Work Text:
“NO, NO! Will, hey! Hey! Can you hear me?! Will!”
Mike screamed, but there was no answer. Will lay there, motionless, his eyes eerily open and completely, endlessly white. He stared up at the ceiling of Castle Byers, as if Mike wasn’t even there, as Will were…
Shit, shit, shit, c’mon wake up, Will, wake up, Mike thought, shaking Will by the shoulders.
Thunder was rolling dramatically, and loud, cosmic cracks of lightning could be heard across the Upside Down. Vecna was finally doing it. He had the twelve kids all embedded in his giant circular wall, his fucked up wormhole-clock or whatever.
And he was using Will as the final puzzle piece in the clock to power it to life.
When they realized they weren’t going to be able to find the kids Vecna had buried deep in the wall, the group had thrown all of their power at keeping Vecna away from the center of the circle, which they had figured was Hawkins Lab. It seemed fair to assume that once he completed the clock formation —twelve numbers on the clock, then a centerpost with two hands at the center— then it would start ticking, and then it would only be a matter of time (literally) before the wormhole would meld Dimension X with the real world, and everything would be destroyed forever. But after all the group had done to distract the demogorgons and all El and Kali had done to try to take out Vecna for good, Vecna had pulled his ace card;
Will.
What pissed Mike off was how quietly the fucker had done it. Will had been there in the Upside Down outside of Hawkins Lab, fighting along with the rest of them with his new powers, crunching up demogorgons with the flex of his knuckles like the amazing fucking sorcerer that he was. Then, out of nowhere, he was wandering away from the fray and off into the woods, and Mike had been the only one close enough to notice. Mike had finished sticking an axe down a demogorgon’s throat before he ran after Will to see what was wrong, calling out his name as he came up behind him. Then he had finally caught up to him and grabbed his shoulder.
“Will, hey, what’s wrong, why are you—”
When Will slowly turned around, it was not Will looking back at Mike.
White eyes.
“William is mine now,” a slow, calculated voice that was Will’s and utterly not Will’s had said. “I have finally melded our minds together, as I always intended. We will finally bring our beautiful work to completion.”
Mike had stumbled back, the wind knocked out of him. He tried to summon the air to speak, but his next words came out raw and pathetic.
“Get. out. of. him. Get out of him, you motherfucker, leave him the fuck alone.”
Will—Vecna— had cocked his head to the side.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
Will/Vecna turned and kept walking deeper into the woods. Mike looked around and noticed for the first time that they were in the Upside Down version of the woods near the Byers’ old house. A few yards ahead in the eerie dark lay a haunted, dilapidated version of Castle Byers.
“You see,” Will/Vecna had continued, calmly, unaffected, “I need William. I need his heart. Before Eleven cast me out of our world and destroyed my body, I had been planning to be the vessel to power this bridge between the worlds. But once my body was mangled, I knew I needed a new vessel. A new body, with a heart alive enough to supply the energy for this bridge, this beautiful clock that will defy Time and Space and marry the two worlds together. When I found William, all those years ago, I knew he would be perfect; I found him here, you see, I followed this overwhelming, brilliant energy I sensed in your world until I found him in this pathetic little home he’d constructed in the woods. Here was a heart so big and so full, and so unwanted. The perfect energy center, so alive with pain.” Will/Vecna stood at the entrance to Castle Byers. “He just needed a few more years of maturation to develop into a fully fledged vessel with the strength to be the center post of my clock, the keystone of my bridge. I waited patiently until he was ready, until he was able to give way to our connection.” He looked back at Mike, and smiled. It wasn’t Will’s smile at all, but an uncanny, cold curl of the lip. Mike had almost vomited. “Now, everything is in place. It is time for the melding of the worlds to begin.”
“We won’t let you,” Mike yelled after him. “We’ll stop you, just like we always have.”
“Oh yes, I’m sure Eleven and Eight are miles away, trying all kinds of things to destroy my body more than they already have. But out here, at the true heart of the bridge, it’s just you and me, Michael Wheeler. And I could kill you now, but why should I?” A slow, knowing tilt of the head. “You’ll die shortly anyway, without me having to lift a finger. And you won’t stop me, will you? I have a hard time believing you would lay a hand on this body, Michael. Violently or otherwise.”
Then Vecna/Will had crouched down and disappeared into Castle Byers.
For a split second, Mike had considered bolting—he could run back to the lab, grab El and Kali, and bring them back here where the true fight needed to be. He had been about to, when—
A vine whizzed past him. Mike stumbled back.
Then another.
Mike had watched as vines from every direction flew through the air like spears, violently breaking through the wooden walls of Castle Byers to converge within.
