Oh. You found that.” Mike sounded odd, his voice slightly strangled. The smile he wore when he came into the room had slid off his face, the other boy was just staring blankly at the ground, avoiding Will’s gaze, towel now abandoned on the floor. 

Will sighed, closing the binder gently, standing up from the bed to return the book to its spot on the shelf. Mike started in surprise, eyes wide as he tracked his movement across the room. 

He realized belatedly, that to Mike it probably just looked like the binder was floating in midair, and could understand why the other teen looked so shocked. Other than his brief appearance yesterday, which Mike could probably explain away as some grief-based hallucinations, the other teen hadn’t really had any concrete proof of his existence. Flickering lights could be caused by the electricity flaring, objects moved from their original positions could be written off as Holly or his mom. But a book floating right in front of your eyes isn’t quite so easy for the brain to pass off.  

Reaching over to tap at the bedside lamp, Will tapped out a brief one-word response.

S-O-R-R-Y

Mike blinked for a moment, his gaze clearing as he lasered in on the lamp. The other teen paused for a moment, whispering quietly under his breath. Will waited patiently, he had grown used to Mike having to count out the dots and dashes in order to decipher his message over the course of their conversation earlier. While it was frustrating only being able to speak in yes-no answers or one word responses, it was better than not being able to talk to Mike at all. 

“What are you sorry for?” Mike questioned, finally having worked out his apology. Will was just about to begin tapping out a response when Mike waved his hands in the air, eyes focusing somewhere over Will’s shoulder. “Wait. Sorry. I forgot.” Mike blushed slightly, walking slowly to sit down on the edge of the bed. 

“What I meant to say is, you don’t have to be sorry for looking at your own stuff. I mean if it was Dustin, or Lucas or even El it would probably be embarrassing as hell, but you drew the stuff, and you’re you know-” Mike waved his hand limply in the air as if his next words were obvious, “-dead and all. So it’s not like you can go around telling anyone.” Mike’s eyes sparked slightly at his own words and he scrambled across his bed for his notebook. 

“Wait, can you talk to anyone else?” Mike questioned, eyes once again alight with curiosity, much like they had been when Will first used the lights to talk to him. 

He thought over his time wandering the Wheeler house, while he was missing his memories for most of the time, for some reason, he never felt comfortable being around anyone else in the house besides Mike. Even when he followed Mike to the cemetery and saw Jonathan and his mom, he hadn't tried to speak with them, initially because he didn't know who they were, and then after his memories came back he was too busy being knee-deep in a panic spiral to attempt to communicate. All-in-all, visiting your own grave as a ghost was not something he would recommend, but in his defense he didn't exactly know where Mike was going in the first place. 

When it came down to it though, Will hadn't even attempted to communicate with anyone besides Mike, and wasn't even sure if he could. He had woken up in Mike's basement instead of somewhere more likely, like his own house, so maybe him and Mike had some sort of ghost bond that only allowed Mike to hear him. 

Knowing that his sudden revelation was much too long to type out in morse code, Will simply settled on tapping the light once, then twice, then three times, hoping Mike would understand what he meant. 

The dark-haired teen's eyes fixated on the lamp until it stopped blinking and hastily scribbled down something in his notebook, before returning his gaze back toward where he likely thought Will was standing, but in reality was staring about a foot to the right of his current location. 

"So you don't know if you can talk to other people? Or you haven't tried?" Mike questioned, his voice teasing. 

Will couldn't help himself and used his language barrier to his advantage in teasing Mike right back. One tap. Yes. 

"You know, you can't just say yes when I ask you two questions." Mike rolled his eyes with a huff of amusement and flipped over onto his stomach, closing his notebook and flinging it carelessly into his desk. "I'm beat, I gotta meet up with Lucas and Dustin at the mall tomorrow, so we should probably call it a night." Mike yawned, fidgeting awkwardly to untuck the comforter from underneath his own body without having to get out of bed. 

Glancing at the clock, Will realized it was much later than he realized, nearly 1 AM, and even though he didn't need to sleep, figured Mike had to be absolutely exhausted after such a long, emotional day. 

The boy in question had managed to wiggle himself under the covers so only his dark, curly mane of hair was visible from underneath the blanket, and Will figured it was time to take his leave before he did something too weird, like watch his best friend sleep all night, something he already regretted having done once. Stepping quietly, even though he knew Mike couldn't hear his footsteps, Will slowly made his way to the door. He was still slightly uncomfortable about walking through walls, it was a bit too much like falling through the floor for his liking, so despite his ghostly-ness he preferred to use regular doorways. 

He chanced one last look back at his friend, and saw that Mike's eyes were gazing back at him, a sad look in their dark brown depths. He started in surprise for a moment, almost certain that Mike could see him, but then the boy's gaze skirted away, fixing itself on some point near his closet. 

"Will? Are you still there?" Mike called, voice quiet as his eyes swept the room. 

With a sigh, Will pushed, it seemed to be the best way to describe the feeling of extending his presence to affect other things not in his reach, and flicked the overhead light once in response.

Mike seemed to deflate with relief when he saw the light blink, pulling the covers down far enough to expose the small smile twisting his lips.  

"Er, it might be weird of me to ask. But do-" Mike's expression grew nervous, his chocolate brown eyes swinging down to focus on the bedspread, his long fingers plucking at a loose string. "Do you think you could stay?" 

He was suddenly very glad Mike couldn't see his face, his mouth dropped open so fast he felt his jaw pop and his cheeks instantly flamed at the other boy's words. Will found himself looking at everything in the room besides the fluffy haired teen in the bed. Apparently he wasn't the only one embarrassed, since out of the corner of his eye he could still see the way Mike's face had blanched of color, his freckles standing out in sharp contrast to the paleness of his face, almost as if he was just as surprised as Will by what he had said. 

But it didn't end there, Mike's mouth apparently couldn't seem to stop moving, the other boy continuing to speak even as his face grew whiter and whiter in shock. 

"I-I mean, I just got you back. I'm worried that if I wake up in the morning it'll be like today never happened. I know I can't see you or hear you or anything, but I think just knowing that you're here might make me sleep easier." 

Will hadn't realized it, but the anxiety in Mike's words seemed to have pulled him forward like a magnet, dragging him forward until he was standing at the foot of Mike's bed, gazing back at the other boy, who was breathless and now blushing furiously, his words finally catching up to him. 

Reaching out one hesitant hand, Will channeled all his focus into one finger, willing it into being, not even entirely sure this would even work. Leaning forward until he was just a hair's breadth away from Mike's hand, freckled and pale on the bedspread he let out a shaky breath, he prayed with every fiber in his being that this would work, and bridged the gap between their hands, pressing a quick message onto the back of the boy's palm. 

H-E-R-E

Mike let out a sharp gasp at the sudden pressure, and Will snatched his hand back in surprise, the tips of his fingers tingling from the phantom heat of Mike's palm. Against all rational thought, Will brought his fingertips up to his lips, reveling in the feeling of touching   another person, of touching Mike. 

His fingers came away slightly bloody, and from the slight burn of his nose, knew that it was the likely source. He hastily wiped the evidence off on the hem of his hospital gown, even though he knew no one but him would know. He flicked his gaze back to Mike, who was still staring, awestruck, at the back of his hand, his fingers tracing idly over the spot Will had touched. 

"Thanks." Mike whispered softly, a small smile gracing his face as he slipped back beneath the covers. 

“Oh, and Will?” Mike pulled his face back out from under the covers for a moment, a small smile tilting up the corners of his lips. 

“Happy belated birthday.” 

Will’s chest felt tight as he watched Mike’s cheeks blossom with color before the teen dove back under the covers, pulling the blanket up over his nose to hide his blush. And Will had to resist the urge to reach out and pull the blanket aside just to get another glance of the soft rosy flush. 

Instead, Will watched the boy's eyes flutter shut, entranced yet again by the barely visible freckles on the back of Mike's eyelids, unable to tear his eyes away as the other teen’s face slowly grew slack with unconsciousness. 

He wasn't entirely sure how long he spent staring at Mike as he slept, and once again knew it was beyond creepy, too intimate for whatever weird friendship he and Mike shared. Or whatever friendship a ghost and his former childhood best friend could share, so he eventually forced his eyes away from the angelic sleeping boy, determined to find something else to occupy his attention. 

Glancing about the room, Will's first thought was to try to grab a book from Mike's bookshelf and just read for the rest of the night, but in the corner of the room, hidden by a few aberrant pieces of paper on the desk, Will spied a Walkman. 

He wasn't sure how much Mike's music tastes had changed since they were 11, but for someone who listened to The Clash or The Cure on repeat almost obsessively after Jonathan showed him the Brit rock bands, Will had been incredibly starved for music ever since he had come back as a ghost. He'd even be willing to settle for whatever weird synth-pop Mike was currently listening to just to listen to something with a beat. 

God he sounded like a druggie. 

Clearing away the papers, Will pulled out the Walkman, popping out the tape, curious as to what Mike had last been listening to. 

To his surprise, a handmade mixtape greeted him. 

Will's Mix

The handwriting was tiny, cramped and oh so familiar. 

Jonathan. 

Will remembered when Jonathan made him this mix for his 12th birthday. The Byers never could afford much, so Jonathan, Will, and his mom often made do with handmade presents. He had given drawings and homemade cards as gifts to his family and friends for almost as long as he could hold a crayon. For birthdays and Christmases he could usually count on receiving lumpy mittens or misshapen knitted hats from his mom, and mixtapes or artful photographs from Jonathan. 

His 12th birthday, his last birthday, was the biggest Will had ever had; Mike, Lucas and Dustin meeting up for a one-shot D&D campaign Mike had lovingly crafted followed by a humble cake and a few presents back at the Byers’ house. It wasn't much, but it was one of the happiest memories Will had; watching Dustin smear frosting all over Lucas's face, the brand new 24 pack of name-brand colored pencils his mom bought him, instead of just whatever she could find at Melvald's, and Mike, who was definitely showing favoritism in his one-shot by helping Will avoid most of the injuries that afflicted Lucas and Dustin, and allowing him to get way more crit hits than should be possible given his relatively mediocre rolls. But it was his birthday, so he and his friends looked the other way at Mike's shenanigans. 

After the festivities had wound down, and all his friends had long since hopped on their bikes to return to their own houses, Jonathan had pulled him aside and handed him a small square wrapped in brown paper. 

"Here. I put some songs on here that I think you might like." 

Will remembered the soft smile Jonathan had flashed him, even with the dark bags under his eyes belaying that despite his nonchalance, his brother had likely stayed up all night trying to find the perfect songs to give to Will. Jonathan was good like that. 

With shaking fingers, Will turned the tape over in his hands, relishing the cool feeling of the plastic under his fingertips, the feeling of a piece of his past once again finding him in the present. He wasn’t entirely sure how the tape had ended up in Mike’s collection, but he wouldn’t put it past Jonathan to give the tape away to Will’s closest friend after he died. Why the dark-haired teen was listening to it now, three years later, Will wasn’t entirely sure. Especially considering his and Mike’s tastes in music had hardly aligned while they were alive, but Will wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Sliding the cassette back into the Walkman, Will attempted to pick up the headphones to slide them over his ears, but found, no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t seem to pick them up from the desk. 

Stupid arbitrary ghost powers. 

With a sigh and more of a struggle than he cared to admit considering he was incapable of interacting with the Walkman’s headphones, Will managed to maneuver the headphones so they dangled off the desk a few inches, at the exact same height his head would rest if he was sitting on the floor. How he was able to interact with the Walkman but not the headphones would likely forever be a mystery, but Will was really just glad that he was able to touch things at all. Glancing up at Mike, to ensure that the teen was still soundly asleep, Will pressed the volume button a few times in order to turn the sound up loud enough for him to be able to hear without putting on the headphones, but still quiet enough to not wake his sleeping friend. 

Bracing himself to have to quickly press pause if the music came blaring out too loud, Will finally settled himself on the floor and pressed play. 

Golden years, gold whop whop whop

Golden years, gold whop whop whop

Golden years, gold whop whop whop

Don't let me hear you say life's taking you nowhere

As he let Bowie’s soft voice fill his eardrums, Will couldn’t help but suppress a small chuckle, remembering that Jonathan had been a bit of a Bowie fan, but once Will had been introduced, he had become obsessed. The thought and care Jonathan had put in to include one of Will’s favorite artists as the first track on his mixtape made Will’s throat grow tight, even all these years later. He could just imagine Jonathan scowling in the early morning hours as he listened to hours of different Bowie albums trying to find a song that he thought would be perfect for Will. 

Will let himself hum along to the song, fading into memories of a softer warmer time. Eyes closing slowly as he listened. 

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there listening to Jonathan’s mixtape, he knew it was long enough for the songs to stop, pulling him from his half-sleep with the sound of the static hiss of the tape reaching its end. Will rubbed at his eyes for a moment, before popping open the Walkman and flipping the tape over to side B, before settling himself back into place and once again pressing play. 

He had only been listening to side B for a couple minutes when he heard a faint whimper coming from the bed. His eyes instantly snapped open, music momentarily forgotten as his gaze swung back to Mike’s sleeping form. He had only been staring for a few brief seconds when the noise sounded again, a whimper, coming from Mike. 

He’s having a nightmare.

Will rushed to his feet, stumbling over to Mike’s bedside, his left foot momentarily falling through the floor in his anxiety to get to his best friend. 

In just the few seconds it took to reach Mike’s side, the dark haired teen had gone from a few quiet whimpers to full on thrashing, tangling himself up in the sheets. 

“Mike! Mike, wake up!” Will pleaded, reaching forward to grab his friend. To his dismay, instead of wrapping his arms around Mike’s shoulders, his fingers floated right through the other boy, sending a sinking feeling straight into Will’s gut. 

“Mike?” Will’s voice cracked as the other boy sucked in a shuddering breath and let out a sharp cry. 

“No. No. No. This isn’t working!” Will fretted, hands fluttering at his sides as he took in Mike’s sweat soaked shirt twisted up around his torso, and the frantic way the boy’s dark eyes fluttered under his freckled eyelids.

As he watched Mike struggle, Will felt helpless to stop it. The boy’s dark hair plastered to his face with sweat as he flailed violently. 

Will was distantly aware of the Mike’s lights flickering intermittently every time Mike let out so much of a whimper, but he was too engrossed in trying to grab the other boy’s hand, shake him awake, shout in his ear, anything to wake his friend up from his seemingly endless nightmare. 

“Mike, please?” He pleaded, near tears as he once again tried to grab hold of his friend, whose soft whimpers had now grown to full on crying out in his sleep. 

Where Mike’s parents were, or his sister, Will wasn’t entirely sure. Maybe this was such a frequent occurrence that his family didn’t even bother getting up anymore, and something about the thought of Mike experiencing nightmares night after night with no one to comfort him left Will feeling cold and empty. The room felt oppressively dark and lonely besides the occasional sound of Mike’s sharp gasps and cries, and he felt his heart break just a little bit more with each whimper. Will pressed his head down onto the mattress, just scant inches away from his best friend’s hand he couldn’t touch, and felt the stinging tears finally begin to overflow. 

Darling, you got to let me know

Should I stay or should I go?

Perking his head up at the faint sound of music, Will swung his head around to the desk, where the abandoned Walkman sat innocently on the counter, quietly playing one of Will’s favorite songs. 

The Walkman!

He could touch the Walkman!

“Hold on Mike!” Will shouted, despite knowing the other boy couldn’t hear him as he dashed across the room to pick up the cassette player. Striding back towards his still sleeping friend, Will quickly turned up the volume as high as it could go before managing to awkwardly position the Walkman so the headphones would drape close to Mike’s head. 

He kneeled beside the bed, eyes intently focused on the sleeping boy, letting the words of The Clash wash over him, hoping desperately that his last bid to wake Mike would work. 

So if you want me off your back

Well, come on and let me know

Should I stay or should I go?

The song continued to cycle, and Will swore that Mike’s face looked slightly less tense than it had moments before, the wrinkle between Mike’s eyebrows nearly smoothed back into nonexistence. It was working!

When the chorus looped back around, Will couldn’t help but sing along, hoping that somehow the words would reach Mike. 

Should I stay or should I go now?

Should I stay or should I go now?

If I go, there will be trouble

And if I stay it will be double. 

“Will?” A hoarse voice whispered into the darkness, Mike’s dark eyes blinking open in confusion, unfocused and hazy. 

“I’m here Mike.” He replied softly, knowing the other boy couldn’t hear him. 

The dark haired teen sat up slowly, grimacing as he pulled his sweat-soaked shirt away from his torso. 

“I-I guess I had a nightmare, didn’t I?” Mike spoke softly, gaze still fixed on the bedspread, nervous. 

The tape continued to play, the last few lines of the song ringing out in the stifling silence of the room. 

If I go, there will be trouble

And if I stay it will be double

So come on and let me know

Should I stay or should I go?

As The Clash transitioned into Television, Mike’s gaze finally swiveled towards the source of the noise, still sitting near his pillow where Will had placed it. 

“Guess you found my Walkman, huh?” Mike teased, reaching down to pick up the cassette player and headphones. “You know the headphones are supposed to go aro-” Mike’s voice abruptly cut off as he raised his gaze to meet Will’s. 

Will was stuck. Eyes wide as he took in Mike’s face, pale and sweaty, the room too dark to distinguish where Mike’s dark brown eyes ended and his pupils began. 

But Mike was looking at him. Not looking over his shoulder, or three inches to the right, or at his sternum, but directly at him. Eyes drawn towards each other like a set of magnets. Will drew in a sharp breath, he had forgotten how intense Mike’s gaze could be. 

“Will?” Mike’s voice called shakily, the other boy reaching his hand out in the air, in the direction Will was still kneeling beside Mike’s bedside. “Will, I can see you.”

Chapter Text

I close my eyes and I think of home

Another city goes by in the night

Ain’t it funny how it is? You never miss it til’ it’s gone away

And my heart is lying there, will be ‘til my dying day Adrian. 

So understand

Don’t waste your time always searching for those wasted years

Face up, make your stand

Realize you’re living in the golden years

Wasted Years - Iron Maiden

It was almost always the same, his nightmares. They were always about that night, or the nights directly afterwards, when Will went missing. They didn’t happen as frequently as they did when he was in middle school, but they continued with a regularity that Mike was unsure he would ever be able to outgrow.

“Will? Will!” Mike screamed, beaming his flashlight into the darkness of the woods, barely able to see a few feet in front of him because of the rain. 

“Byers!” Lucas and Dustin's voices echoed around him, but every time he turned his head to try to spot his friends, he was always met with just more of the endless expanse of trees.

“Do you ever think Will went missing because he ran into something bad?”  Dustin’s voice echoed cynically in his ears. 

'Ran into something bad'

'Something bad'

'Bad'

'Bad'

Mike longed to cover his ears, but he knew from experience it wouldn’t keep the voices out. 

Over the loud crash of the thunderstorm, Mike could distantly make out the sound of the bushes rustling off to the side. With a thundering heart, Mike turned his flashlight towards the source of the noise. 

“Do you guys hear that?” He called to his nonexistent friends. Lucas and Dustin’s voices now silent, and Mike knew that his friends had disappeared from his dreamscape. He was utterly alone. 

In reality, what had come barreling from the bushes was actually Eleven, a strange baldheaded girl stumbling around in the rain. They had taken her home, cleaned her up, and eventually after everything settled down, actually became really close friends, and even something a little more than on and off for a time at the end of middle school and into high school. But this wasn’t a memory. It was a dream. And Mike's dreams always loved to fuck with him. 

Sometimes what appeared from the bushes was a cold wet body wearing a red and yellow jacket vest and sporting a bedraggled brown bowl cut, Will, looking exactly the same as he had the last time Mike had seen his best friend, being dredged from the bottom of Quarry Lake. 

Sometimes it was Lonnie, carrying a knife dripping with blood, spouting off the same hateful shit he had said when Will had been alive. 

A few times it was Eleven, the hem of the giant yellow shirt they had found her in soaked in blood, the small girl unresponsive, shaking violently in the downpour, her fingers clawing at her face as she repeated over and over that she had killed him. 

This time it was none of those. 

Out of the bushes crawled a monster, vaguely humanoid with a shape that stretched on for far longer than a normal human body. It swung it's protuberous face in Mike’s direction before it opened up like a giant flower and it screeched an unholy scream. 

Mike, like always, was stuck, frozen to the ground, as the creature approached. He had taken to calling it a demogorgon after the boss monster from his very last D&D campaign for a lack of anything else to call his nightmare monster. But giving the fear a name didn’t make it any less scary. 

Knees shaking, Mike stared down the creature, awaiting the moment it inevitably struck when an unfamiliar sound reached him. 

Well, come on and let me know

Should I stay or should I go?

The demogorgon paused in its approach, the rain flickering and stuttering around him as Mike’s attention wavered between the monster in front of him and following the sound echoing around in his head. 

This wasn't normally a part of his dream.

Should I stay or should I go now?

If I go, there will be trouble

This time, something else filtered in with the music, a voice, singing along. A voice that seemed familiar to Mike but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He listened for a few more moments, completely ignoring the monster in front of him. 

And then he remembered. 

Will!

Mike’s eyes flew open with a start, gasping frantically as he blinked up at the glow-in-the dark stars on the ceiling. 

He was out. He woke up before his dream had finished. Mike took a few shuddering breaths to steady himself, and heard it. The comforting sound of The Clash echoing in his ears. 

Will

Will must’ve found a way to wake him up from his nightmare using music, since the other boy couldn’t talk or touch him in order to wake him up. Feeling distinctly embarrassed at the sight he probably made, acutely aware as to what he looked like when he awoke from a dream. Disheveled, red-faced and sweaty, dark purple stains like bruises under his eyes. 

Trying to break the tension, Mike floundered for something to distract himself from his growing embarrassment, eyes alighting on the bright yellow Walkman and matching headphones placed beside his pillow. 

“Guess you found my Walkman, huh?” Mike joked, picking up the headphones and placing them around his neck, “You know the headphones are supposed to go aro-” Mike’s voice died in his throat as he looked up. 

He hadn’t expected to see anything, but figured it was polite to at least glance in the general direction Will was located as he spoke, but instead of being met with the empty darkness of his room, Mike caught sight of a familiar pair of brown-green-hazel eyes glowing in the darkness. 

“Will?” His voice caught, his nerves still fried from his nightmare and he felt that he was just moments away from bursting into tears, as his eyes adjusted to the darkness and he could make out more features on his friend’s face. 

The tense line of Will’s jaw as his lips pressed together with concern, the furrows in the other boy’s brow. The small mole beside the other boy’s lip. Unable to help himself, and still not entirely sure if he was still dreaming, Mike lifted his hand, slowly extending it towards his best friend kneeling at his bedside. 

“Will, I can see you.” His voice was soft, scared to break the silence surrounding them as the next song began to play through the headphones around his neck. 

Almost as if it had a mind of its own, Mike’s hand landed softly on Will’s cheek, seeming to startle the other boy slightly, before his friend relaxed and leaned into the touch. 

Mike would never forget the feeling of Will’s face under his palm. The softness of Will’s skin pricking at his fingertips as he ghosted his thumb along the line of Will’s cheek, trying to convince himself he wasn’t just imagining this. 

Will's pupils were blown, his green-brown-hazel eyes nearly completely eclipsed by the black, his mouth open, probably looking just as surprised as he did. 

"Is this real?" Mike whispered into the darkness, barely daring to breathe, as if his words might scatter Will to the winds. "Am I dreaming?" 

Will's eyes shined like marbles, the other boy looking incredibly close to tears. But judging by the stinging of his own eyes, Mike figured he likely looked the same. Will lifted one thin-boned hand, fingers long and bird-like, much larger than it had ever been in life, and gently placed it over Mike's own, holding his hand to his cheek. 

"Yes. It's real." 

The other boy seemed almost to glow ethereally in the dim light of Mike's room. He was unsure if it was from the lack of light, or just some weird ghostly side effect, but in that moment, it took Mike's breath away. He didn't think he had ever seen something as beautiful as Will, kneeling at his bedside in the middle of the night, holding his hand to his face, fingers pressed together in such a way that if either of them moved even a fraction of an inch their fingers would be intertwined. 

Mike almost did it, he almost shifted his hand so that he could grasp Will's delicate artist fingers in his, but he knew if he did he would probably never be able to let go. 

So instead, he studied his best friend's face, which was all at once so familiar yet so strikingly different from the face of the 12 year old boy who had disappeared in the woods. Will's face was leaner, his cheekbones sharp and shadowed in the eerie light. His eyebrows were dark and heavy, Mike was unused to seeing them, since they were so often hidden in Will's frankly hideous bowl cut. But now Will's hair was shorn close to his scalp, making his ears seem to stick out maybe just a little too far, and Mike found that he missed the other boy's soft brownish locks. So much had changed about Will since he had last seen him, but his friend still held traces of the boy he remembered. Eyes trailing downward, he caught sight of the little mole over his lip. The one that always pulled up slightly when Will smiled. 

This close, it was impossible for Mike's gaze not to be drawn a scant inch downward to Will's lips, his defined cupid's bow and full lower lip, which looked much softer than Mike's, whose were always perpetually chapped. His eyes focused on the way Will’s lips have parted, and he swore he could feel Will's nonexistent breath puffing across his face. 

Before he got the chance to tear his gaze away, the headphones around his neck, momentarily forgotten in all commotion of Will's reappearance, began to hiss, the tape finally finished. Unwilling to remove his palm from Will's face, Mike awkwardly tried to use his other hand to pause the Walkman without looking, but as soon as his finger pressed down on the button, his hand slipped from Will's cheek. 

Well, less slipped and more fell through Will's face. His friend's form began flickering and fading, seeming to disappear as he looked on in horror. 

"Will? What's happening?" Mike's voice shook, cracking in a way that would have made him embarrassed if he wasn't so terrified. 

"Mi-" Will's voice stuttered, cutting in and out like a bad radio connection "I -ink it's -sic. Try the -lkman." 

Mike could only watch with horror as the friend he had only had back for a few brief moments faded out of existence, leaving his room empty and dark as if he had never been there. 

Maybe he was being dramatic, in all likelihood, Will was probably still in the exact same place at the edge of Mike's bed, just invisible, intangible. But in the shadowed silence encompassing his room, he couldn't help but feel instantly and utterly alone. 

"Will?" Mike's voice wavered, and he was distantly aware that he sounded close to tears. 

The light on his bedside table blinked once in response and Mike let out a breath he hadn't realized he had been holding since Will had suddenly vanished. 

"Oh thank god you're still here!" Mike cried out, scrambling off the bed to Will's last location, only to be yanked back by the forgotten headphone cord around his neck, still connected to the Walkman nestled lovingly next to his pillow. 

Seeing the faded yellow cassette player, Will's last words instantly fluttered back to him. 

"I -ink it's -sic. Try the -lkman." 

"Will, you're a genius!" Mike crowed excitedly, shuffling back onto the mattress and ejecting the cassette, flipping it back to the A side before pressing rewind. The next few minutes of silence as the tape rewound were near painful as Mike bounced energetically on the bed, desperate to know whether Will's theory was correct. Finally, finally , the cassette made a soft click as it once again reached the beginning of its spool and Mike instantly pressed play. 

Even though Will's music wasn't really to his tastes, Mike had listened to this mixtape more times than he cared to admit, often using it as a form of comfort when he was missing his friend. The tape especially got a lot of use around March and November, the months Mike missed Will the most. So, despite knowing next to no Bowie songs, when Golden Years came on, Mike couldn't help but hum along. 

He was still humming when another familiar voice joined in, and Mike finally found it in himself to look up, met with the sight of his dead best friend, standing in the middle of his bedroom, a small secret smile on his lips. 

Mike felt his lips curl upward into a blinding grin as he flung himself forward, arms outstretched, into Will's unsuspecting hold, like a Victorian maiden welcoming her husband home from war. 

"Will!"  

Except he wasn't a Victorian maiden, he was a teenage boy jumping on another teenage boy who he had an inch and at least 20 pounds on, so instead of being elegantly caught in Will's arms, the pair ended up painfully sprawled on the carpet,Will nearly flattened beneath Mike's weight. Mike's knees knocking painfully into Will's eliciting a groan from both boys, but Mike couldn't seem to muster up anything besides absolute all-encompassing joy. Pressing his forehead into the fabric covering Will's chest, he mumbled quietly into the folds. 

"Byers. Fuck man. I missed you."

Will chuckled softly, knocking Mike on the crown of his head with his knuckles, "You're so dramatic! I was only gone for a couple of minutes." 

Mike pulled back slightly, so that he could look Will in the eye as he spoke, "You know that's not what I meant." 

As his words hit him, Mike watched Will's eyes soften, a sad smile pulling at his lips. 

"Yeah, I know." Will whispered softly.

Mike wrapped his arms around his friend the best he could from their awkward position and he leaned forward to bury his face into Will's neck, breathing deeply hoping to catch the familiar scent of the discount detergent Joyce had used on Will's clothes when they were kids but was instead met with nothing, once again reminding him that while Will may be here in front of him, he was still dead, and things could never quite go back to the way they were before. 

The pair sat in surprisingly companionable silence considering the fact that Mike's knee was bracketed by Will's thighs, and the two were firmly pressed together from chest to toe. If Mike pulled his head from its place in the crook of Will's neck he was sure they would be practically nose to nose, breathing in each other's recycled air. He could almost pretend from his position that at every point of contact with Will he could feel the other boy's warmth. But in reality, Will wasn't hot or cold, just strangely neutral in temperature. Mike was still ruminating on the science behind a room-temperature ghost when Will spoke up from beneath him. 

"Mike." Will called softly, drawing Mike's attention back to how close he was to Will's face when he lifted his head to look the other boy in the eye. 

"Mmm?" He hummed, eyes once again zeroing in on the mole beside Will's lip. 

"Mike, you're suffocating me." Will wheezed, prodding the other boy in the side. 

Mike rolled his eyes, "Oh come on, you're a ghost, what do you need to breathe for?" He teased, but rolled off nevertheless, flopping over onto his back to stare up at the ceiling. His shoulder still pressed solidly into Will's own as the two stared up at the scattered stars on the ceiling. Mike's fingertips ghosted along Will's wrist, unwilling to release the other boy for even a second for fear that his friend would just fade away again. 

He thinks he fell asleep like that, fingers pressed to Will's pulse point, his head lolled on the other boy's shoulder. But eventually, the tape came to a close, hissing gently into his ears and Mike was startled into wakefulness by both his hand and his head hitting the floor simultaneously. 

"The things I do for you, Byers." Mike sighed, rubbing his head as he sat up and flipped the tape over to side B. 

Will came back into fruition mid-jab, his finger suddenly appearing mere inches from Mike's side, making it impossible to avoid. 

"Shut up Wheeler! You know you love me." 

Mike felt something white-hot zing through him at Will's words, his whole body seeming to heat with embarrassment as his eyes flickered to any place in the room besides where Will was sitting. 

His eyes caught on a flash of yellow in the corner of his vision and his gaze was drawn towards the faded yellow Walkman, his hands fiddling with the headphone cord. 

"Will, do you trust me?" Mike whispered, gaze flicking back up to his best friend. 

"Yeah?" Will nodded slowly, but his voice was laced with confusion. 

Mike couldn't help but smile, the other boy always going along with Mike's crazy ideas even if he didn't know what they were. He had that much trust in him. He scrambled up quickly, turning back to reach a hand out to Will still sprawled on the floor, pulling the other boy to his feet before quickly dropping the thin hand as if it burned, willfully ignoring the way his fingers tingled as he stepped away. 

Turning around, he trotted over to the corner of his room, pulling the box off the floor and unceremoniously dumping the contents onto his bed with a mischievous grin. 

"What do you say about doing a couple of tests?"

Will looked down at the cassettes now spilled across his comforter and then back at Mike's teasingly serious face before his own expression broke into a mirroring grin. 

"You know, last I recall that was really more of Dustin's thing. But I'm all in!" 

Sparing one last glance at his friend, who, catching his eye, smirked playfully back, Mike slowly, deliberately, giving Will ample time to stop him, pressed the pause button on the Walkman. His eyes were glued to the tacky yellow plastic as he ejected the tape, unwilling to watch his friend fade out existence yet again. By the time he raised his eyes, Will was already gone. 

"Okay you sneaky son of a bitch," Mike teased, picking a tape at random from the pile, "Let's see what kind of music you really like." 

He started easy, stuff he knew Will had liked when he was alive: his Queen The Game cassette was first on the line up, and mere seconds after Freddy Mercury began crooning the opening lines of Play The Game Will had sprung back into existence both hands raised like he was being held at gunpoint, a cheeky grin on his face. 

"Oh no, you've caught me officer. I'm a Queen fan." Will rolled his brown-hazel-green eyes before plopping down on Mike's unmade bed. "Me and everyone else in the world." 

"Shut up!" Mike blustered, shoving the other boy's face into the mattress as he sat down in the space now vacated by Will's body. "I just wanted to go with something we both liked." 

Will gasped with mock horror, "What? You're telling me you don't like Brit rock? Whatever will I do with myself." 

Will, still facedown on the mattress, reached his arm forward grasping a tape from the pile at random, not even looking before he handed the tape to Mike. "Here, try this one next." 

Glancing at the familiar cassette cover, Mike had to stifle a laugh, popping the tape into the player and hitting play. "Oh, you're gonna love this." 

Welcome to your life

There's no Turning Back

Even while we sleep

We will find you  

Will was gone once again when he glanced up, but he still let Everybody Wants to Rule the World play to its conclusion before ejecting the tape and slotting Queen back into the player. 

"I most decidedly did not love that." Will groaned, the boy suddenly popping back into existence, now situated with his back on the floor, legs propped up against the side of Mike's bed, his hospital gown pooling around his waist, showcasing a pair of very familiar athletic shorts underneath. He was just in the middle of trying to figure out when and how Will had managed to snag a pair of his shorts, and how the physics of a ghost wearing real clothes worked when Will's rambling jarred him back to attention. 

"Why do you even have that tape?" 

"You're not gonna believe me. But I'm pretty sure Steve Harrington left it over here one time." Mike scratched at his head, feeling sheepish. 

Will's head shot up in surprise, "Wait. The Steve Harrington who was trying to make the moves on your sister when I-" The other boy made a slicing motion over his neck. 

"Jeez you're morbid." Mike cackled, but nodded in response. 

"You'd be surprised. He actually turned into kinda a decent guy after, you know…" Mike gestured vaguely to Will in his entirety. "He and Nancy dated for like a year or something. But after Nancy and Jonathan started dating-" 

"Wait! Nancy?" Will screeched, fully sitting up at this point, legs plopping heavily onto the floor. "And Jonathan!?" 

Mike waved at him to be silent and continued, "As I was saying, when Jonathan and Nancy got together, Steve really stepped up. Don't tell Dustin I said that. He's got some weird sort of hero worship thing going on with that guy." Mike huffed, returning to his original point, "But Steve and Jonathan and Nancy had this sort of weird friendship thing going on, despite all their shared history. I don't really get it, but it seemed to work for them." 

Will's face was still frozen with shock, Mike was fairly certain his friend hadn't heard anything he had just said. His mind was too blown by the idea of his brother getting a girlfriend. He leaned over the edge of the bed, poking Will in the cheek and bringing the other boy back to attention. 

"How about you pick the next tape? You can even look this time." Mike teased, holding out his hand towards the brunet sprawled across his bedroom floor. "And get back up here. Those shorts are way too short for you to be sitting like that." 

Will glanced down at himself, his long pale legs stretched out on the carpet, his multiple dark moles on display in Mike's slightly too short shorts. Mike found his eyes continuously drawn to the freckled expanse of skin, likely because Will was showing entirely too much of it, as Will hoisted himself to his feet, crawling on the bed beside him. 

The other boy peered at the collection of tapes, picking up a few, before shaking his head and placing them in a separate pile. Purposefully leaning away from Mike's watchful eye so that he didn't know what he was picking. 

"Okay, close your eyes." Will finally acquiesced, holding his selected tape triumphantly aloft. 

"Ugh, fine. But if you picked that Joy Division album Jonathan left like two years ago your music picking privileges are going to be revoked." Mike sighed, allowing his eyes to slide shut as he waited in anticipation. 

He felt the bed shift slightly as Will inched his way forward, nearly pressed to Mike's side as he pulled the Walkman from his grasp. He longed to open his eyes and take a peek at what Will was doing. Logically, he knew that Will had all but disappeared now that the tape had stopped, and at best he would just see his Walkman randomly floating a few inches over his bed. But it didn't keep him from wondering if Will was sticking his tongue out in concentration as he slid the tape into place, or if he could still feel Mike's breath on the back of his neck as he leaned over to return the Walkman into his grasp. 

Mike bit back a gasp as he felt the play button depress under his fingers, even without him touching it. The familiar hiss of the Walkman filled his ears as the tape began. 

"Done." Will breathed, and he swore Will had whispered the words directly in his ear from the way his body lit up in goosebumps at the sudden sound of the other boy's voice.

He forced himself to keep his eyes shut as Will slid away from him, unsure if his body could take it if he opened his eyes and found Will's face popping into existence just scant inches away. Eyes still firmly shut, Mike remained silent, allowing the first few moments of music to echo around him. 

Won't you come see about me?

I'll be alone, dancing, you know it, baby.

"The Breakfast Club?" Mike's eyes popped open, wheeling on Will, who was surprisingly still tangible and was sitting one leg pulled up to his chest, chin resting on his knee, eyeing Mike with a cheeky grin. 

"How do you even know this movie? Didn't it come out in like '85?" Mike scrambled around the bedspread searching for the cassette case. 

"Oh no, I don't. I was definitely dead by then. I just thought the album cover looked very out of place with all your new wave and whatever that edgy shit is, and then I saw it had a Simple Minds song, and I thought 'there's no way Michael Wheeler is cool enough to listen to Simple Minds' but low and behold, never thought I'd live to see the day!" 

"Well, you didn't exactly live to see it." Mike teased back morbidly, poking Will in the stomach with one socked foot. 

"Oh it is on Wheeler! Just because I'm dead doesn't mean I can't kick your ass!" 

And that's how he ended up knocked to the floor, slightly winded from his impact with the ground as a victorious Will Byers sat firmly on his chest while The Breakfast Club's most popular song played in the background. 

As you walk on by

Will you call my name?

Will's eyes were dark in the half-light, more black than brown, and Mike swore he saw his friend's eyes dart to his lips as his tongue darted out to lick them unconsciously. 

As you walk on by

Will you call my name?

"Uncle?" Mike wheezed, frozen under the weight of Will's stare as the boy inched ever closer. 

Suddenly, just as quickly as it had come, the weight on Mike's chest had vanished, and Will near-instantaneously appeared at the other end of the room, much faster than a person could have possibly moved. 

Finally able to breath now that Will's intense gaze wasn't locked onto his, Mike sat up, eyes locked in on the brunet, who was standing, hunched and guilty-looking on the other side of the room. 

