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Will’s only just made it back inside when Mike and Lucas finally catch up to him.
He startles at the sound of the first fist coming down against the door, three rapid-succession knocks that make the wood rattle in its frame. The muffled sound of his own name follows soon after, then something else he can’t quite make out over the sound of the rain and the raw, desperate cry that forces itself out from his chest without his permission. His wet clothes cling to him like a sticky second skin, Castle Byers lays in ruins in the woods with the rest of his stupid childhood, and he doesn’t want to answer the door.
An assault on the window joins the one on the door, and then it's Lucas’s voice joining Mike’s as they both strain to be heard over the storm. Will grips the sweatshirt in his fists – an old one of Jonathan’s, faded and frayed but soft all the same – until they shake, his knuckles white.
He doesn’t want to answer the door.
The pounding continues, and over the sound of the thunder – we’ll stay out here all night if we have to, man! – a threat and a promise bound together with a neat little bow. Will heaves out a shuddering breath. He doesn’t want to answer the door. He strips out of his wet clothes, and pulls on the old sweatshirt and a pair of shorts hastily. He doesn’t want to answer the door. He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes and allows himself one more helpless, pitiful wail. He doesn’t want to answer the door.
He’s going to answer the door.
Will rips open the door to his bedroom before he can talk himself out of it, but he pauses before stepping out into the hallway; he’s been crying, and he knows he looks it. He takes another deep breath and uses his too-long sleeves to scrub furiously at his eyes, hoping it’s not too obvious.
He knows it will be.
The moment he steps into the hallway, he can see Lucas and Mike’s faces pressed to the window, peering into the house. The moment they see him, they start frantically tapping at the glass again, their chorus of let us in! let us in! muffled but clear.
He still doesn’t want to let them in.
He does anyway.
They rush to fill in the space the door makes for them once Will opens it, stumbling over each other, their shoes slipping in the puddles that cover the porch. Will watches it all happen with a blank expression, carefully and desperately neutral.
“Will,” Mike heaves out. He’s dripping wet and gripping the doorframe like a lifeline. “Will, you’re okay.”
In the grand scheme of things, Will supposes that Mike is right – he is okay, physically. He made it home, through the woods, in the rain, without any supernatural intervention. It should be something to celebrate, all things considering. The part of his heart that Mike crushed beneath the sole of his sneaker not even an hour ago disagrees.
“Right,” he says, voice flat.
They both shift on their feet, awkward and uncertain. Will just stands there and stares at them, not saying anything. The rain pours on.
“Can we, uh,” Lucas starts. “Can we come in?”
He doesn’t want to let them in.
He steps aside anyway.
They both usher themselves into the house, dripping all over his mom’s carpet. Will closes the door, the wood barely doing anything to diminish the sound of the rain, but Will is grateful for it — it gives something to focus on that isn’t the awkward silence, looming over them in the doorway like the storm cloud looms over them outside. It’s funny, Will thinks, that they biked all this way here, followed him through the downpour, and have nothing to say for it.
“What do you want?” he asks, going for disinterested and nonchalant and missing by a mile. Instead, his voice cracks, and the embarrassment of it all and the emotions from before hit him all at once, and the tears he never quite manages to banish are welling up before he can even think to stop them. He immediately looks away, picking a random tear in the wallpaper of the hallway and focusing on it, even as his vision blurs too much to see it anymore.
Don’t blink, don’t blink, he thinks.
Lucas lets out a soft noise that turns into the shape of his name. Despite all his efforts, Will blinks, and two tears escape, running down his face, right where Lucas and Mike can see them. He curls in on himself, turning further away from the both of them and stifling another sob with the too-long sleeve of his sweatshirt.
There’s no hiding it: he is such a pathetic thing.
It’s in the fiber of his being, to be pathetic. It’s in the way he refuses to grow up, clawing with desperate, trembling fingers at a childhood that ended on a November night two years ago. It’s in every tear he cries, fourteen years old and unable to stop them from coming. It’s been branded on him since before he knew what it was to be pathetic, but everyone around him knew, didn’t they? His mom and Jonathan, coddling him the way that they do. His dad, casting one last disappointed look at him before he headed for the hills and never came back. Mike, seeing a little boy by himself on the swings and talking to him out of pity. Lucas and Dustin, treating him with kid gloves for the past two years.
They all see it, every person in his life, and it’s no different for Mike and Lucas, now. Will shouldn’t be so ashamed — they’re used to this, after all this time. It comes with the territory of being his friend.
“Will,” Mike says, just as softly as Lucas had. Will hates himself for the way his heart reads into it, hopeful and yearning, despite everything.
