Archive of Our Own ^beta

March 1986

Maybe it’s strange, and honestly a little twisted, and Will would never dare to say it out loud, but Hawkins looks kind of pretty under the flurry of gray Upside Down ash. Giant red clouds of smoke descend from the sky, low enough to touch the buildings downtown, painting the lightning a deep shade of maroon as it crackles with the thunder. 

Mike stands next to him at the top of the hill, watching El bend down to examine an ash-covered poppy in the middle of the field. She looks anxious, spine stiff as she stands back up to look at the sky. 

The fluttering on the back of his neck becomes more severe, and Will rubs the skin there in slow circles, attempting to dull it. It doesn’t work, obviously, but he has gotten alarmingly good at functioning even with the weird sensation. 

He knows well and good that Vecna isn’t dead, or at least not completely. It’s the only way to explain what he feels, why it hasn’t stopped—but it doesn’t make the situation any less discouraging. They’ve fought for so long, and still his connection to Vecna isn’t severed. Still, there’s been so many who have died in this seemingly endless battle. 

“Are you okay?” Mike asks, eyes following the movement of his hand. “Do you still feel him?”

And maybe it’s an obvious question, and Mike has always had a tendency for being slightly overbearing, but Will has missed this. They’ve barely talked to each other this year, and even when Mike was visiting them in California, he needed to be there for El, to focus on finding her and then encouraging her during the fight. 

Besides, there’s this awkward energy that fissles between them now, so Will is grateful for any sort of interaction. 

“Yeah,” he whispers. “It hasn’t gone away yet.”

Hopper moves to stand by El, then, laying a hand on her shoulder and saying something that’s drowned out by the incessant thundering. She nods at him, expression fierce and fists clenched into knots.

“We’re going to start cleaning up,” Hopper announces, heading back up the hill. “It looks like this is gonna be a long-term problem—” he juts his thumbs back at the reddening sky “—and we need someplace to live.” El follows him obediently, probably still in shock that he’s here. She glances at Mike as they pass by, eyes tired and smile a bit strained. 

Will’s mom comes up to them next, glancing worriedly after Hopper and El. “I’m going to help them, sweetie,” she says, grasping ahold of Will’s shoulder with one hand, the other coming up to fix his hair. “Feel free to join. There’s a lot of work to do on that cabin if it’s where we’ll be living from now on.” Her head tilts downward as she gives him that look, the mom one, and then she’s calling after Hopper to slow down. 

Nancy, hand clasped tightly in Jonathan’s, walks them both over to Mike. “We promised Robin we’d take a shift at the volunteer center,” she tells him. “Mom will probably get worried if you’re not back in a few hours.”

“Nancy,” Mike groans. 

She just shrugs, widening her eyes as if to say, don’t blame me. It’s a classic Wheeler expression, Will knows it well. 

And then it’s just them on the hill, Mike and Will, without any idea how to act around each other after they’ve been, well, distant for so long. Mike fidgets with the hem of his sweatshirt, scuffing the brittle grass with his shoe, predictably unable to stand still.

“Should we go help?” Will offers, desperate to break the silence stretching between them. They used to talk so easily.

Mike’s mouth twists to the side, that half-smile he wears when he’s scheming up something. “I mean…if this is going to take a long time I was actually thinking we could call up Lucas and Dustin and see if they want to start a campaign.” He says this last part in one breath, all rushed, as if it’s supposed to be a secret.

Will grins, wide. He starts agreeing, but finds that he doesn’t need to, because Mike is already unhooking his walkie from his belt and sending a signal to the rest of their friends.

Lucas says he can be over at the Wheelers in ten, so they start walking back, and Will tries his best to ignore the prickling sensation at the back of his neck, focusing instead on the fluttering feeling in his chest as he watches Mike brush his shaggy hair away from the back of his neck.

It’s hard to feel happy, exactly, but he feels okay, which is more than he’s felt in a long time.

May 1986

It’s an early Saturday morning when Will’s mom finally gives up, tripping over Jonathan where he’s curled up in his sleeping bag a few feet from the bathroom door. She throws her hands up in defeat, stomping back to her and Hopper’s bedroom to announce that the Byers are staging a complete extraction from the small cabin.

She’s on the phone with Mrs. Wheeler not even ten minutes later, exchanging greetings while subtly mentioning that it’s getting unbearably crowded in Hopper’s cabin, and that their living situation is causing so many difficulties. Mrs. Wheeler, being the keen hostess she is, immediately offers up their guest bedroom and basement for however long the Byers need. 

Jonathan is very happy with the situation, which he shows through a brief raise of his eyebrows. But Will’s mom catches this immediately, attuned to his quiet mannerisms, and musses up his hair as she reminds him that he will be sleeping in the basement, far away from Nancy’s room. But his mood isn’t dampened, and he even spreads Nutella on everyone’s waffles before bringing a plate to their makeshift dining table.

And Will? Well, he doesn’t really know what to think. Hopper’s cabin isn’t the most spacious, and sleeping on a nylon sac every night is definitely going to give him an early onset of lower back problems. But of course, he’s survived much worse, and it’s kind of nice to be living together like this. It feels complete, and his mom is finally happy with Hopper back, and Will has more people to talk to. 

El wakes up when they’re midway through breakfast, grabbing a plain waffle from the plate and putting it back into the toaster to reheat it. It’s practically burnt to a crisp when she takes it out, but she doesn’t seem to notice (or care), and takes a large bite out of it as she walks back to her room.

Will pushes out of his chair and goes after her, already done with his breakfast. 

She’s sitting on her bed, pulling on a pair of thick, knee-high socks. He knocks a few times on the doorframe to get her attention. 

El looks up, waffle still in her mouth. “You c’n comf in,” she says.

Will huffs a laugh and sits next to her on the bed, leaning back on his hands to observe her. “Where are you going?”

“To the tubf,” El mumbles, and then takes the waffle out of her mouth. “Have to find Max.”

“El, you’ve tried every single day,” Will protests. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

“I’m fine. Max is not. I can find her if I look hard enough,” El insists. She finishes the burnt waffle and then adjusts her socks again. As she’s tying her hair up, she glances sideways at Will. “You’re leaving?” she asks.

“Yeah,” Will says, regretfully. “We can still see each other all the time,” he adds, placing a hand on her shoulder. He doesn’t want her to feel left out, for her to think that she isn’t an essential part of their group. Also, she’s kind of like his sister now, and he finds himself feeling the same protective rush swell over him as when she had fought with that girl at the roller rink.

“Not without using the tunnels,” Hopper calls gruffly from the kitchen, somehow overhearing their conversation. He’d reopened a few of the entrances that had been sealed off two years ago, using it as the main mechanism for him and El to get around without catching attention.

“It’s fine,” El replies, her voice doing that faraway thing that means she’s actively thinking about something else, something more important. She’s been doing that a lot recently, zoning out at dinner and only really snapping back in when she begs Hopper to let her train outside, to get stronger.

Pushing up from her bed, El takes Will’s hand and squeezes it firmly in her own before walking back out, heading for the tub in the far corner of the living room. Joyce had tried to decorate the area a little bit, putting up a pink folding divider she had found at the donation center, and even brought out her old flower-shaped radio to play static from. El didn’t much care for decorations, but she’d always been grateful for Will’s mom, and had hugged her when she saw the final product. 

She pauses before she pulls the divider back to look at Will, who’s followed her into the living room. “Have fun at Mike’s,” she says. 

And though Will knows she’s doing something important, her voice sounds so sad that he wishes he could just kill Vecna here and now if that would mean she could live normally. 

Not long after, they say goodbye to Hopper and load up all their belongings in the car, which is parked at the edge of the forest, a ten minute walk from the cabin for safety. They don’t have much—most of their things didn’t make it in the move to California, and even less made it back with them in their frenzy to get back to Hawkins two months ago. Will has maybe a few days worth of clothes, two comic books, a pillow and blanket, and the walkman he shares with Jonathan. 

His mom doesn’t seem concerned, and tells him to just borrow some clothes from Mike, that they’re probably around the same size. At that, Will nearly chokes, beyond flustered, and Jonathan must sense his embarrassment because he immediately assures them that he will definitely be borrowing Nancy’s clothes. 

They drive slowly, taking as many residential streets as they can to avoid the main roads that are constantly being patrolled by the military. Hawkins is being repaired little by little, with most of the buildings downtown that were damaged in the aftermath already undergoing construction. There’s hardly anyone outside as they pass by, since the whole town has been not-so-gently advised to stay indoors as much as possible, with the only exceptions being kids traveling to school or parents driving to work.