Will looked small, smaller than he had expected, considering his significant growth spurt since they were twelve. But he remembered this Will. The soft, kind Will who always felt just a little too much; the boy who caved in on himself when he was hurting, always the best at hiding, even from his friends. 

But while this Will seemed a lot like the Will he remembered, he also knew that approximately one day of reunion after more than three apart, was not enough to bridge the gap that had grown between them since Will's death. They were different now, and Mike wasn't sure what to do with this new, different Will. 

"Will? What's wrong?" He asked tentatively, hand halfway raised, unsure if Will even wanted to be touched. 

"I shouldn't be here." Will said quietly, shoulders bowed inwards and eyes downturned, avoiding Mike's gaze. 

"Me being here is a mistake." Will bit out harshly, eyes blazing with ferocity. "I'm dead. Why am I suddenly here three years later? And who knows how long I'll be around for, maybe tomorrow I'll just disappear back into the nothingness and it'll be just like I died all over again." Will's eyes grew soft for a second as he gazed at Mike, "I know me dying really fucked you up the first time, and I don't think its really hit you, or me really, that this ," He gestured between them, "Is a temporary thing." 

Mike jolted forward at Will's words, the other boy's tone igniting a fire inside of him, "Why does it matter if it's temporary? Yeah it'll fucking suck if you disappear on me again Byers." Mike managed a small smile, an attempt at humor, but Will's face remained stoic, "But why can't we enjoy things while they last? I wanna have fun with my friend again." Mike stepped forward, his arm slowly outstretched as if he was approaching a scared dog who could bite at any moment, but given what Will did to the lights the day before, the analogy probably wasn't that far off. 

Will shook his head, pulling back out of Mike's reach. "I shouldn't be allowed to want things Mike. I'm not real." His eyes swung back to Mike's, his gaze swimming with something he didn't understand. "I shouldn’t want things I can't have." 

Mike stepped forward again, boxing Will between him and the wall. He was fairly certain Will had some ghostly ability to walk through walls, but he knew that he wouldn't. 

"You're allowed to want things Will. I'm allowed to want things too." Mike said, stepping ever closer, hoping Will would understand. 

"You and I don't want the same things." Will replied softly, eyes still locked firmly on the floor. 

"How do you know?" Mike asked, Will's gaze suddenly lifting to meet his eyes at his words. As soon as his dark brown eyes met Will's pair of hazel-green-brown, Mike felt the breath knocked from his chest. 

He could see the swirls of color in his best friend's eyes, he could count every eyelash. They were standing so close he could feel Will's breath puffing against his face. They were standing so close that if he leaned forward just an inch he could- 

"You don't." Will replied, eyes shuttering coldly. 

And then in what has to be either the coolest or most frustrating way to leave an argument, Will Byers leaned back and just fell through his bedroom wall. 

Chapter Text

Oh it’s such a perfect day

I’m glad I spent it with you

Oh such a perfect day

You just keep me hanging on

Perfect Day - Lou Reed

Will was sulking. 

He knew he was sulking, but he just couldn't help it. Mike had been so close, Will sitting on his chest, pinning the other boy to the floor, music playing softly in the background, it would've been so easy to just lean in. He had wanted to, wanted to bridge the gap between his and Mike's faces, press their lips together. But then everything finally caught up to him and hit him like a ton of bricks to the face. 

He was dead. 

Dead people don't get second chances. Dead people don't get to kiss their childhood crushes. Dead people can't string along their best friend like they could possibly go back to normal, be like how they were before. 

So Will flung himself away from Mike, and tried desperately to tamp down the feelings stirring violently in his chest.

But to his surprise, Mike followed. 

Mike always followed. He always tried to make Will feel better, unable to leave a fight unresolved, always wanting to right a wrong, and apparently this time was no different. He stepped into Will's space, eyes dark and sad as he gazed at Will, and he found himself stuck like a bug trapped in amber, unable to escape Mike's pull. 

And then Mike stepped closer, narrowing the gap between their bodies, and Will felt like he couldn't breathe. 

He couldn't help the way his eyes darted to Mike's lips, impossibly close yet so far away. All Will wanted to do was close the space between them and suck all the air from Mike's lungs.

But then he looked up. 

He saw Mike's dark irises eclipsed by pupil, his eyes wide and hungry. And suddenly Will couldn't breathe for an entirely different reason. 

It was one thing for him to be feeling this way. Yearning after his best friend. It was inconsequential, his one sided attraction. He was a ghost after all, and who knew when he would suddenly disappear again.  

But now he had corrupted Mike. 

Soon Will would be gone and Mike will be crushed all over again. Will couldn't do that to Mike. He couldn't keep getting close to him and ignoring the consequences of his actions. The consequences Mike would have to live with. 

Unable to avoid the dark-haired teen inching steadily closer, and liable to drown in Mike's warm brown eyes if he stayed put even a moment longer, Will did the first thing he could think of.

He phased backwards through the wall. 

In retrospect it was probably not the smartest move, but he had panicked. 

And now he was sulking. In Mike's closet of all places, which, given the circumstances, was really fucking ironic. 

He watched silently, through a crack in the door as Mike stomped back to his bed, flung himself down onto the mattress with all the decorum of a grumpy toddler, and screamed loudly into his pillow for a few long seconds. 

Despite how mixed up he was inside about everything, he still felt a hint of a smile crack at his lips as he watched Mike, a nearly full grown adult, throw a tantrum. 

The teen remained on his bed for a few moments before he picked himself back up, ran his hands through his already disheveled hair a few times and then went back through sorting through the tapes on his bed. 

This continued for a while, Mike eventually replacing the Breakfast Club tape for 'Will's Mix' once the movie soundtrack had reached its conclusion. When the dark haired teen pushed the play button and the familiar sound of Bowie echoed through the speakers, he glanced around the room for a moment, as if waiting for Will to suddenly appear, his expression falling slightly after nothing happened for a few seconds. 

Much like how he had when he had first begun haunting Mike Wheeler's basement, Will watched Mike. He watched Mike as he sang softly under his breath to Lost in the Supermarket , despite his adamant denial of liking The Clash. He watched as his friend chewed on his bottom lip, sorting through the tapes on his bed with a fervor he had rarely seen on the other boy, the dark haired teen's eyes darting between two similar looking cassettes before finally sighing and placing both in the ever growing pile at his feet. 

It took him a while, but eventually he realized that Mike was sorting through the tapes to try to find things he liked. He wanted to find something that Will would listen to, things they could listen to, together. Will almost burst his way out of the closet then, set on apologizing right then and there when he was interrupted by a harsh crackle echoed through the room, stopping Will in his tracks. 

"-ey Mike, you there? Come in. Over." 

Will recognized the voice over the radio, the same voice that had called Mike just a few days ago at movie night, who he now knew was another of Will's childhood friends, Dustin. 

Mike set down the tape he had been holding and quickly strode over to where his walkie was buried underneath a pile of clothes. Which, ew. 

"Yeah Dustin, it's me. Over."

"So Lucas and I were gonna head on over to the mall in like an hour, and neither one of us wants to bike all the way…" 

"So you want the car? Over." Mike sighed, cutting Dustin off. 

"How'd ya know, Wheeler? Over." 

"Yeah, I guess I can drive you guys to the mall. But you guys owe me. Over." 

"You're the best! Over." 

Will's eyes brightened, he didn't remember a mall in Hawkins when he was younger. And the thought of being able to see Dustin and Lucas had him excited. 

Maybe a bit too excited if the rapid brightening and dimming of the lights in Mike's room were anything to go by. The dark haired teen glanced over at the lamp curiously, his mouth curving into the hint of a smile. 

Will quickly tried to tamp down on his leaking enthusiasm. But it was already too late, he had been caught. 

"I gotta go Dustin. See you in an hour! Over." Mike called, before chucking the walkie unceremoniously back onto the clothing pile. 

"I know you're there Will." Mike called, glancing around the room. "Now come help me pick out a few tapes to bring to the mall so I'm not stuck listening to The goddamn Clash on repeat for 24 hours straight." 

Will bit his lip anxiously, still unsure whether he should come out. Spending time around Mike was fun, and exciting, but he knew spending all this time together it would probably end up hurting the other boy in the end, he didn't want the weight of that guilt on his conscience. 

"Come on Will!" Mike sing-songed, "Or you're gonna be stuck listening to Depeche Mode all day." 

"Over my dead body!" Will burst his way out of the closet, internal dilemma completely forgotten in the wake of the objectively worse problem of having to endure Mike's eclectic music taste for hours on end. 

"Well…" Mike laughed, glancing down at where Will was standing, half in and half out of Mike's closet door. 

"Oh shut up!" Will huffed, diving for Mike's tape and knocking the Depeche Mode cassette to the floor. 

"Hey! Why can't I sit in the front?" Dustin whined, climbing into the backseat with Lucas, an expression very close to a pout marring the normally jovial teen’s expression. 

Will raised an eyebrow at Mike from his position in the passenger seat, mentally checking off visible to others in presence of music off his ghostly checklist, since he figured if Lucas and Dustin could see him they would probably be making a much bigger fuss about their long-dead friend suddenly appearing in Mike’s passenger seat. So he could reasonably assume he was still invisible to his other two friends. Guess that meant that Mike was just an outlier for some strange reason that Will didn’t really want to think about. If he had been Dustin he would've developed a multi-part hypothesis about his ghostly traits and set parameters to test each one individually. But Will was not Dustin, and he was content to not think about his strange ghost powers as much as humanly possibly. So instead, he shot Mike a slight smirk, wondering what yarn his friend would spin to convince the others to leave the front seat open, especially since he didn’t want his first lap dance to be given to him by Dustin of all people. 

"My imaginary friend is sitting there." Mike replied confidently, already reversing the car out of Dustin's driveway, preventing any of the boys from switching seats. 

"Well Lucas, it looks like Mike's finally lost it." Dustin stage whispered, easily heard by every member of the vehicle. 

"You're an idiot." Lucas responded back, rolling his eyes. 

"Dude, what are you listening to?" Lucas blinked, confused for a moment. "Is that- T Rex?" 

"Um. Yeah." Will didn't miss the way Mike's eyes flickered to his for a moment before turning back to the road. "I just wanted to try something different, ya know." 

Will rolled his eyes, Mike was always such a terrible liar, and it seemed like that much at least, had never changed. 

He sat in silence for the rest of the car ride, silently observing his three friends. Laughing, joking, having fun. 

Watching Lucas and Dustin bicker in the backseat over whether they should go to the arcade or the movies first while Mike vehemently argued for the record store, only to be immediately shut down by both boys in the backseat, sent a strong wave of nostalgia washing over him. 

He missed this. 

And yeah, it wasn't the same as when they were twelve, stuck biking back and forth between each other's houses, or spending their weekends playing D&D in Mike's basement. The most glaring difference was probably that no one but Mike even knew he was there. But then again he had never talked much back then anyways, so really, maybe it wasn't so different after all. He allowed himself to pretend, for just a moment, that this could be his life if he were still alive. Sitting in the passenger seat while his best friend drove and his other friends squabbled in the back. With a small smile blossoming across his face, he let his eyes flutter shut and drank in the familiar sounds of his closest friends' voices, and let the world continue to spin on around him. 

"So the girls want to meet up for lunch. Which means we have," Lucas glanced down at his watch, "Two hours and 37 minutes until then. I still say we hit up the arcade before Max joins us or we're gonna have no chance in hell of beating the high scores." 

Dustin nods sagely, apparently able to be convinced over to Lucas's point of view when the other boy bribed him with free ice cream. The two setting off for the mall's arcade on the opposite end of the building, with Dustin already laying out the order in which to tackle the games. 

Mike lagged behind slightly, glancing back and forth between his friends who were slowly pulling away, and Will, who was keeping pace beside him. 

The dark-haired teen tugged at the headphones wrapped around his neck, adjusting the volume so the tinny noise of The Police's Synchronicity I blared slightly louder. Will wished he still had bangs to hide his eyes behind as he glanced down at the floor as he shuffled closer, feeling awkward in the sudden silence and hoping the sheer proximity to the other boy would prevent the other mall patrons from walking right through him. 

"You wanna hit up the record store real quick before they notice I'm gone?" Mike whispered under his breath. "Figured we could use some more music so I don't go out of my mind listening to the same three tapes on repeat till the end of time." 

Will crossed his arms and sent Mike a mock stern look, “Hey, I saw that you have not one, but three The Cure albums. And I know for a fact at least one of them came out since I died, so don’t keep pretending that you aren’t secretly a fan. I’m onto you Wheeler. I know what you are.”

His friend colored slightly under Will’s direct attention, and Will found himself looking away, unable to bear looking directly at the way Mike’s soft blush only brought his numerous freckles into even starker contrast. 

The two continued on in slightly stilted silence, only broken up by Will occasionally skirting away to avoid another mall patron walking directly through him with their numerous shopping bags. On one occasion, he even had to go so far as to leap on top of a bench occupied by a wizened older lady to avoid a raucous group of preteens taking up the entire walkway. 

“You know, I never thought I’d say it. But I think being invisible is a lame superpower.” Will sighed loudly, hopping down from the bench to rejoin Mike, who was not so subtly hiding a small smile at Will’s continuous awkward encounters. 

“See, that’s just because you’re not using it right. Right now, you just see your invisibility and permeability as a hindrance. But think about how great it would be if you wanted to sneak into a movie? Or break into an art museum. Dustin would probably try to get you to break into Area 51 and tell him whether or not aliens really exist.” Mike teased, bumping Will slightly with his shoulder. 

“The fact that you put sneaking into movies on the same level as breaking into Area 51 makes me concerned as to what you’ve been getting up to the past couple years, so I’m just gonna pretend to ignore that for now.” Will chimed in, eyes lighting up as he caught sight of their destination, a slightly faded sign reading Exchange Records . In the window display case an eccentric mix of what Will assumed were new releases sat proudly on display, apparently March 1987 was the time for a new Bon Jovi album, some album called Boi-ngo, what looked to be a heavy metal album, and of course, much to Will’s chagrin, Depeche Mode. 

“I-” Mike began, but Will quickly cut him off. 

“Don’t you fucking dare.” 

Mike huffed, “You didn’t even know what I was going to say.” 

“I don’t have to. Best friend, remember.” Will teased, tapping his temple, “I can see you practically drooling over the new Depeche album, and I swear I will drag myself to hell by my fingernails if you have the audacity of listening to that in my presence.”

Before Mike had the chance to get a word in edgewise, Will darted into the store, knowing Mike wouldn’t make a scene in front of witnesses at the risk of looking insane for having an argument with an invisible person. 

“I hate you.” Mike hissed under his breath as he stalked inside behind him, but not before sparing one last longing look at the black and red album in the window. 

“Welcome to Exchange Records, let me know if you need help with anything.” A man with a cloud of long, messy dark hair called out from one end of the store, where he was currently restocking the cassette tapes in the Pop Music section, which judging by the annoyed muttering he could hear even from the opposite end of the store the man was doing with an extreme vehemence. 

“You know,” Will teased, gaze flickering back and forth between the shaggy haired man stocking records and the dark-haired boy standing beside him, “If you keep letting your hair grow out and stop letting your mom pick out all your clothes, I’m pretty sure you and that guy over there could be twins.” He smirked, lips quirking up at the corners so that Mike knew he was only teasing.

Mike cast a sparing glance towards the record store employee, rolling his eyes exaggeratedly until his eyes suddenly bugged out and he quickly did a double take at the other man. “Dude, I think that guy went to Hawkins, he was some sort of super senior that just graduated last year. He’s like super weird.” Mike’s face twisted oddly, caught somewhere between a wistful expression and a grimace. 

Will was sure there was some sort of history between the man on the other edge of the store and Mike, but he figured it really wasn’t any of his business to ask, so he just hummed quietly in response and went back to scanning the records on the shelf. His eyes occasionally being drawn to the Mike look-alike on occasion, but he tried not to be obvious about it. Mike puttered around the store in silence for a few minutes, sporadically picking up cassettes and records before meticulously putting them back on the shelf, and eventually Will tuned his presence out, well versed in the ways of hangouts with Mike Wheeler. 

“Okay, what do you think of this?” Mike spoke softly, dragging Will’s attention away from where he was examining a large patch on the back of the man’s denim jacket. Mike was holding up two cassettes, The Kinks Sleepwalker album, and a Bowie in a familiar half-man, half-dog image which graced the cover of the Diamond Dogs cassette. 

“So I’ve only got enough money for maybe three cassettes, and I figured if this whole thing ends up lasting long enough, I could probably get Jonathan to loan me a couple of your old tapes because I’m pretty sure you own these already, but I figure can’t hurt to have at least one oldie but goodie.” Mike looked sheepish, as if he regretted the cheesy words the instant they had come out of his mouth but Will had barely noticed. 

In an effort to not look like a complete weirdo, Mike had spoken softly and had stepped in close to Will in order to speak, and despite the fact that Will had no ability to discern hot from cold, he swore he could feel Mike’s warm breath ghosting across his face. 

“I- er, uh-” Will stammered before reaching out blindly and pointing one of the cassettes in Mike's hand at random. He didn’t even get to see what he had chosen, since as soon as he reached out, Mike quickly vacated his personal space, hastily booking it to the other end of the aisle. Will silently mourned the loss, and tried to distract himself from Mike’s strange behavior by examining the stacks. 

Mike left him to his own devices for a few minutes, likely to go harass the store clerk about getting his hands on the new Depeche album when he spotted it. 

Hidden behind three copies of the same Queen album, Will caught sight of a familiar band name, one that he was slightly surprised to see on a cassette tape. 

The Queen is Dead - The Smiths

Jonathan had first shown him a bootleg demo tape of The Smiths what seemed like ages ago, back in his older brother’s bedroom, trying to drown out the sound of Lonnie and his mother fighting. He had told him to keep his eye out for the band, because while they hadn’t quite broken into the U.S. yet, he was certain they were going to be big. 

Apparently Jonathan had known what he was talking about, because as he glanced about the shop, keeping his eye out for other albums from the same band, he was able to spot three other albums besides the one that had originally caught his eye. With one last longing look, Will tore his gaze away from The Smith’s cassette, and meandered over to where Mike was digging through the discount bin. 

He spent a few brief seconds surreptitiously observing the subtle curvature of Mike's rear, before he slapped his hands over his warm cheeks, forcing his gaze away from his friend, feeling oddly guilty. 

Willing thoughts of Mike's ass from his mind, Will quietly snuck around in Mike’s blind spot, leaning over the other boy ominously, until he was directly behind the other boy’s ear.

“Boo.” 

Mike shrieked loudly, nearly tumbling face first into the bin of cassettes in front of him. Will was unable to hold back a guffaw of laughter, and was glad no one but Mike, who was currently ass-up in a bin of old tapes, could see the way he was doubled over with laughter, face red and tears in his eyes. 

“Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” A voice called from the other end of the store. The long-haired man, coupled with his dark ripped jeans and heavy metal t-shirt with a frayed collar, looked vaguely threatening as he stormed across the store, zeroing in on Mike’s direction. 

Mike, finally able to vacate his head from the bin, sent one quick scared look in Will’s direction, and bolted from the shop, abandoning his potential purchases on the floor behind him with a clatter. Will, sparing a slightly guilty look towards the mess the other boy had inadvertently left because of him, quickly followed. 

Once they were out of sight of the shop, and it seemed no angry metalhead was chasing after them, Mike’s pace slowed to a sedate walk and Will finally managed to catch up to the other teen, giving his friend an appraising look. 

“Wow, who knew Mike Wheeler was so bad. Getting chased out of a record shop. Next you'll be kicking puppies and holding up liquor stores." 

The taller teen let out a sharp huff of laughter, causing a severe-looking blonde woman carrying a sleeping toddler to glare at him in annoyance. 

"Er- sorry ma'am." Mike stuttered out, embarrassed, the woman turning away without a backwards glance. Will couldn't help but grin at his friend's sudden shift into awkwardness. 

Mike turned back in time to catch the shit-eating grin present on his face and rolled his eyes in response before stomping forward, whispering under his breath, "You know, I seem to remember you never being the one to get in trouble when we were kids either." 

Will snorted, "That's just because you're a bad influence. I mean look at you!" He made a vague kind of gesture toward Mike, "Your hair's so long it's nearly a mullet, you've got ripped black jeans and a graphic tee. Just give it a couple more years and I bet you'll end up looking just like the guy in the record shop." 

Unable to help himself, Will tugged on a stray strand of Mike's hair as he spoke to further emphasize his point, reveling in the soft yet wiry texture of the thick dark strands. Mike froze at the sudden contact, feet stuttering to a halt in the middle of the walkway, and Will immediately snatched his hand away as if it had burned.

If his eyes hadn't been focused on Mike's stray curls, he probably would've missed the slight tinge of pink darkening the tips of the teen's ears. Will, suddenly tongue-tied, quickly turned away, face aflame. 

Out of the corner of his eye he could see Mike glaring at the floor, face hidden behind the thick curtain of his hair, but he was certain the other boy was staring at his shoes, one of which he was worrying along the tile floor. 

"Arcade?" Will whispered, breaking the tense silence that surrounded the pair. 

Mike nodded, eyes still refusing to meet Will's, "Arcade." He agreed. 

By the time they made their way to the arcade, it seemed Dustin and Lucas were well on their way to an all out brawl over who got to play next on Joust. 

Will looked on nervously as Dustin elbowed Lucas hard in the side, pushing him out of the way before the other teen had a chance to insert his coins. 

"You played the last two games in a row, it's my turn!" Lucas cried, shoulder-checking the other boy with a force which made Will wince in sympathy, unused to the much more aggressive way his friends seemed to duke it out than he remembered from when they were kids.  

"I only played twice in a row because the game glitched, otherwise I never would've lost so early on!" Dustin shouted back, trying to wedge his hand in front of where Lucas's leg was blocking the coin slot. 

Lucas snorted, "Like hell, that buzzard flew above you and killed you fair and square and you know it!" 

Will was so caught up in the boy's arguing, he hadn't even noticed Mike's disappearance until the boy reappeared clutching a cup full of quarters. 

Without even acknowledging his two friends squabbling, Mike thrust his way between the two bickering teens and inserted his quarters, casually pressing the 1-player button before wrapping his dexterous fingers confidently around the controls. 

Dustin and Lucas's argument immediately ceased, the two teens falling silent in some sort of ritual that preceded Will, gazing intently at the screen as Mike began his run. 

It may have been literal years since the last time Will had set foot in an arcade, but from his position just over Mike's shoulder, he watched entranced as the avatar floated and dove across the screen in time to the teen's rapid-fire button pressing, and felt as if almost no time had passed. 

Eventually Will's gaze wandered from the screen and inevitably settled on Mike's face. Secure in his knowledge that the other boy was too entranced in his game to notice his sudden attention, Will took a few long moments to study his friend's features. 

Mike's brows were slightly pinched, his eyes hooded and serious as his fingers flew across the controls. Will's heart stuttered wildly inside his chest as Mike poked his tongue out in concentration as he executed a particularly complicated dive. He was certain he was making some sort of constipated expression in response, and had never been more happy to be completely invisible because he was certain Dustin and Lucas would have teased him relentlessly if they had been able to see the look on his face. 

After what seemed like an eternity, Mike was finally bested, his ostrich falling from the sky and the game flashing a large GAME OVER message across the screen. Mike tsked under his breath, betraying his mild annoyance that his score didn't break the top 10 before turning back to his friends. 

"Now that's how you play Joust." He declared with a burst of self-confidence Will had never seen in the 12-year-old version of his best friend, but found Mike’s self-assurance oddly fitting for 16. Will felt an odd pang in his chest as he watched Mike high-five Lucas, and join in on jokingly teasing Dustin for his paltry high score from earlier. 

He missed this. 

He missed playing video games with his friends, missed hanging out together in Mike’s basement, he missed Dustin’s nerdy jokes and weird obsessions, he missed Lucas incessantly bickering with his sister, even though any time the younger girl needed his help, he was always the first one to drop everything. 

He missed being alive. 

But was he allowed to miss it?

It’s not like it would change anything. 

Would it?

Will had been so caught up in his own head he had completely missed that the Party had wandered away from the Joust machine to the other side of the arcade, where a surprisingly large crowd was gathered around an arcade game occupied by two players. 

Unwilling to get left behind, especially since Mike was the only one who could see him and he had no idea how to get back to the Wheeler house if he lost him, Will slowly edged his way towards the crowd, staying near the outer edges so he wouldn’t accidentally fall through someone, until he could finally see what all the commotion was about. 

Street Fighter, the game everyone in the arcade seemed to want to play, must've been a newer arcade game, since Will was seriously impressed by how good the graphics looked on the fighting game. Will’s eyes darted back and forth rapidly as the two players quickly pressed the buttons and moved the joystick in various combinations, causing their playable characters to kick and punch wildly. 

He had never been very good at fighting games, preferring games of strategy, like Dig Dug or Pac-Man, over those of overt skill. But, considering that he was mostly incorporeal, and didn’t want to scare any of the children at the arcade into thinking the machines were haunted, even if by definition they probably were if he were to play on them. He had to settle with being largely dependent on Mike for his entertainment. 

The same Mike who seemed to have completely forgotten his existence the moment Street Fighter’s bright colors and flashy animations caught his eye. 

Will huffed out a short sigh, leaning against an unused Ms. Pac-Man machine as he waited for his friends to take their turn, figuring he was probably in for a long wait. 

Slowly but surely, Mike, Dustin and Lucas began making their way towards the machine, cups of quarters clutched excitedly in their grips as they chattered quietly to one another, eyes still laser focused on the game in front of them. 

He wondered, absently, unable to make out the faint music coming from Mike’s headphones, if the other teen would still be able to see him if Will himself couldn’t hear the music. 

His question was answered fairly quickly when Mike’s eyes finally tore themselves away from the round 3 KO of the last match to glance about the arcade, his gaze searching. Mike’s expression grew more and more frantic the longer he looked, his dark eyes wide as they darted about the room. 

Will felt guilty for hiding in the corner by the abandoned arcade machine, and was about to brave the crowd to approach Mike when the other teen stepped out of line, whispering fervently to Lucas and Dustin, before trotting off quickly back towards the Joust machine, his mouth pinched with concern and completely ignorant to the shocked look displayed on both of his friends’ faces as he hurried off. 

Instantly feeling like a shitty friend, Will peeled away from the Ms. Pac-Man machine and hastily followed after his dark-haired friend. 

“Will? Will?!” Mike hissed quietly, worriedly searching around the arcade machines, even going so far as to look underneath a dusty basketball shooting game, causing Will to let out a rather undignified snort at the sight. 

“Well I don’t think I could fit under there. Even as a ghost.” Will chuckled, sliding up behind the freckled teen. 

Mike started slightly at the sound of his voice before quickly whirling around, mouth curling up into a relieved grin. 

“Fucking hell Byers, didn’t anyone ever tell you not to sneak up on people when you’re invisible?” 

“Funnily enough, that never came up in ghost training.” Will replied, unable to repress his answering smirk. 

“Where’d you go?” Mike questioned, his voice quiet, and Will could see the tense creases around the other teen’s dark eyes and knew the other boy had been worried. 

“Just over there.” Will gestured to the Ms. Pac-Man machine he had been leaning against. “I guess if I can’t hear the music too, you can’t see me.” 

“Yeah, I guess so.” Mike shrugged, looking like he was torn between feigning nonchalance and genuine anxiety at the idea of not being able to see Will. 

Mike stared despondently at the floor, picking absently at a stray piece of skin on his thumb. Will felt another stab of guilt worm sharply in his chest. 

Look at what he was doing to Mike, it had only been one day and Mike was nearly losing it at the thought of Will disappearing in the arcade, what would happen if - when- Will truly disappeared for real. He couldn’t keep doing this to Mike, couldn’t keep using his best friend like this- 

“Hey, I- uh, have an idea.” Mike spoke tentatively, startling Will out of his internal debate. Mike looked sheepish, his eyes still lowered at the floor, one hand rubbing at his neck awkwardly. 

“Would you like to try something?” 

Cute. Will’s brain supplied unhelpfully, and Will suppressed the urge to smack himself in the face. 

“Uh, sure.” He managed to stammer out, hoping he wasn’t noticeably blushing. 

“Come with me.” Mike called, suddenly excited, latching onto Will’s wrist and tugging him deeper into the arcade, past games he recognized and some he didn’t, Will’s eyes oscillating between staring at the back of Mike’s head as he tugged him through the maze of games and taking in his unfamiliar surroundings, before Mike suddenly came to a halt. 

They were near the back of the arcade, well away from some of the more popular games, and in an area completely devoid of other people. Mike spun around, eyes bright with excitement as he gazed at Will. 

Will had to force himself to tear his gaze away, lest he go blind from the brightness that is Mike Wheeler, his gaze finally focusing on what Mike had brought him here for. 

Tempest

“What? Do you want me to watch you play or something?” Will asked confused. 

Mike’s 1000-watt smile dimmed somewhat, slightly put out that Will didn’t seem to understand what he wanted right away. 

“No, I wanted you to play.” 

“But what if someone walks by?” Will glances around, as if someone might be summoned by his words. 

“I’ll just stand right next to you, and if someone comes by I’ll just take over.” Mike replied brightly, seemingly proud of himself for coming up with the idea. 

Will sighed loudly, rolling his eyes before stepping up towards the arcade game, knowing he couldn’t deny Mike this. Not when the other teen was so obviously trying to make Will feel included. “Okay, I’ll play. But no complaining if I beat your high score!”

And then it was on. 

It took Will a few attempts to get used to the controls again, he died the first couple of times embarrassingly quickly, getting easily overrun by the first mob. But Mike stood by, whispering encouragingly, and shoved another quarter into the slot, allowing Will to try again. 

For once, Will let himself just enjoy the moment. No thinking about what his presence might be doing to Mike, or his inevitable disappearance, or even the fact that he was most definitely wasting Mike’s money. Instead, he played games with his best friend, cheering loudly when he finally beat his personal best, or slapping the console hard when the Game Over screen appeared far too quickly. The entire time Mike stood solidly at his side, The Police album quietly echoing around them as the other boy teased and joked at Will's expense, even going so far as to prod his elbow into Will’s side in an attempt to make him mess up.

“Hey, if I lose, it’s your quarters you’re wasting, just so you know.” Will bit out, eyes still focused entirely on the screen, the next wave coming barreling down the tunnel. 

“I’ve got plenty of quarters left.” Mike exclaims, rattling his cup to prove a point, but Will doesn’t even need to look over to hear the rather pitiful sound of the few remaining quarters jostling around in the bottom. 

“Huh, I swear I had more.” And Will could imagine Mike’s put-out expression at his words, his eyes quickly darting away from the screen in time to see the other teen frowning down at his nearly empty cup. 

Suddenly a dying noise emanated from the game, and Will glanced back at the screen to a bright Game Over message. He let out a loud groan, banging his head against the arcade game jokingly. 

“This is your fault.” He deadpanned, looking up at Mike out of the corner of his eye from where his head lay on top of the game console. The joystick pressed painfully into his forehead. 

Mike opened his mouth, his eyes crinkling at the corners when-

“Mike! Hey man it’s time to go!” Lucas called, wheeling around the corner, a crestfallen looking Dustin in tow. 

Will, completely forgetting he was invisible to the other two, started in shock, the game letting out a strange electronic beep as Will nearly fell over, twisting his head to face his two friends, feeling as if he had been caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to. 

Mike squeaked in surprise, face blooming a vibrant crimson, bringing his abundant freckles into sharp relief as he glanced between Will and his two friends. 

“You alright there buddy?” Dustin called, his brow furrowing in concern as he took in Mike’s strangely flustered appearance. 

“You know this is the makeout corner right?” Lucas lifted his eyebrow suggestively, looking Mike up and down skeptically. “You weren’t doing anything back here were you?” 

Mike sputtered, flapping his hand in front of him, his face growing impossibly redder. “N-no. Nothing like that.” 

Dustin and Lucas shared a look, obviously not believing him but choosing not to question it. 

“Well, we don’t want to be late. I know Max will throw a bitch fit if we make her and El have to wait too long.” Dustin said, turning his back on Mike and Will and heading towards the exit, Lucas, sending Mike a suggestive look, trailing after him. 

As soon as the boys were out of eyesight, Mike slumped over with relief, Will’s dark gaze quickly meeting his as the two boys burst out into joint rounds of laughter. 

“Come on, let’s go. Don’t want to make them even more suspicious.” Mike called, already hustling after the other two boys. 

“Suspicious of what? What’s more believable, you having a secret girlfriend, or your childhood best friend haunting you at the mall?” Will sniped back, peeling himself off the Tempest game as he turned to follow. 

He wasn’t sure what compelled him, but when he glanced back at the machine, he saw the high score log flashing brightly, slots 1-10 bearing identical scores and sporting a name that he was certain wasn’t there a minute ago. 

551,983 -WIL

“I think I want pizza for lunch!” Dustin spoke loudly, his broad hand gesture nearly swiping through Will’s stomach, with only his fast reflexes kept him from becoming intimately familiar with how Dustin's hand felt inside his chest cavity. 

Lucas scoffed in response, “I had pizza last night. I wanna go to the new burger place that opened up.” 

Dustin groaned, “But that’s all the way on the other side of the mall!” 

Will glanced up at Mike, the other boy was shaking his head with fond exasperation, “Are they always like this?” 

Mike snorted, “Only on days ending in Y.” 

“Huh? What was that?” Lucas turned back, eyeing Mike strangely. 

“Er- nothing, just talking to myself.” Mike stammered out awkwardly, avoiding Lucas’s intense gaze. “You know, what about ice cream?” 

“We haven’t even eaten lunch yet, and you want dessert?” Dustin questioned, brows furrowed in thought before his face suddenly brightened, “Hell yeah Wheeler! That sounds like a great idea. Lucas does still owe me my free cone!” Dustin pumped his fist in the air. 

“Smooth. Real smooth.” Will cackled, unable to stop himself from teasing his friend, especially since he knew Mike wouldn’t be able to respond back with Lucas watching him so closely. 

“If Wheeler suggested it, I’m sure it’s a terrible idea.” A voice called from behind them, the group turning in surprise. 

Will spun around to see the redhead he remembered curling up next to Lucas during the Party’s movie night striding over, her face split into a shit-eating grin. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a small frown crease the corners of Mike’s mouth, and he had to stop himself from snorting with laughter at his friend’s pettiness. 

Oh. Anyone who can push Mike's buttons like that seems like a lot of fun. 

“Hey Max!” Lucas called, striding up to the shorter girl and pulling her into an impromptu hug, which the redhead did not seem to appreciate considering how much she squirmed to get out of it. 

“Hey Lucas.” The girl replied, the gruff annoyance of her tone at odds with the soft pink flush visible on her cheekbones. “You’re so embarrassing.” She muttered, punching the teen roughly in the shoulder.  

“Where’s El?” Mike asked, his eyes glancing around with the same single-minded determination he had shown when scouring the arcade for Will earlier, which he felt like a sharp kick to the stomach, especially since he now knew of the shared history between the pair. 

“Oh she just had to go to the bathroom, she should be back any minute-” Max responded, looking out over the crowd,  “Speaking of- El! Over here!”  Max called out loudly, going so far as to raise a hand above her head and waving it wildly. 

A girl sporting a wavy brown bob and wearing a vibrantly patterned denim dress quickly spun around, her expression brightening as she rushed towards them. 

“Found you.” She said as she approached, her dark brown eyes alighting on the members of the group in turn. 

“Hello, Dustin and Lucas and Mike.” The girl, El, another familiar face from the movie night, replied, waving slightly as she greeted each member of the group. 

“And-” El cocked her head to the side, her dark gaze sweeping across the others before landing directly on Will, her face growing instantly pale when she saw him staring back. 

She can see me. He thought for a moment, taking in her horror filled gaze, and for an instant his eyes watered slightly, relieved that another person could finally see him. 

But vision hazy with unshed tears, her figured blurred, warped by his watery eyes and Will realized the girl looked more familiar than just from movie night. 

A girl in a dirty hospital gown, soaking wet and bald. 

The rain doing little to remove the blood crusted to her upper lip. 

A lifted hand and a sudden scream. 

A sharp pain pounding in his skull and then…

Nothing. 

Will’s eyes widened in shock. His gaze instantly hardened as he glared at the girl, El, whose horror filled expression had morphed into one of guilt. 

But of course it did. She was the one who killed him after all. 

He was nearly vibrating with rage, his fists clenched as he started forward, a growl growing in his throat. He was only distantly aware of the way the lights began to flicker, strobing violently as he approached the brown-haired girl, who suddenly seemed very, very small in the wake of his growing wrath.  

He missed the way Mike’s eyes widened, the way the other teen made an aborted movement towards him before pulling back quickly, hand clasped over his mouth. 

“You!” He screeched, flying forward in a rage, and then everything went dark. 

Chapter Text

The Clap of thunder

And I see my life go flashing by

The smell of sulphur

And I weep as I embrace the sky

Here Today - The Chameleons

As quickly as Will had thrown himself forward, his body abruptly jolted to a halt, completely frozen in place. 

He thrashed his arms. Nothing. 

He kicked his legs. Nothing.

He tried to open his mouth to shout but he was unable to force his lips to move. 

What the fuck? 

"What's going on?" A loud voice which sounded suspiciously like Lucas spoke over his shoulder. 

"Power outage probably." Dustin responded, and Will could just barely make out their figures flailing about in the dark from the corner of his vision. 

In the dark light of the mall, he was certain no one else besides himself, with his ghostly night vision, could see farther than a foot in front of his face. But despite the sudden darkness the strange brown-haired girl still stood resolutely a few feet in front of him, her dark gaze locked perfectly onto Will's, one arm extended, a small drop of blood slowly oozing from one nostril. 

Will wanted to snarl, to bite and scratch and kick at this girl. To show her even a tiny piece of the anger he felt at her presence. 

But despite the eerie way her eyes seemed to exactly find his, as if she too had the uncanny ability to see in the dark, she didn't seem afraid. Instead she looked almost sad, pitying even.

Which would've made Will even more furious, something inside of him screaming to show this girl an ounce of the pain he had gone through, if she hadn't shook her head minutely like she could read his very thoughts. The haunted look in her eyes speaking volumes as she lowered her hand, suddenly releasing Will from the unexplained pressure holding his body in place. 

Will started forward the moment the girl released him, intent on what he wasn't entirely sure, he only knew he wanted the girl to pay. To pay for what she had did to him. Pay for the childhood he had lost. His lips had begun to curl upward into a sneer when a warm voice spoke directly into his head.  

'Don't attack. I promise I can explain. You will only hurt Mike and the others if you do something rash.' 

Will froze. Unable to help himself he found his gaze traveling to Mike, the other boy's head whipping about frantically in the darkness. He could see the dark-haired teen's mouth moving silently, and he was willing to bet Mike was mouthing his name, not wanting to alert his other friends nearby that the cause of the sudden darkness was much more complicated than a mere power outage. 

