Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“So,” Mike says.

His eyebrows are furrowed in a way that reminds Will of when they were kids - Mike standing in front of the party, elevated on a rock, whisper-yelling so here’s the plan guys, you gotta listen to me. He’s always been good at being the center of attention, and Will’s always been good at watching him, pulled in by the invisible gravitational field that surrounds him. Will had realized, months ago, that none of them really were kids anymore, but thinking about it now, it still stings, really. The furrow between Mike’s brows remains the same, yet everything else is different.

The rest of the group watch Mike as he talks. He gestures with his hands a lot when he’s passionate about something. And Mike is rarely as passionate as he is when he knows he has a crowd eating out of his palm, enraptured.

They have no plan for the end of the world. Logically, they’re all doomed; each and every one of them. But Mike sure is shit is nothing but not stubborn, and once he sets his mind on saving the world, he is good at convincing others they have a chance of saving it, too.

“El said once about a sister,” Mike continues, gesturing at El who stands near him with her arms crossed and face set, “If there’s more people out there like her, surely she can reach them, and we can convince them to help us.”

Dustin says, “Help us how? Henry’s already won. He’s getting stronger by the minute, and we’re just waiting around like sitting ducks.” He looks to Lucas for support, but Lucas is staring at the floor, lost in thought. He looks sadder than Will has ever seen him. 

Mike stares at Dustin, incredulous. If he’s honest, Will is a little surprised at Dustin's reaction, too - Dustin’s usually the one most cheerful, most determined, but Eddie’s death seems to have knocked all of that out of him in one fell swoop. Mike is affected at the loss of Eddie too, even though he tries to hide it from everyone - Will had only noticed because he knows Mike like he knows the signs of a panic attack, a possession, a breakdown. 

“What, so you just want to give up?” Mike almost-yells.

Dustin almost-yells back, “No. I’m just saying. There’s too many flaws in your plan, Sherlock. We don’t know-”

‘We can’t afford to be picky right now! Even though-”

“Yes we sure as shit can! If-”

“-There’s flaws it’s-”

“-It fails, then-”

Lucas’ voice cuts through their bickering, something dark and resolute, “Shut up. Both of you.”

Miraculously, they both shut up. Two pairs of heads, Dustin, Mike, Will, El, all turn to look at Lucas, like marionettes pulled by an invisible string. Lucas doesn’t look at any of them, doesn’t even lift his stare up from the ground, “Until we come up with something better, something to save Max-” (Will doesn’t miss the subtle flinch from El when Lucas says Max’s name. Mike does. This annoys him, briefly.) “-This meeting is adjourned.”. 

Mike and Dustin speak up at once, like Will knew they would, but Lucas cuts them off with an unwavering and unfamiliar, “Meeting. Adjourned.”. Lucas looks at El, once, and something passes between them, something indecipherable, and Will has to look away quickly. 

No one bothers arguing any further. They all walk back to the cabin in silence. 

.::.

The party has the same meeting, every Friday at 19 hundred hours, to discuss regular teenage shit, like homework, extra-curriculars, and how to save the world. They used to invite Nancy and Robin and the others, but Nancy had looked around at the older kids as if to say ‘get a load of this’ the first time they had raised an idea for a plan, as if they were all still some stupid kids trying to pester and bully her into dressing up as an Elf for their campaign. Will used to crave being treated like a regular kid, at one point, used to hunger for it like a man half-starved. Now it just makes him tired and sad. He hasn’t been a kid for a long, long time.

He had known that he wasn’t a regular kid ever since he had realized he was different , but that had been so easy to forget when he was with the party. When he had their unwavering support, their fierce loyalty. He still has it, now, he knows they would do anything for him, and him for them in return, but they’ve all been changed by this, by everything - and now all of them can feel it. 

But, Will knows better than anyone that there are worse things to be perceived as than a stupid kid. Ever since he had gathered everyone and reluctantly opened up and told them all about the nightmares, the visions, the fucking noises and voices , he hasn’t been able to ignore their new reluctance, new hesitance around him. Recently, the meetings  have become more vague, with everyone darting glances at Will as if he is someone to be skeptical of. They don’t tell him as much as they used to, Will has noticed. They’d never take the initiative of actually uninviting him from the meetings, which Will appreciates, at least, but he’s not sure if they’re having extra secret meetings without him or not. It’s a 50/50. He’d accepted it from Nancy, and Steve, maybe even Dustin and Lucas, maybe even thought he’d deserved it, but recognising the hesitance in the eyes of Jonathan and Mike and El had hurt like nothing else. 

He thinks about it now, while walking to the rendezvous spot– and it feels like pressing on a fresh bruise. He thinks about it anyway. Will has always been able to suffer longer than anyone else. 

Robin waves at him, almost manically, from about a quarter mile away, and Will walks up to meet her, avoiding eye contact. He had only ever been in this close proximity to her in a group of other people, and he feels nervous about how this parole will go when it’s just the two of them. 

Robin sticks out her hand to Will in one sharp movement, smiling with all her teeth, and Will takes it hesitantly. He takes in the teenage scruffiness of her; her scuffed, graffitied shoes, the threadbare bracelets adorning her wrists, her hair haphazardly scrunched and placed on the top of her head.  She’s wearing as many colors as he is, maybe even more, and he feels a strange sort of solidarity with this girl before him in that moment, like they have something inexplicable that ties them together. She must feel it too, because she grins even wider. Will hadn’t thought that possible. 

And as it turns out, Will doesn’t have to be nervous - Robin talks enough for the both of them. 

“So, little Byers,” She starts, “We haven’t actually had a chance to properly meet yet have we? Well we do now! It’s just you and me today, thank God, because Steve has been pissing me off soooo badly with all his moping and pining after-'', suddenly she pauses and looks at Will like a deer in the headlights, as if Will doesn’t know about Steve being in love with Nancy - as if it isn’t obvious. 

Will smiles in what he hopes is a comforting way, says, “Yeah, it’s pretty annoying,” and hopes that that will be the end of it, that Robin wont try and apologize for bringing up the strange creature that is Nancy-Jonathan-Steve, because Will doesn’t know the first thing about trying to tackle that conversation. Robin, thankfully, doesn’t say anything, and they start walking. 

He actually finds himself starting to like Robin, the more they talk, and it’s unusual for Will to warm up to someone so quickly, but Robin is kind in an eccentric way, and she talks without thinking in a way that isn’t cruel - and Will starts to think that maybe there is something between them, some sort of unspoken understanding.

They find tins of canned peaches in an old abandoned camping gear store, of all places, and eat them cross-legged on the front desk with their fingers, juice dripping down their chins, sticky, and Robin pretends to christen him with some of it like its Ash Wednesday at Church, says you’re one of us now, and they both laugh until their ribs hurt.

It’s the most fun Will can remember having in a long time. 

.::.

The voice says, but you aren’t happy, are you? I can–

.::.

Will is lying on the lumpy pull-out bed in the basement, and he’s thinking about Mike Wheeler. Thinking about Mike Wheeler is something that Will is so used to that it’s become a habit, a tic, like when El clenches and unclenches her fist, or when Dustin runs a tongue over his teeth. He thinks, a little ludicrously, that if he stops thinking about Mike, he might start showing withdrawal symptoms, might start sweating and itching like an addict that's gone too long without their fix. He’s so far gone he might as well bury himself now. (He’s honestly, privately , a little happy to even be able to think about Mike tonight - most nights it's impossible for him to sleep because of all the noises in his head, and when he does manage to, he almost always wakes up screaming.) 

The thing is, Will used to be able to deal with all of Mike’s … Mikeness when it was just them two together, or when he was at a socially acceptable age for boys to hold hands with other boys. When it was just them, he could happily feed into his fantasies and delude himself into thinking that maybe Mike wanted him as much as Will wanted Mike. And Will knows he’s an awful person for thinking this, that if Will hadn’t met Lucas and Mike hadn’t met Dustin there would be no party, and if they never met El, she would still be stuck in that lab, and if they never met Max….. well. Will prefers not to think about that one.

But when other people started becoming involved with them– it became apparent that Will could not deal with all of his feelings about Mike. He hadn’t learnt how to compartmentalize yet. All of the love, the hate, the want , all of it couldn’t all fit inside his tiny 9 year old body, and when Will tried to separate the feelings from each other, from himself , he felt sliced down the middle as if he had lost a piece of himself; not just Mike. So instead, when Will would feel overpowered by these feelings, he would think of all the things he would never tell Mike, and he would say them very quietly. 

And when Mike started dating El, Will was so monstrously, so savagely, so obstreperously fucking jealous. It felt good, to latch onto that anger, but it wasn’t even directed towards anyone, and had nowhere to go. He was aware of how he felt about Mike, was aware that he wanted Mike to look at him the way Mike looked at El, that made him angry, and it was simple– Easy to understand. Which was something that Will had never encountered with Mike before. 

El was a complete electric shock to Will. She hit him like a heart attack. He hated her, she fascinated him to no end, he wanted to be her, he wanted her gone , he was so glad she was here, that she was safe , he wished Mike had never found her, that he had seen her and then left her alone in the woods. Will felt the invisible wire holding him and El suspended in parallel like mirrors, felt their lives intertwining like old weathered yarn. And he knew she could feel it too. Her moving in with them was the easiest decision Will ever had to partake in making. 

Of course, when Will realized that El was a million times better than he ever could be, he stopped being angry-jealous. Instead he felt desperately sad, like a puppy left outside in the cold. Instead of thinking, I’m right here, why doesn’t Mike pick me instead of her , he thinks, of course he would pick her, he knows I’ve been here the whole time and he’s never looked twice. Of course. This is how it happens. This is right. 

The ugly, ugly truth is, Mike could do anything he wanted to Will, and Will would let him. He’d let him hurt him in any way imaginable, let him open his jaw and sink his canine teeth into his supple flesh for consumption. He’s only ever of use to Mike when he's his punching bag, his stepping stone. He would wait for him like a kicked dog sat with the crushed, ugly corpse of a bird in its mangled jaws. 

But what gets him is that– doesn’t that mean something? That Will would let Mike hold his soft skull in his palms and squeeze until his brains melted out of his eyes if he wanted to? That he would be glad to be his sacrificial lamb, his immolation, his offering? Doesn’t that mean something, in all of this? Can it really mean nothing?

.::.

The voice says, it means nothing, you mean nothing–

.::.

When Will looks at the notice board in the cabin and finds his name next to Robins for patrol, he smiles. Mike catches him at it, shoulder checks him, then says, “What are you smiling about?" Will loves him so much he could burst with it. 

He doesn’t know how to explain why he’s smiling in a way that sounds platonic. Because it is platonic. But, Mike, as much as Will knows, has never really managed to escape the headspace that when girls and boys were friends, there had to be something simmering underneath the surface. Definitely Dustin's influence. That science summer camp did a number on him. 

Whatever. “I’m just happy to be doing my patrol with Robin, that’s all.” 

A strange expression dances over Mike’s face, so fleeting Will could have imagined it. “Yeah, she’s cool,” he says, but the words sound stunted. Weird. Things have been weird between him and Mike, ever since half-hearted love confessions in the back of pizza-vans, Will stupidly using El as a coverup, crying El needs you Mike- but this is something else. 

Will eyes him, “Yeah, she is.”

The weirdness still hasn’t seemed to leave Mike, and he seems confused, staring into space, and because Will is pathetic and awful he says, “I can try and see if I can get something for you while I’m out, if you want?” 

“Like what?” Attention is put on him again, and Will feels it like a kick to the stomach.

He hadn’t thought it through this far. “Well, what do you want?” 

Mike looks at him like this is an incredibly difficult decision, as if Will meant something else by that question, something deeper, and not just if he wants some canned peaches from an old camping store or something. He looks as if he has just been faced with a life-or-death situation, and has T minus 5 seconds to come up with something. A lifetime ago, Will would’ve known exactly what that expression meant, and why it was clouding his face. He has no idea, now. 

Will says, “I’ll think of something,” and leaves him to his thoughts. 

.::.

School is still happening, for some reason, right in the shot-gun-center of the apocalypse. 

Granted, apocalypse is a word that doesn’t truly fit. The military, dubbed the Useless Mouthbreathers by the party, have done a decent job of patching things up, all things considered. There’s a couple buildings and structures that weren’t able to be fixed, like Old man Bill’s fishing shop, or the playground near the old houses – but, Hawkins, if you didn’t know it that well, could maybe pass for normal, save for the military. Even though the party (separated into groups with other people in the know) still do apocalyptic patrols every night to see if there's any sign of 001/Henry/Vecna, which is pretty easy considering half of the town is empty, and even though the population of Hawkins is half-starved as most of the stores are destroyed or abandoned, and the High School needs military security and a food bank, and half of the place is crawling with demodogs that the military is trying to keep hidden from the religious-maniac parents and easily-terrified students, Will still wouldn't consider it an apocalypse. Reasoning: There's no zombies. 

The collective psyche of Hawkins has been shattered beyond repair. Especially for the paranoid wine-moms and the indignant, religious middle-class. Dustin and Will had overheard a conversation between Mr Clarke and the headteacher a couple weeks ago - they’re thinking about replacing science classes bi-weekly with mandatory excursions to church. The parents are unwavering and certain that the only way to cleanse the town of Hawkins is through repenting–  praying till everyone's knees are bloody and their voices spent. Dustin had been furious, clad in a torn Hellfire shirt despite the bullying and dirty looks, and had already been fabricating a plan to save all science classes - saying they're eminent for plans regarding saving-the-world and such. Will had put on a show of disgruntled exterior for Dustin, voicing his passionate agreement, but deep down had been unable to feel anything toward it, toward anything . 

Privately, and half-ashamed, Will wonders whether repenting does anything - not really for the half-formed idea of a God, and a merit system of sins, but for the repentant themselves. A release, maybe? Or the knowledge that they will be punished, and then be glad for it afterwards. A weight off the shoulders. He understands the appeal of religion, and maybe wishes that he was naive enough, or rather, faithful enough to believe it fully. Most of his faith was beaten out of him long ago. 

The impending doom of prom on the horizon is enough for Will to start praying to God himself, anyway. Prom has its claws dug deep into Hawkins High- It’s impossible to escape any semblance of it no matter where you go. Though Will doesn’t speak his distaste for prom outloud, Lucas does, and for that he’s incredibly grateful, although he feels sick about it when he remembers that Lucas is upset because the person he of course wants to go with is in a coma , and Will is only upset because the person he wants to go with has no fucking interest in him whatsoever –

The entire party, save Max, and El, as religion had been a goal of education for her set in a future date that was interrupted by the fucking apocalypse, all think the whole satanic panic situation is a load of total bullshit. Will mainly hates it because everytime he hears the word sodomy uttered in the hallways he flushes red-hot, a pleasant sort of sickness rotting deep behind his ribs. Dustin rolls his eyes whenever they pass anything on the walls even remotely to do with it.

Somehow, instead of using the money on repairs, Hawkins had managed to scrounge up a budget for pricey new candles for the churches, hired a brand-new qualified, official priest (not like old Melvin Sturges who everyone knew lied about his qualifications and got drunk every weekend), and covered the town in catholic posters and billboards. There’s even one stuck to Max’s trailer that reads REPENT FOR YOUR SINS. 

There’s a new and shiny billboard near the main part of town- white background, a large crucifix, a man starved, plastered with the blood-red words; Who else has died for you?  Will walks past it everyday on the way to school. Too many people, he thinks. Way too fucking many. 

.::.

The voice says And how many more will, eventually? Come–

.::.

At the end of the world, Will Byers decides to go and visit his old childhood home. 

It was easy to pick the lock on the backdoor of the house. The previous ‘owners’ had backed out of the purchase at the last minute, probably after they saw the news about Hawkins. The Byers family had still got the money for selling, but even if they hadn’t, the loss of money wouldn’t have really been a big deal for once. They were living pretty comfortably. Government hush-money is no joke. 

Nobody else had tried to purchase the Byers household since. The running theory throughout Hawkins, Mike had told Will, was that it was cursed - and any family or couple or person to move in was doomed to be lost forever, and never found. It was also, as the general opinion of the public concluded, a shithole. 

Will privately disagrees. Sure, the door hinges were a little rusty, and the electricity was fucked, and half the time the hot water doesn’t work - but it was home . Or, it used to be. Now, trailing his fingers along the battered walls of his childhood home, Will’s not so sure. He’s not sure of the last time he felt safe here. He’s not sure of the last time he felt safe anywhere. 

It all feels so small and insignificant now. This house used to be larger than life to Will when he was younger - he used to run from one side of the house to the next, over and over, and be so out of breath he’d collapse next to Chester on the couch. Sometimes he recalls memories of him and El and Jonathan in this house all together, lukewarm and happy-ish, like they were in Lenora, although he knows they can’t have been real memories. He wishes, not for the first time in his life, that things could have been different - that El could’ve moved in with them earlier, and her and Will could’ve shared a room, pretended to totally not be listening to Madonna together, and maybe been happier, for a time. But then Will thinks about how El and Mike would’ve been making out in his room, and then he isn’t so sure again. Anyway. 

Looking at the phantom memory of toys, of books and drawings adorning his walls, (The toy robot Dustin gave to him when he lost a bet, Lucas’ rubix cube that he borrowed when he told him he could definitely solve it and then forgot to ever give it back, until they moved out years later. The drawings he’d pretended not to do solely for Mike, purely to see his smile when he showed them to him, the crinkle by his eyes–) a sort of anxious desperation overtakes him, as if he’s lost something, but can’t remember what. 