When they pull into the Wheelers’ driveway, Mike is already standing outside the front door. He runs up to the side of the car, tapping relentlessly at the window until Will opens the door and steps out.

“Mom said you were moving in,” he breathes out with a laugh. 

Will’s heart does a little flip, and he briefly contemplates getting back in the car and driving all the way back to Hopper’s, because there’s no way he’s going to be able to handle living this close to Mike. With Mike.

“Surprise,” Will says, giving a small, awkward flourish with the pillow in his hand, immediately cringing at how dorky it must look.

“This is going to be great,” Mike continues, oblivious to his mortification, and grabs the pillow. “Do you have any more stuff?” he asks.

Will shakes his head, throwing his backpack over his shoulder and slamming the car door shut.

“Mom’s in the kitchen, Ms. Byers,” Mike calls out to Will’s mom. “I think she’s making pancakes.” 

“Thank you, sweetie,” Will’s mom responds warmly, locking the car and heading inside with Jonathan in tow.

“Is El okay?” Mike asks as they walk towards the door. “I haven’t seen her in a bit and she barely answers her walkie anymore.” His eyebrows crease in the middle, a subtle tell that means he’s anxious about something.

Will doesn’t know how to reply. El hasn’t really been talking to him recently either, but he’d had no idea she was keeping her boyfriend out of the loop too. The two had been so happy when El had escaped from the lab, holding each other close and sticking together for a few weeks after that. But then, as El began realizing that she was still having trouble locating Max, and worse, Vecna, she became obsessed with strengthening her abilities.

But he doesn’t really know why she would choose to cut Mike out, as well. He’s usually her favorite person, and he knows Mike feels the same way about her.

“Hopper’s been upping her training,” he settles on. Will internally promises himself to stop getting himself into these situations where he’s somehow between them. It never ends in any good, and usually involves a substantial amount of lying on his part, and honestly he’s probably the worst person to serve as the mediator for their relationship anyway.

“Okay,” Mike replies, pausing by the front door. He purses his lips as if he’s thinking of what to say next, but—

“Boys, come inside, breakfast is ready!” Mrs. Wheeler’s voice cuts through the screen. 

Will hurries to open the door, grateful to have an excuse to get out of this conversation, and walks inside to find his mom and Mrs. Wheeler setting the table with large stacks of pancakes, syrup, and butter.

“Will, you better be hungry!” Mrs. Wheeler greets him cheerfully. “I’ve made lots of pancakes for you and Jonathan, I know you boys like to eat a lot.”

Feeling the heat rise in his cheeks, Will tries to ignore Mike’s snickering behind him. “Oh, I’ve already—” He’s cut off by the look his mom gives him over Mrs. Wheeler’s shoulder, her silent warning to be polite or else. “Nevermind,” he shakes his head. “Thank you Mrs. Wheeler, they look really good,” he says, giving her a smile.

“It’s lovely, Karen. Thank you again,” Will’s mom says. 

“It’s no problem, hon. Let me show you where you’re staying,” she says brightly, taking off her apron. “Will, honey, I’ll get some blankets and sheets downstairs for you and Jonathan. And Mike! Go wake up Dustin and Lucas for breakfast.” She disappears upstairs after that, shouting Holly’s name in an effort to wake the youngest Wheeler up.

Mike rolls his eyes. “C’mon,” he says, adjusting the pillow under his arm and heading for the staircase to the basement. 

Will hadn’t known that Dustin and Lucas were sleeping over, and he hates the tightness that fills his chest as he thinks about the three of them having fun yesterday night without him. It makes sense that they’d be here, really, since their parents don’t know anything and let them sleep over whenever, assuming they’re just being normal teenagers. 

But Will’s mom isn’t like that, especially not since the start of the military surveillance of Hawkins. And really, Will has always had a crippling fear of being left out of things, that he’s a burden, that his friends have more fun when he’s not around. He’s tried to shake it over the years, to grow out of the childish anxiety, but the stupid nauseous feeling still settles in his stomach when he dwells on it. 

Maybe Will’s been quiet for a bit too long, or maybe Mike just knows him well enough to tell that something like this would bother him. “Will’s living here, now, so can you guys stay over another night?” he calls out as they reach the bottom of the stairs. 

Dustin’s still sleeping, limbs haphazardly arranged to take up the most space possible. But Lucas looks up excitedly from the couch, already moving his blanket over to make room for them. 

And it’s just like Mike to notice something’s wrong and fix it, to make everything better like he always does. Will throws his bags on the rug, giggling as a shirt flies out and lands on Dustin’s face, who lets out a string of curses as he wakes up.

So maybe living here won’t be so bad.

June 1986 

Vecna is approaching, Will can tell by the way the muddy ground shudders every few seconds. 

A demogorgon has its arms wrapped around his frail body, the teeth in its flowering head clamping down on the back of his shirt. He twists in its grasp, writhing, but it’s freezing, and his body can barely move from stiffness. 

Growling fills the air, low and foreboding, and then Vecna appears from behind one of the decaying columns in his lair. 

“William,” he snarls, syllables drawn out in his gravelly, menacing voice. 

He gets close to Will’s body, raising his clawed hand to command the demogorgon to lift him higher. Will forces his eyes shut, squirming as he desperately tries to get away from Vecna’s icy stare.

But Vecna places one of his fingers on his cheek, and it feels so cold that Will’s eyes fling open immediately.

“You cannot escape me, William,” Vecna continues. “You are too weak. You are perfect for me,” he growls, the gap of his mouth lifting ever-so-slightly on the edges. 

Will thrashes again, his sleeves tearing against the demogorgon’s tight grip. Vecna angles his finger so just the sharp tip of it is skimming his skin, and then he pushes in, piercing his cheek until he reaches bone. Will screams, tears streaming down his face because it hurts so much, and he’s so cold. 

Vecna steps away from him, and his hand comes down. The demogorgon immediately drops him, leaving his body crumpled on the freezing ground. 

“And if you do, I will kill everyone you love,” Vecna’s voice echoes around his lair.

Will’s eyes blink open, the night light shining bright at the base of the stairs appearing like a fuzzy blob in his peripheral until his vision adjusts. He’s shuddering, hard, and completely covered in sweat. 

Jonathan sleeps on the couch next to him, and Will has to stare at his brother for a few seconds to ensure that his breathing is steady. To make sure he’s not dead. 

It’s not the first time he’s had those nightmares, not by a long shot, but it’s been a while since he’s had one this vivid. 

He slips out of his blanket, squinting as he gets up to avoid bumping into anything. The night light is bright enough when he reaches the stairs, and Will steps on them as slowly and quietly as possible until he reaches the top and creaks open the door. He inches towards the kitchen, shuffling his feet along the hardwood floor, but then he stops short when he reaches the doorframe.

Mike is sitting down at the dining table in his old Sting t-shirt, leaning over with his head resting in the crook of his arm. He’s filling out a crossword, his tiny pencil scratches filling up the silence in the room. When he hears the floorboards creak under Will’s steps, he looks up and rests the pencil on the table. 

“Nightmare?” he asks, voice cracking slightly on the second syllable. He clears his throat, ducking his head as if he’s embarrassed.

And Will nearly melts, biting his lip to try and stop from smiling. It doesn’t work, obviously, and he has to walk over to the sink so Mike won’t see the grin on his face. “Yeah,” he responds, and then fills up a mug from the cabinet.

Mike shifts in his chair to look at him. “What was it about?”

“Vecna,” Will murmurs around the edge of the mug, and then swallows the rest of his water. He walks over to the table, pulling out the chair across from Mike and sitting down.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really,” Will says, leaning down on his arm the way Mike had been a few seconds ago.

“Okay,” Mike says, smiling a little at him.

“What about you?” Will questions, tilting his head at the crossword book. “What are you worried about?”

It had started about two months after Will had come back from the Upside Down. Because Mike wasn’t busy looking for him anymore, it seemed that the aftereffects from the traumatic ordeal finally caught up to him, and he had difficulty staying asleep for more than a few hours at a time. So he would wander to the kitchen, finding Mr. Wheeler’s newspaper from that morning strewn across the table, and finish the crosswords on the last page.

Will knows this because they’d slept over at each other's houses more often than not during that period, and Mike had started tucking his own crossword book under his pillow when he went to sleep. It helps calm me, he had explained when Will first asked about it. It gives me something to solve, something that I can actually find an answer to.