It’s not my fault you don’t like girls, Mike sneers in his head.
It is, Will answers miserably in his head, it is, it is, it is.
Pathetic.
It takes a moment for his breathing to settle, for the steady in and out of oxygen to press down on the tightness in his chest until it subsides enough for him to speak. “Just say what you came here to say,” he says, sad and pitiful. He still does not look at them.
“Will, we’re sorry,” Lucas answers immediately. “Your campaign — it was really cool, and we should have taken it seriously.”
“Yeah,” Mike chimes in, “and what I said to you, in the garage” —he leans to the side, trying to peer around and catch Will’s eye— “it wasn’t cool. It was really messed up of me, and I’m sorry.”
Will glances at Mike out of the corner of his eye, all softness and sincerity wrapped up in a soaked raincoat that’s too big for him. His heart lurches forward, almost like it’s trying to break free of his chest and join the source of its sick affection.
“It doesn’t matter,” he forces out, looking away quickly, wishing these feelings for Mike would drown out with the rest of the rain.
“It does matter,” Mike argues back. He moves to stand in front of Will now, his sneakers squelching with every step. “It does matter. You’re upset, and we — I — did that, and that’s not okay.”
“Yeah,” Lucas says, crossing the distance and standing right by Mike’s side. “We care about you. The girls — they’re cool, and all, but they’re — they might not be around forever, right? But you will be, because you’re our best friend.”
“ Best friend,” Mike echoes. Will finally looks back at them then, eyeing them both warily. “We’ll do a better job of showing it, okay?”
“We’ll play your campaign for real tomorrow,” Lucas promises. “No girls.”
Will just stands there, wanting to believe them so badly, because this is everything he’s wanted to hear all summer. They chased after him into the woods, through the rain and through the dark to tell him this, pounded on his door and his window over and over, and wouldn’t quit until he let them inside.
There’s a good chance that they just feel bad for him, he thinks. It comes from that same part of his brain that loves that word, pathetic . That part that yells at his heart every time it dances for Mike when it shouldn’t, who remembers the words his father and some of the boys at school have used to describe people like him, sour on their tongues. But among those things, as true or as false as they may be, Will Byers is kind, and sometimes, that kindness extends even to himself. It’s this part of him that thinks there’s also a good chance they’re being sincere, because that part of him knows that this isn’t the first time these two boys have chased him into the woods, through the rain and through the dark. This part of him knows a Lucas who treated him with kid gloves not because he thought that Will was a baby, but because he never wanted to be the one to make Will upset. This part of him knows a Mike who glued himself to Will’s side last year, who was there even when Will himself wasn’t, who steadied his hand when it trembled and who said befriending Will was the best thing he’s ever done. This part of him knows that Lucas and that Mike are still here, and they’re standing in front of him, and they care.
“It was never about the campaign,” he finds himself saying, the words spilling out of him before he can think.
“Then what was it about?” Mike asks, his voice soft in that way it sometimes gets, only for Will.
Will sniffs, trying to keep more tears from spilling over. “I just want things to feel normal again,” he admits shakily. “Before the Upside Down, before the Mind Flayer, before any of it. I just” —he stops, swallows, and waits until his breath is steady before continuing— “I just feel like I’ve lost so much time. I just want some of it back.”
“Oh, Will,” Mike says, and that’s not pity in his voice: it’s understanding. “We didn’t know.” He steps forward, wrapping his arms around Will, and Will only stiffens for a moment before clinging back, rainwater be damned. “We didn’t know.”
Lucas crashes into him from behind, saying nothing, but wrapping his arms around them both. Will feels small, standing there in their wet embrace, but it’s okay — he knows that when he feels small, Mike and Lucas will be there with him until he finds the courage to be big again.
A flash of lightning illuminates the room, shortly followed by a deafening clap of thunder, and with it, the house shakes, every light flickering. The three of them jump, startled, but stay huddled together, none of them quite ready to let go.
“Jesus,” Lucas breathes out, looking around at the lights. The storm rages on outside, no signs of stopping soon. The lights flicker again.
And that’s when it happens — that familiar coldness at his nape, raising every hair on the back of his neck. He lifts a shaking hand to the exposed skin, and he feels it, the raised flesh under the press of his fingers. Lucas is still watching the lights, but Mike is watching Will, eyes searching for something, anything.
“Will?” He steps back just a hair, bringing his hands up to grip Will’s upper arms. “Will, what is it?”
Will swallows, looking between the two of them. Mike, still drowning in his hood, his brow furrowed. Lucas, paying attention to Will now, putting the pieces together. The lights stop flickering, but that cold feeling lingers, and Will knows. He knows .
“He’s back.”