He’s going to die soon – the thought washing over him like warm, holy water. They still don’t have a plan, El has been trying to find Max every single day and found nothing, they’re all exhausted from lack of sleep, and every time he looks at any of them, he has a horrible feeling that it might be the last time.

Standing in his childhood bedroom, Will realizes, suddenly, irrevocably, terribly, that his 12 year old self will be dying with him. It would be silly to mourn for himself, so he doesn’t, but he can’t stop the grief spreading through him like a wildfire.

His childhood bedroom has become his mausoleum; the closest thing he will ever get to a final resting place. This, he thinks manically, staring at his old desk, now empty, is where Will Byers would do his homework, clean up drawings he did of bearded wizards firing green cabbage-like fireballs, and listen to music from a mixtape made by his brother Jonathan. 

This, he thinks, looking at his shelves, is where Will once kept his nerdy comic books stolen from his friends, his pathetic diaries that he would never call diaries but journals , his stuffed animals that he could never bring himself to get rid of, no matter how old he grew.

And this, Will thinks sitting on his bed, is where Will Byers would sleep, – when he still had a consciousness to shut off, that is – where Will would cuddle said stuffed animals as mentioned before, and where he would sit with his best friend Mike Wheeler, and stare at his hands, and realize for the first time that he wants those hands all over him; wants to feel the heat of them everywhere. This is where he would figure out that that isn’t a normal thing for him to realize so casually, if at all.  

This is where he would grapple with forces larger than himself, try to keep hold of himself and his autonomy with everything his little 12 year old body and mind had to offer - but unfortunately for Will, this would all turn out to be fruitless, in the end. He beats the forces, sure, for a while, but then they come back to get him; like he always sensed they would - to drag him back into the dirt. Ashes to ashes.

Will toys with an old yoyo he keeps in his jacket pocket, and places it on the smooth surface of his wooden desk. Thinks; Something to remember me by.

.::.

The voice says, remember who? Remember who? Rememb–-

.::.

El and Jonathan both do the same thing when they walk. They both bend one of their arms at the elbow and hold their forearms out slightly in front of them, and press it into whoever is walking beside them, leaning into it as if fighting for balance. Will is walking in the middle of them, meaning he is being squashed like the filling of a sandwich. He doesn’t mind. The touch grounds him. 

None of them are talking to each other. Will finds he doesn’t really want to talk to them, despite their proximity. He knows they know that he knows they don’t trust them, and it’s awkward and it’s heartbreaking. Will quite literally has nobody to talk to about the things that actually matter. And more than that, he misses them so fucking badly, even though they’re right next to him and squishing into his sides like a pair of penguins in the cold. 

Will realizes too late that this is an ambush, an amateur intervention. When El had appeared in front of him and asked if he wanted to go for a walk with her and Jonathan, Will had been so fiercely happy that he’d accepted without hesitation. Stupid. 

He rolls his eyes when they meet a clearing with some large rocks, (presumably for sitting, like this is some fucking AA meeting his dad would pretend to attend) and turns to leave and start walking in the same direction they came from. El and Jonathan are blocking his path before he can blink.

“Fuck you both,” Will sighs. He doesn’t bother pushing them out of his way. Who cares, anymore.

“We love you,” Jonathan says, guilty.

El doesn’t say anything, which isn’t unusual for her. Will still wishes she would.

What Will wants to say is, yeah, I’ve really been feeling the love lately, but he’s always hated conflict, so he says nothing. He walks over to one of the rocks, sighing again for good measure, and sits down. The rough surface hurts a little, but he doesn’t move. Jonathan and El do - they walk over to the other rocks opposite to Will, and sit on the biggest one together, their shoulders and thighs touching. An electric surge of sickening jealousy courses through Will as if he had just touched a plug with his hands wet. Seems that even though their trust in Will has grown thin, their trust in each other has grown stronger than ever. 

El is poised for a fight, as if she hasn’t yet realized that Will is too tired to fight anymore. 

Jonathan speaks up again, “We’ve just– we’ve noticed lately that you’ve been more…” He trails off, looking to El for help on finishing his sentence, but she’s too busy looking at Will. More what?

“More… sad.” He finishes lamely.

Will looks at him, then looks at El. “The world is ending.”

“See! That !” Jonathan leaps up and points at him, as though he had just caught Will with his hand in the cookie jar. It’s the most animated Will has seen Jonathan in a year. “ That’s what I’m talking about. You’re just… You used to be so…”

“Do you plan on finishing any of those sentences?”

Jonathan glares at him, but it lacks any heat, comes across more frustratingly worried than anything. “It’s like you’ve given up before we’ve even started, Will.” 

And well. Will… thinks that's a little unfair. For him, all of this started years ago. He’s been fighting a losing battle since he was 12 years old. And sure, he isn’t as determined, or as optimistic as he used to be , but really, who can blame him? Every single thing in his life he has witnessed as a third party - his childhood, his own body, his first love. He just wants to have control over something, even if that means hurting himself in the process. He wants so many things at once he can’t possibly concentrate on just a single one. He wants all of this to be over. He wants to feel awake when his eyes are open. He wants to be someone worth saving. 

“You can’t give up,” El says, finally. She’s looking at him in a way that frightens him a bit, “None of us can give up. We have to stay strong. Stay a… team.”

She had obviously learnt that word from Mike, and Will feels a familiar but unwelcome pang of jealousy. He had thought, ridiculously, that by team, Mike had meant just the two of them, like how it used to be. Obviously, he was wrong. Unwelcome anger greets him like an old friend.

“Team. Right. Because that’s actually exactly what you guys have been treating me like recently - a teammate ,” Will says, gesturing at them madly. He has never been able to control his emotions as well as he wants to. “I mean, for weeks all of you, every single one of you have been acting like I’m some sort of fucking spy again, like I’m just going to run off and tell all of the private information to my best friend Henry.” 

Jonathan and El both look guilty, as though they are about to cut in. Will doesn’t stop. Can’t, really. 

“I mean, God, do you even know what that’s like? ” Mortifingly, he feels his eyes well up in tears, and pathetic sobs begin to wrack up from his chest, through his body. He sees El and Jonathan both take a step towards him as if on autopilot, and instinctively, Will steps back. “I mean- I am completely, completely alone, I have no one to talk to about anything, and you all have each other. It sucks . It really fucking sucks. And maybe I would’ve expected it from everyone else, but never from you two. Never.” 

They’re both talking to him, Jonathan saying something like, “You know you can always talk to us-”, and El something like “We never meant to hurt you–” but Will is done listening. 

He says one final thing before being unable to talk anymore, “If either of you care about me even a little bit, do not follow me.”

He walks into the woods. Neither of them try to stop him.

They don’t talk for two weeks.

.::.

The voice says, they were glad to get rid of you, and you know it too, come–

.::.

Will wakes up screaming.

He was always better at quieting himself, before. He never liked worrying people, definitely didn’t like it when they worried over him. But, the nightmares (they’re not nightmares, not exactly, but there is no better word to describe them. Now-memories don't fit, either) have become ten times as harrowing, ten times as vivid and a hundred times more disturbing than they used to be when he was 12. 

They’re evacuating soon, all of them – moving to some sort of farm up North near Bloomington. It’s mandatory, but they had all tried to fight it, Lucas especially. He hadn’t wanted to leave Max, said he would chain himself to her hospital bed if they tried to force him. The government are letting them take her with them because of Lucas’ idiotic, beautiful, blind loyalty - obviously they had realized he wasn’t going to budge. Max’s mom hadn’t tried to fight much, she’s drunk most of the time than not, and said that she’ll be staying with her sister somewhere North East.  They all knew she’d given up on Max ever waking up months ago. Will doesn’t blame her exactly, after everything that happened with Billy… It made logical sense. Hawkins had chewed up the Mayfield family and then spit them out. Anyone in their right mind would want to get the fuck out before it got them, too. She’d given Lucas the address to her new place when she was leaving, the rest of the group watching from a few yards away - all pretending they weren’t -  and something in her face said that she knew Max would be safest wherever Lucas was. He would rather die than let anything else happen to her, and they all knew it. It was almost like she was giving her his blessing. But maybe she wasn’t. Will had always been a romantic. 

Max had been in his nightmare, and this is where it gets disturbing, because while El and Lucas had described what happened to her in as much detail as they could muster up the strength to say, the image of it had never been particularly vivid. But in the nightmare, Will had seen it all in bright, vibrant colors - Max’s floating body, limbs twisting and snapping like twigs with a sickening crack, eyes sucked into the back of her skull. And the worst part, the part that Will had woken up screaming about, was that in the nightmare, God, it had been him doing it. He was Vecna, and Vecna was him. They had merged, and he couldn’t tell where Vecna ended and he began, couldn’t decipher whose feelings and thoughts were whose. But one of the emotions had stuck out above the rest–  an undeniable satisfaction. He had killed Max. And he had liked it. 

Will’s fingers come back wet when he presses them to his face. He hadn’t realized he was crying. 

He’s halfway up the stairs in Mike’s basement before it registers that he’s moving– he's watching his body from the outside, he’s not real, he’s still dreaming, his hands don’t feel like his own, they’re birds about to take flight- and then the door is opening, light flooding into the room, and Mike is right there looking down at him. And Will could almost collapse from the relief of just seeing him, the face he had been looking at since he was five, the face Will had never noticed had been looking back at him until now.

There’s a look in Mike’s eyes that's familiar, but unintelligible. He says, softly, in a voice that Will used to imagine was reserved only for him, “Hey, sorry I just- I heard you screaming.”

Will’s face burns. ‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to–”

Mike cuts him off, “No, it’s okay, really. I wasn’t really sleeping anyway,” Will looks down at his hands as if they’re the most fascinating appendages on planet earth in preparation for the inevitable-

“Are you okay?” Right on cue, and then the automatic, “Yeah,” leaving his own mouth, and it’s not exactly a lie but it's not exactly the truth either, and Will used to find it a herculean task, - lying to Mike - but somewhere in the timeline of their friendship, somewhere indecipherable, it had become easier. He suddenly feels as if he had tried to drink a whole jug of boiling hot water. His chest is burning. 

Unknowing to Will's internal conflict, Mike looks at him as if searching for the truth in his face, unwaveringly and unselfconsciously as he always is in things not El-related, and makes a half-aborted reach out towards him– as if to grab his hand. Will stares at him. Mike stares back.

It’s Mike, always the full-mouthed to Will’s tight-lipped, who breaks the silence, says, “Do you want a glass of water or something?” 

Will is momentarily shocked at the lack of rapid-fire questions regarding what is his probably horrifying physical state-of-being, all borrowed and rumpled pajamas and pale skin. Jesus. He must look really fucked up if even Mike is afraid to push him too far. Mike is still looking at him as if he’s trying to peel back the layers of Will’s skin with his mind, something that would probably be terrifying if he wasn’t dressed in Batman pajamas. 

He must've noticed Will looking, because Mike looks down at himself, and then makes to move up the stairs. “Shut the fuck up.” He says happily, gesturing for Will to follow him. 

Will says, “I didn’t say anything,” and follows him up.

..

Standing around awkwardly has become somewhat of a skill to Will, and he practices this skill while he watches Mike root around his kitchen cupboards for some glasses. He looks at the kitchen island, and remembers how the party used to crowd around it, bony shoulders and bony elbows, making campaigns after campaigns. Remembers how huge the Wheeler’s kitchen had seemed compared to the Byers’ tiny rocky table they found on the side of the road, their splintering wood stools and century old stove. It’s one of the only things that Will had felt alienated him from the party - at least when they were younger and hadn’t discovered the world of girls yet - because while the rest of them rejected the idea of being rich, that’s exactly what they were. The Hendersons weren’t as wealthy as the Wheelers or the Sinclairs, with Dustin only having a single mother to support him, but Dustin never mentioned being worried about them not being able to make rent, or the electricity shutting off at night, or the water turning freezing cold halfway through a morning shower.

Will remembers the struggle of his childhood - the abuse and then the silence from his shitty father, the way he and Jonathan had sometimes had to steal in order to eat that day, (remembers feeling so nervous while doing it he felt like he would projectile vomit everywhere) remembers the kitchen table piled with tax papers, Jonathan having to get a job at 13, having to take the role of a parent so that Will would have someone to take care of him. The rest of the party didn’t have the constant burden of poverty weighing on their consciousness like Will did, and it's not as if they ever made fun of Will for being poor, but they would just never mention it at all . He used to love that the party didn’t care about their differences, and then, as he got older, grew to resent them for ignoring it - and now he just doesn’t care. It’s the end of the fucking world.  

Plus, while being possessed by eldritch horror entities at the ripe age of 12 doesn’t have many perks, it does get you a fuck ton of hush money from the government. 

Now equipped with two full glasses of water, Mike moves over to the stools by the kitchen island, and Will follows. He  places the glasses down on the counter and sits, and before Will can do the same, Mike hooks his foot under the metal of Will’s stool and pulls it closer towards him. Caught up in the familiarity of the gesture, Will sits down on auto-pilot. It’s so sudden and so achingly familiar that Will for a second thinks he’s teleported back in time, but no, just another small, bizarre glimpse into the shattered looking glass of their childhood. Will looks at Mike to see if he’s affected as he is, or maybe even to say something to him - what, exactly he doesn’t know, maybe something like We don’t do that anymore, you made sure we don’t do anything like that anymore - but Mike looks as unaffected as ever, long fingers wrapped around his condensation-covered glass. He could count every freckle on Mike’s face they’re sitting that close. 

Will takes a sip of his water, mentally tracks the ice-cold path of it from the top of his throat down to his stomach. Sees Mike do the same a few seconds later in his peripheral vision. It’s so quiet. 

“Are you coming to see Max tomorrow with me and El?” Mike asks him.

The mention of Max makes him flinch unconsciously, only a little bit. Mike looks over at him immediately, a question in his eyes, but in pattern to his earlier behavior, doesn’t push. “Yeah,” Will says. He hasn’t spoken to El or Jonathan since their half-sorta-fight a couple weeks ago, but he does want to see Max, and the worst that can happen with him and El is a little bit of awkwardness or maybe a bit of blood and death and tears, but who cares. They’re all going to die anyway. 

“Cool.”

“Cool.”

He takes another sip of water. Mike does the same. He can feel warmth emitting from Mike in their closeness. The silence isn’t awkward but it’s not comfortable, either. Has it always been like this? Or had he and Mike just lost whatever made them Will-and-Mike, and now they would always be desperately clinging to old memories and past-versions of themselves in order to go back to how it was? The thought has teeth, gnaws at him. He misses Mike even when he’s right next to him.

Mike clears his throat, then says, “The- earlier, me and my parents…. My parents and Holly aren’t coming with us to that farm in Bloomsbury,” he chuckles, darkly, and looks down at his lap, “they’re going the opposite direction actually. Somewhere East.” 

Speechless, Will looks at him, studies the sharp curve of his nose, the dark fluttering of eyelashes across pale skin. Will has always been desperate to tell Mike how much he’s needed, how important he is; to try and make him feel better. It comes from a place of desperate and skewed guilt, probably - he’ll be able to never tell him the real depth of his feelings, so he needs to make it up to him somehow. He also, much simpler, just never wants Mike to be sad. But Will doesn’t really know what to say, this time. The scenario doesn’t really fit in his head, somehow. He can’t imagine Karen Wheeler placidly nodding along to whatever her husband says, packing up their life into neat little boxes and leaving half of her family in a danger zone. That doesn’t match up to the image of her that Will has had in his head for the past 10 years. 

“Oh.” Will says eloquently. 

“Yeah.”

“I’m so sorry, Mike. I don’t really know what to say…” He trails off into silence for a moment, then, “How are you feeling about… all of it?”

Mike looks at him steadily. Will feels his attention like an electric shock up his spine. “Well, I don’t know, really. I guess I’m glad that Holly’s not coming. I don’t want her wrapped up in all of this like we are.” He looks at Will the same way he did on the creaky stairs of the basement earlier - like trying to crack a case that has gone cold. “And how are.. How are you doing?” 

It’s the first time Mike has shown he cares about what Will is feeling in the past year, yet all Will wants to do is lie to him. To tell him that everything is fine, that he isn’t having the most traumatic nightmares, isn’t sleeping for four hours a night on a good day, isn’t feeling like he’s losing his grip on reality, isn’t feeling like he's fighting a battle already lost; because if Will can convince Mike that all of this isn’t happening, maybe he can convince himself, too.

“I’m okay.”

He hears Mike scoff angrily. Looking at him, Mike looks genuinely pissed, pissed at Will, something that always feels like a stab to the chest no matter how many times Will has seen it in the years of their friendship, in fights underneath awnings, in roller-rinks. But there’s something else, something underneath the anger, that looks suspiciously like hurt, like a question - When did it get so easy for you to lie to me?  And while seeing that question burns, makes Will hot with shame, maybe it can be good, too, maybe it shows that Will is relearning Mike, bit by bit. Maybe they’re relearning each other, piece by broken piece. (Something deep in Will rejects that idea, snarls at it like a cornered animal; I have never not known him, I knew him before I knew him, I knew him before I knew anything- )

Mike says, cooly, “No you’re not.” 