“It’s just habit,” Mike says now, much too casual. “I have to finish one before I go to bed.”

He’s lying, Will’s sure of it, or at least not telling him everything—because it’s three in the morning by now, way beyond the normal time to go to sleep. But he drops it anyway. “How can you even see?” he asks incredulously, squinting in the darkness to try and read the words in Mike’s book.

“I don’t know,” Mike laughs, shaking his head helplessly. “Mom keeps saying it’s going to catch up to me one day, and then I’ll need glasses.” He wrinkles his nose at that, as if wearing glasses would be totally catastrophic to his look. 

Will feels his face heat up at the thought of Mike sitting at the table, frowning at his crossword while adjusting a pair of glasses on his nose. He would probably look really good with them, actually, though Will doesn’t dare to say that out loud.

“I should probably go back to sleep,” he decides, knowing that if he stays any longer in this dimly lit kitchen he will actually end up saying something stupid. 

“I can come with you,” Mike announces, pushing up from his chair. “I’ll bring out the sleeping bags so you don’t have to stay there alone.”

Will actually thinks that having Mike next to him would dramatically decrease any chance he has of falling back asleep, and Jonathan sleeps downstairs anyway, but he’s never been good at saying no to him.

So they set up next to the washing machine, on the opposite side of the coffee table from Jonathan, who is sleeping soundly on the couch. The basement is silent, save for Mike’s steady breathing beside him, and Will suddenly has this horrible thought that maybe Vecna can see him now, not just in his dreams, but in real life, in this moment. 

Maybe it doesn’t matter that Will hasn’t felt the fluttering at the back of his neck in a few months, maybe Vecna can spy on him anywhere. What if he knows, knows of Will’s unhealthy attachment towards his best friend, and decides to target him like that? He shifts in the sleeping bag, sweat pooling at the base of his neck, breathing as deep as he can to try and slow his heart rate. 

Mike shifts too, turning his body over so he faces Will. “Have you done the biology homework?” he asks softly.

It’s completely unrelated, completely unimportant, but Will knows it’s Mike’s way of distracting him. He smiles, shaking his head. “No,” he murmurs. “I was just gonna do it in homeroom tomorrow.” 

“Today,” Mike corrects with a smirk.

Will sighs, draping his arm over his eyes in an effort to keep them shut. 

And then Jonathan shifts on the couch, muttering something in his sleep that kind of sounds like ‘Nancy,’ and Will startles because he’d forgotten his brother was there.

Mike giggles beside him, his eyes squinting shut with amusement. Will shushes him, and then against his better judgement grabs ahold of his sleeping bag and drags it up over his mouth, muffling the noise. 

His hand lingers there, so close to Mike’s face, and they stare at each other with wide eyes for a brief moment, silence hanging thick between them.

Jonathan lets out another groan, and Will jerks his hand back, letting the sleeping bag fall, watching Mike’s mouth quirk sideways the way it does when he’s trying his hardest to hold back a laugh.

“Let’s just go upstairs,” Mike whispers, and Will nods jerkily, trying to catch his breath because it might have just stopped for a second.

He follows him up the rickety stairs, assuming he means to the living room, so they can set up some blankets on the rug by the couch. But Mike takes hold of the banister and continues up the staircase to the second floor. Hesitating, Will lingers on the first step, gripping the polished wood of the banister. 

“C’mon,” Mike whispers, and motions with his hand to follow him.

“Do you really think—” Will starts, but Mike cuts him off with the motion of a silent press of his finger to his lips.

“You’re gonna wake them up!” he mouths. So Will breathes deeply and follows him up the stairs, stepping on the edges of the steps in a zig-zag pattern to avoid the creaking ones, the way Mike had taught him.

Mike turns his doorknob slowly, opening the door a crack and slipping inside the room. Will closes the door behind them, and finds Mike crawling onto his bed in the corner of the room, patting the mattress for him to sit on the other side.

It’s so reminiscent of when they were younger, when they could both sleep in this bed with so much space between them. But now they’re older, and the bed would be cramped, and Will hasn’t really slept this way with Mike since three years ago. He doesn’t know what it would be like, now. Would Mike still insist they fall asleep facing each other, so that if Will wakes up scared he can see he’s not alone? Would he still bring his hand up to Will’s face, smoothing over the crease in his eyebrows and tell him he can’t sleep if he worries?

Will swallows the panic rising in his throat, and suddenly he feels terrified, way more than when he’d woken up from the nightmare downstairs.

But Mike is rolling his eyes at his hesitation, like this doesn’t mean anything, so Will knows he’s just going to have to suck it up.

“Sorry for taking up your space,” Will mutters awkwardly as he crawls onto the bed and leans against the pillow.

“I really don’t mind,” Mike shrugs. “I actually asked Mom if you could sleep up here in case you have a bad nightmare again. But she said we wouldn’t fit,” he finishes with a small laugh.

Will’s chest tightens, a pang of guilt shooting through him at the thought of his own weakness, a weakness so obvious it’s visible to everyone. Mike shouldn’t constantly have to take care of him, not when he has a million more important things, like El, to worry about. 

Mike must realize what Will’s thinking, then, and frowns slightly. “I get scared too,” he offers.

“You don’t have to—”

“No, I’m serious!” Mike cuts him off. “I get scared that one day I’ll trip while doing a wheelie and Lucas will never let me forget it. I’m scared of mispronouncing something during a campaign and ruining the most dramatic boss battle we’ve ever had!” And after a brief pause to think, he adds, “....also Nancy sometimes gets really scary when I don’t listen to her.” 

Will is laughing, now, tears forming in his eyes from the absurdity of it all. “Mike, those are all stupid,” he gasps.

Mike bites his lip, smiling, but then his eyebrows knit together and he lets out a sigh through his nose. “I was scared that you didn’t want to be my friend anymore, when you were in California,” he admits. 

The laughter leaves his body in an instant, and he feels like he’s sinking into Mike’s sea of blue sheets. “What?” he breathes.

“It’s just that when we, you know, didn’t talk to each other for a while…” Mike says quietly, hand coming up to rub the back of his neck. “I guess I just overcomplicated  things.”

“What do you mean?” Will asks, maybe a little bit too fast. A prickle of fear flares within him, but it’s not just the normal depressing bout of dread that usually accompanies his thoughts of Mike, because there’s a tiny, stupid sliver of hope along with it.

Mike huffs a laugh, a strained sound, and shakes his head a little. “I was sort of convinced we would never be as close as we once were,” he confesses, “I guess I’m still a little scared of that.”

“You could have always…called,” Will says, before he can think better of it. “I don’t blame you for it, that’s not what I meant,” he rushes to add, seeing the beginning of a guilty expression forming on Mike’s face. “But I would have been happy to talk to you,” he says gently. 

“I did, I called more than a few times, you know,” Mike protests, mildly defensive. “The phone was just constantly busy when I did, and I—” he glances over at Will, quickly, and then looks down at his hands. “I was going to send you more letters, too, but every time I got El on the phone or read one of her letters she was always mentioning, I don’t know, how well you were doing over there! That you had new friends, or whatever, and that you liked the classes there, and I don’t know, I just—” he pauses, letting out a long breath. “I thought that you wouldn’t want to hear from me anyway.”

Mike slowly looks up, wincing as he meets Will’s wide-eyed stare.

Because Will has gone utterly still, hands limp at his sides, desperate to understand what the hell Mike had just said. His mind is racing, but he can’t make sense of it, can’t comprehend this impossible confession. 

Mike knots his hands in his lap, twisting the fabric of his t-shirt until it wrinkles. “It was so stupid, I know that now, but—”

“It’s not stupid,” Will manages, swallowing hard. “I thought the same thing about you. That you were fine in Hawkins without me, with Eddie and Dustin and Lucas, and that you only really came to visit El,” he lets slip, slightly embarrassed.

“Obviously not,” Mike says, looking up from his hands to give Will a soft smile.

They’re quiet for a few moments, Will trying desperately to look around the room, at the blanket on the bed, anywhere but at Mike. He’s flustered, blood nearly pulsing in his face as he attempts to breathe steadily. And yet he feels lighter than he’s been in a while, the weight that’s been settling in his chest since California finally lifting off.

Then, Mike reaches over to his side and switches the lamp off. “We should go to sleep,” he murmurs. 