There were twelve.
Mike had sprinted to the entrance of Castle Byers and dove through the entrance, not considering that he had left his axe inside that stupid demogorgon and he was now virtually defenseless. All he’d known was that Will was in here, and…
Will was lying on his back in the makeshift bed of Castle Byers, eyes white, staring up into nothing.
And twelve thorny vines from every direction met in the middle to converge into a single, pulsing vine.
That was planted in Will’s chest.
“FUCK! WILL! Oh god, oh god, someone help me! Help!!” Mike screamed, but he knew no one would be close enough to hear. Even if the others had realized that the formation of the bridge was complete and that Vecna had been acting as a distraction in order to install Will at the center, the others probably couldn’t get to them now anyway; every damn demo-creature in the Upside Down had been called to the lab to take care of their little army.
Mike remembered he had a knife tucked in his belt and he grabbed for it, beginning to hack at the vines.
“Fuck, c’mon, c’mon,” he shouted. Hacking, sawing, slicing; nothing made a fucking dent in these things. He threw away the knife in frustration and turned back to Will.
“Will, I need you to wake up, okay? Vecna is using your connection to the hive mind, he’s hijacked you, but I need you to come back. He’s using you to power the wormhole, you gotta try and shake him off, okay? Can you do that? Will?!”
Mike was kneeling beside Will’s makeshift bed between two of the converging vines, and the sight of the vine digging into Will’s chest made him so nauseous that he was doing anything he could not to look there. He kept shaking Will’s shoulders, then moved his hands up to Will’s face. Luckily he was positioned in such a way that his face was between two vines so his face was unobscured. There was blood from some cuts Will had sustained in the battle by the lab, and Mike found himself trying to wipe it away from his temples.
“C’mon, Will, c’mon, whatever he’s saying to you, don’t listen to him. If he’s in there with you just don’t listen to him, come back here and listen to me, okay? Come back to me, we can fix this, I just need…”
That was a lie. How were they gonna fix this? He had no idea what they could do even if Will could wake up. How could they get the vine out of his heart without hurting him? And how fucking scary would it have to be to wake up with a fucking pulsing, fleshy vine embedded in your chest? Maybe trying to wake him up was the worst possible thing to do to Will, but what else could Mike do? At least it was possible that, if Will were awake, maybe he could use his hive mind powers to snap the vines and stop Vecna once and for all.
But how on earth was Mike going to be able to wake him up? This wasn’t like Will’s possession back in middle school, or like Max falling under Vecna’s curse a few years ago. Will wasn’t just being invaded by Vecna; Will and Vecna’s minds had melded. They were the same person, now, except of course they fucking weren’t because Vecna was an evil horror movie monster come to life and Will was Will. Will just needed to remember that.
“Uh, okay, songs, right? Music saved Max the first time she was targeted,” Mike rambled. “Shit, shit, what’s your favorite song now? I know you were listening to that new Bowie album Murray snuck in for you but you said you weren’t sure if you had a favorite song yet. Shit!”
Mike was panicking. It was cold and dark, and Will’s body seemed to be buzzing with this preternatural energy, an energy that transferred into the vines and caused them to pulse even more intensely. Now that Mike thought about it, he noticed that the vine to his right, right by Will’s head, was pulled especially taut by this buzzing energy. Then, the one to his left started buzzing more too.
One vine…then two…
Mike checked his watch. It had been around ten minutes.
The vines must be connected to the kids, to the numbers on Vecna’s clock. Once each vine was fully activated with Will’s energy, it would complete the cycle of the clock.
Which meant they had fifty minutes left before everything was destroyed.
Shit, shit, shit.
Mike had stopped rubbing blood away from Will’s face and was now just cradling it in his hands. He tried to focus. He could do this. Will just needed to wake up.
“Just remember who you are, okay?” Mike started again. “You’re Will, you’re my best friend, you’ve been my best friend since kindergarten, where we met on the swings, remember? And, and you’re this amazing artist, I mean I still have all the drawings you’ve given me, they're in a binder in my closet. You made this awesome painting too, a few years ago, it was of us and the rest of the party fighting a thessalhydra, and I still have it hanging in my room ‘cause… ‘cause it’s my favorite gift I’ve ever gotten in my life. You said it was from El, but…”
Mike bit down on his lip. They had never talked about this. Before El had gone into hiding after they’d first come back to Hawkins from Lenora, the two of them had decided to just be friends. He had thanked her for the painting anyway, and she had furrowed her brow and said ‘what painting?’ right before they had been interrupted. Mike had lain awake at night for weeks afterwards trying to figure it out. He still wasn’t sure, but… but he wondered if…
No, that didn’t matter right now. His… hopes about the painting were not what this was about. This was about Will, not about Mike’s… not about Mike. He tried to shake it off. He focused his eyes on Will again.