“I am,” Will replies, desperately trying to control the situation. After not speaking to El and Jonathan for weeks, losing Mike too would kill him. “It’s-”

“Right, and that’s why you’re having nightmares,” Mike cuts in, sounding even angrier, “and waking up screaming, right? Because you’re okay? ”

“On like, a scale,” he replies, gesturing wildly, keenly feeling the exhaustion from sleep deprivation in his arms, “of Great to Dead, I’m almost a hundred percent sure I’m in the middle. Probably. Like, at five.”

Mike says, “You’re at eight at least,” and maybe it’s because it's that time of night where nothing really feels real and they’re untouchable, or maybe it's the sleep deprivation, or some other nonsensical, ridiculous reason, but they both burst into hysterical laughter; and they’re suddenly twelve years old again. They are the only two people left on earth. They are kings of the universe. Will has never loved anyone more in his entire, pathetic life. 

Somehow, once they’ve stopped clutching their stomachs in laughter, stopped futility attempting shushing each other to avoid waking up the whole house, they end up on the cold tiled floors, backs touching the cabinets, legs pressed up against each other. The air is more somber now, more honest, as if the hysterical bout of laughter has purged them of any awkwardness. It must be well into the early hours of the morning. Will’s eyelids are drooping from exhaustion, and when he risks a glance over at Mike, he can see he’s not faring any better. 

Will’s looking at Mike how he has looked at him for years. Mike’s looking at Will how he has looked at him for years. Will doesn't realize they both had been smiling until Mike’s face falls slightly. 

He speaks without prompt, “You’ve been screaming in your sleep for a while now,” Mike looks down at his hands, twisting them together, “Would you ever have told me, about- about the nightmares?” 

Would you have cared?  Will banishes the thought from his head; pinches himself sharply on the back of his hand for the patheticness of it. The answer is a straightforward, plain no; Will wouldn’t have told Mike anything as he wouldn't want to risk becoming a more of a burden than he already is. He’s so tired of being dead-weight. But, he has a feeling Mike won’t like that answer, so he attempts to sugar-coat it. 

“I mean, eventually, probably,” And then a thought hits him like a death-drop, stomach falling out from underneath him, “Why didn’t you come in before - if it’s been happening a while?” And he feels terrible right after he says it, wants to take the words right out of the air and shove them back down his throat, it’s not Mike’s responsibility to take care of him, Jesus Christ, but once he’s said them he can’t stop thinking them, either, can’t stop wondering how many times Mike has heard him scream and scream and done nothing . 

Mike looks at him, eyes wide and panicked, “I did! I did,” he turns to face him, staring at Will in the face to really solidify it, “Every time, I came down straight away, it’s just, well, you’d never wake up, and, um,” he averts eye contact, and Will notices the tips of his ears becoming stained with red, then thinks, Oh God… What the fuck did I do? 

“When I’d talk to you, at first it was to try and wake you up, I swear, but when it wouldn’t work, I would keep talking, and it was like the nightmare stopped, or something, and you’d calm down or,” He pauses. “I don’t know, it was… I don’t know. Sorry.” 

The hands twisted together in Will’s lap are the most interesting thing he’s ever seen in his entire cognitive life. Really. He cannot look at Mike, and he can feel his stare like a match burning a hole clean through the side of his head. Will’s entire face is on fire. He might spontaneously combust. His feelings must be so unbelievably obvious to everyone, he might as well write IN LOVE WITH MIKE WHEELER on his forehead in permanent black ink. Somehow, his face burns even brighter when he thinks about how even Mike knows now, probably, and that must be the reason why he seemed so embarrassed when telling Will about it. Will is going to throw up from embarrassment, and then get his heart shattered when Mike inevitably rejects him for something Will never even had the courage to ask. 

It’s a genuine triumph that his voice doesn’t shake too badly when he says, “I am. So sorry,” and he realizes that on top of this being the worst moment of his life, he had also assumed that Mike had left him alone when Will was screaming, and then he somehow, impossibly, feels even shittier. “For assuming that you didn’t check on me, and for… All of… that, too”

“No! No,” Mike says loudly, then grimaces and quiets down, probably remembering the time, “No, I mean, if anything, I’m sorry, like it’s weird that I just sat and talked to you when you were asleep, and for the other thing, it’s fair enough that you assumed that I wouldn’t when I’ve been a total asshole to you for the past year”

Oh. “You haven’t been an asshole.”

“I have.”

“No, you haven’t. And I appreciate you helping me, seriously. It’s not weird.” 

“It’s a little weird.”

“Maybe. But thank you anyway”

Will looks at Mike, and Mike looks at Will, and they’re laughing again. There’s a sudden mental image of them at nine, at twelve, at fourteen, laughing in the exact way they are right now. It’s too vivid and too clean to be a real memory, but it must’ve happened at some point, so shouldn’t it count as one? All awkwardness dissipates, and everything steadies. Mike and Will are Mike and Will once more, or they’re close enough.

“Hey, listen,” Mike says, almost shyly. “Thanks, for helping me, too”

Will looks at him, puzzled. “When?”

“You know, in the van before,” Will's blood turns to ice, and he freezes in place. “I know El commissioned it, and everything, but the painting was really cool of you to do. And for everything you said. I needed that. So. Thank you”

He looks so sincere and happy. Will is the worst person alive. All of the heartache he felt then, feels now - the pain of knowing that the painting wouldn’t mean half as much to Mike if he knew all of it came from Will and his twisted, broken heart - is all warranted and entirely deserved. He doesn’t even feel guilty about lying in the moment, not really, he helped Mike instead of giving him more problems to deal with concerning Will’s own selfish feelings. The guilt stems from the concept, the betrayal of lying, then it is the actual lie itself. If it came down to it, he would do it again - because it was the best way to help in the moment. 

The laughter had shaken off a layer of worthlessness from Will’s skin, earlier. He feels it shroud him again like a heavy and unwelcome cloak. “Yeah. No problem.”

Mike offers Will a hand up. Will takes it, mind all skin against skin, palm against palm, and then the absence of it when they let go, after a little too long to be deemed normal. They both know it’s not necessary, and yet Mike had offered, and Will had accepted. 

.::.

The voice says, you are nothing, but you could be something, with me. Come–

.::.

“You need to make up with Jonathan.”

It’s the first thing Robin says to him when they meet up for their patrol. She’s wearing a light green bandana tied across her head to keep her hair back. Will, tying his shoelace, squints up at her. “Huh?”

She sighs dramatically, hands on hips, “That man is losing touch with reality.”

Though something deep in Will’s chest tugs at that, he says, “I’m sure he’s fine.”

Something in Will misses Jonathan like a severed limb, a language he’s forgotten how to speak. They’ve never not talked for this long before, not even that one time Jonathan stole Will’s puzzle and messed it up after Will had spent months trying to solve it. He misses El with a ferocity too, but while the absence of her stings, it’s easier to manage - he has existed without her before, but Jonathan is engrained in everything Will is, his whole life has happened with Jonathan being a part of it somehow. He feels unmoored without him, like a ship adrift at sea. 

Will finishes tying his shoelace, stands up and looks at Robin face-to face, then starts walking. Robin rushes to catch up to him. 

“He misses you.”

“Sure.”

“He does! Will, he looks terrible. And don’t even try to deny that it has something to do with you. I've seen how freakishly codependent you guys are.” 

“He stopped smoking. Maybe he’s withdrawing.”

“He stopped weeks ago. And I’m pretty sure that’s not even how weed works.”

“What’s weed?” Will asks, just to be annoying. 

It’s one of the nicest days in Hawkins they’ve had in a while, whatever nice can really be with apocalyptic vines growing over the trees and cracking open the roads. Will wishes they were talking about something else. It’s a Friday, so the party has their routined meeting later, but everyone is still being so fucking weird with him that Will thinks he’s probably going to skip, anyway. The twisting pain he feels when he thinks about them goes perfectly well with the other sharp objects lodged in his heart. He barely feels it. He hurts all the time, now. 

Robin ignores him, “I don’t know what happened with you guys, and El, because none of you will tell me shit, so, fine, whatever, I just think we all need to be together for this, like, we don’t know what's gonna happen, so…” She trails off and looks at Will like she said something revolutionary, like it’s not the same recycled bullshit everyones been telling him recently, and Will really doesn’t want to get angry at her too but she’s making it pretty fucking difficult right about now. 

“You’re right,” he snaps, “You don’t know what happened between us. So maybe you shouldn’t speak on things you don’t understand,” and tries to ignore the hurt look on her face immediately afterwards. It’s the snarkiest thing he’s ever said to her, and although Will is always so fucking perpetually tired and numb lately, there’s an onslaught of panic in his thoughts all saying, God, now she’s gonna hate me, the only person who truly gets it, and many variations of what the hell is wrong with me?

They walk in silence to the abandoned stores they haven’t checked out yet. It’s awkward. 

Robin is quiet for a long time, and just when Will is about to break and apologize, she breaks the silence first. “You’re right. I don’t know what happened. I just don’t like seeing you guys upset,” She looks at Will appraisingly, then adds on, “You especially, honestly,” and he’s so struck dumb by that it must show on his face. 

“Why me, especially?”

Sadly, she smiles at him. “You remind me a lot of myself.”

Will understands. You’re one of us now. They continue on. What else is there to do?

“I’m sorry for snapping earlier,” He says, when their shoes are crunching over broken glass inside an abandoned Kmart. “I just- I haven’t been, um,” That could get too personal, “Things have been weird, lately. Obviously.” 

Robin parrots back, “Obviously,” but looks at him as if she knows he’s not telling her something. She looks away from him and it's a weight off of his shoulders. Wordlessly, Robin takes one side of the abandoned store, and Will takes the other. The shelves are pretty much empty, save for a few scattered useless beauty products and dusty baby clothes. Will is just pondering whether they could find a use for the baby clothes for something when there’s a crash outside, and his heart stops. 

Everything happens very fast. 

Ironically, this is the first time they haven’t bought weapons on a patrol  - the group had gotten too comfortable. There hadn’t been any sightings or attacks for weeks, and they had all stupidly let their guard down, and forgone all weapons for the time being, hoping to save them for the real, big-fucking-deal fight with Vecna. Stupid, stupid stupid. 

Will hears the demodog before he sees it.

He also hears Robins fruitless attempts at walking quietly from across the room, pointless because the amount of broken glass scattered along the floor makes it impossible to move silently, and Wills trying to get to her, and he’s thinking that this is the last time he’s going to see her, see anything, because they’re going to die in this fucking Kmart, and his chest is tightening, he can’t breathe, and then somehow Robin is next to him and clutching onto him tightly and then she’s dragging them both down into a basement and locking the door behind them. Will turns around just before the door closes, and see’s the jaws of the demodog wide open and gaping. Then, the sound of it hitting the metal of the door, and the lock clicking into place. He snaps out of it. They drag a large metal crate in front of the door, wincing at the horrible screeching sound it makes as it's pushed along the floor. 

Will gives himself a brief moment to hate himself for freezing up and being useless again, as he always is. And then he turns to Robin to see if she’s okay.

She looks unharmed, but Will knows better than anyone that looks can be deceiving, so he whispers, “Are you alright?” 

Pale, she nods. 

“How much do you want to bet that there’s a whole hoard of them out there?”

“You are so weird.” Will replies. Well. Robin’s fine. He glances down the stairs of the unending basement they are now fucking stuck in. Pitch black. At least they had brought flashlights. And, hey, Maybe they can hit a demogorgon round the head with the blunt end of one to knock it unconscious if it comes down to it. Maybe if Robin irritates him enough he'll suggest the idea for her to try out. Or offer himself up.

The demodog isn’t even scratching at the door, just pacing up and down, up and down the outside perimeter, which is definitely significantly more creepy, but as of right now - significantly less harmful. Will and Robin look at eachother, then at the dark staircase with trepidation. 

Robin says, “Ladies first,” and gestures downwards. Will rolls his eyes, and walks down.

..

They try to cope with being trapped in a basement while interdimensional monsters roam outside by;

(“But, if I was to get arrested, it’d definitely be for like, something cool. Like starting a bar fight.”

Robin’s back is on the floor, legs balanced upright on the wall. Will stops spinning in his cool spinny office chair that he had called dibs on and looks across the room at her, incredulous, “That's the coolest crime you can think of?” 

“Well. I was going to say murder but then I realized we’re stuck in a creepy basement together and I don’t want you to get all paranoid and slice me up with that pizza cutter over there.” 

He considers this. Fair enough. “Who would you murder, anyway?”

There’s a long pause. When Robin answers, her voice is full of forced-casualty and cheer, “My teacher in the fourth grade for giving me an F on my science project.”

Will clears his throat. “I’d probably go to jail for something so dull. Like driving too slow.”

Robin stops hitting the hard heels of her sneakers against the concrete wall, says, “You know, you think you’re a lot more un-interesting than you actually are.”

“What,” Will says, “you mean that everyone doesn't get possessed at twelve?” Receiving compliments is one of life’s greatest discomforts and there is quite literally nowhere to run from them here. The basement is bigger than Will thought it would be, metal shelves lining the damp walls, empty save for a few cans of food. There’s a small desk with a spinning chair that Will had spotted straight away, and he and Robin have been pacing up and down the small square feet available to them for what feels like months. 

Robin ignores him, “I mean. You literally kind of died.”

“Well, it didn’t exactly stick.”

He wants nothing more in this moment than for this conversation to be over. Zombie boy, zombie boy, zombie boy. The boy who came back from the dead. That’s all he will ever be no matter what he does, no matter what else he survives, no matter what else he stands for. The room is small enough, and Robin must know Will enough by now to read his silences, as she stops talking and turns to look at him. Will doesn’t meet her gaze. 

He disagrees with that, anyway. Experiences and the shit you go through in life don’t make you interesting by default, it’s the way you interpret those experiences and mould them to yourself that make you interesting, and so far Will hasn’t been able to learn any valuable life skills from all this supernatural trauma other than life fucking sucks sometimes. It sucks most of the time, for people like him. 

There’s no need for Robin to apologize, so she doesn’t, but a while later something drops into Will's lap, and he sees that it’s a can of tinned peaches. )

And later; 

(They’re sitting back to back on the cold concrete floor, bored out of their minds. The only thing Will can feel is the heat of Robin’s back, the texture of her hair against his and the slight noise it makes when one of them moves. The rest of him is numb. He would be so much more freaked out if Robin weren’t here to sporadically blow raspberries and ask him whether he thinks the moon is made out of cheese or not. They’ve played so many games of eye-spy Will could probably recount every single object in the room from memory. His flashlight is dead, Robins’ is on its way out, and the only source of light available in the room-  a small, tiny barred window- has now been brought into uselessness by the black night. It’s so dark that nothing feels real, like he could say anything or do anything and it wouldn’t matter. It’s as dangerous as it is exhilarating. 

Just to see if the feeling will stick, he breaks the silence. “You know what the real fucked up part of all this is?”

“That I’d make a much better boy and you’d make a much better girl?” Robin says.

“What? No.” 

“Oh. The hoard of cockroaches in here?”

“The what?” 

“Nothing. Nevermind.” 

Will forgets what he was even going to say. The party’s meeting is at 7, Robin and Will left at 5, and they’ve definitely been gone for way longer than two hours. Will thinks about the party. Wonders if they realize he’s not there, if they even care. It’s probably better for them not to have to worry about the unwanted presence of him, even just for a half-day. 

They’ve tried to reach the group, as they weren’t stupid enough to forgo their walkie-talkies, but there’s no signal, no matter how far up the stairs they go, or how high they climb the shelves. There’s a rule that they all have, Murray and Argyle and Hopper’s Russian friend included, that if a certain patrol goes missing, they try everything else available before splitting and setting out to find them. They’ve probably passed the satellite-level of trying to establish communication by now, and Will wonders how long they’ve been searching for them. Tortures himself by thinking that if Robin weren’t here with him, maybe they wouldn’t even be looking at all - instead viewing his disappearance as a potential threat neutralized. 

Will shakes his head, and tunes back into Robin talking to her radio. She’s pretending to barter for a ransom by holding him hostage. You have 24 hours, motherfucker, and I have the Byers kid so don’t try anything funny! )

And even later ; 

(Robin had gone through a stage of genuine panic, pacing around the small concrete space and struggling to breathe. Will had tried his best to help her, asking dumb questions and breathing with her, but he had skipped that panicked stage, somehow, as if all the fight had left him a long time ago. He almost can’t believe how little he feels about all of this. Almost. 

But moments, hours, days later, Robin is hyper and sleep-drunk. Will can tell. She keeps on clicking her walkie on and off and it’s driving him a little insane. He thinks he preferred her when she was hyperventilating into a paper bag. 

He’s about to accidentally kick her ankle when she says, irreversibly, “Have you ever been in love? 

His stomach seizes up. She must really be delirious . Will dodges around the question - he’s never been a good liar, and he knows he definitely won’t be able to lie to Robin and have her actually believe him. He says, dryly, “How many of those canned peaches have you had?” 

She chuckles dryly back.

There’s silence, and Will should've known better than to believe that Robin could ever let go of something quietly, but he still almost jumps when she offers, voice small, “I have.” 

He doesn’t reply with words, but hums in encouragement for her to continue. He’s so curious, but terrified that she’ll ask for something in return. But Robin isn’t the type of person to keep score, or need something in exchange for something given willingly.

She sighs heavily, like a release, then says, “Fucking suuucked, seriously,”. Will snorts. “No, like honestly. It wasn’t– I mean sh- it wasn’t, um, requited– I guess.” 