“Yeah,” Will agrees, adjusting his pillow and easing onto the mattress. “Goodnight,” he breathes out, turning around so that he’s facing the wall.

“Night,” Mike says, and tugs the blanket higher around his shoulders.

Will doesn’t fall asleep until the sun starts peeking in from between the blinds, unable to get Mike’s words out of his head as he fidgets restlessly under the blanket.

But when the alarm goes off and Mike groans into his pillow, miserable at the prospect of having to wake up, Will realizes he’s entirely forgotten about the nightmare.

July 1986

Lucas adjusts the collar of his sports jacket in the reflection of the small, dark window of the hospital room door. He turns to Will and Mike, smoothing down the frizz along his hairline with the tips of his fingers. “Do you think I look good?” he asks, his voice wavering nervously.

Will nods enthusiastically, and Mike flashes two thumbs up at him. Neither of them dare to say anything about how it wouldn’t matter if he was wearing the most hideous thing on earth, since Max isn’t awake to see him anyway. 

“Okay.” Lucas breathes deeply, and pushes open the door.

It’s Will’s tenth time visiting Max, Mike’s sixteenth, and Lucas’s maybe one millionth. There hasn’t been a single day that he hasn’t come to the hospital, scampering off after school or early in the morning on the weekends. Sometimes he talks to her, telling her about what they learned in school. So she doesn’t fall behind, he’d explained, even though they all know Max doesn’t really care about that stuff. Other times he reads to her, a fantasy book or a feminist novel Nancy gave him that he knew she’d enjoy. 

And he always makes sure to comb his hair, iron his clothes, and appear extremely presentable. Just in case that was the day she finally woke up. 

Mike and Will follow behind him around the curtain. El is also with them, slinking in after, drawstrings of her hoodie completely tightened so that you can only see one of her eyes peeping through. Hopper had continued to insist she should try and locate Max from their cabin, safely, but El has had enough of it at this point. She’d taken the tunnels to get here, waiting until Hopper was out to sneak down through the trap door. 

Lucas sits in the chair next to Max’s bed. His leg jiggles rhythmically in his faded blue jeans, little tap-taps on the linoleum. “Hi Max,” he starts, and then clears his throat loudly. “We had the day off of school again because they’re rebuilding the parking lot. You’d have enjoyed it.” He laughs, but it’s strained.

Mike nods beside him, his hand leaning on the back of Lucas’s chair. “You would have learned like five new skateboarding tricks by now, with all the time we have off,” he adds.

“What he means to say is that you would have gotten better at them,” Lucas rushes to correct. “We know you know every trick already.”

“Obviously,” Mike says, rolling his eyes.

Lucas scrunches his nose at him. “Anyway, we’re still trying to find a way to get back into the Upside Down and find Vecna. You’ve just got to hang on a little longer, and we’ll get you out of there. Right, El?” He shifts his gaze to the end of the bed, where El is standing.

She’s gripping the edge of the bedframe tight, her eyes focused intently on Max, analyzing every twitch of her eyelid or rise of her chest. “Yes,” El says, voice firm.

“Okay,” Lucas affirms, turning back to Max. “You heard that. It’s gonna happen soon. Will, Mike, anything else to add?”

And honestly, Will doesn’t really know what she’d want to hear, if she could somehow hear them. He’d been pretty out-of-commission the first year they’d met her, when they were thirteen. That summer they’d gotten closer, the whole group of them, though Max preferred to hang out with Lucas or El. And it was only two months after that Will had moved to California, and by the time he’d gotten back she was, well, like this. There hadn’t been a lot of time for them to get to know each other in any capacity besides orbiting around in the same group. The closeness had happened while he was gone.

Even Mike, who’d always had this sort of rivalry with her, knows about the TV shows she likes and people at school she thinks are annoying. 

“Oh, uh, I was going to tell you about the new Smiths album when I was here last time, but I forgot. It’s pretty good, I think you would like it,” Mike ventures. “Even if you think Morrissey’s kinda whiny.” 

“Mike listened to it like a hundred times last week,” Lucas snorts.

“Okay, I don’t—”

“Wait, I think Siouxsie and the Banshees released something a few months ago too, right?” Will chimes in, thinking she might like their music.

“Yeah, Nancy was talking about it at some point,” Mike recalls.

“Is that like Kate Bush?” Lucas asks.

“I think so,” Will guesses, and Mike shrugs.

Lucas accepts that answer with a nod. “Okay, Max, we’re gonna shut up now so we can play the song.” He leans over in his chair to the tiny table by her bed, reaching to turn on the radio that now permanently resides there. 

The starting synthesizer notes fill up the small room, and Lucas scoots his chair forward to grasp her hand tightly between his own.

They’re all silent—Lucas, Mike, Will, and El at the foot of the bed, still staring intently at Max’s face—as Kate Bush’s voice comes out of the speakers, the same way it has every day since March. 

And then there’s a creak from the door opening, and El pulls the drawstrings of her hoodie tighter and moves to stand behind Mike. They hear the sound of a can being cracked, the fizzy bubbling of the liquid frothing at the rim, and then Dustin’s head peeks in from behind the curtain.

El lets out a breath and loosens her hood again. Dustin had come with them to the hospital, delegating himself to bring them all drinks from the vending machine at the other end of the hallway. He tosses a can to each of them now: Orange Crush for Lucas, Hi-C for El, and Cherry Coke for Will and Mike.

Dustin opens his mouth and says something, gesturing to the curtain behind them. But the music is loud, and he’s speaking softly, so none of them can hear what he’s trying to say.

He rolls his eyes at their confused expressions. “Would you lower that down?” he asks, voice raised now. “There are other patients here, you know.”

Lucas frowns and twists the volume knob down. “We have to play the full song at least once,” he argues. “You know we have to.”

“As if that will do something,” Dustin mutters under his breath.

“Why are you being like this?” Lucas presses, an edge to his voice now.

“Lucas—” Will starts.

Lucas twists in his chair to face him. “No, Will, he’s like this every time we’re here!” he cries, and then turns back. “I don’t understand why you can’t at least pretend to be optimistic about this,” he mutters, sending an accusatory look over at Dustin.

“Because it’s pointless,” Dustin snaps, crossing his arms as he frowns at them.

“The music worked last time!” Lucas shoots back. “It woke her up. We’ve got to keep trying!”

“That was like, five months ago, Lucas! She’s been in a coma since then!”

“You can’t just give up on her. We can’t! Forget the fact that she’s our friend, she’s helped so much the past three years! We owe it to her,” Lucas hisses, lowering his voice as if Max can somehow overhear their conversation.

“You can’t just music someone out of a coma!”

“Look, just because Eddie died and you’re still upset about that doesn’t mean you have to take it out on Max! Max isn’t going to die!”

The room goes silent at that, and all of them stare at Lucas, who looks like he immediately regrets what he just said. Dustin’s mouth hangs open, and then it moves as if he’s going to say something, but he snaps it shut and storms out the room instead.

Mike is gripping the back of Lucas’s chair, hard. “Lucas—”

“I know,” Lucas sighs. “I’ll go after him.” He takes one more look at Max and disappears behind the curtain, calling out Dustin’s name to see where he went. 

Mike pushes off the room's blue-and-white striped wall and pulls the curtain aside. “I should probably go make sure that they aren’t going to kill each other,” he says over his shoulder, and then yells out an apology to the very annoyed-looking nurse he nearly runs over in the hallway.

“Wait, Mike—!” El calls after him.

But the door to the room slams shut, and Mike is probably already halfway down the hall. 

She breathes out a long sigh, and then goes over to sit in Lucas’s chair. Will places a hand on her shoulder, reassuring.

“I’m going to try again,” El says, and this time she leans over and grabs Max’s hand with such fierceness that Will actually thinks it might work. She closes her eyes, concentrating hard. Will reaches over her to turn the radio on and flicks through the channels to find that little in-between space that makes static hiss through the speakers. 

He keeps an eye on the heart rate monitor, praying that Max will give them some sort of indicator, anything to let them know that she’s really in there and trying to get out. 

The seconds pass, the wall clock’s ticking and monitor’s beeping echoing around them. El has her head bent down, and she’s still, so still, as her hand lingers on Max’s.

And then Will hears her sniffle, and she lifts her head to lean back in the chair, defeated. “I can’t do it,” she says, and her voice cracks on the last word as tears start streaming down her face.