Will felt the fight drain out of him immediately as he watched Mike's anxiety only continue to grow as the teen was unable to locate him. More than just the girl would be hurt if Will lashed out. It would hurt Mike too. 

He flicked his gaze back towards the girl, El . He felt the smoldering embers of anger still writhing in his gut, but now instead of being overwhelmed by his hatred, he could see more than just his first tainted memory of the girl from when he was twelve. He had met her other times too. 

He remembered El curled up on the floor in Mike's basement to watch the movie. 

Watching the brown-haired teen call Mike a 'mouth breather' as she shoved a pillow at his face. Something that at the time had him cackling with laughter. 

He remembered the girl, curled comfortably around a bowl of popcorn, leaning up against the back of Max’s legs as the redhead fell asleep against Lucas’s shoulder.  

El had been the first person to notice how sad Mike really was. 

And that thought made Will pause.

He trusted his friends. 

He thought Mike, Dustin and Lucas were pretty good judges of character, distinctly remembering the boys had a keen knack for sniffing out potential bullies in elementary school, and figured that their integration of Max into the Party only solidified the fact in Will's mind that his friends knew what they were doing. So, after a moment of intense contemplation, he reluctantly figured that someone friends with Mike and Dustin and Lucas couldn't possibly be all bad.

So, for now, Will decided to give the brunette the benefit of doubt.  

El cocked her head at him, eyes searching as she took him in, instantly clocking his sudden decrease in bloodlust towards her. She sent him a small, soft smile. And Will couldn't help but blink hesitantly back at her.

An olive branch. For Mike.  

'So, think you can do something about the lights?' El gestured above her and back at his three companions all looking lost in the sudden darkness. 

Will looked back at El, his gaze worried and disheartened. He shrugged, he didn't know how to turn on the lights. Hell, he couldn't even figure out how to respond back to the other girl telepathically. Was that even something he could do with his ghost powers. 

El just lifted one eyebrow, turning his attention back to the task at hand, 'You can do it. Turn on the lights.' She sent him an earnest look, as if she really did believe a total stranger could just magically flip all the lights back on. 

And well, Will couldn't not at least try. Not with her looking at him like that. Especially since she had so thoroughly whooped him in the power department earlier freezing him in place with her telekinetic display. 

So hoping he didn’t wind up looking like a complete idiot, he shut his eyes, and concentrated hard. 

Turn on

Turn on 

Turn on

And with a loud pop suddenly the mall was bright with light and sound. 

Will flinched at the sudden onslaught of sensations, and nearly stumbled directly into Lucas at Dustin's loud voice speaking right near his ear. 

"See look, only took like a minute and the power is back on. Must've been a rolling blackout." Dustin nudged Lucas on the shoulder smugly. 

"I never said it wasn't a power outage. I just-" Lucas bit back only to be interrupted by a small redhead walking up and smacking both boys soundly on the back of the head. 

"You guys are so annoying. Can we just get food already?" Max retorted, rolling her eyes fondly, latching on tightly to Lucas's arm and beginning to drag the much larger boy away towards the food court, Dustin following dutifully behind. 

Will felt his gaze wander back to El, curious about the super-powered teen. Apparently sometime while Will was distracted by Dustin and Lucas, she had found the time to surreptitiously clean her upper lip of any traces of blood, and now the El looked as if nothing was amiss, like any regular sixteen year old girl. If not for the not-so-subtle wink she sent Will before she turned and trotted off after her friends. 

As she wandered off, he became aware of a presence at his side. 

"W-Will?" Mike called hesitantly, his fingers brushing the inside of Will's wrist, in a way that could easily be played off as an accident, but knowing Mike, was definitely on purpose. 

"Are you okay?" 

Dragging his eyes away from the retreating figures of his friends, he turned his attention towards the boy at his side. 

"Yeah. I'm fine." Will replied, voice hoarse. 

He didn't need to know the truth. It was obvious Mike didn't know that El had killed Will, since he doubted Mike would willing befriend his best friend's murderer, but it honestly didn't feel like his secret to share. If Will told Mike the truth now, it would absolutely implode their friend group, and for what, for Will to have his vindication? Mike would never forgive himself for striking up a friendship with El in the first place, and El seemed genuinely good for Mike. Maybe in time, El would finally tell Mike what happened on that stormy November night back in 1983, and maybe when they were older, and things were less fresh, Mike would understand. But for now, Will didn't want to ruin Mike's life more than he already had. He was already dead after all, may as well let sleeping dogs lie. 

"Do you- want to talk about it? That was you right… with the lights?" Mike's face was warm and open, his voice pulling Will back to the present. Mike's dark brows pinched slightly with concern as he took in Will's pale face and tense posture. His fingers ghosting along the exposed portion of his wrist, every point of contact burning across his skin. The soft sounds of Wrapped Around Your Finger emanating from the speakers around Mike's neck was the only thing breaking the silence surrounding the pair. 

Will gazed back at Mike, wanting more than anything to lean into his touch, to forget about El, and being dead, and the whole chaotic mess his un-death had turned into. Instead, he gently pulled his arm out of Mike's grasp and turned to follow the others, knowing how easily Mike would be able to see the lie in his face. 

"I-I just thought I saw someone I recognized. We can talk about it later. I promise." 

And, like always, Mike followed right along after him, no questions asked. Only sparing Will occasional concerned looks that he pretended not to notice. 

Eventually, they managed to catch up to the others in the food court who, in their absence, had managed to push together a few tables to create a sitting area large enough for the whole group.

Once Mike arrived the others began tottering off towards various food stands, Lucas and Dustin making a bee-line for a sailor themed ice cream shop, obviously so Dustin could get the ice cream Lucas owed him, while the two girls trailed off towards some Mexican food place, which seemed a surefire way to wind up with food poisoning in Hawkins, Indiana, where the only thing people knew how to cook was casserole and boiled chicken, but he had also been dead for three years so what did he know. 

“So uh-” Will was startled back to attention by Mike’s voice speaking in his ear, and he had to resist the urge to step back at their shared proximity. “I’m gonna be right back. Can you stay at the table?” 

The unspoken plea in Mike’s voice was apparent. And he could see in the slight downturn of the other boy’s lips that the teen was worried he might not be able to find Will again if he wandered off, since Mike’s range of Will visibility only seemed to stretch as far as the sound on the Walkman’s shitty speakers.

“I mean, I can just come with you-” Will started, but Mike was already walking away, waving a hand nonchalantly behind him. 

“No need. Bathroom.” Mike hurried replied before scampering off, in the exact opposite direction of the clearly marked bathroom signs. 

Mike always was a shitty liar. 

But despite whatever Mike happened to be up to, Will decided to just leave it be and settled into a spare seat at the table, grateful that someone in the group had pulled up an extra chair, he just had to hope someone wouldn’t decide to sit in it. 

Eventually the rest of the group managed to grab their food and settle back in at the table, luckily leaving Will’s chair unoccupied. Although that was probably less to do with luck and more to do with the way El surreptitiously scooted the chair away when Dustin went to sit down in it. Not that the curly-haired teen noticed, thoroughly engrossed in a confusing conversation with Max involving the potential existence of alternate dimensions that Will couldn’t manage to make heads or tails of. But eventually, Dustin managed to snag a Will-less seat and the conspicuous absence of Mike was suddenly glaringly obvious to the rest of the table. 

“Where’s Mike?” El asked innocently, but given the way she kept sneaking glances at Will, she probably knew more about the dark-haired teen's whereabouts than she was letting on. She was psychic after all, he wouldn’t be surprised if her powers extended to telepathy or clairvoyance or something equally cool like that. Not like Will and his ability to accidentally get his foot stuck in a table approximately three times a day. 

“Who cares.” Max muttered, stuffing another bite of rice into her mouth, “He’s been such a downer lately he probably went to go cry in the bathroom.” 

Lucas kicked her under the table in response, causing his girlfriend to scowl darkly at him, “It’s only been a couple days since Will’s birthday, cut him a little slack.” 

El turned back to Will, eyes practically shooting lasers with how intense her stare was, “What was Will like?”

She spoke carefully, and seemed, to Will, like she was being purposefully super fucking obvious, what with the way she was ogling him as she spoke, but the rest of the group didn't seem to pick up on it. Which was valid. It's not like anyone would've known Will had come back from the dead to haunt Mike Wheeler and personally be victimized by being dragged into this ham-fisted conversation. 

Lucas and Dustin, oblivious to both Will's presence and current inner turmoil, shared a look before Dustin spoke up, brandishing his spoon, “He was pretty quiet when we first met, always hiding behind Mike. But once you got to know him, man, the imagination on that guy. He could draw the craziest things; dragons, D&D characters, people.”

“He drew Mike and his mom a lot.” Lucas butted in, and Will felt his face heat as he avoided looking anywhere but at El. 

Dustin nodded at Lucas’s statement before continuing, “He was our cleric in D&D - clerics are like wizards who take power from whatever god they serve -” Dustin amended, noticing Max and El’s blank looks, “And no matter how crazy complicated Mike tried to make a twist or a big boss reveal, Will always seemed to figure it out. It drove Mike nuts.” Dustin shook his head fondly, spearing his spoon back into his ice cream to take another large bite of his frankly horrifying combination of Cherries Jubilee and mint chocolate chip. 

“He and Mike were practically inseparable. They met in kindergarten, Dustin and I moved to the neighborhood a few years later, but by then they were already attached at the hip.” Lucas sighed fondly, before his eyes grew dim, “He took it really hard when he died. I mean we all did. We were only twelve. But Mike-” Lucas faltered, seeming unsure if he should continue, “I don’t think Mike ever really got over it.” 

Will bit his lip, his eyes burning with unshed tears at the thought of Mike, his best friend in the whole world, alone for three whole years, still stuck in the past, still thinking about Will. Judging by the somber looks of the rest of the table, he figured the others were feeling much the same way. 

Suddenly, as if summoned, Mike appeared around the corner, carrying a bag that most definitely did not contain food, strutting up to the table and plopping himself down in the open seat next to Will. The faint lines around his eyes relaxed as his dark brown eyes slid to Will. 

“That doesn’t look like food.” Max pointed out, annoyed, glancing at the shopping bag Mike had tried to not so discreetly under his seat. 

“Uh, I spent all my money at the music store.” Mike tugged his pocket inside out, grasping the fabric to showcase his current lack of funds. 

Will swiveled in his seat to stare at Mike at the mention of the music store, distinctly remembering being chased away by a disgruntled metalhead. He wondered why Mike would bother to go back and likely face the man’s ire. Unable to help himself, Will sneakily tried to glance under Mike’s seat, but judging by the sheepish expression on Mike’s face as the other teen caught Will’s gaze, he figured he was probably just embarrassed about his purchase. 

He must have bought the new Depeche Mode album. 

Will mentally rolled his eyes and turned back towards the rest of the table. El had slid a basket of tortilla chips in Mike’s direction, and the dark-haired teen smiled back gratefully before digging in like he had been starved. Will tried not to let El’s warm smile and the pink staining Mike’s cheeks get to him. He had known that Mike and El had dated briefly in late middle school into early high school before splitting up on amicable terms. But he couldn’t help the unwarranted tide of jealousy flooding into his gut at the sight of the two happy friends. 

Logically, he knew, considering the fact that he was well, dead , that El was a significantly better match than, say, him. Hell, even Dustin would be a better partner for Mike than dead-and-buried-William-Byers, but it didn’t stop his heart from ka-thunking oddly in his chest, and he averted his gaze from the two, rubbing at his nose as he felt a sluggish drop of blood roll down over his lip. 

The rest of the afternoon passed fairly uneventfully, the teens trundling off to store after store, Max and El even managing to convince the boys to try on a few wacky outfits. Dustin ended up in what he thinks was a pirate costume, although he was 90% sure that the curly-haired teen was definitely wearing a girl’s shirt, and Lucas had briefly sported a pair of white bell-bottoms and a flamboyantly patterned shirt that was approximately 10 years out of date, but his personal favorite was the all-leather ensemble Mike had somehow managed to squeeze into. 

And he meant squeezed. 

Mike’s pants looked like they were practically painted on, hugging the gentle curves of his thighs in exactly the right way. Paired with heavy combat boots, a black leather jacket and of all things, a cropped Metallica tee, which showed just the barest hint of Mike’s creamy freckled stomach and Will was practically dying a second time. 

Unfortunately for him, he spent most of the time Mike was dressed up hiding behind a clothing rack, trying to will away the furious red blush spotting his cheeks before Mike could spot him, and attempting to avoid the knowing looks El kept shooting his way after he stared maybe a few seconds too long at Mike’s legs. The good news for Will’s heart was that Mike seemed to be just as flustered by the outfit as Will. The dark-haired teen refusing to make eye contact with his friends while Dustin and Max wolf-whistled wildly, startling the other patrons in the store. 

Eventually, everyone was once again in their original clothing, much to Will and apparently Mike’s relief, and the group slowly began to break apart. El and Max waved goodbye, the former of which sent Will a rather obnoxious amount of winks from over Mike’s shoulder as she hugged him goodbye, and Will decided that El wouldn’t know subtlety if it hit her over the face. But he thought that she really wasn’t so bad, and maybe in an alternate universe where Will hadn’t died at twelve and now cursed to haunt Mike Wheeler, he thinks they even could have been friends.

After the girls left, the guys also decided to call it quits, Mike, Will, Dustin and Lucas once again piling into the station wagon, Will resigning himself to the backseat with Lucas since Dustin called shotgun before they had even made it to the parking lot and Mike couldn’t seem to come up with a valid excuse to keep the other boy in the back. 

The ride home was fairly uneventful, the group of teens tired from their daylong excursion, with only the voice of Freddy Mercury singing Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy to break the silence, since Dustin had refused to listen to T Rex on the way home and had commandeered the tape deck. Not that Mike had seemed to mind, since Queen was apparently one of the few shared artists all boys actually agreed upon. 

Finally, after what seemed like hours, Dustin and Lucas were dropped off at their respective houses, although since Lucas and Mike lived right next door to each other, dropping off Lucas entailed Mike parking in his own driveway and Lucas scurrying out of the car and down the street to his yard, shouting a hurried goodbye behind him. 

As soon as Lucas was out of sight, Mike rushed in the front door, shouting hellos to his parents over his shoulder before hustling up the steps and back into his bedroom, Will trailing silently, and invisibly behind. Once the door was shut, Mike was immediately popping the familiar 'Will's Mix' tape into the cassette player, pressing play and allowing Bowie to fill the room. 

Mike stood awkwardly for a few seconds in the center of the room before his gaze suddenly focused, eyes zeroing in on Will's position, and he presumed he had suddenly become visible again. 

"So uh- did you have fun?" Mike questioned, his eyes boring holes into the worn carpet. 

The air around the pair was slightly off, heavy and tense with something Will couldn't quite seem to name, but he had a suspicion over what it could be. Nothing better to do, Will settled himself down on the edge of Mike's bed, trying to avoid the other teen's gaze, which wasn’t hard with the way Mike was trying to sink into the carpet. 

"Yeah I did." His fingers found a stray thread on the comforter and he began toying with it as an excuse to avoid looking at Mike. "It was nice to see everyone again." Will's voice was soft, and once again he couldn't help but wonder what it would've been like if he was alive. Sitting in the passenger seat next to Mike while Lucas and Dustin complained about his music choices from the backseat. Challenging Dustin in Street Fighter . He surely would've gotten his ass kicked, but he could imagine Lucas buying him ice cream afterwards to cheer him up. The pair making their way through a dripping set of waffle cones. He could've become friends with Max, the redhead's snarky attitude and general vehemence towards Mike was honestly refreshing, and he was certain they would've been fast friends. He imagines El teasing him relentlessly about his big obvious crush on Mike, and the two bonding over their mutual love of the same stupid Wheeler. The other girl seemed soft and sweet, but he could tell that she was whip smart about certain things, clocking Will's affection towards Mike almost immediately. So maybe it was better that they wouldn't ever become friends, for Will's mental health at least. 

Sometime in the middle of Will’s daydream, Mike had gone to settle himself down on the mattress, flopping ungracefully onto the bedspread, starfishing into Will’s space, the teen’s dark head of hair pooling gently next to Will’s thigh. 

Not thinking much of it, Will’s hand unconsciously went from tugging at the loose thread of the bedspread to carding gently through Mike’s tangled locks; he wanted to know what they felt like, just this once, even if it was incredibly selfish of him.  

Mike stiffened for a moment at the touch but then quickly relaxed, letting out a small sigh as Will scratched absentmindedly at his scalp. 

Will had started to hum quietly to himself, not at all matching the music pouring from Mike's speakers, but something softer, slower, and slightly familiar in a way that tickled the back of his skull, but Will had no idea why, and he didn’t think much of it.  

Take me out tonight

While Mike’s eyes were closed, Will took the chance to examine the other teen. He was already being selfish allowing himself to be close to Mike like this, what harm could a couple seconds of looking really do? 

Because I want to see people

He drank in the sight of the slight upturn of Mike’s lips, the boy’s thin, pink lips just ever so slightly tilted upward as Will delicately tugged through a particularly stubborn knot. The way his eyelids fluttered slightly as Will’s hand scratched delicately behind the other boy’s ear. The delicate way the other boy’s bony chest rose and fell with each puff of breath. The way Mike’s freckles spilled from his nose and across his cheekbones like constellations, fading slightly as they spread down his neck and disappeared beneath the collar of Mike’s shirt. 

And I want to see life

Will wished he could sit there forever, categorizing every freckle on Mike’s body, mapping them the same way astronomers mapped stars. 

Driving in your car

Will realized he had been humming the same half-forgotten melody and playing with Mike’s hair for nearly ten minutes, Mike just laying loose-limbed in the middle of the bed, so unnaturally quiet and still that Will was almost beginning to think the other boy had fallen asleep, until dark brown eyes cracked open to meet hazel, and Will realized he had been staring. He looked away. 

"Is it hard?" Mike questioned, voice surprisingly soft. 

"Huh?" Will replied, confused.

"Is it hard being around everyone else when you're, you know, dead?" 

He looked up to see Mike's dark brown gaze staring fervently at his face, trying to read his expression, the boy's freckled features pinched into a slight frown. He had the urge to look away then and avoid Mike's eyes, which had always been able to read him like an open book. But instead he held the other teen's gaze, finding himself unable to look away. 

"Sometimes, yeah. It sucks that they can't see me. That if I tried to reach out and touch them, my hand would just go right on through." Will sighed, finally tearing his gaze away from Mike's, focusing on the hand in question, picking at the seam of Mike's comforter, slowly pulling the thread further and further, and felt comforted, at least slightly, that when he was gone at least the movement of this tiny, insignificant thread would prove to the world that he had actually been here. 

A hand covered his own, ceasing his movement, and Will's eyes quickly shot up. 

"Mike?" 

"I can see you. I can touch you." Mike said earnestly, his expression intense as he stared at Will. Once again Will felt drawn into those eyes, and maybe he always had been, ever since the moment a freckled dark haired boy offered him his hand and asked Will to be friends. Will pulled his hand away, looking away quickly so he didn't have to see the hurt flash across Mike's face.

"Mike-" Will's voice was strained, "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should." 

Suddenly, the hot press of Mike's shoulder against his own, Mike’s fingers dangling empty on the bedspread, abandoned, was all too much. Will made to pull himself from the bed, but a hand against his elbow held him in place. 

"Why shouldn't I, Will?" Mike's voice was quiet and quivery, almost as if he was about to cry. It took everything in Will not to turn around and cup his fingers to Mike's cheeks, pressing soft fingers to the places where Mike's tears threatened to spill over. 

Instead he stood rigid, halfway between sitting and standing, caught like a fly in the web that was Mike Wheeler. 

"Mike, you know why." He replied, despairingly. 

A sharp tug at his elbow had him spinning around, nearly stumbling into Mike's chest as the boy rose from the bed and stepped directly into Will's space, hardly an inch between them. 

"You know, I don't think I do." Mike cocked his head to the side, teasing. "Why don't you tell me?"

Will swallowed hard, wishing more than anything he could pull away, Mike was too close, it was too much. His eyes were inevitably drawn to Mike's lips, a motion that judging by the sudden flash in those dark eyes, did not go unnoticed by the other boy. 

"I-I don't want you to get hurt anymore." Will stammered, his face flushed, his whole body feeling as though it was on fire, radiating outward from where Mike had wrapped his hand firmly around Will's elbow. 

"Oh Will," Mike said slowly, his brown eyes warm and soft, like chocolate. "You could never hurt me." 

Will flinched at Mike's words, tugging his arm from Mike's grip but making no moves to step away. "Yes, I can. Can you honestly tell me it wouldn't rip you to shreds if I disappeared again? Can you?" Will's expression had grown frantic, and now he was the one pressing into Mike's space, only stopping when the back of the other boy's knees hit the mattress. 

Mike hung his head, his dark hair hiding his expression. "No, I can't tell you that."

Despite Mike's words being exactly what Will had wanted to hear, he couldn't help the sudden crushing feeling tightening around his lungs as he took in Mike's bowed head.  

Was this really what he wanted? To push Mike away?

Quick as a flash, Mike's hand was around him once again, this time pulling at the front of his shirt, tugging him forward and forcing his gaze up towards where Mike stood above him. 

Mike's gaze wasn't broken or dejected like he had expected. No, Mike's gaze burned . It scorched Will from the inside out as he gazed back at those deep brown eyes that were so familiar to him, but that he had never seen alight with such ferocity. 

"I know for a fact my life would be a living hell if you weren't in it. Honestly, losing you now might even be worse than losing you the first time. But I don't care!" Mike's voice had nearly risen to a shout, and Will was shocked into silence, gazing awestruck at his best friend as he continued. 

"I would rather have you back in my life for a minute and lose you forever than never have you at all." 

Will choked, eyes threatening to spill over with tears at his friend's words. "You don't mean that." 

Mike looked seconds away from throttling him, "The hell you mean 'I don't mean that'?" 

"We don't want the same things." Will spoke softly, his voice barely a whisper. 

Mike's hands relaxed, no longer clutching desperately at Will's shirt, instead now curled gently into the fabric over Will's chest, directly over his heart. 

"How do you know? You never asked." 

Will averted his gaze, shame coursing through him, his hands shook as he reached up to grab Mike's wrists, trying to tug the other boy off of him. 

"What I want. It's not right. It's wrong and fucked up. I'm wrong and-" 

"Will," Mike's voice was firm, insistent. A pair of fingers pushed up on his chin, causing him to look up at Mike. The boy who had held his heart since the beginning. 

"Nothing you do could ever be wrong." 

And then he kissed him. 

If he wasn't already dead, Will would've thought he had just died. But no, here he was, awkward ghost boy Will, doing something he only dreamed of, kissing a boy. 

No, not just any boy. 

The boy. 

The only boy who had tugged at his heartstrings until they were wrapped entirely in his grasp. The boy who he had loved across two lifetimes and too many years to count. The boy who taught Will how to love. The boy he had defied death to return to. 

Mike Wheeler. 

Will was so caught up in the fact that Mike was kissing him, that he hadn’t even realized he wasn’t reciprocating until Mike began to pull away and Will realized that he was frozen, too shocked to even move. He hadn't been kissing Mike back at all. 

To hell with that.

He surged forward, recapturing Mike's lips with his own, pressing himself into Mike's space, hands rising up to tangle themselves in the teen's luxurious dark mane. 

He had never done this before, he had died when he was twelve after all. But he knew Mike had dated before, he surely had some experience in the whole matter of kissing, so he easily gave up the reins to the more experienced boy and allowed himself to be buoyed along by Mike's lips. 

Mike was an enigma when it came to kissing it seemed, going from heart-rendingly gentle with his lips, pressing small pecks onto Will's awaiting mouth, to insatiable, hungry and searching, lapping at the seam of Will's lips to request entry, and darting inside the moment Will's mouth parted in surprise. 

Will felt like he was in a dream, sparks flying from every bit of exposed skin Mike touched, the other boy's fingers dancing across Will's neck and his arms, and eventually snaking under the hem of his shirt, Mike's shirt, which elicited a startled gasp, unbidden, from his throat. 

Mike seemed to take Will's noise as approval and continued, pressing his palm into the small of his back and biting down on Will's bottom lip in a single smooth moment. 

Will instantly felt as if he had been drenched in ice. 

Something was wrong. 

He opened his eyes, and bit off a choked gasp. Mike was fading, blurry and hazy in front of him. 

No. He was fading. 

"Mike!" Will cried, and Mike's eyes snapped open with surprise at the anxiety in Will's voice. 

At the sight of the fading boy in his arms Mike's eyes instantly grew wide. 

"Will, you're disappearing! But the music-" 

Mike floundered, his eyes shifting to the cassette player still playing softly in the background. 

Will felt a tug in his gut and Mike's arms slipped from around his waist and fell empty at the boy's sides. Will's body no long tangible. 

"I-I think I'm leaving Mike." Face contorted in a grimace as he tried to fight the incessant force seeming to tug at him from within. 

"Will, please don't leave!" Mike begged, the boy's almond eyes brimming with tears, "Please!" 

"Mike," Will lifted his hand up, placing it on Mike's freckled cheek despite knowing the other boy couldn't feel it. "I can't fight it anymore. I'm sorry." Will's eyes burned as he gazed at the boy who held his heart in his hands for the last time. 

"Will. No." Mike pleaded, the teen's face slowly crumbling in on itself as Will slowly chipped away. 

"It'll be okay, Mike. I lo-" 

And then Will winked out of existence. 

Blinking groggily against the harsh glare of the overhead lights buzzing above him, his head swam as he squinted to try to take in his surroundings from his currently horizontal position. 

What happened? Where am I? 

A methodical beeping echoed near his ear, and he managed to catch sight of the heart rate monitor stationed by his bedside. 

Am I in the hospital? He raised his hand towards his head, hoping to relieve some of the tension pounding its way across his skull. He distantly noticed the numerous wires and needles strapped to his arm. 

Was it all a dream? 

He had one hand posed over the needle in his arm seconds away from ripping it from his vein when a sharp knock at the doorway caused him to stop. 

A white haired man in an impeccable gray three-piece suit stood at the door, gazing at him with a cool, calculating gaze. 

He couldn't help but think the man looked familiar. 

"Good morning William, how did you sleep?" 

And then he remembered everything.  

Chapter Text

If a ten ton truck 

Kills the both of us

To die by your side

Well, the pleasure, the privilege is mine

Oh, there is a light and it never goes out

There is a Light That Never Goes Out - The Smiths

"What I want. It's not right. It's wrong and fucked up. I'm wrong and-" 

"Will," Mike wanted to scream at his best friend, he wanted to grab him by the collar and shake him. How could Will ever possibly think anything about him could be wrong. There was nothing wrong with Will, he was perfect, and amazing, and beautiful, and Mike wanted more than anything to scoop him up into his arms and kiss him senseless. Anything to knock that wretched look off his face, and-

Oh. 

Oh. 

He wanted to kiss Will. 

Normally Mike might take some time to process this errant thought, document it, categorize it, and then decide the best course of action. 

But Will was currently spiraling right in front of him, feeling useless and worthless and disgusting and Mike didn’t ever want Will to feel that way. He wanted Will to feel special, and cherished and most of all, loved. 

But Will was right, who knows how long he had left in the world. He was a ghost after all. So instead of spending time he may not have picking apart his feelings with a fine toothed comb, Mike decided he was going to jump in headfirst. He was all in for Will Byers. 

He reached out, fingers shaking slightly and grasped at Will’s chin, startling the boy out of his self-deprecating spiral. He lifted Will’s face so the other teen was looking at him instead of the floor. And the moment Will’s brown-green-hazel eyes locked onto his, Mike nearly fell over. 

Will’s large, gorgeous eyes were swimming with tears. 

And that just wouldn’t do. 

Carefully, he used one thumb to swipe at the skin under Will’s eye, the moisture beading on his skin. Will’s eyes were wide, no longer crying as his mouth dropped open in surprise at Mike’s gesture, instantly silent. 

"Nothing you do could ever be wrong." He whispered, meaning it with every fiber in his being. More than he had ever meant anything in his entire life. 

And then he kissed him.

And it was amazing. 

At first he had been worried that he had read the entire situation wrong, Will’s lips tense and unmoving as he pressed against them. Mike pulled back, apology already posed on the tip of his tongue when Will suddenly surged forward, gripping onto the front of his shirt tightly and dragging him back down into the kiss. 

Mike wanted to cry out for joy. He was doing it, he was kissing Will. And Will was kissing him back. His brain was so overwhelmed with the turn of events that he couldn’t seem to decide if he wanted to take things soft and slow, prying Will apart with tender warm kisses, or if he wanted to devour Will whole, nipping and biting his way against Will’s lips and throat, his fingers dancing across Will’s pale skin as he shucked up the other boy’s shirt. 

Will let out a startled gasp, and Mike drew away slightly on reflex at Will’s suddenly tense posture. He must have gone too far, scared Will with his forwardness. 

"Mike!" Will cried, and Mike's eyes snapped open with surprise at the sheer terror in Will's voice. 

And he was met with the sight of his best friend held tightly in his arms, his form beginning to blur around the edges.

His eyes widened in alarm, his expression going frantic, he could make out the bright yellow of his cassette player directly through Will’s head. 

But Mike could still hear the music. He could still hear Journey softly playing in the background. 

If we can’t go on 

To survive the tides

Love divides

"Will, you're disappearing! But the music-" Mike’s eyes were wild, he gripped onto Will tighter, snaking his arms against the other boy and crushing him to his chest, as if his arms could stop the force of Will’s fading. 

But Mike was only a mortal, and he doesn’t have the strength to combat God or Satan or whatever higher power is currently trying to steal Will away from him. And between one second and the next Mike’s arms were empty, Will’s form suddenly insubstantial. 

"I-I think I'm leaving Mike." Will’s eyes looked infinitely sad, but also strangely resigned, even as his face contorted into a grimace. Mike realized he could barely see Will’s face anymore, the other teen’s skin nearly blending in with the color of Mike’s bedroom walls.

Tears began to pool in Mike’s eyes. 

It was too soon. 

He wasn’t ready. 

He couldn’t lose Will again. 

"Will, please don't leave!" Mike begged, his vision so hazy with tears, or maybe Will’s form had grown so incorporeal that he could only make out his best friend’s beautiful green-brown-hazel eyes. "Please!" 

Will’s expression looked pained, and Mike was unsure if it was because he was fighting against whatever was tugging at him, or from the distraught expression painted across Mike’s face.

"Mike," Will’s hand lifted up towards Mike’s face, he figured from the gesture that Will was attempting to cup his cheek. 

But he couldn’t feel it. 

He couldn’t feel Will’s calloused hand with its delicate artist fingers pressing against his face. 

He couldn’t feel Will. 

"I can't fight it anymore. I'm sorry." Will's eyes burned as the rest of him faded away to near obscurity, his form so faint Mike could only recognize it by the faint wobbling of the air. 

"Will. No." Mike cried as he gazed at the boy who he had just gotten back. His best friend, the boy who finally made his shriveled up heart beat again, for the last time. 

"It'll be okay, Mike. I lo-" 

Then Will winked out of existence, his words unfinished. 

And like all his strings had suddenly been cut, Mike collapsed to the floor, left all alone in his bedroom, and sobbed. 

If he ever hurts you

True love won’t desert you

You know I still love you

Though we touched and went our separate ways

He doesn’t know how long he lay there, crumpled on the floor. Eventually his sobs petered away, his body too dehydrated to produce any more tears. But still he didn’t move, his head buried in his hands as his room slowly grew dark around him, the daylight finally fading. Leaving Mike in the darkness he felt he deserved. 

Will was gone.

And no one but Mike would even know he had been there in the first place. 

Mike had Will back for a single day, the single best day of his entire life, only to have him snatched away just as quickly. 

And no one would ever know. 

“Mike, honey it's nearly time for dinner.” His mother called from the bottom of the steps. 

Mike didn’t bother to answer. 

A knock came from the door, “Mike, I’ve been calling you-” his mother pushed her way into his room, her voice tinged with annoyance as she took in the darkness Mike had enshrouded himself in, “Why do you have all the lights off?” She flipped the switch, flooding the room with light and causing Mike to flinch. 

“Oh, baby, what’s wrong?” She cried, alarmed, hastily dropping to the floor and scooping Mike into her arms. 

The way she held onto him so tightly reminded him of the way he gripped onto Will before the boy had slipped from his grasp. 

He raised his gaze to his mother’s concerned face, his eyes instantly filling with tears, “H-He’s gone, Mom. I’m never going to see him again. He’s g-gone.” He sobbed, throwing himself into her chest and allowing himself to be hugged tightly. 

“I know baby, I know it hurts.” She cooed, pulling Mike into her lap as if he weighed nothing, and Mike was instantly transported to the last time he had done this, on a cold November night in 1983, when it finally hit him that Will was dead. 

His mother stroked his hair, humming a lullaby under her breath as she rocked him. And he was reminded so strongly of Will in his last moments that he positively ached with it. He cried harder, wrapping his arms around his mother’s waist, and holding tight, unwilling to let another person he loved slip from his grasp. 

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, cradled in his mother’s arms, his heart breaking over Will for the second time. But eventually his cries had petered out, and Mike was just left a dehydrated empty husk, no tears left to give. 

After Mike had cried himself out, his mom managed to drag him from the carpet and delicately tucked him into bed, pulling the covers up to his chin and kissing him gently on the forehead like he was still a kid, but Mike found the gesture strangely comforting all the same. 

“You know honey,” His mom whispered into the quiet darkness, “I’m always here if you need me.” Before patting him gently on the cheek and exiting the room, closing the door behind her with a soft click. 

The warmth of his mother’s palm burned like a brand against his skin, reminding him of Will’s last attempt at touch, a skinny, long-fingered hand reaching out to brush against his cheek. Will’s last touch that Mike had been unable to enjoy, his best friend’s fingers replaced by aching nothingness. 

Absently, Mike’s own hand reached up to touch the same point, his fingers brushing softly against his cheekbone and the base of his palm gently resting against the jut of his jaw. His hand was warm, slightly scratchy where it brushed against the nearly nonexistent stubble gracing Mike’s chin, but it wasn’t the same. 

It wasn’t Will’s hand. 

It wasn’t those graceful long fingers that he longed for. Different from how he remembered, thinner and paler than he remembered from when he was a child. But still the same. It still held the same twisting scar that trailed from thin skin between Will’s thumb and index finger, from the time the other boy had fallen out of a tree when he tried to help Mike down when they were eight. 

Mike had nearly gone into a panic when he saw Will’s small form crumpled on the ground unmoving. And despite the fact that Will had scaled the tree to help Mike down because the dark-haired boy had been overcome by his fear of heights, Mike nearly leapt from the tree in an effort to make it back down to his friend, his feet barely touching the branches as he flew downward. 

Will had been lying so still he had almost thought his best friend was dead. Mike had kneeled down shaking his friend fervently until the sandy haired boy’s wonderful hazel-green-brown eyes had opened and Will had graced Mike with a small smile. 

“I knew you could do it!” 

Mike had wanted to thump the other boy on the head for his idiocy. “Only you could fall out of a tree and be happy about it.” Mike grumbled, still unwilling to let go of his best friend, and only just began to notice the blood soaking the front of Will’s shirt from where he had pressed his hand to his chest. 

“Will! You’re bleeding!” He cried out in horror, certain that Will was bleeding out in front of his very eyes. 

And Will had only laughed, a bright shining beautiful laugh. 

When Mike managed to drag himself out of the unforeseen memory, the warmth of his mother’s touch was already gone. And once again, Mike was alone. 

His eyes felt puffy and crusted with the salt of his tears, and his body was heavy with tiredness. Mike had been so caught up in Will’s sudden reemergence into his life that he had hardly slept at all the night before, and it seemed that now it was all catching up to him. 

Had it really only been 24 hours that he had Will back in his life?

Would he have to wait another 3 years for Will to return, or was his best friend lost to him forever? 

Mike could feel the edges of sleep beginning to take him, in spite of his best efforts. And before too long, the dark-haired teen faded into fitful unconsciousness, thoughts of Will swirling in his head all night long.

Harsh sunlight splashed across his face and tugged Mike from his restless slumber the next morning. With a groan Mike blinked open his eyes, which felt swollen and puffy, and squinted against the dawn light. Sitting up with a loud sigh, Mike stumbled from the bed, hastily closing his curtains to allow himself a few more precious hours of sleep, when he stumbled over an object littering the floor. 

He glanced down absentmindedly, fully prepared to just kick his backpack, or clothes or whatever object he had just tripped over underneath his bed, when his eyes caught on the blocky print of a store logo gracing the side of the shopping bag. 

Exchange Records

His breath caught in his throat. 

For a moment, he had nearly forgotten the events of the past 48 hours. He had forgotten the strangely flashing lights, catching sight of Will’s reflection in his bathroom mirror, an awkwardly one-sided conversation with Mike staring for hours at the bedside lamp currently being possessed by his former best friend, their trip to the mall, kissing Will and then – 

Mike cut his train of thinking off immediately, knowing that he was liable to break down into tears if he thought about how yesterday had ended any harder. 

Knowing that he was unlikely to get any more sleep now that he felt he had been suckerpunched in the gut by the presence of a mere shopping bag. Mike knelt down and snatched the shopping bag from the floor, intent on shoving the offending bag in the back of his closet or under his bed so he wouldn’t have to see it, when his eyes caught sight of a familiar cassette with a dark cover and red lettering peeking out from inside. 

His breath caught in his throat at the sight, and he knew he couldn’t just hide the bag away into a dim, dusty corner, never to be seen again. He couldn’t just sweep his brief reunion with Will under the rug, no matter how much it hurt. So with a long drawn out sigh that seemed much too weary for Mike’s sixteen years, he plopped the crumpled bag onto his desk and extracted the cassette from inside. 

The Queen is Dead - The Smiths

He had been meaning to show this album to Will yesterday, before everything went south. He had seen the other boy wistfully gazing at the cassette when they were in the record store the day before, and Mike had fully intended on getting it for him until Will’s untimely prank had caused them to be chased from the store by an irate metalhead. 

But he had really wanted Will to have the cassette. So while the rest of the Party had been grabbing food for lunch, Mike had slunk his way back to the record store, ready to grovel on his knees to the dark-haired man in the leather jacket to be allowed back inside, but the other man had taken one look at his pathetic expression and had just waved him in with an exaggerated bow. The man even had the audacity to wink at Mike and tell him that whoever he was buying the cassette for had good taste. 

Mike had felt his cheeks burn nearly the entire walk back to the food court. His shopping bag bounced against the back of his knees like it was some sort of illicit purchase. He saw the way Will’s nose had scrunched up slightly in confusion as he caught sight of the bag, but Mike had just allowed the other boy to undoubtedly think it was the new Depeche Mode album that Mike had stubbornly gone back to get. He couldn’t wait to see the look on Will’s face when he surprised him with the true contents of the bag. 