“Anyway. You’re the best person to play D&D with because you always do whatever it takes to save the party, even if it means risking yourself. You never lie, because friends don’t lie, and you're the best friend anyone could…anyone could ever…”
Tears were welling in Mike’s eyes. Will still wasn’t moving, still wasn’t looking at him. Mike wiped his nose on his sleeve. The third vine started trembling with energy. The thunder was roaring more loudly than ever and wild, swirling winds outside Castle Byers were picking up, and Mike found himself feeling hoarse trying to be heard above them.
“We’re in Castle Byers right now, you built this place with Jonathan, remember? You love this place. The password to get in is Radagast ‘cause you were obsessed with Lord of the Rings that one summer, though you always said I didn’t need to use the password, I could just come in. You always let me in, Will, even when I didn’t deserve it, even when I would fuck things up ‘cause I’m a fucking idiot sometimes, you always forgave me…Fuck, Will, please. Please just come back.”
Time was running out. Mike could go on, of course he could. He could go through every memory. How he and Will would team up against Lucas and Dustin at laser tag in elementary school and beat their asses every time. How Will always held out his popcorn bag between them at the movies even though he’d already told Mike to get his own. How Will had told them to close the gate when he was possessed by the Mind Flayer even though at the time it would have meant that he would die, because that’s who Will was, willing to sacrifice his own life for everyone else when he was still just a little kid. How Will always let Mike be close to him even though Mike knew it was weird, he shouldn’t always be leaning towards Will like a fucking magnet and invading his space, but he couldn’t really help it, he always wanted to be by Will’s side and make sure he was safe, and Will allowed it ‘cause he was always like that, so kind without even needing to say a word.
Mike could go on forever, but what good would it do? Will couldn’t hear him. Will might not even be there, anymore.
Mike was sobbing now. He collapsed, falling down onto Will’s neck and moving his hands up into Will’s hair. He had never been this close to Will before, and normally he felt electrifyingly self-conscious when he was close to Will, even as if he couldn’t help gravitating towards him. But now, he buried his face in Will’s skin. No one was here to see or judge, and he wouldn’t give a fuck if they were.
Mike hadn’t cried in a long time. In fact, he wasn’t sure when the last time he’d cried had been. A few years ago, he’d cried one night over Eddie, unable to keep it in anymore. And then before that, he had cried when the Byers had driven away in their U-Haul for Lenora. He’d spent the whole night crying in his room.
And right now, the whole world was literally fucking ending, and Mike was fucking terrified, and everything they’d all done to fight this thing for years had been for nothing, and so yea he was crying, but mostly he was crying because Will… his Will was being taken from him, and now everything was over, and…
And he’d wasted all this time.
At this moment, something was happening in Mike’s mind, even as he wasn’t even really thinking; all he could do was sob. Even still, some sort of shift, some sort of crumbling was happening, bringing something new to the surface.
There had been so much locked away in the back of his mind for a long time now, and he’d kinda known that. There was so much he had felt, or known, but had never let himself think, let alone fully act on. He’d known better than that, hadn’t he? He’d learned from bullies at school, or the news, or even his own dad. He hadn’t even needed his dad to say anything outright, it was just clear that there were feelings that made sense and feelings that didn’t make sense when it came to… to boys, or to Will, and he just needed to find feelings that did make sense. And that’s what he’d always done. He knew what was normal, and he just did that. It was that simple. That’s how you survive, right? You keep what’s normal in the forefront, and you lock shit that isn’t… isn’t normal behind a wall where you can’t see it, ‘cause out of sight, out of mind.
Except it was in his mind, always there, lurking in the places he refused to look at. No matter what he did.
And now, with the falling tears, and the swirling winds outside, and the end of the world, everything was rushing forward in his mind like a dam being broken, and he was being flooded with it, all the things and feelings he had kept behind this wall now surging into him and he almost fell backward on the ground, like the wind was being knocked out of him.
Mike lifted himself up to look at Will again. Even with his eyes white and his face blank, his body completely consumed by his worst nightmare, Will was still Will, and he was still— still… beautiful, beautiful, yes that was the word, and fuck it because it was the end of the world and Mike could think that word, he could think whatever the fuck he wanted. Will was beautiful and lovely, had always been beautiful and lovely, the only person Mike had ever needed this way, and tears were streaming down his cheeks and he knew now that it was long ago that he’d fallen, but at least now he could finally see it, finally say it.