Will startles, whole body immediately flooding with the need to calm her down, to make her okay again. He sits down on the edge of Max’s bed so that he faces her. “You’re trying the best you can,” he says gently. “Your powers are strong, El. It’s not your fault that she’s somewhere you can’t reach.”

“But that’s the point, Will,” she answers bitterly, and her mouth twists into an ugly frown. “What am I supposed to do if I can’t find her?”

“You stick with the rest of us. You let yourself rest and try again when you’re ready.”

El shakes her head, new tears reforming at the corners of her eyes. “I’m only useful if I can do something with my powers. If I can save someone.”

Will’s heart breaks at that, because it’s so hard to hear her say something like that about herself. He loves El, and it’s not because she can be super powerful and snap a demogorgon’s neck with the tilt of her head. It’s because she’s funny, always replying to everything with her straightforward answers and repeating the jokes she’s learned until he has to beg her to stop. She’s determined, and her willpower manifests even in the simplest of tasks, like when she had to figure out there was a special setting on the toaster for different types of foods. She’s brilliant, and he is forever grateful for the time they got to spend together in California, even if they were away from everyone else. 

But he isn’t the right person to tell her that.

“Why don’t you talk to Mike?” Will asks, once again berating himself for getting involved. Last time, he promises himself. This is the last time. “You mean more to him than what you can do with your powers.” 

“Mike doesn’t get it,” she murmurs, sniffling harshly and wiping under her eyes with her sleeve. “He thinks I can do anything. That I’m invincible.”

And frankly, that just doesn’t match up for Will. Mike isn’t the type to think like that, to idolize a person so much, or to look over their weaknesses. Will knows the last part especially isn’t true, not with how Mike had always treated him. He’s caring, a bit too much, honestly, but his role has always been to protect them all. Whenever someone’s struggling, he knows it immediately, he can see what’s wrong. And then he tries to fix it.

“I’d rather talk to you,” El adds. “You get it,” she says, pointing a finger at his chest.

Will smiles self-indulgently, grateful that she views him as someone to lean on. “You can always talk to me, El,” he promises. “But Mike’s still worried about you. He always asks about you a lot, you know? About how you’re doing,” Will presses.

El tilts her head. “Why doesn’t he just ask me directly?” she asks, her eyebrows knitted together.

Will thinks it feels wrong to talk to her about this, just like it felt wrong to talk to Mike about El. He worries, impossibly so, that he will somehow say something wrong, that the twisted, reckless, hungry thing inside him will become apparent. That he could ruin what they have, with his own stupid impulses. 

But El looks so confused, blurry eyes wide, and Will can’t stand seeing her like that. “I don’t think he knows that’s an option,” he manages, huffing a laugh.

Fortunately, El doesn’t notice his inner turmoil and laughs a little too, a choked sound, wiping her eye again. “Probably not,” she agrees.

She turns back to Max, then, reaching for her hand again and leaning forward. “I promise I’ll try harder,” El says, sincere as ever. “I’ll find you and get you out of there.”

And miraculously, Max’s heart rate picks up just a little bit, the monitor speeding up, and El shifts closer, squeezing her hand tighter, and then—

The door slams open, and they both turn to see Will’s mom standing in the entrance, hair unkempt, clothing mismatched, wearing a really, really large frown on her face.

“Mom!” Will cries, because they were so close, closer than ever before. “It almost worked, Max almost—”

“I don’t care!” She shouts, and it’s the loudest she’s been in a while. “El, you are coming back to the cabin with me right now! I can’t believe you risked yourself like that! You can find Max from home. Anyone could have seen you!”

“I put my hoodie up!” El protests, but Will’s mom just shakes her head and grabs El’s hand to pull her off the chair. “And you,” she points at Will. “You’re supposed to look after her, to make sure she doesn’t do these kinds of things!”

“I can look after myself!” El replies haughtily.

“Well, you didn’t!” Will’s mom practically hisses. “You two clearly don’t understand the gravity of the situation! El cannot go outside, and Will, you cannot encourage this!” She marches her and El over to the doorway, yanking El’s hoodie back up so that it covers her face. “We’re going back to the cabin, where we’re supposed to be,” she says firmly. “And I want you back at the Wheeler’s in an hour,” she seethes.  

Will nods mutely, watching as she opens the door and sneaks El out into the brightly lit hallway.

He’s left by himself in the hospital room, alone with Max and her slow, steady heartrate, and somehow everything feels even more complicated then when they were all working together, fighting against the Upside Down. 

August 1986

Mike kicks an empty can of coke along the side of the grassy path up the hill, his hand swinging in the space that hangs between them. 

The area around the WSQK has always been a little isolated, but even since the military shutdown, it’s been completely deserted. So deserted, in fact, that Keith, the manager of the video store (who must’ve known the radio station owner) practically begged Steve and Robin to get it up and running again. 

Steve had agreed, since he needed the money for his car anyway, and now that Robin had graduated she was able to devote her time to helping him clean up the space. They’d asked anyone who was available to come up and help them sort through the piles upon piles of junk that had amassed there. Nancy and Jonathan, who’d appointed themselves as the operational managers of the station, were currently helping Dustin again with donations.

So now Will is following Mike as they reach the top of the grassy hill, stopping outside the front door. Mike knocks, three times, the way he always does. He’s always done whatever he could in threes—that’s his favorite number, Will knows.

Robin answers the door with her usual bright grin, gesturing for them to come in. “Thank God you guys are here,” she breathes. “There is so much work to do, and Steve is being a useless lump right now.”

“Hey!” Steve’s offended cry comes from inside the radio station. “I’ve been helping.”

“No he hasn’t,” Robin whispers to them, and Will bites back a smile. He likes Robin, and her easygoing nature. And Steve has always been a little bit…egotistical, but Will knows he means a lot to Dustin, so he must not be as self-centered as he seems.

They follow her inside, heading past the broadcasting booth to the storage shelves lining the back wall. There are boxes everywhere, piles of dusty records, and trash bags filled with old tapes. 

“We need to do something about…all of this,” Robin explains to them, waving her hand in a broad circle at the mess.

Steve pops his head out of the broadcasting booth, sitting in a swivelly chair with a pencil tucked behind his ear. “Guys, come look at this! I found a bunch of random tapes with sound effects on them, and I’ve finally figured out how to make them work!”

“This is what I mean,” Robin says matter-of-factly. 

Mike steps into the booth, Will and Robin behind him. 

Steve is up from his chair, standing next to a rather large tape cartridge. “Watch this,” he says, wiggling his eyebrows. Robin sighs. 

He pops in a tape, hits play, and a crowd boo-ing sound plays from the system. He takes that one out, popping in another, this time a car horn sounding. “Isn’t this rad?!” he exclaims, alarmingly sounding like a kid who’s just discovered a new toy.

“It’s crazy how you get away with being such an idiot on the daily,” Robin says dryly. 

Steve flings his pencil at her, which she narrowly avoids. “Fine, I’m coming,” he sighs. He sends Mike a little she’s crazy sign over his shoulder as he exits the booth, which Mike laughs at.

“Okay,” Robin starts when they’re all staring at the intimidating mess around them. “Will and Steve, you guys start on the bags of tapes. Sort them into categories based on their label, and if they don’t have a label, go in and play them to see what it is. Mike and I will start with the records.”

Steve salutes her like a diligent soldier, and then grabs one of the heavier bags of tapes and hauls it over to the wooden table in the corner of the room. Will follows him, picking up two smaller bags. Robin takes hold of the bottom of a big record box, but immediately has to set it down.

“I don’t even know why you try to lift that,” Steve says, coming back to Robin’s side and lifting the box for her.

“I could piggyback your ass, Harrington.” Robin swats him on the shoulder, but follows him as he places the box on the rug next to the table. 

And Will, who hasn’t really hung out with them outside of life-threatening situations, marvels at how easy their relationship is. He knows they aren’t dating—it was a hot topic of conversation last summer, when Dustin had brought up how he wished Steve would just ask her out already. But honestly, Will doesn’t really see anything romantic between them. They’re so different from Nancy and Jonothan, who are constantly holding hands or reassuring one another. 

And besides, it’s actually rather nice for a boy and a girl to be such good friends with each other.

Maybe it’s because they’re older, because they’ve already graduated high school and don’t have to deal with all of the gossip and teasing that comes with it. Maybe the whole dating obsession was something that people gradually grew out of, something that eventually lost its weight. He wishes it could be like that between all boys and girls, that there wasn’t such a fixation on pairing people off. Then again, he’s kinda got a…unique vantage point to the situation.