Now, looking down Mike caught sight of the man in black-and-white gracing the cover, some French actor Mike had forgotten the name of, but he was certain that if Will had been alive when the album was released, he certainly would’ve known the man’s name. 

He turned the cassette over in his hands a few times, eyeing the tracklist on the back for a few moments. He had never listened to the album, since The Smiths had always been more of Will’s thing, and seeking out their music after Will had died had been too painful for Mike. But here he stood, at some ungodly hour of the morning with one of Will’s favorite band’s cassettes in his hands, and it seemed like a waste to not listen to it. 

With shaking fingers, Mike pried apart the plastic casing, plucking the cassette from its housing. He reached over the ejected ‘Will’s Mix’ from his cassette player, taking extra care to place the well-loved cassette back into its case before inserting The Smiths album, and with slightly blurry vision, most certainly caused by a sudden influx of tears, Mike settled down at his desk, tugged the headphones over his ears, and pressed play. 

And he listened. 

He had leaned his cheek against the cool wood of the desk, and allowed his unruly dark hair to fall across his face as he took in his last gift to his best friend, Will Byers. 

Some of the songs he liked, the first track on the tape, the titular The Queen is Dead according to the tracklist, had Mike confused on whether or not he actually liked the song, but he decided to stick with it and was not disappointed. 

Two songs later he was openly sobbing as the lyrics to I Know It’s Over washed over him. 

I know it’s over 

And it never really begun

But in my heart it felt so real 

He knew the band had definitely not written the song thinking that some teen boy in Indiana would find it eerily similar to how he felt after his best friend briefly reincarnated as a ghost and then poofed away as soon as he had finally gotten the guts to kiss him. But he felt seen by the lyrics all the same. 

Somewhere along the way Mike must have fallen into a sort of half-sleep, only to be jolted awake by the sound of an annoying hissing in his ear signaling that the first side of the tape had reached his conclusion. 

He felt strangely guilty at partially falling asleep, even if he knew it couldn’t have been for more than a few minutes. But he felt that missing even a moment of music was like doing some sort of disservice to Will. With a large yawn, Mike quickly switched the cassette around and pressed play, beginning on side B, determined this time to stay awake for it in its entirety. 

It took only a couple minutes and the beginning notes of The Boy With the Thorn in his Side to whisper out through the headphones before Mike’s eyes had slowly fallen shut yet again. 

A pair of long dexterous fingers carded their way through his hair, taking extra care towards the ends to avoid tangling the strands into knots. Mike hummed quietly, his head tilting back into the warm pressure of the familiar fingers. 

“Mike, what are you doing? It’s time to get up.” A warm familiar voice laughed in his ear. 

Will. 

Mike mumbled something unintelligible, hiding his face in the plush softness of his pillow and pressing his head back into the fingers like a cat, enjoying the way that the fingers - Will’s fingers - seemed to know just where to press on his scalp. The fingers glided over the nape of his neck, and Mike let out a relaxed sigh.  

“You’re the worst, you know that right? You’re gonna be late at this rate.” Will spoke again, his voice coming from even closer, and Mike could feel the gentle puff of his breath across his ear. 

Finally acquiescing, Mike rolled over, fully prepared to pull himself out of bed when he crashed into a warm body on the other side of the mattress. Immediately the pressure on his scalp ceased, and Mike bit back a soft whine for a moment until a set of arms instantly wrapped themselves around his torso, tugging Mike bonelessly against their chest. 

Mike’s eyes fluttered open for a brief moment to catch sight of Will’s face floating above him, looking older than he last remembered him, his jaw more defined, and his hair trimmed into a flattering undercut, but still the same Will. 

Mike sighed, snaking his arms around Will like a vise, and pressing his cheek against his chest, his eyes falling shut. 

Will laughed above him, the sound reverberating in his chest. “You’re incorrigible, you know that.” But instead of forcing the other man out of bed, Will stayed put, his fingers once again finding themselves in Mike’s hair. 

Mike felt himself just barely on the edge of falling back asleep when Will started to sing,

'Take me out tonight

Because I wanna see people

And I want to see life'

And then Mike started awake. 

Mike mourned the loss of his dream. A dream with him and Will, alive, older, and seemingly together . He hadn’t even realized that was something he might want until he had that choice utterly stripped away from him. Mike choked down a tight knot in his throat, his eyes unsurprisingly dry, as if he had no more tears to give. He made to take off his headphones, deciding that weird dreams where he imagined him and his dead best friend as adults in bed together probably meant he had listened to too much The Smiths today when the music playing washed over him. 

Driving in your car

Oh please don’t drop me home

Mike froze, his hands hovering over his headphones, something niggling at him from the back of his brain. Where had he heard this before?

And if a double-decker bus

Crashes into us

To die by your side

Is such a heavenly way to die

With a gasp, Mike crashed to the floor, he remembered, he remembered! Will had been humming this song as he stroked his hair the day before. Will had been singing this same song to him in his dream. Will knew this song. 

But how did he know this song?  

Scrambling back to his feet, Mike rooted around on the mess of his desk until he found the cassette case, searching for the information he knew in his mind but he needed absolute proof for. 

There, in small print underneath the tracklist on the back, Mike found what he was looking for, the release date: June 1986. 

Almost three years after Will had died. 

So how in the world had Will known that song?

Chapter Text

After my picture fades and darkness has 

Turned to gray

Watching through windows

You’re wondering if I’m okay

Secrets stolen from deep inside (deep inside) 

And the drum beats out of time

Time After Time - Cyndi Lauper 

“--ode Red. I repeat this is a Code Red. Does anyone copy?” 

El groaned and rolled over, slapping her hand blindly against the alarm clock sitting on her nightstand in an attempt to turn it off. For a few blissful seconds her room was pleasantly quiet, and El settled herself back into sleep when the same crackling sound echoed across her room again. 

“Does anyone copy? This is a Code Red! Over.” 

Instinctually, El flung her hand out, picking up the alarm clock and slamming it soundly against the wall with a wave of psychic powers, distantly hearing the crunching sound of broken plastic and metal as the clock fell to the floor. She rolled herself back over, content on getting a few more minutes of peaceful sleep, when her sleep-addled brain seemed to finally managed to turn on and realize what had just happened. 

She was hearing Mike’s voice, not her alarm clock, and he had been saying something. Repeating it over and over, and for some reason it seemed important. But El’s tired mind couldn’t quite piece together what Mike could’ve possibly wanted at such an ungodly hour of the morning until, from the depths of her half-awake state, she managed to recall what noises had been coming from the walkie.

Code Red. 

With a gasp, El’s eyes snapped open, her body instantly awake as she scrambled out of bed, intent on finding her radio. She grimaced slightly as she stepped over the shattered remains of her alarm clock on the floor, and knew that Hop wouldn’t be happy when she inevitably had to ask him for yet another new one. But she knew her dad didn't have it in him to be mad, and he would probably just sigh loudly before pulling out another clock from the undoubtedly large collection he had amassed for just an occasion. 

Smiling at the warm thought, El managed to spy her walkie on the floor underneath some teen magazine Max had brought over the last time the two of them had a sleepover, and she lazily waved her hand to drag the device towards herself without having to bend down to grab it. 

She paused for a moment, waiting to see if any of the other party members would respond, or if Mike would try calling again. After a few moments of tense silence, El pressed down on the button on the side, just like Mike had shown her back in his basement all those years before, and she spoke. 

“I copy. What do you need Mike?” She hesitated, her fingers tapping anxiously on the cool plastic, decorated with an array of pink and rainbow stickers. Her thumb picked listlessly at a slightly peeling waffle sticker that she had applied as a bit of a joke, waiting tensely for Mike’s response. Thankfully she didn’t have to wait long, the dark-haired teen responding back so fast he was likely anxiously hovering over his own radio, waiting for the other party members to wake up and respond. 

“I can’t say it over the radio. But I need to call an emergency party meeting. Meet at my house ASAP! And can you try to get ahold of Max and Dustin? I’m gonna head to Lucas’s house and wake him up. This is too important, it can't wait.” 

El frowned, instantly picking up the wobbly nature of Mike’s tone. She was unsure what this meeting could possibly be about, the only weird thing that had happened recently was the appearance of the ghost-boy, Will . But El wasn’t quite sure if that whole event was related, since she was fairly certain Mike couldn’t even see the other boy, and figured Will was only hanging around the dark-haired teen because the other boy felt familiar. 

Although, now that she thought about it, she was slightly concerned as to why the other boy had appeared so suddenly in the first place. As her thoughts whirled, she absently pulled a brightly patterned purple and blue dress from her closet, pulling the fabric down over her head. She had seen Will two times in the past few days, once on the day the party got together for a movie night, and the other at the mall just yesterday. 

She grabbed her brush from her dresser and ran it quickly through her wavy hair, smoothing down the flyaways as she worried her lip absently, her thoughts still stuck on Will. Trying to think of any logical reason for why the boy would appear now of all times, and whether or not it was even related to Mike’s worrisome message. 

El scowled at herself in the mirror, annoyed that the boy’s appearance didn’t seem to make any sort of sense. Maybe Will appeared around his birthday every year? Will had been in Mike’s basement the day before his birthday, and at the mall just a couple days later. El rolled that thought around in her head a bit, it seemed like a reasonable conclusion to make, but for some reason the idea just didn’t sit right with her. Unfortunately, she couldn’t completely discount that theory entirely since Mike was usually so reclusive on the days before and after Will’s birthday and the day of his disappearance, so El actually wasn’t sure whether or not this was a potentially yearly occurrence. 

The other thing that really didn’t make sense was the way Will looked. She had seen pictures of Will before. The other boy was a small, pale, mousy haired twelve year old who was nearly perpetually attached to Mike’s side in every single photo she had seen, stretching from Kindergarten all the way to middle school. And while seeing ghosts probably wasn’t entirely outside of the realm of possibility given her rather unexplainable powers, something about seeing Will just seemed wrong. 

She certainly wasn’t an expert in ghosts, given all the information she had on the subject came courtesy of Dustin and his ability to get them free horror movie rentals from Family Video, but she had never heard of a ghost appearing to age. 

But Will had. Will wasn’t some scrawny preteen kid. He actually appeared to be similar in age to El and the other members of the Party as well. And from what she knew from being friends with a bunch of horror movie nerds, ghosts usually wore the same clothes they died in. But if that was the case, why would Will be sporting a shaved head and a dingy hospital gown not unlike the one El had once worn a lifetime ago. But then, the next time she had spotted Will he had been in a completely different outfit, the bony teen sporting a pair of athletic shorts and a Hawkins High shirt, which for some reason looked suspiciously like Mike's own gym set. 

Shaking her head with a sigh, El knew it was pointless to try to speculate, and was obviously getting nowhere with her conspiracy theories, so instead she just scooped up her abandoned radio and tried to get in touch with Max. 

She was midway through brushing her teeth, her mind still pondering what emergency Mike could have possibly stumbled into before 6AM during spring break, when a soft knock sounded at the bathroom door, and a sleepy looking Hopper peered in blearily. 

"You know it's not even 8 yet, some of us need our beauty sleep. What are you doing up?" 

El, not even moving from her position in front of the mirror, used her telekinesis to wave the walkie in front of her dad's face a few times before spitting into the sink and turning around to face him. 

"Mike called an emergency meeting. Do you think you can drive me? And pick up Max on the way?" She smiled sweetly, knowing Hopper could never quite resist when she did.

Hopper scowled, his mouth twisting into a thin line at the mention of Mike, her dad still never quite getting over his dislike of the other boy which seemed to spawn right around the time the pair started dating, but eventually his face smoothed into a resigned expression and he nodded. 

"Yeah, fine. We leave in 10." Hopper turned to go, starting off down the hallway before he turned back to shoot her a look, "Have you eaten? I can pick you and Max something from Josie's on the way." 

El flashed her dad a teasing grin, "You just wanna say hi to Mrs. Byers at Melvald's again don't you?" 

Her dad sputtered, turning away quickly, knowing anything he said would easily be spotted as a lie. She smiled and shook her head fondly as she trotted off down the hallway behind him. 

"Okay, why the hell did you need to call this stupid meeting so early." Max groaned as she burst her way into Mike's basement, El following quietly after her, quickly taking stock of the room. 

It seemed her and Max were the last two to arrive, Lucas and Dustin sprawled across the sofa while Mike paced anxiously in front of the coffee table, hardly sparing the two girls a glance as they entered. She didn't spot the ghost boy, Will, but maybe he was just hiding, like he had at the mall. 

"We've been waiting for you." Mike spat, annoyed, shooting Max a glare as she plucked Lucas's legs from the couch and plopped herself down in the vacant spot. 

"Can it Wheeler. We got here as fast as we could. You know El lives in the middle of the fucking boonies, so if you want our help so bad quit complaining and just tell us what's going on." Max sniped, rolling her eyes as she scooted closer to Lucas, freeing up a space for El to slide in next to her. 

Sliding into the open spot gratefully, El covered her mouth with her hand, trying to suppress the smile growing across her lips at Max's words, knowing that Mike and Max couldn't be in each other's presence for more than a couple minutes without starting some kind of fight, and lightly kicked the other girl in the shin, causing the redhead to raise her eyebrows at her. 

'Be nice.' She tried to convey wordlessly to her friend, but she is unsure how much of her message got through to the other girl, since Max just grinned sharply and turned her attention back to Mike. 

"So what's so goddamn important Wheeler?" Max pressed, her arms folded across her chest. 

Mike stopped his pacing, swiping one long-fingered hand across his face, and El finally noticed the deep purple bags under his eyes and the sallow complexion of his already pale skin. She frowned with concern. Whatever Mike had called them about, it wasn't good. 

In lieu of talking Mike grabbed a cardboard box he had apparently stuffed behind a chair and upended its contents on the coffee table. 

El wasn't entirely sure what she was looking at, other than the fact that everything just seemed to be random junk. A beat-up yellow cassette player, a couple of tapes, a random D&D figurine, a notebook, and a pair of Hawkins High’s tiny green gym shorts with the name 'Michael Wheeler' stitched onto the waistband. 

Apparently she wasn't the only one confused by Mike's random assortment of junk, Dustin's gaze sweeping the table before swinging back to Mike, a concerned expression on his face. 

"Okay Mike, you know that we fully support you no matter what, but you care to explain what's going on?" 

Mike grabbed the notebook from the table, flipped to a page near the end of the journal and jabbed at it pointedly before spinning it around so the others could see.

Her curiosity got the best of her and El felt herself leaning forward, trying to catch sight of what was so important that Mike called this meeting. 

It looked like a bunch of scribbled notebook entries, in Mike’s scrawled handwriting all dated from just a few days previously. 

March 22, Approx. 6:20 PM

-Heard strange voice and saw boy (looked around 15-18) in mirror 

       -boy had short cropped hair and brown-green-hazel and was wearing a hospital gown and had a bloody nose (like El?) 

       -Suspected identity: Will Byers

-Lightbulbs exploded and boy disappeared 

March 23, 9:23 AM

-Demogorgon D&D figure and notebook found inside blanket fort where they were not the night before (moved?)

March 23, 9:49 AM

-Lights flickered in Morse code (spelled out Mike)

March 23, 11:53 AM

-Was able to hold a conversation using yes or no questions using the lights as a medium 

March 23, 2:57 PM

-Able to draw in the steam of the bathroom mirror

-Can hold objects for brief periods of time

-Is it all objects or only things he touched when alive?

March 24, 4:52 AM

-Music allows him to take a corporeal form; He can be seen and touch objects/people with no issues

-Can wear my shorts

-Only seems to work with songs he likes

-He likes Queen and The Breakfast Club

-He’s a little shit

March 24, 9:58 AM

-He is able to ride in the car, others cannot see him

March 24, Approx. 10:32 AM

-He was able to push me into the discount bin at the record store, no one else could see him. 

-Why can he only touch me?

March 24, 11:13 AM

-I am unable to see him if both of us can’t hear the music at the same time

-Set high score record on Tempest at the mall (the machine glitched out and reset all the scores)

March 24, Approx. 11:52 AM

-He started shouting at someone and all the lights went out (wouldn’t say who)

-Lights back on within two minutes

The last entry’s handwriting was spiked and jagged cutting harshly across the page, and in some places even tore through the paper. 

March 24, 4:53 PM

-He disappeared

-He’s gone

-The music isn’t working anymore

El froze as she took in the words on the page, she was a slower reader than most and it seemed like the others had already finished reading and were beginning to whisper quietly to each other. But her eyes were still glued to the page. 

“Sooo... you’re working on another short story?” Lucas asked, his eyes scanning the pages in front of him in confusion. “About Will?” 

Her heartbeat was thundering in her throat as she pieced together what Mike’s words really meant. The lights flickering. The bloody nose. Mike had been able to see him too. It wasn’t just her being haunted by the ghost of Will Byers, which meant-

"It's Will. He's alive." Mike spoke softly, his voice hoarse and scratchy, his gaze fixated on the yellow Walkman on the table, unwilling to meet anyone else’s eye. 

The entire basement was so silent she felt like she could hear Max swallow beside her, before the other girl laughed, cold and cruel, “Okay Wheeler, this isn’t funny anymore. We all accommodated your yearly mental break, but it’s time to come back to reality now.” 

El frowned at her friend’s words, but she knew Max was only lashing out because she was uncomfortable and scared, two things El was deeply familiar with. 

Placing a hand on Max’s knee to calm the other girl, El finally spoke. “I didn’t know you could see him too.” 

Mike sucked in a sharp gasp, his dark gaze instantly flying to her’s, his expression hopeful. His eyes were puffy and red rimmed, and El longed to wrap the other boy into a hug. “Y-you, you could see him? So I’m not crazy.”  

El shook her head, “I thought it was… punishment. Seeing him.” She glanced down at the random assortment of items on Mike’s table, her eyes once again falling on the journal. “You never acknowledged him, or looked at him when he was following you around, so I didn’t know you could see him.” 

“H-how long, could you-” Mike’s voice grew strangled, his words petering out before he finished, but he looked at El imploringly, desperately. 

“Since the movie, the other day. He sat on the floor next to you. I think he really liked the movie. He was smiling nearly the entire time. And he wouldn’t stop looking at you.” 

Mike opened his mouth to reply when-

“Okay, what is going on?” Dustin butted in, looking between Mike and El, a scrutinizing look on his face. “Anyone care to enlighten the class?” 

Eyes growing wide, Mike turned to face the rest of the group, “I’ve been able to see Will. Our Will, since his birthday. We figured out a way to communicate, first through lights, then with the music playing. I brought him with us to the mall to see if any of the rest of you could see him, but for some reason it just seemed to be me. And El for some reason.” He gestured at her before continuing. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you guys. At first I thought he was just some figment of my imagination, so I wanted to get proof. But then I was just having so much fun having him around again. And then- then he- he-” Mike’s voice gave out, and the other boy hung his head, shoulders shaking almost imperceptibly. 

“He disappeared, right?” El whispered, watching Mike carefully to see if her words would cause him even more despair. He nodded slowly in response. His long dark hair hiding his expression from the others. 

“Wait, was Will the reason the power went off at the mall yesterday? That is so awesome!” Dustin crowed excitedly, before seeming to remember the somber mood in the room and abruptly going silent. 

Pulling his gaze from the floor, his expression unreadable, Mike pulled the notebook from the clutter on the table and pointed to one of the entries, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure that was him. He never did say exactly what caused him to go off like that though. He just started shouting and the power suddenly went out, and then, a few minutes later, it came back on like nothing had happened.” 

“So it wasn’t a power outage! I knew it!” Dustin pumped his fist in the air, looking triumphant.

Lucas scowled, “Actually, I distinctly remember you saying that it was definitely a power outage.” 

“No I didn’t!” 

“Yeah, you did!” Lucas shot back, rolling his eyes. 

Not wanting the two boys’ bickering to get the conversation off topic, El raised her voice over theirs, “Actually, I’m pretty sure he freaked out because he saw me.” 

Dustin and Lucas’s fledgeling argument instantly petered out, their attention diverting to El. She looked up to see Mike with a strange expression she couldn’t name on his face before he spoke, slowly, deliberately, “What do you mean, because he saw you? He shouldn’t have known who you were, you guys never met. And he didn’t freak out at movie night. At least I don’t remember any weird flashing lights then.” 

El grimaced, her hands going up placatingly, “Promise you won’t get mad?” 

Mike frowned, “El?” He asked, an edge creeping into his voice. 

“Promise?” She repeated firmly. 

Mike sighed, pinching at the bridge of his nose, “Okay, fine. Now just tell me. Why did Will freak out when he saw you?” 

El curled into herself slightly, unable to meet Mike’s burning gaze. She felt a warm pressure against her side, and she found herself looking up to see Max bumping her with her shoulder. The touch grounded her, gave her the confidence to say the next words, the words that might change everything. 

“We have met before.” 

“What? When?” Mike blurted out.

“The day you found me.” She tensed, waiting for the words to click into place for the others. 

“You saw him the day he died? And you never said anything?” Mike’s voice was growing in volume, his brows furrowing. “Explain. Now.” 

Looking at Mike’s furious expression, El felt her heart begin to race, just like it had the first time the ghost boy, Will , had recognized her, and knew what she had done. 

She swallowed down the knot in her throat, forced herself to look Mike dead in the eyes, and finally spoke the words she had never told anyone, the words that have been haunting her since the moment she had first seen a picture of the kind-eyed brown haired boy who had once been Mike’s best friend, before El came along and stripped that away from him. 

“I-I think I killed him.” 

The room was deadly silent around her, and she wished for someone to break the never ending silence surrounding her. 

Unfortunately, the one to break the silence was the person she wanted to hear the least. Mike stood from where he had crouched beside the coffee table and marched over to where she sat on the couch. With his dark glare and imposing positioning above her, El felt a slight chill. She knew that Mike was no match for her, and she could very easily toss him through a wall with nothing but a tilt of her head if she wanted, but never before had she seen such a quietly enraged glower come from the likes of Mike Wheeler.

Without a word, he leaned into El’s space, his face hovering just a few inches above hers, his mouth twisted into a grotesque frown, his cheekbones casting harsh shadows across his face.  She heard Max suck in a surprised breath in the face of Mike’s fury, and then Mike spoke, his voice a low and angry rasp. 

“I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt because I’m 80% sure Will isn’t actually dead. But I’m going to need you to tell me what you know. NOW.” 

And so she told him. 

Every gruesome detail. 

About the night she escaped. And the night Will disappeared. 

How a boy had found her in the woods when she was being chased by the Lab people. How he had tried to lend her his jacket. How she had gotten scared and knocked him out when she heard the guards coming. How she left him there unconscious and soaked to the bone and utterly at the mercy of the same people who had kept her prisoner for her entire life without a passing thought. 

But she had been so scared, and she hadn’t been thinking straight. 

Her throat was tight by the time she finished speaking, her mind whirling with memories which were better off forgotten. Her head bowed remorsefully. Max had pressed herself firmly into her side, acting as a grounding point as El’s tattered thoughts fluttered around her. 

She waited for the yelling. The anger. She was sure at the very least Mike was going to blow up at her, his all-encompassing anger was something she had witnessed on more than one occasion and was expecting a similar vitriol to be pointed towards her in the wake of her confession. But as she kept her head lowered, purposefully avoiding what she was sure was the other’s hateful glares, she was met only with silence. As the silence dragged on, and El was certain she could make out the sound of everyone’s individual heartbeats in the oppressive silence, she squared her shoulders and finally raised her head, ready to face the wrath of a group of friends she had lied to for as long as she had known them. 

Instead, it seemed her presence had been entirely forgotten. Lucas and Max seemed to be having one of their silent conversations, in which Max frowned and shook her head way too much and Lucas’s eyebrows stretched closer and closer to his hairline.  Dustin seemed to be doing rapid calculations for some reason, given the way his lips were rapidly moving, and he would occasionally look down at his hands to count on his fingers. And then there was Mike. 

She had expected Mike to be seething. Will had been his best friend after all, and she admitted to not only being able to see him while he had been following Mike around the past few days, but also that she had been the last person to see him alive. She was certain Mike would’ve been furious. 

But instead, he just looked lost. 

And small. 

And so utterly alone. 

The lanky teen seemed to have curled in on himself, his shoulders hunching inward as he plopped to the floor at El’s feet. All the fight drained out of him. He worried at his lip, his face so startlingly pale all his freckles stood out in sharp relief. 

She reached out to place a hand on his shoulder, startling Mike from his thoughts. He turned his dark gaze on her, and El could see just how tired and drawn the other teen looked.

 “I’m sorry it took me so long to tell you.” 

Mike looked back at her, his expression watery and broken open. One of the most real expressions she thinks she had ever seen on Mike. He had always seemed existed slightly separate from the rest of them, holding his friends at arm’s length, hiding his thoughts and emotions behind a wall too high to climb, but now, finally, it seemed the wall had crumbled, and the real Mike was shining through. 

“I spent so long wondering what happened to him.” He sniffed, his gaze pulling away from El’s to look at something on the wall. She didn’t have to turn around to know it was one of the numerous drawings of Will’s peppering the walls of the basement. “The police kept saying he drowned in the quarry, since that was where they found the body. But what would Will have been doing all the way out there? It wasn’t anywhere near his house.” Mike shook his head, his expression hardening. 

“But it didn’t make sense because it wasn’t the whole story. The police found Will’s bike nearly a mile away. And Will loved that bike, no way was he just leaving it in the dirt like that. And when we went to look in the same stretch of woods that night, we found you . It all makes sense!” Mike’s eyes locked with El’s again, but instead of looking despondent, his eyes sparked with excitement, like he had finally solved the puzzle he had been struggling with for the past three years, which she guessed, he probably had. Will’s unexplainable death had probably eaten away at Mike for years, and the rest of them were likely just as oblivious to Mike’s inner turmoil as she had been. 

The flood of guilt threatened to rise and drown her, the thought that if she had just told Mike the truth ages ago, he might have been spared years of mental anguish, but Lucas’s sudden interruption jarred her from her thoughts. 

“Wait. We saw Will’s body though. You can’t possibly think he’s still alive?” He pondered incredulously, and Max shot him a harsh glare. She swung her gaze back to Mike, expecting him to suddenly crumble under the crushing realization that his best friend was still very much dead, but when El fixed her gaze on Mike, she saw in the determined set of his jaw, that Mike knew more than he was letting on. 

The dark-haired teen got to his feet, a smug grin plastered across his face, “That is where you’re wrong.” Before pulling a The Smiths cassette from the pocket of his jeans and setting it on the table. “This tape came out last year, over two years after Will ‘died’. But Will knew the song on the tape, before I had ever shown it to him.” 

Lucas sputtered, “That could mean anything. Maybe it was playing at the mall, maybe he heard it on the radio. There are a thousand other explanations as to why Will could have possibly known the song than that he’s alive. And that’s with me suspending my disbelief that both of you didn’t just mass hallucinate seeing Will in the first place.” 

El was just about to jump in and defend that she was certainly not hallucinating when Dustin suddenly jumped in, “What about the fact that both El and Mike saw Will as older than he is now. And that he was wearing different clothes.” He pointed to the first entry in Mike’s journal, detailing Will’s older appearance. 

“What does it matter he was wearing different clothes. He’s a ghost isn’t he? They don’t have to follow any sort of logic.” Lucas shot back, his voice rising in volume. 

“Well, ghosts nearly always appear in the clothes they died in, and I’ve never heard of a ghost aging, or wearing someone else’s clothes.” Dustin’s voice rose to match Lucas’s, his expression fierce.  

“Where are you getting your information, a D&D manual?” 

El tuned the bickering boys out, well used to their antics and glanced down at the notebook, her eyes focusing on the words that hadn’t stood out to her before. “Hospital gown.” She whispered, awed. 

Lucas paused mid-rant, instantly wheeling around to face El, confusion evident on his face, “Huh?” 

“He was wearing a hospital gown.” She repeated, growing in certainty, her voice becoming more confident. “When Mike and I first saw him, he was wearing a hospital gown. I saw his nose bleed when he made all the lights go out at the mall. He’s just like me. ” Her voice grew quiet at the end, barely more than a whisper, but there was no doubt that the others in the room heard her. Her fingers absently traced the numbers tattooed into the skin of her wrist, the markings that would always delineate her as nothing more than number 011 to the people of the Hawkins Lab. She wondered, absently, if Will had a similar number on his wrist now. 

Mike’s mouth had dropped open, his eyes darting between the notebook spread out on the table and El’s face, connecting the dots in his head, “He’s at the Lab.” His voice was quiet, subdued, “All this time we thought he was dead,  when really, he’s been held captive by the same people that had El.” 

Dustin’s voice was uncharacteristically grim, “Three and a half years.” 

Lucas looked back and forth between Dustin and Mike, his eyes wide and unbelieving, “You guys are treading dangerously close to kooky conspiracy theory levels. We saw his body! Will is dead . And what would the lab want with a random twelve year old anyways?” Judging by the way his voice cracked at the end, El suspected Lucas was trying to convince himself just as much as the others. 

Max elbowed him roughly in the side, jostling El slightly as she scooted away from Lucas to look her boyfriend in the eye. “You’re friends with a literal human experiment who can move things with her mind and came from that very same lab. Is it really that crazy?” 

Lucas lifted his hand, as if he was about to protest, but when he looked around and saw the other members of the party looking on at him expectantly, he deflated, “I guess it’s not entirely outside the realm of possibly. But I still don’t know-” 

El stood, cutting him off, “I can prove it.” She didn’t let her voice betray the warring emotions growing in her chest, on one hand if she wasn’t able to find Will, it meant that he was most certainly dead . But if she was able to find Will, deep in the bowels of the Hawkins Lab, it meant that Dustin and Mike were right, and because El hadn’t told her friends the truth ages ago, Will had been trapped in that place for over three years, and it was entirely her fault. 

With a quick motion, El scooped up a long strip of fabric draped over the back of a chair meant for exactly this purpose, and snatched up Mike’s proffered walkie, already set to a staticky station, before settling herself on the floor a few feet away from the others. 

Mechanically she held the scrap of fabric up over her eyes and tried to quell the shaking of her fingers as she tied the knot. Her fingers kept slipping across the fabric, unable to secure the knot until a pair of cool hands brushed her fingers aside, replacing her fingers with their own. 

A voice spoke in her ear, deep and familiar, Mike . His breath ruffling her hair under the fabric, “It’s okay if you can’t find him. Just-“ Mike paused, his voice becoming strangely thick, “Thank you for trying. I know it must be hard for you to try to go back there.” 

Before she could respond he finished securing the knot at the back of her head and he quickly pulled away. Leaving her alone. 

Despite the fact that she knew there were many eyes upon her, she was quickly able to settle her nerves and let the static coming through the radio wash over her. After a few calming breaths, she finally opened her eyes. 

She was met with the familiar inky blackness of her mind space and let her mind wander. Unlike most times when she searched for someone, she already had a mental picture of Will to go off of, and that made locating the other boy surprisingly easy. 

Within a few seconds, the hazy figure of a boy hunched over in a chair came to fruition, and El started slowly towards it. Quickly the image began to resolve itself, and El knew for certain it was Will. She breathed out his name, knowing the others would likely be able to hear her speak and she took him in. He looked nearly the same as she last remembered, his hair shorn neatly nearly to his scalp, in a way that was uncomfortably familiar the more she thought about it, and his body was covered with a boxy hospital gown. But his face was different. Gone was the bright-eyed boy who had glared her down in the middle of a crowded mall. Now he just looked so tired, leaner than she remembered, his cheekbones casting dark shadows across his cheeks. 

El stepped closer, trying to get a better look at the teen, although she had a deep suspicion she knew exactly where Will was, she still wanted to be sure. As she approached the room further resolved itself, a small white tiled room with no windows, just a metal table and two chairs she knew were brutally uncomfortable from experience. She was facing towards Will, another man in a dark suit with neat white hair had his back to her. 

“What did you see. Was she there?” The man questioned, and the familiar voice sent a chill down her spine. 

Papa.

Will’s eyes were downcast, avoiding the man’s gaze, but he tapped absentmindedly on the table for a few moments before rolling his attention back to the man, a smirk plastered across his face, “You know, it’s a good thing this whole operation is a secret, if the government knew how obsessed you were with a little girl they’d probably label you a pedoph-“ Will’s response died on his lips as his eyes met El. 

He could see her.

El’s breath caught in her throat as she stared back, frozen. Will’s eyes grew wide, flicking back and forth between El and his hand tapping on the table. It took her a torturously long few moments before she recognized the tapping as the same patterns Hopper used to send her on the radio on the nights he was going to be home late. Unfortunately, she was woefully out of practice and Will was tapping too fast for El to begin to make out any of the letters, so unable to think of anything better, she began tapping the same pattern out on her thigh and hoped the others would be able to pick out Will’s hidden message from where they sat clustered around her body in Mike's living room. 

She had completely forgotten about the man in the suit, until he spoke once more, “Ah William, what could you be doing that is so much more important than our conversation here?” 

Will stiffened in his chair, his eyes drawing back to the white haired man, before inexplicably wandering back over to where El was standing in the corner. The man in the chair straightened, his tone pleased, “Ah, so she found you. ” 

El found herself paralyzed as the man in the suit slowly turned in his seat to peer back at where she was standing. Her heart thundered in her chest despite the fact that she knew the man could not see her. But it didn’t stop the full body shudder she felt when the man faced her with his usual benign smile. “Hello Eleven, I found you.” 

And her body turned to ice. 

Chapter Text

You’re out of touch

I’m out of time

But I’m out of my head when you’re not around

Out of Touch - Hall & Oates

Considering his track record for being absolutely abysmal with his emotions, usually only functioning on two settings: bottling up his feelings entirely or exploding in violent rage, he thinks he should have been angry at El for hiding all this from him. Hiding that she had met Will, that she had gotten Will captured, or maybe even killed, lying to him and the rest of the Party for the entire time they've known her, all of it. And at first, he had been downright seething with rage, but after the first wave of intense anger quickly faded after taking one look at El, who looked more like a kicked puppy than a superpowered teenager, instead of being mad, all he could think about was the gaping scabbed-over hole in his heart where Will was supposed to sit. The wound that had just been ripped open all over again. 

Because Will was alive. The past week hadn’t just been some psychotic break Mike’s brain had cooked up after too many years of unresolved grief. In the wake of his revelation, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to get up and dance on the table with excitement or break down into tears. Instead he just sat there, in numb anxious silence. 

As he sat watching El try to find Will with the radio, Mike couldn’t help his foot from shaking with nerves, knocking against the coffee table in an irregular beat. 

Max shot him a glare, hissing quietly, so as not to disturb El. “Can you cut it out Wheeler.” 

Mike froze, his foot hovering barely an inch away from banging against the table once again before tucking his leg underneath him to hold it in place. “Sorry.” He mouthed, his attention once again drawing back to El, who remained just as still and unmoving as she had been before. 

While it may seem cool at first glance, watching your ex-girlfriend attempt to use her superpowers to find your potentially dead best friend/maybe-something-more-than-that was not as exciting as it seemed. It mostly involved the Party sitting around in the basement trying to stay quiet and pay attention while El occasionally spoke or twitched in her trance. All-in-all, not his ideal way to spend his spring break. Mike had just finished tearing off a stubborn hangnail on his thumb when El finally spoke. 

“Will.” 

Mike was instantly alert, snapping to attention, and judging by the lack of shuffling or whispers from his friends on the couch, the others were suddenly paying attention as well. 

The next few minutes were eerily silent as the Party waited with baited breath for any sort of signal from El, until Dustin broke the heavy silence with a sharp intake of breath before kicking Mike sharply in the ribs with absolutely no warning. 

“Ow, what the hell Dustin!” Mike gasped, rubbing at his side as he turned to scowl at the curly haired teen. 

Dustin ignored him, “Look at her hand.” He whispered back sharply, his gaze never straying from El. 

Spinning back around, Mike caught sight of El rhythmically tapping against her thigh. Which in it of itself was odd, since El hardly ever moved when she was in her trance. But when the pattern began repeating it suddenly clicked. 

It was morse code!

Scrambling back to the table, Mike snatched up his notebook and a spare pencil and immediately began jotting down the taps, unsure how long El would continue for. El seemed to be tapping quickly, and Mike was barely able to jot down all the dots and dashes before the message began cycling around again. He just hoped that El was translating the message correctly. 

Because that’s what it was, a message. From Will. 

After a few tense minutes, Mike was finally confident that he had gotten the full message. But as he translated the dots and dashes into letters, he grew more and more confused. 

He held up the pad to show to the others, “Does BRENNERCOMES mean anything to anyone?” 

The others looked at him blanky before shaking their heads, looking just as befuddled as he did when El gasped suddenly, ripping the blindfold from her head and collapsing to the ground in a heap, her nose bleeding profusely. 

“El!” Overlapping voices exclaimed in shock. Max flew from the couch to El’s side, pushing the sweat-soaked strands of hair from El’s face. “Are you okay?” 

El nodded shakily before sitting up, her face abnormally pale and her gaze vacant. She looked at the others clustered around her, who were all staring at her in concern. Mike found himself torn between wanting to comfort El, who looked wan and shaken from whatever she had seen, and shaking the poor girl to get her to tell him what she found out about Will. 

El blinked a few times, the far-off look clearing from her eyes before she began to speak. “Will is… alive.” She spoke slowly, as if considering every word before she said it, “Captured. Like me. Powers.” 

Mike couldn’t help but notice the way that El had seemed to revert back to a simplified way of speaking that he hadn’t heard from her in years. It didn’t help to abate his nervousness. Whatever El had seen had severely spooked her if the normally steadfast teen was falling back into old behaviors. 

“He is coming.” 

Mike felt a chill run down his spine at El’s dark tone. Dustin, either oblivious to the tension in the air, or curious enough to overcome it, spoke the words that Mike had been thinking. 

“Who?” 

El’s eyes clouded over again, and she leaned heavily into Max’s side, the redhead draping her arm across her shoulders. 

“Papa.” 

And Mike froze. He wasn’t sure how much the others knew, but judging by the look of abject horror plastered across Max’s face, no doubt mirrored by his own, he figured the redhead must know at least some of the story. 

Admittedly, he didn’t know much. El had been unsurprisingly secretive about her past, which given what she had been through, he certainly didn’t fault her for. He did know that she had a caretaker while she had lived in the lab, a man who she called ‘Papa’. From what little he understood, ‘Papa’ had emotionally manipulated El into using her powers for the lab and would often punish El if she didn’t behave the way he wanted. But he had also been the only parental figure El had ever known, and it had taken Hopper quite a long time to teach her that the way ‘Papa’ had treated her was not how parents should treat their children. As much as he couldn’t stand the Hawkins sheriff, and he still occasionally had nightmares where Hopper threatened to shoot his dick off with his shotgun, he had to admit the man was a wonderful dad, and Hopper absolutely doted on El. 