“Oh, Will. Will, I love you,” Mike whispered.
Inaudible in the roar of the apocalypse, but whispered all the same.
Mike wasn’t sure what time it was on Vecna’s fucked up clock, he wasn’t sure what time it was on his own watch; he just knew it was time to stop being such a fucking prisoner in his own mind and finally do what he wanted to do, what he needed to do, so Mike took Will’s face in his hands again and kissed him.
If some hidden part of Mike had always wondered if it would feel different kissing a boy, that part of him definitely got its confirmation. It wasn’t so much that Will’s mouth or lips were so astronomically different, it was that Mike was different. The feeling of pressing his lips against Will’s sent a rippling shockwave to his chest, like he was somehow kissing Will not just with his mouth but with his heart, and as fucking cheesy as it sounded it was also the most breathtaking feeling he’d ever felt in his life. No kiss had ever meant more. He’d spent so long pushing away feelings he had labelled as not ‘making sense,’ but no kiss had made more sense than this.
It might have been a moment, or a few seconds, or maybe even minutes. If you asked Mike how it felt, time had stopped completely. He was just there, fully in that one last, eternal moment before everything was over, giving the love of his life a goodbye kiss, because there was nothing else to be done, and if he had spent his whole fucking life too scared to do the right thing, well, he’d do the right thing now.
He pressed one, two, three kisses. Then he finally lifted his lips from Will’s, and without opening his eyes, he rested his head on Will’s shoulder, shaking a little. He wondered when the moment would come, when the clock would strike twelve and the Cinderella of ‘life as we know it’ would leave the ball, never to return.
The roar of overwhelm in Mike’s head was so loud that he hadn’t noticed a lessening of the winds outside. A lessening which meant he could easily hear the hoarse, awkward words—
“You, uh, should probably keep doing that.”
Mike’s head snapped up.
Green eyes.
“WILL!” Mike yelled, his voice breaking. His hands roamed Will’s hair, Will’s face. “Will, are you okay? What happened, are you—”
“I’m okay, Mike. I’m okay.” Will looked up at Mike with bright eyes, a look of wonder that lit up his whole face. It was his face again, him, no trace of the cold, maniacal twitches and smirks of that monster that had taken him. Even with mussed hair and smeared blood on his cheeks, Will had never looked more ethereally beautiful.
“I thought I… fuck, I thought I lost you,” Mike choked out, and without thinking he crashed down to kiss him again. Will immediately surged up to kiss him back, his arms coming up to clutch at Mike’s hair, keeping him close. Mike was going crazy, unable to keep pressing their lips together, turning his face back and forth to kiss Will at every possible angle, and Will panted into his mouth, giving back as good as he got given his lack of range of motion with that awful vine pinning him down.
That thought shook Mike out of his frenzy. He broke himself away.
“Fuck, Will, what are we gonna do, how do we get it out of you?” Mike breathed, glancing down at his chest before glancing up again.
“Uh, this works,” Will said, his eyes glazed over a bit as he stared at Mike’s mouth. Will’s mouth looked very pink, and Mike felt a warm feeling in his cheeks and stomach about the fact that he had done that. But then he focused on what Will was saying.
“It– what? He’s using you to power the wormhole, Will, we gotta get that thing out of you! We have to figure out how to stop it!”
“I know, Mike, just kiss me,” Will whispered, lifting his chin to try to close the distance between them. Mike went embarrassingly easily, melting down into him again. If it weren’t for these damn vines, Mike would really want to climb up onto the bed, on top of Will…
Vines, right. He broke away from the kiss again.
“Will, we at least have to try, the whole world’s gonna end—”
If he was ever gonna have a chance of getting on top of Will, they would need the world not to end. So as difficult as it was, he was willing to pause the making out for at least a little while.
“Uh, it's not so much. Anymore,” Will said.
Mike furrowed his brow.
“What? What do you mean?”
Will was still glazed over with that blissed out look in his eyes, unashamedly staring at Mike’s lips. He managed to drag his eyes up to meet Mike’s.
“It’s kinda hard to explain,” he said.
“Try me,” Mike replied, leaning back on his heels.
“Uh,” Will said. Mike watched him closely, and he realized Will was feeling shy, even embarrassed about something. This was a weird time to be thinking about how insanely cute Will was, especially when he was about to reveal some cosmically relevant information relating to his connection to an evil aspiring-overlord, but, well, hey. It wasn’t Mike’s fault Will was cute. “My mind was fused with Vecna’s mind, right? And Vecna’s mind is linked with the hive mind and the whole Upside Down. So… so it’s kinda like… dominoes?”