“Keith said that we have to get this place running by the start of the school year,” Robin says. “I don’t really know what I want to broadcast yet. He didn’t give us much guidance.”

“Just play anything you want,” Will shrugs. “You guys have the total place to yourselves.”

“Play Purple Rain,” Mike suggests. “It’ll piss all the parents off.”

“I think the military is going to monitor us pretty closely,” Steve points out. “We can’t do anything too wild or they’ll shut us down.”

“That’s just it,” Robin says, suddenly animated. “I want to keep them off of our tracks entirely. I was thinking I might even go over their rules every morning at the start of the broadcast, and that way they’ll have no idea what we’re really doing…” she trails off. “Wait, you guys haven’t seen the basement, have you?” she asks Mike and Will, who both shake their heads in confusion.

“Oh, yeah!” Steve perks up. “We just discovered it a few days ago. It used to be, like, a bomb shelter or something. It’s actually pretty spacious.”

He stands up and heads back to where the shelves are, waving for them to follow. Then Steve tugs one of the wall shelves extra hard, and the whole thing moves to the side and reveals a doorway. “It used to just be a normal door, but I nailed the shelf to it so that it would stay hidden,” Steve says proudly.

Mike looks to Will in awe. “This is insane,” he says.

“I know,” Steve replies.

They follow him down a curved metal staircase, gripping the railing tightly so as not to fall. They enter into an empty, bare space with cement walls and floors, clearly built for protection. There’s no furniture or anything there, just a blank room, but Steve was right, it’s spacious.

“You guys are also thinking it, right?” Robin asks. “This place would make a really good base.”

Will thinks about all the scattered places they live in now: Lucas and Dustin’s houses, the Wheeler house, and Hopper’s cabin, which doesn’t even show up on the map. It would be so useful to have a place they could all gather in, a place the military has no idea exists. “And it’s close to the tunnels,” he thinks out loud, remembering the secret entrance Hopper had opened at the edge of the woods.

“Yeah, so Hopper and El can get here,” Mike adds eagerly. 

“Dustin thinks that we can use the radio signals to track someone from the Upside Down, since they’re much stronger than our walkies,” Steve adds. “He came by here a few days ago to help us set up the channel. I don’t really get what he wants to do exactly, but I’m sure he’s working up a plan already.”

Mike grins, and Will can’t help but smile too. It feels good to have a direction, some sense of hope after they’ve spent so many months laying low and waiting for information. 

“This is perfect,” Will says softly. “It might even be safe enough for my mom to agree to it.”

“Right?” Robin repeats. “We’ve just got to find a way to assemble all of us at once, and then we’ll be golden.”

They head back upstairs after that, settling by the table and on the rug to start sorting through the ridiculous amount of music the station has amassed in its impressive existence. If they can get this place running to produce a seemingly normal radio channel, it’ll be much easier to get the military off of their backs if they start planning anything…unlawful. 

Steve laughs as he holds up one of the tapes he’s pulled out of the bag. “Eddie would have loved this,” he says, a softer edge to his voice. 

“Is that Metallica?” Mike looks up from his place on the rug. “Yeah, he would have.” 

“I’ve actually listened to them, you know—guess he finally got to me,” Steve says with a little laugh. “They’re not even half bad.” 

“I know, that’s what he was probably trying to tell you!” Mike says with a grin.

“He wouldn’t have convinced me, not then,” Steve muses. “It would have given that dweeb too much satisfaction. Couldn't let that happen.”

Mike points his finger upwards. “I think I hear him laughing,” he whispers.

Steve snorts, and flips a finger up at the roof. “Lick my ass, Munson!” he shouts. 

Will watches them, pretending to sort through the handful of tapes he’s just pulled out as they laugh about different jokes Eddie used to tell. He knows that Eddie was close with Dustin, who he’d really taken under his wing, but Will hadn’t realized how much the others might miss him too. None of them had taken it too hard right after it had happened, since his death had been a heroic thing, and also extremely overshadowed by everything else with Vecna.

But a lot of them had spent significant time with him, Mike and Steve probably second to Dustin. In all the confusion following Vecna’s disappearance, Will had forgotten that they’d also have a reason to mourn when Eddie had died, to wish he was still with them. 

Will can’t help but feel guilty about it, just as he does with every death that’s been caused by the Upside Down. In a way, he’s responsible for everything that’s happened since then, even if he hadn’t wanted anything to do with it. 

But thinking like that is unproductive, he’s been telling himself that for years, when his energy could be spent instead on preventing anyone else from the same fate. 

He makes a note to bring Eddie up with Mike later, when they’re lying in bed and talking before they go to sleep, so that he might get a chance to tell Will about him. Oh, that’s also new—Will’s been sleeping in Mike’s bed since his nightmare, completely abandoning Jonathan downstairs (who is probably happy with that arrangement, since Nancy can now sneak into the basement whenever she wants).

They’ve gotten closer the last few months, talking every night, sometimes for hours until they drift off. A gap had formed in their relationship, a gap that had begun really before California, the second Will had been taken to the Upside Down and everything seemed to get more and more stressful. But they talk like how they used to, now, sharing everything about their days, mentioning whenever one of them has a thought, whether it’s stupid observation or a serious fear. It’s always been their thing—the way they’ve been able to share anything with each other, the ease of it all, and Will has missed it. 

He cherishes that time, finding himself excited for it to get dark, so that Mike might recount moments from his classes last year, or read him one of the stories he’s working on for creative writing.

But anyway.

Steve pulls out a tape from his bag and holds it up close to his face as he squints to read the labelling. “This is one of those chick songs, Total Eclipse.” He tosses it to Robin, who catches it with one hand while rummaging through her box of records. “You can throw it out, I think it’s been overplayed at this point.”

Mike looks up from the box he’s organizing. “Wait, that song is good,” he blurts out, and then his eyes go wide. “Good for broadcasting, I mean. People will listen to it, you know,” he rushes to add.

Steve turns around to look down at him. “Don’t tell me you like Bonnie Tyler, Wheeler Jr.,” he says, amusement creeping into his voice.

Mike’s cheeks turn a dusty pink, and he reaches a hand up to awkwardly scratch the back of his neck. “No, I was just joking…I thought girls would like it if you played it or whatever.” He turns back down to the box he’s sorting, trying desperately to end the conversation.

“If you say so,” Steve replies, eyebrows raised.

“You know, Mike actually loves those cheesy songs,” Will pipes up, a giggle escaping his lips. “He has a whole box of Nancy’s stuff from when she was like fourteen.” 

Steve bursts out laughing, clutching his sides as he steadies himself against the table.“No way!” he exclaims. 

Mike shoots Will a scathing look that clearly says how dare you make me look uncool right now, but Will just shrugs, pretending not to notice.

“Don’t be mean to him, Steve,” Robin chides, but she too is smiling. “People can listen to whatever they want.”

“Yeah, but it’s Bonnie Tyler,” Will says, which sends the three of them into another round of giggles. 

Mike crosses his arms, standing up from his box with a betrayed look on his face. “You guys just have to read between the lines,” he protests. “If you actually listen it’s not that cheesy, it’s actually kind of romantic—hey!” he breaks off, glaring at the three of them bent over with laughter. “All I’m saying is there’s a secret message to it,” he grumbles. “Sorry that you guys are just illiterate assholes…..”

Steve is still laughing hard, managing to say something about how he’s exactly like Nancy before he shakes his head, grinning. Will watches Mike sulk to himself, an overwhelming rush of affection rising in his chest that he struggles to push down.

But Robin had stopped laughing, standing up straight with her hands flat on the table in front of her. “Secret message…” she mutters.

“What’s up with you, Buckley?” Steve asks, still fighting the wave of giggles rolling through him.

“Secret message!” Robin cries. “Guys, wait, I have an idea!” She rushes inside the broadcasting station, lifting the DJ mic up to her face and turning on the switch. Choosing an album from the stack next to the turntable, she takes the vinyl out and sets it carefully down on the player. When the first song starts playing, some cheesy ‘50s song, Robin holds the back of the record sleeve to her face and begins reading off of it.

“Tutti Frutti is a hit single by Little Richard,” she starts. “Apparently, it only took him around two hours in the recording studio before he was able to get a clean track. But his team of producers, three rather inexperienced men, were having a tough time layering the tracks, which resulted in no organization or efforts to get the song out. But all in all, Richard describes it as a fun, rather idiotic track from his record.”