With shaking fingers, Mike thrust his notebook towards El, the decoded morse code printed large on the page. “Was this from Will?” 

El’s eyes darted back down to the page, her eyes growing dark. She nodded before reaching her hand out to stroke the letters of the page. “Papa. He’s coming.” 

“That’s Papa?” Max’s voice came out strangled, tinged slightly with panic. “The same guy who kept you locked up for eleven years is the same guy who has Will?” 

Max’s words turned Mike’s stomach. He had been so focused on finding out if Will was even alive that Mike hadn’t stopped to think what he would do if he actually was. But Will was alive, and he was locked up in a secret government experimental facility that El had only managed to escape because she possessed superhuman abilities. 

And now, because of him, they knew where El was too. Mike almost couldn’t take it.

He had been backed into a corner, and this time, he couldn’t think of a way out. 

He felt overwhelmed with an unfathomable hopelessness. What could he and a ragtag group of teenagers do against a government agency? In all likelihood, the Lab was now finding a way to track down El too, all because he had managed to drag her into this mess as well. 

Her and Hopper would have to go into hiding again. It would be just like that first year, where El had been confined to the cabin in the woods and Mike could only occasionally talk to El on the radio. 

And Will. Will would be trapped in that giant Lab all alone for who knows how long. Maybe they would let him out when he turned 18. Will could survive another two years couldn’t he? But he doubted a government agency content on doing illegal experiments on children would let any of their valuable subjects go, even when they did reach legal age. If they even managed to make it that far. 

No, despite the impossible odds, he couldn’t do that to Will and El. He couldn’t let them waste away like that again, hiding and afraid. He was going to do something. He was going to bust Will out. 

He turned towards the others, who were sitting silently, all their gazes fixed on him. They had been waiting, wanting to see what Mike would do so they could follow his lead. Mike took a deep breath, trying to exude a confidence he definitely didn’t feel, and hoped the others wouldn’t see right through him. 

“Okay, so here’s what we need to do.” 

Somehow, in less than two hours, Mike was standing in the middle of the Byers’ living room, joined by one of the strangest assortments of people he thinks he has ever come across. 

Seated on one sagging sofa sat the Party; Dustin, Lucas and Max having immediately settled themselves on the cushions as soon as they arrived. El alternated between sitting on the floor in front of the couch and perching herself on the armrest. 

Hopper, who had been dragged into this mess by El, and stated that they should have at least one competent adult around, leaned imposingly against the wall, eyes roving across the room, before inevitably settling on Mike. He suppressed a shiver at Hopper’s intense scrutiny and averted his gaze. 

At some point in time Jonathan had come out of his room, intent on discovering the cause of the commotion, Nancy trailing closely behind, which had certainly been a surprise to Mike. He hadn't even known she had come back to Hawkins for Spring Break, and certainly hadn’t factored Nancy and Jonathan into his plan, but he figured they may as well be involved, Jonathan was Will’s brother after all, and Nancy was far too curious to let sleeping dogs lie, so maybe he could use them to their advantage. 

Mrs. Byers, who bless her heart, had absolutely no idea what was going on, but still graciously offered her home to the troupe of teenagers who came knocking at her door with no explanation, fluttered anxiously in and out of the kitchen, ferrying snacks to the awaiting children who had invaded her home. 

Perhaps strangest of all, seated in one aging armchair was one Steve Harrington, and Mike fought the urge to snort when he saw the other man’s perfectly coifed hair in their impromptu war room. But Dustin had insisted he would be a valuable asset, so Mike allowed him to stay. 

At the rate they were going, it seemed like half of Hawkins was going to be involved in this plot, so Mike decided he should probably get this meeting started before some other random half-stranger showed up on the Byers’ doorstep. 

That was the other thing, somehow Mike had been left in charge of this entire operation. Here he was, 16-year-old Michael Wheeler, high school sophomore who was barely scraping by in geometry, and everyone was looking to him. Even Hopper, who usually just looked at him like he was a bug on his shoe, was gazing at him curiously, obviously wondering why he had been invited here. 

Swallowing down his nervousness, Mike pulled himself from the couch and strode towards the middle of the room, sporting one obnoxiously sized drawing pad he had pilfered from Will’s room, since he figured the other teen wouldn’t mind him borrowing it for a bit. 

“Okay, so you’re probably wondering why you’re all here today.” Mike winced internally at his lame opening as everyone stared at him, wide-eyed and expectant. 

Propping the drawing pad up on the wall, Mike flipped to a new page, uncapping the marker and beginning to write. 

“Will Byers is alive.” 

A sharp cry, and the sound of shattering glass interrupted his train of thought. Glancing up he saw Mrs. Byers frozen in the doorway, her hands floating empty in front of her, and a shattered water pitcher at her feet. Mike cursed his lack of foresight, he had been so caught up in planning for Will’s escape, he hadn’t even thought about trying to break the news to Mrs. Byers gently, instead he just threw her off the deep end with no warning. 

“Will is…” Joyce’s voice was shaky, and he could see tears welling in the corners of her eyes. 

Mike opened his mouth, prepared to say something, anything, to Mrs. Byers, but when he looked into her eyes, which were shiny with grief, and maybe just a little bit of hope, all his words instantly left him. He wasn’t the only person torn apart by losing Will, and suddenly it felt like nothing he could say would be enough. He stood frozen in the center of the room, his eyes locked on Mrs. Byers tearful gaze, until El stood from where she had seated herself on the floor and strode to Joyce’s side. She hugged the other woman, El’s slender frame already towering over Mrs. Byers by a couple of inches, and Mike couldn’t help but imagine what the height difference between Will and his mother would look like now. El leaned down slightly, hiding her face in Joyce’s hair and seemed to whisper something in the older woman’s ear. 

Mrs. Byers shuddered slightly, tears leaking silently down her face before she nodded, “That’s him. I’m sure of it.” 

El released the woman from her hug and without a backwards glance, raised all the broken pieces of the pitcher shattered across the floor into the air and deposited them neatly into the trashcan before calmly settling herself back onto the floor, resting her back against Max’s legs, as if she hadn’t just used superpowers in front of more than a few people who had never seen them before. 

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Mike nearly wanted to double over with laughter at the absolutely flabbergasted look on Steve Harrington’s face. Mrs. Byers on the other hand, recovered quickly, her only noticeable reaction was the wry look she shot at Hopper from across the room.  

Schooling his expression back into seriousness, Mike clapped his hands together, redirecting everyone’s attention back to himself at the front of the room. 

“Well, as you now all know, El has powers.” 

A snort from Nancy on the other side of the room. He suppressed the urge to roll his eyes at her. 

He paused, looking to El before he continued. They had discussed sharing this knowledge with the others beforehand, but he was still hesitant to bare El’s life story to some near strangers. The girl nodded, her deep brown eyes warm, kind. With her permission, he continued. 

“El was raised in the Hawkins National Laboratory, where they conducted experiments to grant her powers like you saw earlier. She managed to escape on Nov 6th, 1983.” 

A faint gasp echoed in the quiet space, and Mike was surprised to note that it was Nancy who had made the sound, his sister bringing a hand to her lips, her eyes narrowed. She had apparently put the pieces together a lot faster than he expected, and probably already knew what he was going to say next. He continued anyways, since not everyone had the brain processing power of Nancy Wheeler, and probably needed it spelled out for them. 

“We believe that since Will was in the woods nearby on the day she escaped, the Lab took Will when they were unable to find El. And he’s been trapped there for the past three and a half years. We also have cause to believe that Will has also gained powers while he has been in their custody.” 

Mike glanced up and was met with the grim expressions of everyone in the room, no sound except the thrumming of his own heart. 

“El has been able to spy on the Lab using her powers and has come up with a rough idea of where Will is located.” He flipped the page of the drawing pad, displaying El’s rough sketch of the lab, including a large red circle located in the basement near the center of the facility. It was nowhere near Will’s skill level, but it would suffice for their purposes. 

“Unfortunately, El was caught during one of her spying sessions, so the Lab is now aware that El is after us and are intent on getting her back. So, we need to find a way to strike first before they manage to get the upper hand.” Mike declared, gazing about the room fervently. 

Jonathan’s eyes were wide, his gaze intense, the knuckles of his hand wrapped around Nancy’s were white with how tight he was squeezing. Nancy seemed to not be paying attention, but he knew that his sister was likely connecting the puzzle pieces in her head, making connections the others wouldn’t have even thought of. Steve looked completely lost, and Mike once again questioned why the jock was even invited, but he figured the athletic man could probably shoot a gun or at the very least could function as a suitable meat shield if the need arose. 

Sometime during his speech, Mrs. Byers had migrated over towards Hopper, and the two were now engaged in a heated discussion if Joyce’s numerous pointed hand gestures were anything to go by. The Party had already known most of this information, so they just sat quietly on the couch, the only indication anything he had said had gotten to him was evident in the way Lucas and Max leaned into each other slightly, drawn together like two magnets, and the way Dustin’s hand rested comfortingly on El’s shoulder. Despite everything, Mike managed to crack a small smile at the sight, glad that through all of this, his friends were at his side. Even though he lacked the evidence to prove the majority of his theories, and the fact that they were going up against a relatively unknown entity, they were all firmly in his corner, and would all do whatever it took to get Will back. 

Which he how he ended up here. 

Less than 12 hours after the fateful meeting in the Byers’ living room, he stood, bolt cutters in hand, frozen, unable to bridge the gap and make the first cut into the chain link fence surrounding Hawkins National Laboratory. 

He knew the moment his numb fingers clipped through the metal then this whole thing would become real. His harebrained scheme, many details of which had been stolen from mostly forgotten D&D campaigns, had somehow dragged not only his entire circle of friends, but also several reasonable adults, who honestly should’ve known better than to go along with anything Mike cooked up in less than half a day. 

But somehow, after hours of brainstorming and plotting, this idea had come out on top. They hadn’t had much time for planning, since shortly after they vacated the Byers’ house a huge hoard of vans had surrounded the place, busting down the front door in the process. According to El, who used her abilities to check on the rest of their families, Dustin, Lucas and Mike’s own houses received similar treatment as the Lab people attempted to hunt down El by any means necessary, and he silently hoped his parents wouldn’t be too angry at him when this whole thing was over. Luckily, despite all of the Lab’s immense resources, it seemed they had no knowledge of Hopper’s hidden cabin, so the group had an area to reconvene for the few hours before they were to set their plan in action. 

So here Mike was, backpack slung over his shoulders, bolt cutters in hand, and the only weapon at his disposal a short Bowie knife Hopper happened to have in his immense weapon collection. 

Honestly, Mike was a little miffed he ended up with just a Bowie knife, when nearly everyone else involved had much cooler weapons. Dustin had pulled a machete from Hopper’s stash, Lucas had his slingshot, Max had left to return home for a couple hours, only to return with a bowstaff, of all things, which she apparently actually knew how to use, and El had her mind powers obviously. 

He had expected Hopper and Mrs. Byers to be the only ones packing actual guns to this heist, but he had conveniently forgotten that Lonnie, father of the year, had taught both Jonathan and Will to fire guns, and the older teen had apparently retained at least some knowledge since he ever so casually pulled out a shotgun from his toolshed, and only looked slightly greenish while doing so. He even went so far to hand one to Nancy, who cocked the gun and checked to see if it was loaded like she actually knew what she was doing, and Mike distantly noted that maybe his older sister was a little bit cooler than he thought. Even Steve had ended up with a badass weapon, despite the fact that he shouldn’t have even been involved in this whole plot in the first place, but he guessed being a jock paid off. Since at some point in the afternoon Jonathan, Nancy and Steve wandered out to the garage for a bit, only for Steve to return with an old baseball bat studded through with bent nails, and Mike shuddered at the thought of what, or who , Steve might use it on. 

And despite everyone else’s cool ass weapons, all Mike had been left with was a stupid Bowie knife. Granted he wasn’t supposed to meet much resistance, none of the kids were, besides El, something Mrs. Byers and Hopper had been stubbornly insistent about since the beginning. So, Mike, Lucas, and Dustin were on lookout duty, and Max, who definitely did not have a license, was idling about a mile down the road in their getaway car. 

“Are you gonna clip the damn thing or what? We don’t have all day!” Lucas’s harsh whisper cut through the darkness, causing Mike’s hands close down on the wire cutters reflexively, the thin wire of the fence shearing easily under the sharp blade. 

Mike turned around to glare at the other teen, a scowl on his face. “Happy? You know, we wouldn’t be running behind if someone hadn’t decided he needed to sneak into his own home just to get his Ghillie suit!” Mike swung his gaze to stare back at Dustin, who was barely visible but for the glare of metal from the binoculars pressed to his face. 

Dustin snorted, pushing past the other two to scramble through the cut in the fence Mike had just made, the tendrils of his suit snagging on the protruding metal. “Make fun of the suit all you want. But when the rest of you guys end up captured by the feds don’t come crying to me.” 

Lucas rolled his eyes, trailing after Dustin, “You know if we get captured, there’s no way they don’t trace this back to you either. You’re thoroughly involved at this point so-“ 

Mike tuned their bickering out, having heard most of it earlier in the car on their drive over. Instead, he pushed himself through the fence, wincing slightly as the serrated metal dragged on his shoulder blades. Once he made it through in one piece, he dug the walkie out of his backpack and extended the antenna. 

“This is-“ He let out a short sigh, and was determined to not let Dustin pick their callsigns again, “Kermit the Frog. The Muppets have infiltrated the base and are now heading into position. Over.” 

A faint crackle came over the radio, Max, “This is Zoomer. I read you. You have fifteen minutes until the guard rotation swaps out. The Mavericks are already in position, just waiting on your signal.” 

Mike nodded, about to relay the information to his friends in front of him when Dustin wheeled back around, his brow furrowed with exasperation. “I told her like a million times. She needs to say ‘over’ . It’s not that hard.” 

Lucas opened his mouth, nearly ready to make a retort when Mike snorted, smacking both teens on the side of the head before strolling past them, readjusting the straps on his backpack. “We don’t have time for this guys. You can argue about who’s dick is bigger later.” 

Twin shouts of protest rose up from behind him, but he ignored it, well used to his two friends’ antics. Instead, he hiked forward, shoving his way past undergrowth and shadowy trees which seemed much more ominous than when they had staked the place out in the daytime. 

A stray vine snagged itself around his foot, and nearly sent Mike tumbling down the hill, if not for Lucas’s fast reflexes and well-placed grab. Mike scowled at the ground, kicking the offending vine aggressively. “Hey, Dustin. Don’t you have some sort of weapon that might be helpful in this situation?” 

Dustin looked confused for a moment before his face lit up, “Oh yeah! I nearly forgot.” Before slinging his backpack off and extracting a large machete, making his way to the front of the trio to hack his way through the dense forest growth. Mike frowned at Dustin welding the large blade gleefully, but after a few moments continued to trail after the curly-haired teen.

So much cooler than his Bowie knife.  

Finally, after what seemed like decades, Mike collapsed, winded, at the top of the hill, and vowed to never fake sick during gym class again. His condition was at least slightly better than Dustin’s, who had made the exact same trek in his massive Ghillie suit, and now lay groaning on the forest floor. Lucas, on the other hand, hadn’t even broken a sweat, standing tall and looking at his two friends lying panting on the floor with disappointment. 

Mike cursed every athletic gene in Lucas’s body as he struggled to his feet under the weight of his heavy pack. Fucking jocks. 

Dropping his bag to the ground with an audible thump, Mike rifled through the contents until he pulled out the radio. “This is Kermit. We have reached the landing point. Awaiting your signal. Over.” 

He waited in tense silence for a few moments until the radio suddenly crackled to life in his hands, “You have about 2 minutes to show time. Cutting it kinda close aren’t you?” 

Mike rolled his eyes at Max’s tone, but clicked the button to respond anyways, “We made it that’s all that matters.” Mike bent down to paw through his bag again, drawing forth a small compass with a cheer. “Is the A Team in position?”  

Mike already knew from earlier that Nancy, Steve and Jonathan were already in position. But like him Dustin and Lucas, they were meant as more of a distraction to draw out whatever guards may still be lurking around the lab. The actual infiltration part of the mission had been left up to the adults and El, much to Mike’s annoyance. But considering that he had absolutely no fighting skills to speak of, figured it was probably pretty fair. 

“A Team is in place. Over.” Max responded, and Mike let out a sigh of relief. Turning back towards his friends, who had been unloading their packs as Mike spoke. 

Now, in the middle of the forest floor, sat multiple large metal pieces, Dustin screwing the ends of two pieces together while Lucas looked on with confusion. 

Mike squatted down by Dustin’s side, grabbing an identical piece to the one Dustin was currently holding and began mirroring the other boy’s movements. Lucas observed for a few seconds till he seemed to catch on, and quickly followed suit. 

Before they knew it, a large antenna sat on the top of the hill. The figure looked awkward and spindly, swaying slightly in the faint night breeze. 

“Dustin, are you sure this is going to work?” Mike asked hesitantly. 

Dustin scoffed, “Of course Cerebro will work. If this baby can get a signal all the way to Suzie in Utah, with the modifications I did earlier there’s no way this won’t work from this close.” 

Mike still felt unsure, but since they were quite literally out of time, decided he was just going to have to trust Dustin on this one. 

A small flicker of light erupted to the North, followed by a loud bang as a firework exploded above the tree line. 

The signal. 

“Okay Dustin. Hit it!” Mike cried, and biting his lip and hoping beyond hope that this thing worked. 

Chapter Text

I see your face still in my window,
Torments yet calms, won't set me free,
Something must break now,
This life isn't mine

Something Must Break – Joy Division

The moment the speakers above him began to pop and fill the air with a buzzing static, Will was instantly on alert. Knowing that he was likely still being monitored from the camera in the corner of the room, he tried not to react visibly, but he kept his eyes trained on the door, tensing his muscles underneath his scratchy hospital gown in case it was suddenly thrown open. 

He knew it likely wouldn’t. Not after the stunt he pulled trying to warn El. Even if Dr. Brenner assumed he planned for her to show up mid-interrogation, like they had made some sort of prearranged signal. He wasn't smart enough to have thought of something like that. Hell, his brain was still trying to wrap itself around the events of the past week.  

Ever since being forcibly dragged from his week-long haunting of Mike Wheeler’s basement, Will’s mind had been jumbled with his disjointed memories finally slotting into place. 

The first, most notable difference was, for some reason, while he was trapped in his ‘ghost-form’ as he had started to refer to it, he seemed to have forgotten every memory associated with the lab, which meant nearly all his memories over the past three years had been wiped from existence. 

He was unsure if this was the lab’s doing, to prevent him from giving away any important information, or if happened to be some sort of random unlucky fluke. 

Either way, it was pretty goddamn unfortunate, since both Will himself, and later Mike, thought Will himself was a dead guy spending his free time haunting his best friend’s basement. But if he had access to his memories, maybe he could have been able to tell Mike the truth from the beginning, and he likely could’ve saved his best friend from a good deal of trauma when he suddenly evaporated from existence mid-makeout session. 

He felt his cheeks heat as he remembered the feeling of Mike’s lips pressed against his. The phantom warmth of Mike’s palm against his face. The way their bodies pressed against each other in a long line from chest to thigh. Will’s stomach fluttered at the thought and he slapped his hands against his cheeks, trying to get his thoughts under control, uncaring of how he looked to the ever-present cameras and the multiple scientists and doctors undoubtedly studying his every move. 

Just thinking of the various scientists observing him from behind their protective sheet of one-way glass had all thoughts of Mike vanish from his head, and instead he shot a harsh frown back at his reflection in the mirror. 

It was because of them he was stuck in here, in this dingy tiled room with its thin mattress and lack of privacy. It was because of them everyone in his life thought he was dead.

Well almost everyone.

Judging by El’s sudden appearance earlier in the day, the girl had somehow gotten wind that Will was still alive. But considering that they only ever had two total meetings, he doubted she would’ve figured that out on her own. Which meant- 

Mike.

Mike had somehow deduced that Will was not in fact a ghost and had decided to enlist El’s help in finding him, which had also sorta backfired because it had put the girl right back onto Brenner’s radar. 

For that he felt slightly guilty, but he still hadn't quite made up his mind about how to feel about El as a whole. He had spent the past three and a half years at the lab being conditioned to be El's replacement, which conflicted violently with his new memories of the sweet, albeit slightly meddlesome girl he had met while haunting Mike. Will was also still struggling over the fact that trying to help her that night in the woods back in 1983 had inexplicably led to him winding up here. The replacement. The spare. The one who never quite measured up to the original. 

The scientists loved to talk about El, or 011 as the Lab Coats called her, and how much of an absolute success she was.  

Apparently, the poor girl had been born here, and had spent the beginning of her life constantly being prodded and poked and experimented on, all to document and grow her psychic powers. He may have lost his childhood because of her, the past three and a half hellish years spent locked up in the Hawkins Lab, instead of being a normal teenager, but she had spent her entire life trapped within these grayish walls. So he felt he couldn’t blame her for what happened too much, they were one and the same after all. Two unfortunate kids seen as nothing more than tools in this sadistic, fucked up laboratory. He took a strange comfort in it.

Sometimes he wondered if there were other kids with powers out there, either in the halls of the lab, or lucky enough to have found a way to escape, like 011. 

When he had first been kidnapped, he had been bitter, blaming the little girl in the woods entirely for how he ended up in this horribly unlucky situation. But the longer he was trapped in the confines of the laboratory, always monitored, never a moment to himself, he came to learn he couldn’t fault 011 for what she had done when she had escaped. For knocking him out, a complete stranger, in a moment of sheer terror. She had likely only been eleven or twelve herself at the time, and her only contact with the outside world had been sadistic scientists and of course, the worst of the bunch, Dr. Brenner. 

He rubbed the small mark tattooed onto his wrist absently, like he had done many times before. The numbers which marked his place as nothing but an experiment of Hawkins National Laboratory. 

015  

There had been others, when he had first arrived, a small group of scared huddled children who Will hadn’t been allowed to speak to. They had all been isolated in their own rooms, and he had only occasionally caught glimpses of them through cracked doors or the few times he had been allowed to traverse the hallway with only one scientist tagalong, instead of the usual three or four. 

He once thought he caught sight of Nancy’s friend towards the beginning, huddled on a bed, her normally well-kept hair hanging in greasy clumps around her head before an orderly quickly shut the door. But he had been so shaky and terrified at first, and after never seeing her again, he chalked the whole thing up to just looking for any familiar face in the sea of clinical white lab coats.  

But now, from what he could tell, he was the only one remaining from the initial group of children. He hadn’t seen anyone besides the Lab Coats in what he figured was over a year. 

He wasn’t entirely sure what the scientists were going for, kidnapping a bunch of children and running experiments on them with the hopes of gifting them supernatural powers. But judging from the whispered words of the scientists and the head shakes accompanying yet another failed experiment, it seemed they were trying to recreate their earlier success with 011. 

Unfortunately, Will was yet another failure on their part. 

He never developed any psychokinetic powers like El, other than being able to make the lights flicker if he stared at them hard enough. Her other main draw was her ability to track and spy on people with only a photograph. 

Apparently, this had been El’s main purpose in the lab, no doubt because this whole operation was probably bankrolled by the US government, and she was often sent to listen in on important private conversations occurring in other countries and broadcast their direct words through nearby speakers. Given the current climate with the Soviets, Will could imagine the government was practically drooling over the potential usage for this particular power. 

So, when El escaped, the US lost their main source of enemy information, and from what he could tell, cracked down on the lab pretty hard immediately afterwards. So, for the past three years, once it was obvious Will wasn’t going to suddenly become an ultra-powerful telekinetic anytime soon, they switched their tactics to turning him into their own personal spy on the inside. 

Mostly it involved them strapping him to a table and injecting him with a bunch of strange drugs that made the room spin, or the wall suddenly explode as a giant flower-headed monster burst through it, or large shadows that looked vaguely reminiscent of spiders to cluster in the corner, looming ominously above the Lab Coats oblivious heads. 

‘Just do it.’ He whispered once, pleading to the pointy shadow which seemed to manifest in the corner of his vision more and more often. 

‘What was that?’ One of the Lab Coat’s questioned, a pen poised over his clipboard as he looked on curiously. 

‘Kill them.' He hissed, writhing on the bed, his ankles and wrists screaming in pain as he fought to escape, yearning to reach out towards the sharp shadowy monster and allow it to take him away from this terrible place. 'Kill them all.' 

The Lab Coat made a surprised sound, his gray eyes widening in surprise as he scribbled hastily onto his clipboard. 

They took him off that particular drug pretty quickly after that. 

But somehow, after months and months of needle sticks and drug hallucinations and being chained to his bed more times than he could count. Somehow, the scientists finally had a breakthrough. He was given some random concoction of drugs during the day, had a slightly abnormal hallucination where the scientists crowded around his bedside to monitor his vitals melted into a puddle of goo that oozed across the floor to coalesce into a large, fleshy version of his shadow monster. After that he didn’t remember much at all except swirling faces and the ceiling bursting open like a bubble to allow strange bat-like creatures to fly through. 

Eventually, once the drug began to leave his system, and the scientists grumbled to each other quietly as they shuffled out of the room, obviously unhappy with the failure that was subject 015, Will had been unstrapped the gurney and escorted back on shaky legs to his tiny white-tiled room. The orderly affixing him with a blank stare as he robotically climbed into his thin mattress, before shutting the door and locking it behind her with a sharp click. 

As he usually was, he had been exhausted after the events of the day and had quickly dropped into a drug-induced slumber. Only, it was far from the heavily medicated dreamless sleep he was used to.   

Between one blink, and the next it was like he had been transported from his bed, to somewhere completely unrecognizable. 

A quaint house, the walls painted a warm brown, with three figures clustered around a dining table, cheerily making their way through a family dinner. 

Will was hit with a sudden pang in his chest, longing to go back to a time where he, Jonathan and his mother clustered around their rickety dining table and ate lasagna, or meatloaf, or some new recipe that his mother wanted to try, which would never taste quite right, but Will and Jonathan choked it down with a smile anyways, knowing their mother had worked herself to the bone to give them this meal, and that it meant the world to her that they could spend it together. 

He would take a thousand soggy, overcooked dinners over the bland tasteless hospital food he had been served day in and day out at the lab, and was nearly salivating over the smell of the food until he heard a voice speak up that instantly turned his insides to ice. 

“So Helen, how was school today?” 

Dr. Brenner.

Will would know that voice anywhere, even with the warm, loving tone the man currently employed, something at complete odds with the cold, callous man who constantly seemed to observe Will’s every move. 

He froze from his position on the wall, worried the man would see him, despite a niggling in the back of his brain telling him that this was just another hallucination. 

The little girl spoke back, her bouncing blonde pigtails swinging happily as she gestured with her fork, but Will had completely tuned her out. His attention was solely focused on Brenner, whose back was currently to him, the man still wearing the same suit he had on this morning while he watched Will hiss and writhe under his restraints, a disappointed pucker to his lips before he left the room, not even sparing him a backwards glance. 

Scooting along the wall, Will tried to inch towards the door and hopefully escape this awful nightmare when his foot brushed against a side table. Will flinched, certain that the lamp balanced on top was about to go crashing to the ground, even if he was only in a dream, something he was growing less and less sure of with each passing minute, but instead his foot floated right through the table leg, the only sign he had even approached the table evidenced by the haphazard flickering of the lamp. 

Dr. Brenner turned in his seat at the odd flickering, brows furrowed as he took in the lamp, his eyes scanning the area nearby as if he expected something to appear. Will froze under the man’s piercing blue gaze, which he was certain was staring directly at him, but then the man’s vision wandered away, sensing nothing was amiss. Letting out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, Will hastily scurried away from the lamp and the flickering suddenly ceased. 

“Martin, don’t worry about it. It’s probably just faulty wiring, it’s not the first time the contractors have gouged us on a job.” 

With a contemplative look, Dr. Brenner let out a rather undignified harrumph and turned back to the table, if he said anything to the brown-haired woman, Will didn’t hear it, so overcome with relief that he wasn’t caught he nearly melted into a puddle on the floor. After that brief scare, he was determined that whether this was a dream or not, he wasn’t going to risk the potential wrath of Dr. Brenner and resolved to stay still until the others left. 

After what felt like ages, the Brenner’s finished up their dinner. Dr. Brenner settling himself down onto the couch and flipping the TV onto the news while the mousy haired woman who was likely his wife put away their leftovers and brought the dishes over to the sink, the bubbly blonde girl bouncing along beside her. 

All-in-all, the entire situation put Will on edge, the whole thing felt entirely domestic. Was this really what Dr. Brenner did when he got home after a long day of work experimenting on children? He just came home to his regular American Dream family just like anyone else? Or was this just another one of Will’s hallucinations? 

Will stood by, barely daring to move until the Brenner’s all retired to their rooms, leaving Will alone in their living room, heart rabbiting in his chest. Finally willing himself to relax, he peeled himself from the wall, and pinched himself, hard. 

Nothing. 

He didn’t wake up. 

He bit the inside of his cheek. The taste of copper flooded into his mouth. But still, he didn’t wake up. 

In annoyance he kicked at the table supporting the lamp, knowing his leg would once again phase right through, but to his surprise, his toe made contact with the leg of the table, sending the gaudy silly looking lamp tumbling to the ground with a large crash. 

And then he woke up.

Gasping and flailing Will was instantly upright, his heart rabbiting in his chest as he remembered how real it felt when his toe connected with the table, and he swore his toe still throbbed with the phantom pain of the contact. 

A drop of liquid spilled passed his lips, and unconsciously, he swiped his hand across his face to wipe it away, only to be surprised when he glanced down to find his hand coated with blood. 

He didn’t sleep for the rest of the night. 

The next morning had him being dragged from his room at some ungodly hour by two burly orderlies, and stuffed into one of the many ‘conversation rooms’ the lab boasted, but Will had seen enough reruns of S.W.A.T when his mom had been working the late shift and he had been able to stay up past his bed time to know that the ‘conversation rooms’ were basically one-to-one copies of every police interrogation room he’d ever seen on TV. 

Will had barely been thrown down onto the hard metal chair when the door clanged open again and Dr. Brenner -Martin- strode into the room, ever present clipboard in his grasp. Will puzzled for a moment, had he known Dr. Brenner's first name before his strange dream yesterday? Before he could ponder the thought too long, the man's cool tone pulled him back to the present.  

“So, William, how was the test we performed yesterday?” 

The man’s demeanor seemed casual, collected, but as Will eyed the man, he could see that Dr. Brenner was not as put together as he usually was. Dark shadows were present underneath the man’s chilling blue gaze, a sign that Will wasn’t the only one who didn’t get much sleep last night. His normally immaculate suit was slightly wrinkled in a few places, something few people would ever notice. But Will had always had a particularly keen eye for details. 

Will averted his gaze from the inquisitive man, picking his fingernails and trying to look unaffected despite his thundering heartbeat. 

“Same as usual Doc. I was high for a few hours on whatever the hell you decided to drug me with this time and then I passed out in bed until your lovely orderlies decided to come calling.” Before he had been taken, Will had never been one for sarcastic comments and purposefully pestering authority figures, but after nearly two years of experiments and torture, a kid had to find a way to amuse himself somehow. The Lab Coats, despite all their years of human experimentation on kids never quite learned how to react to an angsty, combative teenager, and after months of trial and error, Will had learned exactly what buttons to press to get a rise out of the doctors. 

Brenner’s face turned into a particularly wonderful scowl, and Will struggled to keep his face bored, impassive. The man began droning on about something, looking through the notes on his clipboard, and something about how 015 was their ‘most promising’ test subject, but Will had almost immediately tuned him out, swiping his tongue over his teeth and wishing the orderlies had at least given the opportunity to brush before this stupid interrogation. One particularly zealous pass with his tongue prodded a tender spot on the inside of his cheek, and apparently Will didn’t quite hide his wince fast enough, Dr. Brenner’s keen eyes zeroing in on his face as he set the clipboard down with interest. 

“Something paining you 015?” 

Will’s brain had kicked into overdrive the instant he noticed the sore spot on the inside of his mouth. He had bitten it in his dream, drawing blood. That combined with some of the other weird occurrences from yesterday, like learning Dr. Brenner’s first name, and the inexplainable dark bags under the older man’s eyes, almost as if something, like a strangely fallen lamp, had prevented him from getting any sleep the night before. It could be just a series of completely explainable coincidences. But Will was stuck in a lab trying to force feed him superpowers, nothing was a coincidence, no matter how crazy it may seem. 

“William?” Dr. Brenner’s eerily blue eyes stared back at him, his gaze hungry, ready to devour Will whole. 

He was definitely going out on a limb here and had a very good chance that he what he was about to say was completely off base, but it’s not as if his existence here could get much worse. So, he decided to make the risky play, after all, he loved to see Dr. Brenner squirm. He shot the older scientist a lecherous grin, his smile only growing more manic as he spoke. 

“So, how’s Helen? I heard she had a lovely day at school yesterday. Making hand turkeys, serious business for a five-year-old. I didn’t realize it was nearly Thanksgiving, what with the no windows and all. And make sure you tell your wife her chicken smelled absolutely wonderful.” Will grinned wide and sharp before delivering the final blow, “Sorry about your lamp by the way, I'm just so clumsy.” 

And he just leaned back, lacing his fingers behind his head as he watched the color drain from Dr. Brenner’s face. 

It was almost worth what happened afterwards. 

Almost.

Over the next few months Will was kept in a near constant state of dreamless sedation, at least he assumed it was a few months, considering when they finally weaned him off the drugs his hospital gown settled itself just barely above the crook of his knee, meaning he had likely grown several inches. 

After the Lab Coats got whatever information they could glean from him while he was unconscious the testing began. 

Trapped in padded rooms and denied food or water until he could tell the scientists on the other side of the glass what the man in the room next door was doing, or the security guard at the front of the building, or if he could move an object across the hall without leaving the confines of his room. 

The first few times Will nearly died of dehydration after three days of no success and the scientists finally let him out for long enough to make sure he wasn’t dead while they rehydrated him before immediately shoving him back in again. 

Eventually they learned the secret to his powers, he had to be sleeping in order to astral project himself somewhere else. He called it dreamwalking in his own head, something he swears he remembers seeing in Dustin’s D&D manual. With the complete lack of control he was experiencing in his own life, something as small as naming his powers after D&D helped give himself a tiny connection to his life from before, the life where his biggest concern was whether or not he could roll high enough to cast fireball. A life far, far away from here, where Will had three best friends and a mom and a brother who loved him. Sometimes remembering hurt like nothing else, but other times the memories helped keep at bay some of the worse thoughts, when Will was exhausted and shaking and stretched to the absolute limit. It helped him remember that he was more than just 015. 

Life in the lab wasn't always entirely bad, sometimes if he was good, one of the orderlies would let him listen to music, and Will could imagine what his life would’ve been like if he hadn’t been stolen away from the only life he had ever known. 

Mostly though, he was just lonely. 

The day he had ended up in Mike’s basement had been an accident, he was meant to go on his first long term spy mission, surveilling some Russian official Will had no interest in. He had been strapped to the table, the IV full of sleeping agents pumping into his system, when on the cusp of sleep, he heard a voice crying out in a panic. He still wasn't sure if the voice had been real, or just a hallucination. 

“Will! Will?!” 

It had sounded a lot like Mike’s voice. 

So right as he went under, instead of focusing on the mental image of whatever corrupt Russian man he was supposed to be tailing, Will only had thoughts of Mike. 

And then he woke up, squinting harshly into the bright bare bulb of Mike Wheeler’s basement with absolutely no memories at all. 

The speaker spewed static again, the rough popping noise pulling him forcibly from his own memories. Will glanced up, unsure if the staticky speaker was intentional or not. He wouldn’t put it past the scientists to constantly blare irritating noise through the speakers in order to prevent Will from falling asleep and using his powers. But this seemed different . Less intentional more like- 

The speakers blared to life, an achingly familiar tune echoing through what he assumed was every working speaker in the entire lab. 

Darling, you got to let me know

Should I stay or should I go

Will was instantly on his feet. There was no mistaking it. This could have only come from one specific person. One person who had access to a tape of all of Will’s favorite songs. He wasn’t sure how he managed to pull it off, but there was no doubt in his mind who could have possibly orchestrated this. 

Mike was here. 

Against all odds Mike hadn’t just realized he was alive. But he had found him. Likely with the help of El and the rest of the Party as well. 

A smile began to slowly blossom across his cheeks, and he felt, for the first time in a very long time, hope. 

If you say that you are mine

I want you to the end of time

Will began to hum along to the music, his mind already springing into action. 

The lights in his room began to flicker violently. 

A drop of blood pooled across Will’s lip. 

Somewhere off in the distance, an alarm began to wail, nearly drowning out the music, but Will, who knew the song by heart, could still make out the words. 

So you got to let me know

Should I stay or should I go? 

The light above his head suddenly exploded, leaving Will shrouded in a pool of darkness. 

He closed his eyes, willing himself far away from here. He felt himself flicker once, twice, the sound of The Clash ringing in his ears, and he was almost certain he would be able to do it. He could use the powers these monsters had forced upon him to leave this hellhole once and for all. 

But then the music stopped. 

And Will Byers crashed back to the Earth; wings shorn before he could even begin to take flight. 

He was surrounded by broken glass from the shattered lightbulbs, blood gushing from his nostrils, and smothered by the overwhelming silence. 

He could hear footsteps outside his door, along with the wailing of alarms in the distance, but all he could think about was the aching silence. 

He could think of only one reason the music had gone out. 

Mike was in trouble. 

His friends were in trouble. 

He knew what he had to do. 

Standing on shaky legs, he wobbled to the center of the room, nearly collapsing as he tried to settle himself onto the floor amid the broken glass. 

He closed his eyes, focusing on the distant sound of sirens to keep himself grounded, and hoped with everything he had that this would be enough, that this could save his friends. 

And then he began to sing. 

His voice was rough, scratchy and slightly off key, cracking a bit when he hit certain notes, but as he felt the blood dripping from his nose turn into a river, he reached out with his mind and willed his song into being. 

All around him the speakers once again crackled to life, Will’s voice pouring through them, and he hoped his friends could hear it. 

It’s always tease, tease, tease

You’re happy when I’m on my knees

The emergency lights finally roared to life, flooding the room with an eerie red. 

One day is fine and next is black

So if you want me off your back

Will stood from his position on the floor, heedless of the broken glass stabbing at his bare feet as he approached the thick paned one-way glass which he knew led to the observation room just beyond it. He pressed one long fingered hand flecked with blood from his still leaking nose against the glass. Taking in his reflection, the red running rivulets over his lips and chin, the shorn hair, cut short to allow the scientists to monitor his brain waves during testing, which was an even worse haircut than the bowlcuts he sported for most of his formative years, and his hollow, deadened eyes which had seen more than any 16-year-old should ever be expected to. Taking one last look into those dark unrecognizable eyes, he steeled his jaw and with barely a passing thought, shattered the glass. 