“Dominoes?” Mike squinted his eyes.
“If a sort of ‘wall’ is knocked over in my mind, a wall is also knocked over in Vecna’s mind, which is manifested in the real world, so…”
Mike’s eyes locked with Will’s.
“The wall in the Upside Down is falling?” Mike guessed, breathless.
“More like… dissolving,” Will said. “The whole Upside Down is dissolving. But it needs, uh, more… help. To fully dissolve.”
“Help? Okay, okay, what do we do to help it?” Mike said, eyes wide with alarm.
“Like I said, uh. You should probably keep kissing me,” Will said. There was a slight, sheepish smile on his face, and even in the dark of the Upside Down Mike could see he was blushing.
“Why does that help?” Mike said, still not getting it, but already staring at Will’s mouth again. Will should not be encouraging this; Mike had had enough trouble tearing his eyes away from Will’s lips before he’d ever known what it was like to kiss them, before he’d ever even let himself consider the possibility of it.
“Vecna has this other kind of wall in his mind, it’s like, this canyon?” Will explained. “And it separates him from… from this memory… I could see it, Mike, I could see that Vecna—Henry, Henry was taken to Dimension X when he was just a kid, just like I was, when he wandered into this canyon, and then the Mind Flayer took control of him. Mike, this whole time… Henry’s been trapped in his own mind, and the Mind Flayer has been making him do all of this. But Henry didn’t remember that it wasn’t him doing it, he didn’t remember who he actually was because the Mind Flayer had kept this memory behind this canyon wall. And so he created the Upside Down as the bridge because the Mind Flayer made him, so that the Mind Flayer could take over our world for good, but Henry… he can let it go. If he remembers who he really is, the kid that he was before all of this, he can let it go; the walls of the wormhole holding up the Upside Down will shrink, flattening and collapsing the Upside Down as the bridge, and then our world and Dimension X will be fully separate again. He’s already starting to let the wall fall, but he needs help fully accessing his true self. Max… and Holly… they’re helping, but—”
“Holly? Max? What? Where? Where are they?”
Mike startled, his eyes searched back and forth in Will’s.
“They’re in Henry’s mind. They’ll be okay, Mike, if we can do this. But the canyon wall; he can only remember if the canyon wall is knocked down, and because his mind is still tied up with mine, the canyon wall is also somehow… It’s also this feeling I had.” Will said. Will looked up at Mike, his eyes shining. “This feeling that I…I would never get to be fully happy. Even if I accepted who I was, I felt like I’d never get to live a life being who I actually am. Sometimes I kinda hoped, I kinda wondered if, if you’d ever…” Will bit his lip, his voice trembling. “But I never really let myself believe it. I never fully let myself believe that you’d…” He was whispering now. “That you’d want me.” He reached out and grabbed Mike's hand. “And then I’d never get to fully be me, the me who… who loves you so fucking much, Mike.”
Mike’s hands were shaking.
“But when I kissed you…?” Mike said, slowly drawing closer again. Will smiled a little.
“Ever since he took me, I-I couldn’t sense you, or even my own body, the melding confused me so much I was forgetting everything, forgetting me, forgetting that I wasn’t h-him, but then I could feel you kissing me, and I could feel my heart again, instead of just this thing controlling me. Henry’s clock stopped, and I started to believe…”
Mike glanced down at the vines. The vines were still connected, still planted inside Will, but they weren’t buzzing anymore. That kiss had actually stopped time. Mike huffed a disbelieving laugh.
“So let me get this straight,” Mike said, looking back up and bringing their faces close together. “If you and me make out, we’ll be able to diffuse the wormhole, dissolve the entire Upside Down, defeat the Mind Flayer, and save the world from certain doom?”
“Uh. Yea, I think so,” Will said. He licked his lips a little, but then shrugged a little. “I mean, only if you want to…”
Mike laughed suddenly and loud, and he fell forward into Will, pressing their lips together again.
“I do kinda wanna save the world, yea,” Mike said between kisses. Will stammered a little, clearly flustered.
“I mean, I meant—”
“And I really wanna kiss you,” Mike said slowly against Will’s mouth.
That seemed to satisfy Will, who brought his hands up to Mike’s face, stroking his cheeks with his thumbs like Mike was a precious thing, and it kinda made Mike tremble. Mike moved his arm under Will’s neck, creating a pillow for Will as he moved closer to him, trying to kiss him deeper. The warm, tender feeling he always had in his chest whenever he was near Will, whenever he even thought of Will, was lighting him up like a fucking Christmas tree; he had never felt so alive in his life. He couldn’t help speeding up, kissing Will faster, licking against the seam of his lips. A small shudder escaped Will as he opened his mouth for Mike. That sound, and the feeling of their tongues touching—
“M-Mike,” Will gasped. He was panting hard, his hands now clutching at Mike’s hair. His lips were gleaming, and Mike loved him.