“What the hell are you doing?” Steve asks, dumbfounded. “It’s just an album description.”

Mike frowns, and Will, too, is unable to understand what she’s trying to show them.

“No, just wait,” Robin urges. “Tutti Frutti is a hit single by Little Richard. Apparently, it only took him around two hours in the recording studio before he was able to get a clean track. But his team of producers, three rather inexperienced men, were having a tough time layering the tracks, which resulted in no organization or efforts to get the song out. But all in all, Richard describes it as a fun, rather idiotic track from his record,” she repeats.

“...rather idiotic,” Steve whispers. “Oh my god.”

“You’re speaking in code,” Mike says, wide-eyed.

Robin nods eagerly at him, flashing an excited thumbs-up. “I just called you three incompetent helpers and no one else would have ever known. Think of how easy it will be to let everyone know when we’re going to gather in the future!”

The three of them look up at each other, Will, Mike, and Steve, each with matching wide grins on their faces. 

Finally, they have a start.

September 1986

The first time it happens, Will is being patted down aggressively with Erica’s pink fluffy towel.

It’s been half a year since the lockdown started, and at this point they’re all so restless that it feels as though they could start tackling each other at any moment. They’re hanging out at Lucas’s house today, which would normally be fine, since Mrs. and Mr. Wheeler are usually more strict, and Will’s mom is another level of hyper-aware entirely.

Except Lucas had apparently made a bet with Erica yesterday involving who could get away with not washing the dishes for the longest time, which of course Erica (being the youngest) won. Her prize was that she could style Lucas’s hair however she wanted, which had actually turned out quite good, his normally cropped hairstyle now looser curls that hang down his forehead. 

But he’d conveniently forgotten to mention that he’d offered up the other boys’ hair as part of the bet as well, until he’d opened the door for them with a guilty look on his face. 

So naturally Will is elected to get styled first, since Lucas is still making it up to Dustin and Mike practically squeals in terror at the thought of anyone touching his now shoulder-length hair.

Erica comes out from her room with a pair of scissors and a malicious grin on her face, instructing him to sit in the dining table chair she’s moved to the living room for her makeshift hair salon. Will leans back in the chair and prays that she doesn’t have some secret ulterior motive to doing this, like conducting an experiment to see how fast hair can burn or something. 

He doesn’t really understand why she’s so fixated on this, since she’s not exactly the type to care too much about her own hair and outfits, much less her older brother’s friends’. But maybe this lockdown has affected all of them more than Will initially thought.

“I don’t know why you always get this stupid haircut,” Erica says, looking down at Will’s head from behind him. 

Will lets out an offended laugh. “What do you mean?” he protests.

Erica just raises her eyebrows at him, unimpressed. “You could look so much better,” she says, and shakes her head as if Will’s hair is truly the worst tragedy she can imagine. “Don’t you worry, I’m gonna do you right.”

He has no idea what that means, but he doesn’t think Erica would really do any permanent damage, so he just shrugs and lets her get to work. 

Mike, Dustin and Lucas are outside, Will can hear them arguing on the back porch about which freeze pop flavour is the best, and then which soda flavour. Erica had banished them all from the living room, claiming that she needed privacy to do her best work. For once, Will doesn’t feel like he’s missing out on anything, just happy that the three of them are together again, laughing about stupid things that don’t actually matter in the long run.

It was tense for the last few weeks of the summer, Will and Mike constantly playing mediators between Lucas and Dustin, who just could not seem to fully apologize to one another. But when school started again for the year, Dustin had made it his new mission to honor Eddie the best he could, whether it be by cleaning his grave every week or sticking up new Hellfire signs whenever they got torn down. 

And one day, when Dustin had run into a particularly large group of bullies on the basketball court after school, Lucas had come up behind them and literally whooped their asses, causing them to flee in terror at the homosexual implications. Dustin had burst out laughing, insisting that Eddie would have thought that was hilarious.

So the two seemed to be slowly getting better.

“Tina just got this new haircut,” Erica says, and Will just smiles fondly because he knows another one of her tangents is coming. “And apparently it was so good that Josh from History came up to her in the hallway and asked her out on the spot.” She delivers this last part with an extra dramatic snip of her scissors.

“So then I told mom that I needed to get a haircut too, but she said no, ‘cause I guess she thinks it would look too mature, or something,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “Which is fine, I can cut it myself.”

“So you’re practicing on us?” Will guesses, grimacing as she forcefully shoves his head down to reach the back of his hair.

“Yup, you got it.”

“Why do you care about Tina so much?”

Erica stops snipping for a second. “Why don’t you stay out of my business?” she retorts.

“Fair enough,” Will replies.

She continues cutting his hair, moving his head from side to side to reach the parts underneath. Will can see more and more pieces of his hair gathering in uneven piles on the hardwood floor, evidence of how much she’s already cut.

“Mom’s gonna freak out,” he realizes, shifting in his seat.

“Whatever,” Erica waves her hand. “It’s gonna look better this way, promise.” She forces his head to lean back further, over a bucket she’s propped up under his head, and starts pouring a pitcher of water over his hair.

Will sputters as some of the water gets in his mouth, but Erica just tosses a towel over his face and tells him to suck it up. 

“Tina doesn’t do well in her classes, she’s actually kind of stupid,” Erica says with a snort. “I’m way smarter than her. But if people think Tina is prettier than me, it doesn’t matter how smart I am.”

Will thinks that Erica’s fast thinking is so much more valuable, since being pretty won’t save her from getting killed by a demogorgon. But she probably doesn’t think about that on a daily basis, he reminds himself. And anyway, the kids at school are always mean for some reason, a fact he himself knows all too well.

“Well, what if you just…stayed the way you are?” Will offers.

“It’s different for boys,” Erica says, as if the statement should be obvious. “Plus, you freaks already have your little friend group. You can all be nerds together, it doesn’t matter.”

“Well, Erica, you know, I’m sure if you told Lucas this he wouldn’t mind if you hung out with—”

“No.”

“I’m just saying that—”

“I’d rather hang out with a thousand Tina’s than deal with you guys on the daily.”

“Oooookay,” Will says, officially giving up on his attempt at reason. Mike often complained about how much Nancy used to be focused on her clothes or makeup or whatever, claiming that it ultimately never mattered what she looked like because she would always find something else to obsess over.

But Nancy isn’t like that anymore, maybe because she figured out there’s more important things to prioritize, or maybe even because she’s been dating Jonathan for so long that she doesn't feel the need to impress anybody with her looks. Will doesn’t know. 

He does know that Erica is smart, probably smarter than Nancy was when she was her age, having tested into the higher-level science class with ease. He hopes she too will grow out of her insecurities, that she can recognize her strengths and focus on those instead. 

Erica starts lathering his hair with some sort of creamy soap. She twists her fingers in his hair, twirling each lock and then letting it rest on his head.

“Is it really gonna stay like that?” Will asks. His hair has always kind of kept the same shape, falling flat on his forehead no matter the haircut he gets.

“Yeah,” Erica mutters, and Will can hear her roll her eyes. “You’ll see, zombie boy. I know your hair can be wavy.”

Once she finishes her twisting and sprays his hair with more water, drenching his face again, she holds up her pink mirror for him to see. Will’s eyes blink open, droplets flinging as he runs a hand through his hair.

“See?” she says, a smug smile on her face. “It looks good.”

His hair is wavier than it usually is, Erica’s finger-twisting method actually keeping the texture in with whatever cream she’d put in. She’s trimmed it a little on the sides but left the top longer, so that the waves fall on his forehead and skim the edge of his eyebrows.

“Yeah, it actually does,” Will admits. “I like it. Thanks, Erica.” He runs the towel over his face, drying his forehead where the dripping wet hair clings to it. 

“You boys always act like you have no free will,” Erica drawls, and dries the back of his head with her special pink towel. She’s grown impossibly sassier the past few months, though she’s always been fast to clap back at anything any of the boys have said. Will feels a rush of affection for her, and finds himself missing El, who’s been drowning herself in training again. 

The screen door to the porch opens, then, and Mike comes into the living room, a crumpled can of coke in his hand. He stops mid-step when he sees Will, the previous grin he had on his face melting off.

Will feels a wave of dread pooling in his stomach. “Does it look bad?” he asks, terrified of Mike’s response. “Is it terrible?”

But Mike just moves the can to his other hand, eyes never leaving Will’s face. 