Well come on and let me know

Should I stay or should I go? 

Like a man possessed, Will clambered his way through the shattered window, causing one panicked scientist to scream in alarm before huddling in the corner, his clipboard raised over his head, like it would offer him any sort of protection against Will’s rage. 

Should I stay or should I go now? 

Should I stay or should I go now?

He hadn’t really thought about the logistics of his plan, but he realized it was incredibly difficult to sing while simultaneously using psychic powers and doing more exercise than he had performed in all his three years of captivity. Spitting a glob of blood from his mouth, and realizing the room was spinning far more than he’d like, Will knew he was working with a very condensed timeline before he either passed out from sheer exhaustion, or the security guards came to get him under control. He just had to do enough to give his friends an opening. Anything that could give them a chance at escape. 

If I go there will be trouble 

And if I stay there will be double

He blew the door off its hinges, bursting into the hallway, intent on doing the most damage physically possible before he gave out. 

Blood had now fully soaked the collar of his shirt at this point, running rivers down his mouth and chin, and black spots were beginning to appear at the edges of his vision. But Will had no intention of stopping. 

With one massive sweep of his hand, he exploded all the emergency lights in the hallway in a shower of sparks, instantly plunging the lab into inky blackness. 

He could barely see his hand in front of his face. But he had been marched through the halls enough times to know their layout. He was making his way towards the central research areas, where he figured the main scientists, including Brenner would be hiding out. He bet he cut a striking figure, with his eyes alight with anger and the blood streaked across his face, the thought of which curled his lips into a wicked smile. 

So come on and let me kn-

A swift blow smashed into the back of his head, sending Will crumbling to the floor, The Clash still posed on the edge of his lips. 

Chapter Text

Oh, please, leave the vendanna open
Federico Lorca is dead and gone
Bullet holes in the cemetery walls
The black cars of the Guardia Civil
Spanish bombs on the Costa Rica

Spanish Bombs - The Clash

Mike’s plan had been working beautifully. Dustin’s repurposed Cerebro blasting Mike’s ‘Will’s Mix’ cassette loudly across the airwaves. The tinny sound of The Clash poured out from Mike’s Supercomm, and over the sound of his own radio, he thought he could make out the same sound coming from the lab itself, which meant the first step of the plan, the distraction, had worked. Now it was up to the strike team made up of Hopper, Mrs. Byers and El to sneak into the lab and extract El while Nancy, Jonathan and Steve caused yet another distraction by taking out the security checkpoint. 

He wished he and the rest of the Party proper had a more exciting part of the plan, since their only job now was to keep Cerebro running to prevent the lab people from using the airwaves to communicate and to watch for any sign of the many vans which had left for Hawkins proper earlier in the day to track down El returning with backup. 

Dustin and Lucas had already launched into the second phase of their plan, both extracting pairs of binoculars from their bags and settling down at good vantage points on the hill, Dustin’s focus on the lab itself while Lucas monitored the road leading back towards Hawkins. 

For all the planning that they had done, other than their 10 minutes of trekking through the woods, the payoff had been rather anticlimactic, which he guess he should be thankful for, since it was Will’s rescue on the line afterall, so he really shouldn’t complain. He just wished he could’ve been more useful. He wished he could’ve been the one to run in and save Will from capture, Mike’s paladin performing the ultimate harrowing rescue, Will would be so impressed by his heroism he would leap into his arms and then- 

Mike blushed furiously, shaking the thought from his head. They were on a mission, he could think about the confusing knot of feelings burning a hole in his gut every time he so much as thought of Will later. He turned his attention back towards the radio, cold and silent in his hands, an icy feeling suddenly sliding over him. 

“Guys!” He called, pulling Lucas and Dustin’s attention back towards him. 

“What’s wrong?” Lucas asked, brows furrowed as he took in Mike’s pinched expression. 

He held up the radio, waving it in the air wildly, “It’s silent. There’s no music.” 

“Maybe the batteries died?” Dustin chimed in but judging by the dark expression on the small portion of his face visible under his Ghillie suit, the other boy didn’t seem to think it was likely.

“It’s not dead. I replaced the batteries before we left.” Mike spat, stomping over to the large tower of radio equipment. “Are you sure you set Cerebro up right?” 

Dustin shimmied out of the tree he had stationed himself in, drawing up beside Mike, “Of course I set Cerebro up right!" Dustin scowled, likely offended by the slight to his mechanical capabilities before he sudden wheeled around, turning away from Mike entirely. "Listen. It’s off at the lab too.” 

Mike’s eyes blew wide, spinning towards where the lab was still mostly hidden in the trees, stomach sinking as he imagined El and Hopper and Mrs. Byers walking into the lab without the cover of their distraction. 

And Will.

What would happen to Will?

His chest felt tight, at the thought of turning around and going home after everything they had been through to get here, of leaving Will behind trapped in that prison. He thought he heard Lucas calling him distantly, but all he could focus on was Will. Will. 

Suddenly the radio flared back to life, a distorted, crackling voice echoing over the speakers, a voice that Mike could recognize anywhere. Will. 

He hadn’t realized he had spoken the last part aloud, his voice barely a whisper in the quiet forest, but the other two boys were at his side in an instant, their eyes intent on the radio grasped tightly between Mike’s bloodless fingers. 

“It really is Will.” Lucas breathed; mouth open with surprise as he stood staring down at the walkie like it held the secrets of the universe. 

Dustin, never the one to properly read a mood, snorted, “Did you really not believe it till now? You agreed to this whole harebrained scheme, and you weren’t entirely sure Will was even actually alive?” 

Lucas shrugged, unable to tear his gaze away. “I mean we saw his body.” He mumbled, looking sheepish. 

Mike ignored the two of them, well used to his friend’s constant bickering, which apparently still persisted even in the direst of circumstances. Although he wasn’t going to say it out loud, he actually kind of agreed with Lucas. While he had believed wholeheartedly that Will had been alive during the time he had visited Mike as a ghost, he had no idea whether or not Will would still be okay, especially after sending that morse code message to El. Even just hearing Will’s voice, garbled and fuzzy as it was, through the radio’s speakers brought Mike instant relief. He forced himself to relax his fingers, which had tightened around the Supercomm in a vise grip the moment he heard Will’s voice. 

“Do you think he’s trying to escape on his own?” He asked, finally tearing his gaze away from the walkie to look up at his two friends. 

Judging by the sudden flare of hope brimming in his friend’s eyes, it seemed as if they had also come to the same conclusion. Will Byers knew they were coming and was set to sow as much chaos as possible before the rescue squad arrived. 

A smile blossoming across his cheeks Mike couldn’t help but hum along to Will’s voice, Lucas and Dustin joining in quietly, even though they didn’t know much of the words as they returned to their lookout points, the cheerful energy Mike infecting the other two teens. 

Mike was curious whether or not Will would begin to sing the next song on the tracklist, even without the aid of his cassette when a thumping crash echoed through the radio, Will’s voice instantly cutting out. 

Breath caught in his throat, Mike jammed down on the button on the side of the radio, practically screaming into the thing as his heartrate ratcheted up in his chest. “What just happened? Does anyone have eyes in the lab?” 

He was met with only the staticky fuzz of the radio crackling back at him. Not a single voice to be heard. He spoke into the Supercomm again, “Does anyone copy?” 

Silence. 

“Anyone? Zoomer? Mavericks? A-Team?” 

Mike was only met with the booming sound of the radio’s static, and what was probably not the smartest move, Mike cursed loudly and tossed the malfunctioning Supercomm into a nearby bush. 

Well fuck this. 

He wasn’t just going to sit here on his ass while people were in danger. While Will was in danger. Throwing his backpack to the ground, Mike quickly rifled through the contents before extracting a knife nearly the length of his forearm. 

“-ike. Mike what are you doing?” A hand suddenly grabbed hold of his shoulder, and Mike nearly reflexively lashed out with his knife until he recognized who had grabbed him. Lucas . 

He belatedly registered that Lucas and Dustin were eyeing him with concern and wondered how long Lucas had been trying to get his attention for. He looked down at the knife in his hands and realized that his hands were shaking. He wondered how this looked to Dustin and Lucas. Mike screaming into the walkie mere seconds after Will’s voice cut off. Mike throwing the radio to the ground in a fit of anger before aggressively tossing all the items out of his bag, only to come up welding a large knife and judging by the fear on his friends faces, probably looking at least slightly manic. 

He squared his shoulders, jaw set as he faced down his two closest friends. “I’m going after them. I’m not losing Will a second time.” 

A beat of silence stretched out between the group. Lucas’s body barring Mike’s path, and Mike had little doubt the athlete could easily wrestle him to the ground if he decided to try to stop him. Lucas stared down at Mike for a few moments, his dark eyes unreadable before he stepped to the side, clearing the way for Mike. 

Dustin squawked in surprise, but Lucas kicked him in the shin, quieting the other teen. “We won’t try to stop you. What do you need from us?” Dustin vigorously nodded in agreement, realizing that he was outnumbered. 

Some of the tension in Mike’s gut uncoiled, knowing that his friends still had his back, even in this. Thinking on the fly, Mike began to speak quickly, knowing every second he wasted here was another where Will’s fate was entirely up in the air. 

“Well, it looks like the comms are down, so I think we should run with Plan B.” 

Lucas nodded a fierce grin taking over his features as he dropped to the ground to rustle around in the duffle bag before pulling a few objects from the bottom and turning back to the group. 

"I was hoping I would get to use these." Lucas, ever the fireworks nerd, was practically giddy as he held the flare guns aloft, each one wrapped with a different color of ribbon to delineate their different colors: Red for emergency, white for retreat, purple to signal the return of the vans, and green to be used as a distraction if necessary. 

The group had come up with a rudimentary system of using flare guns and flashlights if for some reason the comms stopped working, the only problem was that, according to El, the areas of the lab the children are kept are deep in the basement, meaning anyone inside the building will not be able to see any signals from the teams outside. So, Mike was going to have to go in blind. 

“One of you should stay here and make sure that the vans don’t come back, we can’t go up against that kind of firepower if they bring backup. The other should go to try to find Nancy, Jonathan and Steve, and then go meet up with Max. We’ve lost the element of surprise, so it’s probably better to get the getaway van as close as possible to the entrance, since who knows what kind of shit will be raining down on us if we manage to get Will out.” 

Mike trailed off, unsure of what else to say. Luckily, Lucas and Dustin seemed to take Mike’s plan in stride, a surprising lack of bickering between the pair while they divided the flares between themselves, before finally as one, they turned back to Mike, both teens sporting grave yet determined expressions. 

“Good luck.” Lucas nodded, before sprinting off into the trees, off to find Nancy, Jonathan and Steve. 

Dustin raised one arm to Mike’s shoulder, “Bring Will home.” 

Mike nodded, throat too tight to respond, before he turned away, sprinting into the forest in the opposite direction of Lucas, not daring to look back as he went to face down an unknown enemy with nothing but the clothes on his back and a single knife, all to save his best friend.

He was beginning to think he had maybe gone into this whole thing a little underprepared after he spent the better part of ten minutes tripping over half-buried roots and cursed not asking Dustin to borrow his significantly higher-powered flashlight, but eventually he managed to make his way through the undergrowth until the trees thinned and the lab stood on full display in blindingly bright floodlights. He silently prayed to every god he could possibly think of that El and the adults had already come this way, since he had come up with absolutely zero ideas on the hike over on how to infiltrate the lab if the place was swarming with guards. Luckily, as he crept along the tree line, he was able to spot more than a few bodies slumped over on the ground as he crept closer to the entrance, and he let out a sigh of relief as he scurried closer, no longer having to hide his movements. As he passed a cluster of guards all collapsed to the ground in a haphazard semi-circle around the front entrance to the lab, he briefly pondered whether or not the guards were even alive, but in the end, decided he didn’t really want to know the answer to that question, and carefully stepped around the hopefully just unconscious bodies and made his way inside. 

If he thought the slew of bodies outside the lab was too much, the inside was much, much worse. With the brightly lit white walls splattered with streaks of red, it was easy to tell that these people weren’t unconscious, they were dead. 

It seemed that El wasn’t alone in her rampage. While he encountered some bodies with necks and limbs twisted gruesomely in the wrong direction, and even one unfortunate scientist who seemed to have roughly half his skull attached to the ceiling, there was also an equal number of scientists, guards, and random other employees who were riddled with gunshot wounds and left to bleed out against the stark white tile floor, likely from Hopper and Mrs. Byers set on exacting vengeance for both El and Will. 

He tried to avoid looking at the slumped and bleeding bodies as much as possible, knowing that the sight would be enough to give him nightmares for months, but he was unable to avoid all the pools of blood, his converse leaving red imprints on the floor in his wake. He hoped El, Hopper and Mrs. Byers had managed to take down all the guards, since Mike was sure as hell leaving behind a trail that led directly to him. 

Once again, he was hit with the thought that this entire thing was a terrible idea, and he had absolutely no plan. But the thought of turning back while Will’s life was potentially at stake was enough to spurn him forward. 

As he walked deeper into the bowels of the building, he felt a chill begin to creep up his spine and felt the unnerving feeling of being watched. He kept looking over his shoulder, trying to gauge whether or not someone was following him, but every time he glanced back, he was only met with his own bloody footprints. 

So, unless he was being followed by someone who couldn’t leave footprints, which, knowing what the lab had done to both Will and El, probably wasn’t outside the realm of possibility, Mike forced himself to put his logical side forward and hope there wasn’t more superpowered children at play, so he figured he was likely alone. 

Eventually he made his way to an elevator, large and imposing at the edge of the hall. Judging by the much thicker cluster of bodies, which looked like they had been running from the elevator when they had been attacked, this was likely the entrance to the lab where the real experiments were run. 

With shaking fingers, Mike used the edge of his shirt to push the elevator call button, not wanting to touch the gore splattered across the wall. Nothing happened. 

He pressed the button again, this time forgetting to use his shirt and smearing blood across his hand in his haste. Still the elevator remained silent. Scowling with annoyance, Mike scanned the hall for any sort of clue when he caught sight of it. 

A badge scanner. 

It had been covered by what he presumed to be brain matter from a scientist now missing the majority of his frontal cortex, likely by way of Mrs. Byers’ shotgun, but he just barely managed to make out the device jutting slightly from the wall underneath all the blood. 

Swallowing back the bile that had crept into his throat, Mike crept forward, weaving among the bodies until he reached the man slumped in front of the scanner. Apologizing silently, he reached down and unclipped the man’s badge from the front of his lab coat, refusing to look at the picture and name written there, knowing it would make the man’s death just a little too real, before quickly swiping the card and backtracking to the elevator call button, which was now lit up a brilliant white at odds with the bloody carnage around him. 

Slipping the badge into his pocket, unsure if he would need it later, he nervously bounced from foot to foot, waiting for the elevator to arrive, the oppressive feeling of being watched only increasing. The chill ghosting over his skin caused the hair on the back of his neck to stand on end, and Mike’s arms were covered in goosebumps. He supressed the instinctual urge to shiver.

Eventually, after what felt like ages, the elevator finally arrived, and Mike tried to put on a brave face as he stepped inside, ready to descend into the unknown that awaited him below. The elevator shuddered and creaked and was frankly taking longer that would be expected to reach a basement level, but he felt a strange sense of anticipation as he stood in the shaking car, he was close, so close to finding Will he could almost taste it. 

And then the elevator ground to a halt and the doors shuddered open. 

As opposed to the brightly lit corridors from the floors above, the hallway was slightly dingy, the tile a washed-out gray that he supposed used to be white, and a few of the lights overhead flickered ominously. But neither of those things were what caught Mike’s attention.

The hallway was completely empty. 

The lab upstairs had been littered with bodies from El and the adults rampage, but down here, the hallway looked as if the group had never made it this far. He wasn’t sure if it meant all the lab personnel had been taken out upstairs, or if the people down here were just better at hiding out from the superpowered threat El posed. 

As he took in the eerie quietness surrounding him, he had a sinking suspicion it was likely the latter.

Pulling the knife from his pocket he held it in front of him with shaking fingers, scanning the hall as he cautiously made his way forward. When El had given them the rundown of the lab’s layout, she hadn’t been able to pinpoint where Will would be located other than the fact that he would likely be in the basement. As Mike crept down the hall, he noticed an array of identical steel doors lining the hallway, small plaques mounted off to the side. 

Curious, Mike prowled closer and examined the small signs as he passed. If he expected the signs to read something obvious like ‘Will’s Room’ he was sorely disappointed, instead he caught sight of plaques reading things like ‘Sensory Deprivation Tank’ and ‘Interrogation Room B’. Out of curiosity, he kicked open a door reading ‘Operating Theater’ and found a large room looking out over what looked to be a surgical suite. The surgery room was full of high-tech looking machines, but what stood out was the large metal table, complete with straps large enough to secure a person, located front and center. 

Mike hastily backed out of the room, feeling nauseous. Had Will ever been strapped to that table while scientists looked on dispassionately? Had he been forced to endure doctors slicing him open, or pumping him full of drugs, while he screamed for help? He could feel his breath ratcheting up in his ears as he imagined young, 12-year-old Will crying out for his mom while scientists strapped him to the metal table, their eyes clinical and cold. Will screaming for help, screaming for Jonathan, for Mike, for anyone to-

A sudden rush of icy cold in his veins had Mike instantly on alert, panicked thoughts forgotten. His gaze whipped about searching for the source of the strange feeling when he felt it again. 

Like a cool breeze, a feeling of intense cold worked its way up his body. It started on his shoulder, oppressive and heavy, before slowly sliding down both arms at once, leaving a trail of goosebumps in its wake. Eventually the feeling settled into his hands, his palms and fingertips icy cold.

‘Mike’  

A voice seemed to echo in his mind, causing Mike to jump in surprise, the cold abruptly vanishing. 

“Who’s there?” He called out, his voice cracking slightly at the end. 

‘Mike’ 

The cold suddenly wrapped around his wrists like a vice, and Mike made to pull away when the cold instantly switched to a strange searing heat, feeling alive . Feeling familiar. Feeling like… feeling like…

Like fingers.

Mike gasped, his gaze zeroing in on his wrists, and the warmth that encapsulated them. He raised his eyes slowly, to about the position a similarly sized teenage boy’s face would be. 

“Will?” Mike rasped, his voice barely a whisper. 

The strange pressure around his wrists increased for a moment before releasing. 

Mike barely stifled a cry of relief. His mouth twitching up into a small grin. It was Will. 

He wasn’t sure how the other boy was doing it, since there was absolutely no music playing, but he wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth. 

“Can you take me to where El and your mom are?” Mike asked, keeping his voice low. 

Two faint pulses on his wrist. 

He remembered their signals from when he first discovered Will and they had to use the lights to communicate. One for yes, two for no. He scowled slightly at the negative response, and hoped that El, Hopper and Mrs. Byers weren’t in too much danger. Knowing even if the group was in trouble there was likely little Mike and his solitary Bowie knife and no combat experience could do to help, he decided to switch tactics. 

“Well then can you take me to you?” 

Instead of responding, a sharp tug pulled him into motion, and Mike nearly tripped over his own feet as he stumbled along behind invisible Will. 

“Hey, be careful! I’ve got a knife you know. What if I had fallen on it and bled out on the floor, felled not by an evil scientist, but by my own clumsiness?” Mike joshed, waving his long knife in the air as proof. 

A pattern of pulses along his wrist answered him. Luckily, all of Mike’s earlier practice talking to Will a few days prior allowed him to understand his message instantly. 

S-O-R-R-Y

Mike shook his head, a smile firmly planted on his face. “I’m just kidding. You’re too easy to tease. Now let’s go, I’ve got a best friend to save.”  

And he swore he could hear the faint echoes of Will’s laugh trailing along behind him as he took off down the hallway. 

The further in he got into the bottom floor of the lab the eerier things became. Rainbows painted on the wall clashed with the cold, depersonalized metal doors placed equidistant from each other. 

He was mostly focused on the warm tug on his wrist from Will guiding the way, but as he approached this area, the warmth in his hands fluttered slightly, flickering between biting cold and near scalding hot. 

“Will?” He questioned, eyes roving about the hallway curiously. 

The tugging at his wrist grew more frantic, as if Will was hastily trying to drag him away, but Will was weak in this form, and invisible tugs barely had the strength to pull him forward. As they passed door after identical door, he caught sight of the nameplates embedded in the tile beside each one.  

Instead of room names, like he had witnessed earlier, it seemed this time the rooms were just labeled with numbers. He passed 002, 003, and 004 without a second thought. Some of the labels looked old, yellowed with age and dusty, while others looked slightly newer. He was trying to determine the pattern of the labels when he came across a number that looked startlingly familiar, instantly freezing in place, the warm grip on his hand sliding off as Will continued forward, unaware of Mike’s sudden stall in the hallway. 

011

Robotically, Mike stepped up towards the door, his fingers tracing the numbers identical to the tattoo on El’s forearm. With shaking hands, he reached towards the handle, moving as if guided by an unseen force. 

Inside was a white tiled room with a single bed pressed up against the wall. There were still a few pictures on the wall, drawn with a childlike scrawl. 

Rainbows like the ones decorating the hallway. A little girl holding hands with a stick figure, Papa written underneath with large shaky letters. 

This was El’s childhood. No wonder she had been nearly mute when they had first met. Her entire childhood revolved around experiments and this tiny room. He ached for the childhood El had lost because of these sick, fucked up people, anger burning him up inside. 

He made to take a step inside when he was hit wave of cold, like a bucket of water had been dumped over his head. He wheeled around, his vision hovering where he thought Will would roughly be. 

“You’re right. I shouldn’t snoop. Let’s keep going.” He sighed, resigned, knowing that every second counted in their quest to rescue Will. He didn’t have time to dig up El’s past. 

Mike continued down the corridor, traveling only a few doors down when the monotony of the hallway was suddenly broken. 

Instead of depressing overhead lights, this section of the hall was shrouded in darkness. Fumbling in his bag to pull out his flashlight, he hastily clicked it on, sweeping the beam around himself quickly, wanting to ensure nothing was hiding in the oppressive blackness. He was met with a surprising lack of bodies given the amount of glass and blood littering the floor. But long reddish streaks leading further into the darkness indicated that someone had likely been dragged through the mess. 

“Did El come by here?” 

Two short pulses on his wrist. Mike frowned, following the trail of blood backward to its source. 

“If it wasn’t El then…” His voice trailed off into silence. 

In front of him was a bowed in door, warped completely off its hinges. Inside were two scientists dead on the floor, their crumpled bodies indicating they had likely been trying to flee whatever caused the explosion. 

Creeping inside further, he saw an observation window with a pattern of destruction similar to that of the door. Glancing into the broken pane, he saw a small room, not unlike El’s own, sparsely decorated with just a single bed and a small cassette player sitting on the metal nightstand. The ground was sprinkled with jagged pieces of glass and more than a few drops of blood. 

Dragging his attention away from the carnage inside the room, he quickly exited the observation room and walked to the next door down, the door to the room itself. Shining his flashlight, he caught sight of the neatly printed numbers on the plaque.

015

“Will?” He called into the darkness, his voice shaky. He hadn’t realized that the cold/hot grasp on his wrist had vanished, and for a moment he feared he had been abandoned. That he was utterly alone. 

A short brush of ice along his forearm. Soft, hesitant. 

“Will, was there someone else in the lab with you or was this… Was this…” He couldn’t seem to get the words out, his throat closing up at the sight of the impersonal 015 written on the door. He had known Will had been an experiment here, much like El. But seeing legitimate proof of it of only made everything suddenly seem very real. 

Was this you?

Will seemed to understand what he was trying to say though, a quick tap on the back of his hand dragging Mike back to the present. 

“Oh Will. I’m sorry.” Mike felt tears pricking at the corner of his eyes as he fixated on that stupid number. 015. The number the lab had reduced Will Byers to. As if a single number could encapsulate the boy he had known since Kindergarten. The boy who liked to doodle in the margins of his math homework, who always bit his lip when he lied, but still tried anyways, the boy whose most prized possession was a mixtape his brother had made him for his birthday. The boy who was Mike’s best friend, the boy that Mike loved. 

His brain hitched slightly at the abrupt thought, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized it was true. 

He loved Will. 

And while he was certain, looking back, he loved the Will from before, his childhood best friend. But he also loved the Will he knew now. The Will who he stayed up all night talking to in morse code. The Will who made fun of his Depeche Mode albums, but still appeared corporeal when they were playing, which meant despite his teasing, he had liked them too. The Will who held him like he was all he ever wanted, who kissed him like he might never have the chance to again. 

He was in love with each and every version of Will. 

“Will, when we get out of this, I’ve got something I want to tell you.” 

A warm feeling settled over the tops of his arms, like an arm being tossed across his shoulders. He grinned widely, turning away from the darkened room which held some of Will’s past, but none of his future.  

“Okay Byers, now how about we get you the hell out of here!” 

The slight uptick of mood from Mike’s sudden romantic revelation was quickly extinguished the deeper they continued. The warmth of Will’s phantom touch was now few and far between, now the ghostly fingers wrapped around his wrist were bitingly cold and near painful. But for Will, he would endure it. 

Will took him down identical hallways and through once locked doors, now dead and left open from the lack of electricity in this part of the lab. He held his knife steady in one hand but grew increasingly worried that his weapon of choice was severely lacking. The pair continued on in silence. Mike long since extinguishing his flashlight and was traveling blind, guided by Will’s touch alone. 

Eventually, Mike was jerked to a halt, Will’s grip on his wrist growing tight as he quickly tapped out a message. 

C-L-O-S-E

Mike froze in place, straining to make out anything in the near blackness. But could barely see anything a few inches in front of his face, let alone what could be hidden in the long, dark hallway. Eventually, after a few minutes of waiting, pressed up against the wall like a cartoon criminal, a beam appeared at the end of the hall. 

A flashlight!

He watched aptly as the beam drew closer before suddenly turning. A bright light briefly lit the doorway as the person opened a door, silhouetting the man, and a pair of armed guards standing outside the door for a moment before he stepped inside. 

Mike furrowed his brow once the man disappeared from view. Unlike all the other members of the lab he had seen thus far, victims of El, Hopper, Mrs. Byers and even Will, the man was not dressed in a pristine white lab coat. Instead, he wore an impeccably tailored gray suit. 

The man didn’t even seem stressed that El, a superhuman they created, was loose in the lab hell-bent on destroying them all. 

He looked over his shoulder, in a rough approximation of where he thought Will might be and whispered quietly. “Do you know who that is?” 

A feverish tapping against his forearm sent chills down his spine, which had very little to do with Will’s frozen touch and everything to do with the word he spelled out. 

B-R-E-N-N-E-R

The man just casually strolling about the lab, looking completely unruffled over the fact that a significant number of the lab employees were currently smeared across the walls upstairs, was the mastermind behind this entire operation. El’s Papa, the man who had been searching endlessly for his superpowered experiment for three and a half years. The reason why El, and now Will had been unable to have normal childhoods. 

Will’s fingers burned like ice against the inside of his arm, but he barely felt it, all Mike could feel was a boiling hatred burning up from his gut. Clenching his fingers tightly around his knife, Mike saw red, taking one deliberate step forward and then another. 

He was going to kill Brenner.

He was going to absolutely destroy the man who had stolen the childhood of two people he was closest to. Who had made him believe that his best friend in the entire world was dead for over three years. He had watched the police drag Will’s body from the quarry lake, a sight that had left him with chronic nightmares which tore him from sleep screaming and panting. This man was some kind of twisted sadistic fuck who deserved to be ripped limb for limb from what he’d done. 

Will had been number 015, meaning there had been at least 14 other children stolen from their homes just so a single man could live out his dream of creating superhumans, no matter what the cost. 

He wished he had El’s powers just for a moment, so that he could force his way into the guarded room, consequences be damned, and show every person inside just how hatred he harbored towards them for their various misdeeds. 

He took another step forward. He wasn’t thinking straight anymore, his entire mind consumed with thoughts of revenge and Will, Will, Will . 

He could no longer feel Will’s cool touch against his arm, his vision tunneling until his only focus was that door Brenner had gone through hidden in the darkness. 

He took a step. 

And he fell into blackness. 

Unlike unlit hallway, this darkness was different. Mike couldn’t perceive any walls or doors or ceiling overhead, and his feet felt as if he was standing in a couple inches of dark water. The water rippled slightly around his scuffed converse, the only spot of color in the inky blackness. His eyes widened.

He could see himself. 

From his dirty jeans, ripped slightly in the knee where he fell trekking through the woods what seemed like a lifetime ago, to the dirt caked underneath his fingernails, and every single freckle dotted up and down his arms. 

“This is just like El’s mind void.” 

A laugh echoed out behind him, “Actually, it’s more like Will’s mind void.” 

Mike spun around in surprise, his lips tilting up instinctively. Standing just a few feet away, perfectly illuminated as a spot of brightness in the black void, was Will. 

As excited as he was to see his best friend, alive and in the flesh, or as in the flesh someone could be in a mind void, Will looked decidedly worse than the last time he saw him. He was once again stuffed into a hospital gown, this one torn and bloodied. The portion of his arms and legs not hidden by boxy hospital garb were covered in a mess of scratches and darkening bruises. His eyes travelling up to his best friend’s face, his breath hitched in his chest, Will’s eyes were sunken in, deep purple crescents pressed underneath irises of an achingly familiar brown-green-hazel, and a large bloody wound oozing sluggishly from a spot over his left ear, leaving a crusty dried patch of rust red across his neck and down onto his collar, mirroring the twin spots of dried blood under Will’s nose. 

He felt himself move forward, hand outstretched, hesitant, as if by touching Will this whole illusion would shatter. Will watched his approach, eyes wary, but made no move to pull away. Mike’s fingers brushed his cheek, his thumb drawing across one jutting cheekbone, shocked by the utter warmth of Will, like he was really there, really alive. Will let out a shuddering breath, leaning into the touch slightly. 

“Will.” The boy’s name fell from his lips like a prayer, and Mike had to fight the urge to sweep the other teen into a crushing hug, pulling him into his chest and never letting go. 

“Mike.” Will whispered back, equally as reverent. 

The two stood, taking each other in for a moment, before the severity of the situation once again set in. Will pulled away first, drawing away from Mike’s touch and averting his gaze. Mike instantly mourned the loss of his friend’s warmth. 

“So, this seems new.” Mike joked, sweeping his hand around the dark space in an attempt to ease the tense mood. 

“I-I think it is. I’ve never done this before. But somehow, I just knew how to do it.” 

“So is time frozen in the real world, or am I just in some weird trance right now and completely vulnerable in the hallway?” 

Will frowned, his gaze going distant. “I’m not sure. So, we should probably make this quick.” His eyes refocused, meeting Mike’s with a purpose. “Do you trust me?” 

“I mean, yeah. But what's this about?” Mike waffled, taking in the tense line of Will’s shoulders, and wishing more than anything that he could smooth them out. 

Will’s eyes flashed, the other boy biting at his lip nervously, a habit Mike hadn’t seen from the other teen since they were 12. 

He reached forward instinctively, stilling Will’s fingers, which had begun to pick anxiously at his cuticles. He smiled encouragingly at the other boy, “Hey, it’s okay if you can’t tell me. I trust you.” Mike squeezed Will’s hand in what he hoped was an encouraging manner. 

“It’s not that I don’t want to tell you. It’s more like I can’t.” Will expression morphed into a confused grimace. “For some reason I’ve just felt this pull. Like it wants me to do this, and if I do everything will work itself out. But I don’t want to hurt you. Not again.” Tears began to pool at the edges of Will’s eyes, and Mike thought it was totally unfair that Will could still look so beautiful even when bloody and disheveled and on the verge of tears. 

He released one of Will’s hands, reaching up to catch a tear that spilled from Will’s eye. “Hey, I trust you, remember. I know you would never do anything to hurt me.” 

Will sniffed, looking Mike up and down like he was certain he would suddenly change his mind. “You’re sure? I’m not entirely sure what it’ll do. We could both end up blown to bits for all I know!” Will let out a strangled laugh, teetering just on the edge of hysterical. 

Mike shushed the other boy, pulling Will to him by one palm on the back of his neck and pressing his forehead firmly to Will’s. “And maybe I’m crazy for going along with this half-baked plan. But at least we’re going crazy together.” 

Mike knew the moment his argument had won, the tension leaching from Will’s shoulders as his friend went boneless in his arms. Mike allowed himself a few precious moments to stroke Will’s back, the knobs of his spine noticeable through the thin hospital gown. Will had carried everything by himself since 1983, if he could do this one thing for Will, to help shoulder some of the burden his best friend was facing, he would do it, no matter the consequences. 

He pulled back gripping Will by the shoulders, shooting the other boy a crooked smile, which he hoped looked more confident than he felt. “So, are we doing this or what?” 

Will smiled back wanly. “You’ve always been so goddamn stubborn.” 

“What I lack in muscles I make up for in pure, physical stubbornness. It gives me the strength of 1000 men!” Mike puffed up his chest with a smirk, fairly certain he looked absolutely ridiculous, covered in dirt and grime and probably a bit of blood as well. But this whole situation was kinda ridiculous if you really thought about it, with ghosts and evil labs and superpowered teenagers, it sounded like something straight out of a comic book. 

Will straightened, warm laughter bubbling up from his chest, Mike’s arms sliding off him as he chuckled. “If anything happens it’s your funeral.”  

“Well I already went to yours, so I guess it’s probably my turn.” 

Will’s smile instantly dropped, the humor draining from his expression and Mike immediately regretted his words. 

Will shook himself, his face going eerily blank as he took a step away from Mike and looked the other teen directly in the eye. “Let’s do this.” 

Mike bridged the gap, regaining the space Will put between them. “I’m ready.” He looked deep into Will’s eyes, urging the other boy to look at him, really look at him. Will’s gaze looked uncertain, but Mike trudged on, staring unflinchingly back at the boy who started it all. 

He put every emotion he had, every pleasant memory of Will, starting from that first offered hand way back in Kindergarten, stretching to just a few days prior when Mike and Will were pressed against each other in his room, arguing over his cassette collection, he put all his feelings, all his love into his next words. 

“I trust you.” And to him, it sounded an awful lot like I love you.

Will looked torn open, his eyes blown wide as he stared back at him. The other teen raised one pale hand, fingers shaking and placed it on Mike’s chest directly over his heart. 

Only it didn’t stop when it met skin. Instead, Mike’s chest grew warm, and Will’s hand reached inside of him, sending tingles up and down Mike’s entire body, radiating out from that single point of contact. Will’s eyes glowed ethereally, his whole body seeming to shine with an internal light as he pressed himself further into Mike’s chest, his hand disappearing up to his wrist. 

He swore he could feel Will’s fingers press past his ribs to wrap themselves around his heart, the boy capable of crushing the organ without a passing thought. But Mike’s heart beat at a steady pace, unwavering, unafraid, as he gazed back at Will. The person he trusted more than anyone else in the entire world. When Will’s fingers slotted into place, gently enclosing his softly beating heart, Mike took one look at the person across from him, the boy he loved, and gave himself over to him entirely. 

And then they awoke. 

Chapter Text

You say I'm a dreamer, we're two of a kind

Both of us searching for some perfect world we know we'll never find

So perhaps I should leave here

Yeah, yeah, and go far away

But you know that there's nowhere that I'd rather be than with you here today

Hold Me Now - Thompson Twins

When he opened his eyes, Mike felt weird, oddly floaty, not completely dissimilar to the feeling of submerging himself at the Hawkins pool, and all the voices suddenly become distorted and muffled, almost as if he was sitting somewhere outside of his own body.

Everything still looked the same as before he entered Will’s mind void. The dingy tiles, the guards at the end of the hall, the oppressive darkness. But for some reason he felt disconnected from it, a layer of translucent fabric drawn over the entire scene. Like he wasn’t really there. 

‘Don’t freak out Mike.’

He tried to spin around to find the source of the voice, but it felt like he was moving through molasses. As hard as he tried, his body didn’t seem to want to respond, utterly frozen. He tried to turn his head. Nothing . He tried to twitch his fingers, they felt like dead unfeeling blocks at the end of his arms. He could feel himself beginning to panic, his thoughts taking on the buzzing frantic quality they usually did when things began to get a bit too much. He expected to hear his heartbeat thundering in his ears, his breath hitching in his throat, but surprisingly his breathing remained steady, his heart slow and unhurried. 

It scared him even more. 

‘Mike, calm down. It’s me. It’s Will.’ 

It was that voice again. He realized it wasn’t coming from beside him, where he had earlier felt Will’s ghostly touch, but it seemed to be emanating from inside his own head.

‘Will, is that you?’ He tried to speak, but his mouth didn’t move. He felt a bit like an idiot. 

‘Yeah. Its me.’ The voice -Will- responded, and Mike thought he detected a hint of teasing in his tone. 

‘What’s going on?’ This time Mike didn’t try to speak. Instead, he just thought what he wanted to say really hard, and he hoped that whatever weird ghostly thing Will was currently doing allowed the other teen to hear him. 

‘I’m not entirely sure’ Will replied, ‘But I think I’m controlling your body.’ And Mike felt the incredibly odd sensation of his shoulders shrugging without him telling them to. 

‘What, like possession? You just had to get all the cool ghost powers, didn’t you Byers.’ Mike tried to huff out a laugh, but since he didn’t actually seem to have control of his body at the moment, it more felt like a very odd tickling sensation in the back of his head. 

He knew he probably ought to be freaked out, what with the whole possession of it all, but given the week Mike had been having, he seemed to have developed quite a tolerance for getting dragged into pretty odd shit. 

And besides, it was Will. If he trusted anyone to take his body for a test drive, he figured his best friend was probably the best man for the job. 

‘I’m not entirely sure I really understand what happened.’ Mike felt his hand flex into a fist as his arm raised up to in front of his face. ‘Something, maybe instinct, just told me that I needed to touch you. And next thing I know, BOOM! I’m in your body.’ 

‘Well, I trust you. Just don’t break anything.’ Mike thought wryly. ‘I still wanna be able to use it later.’ 

Mike felt a surge of warmth in his chest, a feeling that he doesn’t think was entirely caused by him, and wished he had the ability to smile right now. He wondered how this whole experience felt to Will. Somehow controlling a body that wasn’t his own, stuck with the wrong proportions and a different play style, like playing on the NES with the shitty second controller that didn’t work quite right and always drifted a bit to the left. 

As Will started ‘testing’ out how to use his body, Mike decided to fade into the background, since the uncanniness of feeling his body move without his input was more than a little bit freaky. He was only partially paying attention to Will moving his limbs around, figuring Will didn’t need a backseat driver, and he really didn’t want to find out what the consequences of distracting Will during a possession might be.  