Story of Will’s life. He’s supposed to ask, did you ever get over it? but instead what slips out of his dumb, stupid mouth is, “Does it ever stop hurting?” which is the same thing, really. He snaps his jaw shut, hopes, stupidly, that Robin doesn’t notice the does instead of did, but she’s too nice to point it out even if she has. He dreads the answer as much as he does the lack of one. 

There’s a pause. Then, so quiet Will almost misses it: “No. Not really.”)

.::.

The voice says, you hurt all the time. I can get rid of that pai–

.::.

Robin and Will leave out of their own volition, eventually. Robin, pissed that no-one was able to find them, makes a bitter joke about them winning the National Hawkins hide and seek tournament that neither of them pretend to laugh at. Will feels nothing. The demodogs are gone when they creep out, probably seeking food that they are able to actually catch and probably torture a little for fun first, who knows. He doesn’t know how long they were down in that basement for – Robin estimates around six hours, give or take. Enough for it to be completely dark outside, and enough for him and Robin to feel tired enough to collapse where they stand. 

The walk back to the cabin is uneventful, despite them being so high alert they snap their necks any time they hear even a gust of wind. 

The only person who's at the cabin when they arrive, panting and exhausted, is Argyle, funnily enough. He jumps up off the coach and squeezes them both hard enough to break their spines, tells them everyone has been worried sick, and they were all still out searching, 20 minutes away from calling whatever military or police they could contact, and shit, dude, he needs to call them and tell them–

Argyle smells like weed and old laundry detergent. Will barely knows him, Robin even less. He squeezes and holds them for too long to be fully comfortable. Will thinks it's the best hug he’s been given.

He gets them a blanket each and shoves them over to sit down on the coach, gesturing like a disgruntled mother hen. It's the most un-Argyle he has ever seemed, that is until he offers Will and Robin some purple palm tree delight to ease the nerves. Will declines, Robin looks as if she’s seriously considering it until Will whacks her on the knee with the edge of his blanket. 

“Dudes, we’ve got a code green!” Argyle’s voice cheers from the kitchen, presumably into the walkie, “They’re back! They’re back!”

There’s no answer, and Will half-expects Mike or Dustin to say, all rolling-eyes, Dude you need to say over, but the other line stays quiet. He’s about to call out to Argyle in the kitchen after about five minutes of sitting in silence, exchanging glances with Robin, but then the door to the cabin bursts open, and Mike is there.

Will unconsciously stands up immediately, his body always, always in tune with Mike’s, no matter how hard he tries for it not to be. The room is frozen in time. Neither of them move. Mike’s looking at him from across the room, his eyes wide, something like amazement all over his face, and he’s looking at Will like he’s never seen him before, or like he’ll never see him again, eyes running all over his face and down his body and then back up to his face all over again like a cycle, and they’re both frozen but then somehow they’re not and they’re crashing into each other –

Mike is holding him the tightest he’s ever held him, face shoved into Will’s hair, and Will couldn’t move even if he wanted to -- which he really doesn’t want to – his face pressed into Mike’s neck, breathing him in. They’re moving somehow, and Will’s mind floats down into his body slightly only to realize that his feet are actually off the floor, and Mike is holding him so hard that he’s been lifted up– and he hadn’t realized how much he missed him until he’s being held by him again, holy shit– and Mike’s saying something like I thought I lost you into his neck, and Will couldn’t respond to that even if he tried. Being held by Mike in this very moment, like he’s something precious, like he’s something worth saving, is the happiest Will can remember feeling for a long time. It's the only thing that’s made him feel something in a long time. 

He lied before, about that being the best hug he’s ever been given. This one definitely is.

Eventually, they must part and let go, but he doesn’t remember how, or why, or when. When Will’s brain starts functioning again, his first thought is to be embarrassed at the ferocity in which he had held Mike back, because Mike hadn’t even wanted to hug him at all all that time ago in the airport. But when he risks a glance up at Mike, he looks shy, cheeks rosy, but also so– so happy. And for the first time Will entertains the thought that maybe he made him feel that way. 

While looking at Argyle is safe, as he looks as out of it as ever, risking a glance at Robin isn’t so liberating- she looks knowing and smug, leaning back on the couch with her arms crossed, and Will would normally roll his eyes at her, but he feels, fuck it, he feels happy in this moment, too, sue him.

The peace is only broken when the rest of the party and company flock into the crowded cabin, and they all hug him and Robin and check them over for bruises (well, his mom does), and ask for an explanation right now mister (his mom, again.)

El and Jonathan are last in the hug-line. They both look exhausted. Will guesses he doesn’t look much better, although he’s taken to avoiding mirrors lately, so who knows. They both approach him as if they’re trying to cage a feral animal. He rolls his eyes at them, not exactly unkindly, but not exactly kindly, either. They need to talk some stuff out. Will needs to talk to all of them, about all of the supernatural weird things he’s been going through, but also all the shit they’ve put him through, too. There’s a spark in his chest, so, so small he almost misses it, but doesn’t – it glows enough to light up some of the dark. Maybe we still have time.

.::.

The voice says, you will always be second best, Will, but you can change all of that if you–

Will Byers sits up sharply on the pull-out bed in Mike Wheeler's basement and says outloud, finally, irrevocably, fucking bravely, “Okay. What the fuck do you want?”

And the voice says, smile in its voice, Come to me.

Chapter Text

Come to me, come to me, come to,

He sits up out of bed, and makes the trek upstairs to get a glass of water. The only good thing about winter, in Will’s opinion, is that water from the tap is ice-cold straight away. No bullshit store-bought ice or time in the refrigerator needed.

Jonathan is sitting hunched over in one of the kitchen counter stools when Will gets to the kitchen, forehead resting on crossed arms. He doesn’t seem to hear Will when he enters, which is weird because Jonathan usually always jumps at noises he can't expect or predict, and more importantly, he had always seemed in tune with Will , even when he couldn’t see him, as if he could sense his presence (which Will realizes now is a stupid brother-telepathy fantasy he must’ve harbored since he was younger - but it hurts realizing it’s not true nonetheless). 

Neither of them had apologised after Will and Robin returned. Jonathan had patted him on the shoulder like a forgotten phantom urge, smiled at him weakly, and that was it. He and El had walked off together and Will had tried to not to let it bother him. 

He tries to alert Jonathan of his presence a few times; scraping his feet on the floor, tapping, knocking, but it doesn’t seem to work. He then realises that he shouldn’t- doesnt - give a fuck whether Jonathan knows about his presence of not, because he’s a betraying dickhole. Will is halfway through filling his glass when Jonathan says something.

“Jesus,” he breathes weakly, running a hand through his hair, “I didn’t see you there.”

Will says, “Yeah” and then takes a long sip of his water. “I tried to get your attention, but…”

Jonathan seems to try to make himself smaller, and hunches his shoulders into himself. “Yeah, sorry I was just…” he trails off, eyes vacant, “thinking about something.”

Will is suddenly irrationally aware of his body, the fuzzy socks he has on his feet. He’s always wanted to seem cool and worthy to his brother, no matter how pissed off at him he still might be. This certainly isn’t winning him any points. 

It doesn’t seem to matter though, as Jonathan has closed himself off, and shut himself away. His expression is unreadable to anyone but Will.

Will’s been doing the same thing for most of his life, too - shutting away his vulnerabilities when placed in an unpredictable situation. He wonders, briefly, who learned it from who - was it Will mimicking Jonathan after seeing him skillfully put himself behind an impenetrable wall, the only thing that their dad couldn’t destroy; or was it Will who had learnt it first, after being subjected to too many invasive questions of who was it, or what did it look like down there, and the worst of them all, how did you survive? 

A fatal flaw of Will is that he gives himself away too freely. Jonathan’s is that he rarely gives himself away at all.

They were living out of a car once, the Byers family. When his mom finally was able to invest in a car - a shitty Pinto, at that, Lonnie decided to steal their rent money to buy whatever substance from Ellis out on Cornwallis that very week. It was cold, middle of winter. 

Will isn’t sure why he’s thinking about it now. It was only for a few days at most, but he remembers his heart beating and face flushing in fear from the sound of his dad screaming, and his mom screaming right back at him. He watched them both take turns in the phone booth, breath causing smoke in the air, voices muffled but their frantic arms waving angrily were pretty easy to read, even to a freezing and tiny Will. It said that nobody was going to take them in for a couple nights, especially with Lonnie’s reputation. The only small comfort was that nobody was going to move into their house while they were gone because the whole town had concluded that it was one of the worst places to live. Will never thought he would think positively about the people of Hawkins until that moment.

Joyce placed her knitted hat on Will’s head before climbing into the front seat of the Pinto and falling asleep instantly. The itchy wool had kept falling down into his eyes. 

Later, Jonathan stayed as close as possible to Will, and they slept piled in the back of the car like puppies. No one knew where Lonnie went, and Will was up sick with worry most of the night. Jonathan had told him this stupid story he’d made up despite nearly shaking from the cold– about a wizard and his smart pet worm. It made things better, even momentarily. A crack of light in the darkness. Most of his early childhood was only bearable because Jonathan had made it that way.

He’d never realized how much Jonathan had sacrificed for him until he got older, and well, with the world ending and everything, he doubts he'll be able to pay those sacrifices back any time soon. He doesn’t even know where he would start. 

“Hey,” Will says, before he even knows what he’s doing, “do you remember when we slept in the car that time— when we were kids?”

Jonathan’s brow furrows, “Yeah, I do,” he pauses. “I’m surprised you remember that, honestly.”

Will shrugs. He remembers everything. 

“Why do you ask?” 

Will doesn’t say I was thinking about how close we used to be, about how much you sacrificed to keep me happy, about how you used to tell me everything and anything, about how you saved me, over and over again– but it’s a very near thing. He shrugs again, finite. Neither of them say anything else. They look away from each other. 

Jonathan is not his savior. He’s not his God, not anymore, not like he used to be. Will used to think he was invincible, used to draw him with his shaggy hair and a cape, would stare at the teeth in Jonathan’s smile when he handed it to him. Will misses him so fucking much, in this moment, and his brother is seated right in front of him; Even when dimensions separated them, he’s never felt further away.

And he knows, then. No one can save Will or pull him out from this–  no amount of prayers or repentance or begging will save his life, or soul. He’s on his own. 

The tiles seem colder beneath Will’s feet as he leaves. 

.::.

Mike hasn’t let Will out of his sight for more than 30 minutes at a time since the incident with Robin a couple weeks ago. It’s as annoying as it is charming. But it's weird, too. 

Mike is always looking at him, (Will knows because he can feel it like a red-hot laser on his skin) but whenever Will tentatively looks back, he’s looking away. 

Whenever they're on opposite sides of the room, Mike is looking at him. Whenever they’re close to each other, Mike is looking at him. It’s starting to make his skin itch. Will’s too scared to confront him. For one - he would rather scoop his eyes out with a spork than engage in a confrontation that is likely to turn sour, as things often do with him and Mike. And two, in the likely case that he’s making it seem like a bigger deal than it actually is. What would he say, anyway? Hey Mike, I’ve seen you looking at me, and that’s actually not weird at all considering we’re friends and the world is ending, but I was just wondering why because I love you and I’m so horribly, disgustingly in-tune to every single move you make that not knowing your exact motive behind this one is starting to make me anxious? Right. 

When Will is in a room sans Mike, within 20 minutes or so the man himself comes bursting in, cheeks flushed and panting, muttering something like Oh Will I didn't even see you there! Or Hey Will I had no idea you were here, how weird, and then busies himself with something as quick as possible. Will never has the guts to call him out on it. 

Him and El had been weird, too. Not like Will cares. He saw them leave the room together one, two, five times, and by the sixth time he hadn’t even felt like throwing up or bursting into tears on the spot. Progress. Every time they had left, and Will had noticed, Robin looked at him in complete sympathy and knowing. It should have made him feel better. It didn’t. This is all people like us get, Will thought, scraps and bones and splinters. The chasm in his chest split open more and more each time, growing into an open wound.

Weirdly enough, Will has been grabbing onto any sort of feeling he has recently, whether it makes him want to carve his heart out - most commonly - or jump for joy - literally never - because anything beats the all-encompassing nothing he felt before.

(Despite his best efforts, Will can feel the nothingness crowd his senses again, take over his body like a possession. He pushes it down and down and down. He knows, somehow , that the voice, whoever, whatever it is, wants him to feel nothing, to be completely numb to the point of inhumanity. He won't let it happen. Not for himself, but for whatever would come for his friends and family if he fails.)

.::.

After Will unknowingly crosses the Rubicon and stops ignoring its presence altogether, the voice starts acting like it and Will are old friends .

Why don’t you ask me how my day was, it says. 

Will tries not to respond, because talking to voices in his head would be a new particular brand of crazy for him, but heatedly thinks, because I don’t give a shit. 

The voice doesn’t have a face, but Will can hear teeth when it responds, I can hear everything you think, you know. I’m in your head. 

Shut up, Will thinks, desperately. He can’t help himself from the blind-panic that overtakes him over the implications of everything , but whatever -  He won’t freak out, because he won’t let this… thing affect him. He doesn’t care. This will all be over soon, and his head will go back to normal. However normal his head was before, anyway.

My day was absolutely lovely, William. I can’t tell you what exactly it is I did, but you’ll find out soon enough.

I don’t care.

Not yet, the voice says agreeably, but you will.

.::.

“When Will had true sight,” Lucas says, “he was able to understand what Vec- Henry was thinking, right?”

The cafeteria of Hawkins High is as busy as it always has been. Voices blend and merge together, echoing off of the linoleum floors to off-white walls, chairs scraping and footsteps reverberating throughout the hall. Orange and green streamers and other decorations adorn the walls in preparation for the next game. High school really is different from middle school. Will can’t believe how much emphasis is put on a couple of basketball games. 

Will hadn’t really contributing much to the conversation, but he hates being talked about like he’s not there, so he says a little irritably, “Yes,”

Guilty, Lucas turns to him. Mike is staring severely into the distance, lost in thought, looking entirely the role of the party leader. Brave paladin. 

“So, what’s stopping you from hearing what he’s thinking now?” Lucas asks.

“Well. For one, I’m not possessed, as far as I know,” He replies, “And. Also…” 

The voice he’s been hearing is not the same as when he could hear Vecna’s thoughts. He knows that, but he has no idea why. 

The connection between him and Vecna, or the mindflayer as Will knew him, was uncontrollable. Will always got the impression that he didn’t know that Will could hear him at all - it was like electricity zapping through sinuses. When the brain makes a decision to move a limb, it doesn’t categorically order the muscles and blood and bone to move one by one, the arm wants to reach out, and it just does . Everything else that happens in the process is covered up. Hidden beneath.

When Will arrived back in Hawkins, it was like he had true sight again for a while, he could hear everything that Vecna was thinking, but then he had been cut off somehow, like an amputation. Maybe Vecna had been able to sense Will when he came back, and severed their connection himself when he had enough strength. The voice he’s been hearing only speaks when it wants to, is the difference– it’s controlled and measured, and feels entirely different. 

Will has no idea how to explain any of this. Doesn’t even know if it matters, anyway. Lucas is still staring at him, imploringly, and now Mike and Dustin are too. 

He shrugs. “I don’t know. Sorry”

Sighing, Lucas slumps back down into his seat. Dustin looks at him sympathetically. Mike says nothing.

He should feel guilty. Maybe this voice, whatever the hell it is, is the key to finding Max. But Will is nothing but a coward who underneath the numbness is just terrified about being ostracized from the people he loves most in this world. He used to tell Mike everything if not Dustin and Lucas ( Don’t tell the others, okay? They won’t understand-) but now things are even weird between them . El and Jonathan aren’t options either, or his mom or Hopper. Robin is a maybe, but she’d probably tell Steve, who’d tell Nancy, and then she’d tell Jonathan. 

The worn-out sweater Will is wearing itches against his skin when he moves, misshapen from his anxious, tugging hands. He looks at Lucas, then at Mike, Dustin, like he’s evaluating a threat, trying to weasel out the lesser of two (three) evils. 

“Maybe we could try doing paroles again–” Dustin says, breaking the silence. Will looks away.

"No.” Mike and Lucas both say in unison. 

“With weapons this time, obviously,” Dustin puts his hands up in surrender, “Jeeeeez.”

Mike says, “Still no.”

“Well, maybe we could turn a bad experience… upside down,” Dustin says, and when there’s no reaction, he turns to Lucas, “You used to think I was funny.”

Without looking up from his food, Lucas says, falsely contemplating, “Did I?”

Dustin has been doing that a lot recently– making shitty jokes to try and uplift the mood. Lucas is about the only one that has the energy to dispute it anymore, and Will would never say this out loud, but he thinks they both use the bickering as a distraction.  

He zones out when Dustin starts going through the pros and cons of starting paroles up again, with Lucas disapproving every point including the cons. They had stopped them soon after the whole Robin and Will situation, which the party had taken to calling it in secret.  

Before, Mike would’ve nudged Will’s foot under the table, would've caught his eye, they would’ve shared a look of mutual judgment and fondness over their friends bickering. Will doesn’t think about it. 

He doesn’t think about missing the party and home and Mike so much on his fifteenth birthday that he had stolen liquor from the cabinet – something chemically vinegar– had drunk and drunk until was pathetically retching and sobbing over a toilet bowl with his Mom smoothing his sweaty hair away from his forehead, El watching with worried eyes from the hallway, doesn’t think about the stifling, uncomfortable silence over the phone when Dustin asked whether Mike had told him about Hellfire yet and Will had shakily said no, doesn’t think about El receiving letters upon letters, about getting his hopes up every fucking time that there might be one for him and then the crushing heartbreak that followed when there never was. 