“Yea?” Mike said, pressing kisses to Will’s cheeks, his temples, his forehead.
“Could it… could it ever be more than this? Could we ever…” Will whispered into Mike’s neck. “Be together?”
Mike pulled back to look at him. Will went on.
“I know it couldn’t… be like Lucas and Max. Or Nancy and Jonathan. Like other couples. We couldn’t hold hands at school, or kiss… kiss at the movies.” Will's eyes searched back and forth between Mike’s as he spoke. Mike had a sudden flashback to going to the movie theater with the party, the summer before Will had moved away, how the two of them had sat next to each other, how Mike had wanted… He hadn’t known at the time what he’d wanted, but now he did. And now he knew Will had wanted it too. “We’d have to be careful, all the time, and I get it, I get it if you wouldn’t want to…”
Mike cupped Will’s face in his hands, and looked into his eyes.
“I want to, Will,” Mike said.
“It’s… it’s dangerous,” Will croaked out.
“Yea, and you and I wouldn’t know anything about danger,” Mike said, a wry smile on his lips. He leaned his forehead against Will’s.“If we’re not gonna let the Mind Flayer rule the world, then we won’t let any stupid mouthbreathers in the Right Side Up rule the world either.”
A tear spilled down Will’s cheek, but a small, sweet smile rose to his lips.
“Cool,” Will said softly.
Mike grinned.
“Cool,” he whispered back.
The kiss this time was something deep and calm and sure. There was no need to rush, no need for desperation, because… they were together. They would always be together, and no walls could keep them apart now. Mike forgot about the vines for a second and started kneeling taller, wanting to climb up on the bed with Will; then he realized what he was doing. He glanced down to look at the vines.
Only to see a brilliant white light dissolving them.
The light was a glowing orb of brilliant energy emerging from Will’s chest, completely obscuring the place where the vine had entered him. The light emanated from that central point, travelling in twelve directions and dissolving the vines as it went until the vines completely disappeared into thin air.
“Holy shit,” Mike breathed. He watched until the vines had vanished from Castle Byers, then looked back at Will. The light still glowed on his chest, but it was clear that the vine that had been inside of him was gone. Mike slowly drew his hand down from Will’s neck to his chest, resting it in the light over Will’s heart. His chest was warm and his heart beat a strong, comforting rhythm. The light flickered with the movement, as if responding to Mike’s touch.
“He wanted to use my heart for the wormhole, so he thought he had me with that vine in my chest,” Will said. He put his hand over Mike’s on his chest. “But he didn’t get that… uh,” Will coughed a little self-conscious laugh. He looked shyly at Mike. “You’re the heart, actually. You’re… my heart.”
Mike’s mind flashed. A red heart on a silver shield. The van, the desert. A beautiful painting. A beautiful boy. Beautiful words, words Mike had so desperately needed to hear, but they had seemed to be from someone else— only now, he knew for sure that they hadn’t been.
Finally free of the vines, Mike stood up to crawl on top of Will on the bed. Will moved his legs so that Mike lay between them, and though Castle Byers was really too small for them now that they weren’t kids anymore, they still managed to fit together against the wall. Thunder still cracked overheard, wind still whipped outside, but it almost didn’t even feel like the Upside Down because it was no longer dark; the white light of Will’s heart now caught between their chests glowed so powerfully that it created a sort of daylight, even in this netherrealm.
Mike had never been this close to another person. The two of them had hugged before, yea, but there was always that distance you had to keep when hugging a friend, especially hugging another guy, and their hugs were always over long before Mike wanted them to be. Now they were pressed together intimately, the weight of Mike’s body pulled into Will’s by gravity, and he didn’t have to pull back or separate or count the seconds before someone would notice the contact had been sustained too long. He could stay here, with Will. Safe. Even in the cramped, haunted-Upside-Down version of Castle Byers, nothing had ever felt better to Mike in his life, like he had come home, both to his own self and to Will.
“Is this okay?” Mike asked softly, looking down at Will. Will’s green eyes were glowing in the white light from his heart and Mike couldn’t look away even if he tried.
“Yea,” Will whispered. He wrapped his arms around Mike’s back and pulled him in till they were kissing again, and Mike melted into him once more.
Mike had maybe kinda been hoping that it would take a good few hours of kissing Will to save the world, but it was only after another few minutes that Will suddenly grabbed his shoulder and Mike looked up.