Instead, he decided to devote his mind to other things. At first, he wondered how Lucas and Dustin were doing, and if they managed to meet up with Nancy’s team yet. He hoped his friends hadn’t gotten into any danger, or run into any guards, since he really doubted Lucas’s wrist rocket was going to hold up against whatever automatic weapons the guards were probably packing. He couldn’t help but imagine Lucas staring down an entire contingent of armed guards just moments away from being gunned down and he- 

Instantly Mike cut off that train of thought, not wanting to imagine the worse. So, he decided to focus on brighter things. He allowed his thoughts to drift again, this time to Will. Mike imagined himself saving Will, bursting into the room at the end of the hall, and finding his best friend safe and sound. He could practically picture Will jumping to his feet, a pleasantly shocked expression crossing his features as Mike’s long legs ate up the room in just a couple of steps. Will would open his mouth to speak, to thank Mike, but Mike wouldn’t give him the chance, sweeping the other boy off his feet and crushing Will into a fierce hug. And when he pulls away, Will would offer to repay him for his heroics, and he would lean closer-

‘Mike.’ 

-and closer until their lips were just a hairsbreadth away and then he would- 

‘Mike, you know I can hear your thoughts right now, right?’ 

Will's words instantly startled Mike out of his slightly inappropriate daydream, and was certain if he had control of his body right now, he would certainly be blushing from head to toe. 

“I-er I-uh. Stop spying on me!’ He managed to sputter out, wishing desperately he could hide from Will’s all-seeing presence. 

A tense silence seemed to settle across Mike’s mind like a blanket for a few long, drawn out seconds, until Will’s thoughts broke the awkward air. 

‘I’d like that you know.’ His mental voice quiet, uncertain. ‘When all this is over and done with. I think I’d like that.’ 

Mike felt himself flush hot again, this time though, with something besides embarrassment, and abruptly decided to shove those thoughts into a deep corner to not think about anywhere near where Will might be able to overhear them. Instead, he turned his attention back to the boy in question, in a much more innocent manner this time. 

‘So how come you can hear my thoughts, but I can’t seem to hear yours?’

Mike’s body shrugged again, and it was no less weird than the first time. ‘I dunno. Must be a part of the powers thing.’  

‘Well, you got to see my super-secret thoughts, so now it’s my turn.’ Mike teased, before trying to focus on the faint otherness inside of him from where he felt Will’s voice the strongest. He didn’t have any basis to go on, but he figured it was probably his best bet to figure out what Mike was thinking. 

Mentally he reached out towards it, which was a strange feeling since he couldn’t actually move, but he imagined it must be how rubber bands feel when you stretch them just ever so slightly too far. The moment his mind touched the foreign presence he was instantly hit with a wave of familiarity, the feeling of being utterly surrounded by Will. 

Distantly, he felt his own body shudder involuntarily, Will’s voice letting out a sharp gasp in his own mind. He was shocked by the other intimacy of it. It seemed so personal, so precious, so Will. He wondered distantly if he was touching Will’s soul. 

He leaned into the touch, wanting to drown himself in the other boy’s presence when his mind bumped up against something hard, unyielding. Something that seemed out of the norm with the warmth Will’s soul seemed to be exuding. 

He prodded at it, confused when it seemed to push back against him. 

‘Hey, what are you doing? That feels weird.’ 

He poked at it harder, determined to figure out what was the strange thing polluting Will. 

‘Mike. Mike that hurts. Stop. St-‘ 

The thing pressed back, engulfing Mike, shoving him headfirst into a memory. 

He awoke surrounded by scientists, all peering through a tiny window near the front of the room. He expected the others to notice his presence, but they all seemed too preoccupied with whatever was happening on the other side of the window to notice him. Many seemed to be writing onto clipboards furiously, and a few spoke softly into tape recorders. 

Curious, Mike approached the wall of scientists, wanting to see what was on the other side, reeling back in shock when one of the scientists quickly pulled back from the window and stepped neatly through him, as if he wasn’t really there at all. 

Was this what is was like to be a ghost? Is this how Will felt for the week he had been trapped in Mike’s basement before they learned how to communicate? 

Was he inside Will's memory?

A flurry of movement from the scientists piqued his curiosity. A sudden influx of white lab coats jostling each other to get a better look out the window and into the scene beyond. 

Realizing that he could easily push through the crowd, and no one would be the wiser, Mike easily walked through a few scientists who were completely unaware of his presence, until he was standing at the front of the glass, allowing him to see what all the ruckus was about. 

On the other side was a small room, equipped with only a metal table and a few pieces of medical equipment Mike didn’t know the use of. A tall, white-haired man in a suit instantly drew Mike’s attention, the same man he had seen walking down the lab hallway just a few minutes before. Brenner.  

Mike had to stop himself from flinging himself through the wall and onto the man, knowing that nothing he did here would make any difference. He was just inside a memory after all. Will’s memory.

Mike’s brow furrowed, speaking of Will, where was he. If it was his memory, it stood to reason that he would be here somehow. 

He scanned the room, searching for any sign of his best friend, when a bundle of fabric lying on the table suddenly shifted, and Mike’s eyes grew wide as his head tracked the movement. 

He had nearly missed it, mistaking the mound on the table as just a pile of clothes instead of a human body. But as he looked closer, he instantly recognized the clothes. 

Brown bedraggled flannel covered with an unforgettable red and yellow vest, all soaked through with rain. As Mike peered closer, he spotted a pile of wet, clumpy brown hair plastered to a pale forehead. 

It was Will, on November 6, 1983. The day he had disappeared. 

Mike had to fight to stay still. To not run to his best friend’s side and try to whisk him away from this awful place. The place that would become Will’s prison for the next three and a half years. It was only a memory. There was nothing he could do. 

He felt a lump rise in his throat, as he watched Brenner kneel beside the younger version of Will, his voice soft and gentle. 

“Hello William Byers. Good to see you’re finally awake.” 

Will whimpered, curling himself into an even smaller ball, and Mike had to force himself to remain frozen. 

Dr. Brenner smiled, although it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “So, William, I was wondering if you happened to find a little girl out in the woods. About your height, shaved head. She’s my daughter you see, and she’s horribly sick, and we just want to make sure she gets the care she needs.” 

Mike suppressed a shiver at Dr. Brenner’s words, horrified about the way he was speaking about El. His hands clenched into tight, white-knuckled fists at his side. 

Will shook his head minutely, shivering in his soaked clothes. 

Dr. Brenner’s smile morphed from tepid to ice cold in a heartbeat. “Oh, no no no William, that just won’t do.” The man shrugged before moving in closer to Will, plucking an object from a metal tray sitting nearby. Will’s eyes were wild, frightened, and he was shaking uncontrollably by this point. 

 “If you can’t help us find Eleven. I guess you’ll just have to function as her replacement.” 

And then he injected a needle straight into the other boy’s neck. 

“Will!” Mike wailed, throwing himself up against the glass barrier. But the memory was already fading away, the lab and Dr. Brenner and Will disappearing into insubstantial mist before his eyes.

“Will!” He shrieked again, falling harshly to his knees in the… grass ? He looked up, searching his surroundings, which looked suspiciously like the woods around Hawkins. 

Another young Will, standing stock still in the middle of the woods, a shotgun propped against his shoulder, aimed forward. A taller man standing beside him, a sneer on his face, Lonnie. 

“I-I can’t do it.” Will’s voice quivered, and Mike thought he saw the shimmer of tears on his cheeks. 

Lonnie snarled, whispering harshly in his son’s ear, “Quit your pussy-footing around and fucking shoot.” 

The gun shook in Will’s tiny hands. 

Mike remembered this. Will’s tenth birthday. Lonnie had decided to take him hunting. He hadn’t been there. But he had experienced the aftermath. Picking up the sobbing, cracked pieces of Will Byers and painstakingly gluing them back together. 

A small rabbit hopped into the clearing. It’s brown nose quivering in the air. 

“There’s one. Now shoot.” Lonnie directed, his eyes sparking with excitement.

The shotgun shook wildly in Will’s grasp, but the boy stood frozen, finger hovering over the trigger, and Mike braced himself for what was going to happen next. 

“What the hell are you doing? Fucking shoot!” Lonnie jostled Will, his hands reaching around to cover Will’s on the gun. 

A loud bang echoed across the clearing. And the rabbit fell to the ground, shot clean through the back leg. 

“It’s still breathing!” Will cried out in alarm, all but tossing the gun to the ground as he sprinted forward, eyes so intent on helping the rabbit slowly bleeding out from a shotgun blast to the leg, that he didn’t see the way Lonnie was looming behind him, his expression grim. 

“Will, look out!” Mike cried, despite knowing the younger boy couldn’t hear him. 

The memory dissolved to mist the moment Lonnie’s hand reached out to grip the back of Will’s collar, yanking the boy backwards with a strangled yelp. 

The setting reformed back into the sickeningly familiar dingy off-white tile walls of the lab. And Mike desperately wished he had listened to Will’s warning, his stomach heaving and his palms sweaty as he settled in for yet another incredibly invasive showing of Will’s worst memories. 

This time Will was sitting at a metal table, in what looked to be an interrogation room. Mike spied a mirror on one wall and knew there was a troupe of scientists hiding behind the one-way glass. He scowled, turning his attention back to his friend. 

Will looked older than he had in the last memory. Maybe 13 or 14, but he looked so much worse. His head was shaved, likely to allow for the strange contraption of wires strapped around his head, connecting him to a bank of machines sitting behind him. His brow was covered in a thin sheen of sweat, and his eyes looked hollow, their normal brown-green-hazel faded to a flat, washed-out sheen as he glared at the only spot of brightness in the room. 

An ordinary can of Coke. 

“Crush the can.” Brenner’s unnerving cool voice spoke, causing Will to flinch and look up from the soda can, his expression terrified. Mike longed to comfort his friend, he wished he could reach out and touch, or at the very least wished that he could punch Brenner’s face in. 

Will returned his attention to the can, his eyes crossing he was focusing so hard. A spurt of blood dribbled from one nostril, then the other. Mike gasped as he saw a splotch of blood drip down Will’s pale, too-thin neck. His ears were bleeding too. 

“I-I can’t.” Will’s voice quivered, blood dripping gruesomely down his chin. 

Dr. Brenner sighed but didn’t look surprised. Mike was unsure if the man was even capable of such an emotion. “Shame. Another failure.” 

The older man turned towards the window, speaking to someone on the other side. “Send 015 to the isolation chamber.” 

“Wait no! I-I can do it! Just give me another chance!” Will cried out in alarm, jumping up from the hard metal seat. 

A pair of guards rushed into the room. One wrapped a large arm around Will’s torso while his friend twisted and bucked furiously, trying to pull away from the burly man. The other guard pressed an object to Will’s neck, emitting a sharp buzzing noise as it came into contact with his skin. Will let out a harsh shriek of pain and instantly slumped in the man’s arms, unconscious. 

The pair of guards unceremoniously carried Will out, Mike running into the fog after them. 

The memories seemed to come faster at this point. 

Will strapped to a table, a needle stabbing into his neck as the boy writhed in pain, screaming his voice hoarse. 

Will huddled on the floor in a small room, arms curled around his knees as he rocked violently, softly singing a song Mike didn’t recognize. 

Will thrashing awake from a nightmare, Mike’s name on his lips.   

Mike had given up trying to witness Will’s memories, and had curled himself on the floor, hands pressed to his ears as he tried to hum ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’ to himself, but every time Will’s shouts of pain or cries of terror reached his ears, he would lose the words and have to start over. 

He just wanted it to be over. 

He just wanted it to be over. 

He just wanted Will to be okay. 

He just wanted Will. 

‘Mike?’ A voice called out to him in alarm, and Mike finally snapped out of his dream haze.  

‘Will, is that you? What happened?’ Mike’s voice was strained, his chest tight as he imagined that same voice screeching in pain over and over and over again. 

A tendril of warmth seemed to reach out to him, wrapping him up in a familiar comfort. And Mike suddenly felt he could breathe easier surrounded by the warmth of Will. 

‘I’m not sure. I just felt this weird sense of foreboding and I couldn’t feel you at all for a few seconds.’ 

Mike’s head was spinning, ‘That was only a few seconds? I thought I was trapped in your memories for hours!’ 

Will stiffened, and Mike could feel the way his joints locked up as Will took in his words. ‘My memories?’ Will physically slapped his cheeks with his palms, and Mike distantly felt the sting in his own face, as Will tried to focus himself. ‘We can talk about your snooping later.’ Will’s thoughts felt morose, dark, and Mike hated that he was the cause.

‘I think they’re getting nervous. I’m pretty sure they’re going to try to move my body. We need to act fast.’ 

Mike hummed in agreement, his mind still buzzing at what he just witnessed, he only was only vaguely aware of Will piloting his body forward, creeping towards the guards hidden in the darkness, with a precision that bordered on uncanny. Almost as if he could actually see the men in the dark. Which given all the other random shit Will had been able to pull, wouldn’t really be all that much of a surprise. 

As Will approached, Mike expected Will to deploy some El level telekinesis, or maybe just use his body to throw a really killer right-hook, he really wasn’t sure the full extent of Will’s powers. Maybe if they manage to make it out of this Mike could actually sit down and make a comprehensive list of Will’s abilities. Instead of attacking either of the men guarding the door, who were still oblivious to Will’s presence, Mike felt a strange stretching sensation, like his consciousness was being pulled like putty, until Will’s presence in his mind faded slightly, and Mike on a whim, tried to move his fingers, his pinky twitching slightly under his intense concentration. 

Will meanwhile, seemed to be doing something to the guards at the door. Blood began dripping from their noses in earnest, and when one guard reached up to touch the liquid with an inquisitive finger his eyes immediately rolled back and he slumped to the floor bonelessly. The other guard followed less than a second later. 

The stretching sensation vanished, Will once again taking full control of Mike’s body, walking him forward and casually stepping over the two men slumped to the floor. They were different than the way bodies looked after El killed them, with bleeding ears and broken necks or spines, instead these two looked almost peaceful, if not for the faint trickles of blood running from their noses. Mike was unsure if they were dead or just unconscious, and he was glad Will ignored them in favor of dramatically kicking open the door, which was frankly, pretty hot. 

Mike barely had a chance to enjoy it though, since a hailstorm of bullets started assaulting them near instantaneously and Will was forced to throw Mike’s body to the floor behind a large metal table. Mike barely had a chance to take in the room before Will had taken cover, but what he saw hadn’t looked good. 

It seemed the remaining scientists had holed themselves up in a large operating room, the implications of why a laboratory would need an operating room disgusted Mike, but that hadn’t been the thing that had set Mike’s teeth on edge. 

In the center of the room, nearly obscured by a human wall of white lab coats, was Will. Or Will’s body at least, strapped to the table, unconscious, a mask resting over his nose and mouth. 

The only reason Mike was certain Will wasn’t dead was plethora of machines strapped to his best friend. The sound of Will’s eerily calm heartbeat beeping through the monitor managed to soothe some of Mike’s tense nerves, whenever he managed to make it out between a lull in the gunfire. 

As Mike cowered behind the table, positive he was seconds away from meeting death, he felt that odd stretching sensation again, like Will was forcibly peeling himself out of Mike’s body. As the stretch pulled taut, Mike regained feeling in his fingers and toes, only to find his hands shaking violently as his control increased. He clenched his hands into fists and focused on that strange tension inside of himself. The thin tendril of Will. 

At first, he thought he was imagining it, the slowing of the gunfire. But after a few tense seconds that dragged on like hours, a loud clang followed by a spray of gunfire hitting the ceiling all but confirmed it. If he strained his ringing ears over the intense sound of gunshots, he could make out dull thuds of bodies hitting the floor, much like how the guards outside had been taken out. 

Eventually, after what seemed like eons, but probably amounted to less than a minute, the gunshots petered out entirely, Mike remained tense and unmoving in his hiding spot. Still aware that Will’s consciousness was still partially in and partially out of his body, which likely meant that there was still somebody in the lab. 

Mike waited, his anxiety mounting as the frantic sound of squeaking feet echoed in the tomb-like silence permeating the room. Mike waited with bated breath until a loud crash echoed in the surrounding silence, which signified Will had downed his target. 

The tightness in his chest began to abate as Will coiled himself back into his body, which surprisingly, set Mike more at ease, comforted by the warm familiarity that swirled around him in a way that was so distinctly Will. 

Mike began to settle, allowing Will to once again take control, when across the lab Will’s heartrate monitor went wild. The alarm wailing shrilly in the large space. 

The tightness in his chest increased, Will being torn between Mike’s body and his own body strapped to the table. Mike’s heart fluttered in a panic, The cacophonous beating of Will’s heart no longer soothing his pinched nerves but setting them alight. 

The band grew tighter. 

And tighter. 

Will’s presence faded until it was just a faint whisper in the back of his mind. ‘Mike.’ A voice fluttered feebly in the background, and Mike fought to hold on, so that Will wouldn’t drift even further away. To a place Mike couldn’t reach him. 

Will was stretched so thin, Mike was able to once again take control of his own body, his breathing ragged, as he leapt to his feet. Vaulting over the metal table that had protected him from a barrage of bullets and sprinted towards his best friend unconscious on the table.

Will lying there so thin and pale, his heartrate plummeting as Mike looked on, stricken. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a small blonde woman who had collapsed on the floor by the bed, a needle clutched tightly in her grasp. 

With a gasp, Mike’s eyes zeroed in on the crook of Will’s elbow, the skin so translucent there that Mike could see the delicate tracing of veins, and a small, nearly invisible droplet of blood. 

And then Will’s heart stopped. 

The band snapped. 

Mike gasped, the feeling of Will fading away hitting him like a bucket of ice water, leaving him cold, bereft, empty. 

In the wake of that dark emptiness an ember caught in Mike’s chest, and his anger roared to life as he looked down at the boy on the table. His best friend. 

He did not travel all this way, get shot at, and nearly die a hundred times over just for Will to keel over and die when they were moments away from victory. 

No, he wasn’t losing his best friend again. 

“You’re not fucking dying on me Byers. Fat fucking chance.” His hissed through gritted teeth, trying to fight back the tears burning at the back of his eyes. 

Instinctively, Mike reached out. He stretched and stretched and stretched his mind, searching for something, anything left of Will still stuck inside of him. 

He wasn’t entirely sure what he was doing, and he didn’t have powers like Will or El. Hell, he only had about 10 minutes of experience with Will taking his body for a joy ride before everything went to shit. But still, he couldn’t just sit there and do nothing. He had to try.

Mike felt his ears pop, and his nose began to burn. 

He pushed harder. Searched deeper inside himself for just a hint of Will. Anything he could use to anchor his best friend, to keep him from fluttering away and leaving him all alone again. 

His mouth filled with the taste of copper as his nose began to bleed in earnest. Dripping down his chin and onto the collar of his dirt-stained black shirt. 

A feeble whisper scratched at the back of his skull, so familiar he almost cried out in joy. He latched on, gripping at the thin strand of Will he had found, reeling it back into himself until it was curled like a tiny fire in his chest. 

Will was safe. He had found him. 

Mike glanced down at the body on the table. 

There was still no heartbeat. 

But he could still feel Will thrumming in his chest like a second heart. Will was still alive, he could feel it. 

So why wasn’t his body coming back? 

Maybe he was thinking about this too hard. So wrapped up in the supernatural of it all that he forgot that Will doesn’t have a body to return to. Will’s body had just died. Overdosed on whatever drug that scientist pumped into his system before she died. 

Mike wasn’t a doctor, but he had been a lifeguard at the Hawkins pool for one horrific summer last year, and now counted it among his blessings that his mother had forced him to get a job last year. Clambering onto the table, Mike straddled Will’s hips. His hands positioning themselves automatically over the other boy’s heart. 

And then he pressed down. 

Mike winced at the sharp crack of Will’s ribs breaking as he bore down on his chest. The dummies they had used in CPR training hadn’t done that, and Mike was certain the sound was going to haunt his memories for years to come. But still Mike soldiered on. 

This was Will’s only chance. 

He had to save Will. 

-2-

-3-

-4-

The coil of Will still burning in his chest seemed to pulse in time with each of Mike’s compressions, as if Will could sense the life Mike was trying to pump into his body. 

-16-

-17-

-18-

Will’s body flopped from the force of Mike’s compressions, his skin still pale and lifeless. His lips slowly fading to blue. 

-27-

-28-

-29-

-30-

Mike paused, his hands still resting on Will’s unbeating chest, worried that what he was doing wasn’t going to work. He wasn’t doing enough. He dragged his hands from Will’s chest, ripping the mask off Will’s face with one hand, and sliding the other around the jut of his jaw, reveling in the smooth skin there for a moment before tilting Will’s chin up, the boy’s lips falling open automatically. 

He swallowed, hesitating for a moment before leaning in and sealing his lips atop his best friend’s, and breathed out.  

Underneath him, he could feel Will’s chest swell at the influx of oxygen. Under other circumstances, the position he was currently in could be considered erotic. Mike all but sitting in Will’s lap, their bodies pressed together tightly from chest to hip. 

But instead, Will’s face was streaked with blood from Mike’s still leaking nose, and Will’s body was suspiciously still beneath him, and Mike’s throat was growing tight at the thought that Will might never wake up from this. That what Mike was doing wouldn’t be enough.  

Mike forced all his thoughts back down and breathed out again. 

The bundle of warmth in his chest that was Will guttered slightly, and Mike’s breath hitched in his chest as he pulled away from Will’s mouth and restarted compressions. 

-1-

-2-

-3-

Will Byers would not die. 

-7-

-8-

Mike’s arms began to tire. 

-13-

-14-

-15-

Will Byers would not die. 

-21-

-22-

-23-

Mike wouldn’t allow it. 

-29-

-30-

Pressing another few breaths into Will’s chest, part of his soul leaving along with every ragged breath he forced into his best friend’s unwilling lungs. He started again. Every passing moment that Will didn’t wake tearing holes into Mike’s already fragile heart. 

He couldn’t lose Will again. 

It would break him entirely. 

The warmth near his heart flickered weakly. 

Mike became so lost in the rhythm of compressions and breaths that he didn’t even notice the tears dripping onto Will’s frozen cheeks every time Mike sealed his lips over his. 

His movements became robotic. Each compression growing weaker and weaker as Mike’s limp noodle arms began to tremble with exhaustion. 

Another two breaths. 

Will’s body remained unresponsive. 

The flame in his chest trembled and went out, ripping a piece of Mike’s heart away along with it. Mike's body grew limp, his head falling onto Will’s chest as the tears leaked from his eyes with abandon. 

Will was gone. 

Will’s chest trembled beneath him. 

He was truly dead. 

“Mike.” A voice whispered hoarsely, cutting through Mike’s grief like a knife. 

Mike’s head snapped up in surprise. A pair of green-brown-hazel eyes blinked back at him, foggy with pain. Will. 

“Is that really you?” Mike breathed, his hand climbing up Will’s chest till it landed over his heart, where it beat steadily under his palm, alive.

“Yeah, it’s me.” 

Mike blinked the tears from his eyes, his eyes drinking in the boy underneath him on the table. Almost unconsciously, one hand came up to cup Will’s pale cheek. 

“You’re beautiful.” He slurred, and he had never thought the statement to be more true than in that moment. Will, wan and exhausted, face streaked with blood and tears from Mike’s attempt at CPR, whose lips seemed caught somewhere between a smile and a grimace; and Mike wanted more than anything to kiss him, to surge forward and press his lips to Will’s, the real Will’s. He leaned forward slightly, his vision narrowing until his only focus was Will lying in front of him, he inched closer and closer, his hands trembling as Will’s eyes grew wide…

And was suddenly hit with a wave of exhaustion so intense he keeled forward and promptly passed out on Will Byers’ chest.

Chapter Text

I'm runnin wild with the one I love, I see no evil
I'm runnin wild with the one-eyed ones, I see no evil
Pull down the future with the one you love, I see no evil

See No Evil - Television

Will looked down at the boy slumped face first onto his chest.

For a moment a spike of terror shot through him at the way Mike’s eyes had rolled back, his limp body pitching forward alarmingly. But as Will took in the gentle puff of Mike’s breath, lazily blowing a stray piece of hair across his face, and the steady thrum of his heart, which he could feel beating in time with his own, he realized Mike had just succumbed to sheer exhaustion. Breaking into a top secret government facility and then getting possessed by the ghost of your childhood best friend would probably do that.

The boy looked so peaceful lying there, despite all the blood and dirt that stained his face. His normally pinched expression smoothed out, two glistening tear tracks cutting through the grime across his cheeks. Will longed to reach out to him, to press the teen to his chest, despite the way it ached with every breath, but his arms felt like they had been weighed down by wet cement, likely a reaction to whatever drugs they had pumped his body with to keep him sedated.

He was only distantly aware of what had happened after he ruthlessly murdered all the scientists and guards in the room. He had seen the woman reach for a needle, jamming it into his body’s forearm and pressing the plunger, but he was too late to stop it.

Nearly instantly, his hold on Mike began to loosen, he barely had the strength to expand himself outwards, directing his consciousness towards the woman and tearing through her mind, ripping her consciousness to shreds and leaving her to fall lifelessly to the floor.

He barely managed to draw himself back into Mike, reaching towards the familiar presence with a single-minded focus.

After that things started to get blurry. He could feel Mike’s panicked heartrate as he began to lose control of the other teen’s body, Mike’s consciousness overwhelming his feeble presence, and sometime in between he was pretty sure his body died. He remembered hearing the caterwauling of the alarms before everything went blissfully blank.

The next bit of memory was startlingly blank, only coming back once Mike was seated on top of him, forcing air into his body’s lungs. He could feel Mike’s presence, coiled around him protectively, digging his proverbial heels in to prevent this last vestige of Will from floating away.

But the longer Mike pounded against Will’s unmoving chest, the more times Mike pressed his lips to his body’s still ones, the harder and harder it was to hold on.

He didn’t want to die, not really, not when he had finally gotten Mike back. But with every compression, he could feel himself being pulled away, despite how hard Mike fought to keep him in place.

Eventually, the pull won, and with a silent sorry to the boy who had stolen his heart since the moment he had reached out his hand ten years ago, Will let go.

And then somehow, he opened his eyes.

Will wasn’t sure how long he lay there, Mike unconscious on his chest. His brain foggy from the drugs and the death and using his powers way too much, his chest positively aching from the way Mike’s body pressed against his likely broken ribs, but Will wouldn’t dare to move him even if he had the strength to do so.

After a significant effort on his part, he had eventually managed to stretch his nearly unresponsive arms up over Mike’s back, cradling the other boy to his chest, holding him close, keeping him safe. As they lay there, Mike’s body slowly warmed Will’s, making him feel as though he was becoming more and more alive with every passing minute.

For a while he thought about shouting for help, hoping that someone might hear him and come to his aid, but he also knew that Brenner was still on the loose, the well-dressed man slipping out the door as Will was taking out the guards earlier. Dr. Brenner would do nearly anything to take him and El alive, and given his inability to even move at the moment, he would be a sitting duck if the man decided to come back, and then Mike would once again be caught in the crossfire.

So instead, he remained silent.

And that was how they found him. A bloodied exhausted mess, surrounded by a daunting number of bodies, clutching desperately to his best friend.

When the door blew open, Will tensed. He tugged Mike even tighter to his chest and wheezed with pain as his body protested the movement. Lolling his head to the side, he fully expected to see Dr. Brenner surrounded by a legion of soldiers or scientists, prepared to once again secret him away for their own personal gain, but instead he was met with a girl.

She had brown wavy hair matted with blood, and deep haunted eyes, and the moment her gaze locked with his, he nearly melted in relief. He knew this girl. She had come to save him. He would finally be free.

A tear leaked from the corner of his eye, as El turned back the way she came and shouted down the hallway. “I found him!”

El stepped forward, her eyes drinking in the slumped bodies on the floor until she turned her attention back to Will. She lifted one curious eyebrow at the way he cradled an unconscious Mike to his chest, but thankfully didn’t comment on their strange position.  

She was nearly above him now. Her teasing expression morphing into one of guilt when Will shifted under her attention, causing him to wince as his broken ribs grated painfully.

“I’m sor-” She started, cut off by the sound of pounding footsteps echoed nearby, growing ever closer until a pair of figures burst into the room, gasping for breath. One was a tall man with a gun strapped to his chest, hovering on the edge between muscular and slightly overweight, he didn’t think he recognized the man, but the other he knew instantly. She was a little older, a bit more worn, the lines around her eyes and mouth deeper than he remembered, and there was more gray in her hair than when he had seen her last, but it was still unexplicably-

“Mom.” His voice cracked at the sight of the waif-like woman, dark clothes covered in blood and dirt and her hair a tangled gory mess.

“Will!” His mom’s voice quivered as she tossed her shotgun to the ground, weaving between downed bodies to rush to his side.

Her dark eyes filled with tears she practically crawled onto the table to scoop him into her arms, inadvertently bringing Mike, still wrapped tightly in Will’s grip, along with him. “Oh, Will. You’re here. You’re okay. I found you.” She babbled, rocking him back and forth in her arms, tears leaking down her face.

Will’s own tears began to flow, years of pain and loneliness seeming to instantly wash away the moment her arms wrapped around him. Even though he was taller, bonier, than he had been the last time his mother had hugged him, he still felt like they fit together perfectly, two pieces of a puzzle.

He felt the prickles of his mother’s tears in his short hair, and when she squeezed him a little tighter in her surprisingly strong grip, he let out a pained gasp, his ribs protesting the sudden movement.

She instantly released him, and Will mourned the sudden loss of the touch he so desperately craved.

“You’re hurt.” His mother realized, gripping Will gently by the shoulders to examine him more closely. He doubted he painted a pretty picture, Mike’s blood smeared across his face, the deep shadows under his eyes, the way his head listed slightly to the side since he still didn’t have the strength to hold himself upright, Mike splayed unconscious in his lap. Her gaze darkened, her mouth creasing into a deep frown as she turned to look at the bodies strewn about the room.

“Did they do this?”

Will shook his head with a small chuckle, which turned into a wheeze as his ribs protested, his mother flinched at the sound. “Nah, funny story really, it was actually Mike that made me look like this.”

His mother’s dour gaze swung around to stare bullets at the boy in Will’s lap, and she looked like she wanted to wring his neck, or possibly set him on fire. Will wrapped his weak arms around him protectively. “He saved my life.”

His mom’s furious expression vanished in an instant. “He d-did?” Her hands reached out to stroke Mike’s messy dark locks, brushing the strands away from his face.

“Mike would never hurt me, Mom. You know that.”

Mike shifted slightly in his sleep, his head butting against Will’s chest and sending a fiery wave of pain down his torso, almost as if to purposefully contradict his words. He hissed in pain, El suddenly appearing at his side to grip at his shoulder.

“You’re in pain.”  

Will managed to smile weakly up at her, adopting his most affected British accent, which was admittedly pretty poor. “Er-, it’s just a flesh wound.”

El stared at him oddly, tipping her head as she blinked down at him. “Flesh… wound?”

Surprisingly, it was the man behind her, the stranger toting an assault rifle, who laughed at his Monty Python reference. El turned back to look at him, as if she expected him to explain the joke. The man just shook his head and chuckled, “Ask any of your friends about it kiddo, they’d be glad to show you what it’s from.”

Will frowned at the man, who he still didn’t know, but who seemed to not only know him, but also El, and the rest of the Party at large. He figured his situation was probably somewhat like Max’s and he had entered the picture sometime after Will had disappeared back in 1983.

The smile slipped from the man’s face as the overhead lights in the room suddenly clicked off, the room immediately aglow with the harsh red of the emergency lights.

“And that’s our cue. We need to get out of here before the military decides to show up and see what’s going on.”

His mother nodded solemnly, retreating from Will’s side to retrieve the gun she had tossed to the floor when she entered the room, before once again gravitating back to Will’s side, looking down at the two boys with concern.

“Uh Hopper. Any chance you can carry two?”

Hopper? Like the Chief of Police? Will glanced over at the man in question and thought he maybe did look a little familiar. How did he get involved in all of this?

Hopper grunted, a frown creasing his stern face. “I don’t think so. And especially not if you’re gonna need me to shoot anything on the way out.”

Suddenly Will felt weightless, his body floating up from the bed, Mike limply dropping off his legs and back onto the table, his still numb arms too slow to catch him.

“I can carry Will.” A soft voice spoke near his ear, and he managed to flop his head to the side to catch sight of El, a thin trickle of blood beginning to form under her left nostril, joining the red crusted above her lip.

“El sweetie, aren’t you tired? I’m sure I can carry him.” His mom started, reaching grab hold of Will’s hand dangling freely beneath him now that he was fully hovering off the table. Which was a decidedly weird feeling.

El just looked his mother up and down for a moment before snorting, already turning towards the door, Will’s floating body being dragged along behind her, like some kind of perverse parade balloon.

“Don’t worry about it Joyce. She knows what she can handle.” Hopper spoke kindly, a note of humor in his voice, before he bent to scoop Mike over his shoulder, the dark-haired teen’s head dangling limply.

“Hey, be careful with him!” Will called, sending as scathing a look as he could manage towards the Chief, which was hard to do while floating.

“Calm down kid, Mike’s in safe hands. Just need my other hand free in case I have to use this.” Hopper patted the gun strapped across his chest.

Will huffed in annoyance, but acquiesced, since there really wasn’t a much better way to attempt to carry Mike and allowed El to casually float him out the door, Hopper and his mother following soon after.

In the hallway, a different one than he and Mike had taken to get here the ground was littered with bodies. The vast majority of them with blood streaming from their eyes and ears, necks bent at an unnatural angle.

Will spared El a glance, the girl striding through the bodies completely unfazed, seemingly having no issue keeping him aloft, even without having to look at him.

Damn her powers were cool.

“D-did you see Dr. Brenner? He escaped when I was trying to take out the other scientists.” Will spoke softly, hoping his mom and Hopper wouldn’t overhear.

El turned, her eyes shadowed, looking far too haunted for a girl her age. “Follow me.”

Will didn’t say anything about the fact that he didn’t have much choice in the matter. She was the one carrying him after all.

El wound her way through twisting hallways, stepping gracefully over bloody and broken corpses before coming to a sudden stop. Her attention suddenly swiveling back to Will.

“Papa.”

She was kind enough to turn his body, so that he got full view of what lie at her feet.

A mangled husk of a man lay before him. His limbs all bent in impossible ways, so much so he resembled a Stretch Armstrong more than an actual person. His jaw was broken, and his eye sockets were caved in, leaving two gaping holes silently screaming in the middle of his face.

Will would have dismissed it as any other body if not the impeccably tailored suit, now ripped and practically soaking in blood, along with his impressive head of white hair, which even in spite of the state of the man’s body, still looked immaculate.

“Papa is dead.” El practically spat, spinning on her heel and retreating back down the hallway, Will being towed in her wake.

Will was silent for a few long moments. The man who Will had viewed as synonymous to the horrors he had witnessed over the past three and a half years, was dead. Crumpled on the floor like he was less than dirt. Dr. Brenner had died, and Will had been none the wiser. He hadn’t even gone out spectacularly, instead just another body dead on the lab floor. Will waited for the relief to flood in now that the man was dead. But all he could manage to muster was muted resignation.

“Thank you.” He managed to croak, hoping El could hear him.

The other girl didn’t turn back, but he saw in the way her shoulders relaxed subtly that she had heard.

And finally, with the weight of Dr. Brenner’s looming presence off his chest, combined the gentle rocking El’s telekinesis provided, Will was unable to fight the tide of fatigue any longer, and felt himself fall into a peaceful, dreamless sleep.

He awoke to the steady beeping of a heartrate monitor.

Will instantly tensed, unable to open his eyes. Wanting to deny the truth for just a moment longer.

Had it all been a dream?

Was he still trapped in the lab?

What ha-

A gentle pressure squeezed his hand, and a soft familiar voice spoke, “Will baby, it’s okay. You’re safe.”

Will practically melted with relief, his eyes instantly flying open to meet his mother’s dark gaze, which was brimming with tears.

He felt his own eyes begin to moisten, as he clutched tightly at the hand in his grasp.

“Is it over?” He whispered, his voice cracked and hoarse from disuse.

His mom nodded before sweeping him into her arms, pressing her face into the crook of his neck, and he felt the dampness of her tears as they began to fall. “Yes, it’s finally over. You can come home.”

Will hugged her back, his arms instantly falling into place like it had been only minutes since the last time they had held each other like this, and not three and a half years.

“I missed you so much.” He cried, tears sliding silently down his face to mingle with his mom’s auburn hair, now streaked with gray.

“Will.” A voice cracked from somewhere over his mom’s shoulder, and Will instantly tensed, until he caught sight of who stood in the doorway, carrying two steaming cups in his shaking hands.

“Jonathan.” Will’s voice broke, extracting one arm from his mother’s tight grip to reach for his brother.

Jonathan, his eyes wide and shining, at least had the foresight to set down his coffee cups before latching onto Will’s arm, the younger boy tugging him into the pile on the bed. An unending puddle of brown hair, tired eyes and bony, freckled limbs. Unable to tell where one Byers’ stopped and another began. The tears flowed in earnest, his mom’s tears drying on his neck, while Jonathan’s soaked his stubbly hair.

And it was wonderful.

Once the hysteria had died down, Will pulled away slightly, trying to find room on a hospital bed definitely not made to fit three people.

He barely got a chance to get comfortable though, before the door to the room burst open, a gaggle of familiar faces flooded into the room.

“Byers!”

“Will!”

Dustin and Lucas raced across the floor, practically shoving his mom and Jonathan to the floor as the pressed their way to Will’s side, their long limbs wrapping around him in a protective cocoon. The two teens speaking loudly over each other.

“I’m so sorry we stopped looking for you.”

“-Should’ve believed Mike when he told us.”

“-about those ghost powers. Do you think-“

“Oi, Dustin give him some space!”

“You’re the one who’s hogging all the-“

“Guys,” Will called, trying to poke his head through mess of arms surrounding him.

“Just wait until-“

“Until what? Say it to my face!”

“Guys!” Will called again louder, stopping the two boys’ bickering in their tracks. “It’s good to be back, y’know.” He smiled, wobbly and wet, but his two friends smiled back nonetheless.

Eventually, after Dustin and Lucas decided that they had been touching each other entirely too much, the two boys extracted themselves from Will, hovering excitedly at his bedside.

Which finally allowed Will to see the other two people who had entered the room along with Lucas and Dustin, which he had nearly completely forgotten in the excitement of seeing his two friends.

Max and El.

The two girls stood awkwardly along the wall, as if unsure if they were allowed to approach. Their eyes warily following Will as he gazed back at them inquisitively.

“I’m not gonna bite you know.” Will teased softly, trying to send them what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

The redheaded girl, Max, took a hesitant step forward, squeezing El’s wrist once before releasing her grip, her posture much more confident as she approached his bedside. Sticking one freckled hand out formally. Will could see that her nails had been chewed down to the quick.