Will adjusts his slumped posture and takes a deep breath as if that will remove the ache in his chest. He doesn’t think about any of it. It would be pointless. 

Across the cafeteria hall, there’s a man. He’s older, but Will doesn’t think much of it. Although Will had never met him, he knows that Eddie had been older too. But– this man has hair so bright it reflects the white, clinical luminescent lights of the school straight back into Will’s face, and his eyes –

His eyes are– completely black. And they’re staring directly at him. 

Which is weird, because no one else seems to notice him, this odd man, they all dodge and weave past him in the bustling high school, not even sparing a glance. 

People of Hawkins have never been so merciful towards someone like him before. Someone so obviously out of place. Someone strange. 

Will’s about to ask the party whether a new teacher has joined the merry Hawkins High faculty team and why anybody sane would willingly do that to themselves when his breath quickens, and everything goes dark.

.::.

When he wakes up, he’s lying on the cold hard Cafeteria floor. 

“What,” Dustin says pleasantly, “The fuck.”

Mike is hauling him up off the floor and back to his seat by his wrists, gentle despite the tightness in his expression, and glaring at everyone who glances in their direction. Which, Will realizes with horror and a growing heat to his face, is the vast majority of people.

“Will, you alright?” Mike asks, strained. He’s moving his thumbs in small circles so gently around Will’s wrists, over and over. Will can’t answer, but looks down at the point of contact, drawn. Mike releases him like he’s been burned. Will briefly wishes he could gouge his eyes out to never look at anything ever again, but then remembers–

Looking around to where the man was before, he sees with a sickening twist in his gut that the space is completely empty. He glances around, desperately, ignoring the worried glances shot between Mike Dustin and Lucas, and tries to catch a glimpse of blonde hair and black eyes. But the man is gone. Disappeared without a trace. 

Maybe he imagined it.

Dustin is shooing every curious pair of eyes away in the inexplicably pleasant way he's able to do anything, shows over people, come get your tickets for the next one, and Lucas pushes the rest of his water and untouched apple towards Will. Mike looks in the direction of Will’s faraway gaze, searching for something nonexistent, and asks again, “Are you okay?”

Will clears his throat, then says, “Yeah. I’m fine.”

.::.

The voice says, so what did you think?

About what?  Will asks.

The voice doesn't answer.

.::.

Will had almost forgotten about the farm in Bloomsbury until his mom shoves an empty cardboard box at him on an early Saturday morning and tells him to start packing.

There wasn’t really much for him to pack, honestly. It made him sad. Lenora hadn’t felt like a home, not really, but at least they had time to plant their roots there in the hope that something might grow.

And they needed to ditch most of their stuff in Lenora, too. The government had Oh so kindly sent back some of their stuff from the shot-up and broken house because when Joyce had told Hopper about it he had all but threatened them to send their things back to them in Hawkins. Will had a couple shirts, some books, but most of his art equipment had been left, obviously deemed not important enough to transport with the other belongings. 

He picks up his tiger stuffie he had shoved under the bed in Hoppers’ cabin guest room, thinks about El in all her powerful glory, then thinks– Weird what those assholes deem important and what they don't.

A voice from behind him says, “Hey,” and Will turns around and shoves the stuffie behind his back lightning-fast. It’s Mike. Of course. 

“Hey,” Will says awkwardly. Mike looks at him in faint amusement, glances at the hands clasped behind Will’s back and then up towards him again. But there’s something wrong with him, something painful clouding his features. Will can tell, knows Mike’s face as well as his own. 

Mike moves closer towards him, not breaking eye contact, and when he’s less than a breath away, Will hysterically thinks, for an idiotic moment, that Mike’s going to kiss him. But then Mike grabs the tiger from behind his back, loosening it from Will’s grip, and steps away. Will tries to exhale quietly.

A gasp of laughter escapes Mike and he looks perplexed for a moment, as if the reaction surprised him. “I can't believe you still have this,” he laughs, thumbing over the aged and discolored fur.

Will looks at Mike’s hands. Looks away. “Yeah, well. We just have so many great memories together, that’s all.” 

He hopes that Mike remembers how he got that stupid tiger. Hopes with all his bruised, twisted heart.

And of course, because he is and will always be Mike, he says, “If you didn’t take him with you I would’ve been pissed. I used all my allowance on that rigged claw machine for you.”

And, because he is and always will be just Will, he grabs the tiger, Mr Stripes thank you very much, says, “We thank you for your service.”

It’s not really funny, but Mike snorts. Pleased, Will smiles at him. Then Mike pauses abruptly, as if remembering something, and when he looks back at Will all amusement has been drained from him. 

“You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s just…” Mike’s not looking at him anymore, his gaze glued to his hands twisting together. His voice is strained. Quiet.

And when he says, “That painting…” Will’s stomach drops to his feet so fast he thinks he might pass out. Mike, because he’s fucking Mike, notices, says “Will,” so so softly, and Will has never deserved a friend like him, never in his whole life.

Will has to punch out the words, “What about it?”

Mike really laughs now, and it’s nothing like the sweetly surprised one from earlier. This one is biting. Cold. Incredulous. “Well. Seeing your reaction just now I'm gonna go ahead and guess that you know exactly what a-fucking-bout it, Will.” He starts pacing, “El never commissioned it. Did she?”

Will doesn’t answer, can’t answer even if he wanted to. His mind is just a rotating stream of Oh god does he know that it was me, it was all me, or Oh god does he think I was just point blank lying to his face for no reason and he can't even figure out which one is worse. 

This is the Mike that stood up to Troy, that always challenges his parents, that takes the role of party leader more serious than he’s ever taken anything, and this is the Mike that had never called, that can never admit when he’s wrong, that never wrote, that had said it’s not my fault you don’t like— Will sometimes hates this version of Mike as much as he loves him.

He used to admire Mike’s anger so much, because no matter how bottomless it was, how much it overflowed, Will had known it would never be turned on him. He was wrong. 

Mike’s footsteps are even in Will’s silence. “She didn’t even know what the fuck I was talking about. I mean, she never even cared about D&D. Or art. Fuck. She never even cared about m–” He stops suddenly.

Me, he was about to say. She never cared about me. 

Even if El didn’t exactly say what Will did in that god-forsaken van, lovesick and pathetic, she cares about Mike. That much is indisputable; stable as bedrock. She loves him, Will knows this, had agonized over this, had seen and recognised that expression on her face immediately, intimately. Where the hell did Mike get the idea that she doesn’t care about him?

Before Will can voice any of this, Mike turns to him, angrier than before, “What the fuck, man? Seriously, what the fuck?” 

Mike grips his hair, starts pacing again. Will is struck-dumb, is glued to where he stands. He can almost predict what’s going to happen– one of them will say something cruel, something that will bury into skin and fester and scar. They can never fight in moderation. With us, Will thinks nonsensically, we can never do anything in moderation. 

And then, like clockwork, like fate, Mike says, “I mean, that was all for– for what,” He puts on a voice, childishly cruel, “You’re the heart Mike, she needs you Mike– all for… what? ”

Will flushes red-hot in anger and embarrassment. The need to defend, to bite back thaws his frozen body, and he says weakly, “You needed it”.Needed me, he doesn’t say.

“Needed it? I needed you to lie to me?”

“Fucking maybe, yes!”

Mike looks destroyed for a moment, and then angrier for it. Will has always thought that Mike was so beautiful in his anger. Anger just makes Will hideous. 

He laughs that horrible, cold laugh again, “Explain that to me, Saint Will. Explain why I needed you,” – He almost laughs on that word, as if Will is the person least likely to ever tell him anything meaningful. Will feels sick– “To lie to me about a painting.”

And this was the problem with them. No fucking moderation. They rarely fight, but when they do it’s an explosion, a wildfire. Every needling comment just adds fuel over and over again. 

Will doesn’t even recognise his voice when he speaks. “The thing with you Mike, is that you always need someone to need you. Someone to tell you you’re good, that you’re special. Whether it’s me, or El or Dustin– whoever. Maybe the fucking reason why I lied about the painting, about El, is just because the job fell on me that day.” 

Mike steps back as if he’s been slapped. Will knows it’s too much, that he’s said too much, that he’s too much. He wants to shove the words back into his throat the second they leave. But he can't.

“El broke up with me,” is all Mike says, and it’s the worst thing that either of them have said that night. Before Will can respond, Mike leaves without a backward glance.

Will wants to– wants so much, wants to run after Mike, to kiss him until they’re both breathless, to pray until he feels clean and faithful and young again, wants to destroy the whole world with everyone in it.

Childishly, he throws the tiger stuff onto the floor. He collapses, leans his back against the cold wall, head tucked into his knees. He feels something bubbling, as dangerous as a volcano, he wants to scream and cry and laugh all at once. He needs to do something with all of this– all this–

He wants to-

Needs to–

He needs–

The lightbulb explodes. 

Glass shatters and glitters on the dark, shiny floor. Will lifts his tear-stained face, gets up to his feet. Picks glass shards out of his hair.

Mechanically cleans up the glass with a dustpan and broom, sweeps with a repeating motion of back and forth back and forth, goes to the cabinet labeled tools/other shit and finds a new lightbulb, removes the remains of the shattered one from the ceiling. Throws it out, replaces it with the new one, switches the light switch on and off to make sure it works. It does. And he feels nothing. 

Nothing at all.

.::.

The voice says, good.

Will says nothing.

.::.

Erica and Lucas come and get him on a Tuesday afternoon after school. He hasn’t asked them whether they know anything about Mike and El breaking up, because it’s not his business and he doesn’t care. 

They’re sitting on the couch when Will leaves his room– Joyce is fussing over them, offering them tea or coffee or juice. They look so uncomfortable they seem constipated. It’s funny enough for Will to snort softly and for Erica to take notice and glance over at him. 

She widens her eyes comically, mouths Save us! at him just as his mother is telling Lucas how big he’s gotten and handsome he is now. Will pretends not to see it and whistles innocently on his way to the kitchen. 

Jonathan is sitting by the kitchen island, sipping coffee out of a purple mug that has a stupid fucking face. He and Will had gotten it for mom on her 50th birthday and she had laughed so hard she’d snorted so much red wine out of her nose that El had to mop it up with a party city napkin. It was the happiest they’d seen her after– well, after Hopper.

Will cautiously dances around him to the fridge, almost drops the juice when Jonathan awkwardly says, “Hey,”

“Hey,” Will replies just as awkwardly. 

“Hey,” A new voice says, and when Will turns around Erica is leaning against the wall adjoining the kitchen and the living room, eyeing them suspiciously. She’s wearing a bright red scrunchie in her hair and Will recognises it as one of Max’s. “Can we go now?”

He downs his glass of juice in one go and Erica looks at him in disgust. “Yep.”

When they’re outside, Erica turns to him while Lucas is struggling with his coat, and asks, “What was all that about?”

Will knows exactly what she’s talking about. “What are you talking about?”

She looks at him like she knows he's full of shit, and she probably does. “You and your brother. In the kitchen. It was so awkward. I thought you guys were like best friends.” 

“Who are best friends?” Lucas asks after them, obviously having come out victorious in the battle of teenage boy vs heavy winter coat. He places a warm arm around Will and flashes a megawatt smile when Will replies, “Us. Obviously,”

Erica doesn’t call him out on his obvious deflection. She’s always more merciful on days when she and Lucas go to visit Max together, but still says, “Ew.”

“You can’t escape the love Erica,” Lucas replies, and tries to tuck her under his arm too. She’s not as small as she used to be, but looks exactly the part of baby sister next to Lucas, only because Lucas is just that tall–  troll-level-massive, according to Mike.

Will shoves away all thoughts of Mike and focuses back on Lucas chasing Erica down the road. Their laughs echo through the streets. Will allows himself a small smile. 

.::.

There’s a part of Will that hates going to see Max.

He hates seeing her lying there motionless, red hair fanning out on the pillow behind her like a halo; hates seeing someone so strong look so– defenseless. Powerless. 

He wishes so fiercely that she was awake, poking fun at Lucas and Mike again, sharing secret smiles with Will and braiding El’s hair. 

They sit and talk to her for a while, in case she can hear them. Lucas reads some more of whatever book he’s reading right now, something about a friend group and a clown. Erica braids her hair into two little neat plaits– she’s been learning from El and she’s gotten a lot better. Will tells her some cool science facts he remembers learning in the third grade and doesn't stop even when Erica calls him a nerd.

Lucas’ face crumples when the doctor comes in and tells them she needs to be washed and changed like some sort of plant. He leaves immediately, door swinging shut behind him– Erica gives the doctor a dirty look (He looks thoroughly chastised) and tells Will to go and look for Lucas, that she’ll stay near Max. 

...

Will finds him in the waiting room pretending to watch a basketball game that’s playing on a tiny wall-mounted TV. The room is virtually empty, save for some tired-looking 20 year olds and old, graying couples. 

“Typical jock.” Will says, sitting down on the plastic chair next to him. 

Will hears his weak laugh, but doesn’t turn to look at him in fear of what he might see. It's unfair, Will knows, but he places so much of his strength in Lucas, had always thought since he was a little kid that if Lucas could do something that he could, too.

After a few minutes, he hears Lucas get out of his seat and reach for the TV remote. He switches the channel to a cooking show that Will doesn’t recognise. Will wonders whether to talk or not, rotates the pros and cons of breaking the silence in his mind (fucking Dustin) and eventually the con of dying from boredom wins over.

“You don't want to watch the game anymore?

Lucas shakes his head, voice spent, “No.”

“That sucks. The linebacker seemed to really know his stuff.”

Lucas turns to him, sharply, “There are no linebackers in-" stops when he sees the smirk on Will’s face. “Yeah okay. Asshole,” he says.

Will risks a glance over to him, and is amazed to see that Lucas is still Lucas– despite everything. And he’s even smiling . He’s probably the strongest motherfucker that Will has ever met. 

And then Lucas says, “I hate this,” and sobs wetly into his hands. 

Will acts on autopilot, moving closer to him and rubbing a hand soothingly along his back. He’s a little out of his depth here. He can count the amount of times he’s seen Lucas cry on one hand, and all of those times had been when they were kids; like when his pet turtle Mr Kibbly had died or when he fell off his bike and scraped his knee. All of those times had been scary, made more serious when it was Lucas who was affected. But none of them had been even close to this– the sound of ugly heartbreak wracking through his body and erupting out of his mouth, the fracturing of a teenage boy under the weight of the world. 

“She’s–” Lucas says, with punched out words, “Like, she was– we were going to see a movie together. She was going to– be better,” He takes a deep stabilizing breath. “And now–” he breaks off again, but Will knows well enough.

There’s nothing for him to say here. Will can only act as a lifeline, a compass, an anchor, something for Lucas to grab onto– and hope that he doesn’t drift away.

Will grips Lucas’ hand in his and doesn’t let go until Erica comes to get them. 

.::.

There is no hope, Will, no God– Only me, the voice says.

Will says, you supervillains are always so egotistical.

Supervillains? The voice seems appalled. Will smiles, and makes up his mind.

.::.

At the beginning of the meeting Will gets a note passed to him in Robins recognisable chicken-scratch handwriting that reads, R u ok ? with a drawing of a stickman holding a huge heart, something vaguely resembling a giraffe, and a shark with a smiley face. Will rolls his eyes fondly and gives her a thumbs up. She doesn’t seem too convinced, but leans back and shuts up, which is good enough for now.

Will had called a meeting after the visit with Max. He’s having trouble… feeling. Even with Lucas crying, even after his fight with Mike, while Will had been upset, he had felt like a backseat passenger in his own head, like he was looking down his own body from the outside. Almost like he had been given enough emotions to not be completely robotic, but not– like Will . 

He used to hate feeling so much all the time, used to see it as a fucking curse on himself, but now he– while he doesn’t exactly miss it, he feels like he’s missing something important. Something vital.

He knows that he needs to do this, but it’s like two versions of himself are at war– one saying this is not normal, this needs to stop, another saying Don’t feel anything, it doesn’t matter, who cares. Will needs to consciously grab onto the first side with a tight grip if he wants any of this to stop; If he wants to help Lucas and Max and every other forgotten kid in Hawkins.  

As Will calling an emergency meeting is something that has never happened before, everyone has shown up. And, looking at the people surrounding him in this shitty impromptu meeting room, he’s both discouraged and supported in equal measure.  

Argyle and Murray and his weird Russian friend are grouped at the back of the room. Argyle is probably talking about something nonsensical if the other two men's faces are anything to go by. 

Joyce and Hopper are sitting closer to Will, hands clasped, and his mom had already made the instinctual motherly instinct to get up and tell Will to just get on with it already what’s happening are you alright multiple times but had been pulled back down by Hopper on each one. Hopper winks at him when Will notices, but even his smile is tight and strained. 

Sitting together in the middle table are Robin, Steve, Nancy and Jonathan – and despite Jonathan maybe hating Will right now, even just seeing him assures Will that he’s doing the right thing here. Hopefully.

And– The party are all sitting separately. El is sitting with Lucas, Dustin with Mike and Erica, and Will tries not to let it bother him, this fracture, but he feels something pull in his chest at the sight of it. When he looks at Mike, Mike’s already looking at him. He looks terrible, but still beautiful, with bags under his eyes and a frown playing on his mouth. Will guesses he looks about the same. 

