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Will drifted upward through consciousness like someone being pulled from deep water, slowly at first, then all at once, a sharp sting in his lungs at the return of breath. The world came back to him in fragments: the rough texture of a couch cushion beneath his cheek, the distant hum of a ventilation fan, the faint tang of smoke still clinging to the air.
His eyelids felt heavy, glued shut by exhaustion, but he forced them open anyway. The ceiling came into focus: blurry at the edges, familiar in a vague, nostalgic way. Wooden beams. Light bulbs hanging from crooked nails. A fading poster for a radio show, pinned high on the far wall. The old WSQK basement.
He wasn't in the MAC-Z anymore.
Thank God.
His breath shuddered, a tremor moving through him like distant thunder. The ache in his body sharpened with awareness, especially in his joints, radiating outward from elbows, knees, shoulder sockets, and neck. A deep, intrinsic ache, like something inside him had been stretched too far and was now slowly snapping back into place.
He tried to sit up.
The pain answered instantly.
A knife-edge behind his collarbone. A throb in his wrists. A tight, seizing pull across the back of his neck. His body felt like a map of every Demogorgon scream he had channeled, every surge of pain threaded through his nervous system when he had reached into the hive mind and turned it against itself.
For a moment, he just breathed through it, shallow and fast. Each inhale tightened the band around his ribs.
And as he lay there, the memories returned, not in a wave, but in pieces that fell neatly into the shape of a story he had never expected to live.
Robin’s words first. Her voice in the MAC-Z urged its way through. It had been sharp, urgent, cutting through the terror that had been rising like floodwater in his chest. Something in him had cracked open when he recalled her advice, not in the way Vecna once cracked him open, but in a way that let the truth spill out instead of fear.
Then memories of drawing for his mom. Building Castle Byers. Mike. Oh Mike.
Everything they had ever told him, every gentle reassurement, every look that said you matter, you matter, you matter, they rushed back with startling clarity. He felt them like hands steadying him, each memory a point of warmth sparking through the cold void Vecna had tried to swallow him with.
He had taken all of that—the love, the belief, the stubborn hope—and turned it into something powerful.
And horrifying.
And his.
He remembered the moment it happened. The surge of something ancient and jagged inside him. The way the Demogorgons screamed when their bones snapped under the force of his will. The way that pain had ricocheted through his own muscles in return, like a chain reaction he couldn’t contain.
He had felt every break. Every tearing. Every echo of their agony.
And yet, beneath that pain, he had felt freedom. Freedom from the years of being hunted. Freedom from the hollow sense of being someone’s puppet. Freedom from the quiet ways he had made himself small so other people didn’t worry.
He had been more himself in that moment than he had ever been.
But the cost of that truth now throbbed through him, heavy and unrelenting.
A sharp ripple of pain bolted along his spine, and an involuntary sound—raw, low, rough—tore from his throat. It was barely more than a grunt, but it echoed in the stillness of the basement like a flare fired into the night.
Movement answered him immediately.
A sudden catch of breath. A pair of hurried footsteps. The air shifted as someone cut across the room fast enough to stir the space around him.
Will’s heart jolted. He braced himself for his mom’s wide, frantic eyes.
But when the figure leaned toward him, shadow folding away into warm lamplight—
It was Mike.
Mike, whose expression was pure alarm, like seeing Will in pain physically punched the air out of his lungs. Mike, who dropped onto the couch so quickly that the entire frame shifted under his weight. Mike, whose hands hovered near Will as if unsure where to touch first.
“Will—are you—?” Mike’s voice broke before the question could settle into shape.
He looked Will over with a kind of frantic tenderness, scanning his face, his chest, his arms. Will felt the heat of Mike’s gaze more acutely than the ache in his joints.
Mike tried again, words tumbling as if he couldn’t control the speed of his own panic.
“Are you okay? I mean—God, obviously you’re not okay, you just—just destroyed a monster—multiple monsters—with your mind—Will, you felt everything, I know you did, that’s—of course it hurts.”
He spoke like he understood the shape of Will’s pain from the inside out. Like he had been in the storm with him. Like he had felt the edge of every shriek Will had channeled.