“I’m Max. Max Mayfield. I moved to Hawkins in 1984. Sometimes I’m dating this knucklehead right here.” She jabbed her thumb at Lucas, who smiled sheepishly. “And El is my best friend. These dunderheads never could shut up about you. So, I guess it’s good we finally got to meet.”

Will eyed her hand for a moment, still a little overwhelmed by her sudden introduction. But taking one look at her fierce expression, he realized that she had been keeping his friends company for the past few years while he had been gone. She had been there through the hard times following his death, and for that he couldn’t thank her enough.

He reached forward and grasped her hand in his own.

“If you’ve been giving Mike as much shit these past few years as I’ve seen you do in the past few days, I’m sure we’ll be great friends.” Will smirked, and Max grinned back at him equally as sharp.

“Oh, Wheeler is an absolute douchenozzle. I’m surprised you managed to survive haunting that cesspool of a basement for an entire week.”

Will laughed, warming his chest at the thought, “It certainly was a close thing. Nearly tore my hair out a few times there. But I made it through.”

Max extracted her hand, turning back towards Lucas and Dustin, “If he had been around back in middle school, I would’ve stolen him from you guys in a heartbeat. He’s too good for you.”

Dustin huffed, “Mike would’ve chased you to the ends of the earth for him. You wouldn’t have stood a chance.”

Will, choosing to not read anything into Dustin's words, glanced around the room, actually surprised to not see the dark-haired teen. “Speaking of, where is Mike?”

“Sleeping.” A voice called out from the corner, El.

She looked uncertain, unsure if she was allowed to be here, even after Max’s whole speech. She wouldn’t meet his gaze. Will longed to reach out and tug her into the chaotic mess that was his friend group. Their friend group really, since El had occupied just as long, if not longer than Will himself.

But he knew he couldn’t force it.

In his time spent trying to get El’s attention, Lucas and Max had devolved into a full-on argument, the subject of which, Will wasn’t entirely sure. Dustin occasionally interjecting over the top of the couple.

“Absolutely not! Steve would kill us.”

“But Steve’s cool now, I’m sure he’d totally let us.”

“If we asked, I’m pretty sure he’d just say no.”

“Then let’s not ask!”

“Not ask? Are you crazy? Do you want Steve to ban us from his house forever. Then we’d be stuck using Mike’s basement all the time again.”

Will could barely keep track of what was going on with all the yelling when he caught Jonathan’s eye over Dustin’s head.

His brother nodded, seeming to realize that he was getting overwhelmed, and spoke up over the bickering teens. “Okay everyone, I think Will probably needs to get some rest. Why don’t you guys head over and check on Mike?”

Lucas turned, caught sight of Will’s pale face, and seemed to quickly catch on to what was happening, hastily ushering Max and Dustin towards the door. Max’s face was set into a sour pucker, as though she’d rather do literally anything else besides visit Mike Wheeler in the hospital, but she didn’t argue. Dustin on the other hand, protested loudly,

“He just slept for like 14 straight hours, what does Will need more sleep for.”

Lucas promptly smacked the curly-haired teen on the back of the head before forcefully dragging him out.

El paused in the doorway, sparing one last glance back at Will. He couldn’t bear the sad look in the pinch of her brow, and way her dark brown eyes skittered away from him in a shy way he knew, even from his limited experience with the girl, that she very much wasn’t. He couldn’t let her walk away, bearing all that guilt all by herself.

“El, wait!” He cried, much too loudly for the small space and winced.  

El turned to look back at him, her expression wary, confused.

He tried again, “Can I talk to you?” He cast pointed glanced at his mom and brother, “Alone?”

Jonathan and his mom spared him a strange look but seemed to understand. His brother pausing to ruffle his nearly nonexistent hair before making a quick exit, while his mom squeezed his hand comfortingly before pulling herself from her chair. She gave El a gentle pat on the shoulder, and whispered something to her that Will couldn’t hear before following Jonathan out.

El stood frozen in her position near the door, her shoulders hunched, eyes downcast.

She looked small. Downtrodden. Nothing like the girl who pulled him from the wreckage of the lab, face bloodied as she gazed spitefully down at the mangled corpse of the man who had ruined both their lives.

Will glanced down at his hands pillowed in his lap, suddenly unsure of what to say. Any words he might have had all dried up in his throat.

Unconsciously, his finger went to rub against the small tattoo on the inside of his wrist.

015

Such a small little number to symbolize how his world turned absolutely upside down. All the pain and heartache over the past three and a half years, all boiled down to such a simple mark.

He looked up, and jumped slightly, not expecting El’s burning gaze on him. Her eyes caught on the number on his wrist.

“We’re the same you know.” He started, breaking the silence growing between the pair. El stayed quiet, her eyes never leaving Will’s wrist.

“I know it’s not exactly the same. You grew up in the lab, while I only spent three years there. But we’re the only ones left. We’re the only ones left who know what he did to us.”

El’s eyes darted up at his words, locking onto Will’s. He continued, hoping he was breaking through.

“Everyone else is dead. They got off easy. We have to live like this for the rest of our lives. We have to remember what they did to us. We’re always going to be different. No one will ever really understand. Not Dustin or Lucas or Max or my mom, or even Mike.” His voice cracked, as the meaning of his own words finally hit him.

No one would ever get it.

They wouldn’t know what it was like to be experimented on, day after day. Subjected to near 24-hour surveillance by scientists with stark white lab coats and clipboards. To hold powers other people wouldn’t even be able to comprehend. And knowing that there was always a possibility that their secret might get out, they could be discovered and locked up all over again.

They wouldn’t know how it felt.

But she would.

He barreled on. Determined to get through to her.

“You’re just like me. You dealt with that sadistic fuck for years. It was all you knew. He made the world go round, your Papa.”

Will paused, he could feel his throat growing tight the longer he went on.

“I guess, he was kinda like my Papa too in a way. He treated me about the same as my old man. Fucked me up in all the same ways, just did it with a smile on his face instead of a sneer.” Will laughed wetly.

El’s eyes had grown round, her small mouth turned down slightly at the corners, the only sign that Will’s words were affecting her.

“But if he was your Papa, and my Papa. Well, I guess that sorta makes us siblings now, doesn’t it?” Will was full on crying at this point, tears and snot leaking rather unattractively down his face.

“Sib-lings?” A quiet voice spoke, dragging Will from his stupor.

He looked up, his eyes hazy from the tears, but he thought he saw moisture in El’s eyes too.

“Yeah, you and me. We’re brother and sister now. We’re trauma bonded.”

El laughed, finally pulling herself away from the wall to come to rest at Will’s side. One hand resting gently on the bedspread, twitching, uncertain whether or not to reach out.

“It was my fault-“

“Nope!” Will cut her off quickly, blinking the tears from his eyes as he gazed at her sternly. “You don’t get to apologize. It was not your fault. You were a scared eleven-year-old alone in the woods, trying to escape from a team of psychopaths. Absolutely none of it was your fault.

“But,” El tried to interject, but Will steamrolled over her.

“Nothing to apologize for if I never blamed you.” He paused, reaching out to grasp El’s hand draped limply on the bedspread. “Yeah, it certainly sucked, which you probably already know. But the only people I blame are Dr. Brenner and his fucked-up coalition of scientists. If anything, you helped save me from them.”

Will scooted over on the bed, leaving a gap large enough for another person. “Now get on up here already, sis.”

Needing no other invitation, El clambered rather ungracefully onto the bed, flopping down nearly on top of Will, the bed too small for their long bony limbs to truly sit comfortably, but as El’s head came to rest against his chest, her right arm dangling close next to Will’s, their matching tattoos on full display, while Will dragged his free hand through her brown curls, he realized, for the first time in a long time, he had never felt more at peace.

“You know,” El spoke softly, her voice muffled by the fabric of Will’s hospital gown, “Is this a good time to tell you that Hop has been trying to get your mom to go out with him for literal years?”

Will laughed, a deep from the belly chuckle that shook his entire frame, El’s lighter laughter joining in with his, until they were both nearly crying from it. “Well El, maybe we’ll have a chance to be real siblings after all.”

Eventually El’s breaths slowed, her chest rising and falling rhythmically as she finally fell into sleep. Will still dragging his fingers through her hair, which had now become thoroughly mussed, when his mom and Jonathan finally returned.

His mom’s eyes grew wide at the sight of El curled into Will’s side, but she remained silent, settling herself back into the chair at Will’s bedside and picking up a worn paperback book, flicking it open to where she had last left off.

Will wasn’t sure the last time he had seen his mother read, but just the sight of her, casually flipping through a book, and maybe squinting just a bit too much because she had needing reading glasses even back in 1983, made his heart warm. Seeing his family be normal. Whole again.

There had been a time when he had never thought he’d be able to see his mom and Jonathan again, and here he was, enjoying something as mundane as his mother reading a book.

Jonathan leaned against the wall, his expression smug as his gaze darted between Will and El.

Will rolled his eyes and snorted, “So Jonathan,” Will teased, his eyebrows waggling, “Mike told me that you and Nancy got together.”

Jonathan sputtered, nearly knocking his head against the wall in surprise. His mom glanced up from her book, eyes twinkling.

“Looks like you’re not the only one with a bit of a thing for a Wheeler.” Will smirked, waiting for the moment the other shoe would suddenly drop.

Judging by his mother’s sudden intake of breath, she caught on right away. Which wasn’t much of a surprise. Even when he was twelve and still in the fledging stages of his massive crush on Mike, he was still pretty sure his mom had realized something was up, but she never made Will feel out of place for it.

Jonathan’s mouth opened a closed momentarily, and the next time Will got his hands on some colored pencils or some graphite he was definitely drawing his brother as some sort of giant fish, his shocked expression too hilarious not to memorialize. Will watched as the cogs turned in Jonathan’s head so hard, he could practically see steam coming out of his ears, and he noticed the absolute instant Jonathan finally got it. The confusion clearing from his face, eclipsed by understanding. But his lips still pinched into a twisted frown.

“Mike?!” Jonathan’s voice came out strangled, his brow furrowed, eyes blown wide. “You had any guy in the world to choose from, and you decided to go with Mike?”

Will laughed, jostling El at his side, who blinked at him sleepily, her expression confused, but warm. His mother smiled softly at his bedside, patting his hand, while Jonathan looked two seconds away from striding out of the room to personally find Mike and suffocate him in his sleep with a hospital pillow.

Will smiled.

His family. Together again. Whole.

He was glad to finally be home.

Chapter Text

When I'm with you baby

I go out of my head

And I just can't get enough

And I just can't get enough

All the things you do to me

And everything you said

Just Can’t Get Enough – Depeche Mode

The body on the table was thin, pale, and achingly familiar.

Mike’s fingers were shaking as he touched the back of a too cold hand.

A body clad in a bright red and yellow vest, the sleeves of a dingy flannel poking out underneath. Despite the fact that Mike hadn’t seen that shade of red since he was twelve, he would’ve known it anywhere.

Mike couldn’t bring himself to look up. To look at that too-still face frozen in time forever. To see those bright hazel-brown-green eyes instead dull and sightless. It would make it all too real. Unable to be undone.

Instead, he collapsed, his legs giving out beneath him as his forehead fell limp onto the body’s bony chest. Tears falling soundlessly down his cheeks to darken the red fabric beneath him. And he let the keening of his own heart begin to take over as the sobs took hold.

“Will.”

“Will!”

“Will!”

Mike startled into wakefulness, his body instantly upright and alert, scanning his unfamiliar surroundings while his heart thundered anxiously in his chest.

He didn’t recognize where he was. Unfamiliar beige walls, an unfamiliar bed, he didn’t even recognize the clothes he was wearing.

The subtle beeping drew his attention first, his eyes flitting to the machine sitting at his bedside, steadily monitoring the erratic beating of his own heart.

He was in the hospital.

Why was he in the hospital?

The events of the last several days suddenly came rushing back to him.

Will, scared and bald and bleeding in the reflection of his bathroom mirror.

Will, flashing the lamp in his bedroom in a quick sequence of morse code.

Will, in too-short shorts, lounging on his bed and relentlessly teasing him over his cassette collection.

Will, his lips pressed to Mike’s in a way that lit him up from the inside.

Will, gone.

Will, through the radio, singing in off-key to The Clash.

Will, in Mike’s body, piloting him through the lab’s halls.

Will, his body so achingly still as Mike’s bloody hands slammed against his chest. Fighting to keep him alive.

Will, shuddering under Mike’s palms, his eyes fluttering open to showcase their brown-green-hazel depths.

But then, nothing.

The heartrate monitor began to beep more rapidly, noticing the uptick in Mike’s panicked heartrate.

“Will!” Mike cried in alarm, attempting to wrestle himself out of the sheets.

“He’s fine.” A soft voice spoke from somewhere over his shoulder. He turned slowly, his body relaxing somewhat at the familiar voice.

El sat in a chair by Mike’s head. Her brown eyes warm, a teasing smile tugging at the edges of her lips as she looked him up and down.

“You’re sure he’s okay.”

El nodded, tucking a strand of ribbon in between the pages of the book in her lap and shutting the cover, placing it on Mike’s bedstand before returning her attention to him.

“He had two fractured ribs, a mild concussion, and withdrawal symptoms from…” El frowned slightly worrying her lip with her tongue for a moment as she tried to come up with the right words. “an overdose of L-D-S.”

“LSD?” Mike breathed bewildered. El nodded, her expression grim.

He known the lab had been drugging Will with something. He had seen Will get injected with something from a syringe in real life and in Will’s memories, but he hadn’t known it was fucking LSD.

Fuck, now Mike would never be able to sleep unless he definitely knew Will was okay. He renewed his frantic attempts to escape the bed. He pulled the heartrate monitor from his finger, wincing slightly at the pinch. His finger hovered over the needle in his arm connecting him to the IV line hanging over his head when El spoke again.

“What are you doing?”

Mike froze, fingers wrapped around the IV line, feeling like he had been caught doing something he shouldn’t.

He turned towards her resolutely, putting to use every stubborn bone in his body for this one moment.

“I’m going to see Will.”

El just shot him a deadpan look for a few seconds, but Mike met her gaze head on, not backing down from her dark intense gaze in the slightest. After a few long moments, the brunette broke eye contact with a sigh, admitting defeat, a small frown on her lips.

“Really?”

“Really.” Mike nodded resolutely. Fingers already gripping the needle in his arm ready to yank it out when his movement was suddenly arrested by an invisible hand. Mike unable to so much as twitch his fingertips.

“El!” He whined, fixing her with the angriest glare he could muster while wrapped in a hospital gown and sitting half-prone in bed.

The girl pinched the bridge of her nose and surreptitiously wiped the thin trickle of blood from her lip. “I’m not trying to stop you. But can I… help?”

The pressure holding Mike’s hand in place ceased, and he let his hand fall limply back into his lap, fingers flexing absently.

“Help how?” He questioned, raising a brow, and was met with El’s answering smirk, a mischievous glint he rarely saw in her eye.

Which is how he found himself hobbling down the hallway, halfway supported by El’s telekinetic abilities holding the metal IV pole barely an inch above the ground, which Mike clutched onto like a lifeline.

His legs felt like they could give out at any moment, but he managed to continue propelling himself down the hallway. He would walk till his feet fell off in order to get to Will, to make sure he was okay.

Nearly incoherent mumblings fell from his lips with each step.

“Will.”

“Will.”

“Will.”

The name giving him the strength to haul his weakened limbs forward, but only just.

El trotted dutifully behind, kindly not commenting on the fact Mike probably looked deranged, stumbling down the hallway like a drunkard while muttering under his breath.

She was a good friend like that.

Eventually Mike’s single-minded focus to blunder his way down the hallway like a half-starved zombie was halted when the IV pole he was using as a pseudo-crutch froze in midair. Luckily Mike was moving at approximately negative three miles per hour, so he managed to catch himself before he went tumbling to the floor.

“What was that for?” He hissed, scowling at El, who just smiled sweetly and inclined her head towards one of the identical doors lining the hallway.

“I thought you wanted to see Will?” El replied, her voice even, but her lips twitched in amusement as she took Mike in, an expression he was very familiar with, just not one he expected to see on El’s face. Mike scowled in return.

He really needed find a way to keep Max and El apart, the redhead was definitely corrupting her.

Luckily, not all hope was completely lost for El, since she still helped him to the door, even going so far as to hold the door open for Mike to shuffle in mostly unhindered.

And there, lying on the bed, soundly, and peacefully asleep was Will.

Mike had to force himself not to run to his side, instead focusing his attention on scanning Will for any sign that something was wrong.

Other than the half-moon smudges of purple beneath his closed eyes, and heartrate monitor beeping steadily in the corner, Will really did look completely normal.

Or as normal as one could be after being kept prisoner for three and a half years. Will was still too skinny, and his hair was entirely too short, but it was still Will, whole and perfect and beautiful.

“M-Mike?” A raspy voice called out as Will’s eyes fluttered open, the green-hazel-brown cloudy with both sleep and confusion.

“Will.” The words fell from Mike’s lips reverently, and somehow, not entirely sure how he got there, he was at Will’s bedside, clutching the other teen’s bony fingers in his own. ‘It’s really you.”

The door shut with a soft click, Mike having completely forgotten about El’s presence the moment he had entered the room, but by the time he managed to drag his attention away from Will lying on the bed, he knew she had already gone. Leaving the two of them mercifully alone.

She was a good friend.

A faint pressure squeezed his palm, and Mike’s eyes darted to his and Will’s intertwined fingers, fitting together like they belonged that way.

“You’re really here this time?” Mike spoke without even meaning to, his subconscious blurting the words that had been plaguing him since the moment he had woken up from his nightmare.

“Do I feel real to you?” Will broke the silence, his voice sounding tired but upbeat as he reached forward and brushed a stray strand of unruly dark hair behind Mike’s ear.

Mike felt his face began to heat, and pulled back instinctively, angling his face away in an attempt to hide his blush behind his hair.

Will seemed to misconstrue the gesture though, stiffening and pulling his hand back like it had been burned. His expression painfully neutral, but Mike could see the reflection of hurt in his eyes.

“Er, sorry I didn’t mean-”

He was instantly flooded with guilt; Mike tightened his grasp around Will’s fingers as the other boy tried to pull them away and knelt at Will’s bedside in a way oddly reminiscent of the time Will had kneeled beside his bed to pull him from a nightmare with nothing but a Walkman. That memory felt like it had taken place lifetimes ago, but in reality, it had only been days.

His entire world had been rebuilt and had crumbled only to be rebuilt again in just a matter of days. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to let his stupid brain get in the way of making sure it didn’t fall to pieces again.

He reached forward, slowly, so as not to startle Will, the other boy’s eyes wide, questioning, hoping.

His fingers came into contact with Will’s cheek. “Will.”

Will’s breath hitched in his throat, “Mike.”

“Remember, back in the lab, when I said there was something I wanted to tell you when we got out of this?”

He could feel Will nod again his palm, and Mike leaned forward, his vision nearly completely filled by the nebulous green-brown-hazel of Will’s eyes, only stopping when his lips were but a hairsbreadth away from Will’s.

He could feel his best friend’s breath tickling against his lips as he breathed out, and that, more than anything else, solidified that this was real, and Will was here, and he wasn’t going to let him go ever again.

And suddenly the words couldn’t come out of him fast enough.

“Will, I know that I only had you back for just a couple of days, and maybe I’m moving way too fast…But I think- I think-”

Mike shook his head, trying to clear the sudden nervousness clogging his throat. He wanted to do this right. For Will, who he had left waiting for so long. He wanted to say the words more than anything, but his heart was rabbiting wildly in his chest, and his hands were beginning to sweat in Will’s grasp, and his chest was tight, it felt like it was getting hard to breathe and-

Mike looked up.

Will blinked at him from the bed, his expression warm, expectant. He squeezed his hand, the gentle pressure grounding Mike enough to be able to get the next words out.

“I think I’m falling love with you.”

And then Mike could breathe again. He had finally said it.

Will’s eyes were blown wide, and Mike could feel the way he was quivering beneath his palm, but he pressed on. If he didn’t continue, he’s not sure he’d be able to find the courage again.

“I’m falling for the guy who drew dicks on my bathroom mirror, the guy made fun of my cassette collection but listened to it anyways, the guy who’s self-sacrificing to a fault. The same guy who haunted my basement for the better part of a week…”

Mike could feel that his expression had melted into what was probably a dopey grin, but he didn’t care. Not while Will Byers was sitting in front of him, real and in the flesh, smiling back at him like the sun shined out his ass, and Mike wouldn’t give up that feeling in the world.

He was also, somehow, still talking, and he couldn't seem to stop. 

“I dunno, maybe I was actually kinda a bit in love with you the entire time. The little kid who took my hand on the playground ten years ago. The kid who shared his drawings, his secret hiding spaces, and his favorite cassettes, even if they were horrible. Because this guy is someone knows me better than probably anyone else and I mean he’s literally been inside me…”

Mike’s face flushed as his word choice actually hit him, absolutely mortified than his confession had accidentally turned into an innuendo.

“Wait that came out wrong, I mean-“

Will’s laughter stopped him in his tracks, the bright, warm laughter that filled up Mike’s chest like bubbles, his anxiety instantly vanishing. Will’s hand came up over the top of Mike’s own hand, still pressed to Will’s cheek.

“Mike,” Will’s chuckles had died down somewhat, but his face was still split with a cheery grin, his eyes brimming with affection, “I’ve been head over heels for you since we were like ten.”

It took one second, then two, then three before Mike’s brain seemed to process the words.

“Ten! I didn’t even know what love meant when I was ten!” Mike screeched aghast.

Will smiled, softly, extracting the hand intertwined with Mike’s and pressing it to his cheek. “Neither did I, not really. But I loved you still. It’s always been you, Mike. Only you.”

A thumb swiped across his cheek, wiping away a tear Mike hadn’t even known he had shed. He chuckled wetly, “Oh fuck you Byers, you just had to come and hijack my whole speech and make it a thousand times better.”

Will butted his forehead up against Mike’s in response, “Well, what if I make it up to you?”

Now it was Mike’s turn to stiffen. Frozen in place by the heat of Will’s gaze, the iris nearly completely eclipsed by fathomless black. He swallowed sharply.

“Uh- what did you have in mind?” He stuttered, his brain shutting down around him as he struggled to comprehend the sheer proximity of Will’s face to his.

“This.” Will replied, closing the distance between them, and pressed their lips together.

It should have been awful. With Mike kneeling on the tiled floor, and Will leaning above him on the bed, both of them exhausted and injured. Mike still tethered to the IV stand by a thin needle in his arm, Will’s predicament much of the same.

But somehow, it worked.

They fit together perfectly, or rather imperfectly. Will’s lips slotted seamlessly into Mike’s, and he managed to slide his arm across Mike’s shoulders without snagging their IV lines, tugging him impossibly closer, and only Mike’s latent quick reflexes, which had never existed before now, stopped him from toppling over into Will’s lap, their lips never once breaking contact.

A fluttering warm feeling began to build in his stomach, and Mike longed to press himself even closer, to chase the warmth of Will’s lips, deeper, further. To find a way to crawl inside Will’s chest and make a home there. Which was a feeling he didn’t think he had ever felt before, certainly not when he had kissed El. It was a nice feeling.

Unlike the last time they had kissed, Will seemed determined to take charge of the situation this time, and Mike didn’t mind in the slightest. The brown-haired teen carding his hand through Mike’s tangled bedhead while simultaneously sucking his lower lip between his teeth.

Mike let out a gasp of surprise, surging forward to meet Will’s determination head on. Distantly he could hear the way the Will’s heartrate monitor had begun beeping rapidly, and for one glorious moment Mike allowed himself to revel in the fact that he had made Will’s heart do that. Suddenly overwhelmed with the desire to see Will in his entirety, Mike pulled away slightly, Will letting out an involuntary whine as Mike’s lips retreated.

But it was oh so worth it.

Will’s face was splotched a vibrant crimson, his cheeks aglow with a brilliant blush that traveled across his ears and down the smooth column of his throat, disappearing into the hospital gown where Mike’s eyes couldn’t follow. Will’s hazel-brown-green eyes were dark, hungry, gazing back at Mike with an intensity that made his stomach drop. Will’s lips were still wet from where Mike had kissed him, a thin line of spit leaking down from one corner, and on impulse Mike stood so that he towered over the other boy on the bed, one thin-fingered hand coming up to wipe the thin strand of drool from the corner of his lip before unceremoniously popping the offending finger into his mouth, Will's breath hitching at the sight.

He instantly felt utterly ridiculous, like he was scrubbing ice cream from a little kids face, but Will looked at him like he was seconds away from combusting. Will’s expression morphed quickly from one of shock to something else, his eyes lidded, one hand coming up to gently tug Mike’s finger from where it still rested between his lips, Will bringing the offending appendage up to his own mouth and kissing the damp tip reverently. Mike felt like his stomach was going to fall out of his ass at the sight. He wanted to cry at the sheer beauty of it. Will’s voice interrupted his thoughts, coming out in a gravely rasp.

“Mike… get up here… now.”

All awkwardness immediately forgotten, Mike scrambled to comply, practically flinging himself onto the bed, his lips colliding with Will’s in a flurry of motion, the two boys scrabbling at each other blindly. He felt Will’s hands on his face, his neck, in his hair, fluttering across his ribs in a motion that probably should have tickled but instead just set a burning path across Mike’s body in every location Will’s delicate artist fingers touched, his lips trailing a similar path of heat across Mike’s face and lips and throat.

Mike shifted closer, struggling to not fall off the narrow hospital bed most definitely not made for two teenage boys to be enthusiastically making out in, the upper part of his body rolling on top of Will’s as he pushed the other boy into the mattress.

Will made a noise then, barely noticeable, a whimper, pained. Mike instantly froze, flinging himself off the bed away from the other teen instantly, his brow creased with worry.

“You’re still hurt.”

Will frowned, but didn’t protest Mike’s sudden movement, one hand coming up to rub idly against his own chest. “Yeah, probably not the best idea to do this now.”

Mike winced, glancing down at Will’s chest, which looked normal from what little he could see through the boxy hospital gown, nothing caved in or grotesquely mutilated, he tore his eyes away, unable to stomach looking any longer, even if he couldn’t see anything visibly wrong with the other teen, “I’m sorry. It’s my fault.” He breathed, resolutely avoiding eye contact.

“For what? Saving my life?" Will scoffed, "Mike, I probably would’ve been dead three times over if not for you. I don’t care if you crushed my chest.” Will’s hand darted forward, gripping tightly around Mike’s wrist, forcing him to acknowledge the bedridden teen, his expression determined, “You saved my life. That’s all that matters. The rest will heal.”  

“But I-”

Will silenced him with a stern look, and Mike decided to drop it. Not wanting to drag down their reunion.

The brunet cracked a small smile, trying to distract Mike from his brooding, his kiss-swollen lips tugging up at the edges, as he prodded him in the side, “I don’t even know when my mom and Jonathan will be back, they were just going to go grab breakfast in the cafeteria.”

Mike was instantly alert, wheeling on Will with wide eyes, “You were gonna let us make out on the bed when your mom and brother could’ve walked in at any time?” His voice had risen to an embarrassingly high squeak towards the end, but he barely noticed with how his heartrate once again ratcheted up in his chest at the thought of being busted in on by the rest of the Byers family.

Will huffed with amusement, his expression warm and affectionate as he blinked at Mike sleepily. “Maybe not my best idea. But you were standing right there, and you had that look on your face, and I couldn’t not kiss you.” Will looked away, and Mike could see the faint flush on the tips of his ears as he continued, “I may have gotten a bit carried away in the wake of it all.”

“Yeah, me too.” Mike chuckled in response before a loud, bone-cracking yawn interrupted him.

He swayed slightly on his feet, exhaustion slamming him full in the face.

“Mike.” Will spoke softly, drawing his attention to where the boy had scooted over to the edge of the bed, “Get over here.”

Not needing to be asked a second time, Mike, much more cautiously than before, slid into the bed. Unfortunately, without their collective horniness getting in the way, it was also much more awkward this time around, Mike smashing Will in the collarbone with an elbow and knocking his knee painfully against Will’s as he tried to settle into place, apologizing profusely as he tried to get comfortable on the too small bed.

Eventually they managed to settle into a mostly comfortable position, Will flat on his back to not aggravate his ribs, and Mike curled like one side of a parathesis again his side so they could both fit, his head tucked into the crook of Will’s neck, one arm flung out across the other boy’s waist.

“You good?” He whispered into the skin of Will’s throat, and he could feel the way the teen shivered from the contact.

“Y-yeah.” Will responded, voice strained, “I guess we just sleep now?”

“Yeah, guess so.”

Mike curled himself tighter into Will’s side, all talking now ceased. The only sound breaking the silence was the ever-present beeping of Will’s heartrate monitor and the slow deep breaths of the boy beside him. He let his eyes flutter closed, and sometime between one breath and the next, he was asleep.

He awoke to the sound of voices floating above him, pulling him from his dreamless sleep.

“-look so cute like that.”

“Ew, don’t be gross. They make me wanna gag.”

He felt sleepy, comfortable, a soft warmth pressed against his stomach. His left arm was a bit numb where it was trapped beneath him, but not enough so to make him want to move.

“Lucas, you owe me five bucks.”

“Dude, we made that bet when we were eleven. You’re really trying to cash in right now? And there’s no proof anyways, could be platonic cuddling.”

A sharp snort, “Yeah because you and Dustin snuggle up practically inside each other every time you hang out. Platonic my ass.”

“See, Max gets it!”

“He’s waking up.” That last voice was El, and he knew he had been caught pretending to be asleep while listening in on their conversation.

With a groan, Mike blinked open his eyes, squinting against the harsh light. Once he blinked a few times to get his bearings, Mike realized the flesh-colored expanse directly in front of his eyes was Will’s neck. Mike’s face nestled into the joint of the other boy’s shoulder in an effort to escape the light. One arm was thrown over Will’s stomach, his fingers clutching at the extra fabric of his hospital gown. Will still seemed to still be asleep, if the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest was anything to go by, and Mike began to slowly extract his arm so as not to wake him.

A familiar snicker echoed from behind him, Mike swiveling his head instinctively towards the sound. To his surprise, and slight chagrin, Max, Lucas, Dustin and El all stood just inside the doorway, various expressions ranging from delighted (El), smug (Dustin), pinched annoyance (Lucas) and downright disgust (Max), which he figured had to do more with Mike’s general presence than the fact that he and Will were currently cuddled up on a one-person bed together.

His brain snagged on the last thought.

He was still curled into Will’s side, probably looking thoroughly debauched, lips swollen, hair a bedraggled mess, and judging by the looks on his friend’s faces, it was probably blatantly obvious what the pair of them had gotten up to.

So, Mike, in his infinite wisdom, fell off the bed.

“It’s not what it looks like!” He cried in alarm, once he managed to pry his face off the linoleum.

“Really? Because to me it looks like you just fell on your ass because you’re embarrassed to get caught sleeping in the same bed as your boyfriend?” Max teased, her voice sing-songing at the end, her grin sharp as she gazed down at him from the floor.

Mike scowled, brushing off some non-existence dirt from his hospital gown to avoid looking at her haughty expression while El, the absolutely wonderful friend that she is, helped him to his feet as he tried to think of an appropriate retort.

In the end, he just blurted out the first thing that came to his mind, “He’s not my boyfriend.” And regretted his choice of words immediately when he heard the sharp intake of breath from the bed behind him.

“Wait Will I didn’t mean-” He whirled around, already prepared to do damage control, but instead of looking upset, Will, who was now awake and sitting up, was sporting a shit-eating grin. Mike’s stomach swooped, knowing exactly what that look meant. Certain that the next words out of Will’s mouth would either make him want to kiss the boy senseless or smack him on the back of the head in equal measure.

“Not boyfriends,” Will tsked, his lips curling up in a wicked smirk and Mike knew he was in trouble, “And here I thought I was special.” Will brought a hand to his heart and plastered on a mock hurt expression, he could already hear El and Max beginning to giggle behind him and groaned internally. “Guess you’ll just shove your tongue into anyone’s mouth.”

Mike choked.

A loud guffaw of laughter wheezed out from behind him. “Five. Bucks. Sinclair.”

And Lucas’s answering, “Fuck.”

A tittering of overlapping laughter sounded from behind him as his friends fell into an uproar, and Will’s teasing grin as he smirked at Mike from the bed was almost worth the endless ribbing he was likely to receive from his friends for the next 1000 years.

“Really. That’s how you decided to tell our friends?” Mike huffed, pretending to be put out, but really, he couldn’t help the way his lips twitched in amusement.

Will shrugged, “What can I say. I saw an opportunity, and I took it. Just be glad Jonathan and my mom weren’t here for that. Jonathan may have incinerated you on the spot.”

Mike gulped, audibly, his eyes flicking towards the door just to confirm Jonathan wasn’t about to burst in, out for Mike’s blood.

Will laughed at Mike’s nervousness, “Scared, Wheeler?” A hint of something else hiding in the sound of his voice and shadow of his eyes that reignited the burning sensation in Mike’s gut.

“Maybe a little.” He replied, his eyes going hooded as he inched closer to where Will was propped up on the bed, fully intending to-

A loud cough sounded behind him.

Mike spun around, face heating as he suddenly remembered the audience they still had.

Lucas and Dustin seemed to be intent looking anywhere except for Mike. Apparently, the oxygen saturation monitor was requiring Dustin’s full attention, while Lucas seemed oddly focused on a non-existent stain on his shorts.

Max was still sporting a look of disgust which Mike had more to do with the fact that he’s Mike, than any sappy thing him or Will might have said. While El just looked pleased, her arms crossed in front of her chest as she glanced between Will and Mike.

Mike felt suddenly nervous, despite Will’s joke earlier. He really wasn’t sure how his friends would react to this whole thing. He figured they would be cool about it all, but he really didn’t want this to change anything between the group.

“So, uh-” Mike started, his palms growing sweaty as everyone’s focus narrowed in on him. His throat felt tight as he tried to force out the next words, but he couldn’t manage to get them past his lips. His mouth open and shut uselessly a few times, no sound coming out.

A soft pressure ghosted against his elbow, warm, comforting, Will. Chancing a glance backward, he saw Will, smiling at him openly, nodding his head towards the others, his expression clear.

Mike turned back towards his friends, who were still standing silently, all focus on Mike. He was still nervous, but with Will at his back he felt like he could finally get the words out.

“So, it’s okay? You guys don’t mind?”

The Party just looked at him dumbly for a moment. Lucas and Dustin sharing a look that Mike recognized from all the times he had seen it from them before in all the years he had known them, fond exasperation.

“Dude, pretty sure we all knew you guys were ass over tits for each other before you two even knew it yourselves.” Dustin snorted. Lucas elbowed him harshly in the side causing Dustin’s face to instantly fall.

“Oh shit, they’re two guys.” Dustin whispered to himself, but because it was Dustin, the whole room could still hear it anyways. Dustin continued, louder now, “Sorry, didn’t mean to be insensitive. I meant we all knew you guys were…” Dustin paused, thinking for a moment before snapping his fingers at his epiphany, “head over dick for each other before you two even knew it.” Dustin grinned, apparently very proud of himself.

Mike felt his face heat as he heard Max mutter sarcastically under her breath, “Yep, totally saved it.”

Lucas looked so, so disappointed at Dustin’s choice of words that Mike was actually kind of surprised he didn’t actually face palm. Eventually, after shaking off his embarrassment, the taller teen spoke, “You know that you two are our best friends no matter what. Even if one of you is definitely making a huge mistake.” Lucas grinned, his attention pulling to Will.

‘Hey!” Mike cried, indignantly.

Will just snickered, hiding his face behind one palm, “Why do people keep saying that?”

Mike turned on the other teen, betrayed, “What do you mean? Have other people been saying that? What’s wrong with Mike? Mike’s a catch.”

Max snorted, “You sure about that Wheeler?”

And Mike wanted to die.

Will’s first day back and it was already gang up on Mike Wheeler day, his friends were all traitors. He hated all of them.

He glanced back at his friends, all of whom had devolved into full on, stomach-clutching laughter. He hated them.

Except for El.

She stood silently, a small smile on her face, but at least not outright laughing at him like the others.

He decided she was his favorite.

“El’s my favorite. She doesn’t make fun of me like the rest of you.”

El raised an eyebrow in response, pulling away from where she was leaning against the wall to walk silently into Mike’s space. The same small smile never wavering from her lips.

Despite the fact that she was several inches shorter, Mike felt a shiver down his spine as she approached, her expression unwavering, her smile benign, but seemingly wrong. She stopped just a few inches in front of Mike, leaning forward so her auburn hair brushed against his shoulder as she brought her mouth up to his ear. Mike stood completely still, wildly confused as to what was going on. El spoke quickly, her voice low and husky, and Mike was certain his heart was about to explode.

“If you hurt my brother in any way. I’m going to make you regret it.”

She leaned back, but not before settling a pressure, not unlike a rough squeeze on his shoulder. Except her hands hadn’t moved in the slightest. As she stepped away, he noticed a drop of blood trail from her nose that she didn’t bother to wipe away.

Mike stood frozen to the floor as she calmly returned to her spot beside Max on the wall like nothing was amiss.

God, she was scary.

He scrubbed a hand over his face, already feeling a headache beginning to pound its way across his temples, and despite his earlier nap was still feeling absolutely exhausted.

But as he stood there in the middle of a hospital room, with Will at his back, his warm fingers curled gently around Mike’s wrist, and his friends laughing and joking at his expense, he finally felt at peace.

Three and a half long years Mike had spent with a hole in his chest where his heart should’ve been, but now, he felt whole.

He had his friends, he had Will, and he was never going to let anything happen to him ever again.

He turned his hand slightly in Will’s grip, allowing the other boy to slide his palm into his as Mike sat down on the edge of Will’s bed, a small smile tugging on the edge of his lips as he took it all in.

Will blinked back at him warmly, like he was thinking the same thing as Mike.

“Boyfriends?” He mouthed, not wanting to be overheard by his friends, who now seemed to be debating the criteria for Lucas and Dustin’s bet, which Mike would certainly be grilling the pair about later, but for now, it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was Will, sitting right in front of him an awestruck expression plastered across his face, as if he couldn’t quite believe Mike’s words.

Slowly, the other boy nodded, a radiant smile spreading across his face, “Boyfriends.” Will whispered back.

Mike felt alight with warmth, his whole body buoyed up by happiness as he grinned soppily at his new boyfriend. In a spur-of-the-moment decision, not even caring if his friends were watching, he tightened his grip on Will’s hand and leaned in, pressing his lips to Will’s temple.

His mouth ghosted across the thin skin there, “I love you.”

The other boy quietly let out a soft puff of air in surprise.

And when Mike pulled back, he was met with Will’s expressive brown-green-hazel eyes shining like the sun, and Mike thought there was no place he’d rather be.