He still loves him so much. Will loves everyone in this room, and no amount of numbing or controlling or supervillains will ever take that away from him. 

His fucked up family. 

“Okay this is cute, cupcake,” Murray drawls, “But I have somewhere to be so if you could just…” He makes a movement like hurry up with his hand.

Everyone looks towards Will. He sighs.

Where to start?

Chapter Text

For a moment, there is silence.

And then, Steve says “Wait– so… you’re saying you can hear this creep?” and suddenly the floodgates are broken, and everyone is talking over one another. 

El: “For how long have you–”

Robin: “Now, listen I’m not saying you’re nuts, but, come on now–”

Joyce: “We need to call–”

The room is dirty and ruptured. The walls are stabilized by miscellaneous planks of wood they had scavenged from the junkyard, oxidized copper and steel parts patch up the windows. Hoppers’ cabin was too far for everyone to meet in such short notice, so they had to use the abandoned radio station-  their emergency-place.

Will tries to keep up, but it’s an impossible task. Voices build up, tumbling and layering over one another. He sort of wants to fucking die, curls up into himself like a turtle retreating into its shell, and just when he’s about to scream or burst into tears or whatever, something breaks through the madness. 

A loud rattle echoes throughout it. “Everyone shut the fuck up!” Mike yells, clutching a wooden stick in his hand, the heater's sharp metallic tang still reverberating in circles through everyone's ears. The noise falls silent. They all turn towards Mike, but he’s looking at Will. 

They still haven’t spoken since the fight. Will honestly hopes he literally passes away instead of having to talk about it. With the awkward way in which Mike is reluctantly looking at him, he probably feels the same. It’s painful. It’s unfamiliar. It’s irrelevant.

“Um– thanks, Mike.” Will chokes out. Mike nods back at him stiffly, then sits back down, giving Will center-stage. 

He clears his throat, “Can everyone just speak– like, one at a time please? And yes- Steve, I can hear him. Sort of. Unless it’s not. Actually him but I’m pretty sure it is. And– I’m not…. I’m not crazy,” He tacks on meekly. 

Steve looks at him blankly. He’s wearing a bright red jacket and green cargo pants, a combination that could not look good on anyone but him. “Well jeez how sure are you, Byers?”

Jonathan clears his throat imploringly, a little threatening. Well- It's about as threatening to Will as a growl from a kitten and he almost wants to laugh. He doesn't. Chastised, Steve sinks back down in his seat.

Before the arguing can start again, Will says, “We can’t leave Hawkins until this is all over. I mean I can’t. You all can go, obviously, but I need to stay.”

“I’m staying with you,” Mike says immediately. He coughs. “I mean we’re staying with you, obviously.”

The rest of the group nod in assent, like it wasn’t even really a dilemma worth thinking about, like it was never even an option to leave without Will. Considering how skeptical they all were of him a couple of weeks ago, Will guesses this is progress. The only person who sighs, extremely loudly, he might add, is Murray, and Will guesses that's fair enough. Joyce mutters something about calling the owners of the farm in Bloomsbury to let them know they're not coming and leaves the room, and silence settles in the room once again, heavy as snow. 

“How were you taken?” A voice asks.

If the question wasn’t already confusing enough– it also comes from Nancy, who hasn’t spoken once in this meeting or any of the others. She doesn’t look away when Will meets her stare from across the room, all steel-nerves and curls, a citadel of cotton-candy pink frills.

“What?” Will asks.

“Well,” Nancy coughs. The apples of her cheeks are slightly flushed as if she’s just now realizing the outlandish nature of the question, “I know what happened kind of, but I don’t think you’ve ever explained how it happened.”

“How what happened?”

She says it like it’s obvious. Like it’s nothing. “How you ended up in the Upside down all those years ago.”

The silence is thick in the room. The glow of the fluorescent ceiling lights make everyone look pale, ghostly, almost transparent. Will feels like he’s been punched, or stabbed, all oxygen sucked straight out of his lungs, blood dripping onto the floor.

A chair groans in the silence when Jonathan sits up straight, mouth pinched and stretching along his face, “What does that have to do with anything?”

Nancy waves him off, “Humor me.”

For some strange reason, Will's embarrassed. Vulnerable. Like how he felt when the art teacher in Lenora would stare and stare at one of his paintings, observing Will's heart splattered onto canvas while Will stood there with sweaty palms and a pulse heard in his eardrums.

It's just— That story feels incredibly personal somehow. Will half wants to yell with all his indignant and misplaced anger why they think they’re entitled to know it. But he doesn’t. 

Instead, he speaks.

.::.

“I’ll take your X-men 134!” Will yells before rounding the corner near Mirkwood. He distantly hears the pull-strain-stop of Dustin’s bike wheels, the grinding of rubber tires against the asphalt, but doesn’t turn around. Dustin will deny all plausibility tomorrow. He’ll claim that Will cheated, that he never said he could have any comic– and even though Will really wants that x-men 134, he’ll let him. 

He smiles to himself, watches the concrete pass underneath his feet. Looks towards the empty road ahead of him, the yellow fluorescent of the streetlights muffled in the fog. It would make for a nice painting - the loneliness of it all. Mrs Gilliard says that Will has a real eye for understanding the nature of why paintings are created, rather than just how. He isn’t sure why this road would make for a good painting, aside from its distinct emptiness. It feels important somehow. Pivotal.

The light on his bike flickers off, then on again. Will looks back down at the road beneath him. Remembers the pot hole near the edge of the asphalt that the town was supposed to fill years ago but never did, and likely never will. Looks up again and sees–

A not-so empty road. A figure. Unnaturally tall and with a clawed hand outstretched. 

He swerves on instinct as if he had seen an animal on the road and not wanted to hit it rather than out of fear. 

But when his hands and knees hit the damp leaves beneath him, and he looks up to see the figure look straight towards him through the shroud of fog– 

Fear is all he feels. Nothing but fear. 

Pulse jackhammering through his palms all the way to his throat, he ditches his bike and runs. The tall damp grass whacks against his legs as he sprints, spreading through the fabric of his jeans and chilling skin down to the bone. He ignores it. He runs and runs and runs. 

When he gets to his house he slams the door behind him and locks it, tries to calm Chester, calls out to his mom, to Jonathan. When he risks a glance outside the front window and sees the figure he picks up the phone and tries to call for help.

He does everything right, is the irony of it all. Some strange feeling inside Will, echoing in the empty chambers of his whole life, repeating and repeating itself over and over and over tells him that this was always going to happen.

No matter what he does, he's never able to escape it. In any possibility, in any scenario.

And Will had never really believed in fate. He found it difficult to uphold the image of the ‘lovers fated to be together’ after watching the misery of his parents' marriage splinter apart as he got older. When Mike shook his hand at the swingset he thought, for a moment, that maybe, maybe – but then he had gone home to Lonnie, and all his hopes had shattered like glass from their window that had been punched in his anger. 

Looking at that thing towering over him, teeth shaking and hands clammy; Will had thought, one after the other, please, and then— and it would be the last semi-coherent thought he would have for a while –  Why me?

And then he thought nothing at all. 

.::.

“Were you bleeding?” Nancy asks. 

Will looks at her. He ignores the many pairs of eyes set on him and shakes his head roughly to rid himself of the memory. “What?”

“When you fell on the road, I mean. Did you scrape your hand on the concrete or something?”

“No. No, I fell on the grass. I wasn’t bleeding.”

Nancy says nothing. Jonathan turns to look at Will as if he’s never seen him before, like he’s a stranger. Will is missing something here, but he doesn’t know what. Even Steve is looking at him strangely, something he hasn’t done for years or more accurately until he became friends with Robin, 

“What ?” Will asks them. He's not sure if he's more afraid of the answer or the absence of one. 

Clearing her throat, Nancy looks directly at him, “It’s weird. Demogorgons are attracted to blood. There’s no reason for it to follow you all the way to your house if you weren't even bleeding.” 

Will’s stomach plummets. His hands sweat. He feels almost guilty as if he knows something they don’t, as if he’s hiding – but he’s not, of course. This is all news to him. He didn’t know any of that. So why isn’t he surprised? 

“There’s something else,” Nancy says slowly, her gaze almost accusatory, “When we went to the upside down we saw that… Well. Time is frozen . On the exact date that you went missing, Will.” 

.::.

El slips out of the bathtub as smoothly as a snake sheds its skin. “I can't see anything” she says, like Will knew she would. 

He hands her a towel and she begins to wipe her face, her neck. Will studies the slow drip of water onto tiled floor because it’s easier than looking his sister in the face. The noise. The easy repetition. 

“He’s not in there, Will,” El croaks, shivering. Will hands her another smaller, fluffier towel automatically. 

I know, Will wants to say, because he does, but instead he says nothing. He wants to ask her why she broke up with Mike, why on earth anyone would ever want to break up with someone so wonderful, and then wants to ask Mike the same thing about El; and realises he can’t talk to either of them about anything, really. 

“Shit.” Will says instead. 

“Shit,” El echoes, clunky, then says, “Why didn’t you tell me about this earlier?” and it’s only when Will looks up at her from her stunted tone of voice does he realise that she's angry at him. 

“El, I didn’t tell anyone. It wasn’t just you.”

She exhales harshly through her nose and stands up to pull out the bathtub plug in one quick movement. “That is not the point. I could’ve helped you earlier. It was selfish of you to not tell anyone.”

Will laughs, but there’s no anger in it. He’s muted, dull. “Selfish? ”

El harshly rubs at her hair with the smaller towel. It has grown out nicely since Brenner had it shaved, almost reaching past her shoulders. She takes to wearing it tied back now, low buns tied behind her head. Joyce says it makes her look older, more sophisticated– But Will just thinks she, like all of them, look like kids pretending to be adults. “Yes,” she says, “selfish , Will. This doesn’t just affect you, it affects all of us. With you hiding this, you put all of us in danger.” 

The bathtub makes a terrible gurgling noise as the last dregs of water are sucked down into the drain. Will half-hopes he could get poured down there too, liquefied, left to not deal with any of this. He knows that El is right, that by hiding this secret he could’ve put them all in danger, rather than just himself– He knows better than anyone that Henry is unpredictable, violent and above all scared, which makes him more dangerous than ever. 

It’s not exactly like the party made a safe environment for Will to pour out his feelings to, but it’s not like that's their job, either. Will just needs to get on with it. Stop being so goddamn sensitive, a voice echoes in his head, and it sounds like his father. 

“Yeah,” Will sighs, small, “Yeah, you’re right. I’m sorry.”

A quiet moment. The bathtub is empty now. El is looking at Will like some sort of specimen when he meets her gaze after the silence becomes unbearable. 

“Um– I’m learning about the history of art, tomorrow,” El says, finally, and Will realises that he really has been losing time because that means it must be Monday tomorrow, and then realises that El is reaching out to him. An olive branch.

Will, of course, takes it. “Oh really? With mom or hopper?” 

"Mom, I think,” She grins, “But also, Hopper compared you to a crazy guy with one ear, by the way.” 

“You mean Van Gogh?”

“Something like that.”

“I guess that’s sort of a compliment. Most artists are crazy,” He looks down at his hands, adds, self-deprecatingly, “me included, I guess. Though I’m not really an artist.”

The others must be wondering where they are by now, and Will isn’t sure how he’s supposed to explain to the others that he might actually just be insane and Henry probably isn’t poking around in his brain. In the silence, Will thinks, Great , you ruined the fucking peace, you stamped all over the olive branch. 

“Maybe this is proof that you are an artist,” El says.

“Huh?”

“Your insanity. It’s proof that you are an artist.”

Will looks at her for a confused, almost offended moment, and then sees the small grin grow on her face, “You dick.”

She laughs evilly, “Now you can be– all tortured and pretentious like Jonathan,”

“I liked you better when you didn’t know how to talk,” Will scowls back at her. El whips him with the towel. 

When they’re both about to leave the bathroom, El turns to him, a serious, haunted, look on her face. She grabs his shoulders roughly. “Will, if you ever hear anything like that again, you have to tell me. Okay?”

Will’s so frightened by how grave she looks that it cuts through all the noise. “Okay.”

“Promise me,” she implores, staring directly into his eyes.

“El–”

“Promise me . Friends don’t lie.”

“...I promise.” 

She leans up on her toes and kisses him harshly on the forehead, and Will makes a shocked noise that embarrasses them both. Will smiles at her, unsure, jittery, numb, feeling a little bit like he just got baptised by something holy; El smiles back, as solid and as stable as bedrock. 

.::.

His mom ambushes Will as soon as he leaves the bathroom, corners him like he’s some sort of frightened, wild animal. It isn’t entirely unwarranted behaviour. 

“Will,” she says nervously, as if she doesn't have the right to talk to him anymore– and it makes him so suddenly upset that he stops in his tracks. “Hi, sweetie.”

“Hey, mom.”

Her hands are warm when she places them on his shoulders. Will towers over her now, as well as Jonathan, but he still feels as though he needs to look up at her, takes what she says as gospel truth and follows it like faith. “How are you?” She asks him.

“I’m fine,” It doesn’t feel like a lie. Doesn’t feel like the truth, either. “How are you?”

“Oh I’m good, sweetie, don’t worry about me. I just wish I had a million hands and arms to do a million things at once, you know?”

Will does not know. “Sure. Like an Octopus,” 

“Like an Octopus,” She sighs. Her hands twitch at her sides - a tell she needs a cigarette. She’s promised to quit again, although Will, El and Jonathan all know she says that once a month and they always catch her sneaking them in times of stress, a look of don’t judge me or don’t fucking say anything in her eyes as she takes a drag sitting on the porch, face wearing a thousand yard stare. Will bet Jonathan 20 bucks she won’t last a month, and he wonders if that bet is still ongoing considering their unfriendliness to each other recently. 

Then, he thinks it doesn’t really matter regardless. He probably won’t live long enough to find out. 

“Listen,” His mom says, “I’m always going to be here for you, you know that, don’t you?”

It’s so similar to talks in the back of a pizza place with a distant brother a million years ago that he almost laughs. Instead of rolling his eyes, he avoids eye contact says, ‘I know, mom,” and he can tell that she’s going to hug him and for a second wants so badly to never be touched ever again by anyone that he almost runs away without looking back.

Will’s skin feels like it’s been boiled, peeled back, scrubbed until layers have shed. He accepts his mothers hug, smiles at her half-heartedly, and leaves her there to worry about him. 

.::.

What is it that you want from me? Will asks.

The question echoes back to him with no answer. 

.::.

Will’s honestly a little– not nervous, exactly but, feels some trepidation, to be alone with Dustin. Every time they’ve been together recently, Lucas and Mike have been there too. He isn’t really sure of what to say to him.

He’s bent over the desk in the UV club when Will finds him. Working on some sort of invention, probably.

Will leans against the doorframe, deciding to study him for a little. There’s dirt staining his forehead and up the length of his forearms, white sleeves crumbled and turning an off-white gray sort of color from sweat and grime. His curls are wet with sweat. He looks tired, desperate. Strung-out. 

Dustin jumps when he looks up and sees Will. “Jesus, Byers,” He places a hand on his chest, “Warn a guy, would ya?” He sounds like Steve. Or Eddie, maybe. Will wouldn’t know. Either way the smile on Dustin’s face doesn’t reach his eyes. 

“Sorry,” Will exhales, and moves towards the desk. “What are you working on?”

There’s a peculiar movement, as if Dustin is going to protect the hunk of jangled metal on the table from Will’s eyes, or vice versa. It’s aborted and incomplete. Dustin uses his half-outstretched arm to scratch his head. 

He sighs, “It’s actually not anything special at all. I don’t even know if it's even going to work. It detects the level of radiation in the atmosphere and– I don’t know. I thought it might work for the upside down, you know? Or for when– if– the upside down merges into Hawkins. Then we’d be able to tell how bad it is here. I wanted it to work. Want it to, or. I don’t know,”

“Who's to say that it won't?” Will asks, confused. 

Dustin looks at him. His eyes are empty and dead. “I guess it might. I don’t know,” he laughs terribly. “I just don’t know.”

“Dustin, are… Are you okay?” Will asks, and realizes how stupid and insignificant the question is, how its been stretched so, so thin in between all of them over the years that it’s lost all it’s fucking meaning. He can’t help himself from asking anyway.

“No,” Dustin replies, punched-out, as if he’s about to cry, “No, I’m not.” He sits down heavily on a plastic chair. The fluorescent light of the AV club room picks out his features— the crease between his brows, the frown lines around his mouth. He looks, for a sudden and incomprehensible moment, completely unrecognisable. Then it’s gone as suddenly as it appeared, and he’s Dustin once more. 

Will stares at him desperately. “What can I do?” 

.::.

The graveyard sits on top of a slight hill, lined with tall aged oak trees and a shiny black metal fence adorned with spikes to stop the birds from perching. They had told Will what had happened here, with Max. How she started floating away from their grasps, almost lost forever— a sinister and cruel foreshadowing of what was to come. How could any of them have known? 

Dustin walks beside him, holding some sort of cloth and cleaning spray. He barely looks up from the floor to watch where he’s going— a tell of how many times he has visited here alone. 

They stop. The grave in front of them reads; HERE LIES EDWARD MUNSON, and cruelly painted on top of the markings in bright red spray paint; FREAK and MURDERER . 