“Hold on,” Will said.
“Wh—?” Mike started.
And then the world kinda flipped.
It was impossible to describe, and it was only a moment, but somehow it became very clear that they had been upside down that whole time. And gravity was pulling them right side up again, which meant this strange blood rush and a flash, and maybe an undignified yelp or two from Mike (could you blame him?) and then…
And then they were still in Castle Byers, but it was normal. Normal, healthy trees, normal November greenery beyond the cracks in the makeshift walls. No floating white dust, no black and red sky. The white light between them was gone, but they didn’t need it with the sunlight streaming in. They were in Hawkins, in the Right Side Up.
And Will was now on top of Mike.
Mike blinked up at him.
“Wh—what just happened?”
Will looked down, focused, like he was hearing something Mike couldn’t hear.
“It… it worked,” he said slowly. “But Henry… Henry’s gone.”
“You mean your minds aren’t melded anymore?” Mike asked.
“Yea, but more than that… in dissolving the Upside Down, he also dissolved himself. He had become such a part of the hive mind that he couldn’t destroy it without destroying himself along with it. He… he sacrificed himself, to put things right.” Will looked at Mike, “Now he’s gone.”
“And the Mind Flayer?” Mike asked. He sensed that Will maybe seemed kinda sad for ‘Henry’ ‘cause Will was unaccountably sweet like that, but Mike couldn’t kinda help not mourning that Vecna was gone, even if he’d done the right thing in the end.
“Locked away in Dimension X,” Will sighed with relief. “I can’t sense him at all, and I think as long as Hawkins Lab and places like it stop messing around, I don’t think it could ever access us again.”
“What about Max and Holly? Are they okay? If Vecna’s dead, then…” Mike trailed off.
“I’m not 100% sure.” Will bit his lip. “Because the hive mind is gone, my connection to it is gone too, so I can’t sense them now. Holly should be okay, I think all the kids will be; anyone in the Upside Down should have flipped just like we did. And I think it’s likely that Max was set free from his mind when he died and so she’ll have just woken up in the hospital.”
“We should go and find the others, make sure they made it out,” Mike said.
“Yea, yea we should do that,” Will said, nodding in agreement.
Neither of them moved.
Mike broke into a smile.
“Uh, right, sorry,” Will said, blushing, and he quickly moved to get off, but not before Mike grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him down for one last kiss. Mike’s movement was so uncoordinated it made the kiss sort of teeth-clacking, and Will was grinning widely so they couldn’t really properly kiss anyway, but it was pretty perfect nonetheless.
They disentangled themselves, and Will stood up and reached out to help Mike up off the bed. If Mike was honest with himself he already missed the close proximity to Will as soon as they were separated, so to make up for it he interlocked his fingers with Will’s before Will could take his hand back. They ducked out of Castle Byers, and began walking to the lab, hand in hand.
“It’s weird,” Will said, looking back over his shoulder at Castle Byers. “Since the Upside Down was stuck in 1983 when Henry first made it, it makes sense why Castle Byers would still be there, but I don’t know how it could be here now. I destroyed it a few years ago.”
“Oh,” Mike said, his voice accidentally coming out kinda high pitched. He scratched the back of his head, feeling kinda shy. “Yea, uh, about that. I guess I kinda… fixed it. A while back.”
Will looked up at him.
“You did?”
“Yea, uh, after you moved to Lenora. One day I was…” Mike almost said something else, something about casually ‘happening’ to be in these woods, the story he had practiced in his head, had even convinced himself of, in case anyone asked him. But the wall had fallen, so he said, “I came out here ‘cause I missed you like crazy and I saw the damage from when you’d beaten it up that summer before, so I came back with my dad’s tool kit and fixed it.” He looked down, his cheeks feeling warm. “In case, you know. You ever visited and wanted to… go back to it again. And then you did move back, but… you know. Things have been crazy.”
There was a pause for a while.
“Thanks, Mike,” Will said.
His voice was kinda raw, like it meant the world to him that Mike had come back with his toolkit, even after Mike had been the one that made Will smash up his favorite place, his little home in the woods. All because Mike had been too chickenshit to admit to himself how he felt and so had driven Will and all the feelings he caused away instead. Mike shook his head and squeezed his hand, wishing he could go back.
Will bit his lip.
“I wish…I wish you’d told me. When I was in Lenora I thought… maybe you’d kinda forgotten about me, you know.”
Mike snorted.