Will blinked at him, dazed. The corners of his vision pulsed. His body felt ripped apart and loosely sewn back together.
“It hurts,” he admitted, voice thin. “But yeah. I’m okay.”
Mike let out a sound—half a laugh, half a breath of relief—that eased some of the tightness coiled in Will’s chest.
“Yeah,” Mike echoed softly. “You’re all good.”
And when he looked at Will again, the panic had drained from his eyes, replaced by something Will couldn’t immediately categorize. It was warm. Deep. Disbelieving in the way someone looks at sunrise after a night they weren’t sure they’d survive.
“Really good, actually,” Mike added, awe creeping into his tone. “You have powers.”
Will exhaled, something between a laugh and a sigh. “Not really. I think I was just thinking about what you said. About maybe being the one holding Vecna back. About saving my mom.” His throat tightened again, but this time not from pain. “I think I did that.”
Mike stared at him like the world had rearranged itself and made Will the center point.
“Will,” he whispered. “Regardless of how you did it, you saved me. You saved Lucas, and Robin, and I don’t even know who else. Will, I knew it. I knew you had it in you. You’re—” His voice wavered. “You’re amazing.”
Something warm bloomed beneath Will’s ribs, spreading outward until he felt it in every aching joint.
Mike was looking at him like he was something luminous. Something rare. Something worth marveling at. Will had seen that expression in glimpses before, small, stolen moments no one else noticed. When Will had fixed Holly’s bike. When he’d helped Mike rewrite an essay Mike had nearly torn in half out of frustration. When they’d washed dishes side by side last Thanksgiving, and Mike had looked at him with a quiet, soft-eyed concentration that made Will’s breath stutter.
If tonight were the only time, he could explain it away. But it hadn’t been.
It hadn’t been for a long time.
Mike’s hand was still resting on his knee from when he’d rushed in at the sound of Will’s pain. Warm, steady, grounding. A touch Will felt down to the marrow. He didn’t understand it, any of it, so he had finally asked Robin, voice small and terrified:
How do you know when someone wants to date you?
He hadn’t expected a clear answer.
And he didn’t know what Mike truly felt now, not yet. But he knew what he felt. And he wasn’t hiding anymore. Not after facing the monster who’d once convinced him that his heart was something to fear.
“Thanks,” Will murmured.
The word came out breathless, stripped bare. A confession tucked inside a single syllable. He didn’t disguise the way he looked at Mike, didn’t try to soften it, redirect it, quiet it. He let Mike see.
Mike froze.
The blush that crept across his cheeks was slow, growing warmer the longer Will held his gaze. A bloom of color so genuine that Will felt his heart lurch.
Mike tore his eyes away abruptly, the hand on Will’s knee retreating in a small, embarrassed motion, as if he’d only just realized where it had been. He cleared his throat once, then twice, as if trying to swallow down something too big for words.
“S-so, I should get your mom,” he announced suddenly, his attempt at nonchalance hilariously transparent. “She told me to let her know the second you woke up. And then you can…uh…you can explain the whole powers thing.”
He flashed a shaky, boyish smile, one that tried to recast the moment into something harmless, familiar. Something friendly. But the hand that had rested on Will’s knee left a phantom warmth that said something else entirely.
Will wasn’t going to retreat back into silence.
He let a slow, easy smile curve across his lips, soft and deliberate, the kind that said he saw exactly what was happening, and he wasn’t afraid of it anymore.
It hit Mike instantly.
The blush deepened, flushing to the tips of his ears. His breath caught, so minor anyone else might’ve missed it, but not Will. Not anymore.
“Sure,” Will said quietly.
Mike didn’t last a second longer.
He scrambled to his feet—half stumbling, half running—up the stairs. His foot caught on the third step, and he practically tripped in his rush to escape the intensity he’d sparked and couldn’t control.
By the time he reached the top landing, he was still red.
Will sank slowly back into the couch, the ache in his body still fierce but somehow lighter, easier to bear now. Something warm pooled inside him, a quiet certainty, gentle but unyielding.
He wasn’t hiding anymore.
And from the way Mike had blushed, neither was Mike.
Not really. Not anymore. Not with him.