Frosted grass crunches underneath Dustin as he kneels down, spraying the unmoving chunk of stone, wiping away the residue. Will watches, struck. The winter sun shines on both of them like a spotlight. 

“The ‘freak’ part wouldn’t even have bothered him,” Dustin sighs, “but…”

But it bothers me, Will hears. He crosses his arms over himself to stave off the cold. Should’ve worn a warmer sweater. Dustin doesn’t even seem to feel it, cleans off the desecrated grave with clinical, methodical movements. 

‘I’m sorry ’ wouldn’t do jack shit, Will knows. But he still feels sorry. Sorry is his status quo. He feels like everything he does needs apologising for.

He kneels next to Dustin on the frosted ground and feels the cold seep through his jeans. “What was he like?”

“Awesome. Terrifying. Different.” 

“I wish I could’ve met him.”

“Oh, he would’ve loved you. He reminded me of you a little, actually. Like, in how passionate he got in everything. I was always so jealous of that.”

The compliment warms Will’s chest even though he can’t really claim to understand it. “You’re passionate.” 

Dustin chuckles bitterly, “Not really. I always feel so, like— lukewarm. Not too great, not too bad, just there . It’s awful. Eddie was never like that. He was always so bright sometimes it was impossible to look straight at him. He understood that just because you don’t understand something, it doesn’t make it evil. And that’s rare. That’s something that you have too, Will.” 

Will thinks about Dart, about Dustin’s immediate defence and protection over an unknown creature, thinks about his own I’m not going to hurt you when he had found the thing curled up and afraid in the bathroom – so much like him, yet the cause of all his troubles. Well, not all.

The smell of damp grass, bird calls, a cold chill. 

“Sometimes, I lie awake at night and wonder what kind of person I would’ve been. Without all of this. And I can barely stand it.” The words are true, too true, and Will has no idea where they come from. They’re cold and bright against the air. He feels possessed, thrown over. 

Will’s eyes don’t move from the grave but he can feel Dustin’s on him, piercing. “I’ve always been. Different, I guess, is what I’m trying to say.” And something bubbles over, his hands shake, he feels like he might throw up, and he thinks well fuck it and says, irrevocably, “Dustin, I’m uh– I’m gay, is what I’m uh, trying to say. Queer.”

The immediate warmth of Dustin's arm over his shoulder makes Will feel like he could cry from the relief, the release and the stress leaving him in one shaky and unstable exhale.

“Am I the first person you’ve told?” Dustin asks him in a soft voice, no apprehension, no judgment, just curiosity.

“Yeah.”

“Will, thank you for telling me.” He says, “Don’t cry, Will,” and Will hadn’t even realised that he was crying until he reaches up to touch his cheek, heavy under the weight of Dustin’s arm, his friendship, “It’s Okay. I’m– happy for you. I’m happy you told me.”

“Yeah?” Will croaks, still shaking.

“Yeah. Of course. I think Eddie was too, you know.” 

And that’s something that shocks Will, the idea that he wasn’t the only person to feel this way in this fucked up town. “Oh.”

Tears escape Dustin’s eyes at the reminder of Eddie and Will isn't sure if it’s alright to touch him back so settles for looping his arm through his. They’re probably a sight to see— both still kneeled on the winter grass in front of a now-clean gravestone. And Will says, voice thick with tears, “And you.. Didn’t.. don’t mind?”

“I’m-” He pauses for a moment and Will’s heart pauses with him, drops down to his feet. Dustin turns his face from him and for a sickening, heart-crushing moment Will thinks oh shit, he’s not okay with it, I’ve fucked it all up. 

Dustin’s body shakes against his and Will thinks he’s properly crying, sobbing against him, until he hears a fucking giggle and realises that Dustin is laughing, real, deep laughter. Will smiles, incredulously, confused but placated enough to ask, “What?”

“Dude it’s just–” He breaks off into peels of uncontrolled laughter. It’s the exact same fucking laugh he’s had since he was 12 years old, all high-pitched giggles and heaves, and it’s impossible to not laugh along with.

“What is it ?”

“The world is goddamn ending, there are monsters crawling the earth, parallel dimensions and you’re worried that I give a shit that you like boys?”

The mention of it feels so fucking good. You like boys. You like boys. “Alright, I get it, it's stupid,” Will laughs, so relieved and happy he could cry. 

Dustin doesn’t stop laughing. In fact, the laughter grows more.

“Alright, I get it!” Will scowls, faux-upset. Like, come on.

“Will, can you please help me defeat this demogorgon that's about to eat my face? Wait– Nevermind, you exist outside the primitive constructs of society! ”

Primitive constructs of society. “Okay okay! God I get it okay! Not everyone has your priorities.” 

“I’m not trying to, like, undermine you, dude,” Dustin wipes a tear from his eye, “Cause society does suck. And it must be so scary. But imagine what kind of jackass I would be if I gave a shit. Negatively. Especially now.” 

“That implies that you’ll give a shit when this is all over and I don’t have to save you from interdimensional monsters anymore,” Will jokes, then adds, “Well, if this is all over one day. And if we survive.”

Dustin grabs him by the shoulders, suddenly dead-serious, “Will, one day this will all be over, and you’ll be at some pretentious art school, and I’ll be at some fancy science lab earning a million bucks a day, and I promise you I won’t care even then,” he pulls him in for a hug, tenderly, in front of a grave of someone Will never met, and says, “You’re my best friend.” 

.::.

Will crunches over dead and burnt up vines on the way to the video store. The military had taken to burning them a few months ago, according to Murray. Will had never actually seen them do it, remembers the terrible, agonising pain of the burning before. He wonders if he would rather feel the burn of it than whatever numbness he’s feeling now.

“I’m quitting,” Robin tells him, as he opens the door, clad in her objectively horrific uniform, “Seriously. The world is fucking ending. I don’t even know why I’ve stayed here for so long.”

Will lifts himself up to sit on the counter. “So that you can rent us movies at half the price?”

Robin silently slid him a VHS of Maurice over the counter a few weeks ago. Will watched it shamefully by himself, as if he was doing something terribly wrong, chose a time when he knew everyone else would be out of the house. Afterwards, he cried so hard he threw up, shivering and alone on the cold bathroom tiles. Alec, did you dream you had a friend? Someone to last your whole life? 

Will places the VHS gently next to him on the counter. Robin glances at it once, slowly, then away. She looks almost irritated by its presence. 

“Ha, ha,” Robin says, then madly shoves her hands in her hair like she might rip out all the strands.”Seriously what are we fucking doing. Like. The mundanity of it all dude. People still going to school even though there are those fucking things just crawling about. Like Hawkins didn’t split into two halves like– a goddamn orange. Like, what is even–?” She throws her hands up in the air, "What?”

“Do oranges split in half? Like, famously?”

Robin stops in place, pulls out a pack of marlboro reds from her jean pocket. “Do you smoke?”

“Um. Not really”

And Robin grins at him, all teeth, “Me either. I think it's gross. You want one?”

His mom would kill him. But, as Robin said, the world is fucking ending. So Will nods. Robin inclines her head to the front door and leaves, and Will follows. 

Once they’re outside, she turns the sign on the door over – closed . It’s fair enough for her to close in the middle of the day actually, she was right about the world ending and everything– the video store doesn’t get a lot of business these days except for from the party. 

Robin pulls out a cigarette, lights it, hands it to Will, and then lights one herself. They inhale at the same time, but only Will consequently coughs directly after.

“I thought you said you didn’t smoke,” Will says, framed like a question.

“Yeah, I don’t, like, habitually. That doesn’t mean I never have,” She turns towards him, leaning one shoulder on the wall of the video store, then says incredulously,  “Holy shit, did I just give you your first cigarette?” 

Will coughs. “Yeah.”

“But doesn’t your mom smoke? And Jonathan?”

“Jonathan smokes weed, not nicotine. And my moms trying to quit– she’s always talking about how bad it is for your health and all that,” despite this, he inhales again, this time narrowly managing to hold in the cough trying to claw its way out of his throat. He can see Robin looking at him out of the corner of his eye. 

The smoke is acrid, gritty in his throat and lungs, but there’s something nice about that, maybe the half-punishment of it, or the unnatural taste, or the rush he gets from doing something he knows he's not supposed to do. The third inhale is much easier. 

When he looks at Robin, she’s looking away, exhaling smoke out of her nostrils into the cool air.  

“Are you queer?” She asks him.

Will coughs again, and this time it has nothing to do with the smoke. His face heats up and palms begin to sweat. “What?”

He feels betrayed, suddenly, that she would reveal this not-secret. Open this festering wound to the cold, fresh air– and that she would leave him alone in it.

But then she laughs, manically, croaks, “I am,” and begins pacing, holding the cigarette with one hand, clasped between two fingers, “I am! And fuck maybe I should be more careful about it, I’ve always been careful about it for my entire life, but like, the goddamn world is ending here and I just need something to change. Anything! And there's this girl that, I think, well her name's Vickie and…” she trails off, pacing stopped, and looks at Will terrified, a deer in the headlights, like the reality of what she’s admitted to has just hit her.

Will throws his cigarette onto the floor, stamps it out with his shoe, something he’s seen his mother do countless of times. Opens the video store door and goes to sit on the counter, and does not check to see if Robin is following him. 

Will crosses his legs on the counter, holds his ankles, and looks at Robin, who is shutting the door behind her. “Yes,” He says shakily, “Yeah, I am.”

There are tears in his eyes when she turns around to face him. “Does anyone else know?”

“I think maybe Jonathan suspects something but I can’t be sure. But I… told Dustin a few days ago.”

“Henderson?”

“Yes,” He replies, shocked by the surprise in her voice, “Why does that shock you?”

“And he was– cool about it?”

“Yes.”

“Goddamn,” she laughs, peels of it bursting out of her, “Of course those two are just fucking perfect,” And at Wills confused look says, “Steve was the first person I told.” 

“Holy shit. And he was cool about it?” and she nods, laughing still. Will says, incredulous, “And you were scared of Dustin not being cool about it?” 

Robin goes to sit on the counter, thigh pressed up close against his. Two pigeons in a nest, wings folded over each other. “I’m– terrified of everyone, honestly.” A pause. “Not you, though.”

His face heats up, and Will shyly nudges his shoulder against hers. “You’re alright too, I guess.”

She smiles at him, says, “I guess I just thought the first person you told would’ve been Mike,” And Will looks down at his stupid striped socks, avoiding her eyes, picks at the frays of them for something to do, and feels stuck in a terrible, terrible limbo, thinking any minute now, any minute, until Robin says after a few moments that feel like hours, “Oh,” – voice full of an awful, deeper kind of recognition.

"I mean, I sort of had a hunch, but--"

"Yeah."

"Damn."

He asks her, “Do you think I'm a bad person?” and still can’t meet her eyes.

“Will Byers. You couldn’t be a bad person even if you tried.” She says, and hugs him, tight, two ship-wrecked and desperate people hanging to a spar. He mashes his face into her shoulder, clinging back. 

Will thinks about Maurice, a secret code passed between the two of them.

Perhaps we woke up one another. 

.::.

Are you still there?   Will asks the voice. What are you planning?

.::.

Will wakes up. 

His feet are bare and cold against the grass. When he looks down, he sees he’s wearing pyjama pants and an old t-shirt he stole from Jonathan. 

He’s outside, standing, surrounded by tall, stretching trees. 

He doesn’t remember how he got here. A dull sort of panic creeps up on him, seeping into his bones like freezing cold water. He doesn’t remember how he got here. He doesn’t even know where he is.

Past the thick clusters of trees he can see the grey sky. He can’t tell if it's dawn or dusk, and it's cold enough to be either. Goosebumps rise on his arms, and he wraps his arms around himself to stave off the cold and the panic. The forest is dark enough for his sight to be limited, but the light from the rising/setting sun is bright enough so he can see a bit of distance.

He figures he should try walking home, but where? What direction? He doesn’t have a flashlight, a walkie, a map, anything. He is completely lost with no recollection of how he got here. One minute he was lying restless in bed, tossing and turning, and he must've fallen asleep at some point but– how did he get here? Sleepwalking?  Will has never been much of a sleepwalker. Well, that was if he doesn’t count– 

For some reason, and despite his numb panic, Will snaps off a branch from the tree and digs it into the dirt in the exact place he is standing.

It is only after doing so that Will realises he is being watched. 

He snaps his head up, squints into the darkness, and sees a man a few yards away, staring straight back at him. Wills skin perspires a thin sheet of clammy, cold sweat over his limbs. His heartbeat drums in his ears, sickening, so loud he can’t think, can’t breathe. The man stares back. It’s the same man Will saw in the school cafeteria, right before he passed out, and suddenly, Will knows.

“It’s you,” Will whispers, sick, nauseous down to his bones. 

Henry looks at him, all of him, right into his very soul. “Hello, Will.”

He doesn't look how they described. Fleshy, writhing, desiccated skin amalgamated together to create a human-like figure, one clawed hand reaching out. This man looks normal. Handsome. His dirty-blonde hair is slicked back, his clothes ironed and formal-looking. Skin smooth, face symmetrical. 

Will figures they must be inside of his mind. 

“Where are we?” He asks him. The man who has been torturing him, ruining his life since he was a child. 

Henry takes a step closer to him. Branches snap underneath his feet. “Where do you want to be?” 

Will takes a step back, then answers, “At home,” too honest, too numb to be anything but truthful. And suddenly, the forest fades away and they’re at home. Not in Lenora, not at Hopper’s cabin, or the Wheelers basement, but home -- the old run-down house of the Byers, exactly how it looked when Will was eleven and innocent. It will never be home again, and yet when Will thinks of the word, he knows he will always think of this place in close association. 

Will wants Jonathan to come out of his room, tell him some stupid joke that he heard on the radio that morning, for his mom to run out of hers, cigarette in hand, haphazardly buttoning up her overshirt too fast, kissing his hair with an I’m late sweetie, gotta run , but the house is empty, save for him, and the man standing opposite. And Will is alone.

He hates seeing him in this house, in his safe area. Will regrets wanting them to be here. 

“It’s nice to finally meet you,” Henry says, like this is some fucking long-awaited pen-pal reunion, “Face-to-face, I mean.”

And, because they’re in someone's mind and he figures Henry can’t physically hurt him in a way that matters, or in a way that he hasn't already done before, Will says, “This isn’t face-to-face. Not really. I know you don’t look like this anymore.” 

Henry scowls, just barely, before schooling his expression back to that awful cool blankness once more. “You’re right. I don’t wish to scare you with my true form.”

“You’ve never cared for sparing me from fear before.”

Standing still, Henry doesn’t deny it. Doesn’t move to change, either. Will isn’t sure why he’s pushing him on this, but the footing feels uneven; Henry hiding who he really is and Will taken off-guard, laid bare.

“You… you want to talk to me, right?” Will asks him, “That’s what all of this has been about? The cafeteria, the voice in my head?”

Henry nods, almost imperceptibly. His hair doesn’t move even an inch despite the movement, and Henry never stops looking at him even for a second.  

“Well, then I want to speak to you as you really are.” 

There’s a moment of stillness, as if Henry’s debating whether to listen to him or not, and then his clothes start peeling back as if they’re paper lit with a match and set aflame, and underneath--  fleshy, pulsing vines like long tongues start to slither along his torso up to his neck. The skin covering his skull loses its flush and pallor and sheds, revealing the bloody purple interior, the soulless, socketless eyes. The sheer cut where a human nose would be– would have been, before. 

Will doesn’t gasp, doesn’t scream. He looks into the eyes of the monster revealed to him. He’s seen worse. 

As if hearing this, the monster in front of him starts to laugh, a deep rumbling laugh that seems to rattle through Will’s bones and shake the interior of the house. 

His voice, when he speaks, is nothing like the light, soft-spoken one of Henry’s, but seems to carry the tone and tenor of a hundred other voices at once, all trapped in a sorrow that can only speak by the command of one. “You have seen nothing, Will Byers.” 

“I have seen more than most,” Will tells him, “More than anyone deserves to.”

“What is it you think you deserve?” The monster– Vecna, Henry, One – asks.

Stunned, Will doesn’t know how to respond. He opens his mouth, closes it. 

Vecna starts to move closer towards him, and every step forward he takes, Will matches backwards, “Is it ridicule, from the bullies at school? Is it to be forgotten by your friends? Your family? Is that what you deserve?”  

At Will’s flinch, Vecna’s jaw twitches into what could be classified as a smile, smug, all-knowing, “All summer, begging them to see you, for things to go back to how they were, them denying you– only to do exactly that the second you leave.” 

The worst part is that it's true. Will knows it is. Despite their years of friendship, their shared trauma, the party must’ve gotten tired of him at some point, must’ve become impartial to the idea of leaving him behind. A cavernous ditch had been steadily growing between Will and the others ever since he returned from that fucking place. 

Will isn’t sure if it's because he left a part of himself there– or if he had brought something back. 

“I can get rid of that pain,” Vecna says imploringly, “We can do the most beautiful things together, Will. You’re my builder. You and I are connected.”

There's a moment of stunned silence. Will almost wants to laugh at its absurdity. “You want me– to join you? ” 

There’s a twitch in his expression, but Will’s close enough to catch it– anger. Almost hurt. 

An undercurrent of why, why me, what is so special about me? runs through his mind. There must be something he is missing, something about him that makes him valuable in some twisted way to Vecna, but he just can't place it. 