“Fat chance of that happening,” Mike said, thinking about the ache he’d felt every morning he’d woken up that year, thinking about seeing Will that day at school, only to remember that Will was thousands of miles away. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I just… couldn’t, then. I guess… maybe it’s kinda like how you couldn’t tell me about the painting. ‘Cause you didn’t believe that… you know. There was a wall.”
Will nodded.
“Yea,” he said softly.
“Fuck walls,” Mike said.
Will chuckled.
“Fuck walls,” he agreed.
“Wait,” Mike said, thinking of something as they emerged from the woods onto the road that led to the lab. “Before the Upside Down completely dissolved, you and Vecna still had the mind-meld connection. Did that mean that he… or Max, or Holly… did they… I mean, when we were, you know…”
Mike suddenly felt kinda sick. He didn’t actually care if they knew about him and Will; maybe some past version of him would have, but thinking that the world was ending and that Will had been taken from him had completely killed off that version. He was with Will, and the world could go to hell if they didn’t like it. The sick feeling just came from the thought of like, if his little sister somehow saw him making out with someone? Yea that was kinda nauseating. Holly shouldn’t even know what kissing was. Period.
“They didn’t see,” Will said quickly. “They… they do know, though.” He said that more quietly. “I had to tell them what had happened when I woke up in my body, and I was… like, leaving them? If that makes sense? ‘Cause I was him, and then suddenly I was me, and so I was leaving… even though I was still him too, somehow, ‘cause the walls were connected… anyway, I’m sorry I told them without asking you, I should have asked—”
“Hey, Will, it’s okay. I—I don’t mind. If they know. I mean, I don’t love the idea of Holly knowing anything about my love life, but whatever, I think she’ll get it.”
“She did,” Will said, smiling. “Max just told me I better get my ass out of there and make out with you like I meant it, and Holly said she thought it was romantic, like Sleeping Beauty.”
“What?” Mike furrowed his eyebrows. “Like the Disney movie?”
“I think she was locking into the parts about ‘waking up from a kiss’, ‘thorny vines’ and there being a ‘Castle,’” Will chuckled.
“Does that make me your ‘knight in shining armor’ or something?” Mike said. He looked down at Will, grinning a little.
“A paladin in a really grimy jacket, more like,” Will said, wiping something off of Mike’s chest with the hand he wasn’t using to hold Mike’s. Mike caught the hand on his chest with his free hand.
“But your paladin in a really grimy jacket?” Mike urged.
He meant to say it playfully, to flirt with Will, but just then the words suddenly took on this gravity, and his eyes searched out Will’s as they paused in the middle of the road, hands intertwined like a bridge between them. He knew there had been times when Will hadn’t known it or felt it, just how much Mike was his; Vecna had been so fucking wrong to think that Will’s heart was powerful because of his pain instead of because of his love, because of who he was, but when Vecna said Will had felt unwanted, Mike knew he’d been a part of that. When Mike had performed romance with El because he thought that would make him normal; when he had pushed Will away because he couldn’t help the way he softened with Will and it’d scared him; when he hadn’t played D&D with Will that summer before Will moved because he thought he needed to ‘grow up’ and be like everyone else; when he hadn’t hugged Will at the airport in Lenora because he wasn’t sure if he’d ever let him go if he did. Mike knew Will hadn’t always been sure Mike was his, but he needed to make it clear now, and spend the rest of his life making it clear.
“Yea, my paladin,” Will said, looking back with that toothy, sweet smile. A twinkle grew in his eye. “But, you know, I don’t have powers anymore, now that the hive mind is gone. I know that you kinda like superheroes, but… yea, not really a sorcerer anymore. I don’t know if that changes anything…”
Mike could have said all kinds of things to that. That Mike didn’t need a superhero to make him feel special because Will had always made him feel special. That Mike loved Will just the way he was and he always had. That as far as Mike was concerned, Will’s heart was the best superpower in the world, and you could go to hell if you thought that was cliche or cheesy, ‘cause Will had just saved the fucking world with his heart, just by being himself, and Will’s self was the best thing Mike would ever find in this dimension or in any other.
But instead of saying any of that, Michael Wheeler just kissed William Byers in the middle of the road, under the bright afternoon sun in Hawkins Indiana, 1987, where anyone who happened to drive along could have seen them, and in that beautiful, time-stopping moment, Michael Wheeler didn’t give a single fuck.
“Does that answer your question?” Mike whispered playfully into Will’s mouth.
“Mike!” Will gasped, whipping his head around to see if any cars were around. “You’re being crazy!”
But then Mike was grinning and Will was staring at his mouth, and then they were kissing again, until they finally pulled apart to continue their journey towards the lab, and they walked along hand in hand, crazy together.