But this was never a dilemma to entertain. It was never going to be like this.

“Never, ” Will tells him, gleeful in its simplicity. “Never.”

.::.

Will wakes up. Again. 

The same forest, the same stretching trees, surround him. There’s a branch planted in the mud next to him. 

But more importantly than that, a demodog crouches over Will’s sleeping form. As if guarding him. Will freezes, paralyzed with fear. He’s never encountered one of them in close range before. Would it be better to run? Or to simply wait, play dead?

But the demodog isn’t growling, or sniffing at his body like it’s a hunk of meat to eat. It’s merely watching him. Observing. 

When Will shoves it viciously away, it doesn't leap at him with that horrible jaw open, pin him under the weight of its body as it feeds off his flesh like it did to Bob.

It whimpers, lowering its head and body onto the ground. 

Will has half a mind to think he’s still in that dreamscape with Vecna. Because– What the fuck? But the cold nips and bites at his arms, and when he looks around, the landscape stretches for miles and miles. 

The demodog still crouches next to him on the ground.

Half-mad and exhausted, Will tucks his ankles under himself, sitting upright. He reaches out a shaking, sweating hand. Both creatures, human and non-human, are terrified.

Despite feeling nauseous from anxiety, Will tries to keep his hand steady as the creature approaches it. Shoves away thoughts of it taking his fingers, knuckles, metacarpals clean off in one bite. He remembers what Dustin had said– Just because you don’t understand something, it doesn’t make it evil. 

The demodog sniffs at his hand, like an actual real-life dog, and then shockingly, nuzzles into Will’s open palm. Will laughs, half-terrified, half-amazed. 

A loud sound fires off in the distance, a farmer scaring away crows, and the demodog sprints back into the thick forest without looking back. 

.::.

Predictably, explaining this to everyone doesn't go too well. 

For some reason, he doesn’t tell them the full story about the demodog. Still, El wants to go back inside his mind once more, to check if Henry is there, but she’s too exhausted from using her powers to try and save Max that day, so they agree on the first thing tomorrow morning instead. Will and Mike still aren’t really talking. Lucas looks exhausted. Joyce says Hopper is having nightmares and flashbacks from his time being tortured inside of a fucking Russian prison. Jonathan is ignoring him and pretending not to. Everything is fucked.

Which is why Will sneaks out at night, light enough for it to not be too dark, dark enough for Will to not be seen, to go to the Church– To get away from it all. And sure, maybe it’s a sort of last ditch effort too, to try and scream and cry at God who has ignored the town of Hawkins in its entirety. But he figures it can’t hurt to try. Who else can understand him so intimately other than someone who has also been dead? It’s ridiculous, which is why he doesn’t tell anyone why or where he is going. 

On top of a small hill in the town of Hawkins, there sits a small, broken-down church. The white paint covering the exterior wood planks is chipped and dirtied from mud and moss, and lush green vines creep along the walls. It’s a ship lone at sea, overtaken by nature. 

Will has been there exactly twice, and both times he had felt so much like a fraud he felt as if the pastor would pick him out of the crowd and ridicule him publicly. He kept his little head down and sang whatever hymn he was expected to. 

Now, he calmly approaches the altar, lighting the long sticks of candles lined along the wood, before sitting on one of the creaking pews, dusting off the wood before he sits– feeling like a lamb to slaughter. It’s so unnatural and blasphemous for him to set foot in here. The whole place should set alight. Part of Will wishes it would. 

For some reason, he can’t stop thinking about what Vecna said to him in that dreamscape/warped reality. You and I are connected. You and I are connected. My builder. My builder. It burrows under his skin like an itch he can’t scratch deep enough to eradicate, or like a word forgotten on the tip of his tongue. 

The creak of the door opening behind him doesn’t surprise him. He knows who it is before without even turning around.

Mike sits on a pew in the aisle opposite him. “Hi.”

“Hey,” Will says.

“Sorry for following you, I just needed to talk to you. Alone.”

Will looks steadfastly ahead, “O-Kay…”

He can feel Mike turn to look at him in the dim light of the church. “What?”

“I just– thought maybe you didn’t want to talk to me at all. It seemed like you were really mad.”

“Oh, I was. But I’m not anymore,”

Silence, for a minute. Will doesn’t want to fully look at him out of fear that he’ll say or do something stupid, something uncontrollable. Will’s body always did something stupid when Mike was anywhere near it.

“I’m–” Mike says–

“So sorry–” Will says–

And Will can’t not look at Mike anymore, so he does, and he sees that Mike is holding up his palm to get him to stop talking. Will closes his mouth. Mike utters, “Wait, why are you apologising?”

“Well, because we fought,” Will replies, like it’s obvious, because it is, “And I was being an asshole.”

Mike’s voice is loud, direct, when he responds, “No, Will”. He runs his hands through his hair, “I was the one being a dick okay? Not you. God. You need to stop letting people do this to you.”

“I didn’t let you do anything,” Will says, offended and embarrassed, “It takes two to fight, you know.”

“I know, but I was the one being a dick, not you. I’ve been mean to you for ages and still you wind up apologising to me? It’s bullshit. And it always happens.” 

"I said mean things to you too, Mike," Will says, cringing at the mere memory of it. Something about Mike, about the concoction of them together, brought out an entirely different creature, feral and hungry. Now, he doesn't mean any of it, but back then -- maybe he did. 

"I drew first blood, okay?" Mike replies, resolute.

Will doesn’t know how to respond. He looks away and says nothing.

Mike sighs meekly. “...Will you please look at me?”

When Will looks at him once again, Mike is looking at him like Will holds all the secrets to the mystery of the universe. Will could even maybe convince himself it’s with love instead of a misplaced guilt, even just for a moment. 

“What do you think about me and El– breaking up?”

Something shrivels inside of Will’s chest and his face scrunches up. “What kind of question is that?”

“I’m just asking,”

“Why?”

“Why won’t you answer?”

“Are you expecting me to think or feel a certain way about it?” Will asks, and he realises he’s a little angry. What is Mike hoping to gain from this line of questioning? A confession? Almost fitting, for a Church.

“No, Will, Jesus. I just– I don’t know what to think or feel,” Mike sighs, heavily, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know anything.”

“I think that you won’t do anything you don’t want to do,” Will replies, “And you should follow your instincts. Or something.” 

Mike looks at him for a long moment, and then, absurdly, starts laughing. Small at first, but then great, gasping breaths of laughter, holding his stomach. 

Will twists his hands crossed in his lap, chest aching. “You asked me what I thought.” 

The laughter stops at that. “No, it’s not– because of you.” Mike takes in a deep gaping breath, and Will stares at him. The dark colour of his eyes, his pupils blown, adjusting to the darkness. “What if my instincts– or what I really want, are wrong?” 

“What do you mean?”

Mike stands. The steps he takes towards Will are loud and creak noisily in the damp quiet of the stretching room. Watching his movements, Will turns and pivots his legs so that he’s sitting on the edge of the pew diagonally, body turned towards Mike as he approaches him from the other side of the church.

“Like– what if the things that you want, I mean really want, are things that– you can’t have?”

Blood rushes in Will’s ears, and his heart is racing so badly he can’t make sense of anything, but he knows that in this moment, it sounds like– It almost sounds like–

Mike drops to his knees in front of him, slowly, one knee followed by the other, looking up at Will, who's still sitting on the damn church pew in this damn church. Will can’t make sense of anything, wants to say I think the wrong things you want I want too, whatever is wrong with you, is also wrong with me, but can’t get the words to form.

“I lied before,” Mike says, determined, like he’s pleading, begging for absolution. Confessing. “I do know some things. I know that you made me a beautiful painting, and something I did or some way I acted before made it so you felt you had to lie about it,” and at Will’s pained gasp, he does something unholy, something beautiful– he grabs the hands that Will is twisting in his lap and holds them in his own. Something inside of Will begins to crack open. 

“I know that you’re so good,” Mike continues, looking at the skin against his as if wondered by it, “You’re just a good fucking person. There is nothing I could ever do to deserve something like you. Even if I dragged myself to hell and back I wouldn’t deserve you. But- I would do it. I would. I would do anything for you.”

He looks back up at Will, whose silent, blushing crimson red, and down at the hands clasped in his own bigger ones. Mike lifts Will’s palms to his mouth and kisses them. So softly. Murmurs, half-jokingly, “Saint Will .”

There’s a flicker, a spark. A static electricity that brews inside of Will before the storm hits. The same energy as when they fought before, the same energy as when Will has been upset, or angry, or felt so loved and happy to the point that he might explode any time he’s been in Hawkins after Lenora. It makes hair stand on end, gooseflesh rupture against shivering skin. Will cups Mike’s face in his palms.

And then– below all of it, there’s an invisible force, trying to push back against the storm. Trying to dull the powerful surge of emotion, the tide of force. 

The windows of the church start to crack. The wooden interior starts to shake. Pews break and fall, crucifixes hung on walls fall to the floor, statues tumble over. And amidst it all, in the heart of the storm, are Mike and Will. Will’s hands fall from Mike's face, but he’s not surprised by the carnage that surrounds him anymore, because he understands now. 

Mike looks at him in barely concealed curiosity, accompanied by a sharp tang of adrenaline because of what he’s just confessed. He doesn’t even look twice at the destruction. 

And then they notice that the candles Will had lit over had fallen, catching on the fabric of the altar and spreading fast, and look at each other in panic. They freeze, staring at the consuming fire, caught up by the horrible destructive beauty of the flames. 

The fire whooshes up in the small area by the altar. Sparks spit out of the growing beast and create smaller roaring blazes that unfurl faster and faster, consuming the flammable wooden rafters above them, and the pillars surrounding them start to splinter and fall.

When the roof properly catches alight from the roaring fire, large chunks of wood start collapsing, and the roof sags from the lack of support. Mike grabs Will’s hand and tugs him towards the door. 

Outside, the flames are unnoticeable at first. Will and Mike watch, horribly enraptured, as the roof starts to fall and the flames climb and leap to the exterior of the building. Smoke rises into the dark sky. Distantly, Will realises the longer they stand there watching, hands clasped, the less time they’ll have to escape before the fire department arrive, but the fire reflected in Mike’s eyes is such a beautiful sight that he doesn’t really fucking care. 

“I guess it really did set alight,” Will breathes nonsensically. 

Mike turns to him. Their faces are so close together, Will can count all the individual freckles on Mike's face, his sharp features picked out by the glow of the burning flames. And then Mike kisses him, really kisses him, open-mouthed, and Will is on fire. 

He loops his arms around Mike’s neck, into his hair, and he isn’t really sure what he’s doing, but he follows Mike’s movements, pushes his tongue back against his when it dips into his mouth. Mike’s hands dip to his waist, the small of back, bunching the fabric, misshaping it with his wanton hands. The heat from the growing fire grazes Will's skin. There’s nothing friendly about this kiss. It’s angry, biting, so desperate, it feels like Will might crumble to sand beneath the force of it.

They separate when the sound of sirens approaches. Will’s lips are buzzing, feeling bruised and swollen. Mike won’t stop staring at them, even when Will opens his mouth to say, “I know what’s been happening to me.”

When voices start getting louder from behind the trees, Will grabs Mike's hand, and they run.

.::.

“I think,” Will tells them, “No– I know, Vecna numbs me, my emotions and thoughts I mean, because he realised that if I can feel, really feel, I'll be able to feel him, too. Something that he said to me struck me– You and I are connected. Because it's true. 

And what he realised before I did is that the connection goes both ways. I felt the connection at the beginning, when I first got here. I could feel what he felt, think what he thought, and I could guess his motives. He must've caught on and begun this weird, numbing process. Because he realised that if I utilised this connection he would lose the element of surprise entirely. Or worse.”

There’s a quiet moment while everyone processes this. When Will and Mike had returned from the burning of the church, smelling like smoke and covered in soot, Will had called a code red. He only alerted the party, one, because it was 3:22 in the morning, and two, because he’s not really sure what to do with this information. 

So– they’ve discovered why Will has been behaving strangely, but how are they supposed to fix it?

“Okay,” Lucas says, uncertainly, clad in spider-man pyjama pants. “And– How did you figure this out?”

Will coughs, and can feel his face get red. He avoids looking at Mike. “When I get these strong emotions, weird shit happens."

“What kind of weird shit?” El asks. The curse is natural coming out of her mouth now. She's taken a real liking to cursing recently, adding to her collection along with bitchin’.

“Like, stuff breaks. Lightbulbs, buildings. Stuff like that.”

“Buildings? ” Dustin exclaims. “Holy shit.”

“I think it’s the reaction that Vecna has to the emotions that does it. Like, I can feel this force trying to push them down.”

“How can you be sure,” El says, pensive, “That it is not just you?”

Will thinks back to the demodog nuzzling its wet face into his palm. Henry calling him his ‘builder’. Thinks about what that means, what he knows it means, and the horrified reaction of everyone, of Mike, when he tells them what he’s truly guilty of. What he plans to do about it, before they ever know.

“It’s not me, El,” Will lies. “Theres nothing special about me.” 

.::.

Before Will leaves, Jonathan knocks on his door. 

“Hey,” he says.

“Hi,” Will replies, an exchange so familiar to this unfamiliar routine that they both laugh lightly.

Jonathan sits down on his bed, on the same bedsheets that Will has had ever since he was fourteen. “I’m sorry.”

Automatically, but really meaning it, Will says, “I’m sorry, too”

“No,” Jonathan stops him. "I’m really sorry Will. Genuinely,” He rubs his hands along his legs, a nervous tick he’s fostered since he was a kid. “I’ve fallen into this habit of just ignoring things and hoping they just, like, fix themselves. If you know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” Will laughs, self-deprecating, “I think I understand that.” 

“Even after I told you I missed talking to you, I still pushed you away. And I’m really sorry for that.” 

Hungry and starved for comfort, tortured by the knowledge of knowing what he has to do, and knowing that he can’t tell anyone, Will launches himself into the arms of his brother. 

“I’m sorry, too,” Will sniffs, shoving his face into Jonathan’s shoulder, hiding the tears falling from his eyes. I’m sorry for what I have to do.

I hope one day you’ll forgive me. 

.::.

Will knows who he is. 

Despite all of the ridicule, the bullies, the struggles that plagued his entire life, he has never struggled with knowing exactly who he is. Although being queer, being too colorful and strange had definitely played a part, this knowledge of himself, Will thought, had always been what really set him apart from others from such a young age. 

He knew he felt differently about Mike, about boys, by the time he was nine, when Mrs Click had taught them about weddings and marriage and spending your life with one special person, and he had thought about the boy sitting at the desk next to him. It wasn't too hard, later on, to distinguish that feeling as love. 

Which is why he knows what Vecna was trying to tell him, was trying to show him. That Will had helped him create the four gates, he had molded the upside down into his fantasy, where he wanted to be in a time where he was scared. That Will had created the human-killing monsters there with his imagination. The demogorgons and the demodogs. That it was all his fault. 

He imagines, when he’s being kind to himself, that at his funeral, the more introspective people in his life would say something about his knowledge of himself with a positive spin, perhaps in a eulogy. Say that he was so self-assured. Mature. 

When he’s being realistic, he knows it’ll be less beautiful. He’s already had one funeral held for him– Who's going to waste their time showing up for another? 

Goodbye, Will Byers, the people of Hawkins would say. We never really understood you. 

.::.

The final gate had shut. El had managed to escape, but that meant leaving Will inside, alone. Injured. Half-dead already. 

Part of Mike suspected he’d leave. When he’d asked him sheepishly about prom, Will had blushed in the most magnificent way-- but his eyes had stayed dim, and his smile hadn’t reached his eyes.

When Will had kissed him, pulled away from the rest of the party into the quiet, friendly dark. It felt like the sealing of a letter. A wax-stamp pressed. And Mike had done nothing. Nothing. Caught up in the happiness of finally having him.

He paces and paces along whatever room he’s in, not really seeing or caring for his surroundings. People try to talk to him, but he can’t hear them. Joyce’s horrified scream, when Owens had declared Will as presumed dead, rattled through Mike’s bones even now, hours later. He can’t sleep. Can’t eat. Can’t think of any word, any name, other than Will. 

“This was a brave thing to do,” Owens tries to console him, days after Will leaves. “You might not see it yet, but your friend saved all of our lives. It was the right thing to do.”

He almost wants to laugh. Friend.

When Mike looks up at him, he knows his eyes are bloodshot and dead. “I wish he had let us all die.” 

.::.

Days pass, and time continues. The Earth continues to spin.

They’re all gathered at the Wheeler house; one of the only buildings that had managed to avoid destruction in the final fight.

There are no vines anymore. The gates are all shut, and Vecna is dead. For good this time. All that is left is the remaining damage to Hawkins, its collapsed buildings cracked open and half-fallen as if frozen in time, the destruction left behind like a scar. 

There’s something beautiful about the damage, something affirming about it. They dug their fingers into the history of Hawkins until it changed, until it stuck. Like they had written We were here, the sacrifices we made were real, into the very fabric of the town. Bleeding just to know they existed. 

In a few hundred years or so, there may not be any visible damage left. And maybe that will be for the best. It’s not like any of them will be around to see it. 

Dustin moves past the window, carrying a box filled with more donations. Nancy passes Holly the maple syrup at the breakfast table. Joyce, wrapped up in a blanket, waits for the coffee to be ready with a blank, distant stare.  

Outside, bruised and bloody, Will Byers raises his fist to the door, and knocks.