“Mike, if it’s really that bad, I—”

“No!” Mike says, finally snapping out of whatever daze had possessed him. “It looks good,” he blurts out. 

Will feels his face heat up, not expecting such a direct compliment from him. “Oh. Thanks,” he manages. The towel feels heavy in his hands, and he brings it up to his face to dry off, to avoid Mike’s gaze. 

Mike nods a couple times, then starts walking further into the house, heading for the kitchen. He pauses before he leaves the living room, turning back to Will. “You look really good like that,” he adds.

Will’s heart stops. 

What?

His face must be a deep shade of red at this point, and he can feel the prickle of sweat at the base of his neck. Will’s mouth hangs open, and he grasps for something to say, anything to say, but he can’t seem to formulate a single thought.

Mike realizes what he said a second later, probably registering how it must have sounded to Will, who has just been submerged in a bucket of water, wiping his face with a towel to get the droplets out of his eyes.

“Sorry, I just—I just mean that it suits you, your hair,” Mike spits out, his hand reaching back to rub his neck. His ears are a bright pink now, the color his pale skin gets when he’s embarrassed.

Will just stares at him, at a complete loss of words for what to say back.

“Okay, I’m gonna, um, throw this out now,” Mike stammers, pointing to his can, and practically flees to the kitchen.

Erica shakes her head, muttering about how weird they all are under her breath, and takes the bucket of water into the backyard to dump it out.

“Come out, Will, we want to see!” Lucas’s cheery voice comes through the screen door, probably ecstatic to see what his sister has done to his hair.

Will pushes himself off the chair, body moving automatically towards the door, still dazed from the interaction he’d just had.

The base of his neck still burns, and he wonders if Mike knows that his accidental choice of words has caused Will to launch himself into a full-blown panic, suddenly very aware of his immobilizing, overconsuming feelings.

November 1986

Now that the radio station has been operating for some time and they’ve furnished the shelter with enough equipment and supplies, Hopper decides that they can finally begin searching for Vecna. And by that, he of course means that he can begin searching for Vecna, while the rest of them have to monitor from the real world.

They’ve figured out a way to track the military’s operations in the Upside Down, noting when they’ve gone in with their tanks to do whatever it is they’re doing on the flip side. The dates all add up to a specific pattern, and so with Yuri’s help, who provides them with the times, they’re able to predict when the next expedition will take place. That’s where Hopper comes in, predictably having volunteered himself to secretly hop into one of the tanks and catch a ride through the gate without anyone noticing. He would explore each area methodically, starting with the forest and then moving into more populated sectors.

And that was it. It was a haphazardly thrown together plan, sure, but it was all they had at this point. 

They’re all notified by Robin’s channel, which she’s affectionately dubbed “The Morning Squawk,” to gather at the station that night for their first attempt. 

“Okay,” Hopper starts once they’re all there, planting his hands down on the wide table in the shelter. “I’ll be traveling through the tunnels to get to the military base. Mike, Lucas, you two are going to keep watch from the top of the church and alert me when I’m clear.” He walks around the table, adjusting his bulletproof vest over his shoulders. “Steve and Dustin will run the van.”

Dustin nods, ready as he’s been since March to finally hunt Vecna. Steve’s leg is jiggling and he’s grinning wide, ready to get some action.

“Alright then.” Hopper comes to stand next to Dustin, who gives him a walkie. “Don’t lose me,” he says. “You’re my only chance of getting out of there.”

“We’ve got it,” Steve assures. “I’ve been preparing for this drive my whole life.”

Hopper squeezes him on the shoulder, and then he heads towards the curved staircase. 

“What about me?” El asks, jumping after Hopper and moving to stand in front of him so that he can’t go up the stairs.

“No,” he says gruffly.

“But I can help,” El protests.

“El, we talked about this,” Hopper grits out. “You can stay here, with Will and Joyce.”

“But that’s not—”

“No.” And with that, Hopper gently pushes her out of the way and starts heading up the staircase. Will’s mom follows after him, presumably to say goodbye to him at the tunnel entrance.

Steve and Dustin file out after him, and Lucas grabs his binoculars and supply backpack. He waits for Mike at the bottom of the staircase, adjusting his bandana in a way that makes him look like Rambo.

Will leans back on the table, watching Mike gather his things. He kind of wishes he could go with them, or that Hopper had assigned him a more interesting job than doing…well, nothing. At least Jonathan and Nancy were staying here too, managing the station to check if the signal is still active. Besides, he’d probably just get in the way if he came along, especially if they ran into something dangerous. 

He knows he’s useful in at least some way—after all, he’d survived the Upside Down! That’s got to mean something. And yet sometimes it feels like Will is clinging to it desperately, as if the feat he’s accomplished at twelve is the only monumental thing he will ever do.

Mike throws a few extra batteries in his backpack, and starts heading over to join Lucas, who’s growing more impatient by the second. But he stops when he sees El, who for some reason is loading up a backpack of her own.

“El, what are you doing?” Mike asks, a note of caution in his voice. 

“I want to go with him,” she responds, shoving a flashlight into her bag.

Mike gets closer to her, putting a hand on her arm to get her to stop. “Hopper said to stay here, though.”

“Why are you taking his side?” El snaps, dropping the bag on the table and crossing her arms.

“I’m not, I’m just—”

“He doesn’t have a chance to get out if he gets caught,” she says simply, giving Mike a hard look.

“But all those soldiers don’t know he’s alive, El! You, though, you, they’re looking for like crazy!”

“So what do you want me to do?” El cries. “Just wait here and listen to him die? I have my powers, Mike. I can use them.”

Mike closes his mouth, looking like he’s at a loss for what to say. Lucas and Will exchange glances across the room, matching waried expressions on their faces. 

“You said I’m your superhero, remember?” El continues.

“Yes, but El—”

“But! I don’t want but. I want to save him.”

Mike raises his arms in frustration. “You can’t save him if there’s a hundred soldiers hunting your ass every waking moment!”

El stomps her foot on the ground. “I can’t keep up with it, Mike! You can’t think I’m the strongest person on earth and not let me use that!”

“I’ll still think you’re the strongest person on earth if you’re safe,” Mike says softly, his arms falling down to hang by his sides.

“I won’t!”

Will’s mom runs down the stairs, then, Hopper on his way to the base.

“El, honey,” she says, probably having overheard the yelling from upstairs. “He’s going to be okay. Hopper knows what he’s doing.”

“So do I,” El hisses, and Will knows she’s at her breaking point, that she’s laid dormant for basically a whole year, and by now she’s ready to crack. Her powers are so important to her, allow her to feel like she has a place in this world, a duty she has to fulfill. She’s prioritized it so much over her lifetime that it probably feels like she can’t do much else besides use them. She’d never gone to school growing up and learned about other options, anything but the powers she has embedded within her.

And even though Will doesn’t have her powers, not even close, he understands the feeling well. He just feels it on the opposite side.

He thinks about it, sometimes, when he’s lying away in bed, unable to calm his mind. He’s so tied to his weakness, having practically made it his primary characteristic over the past years. If he suddenly lost that, if he somehow overcame it, would he be the same? Would he still be himself? It’s jarring, that he can’t remember what he is without it. He can’t remember the times when he was younger, when he was carefree enough that it kept him strong. 

Mike goes to El, grabbing her by the shoulders and looking her in the eye. “I promise I just want you to be safe,” he murmurs.

“It’s not my role to be safe,” El mutters, shaking out of his grasp.

“But if I can’t keep you safe, or convince you to be safe, what am I supposed to do?” Mike asks, a childish whine slipping into his voice. 

El sighs, brushing her hand against his arms. “You have to support me in what I choose. Compromise,” she says calmly. 

“And what exactly is the compromise, huh? You get to die heroically, and I get to watch?”

“I don’t know,” she shakes her head. “But I can’t have you restrict me too. I need you to let me help.”

“I can’t!” Mike cries. “I can’t stand there and let you put yourself in danger. I’m sorry that I worry, El, I just care!”

“Then you have to find someone who doesn’t have to save the universe, and worry about her,” El says, her voice gentle despite the message in her words. And for the briefest of seconds, her eyes angle towards Will, so fast that anyone who’s not the subject of her gaze wouldn’t be able to see.

Mike freezes, eyes wide as he stares at her. “What are you saying?” he breathes.

“I need some space,” El whispers, swallowing hard. She dumps her things on the table and crosses her arms over herself, rushing towards the staircase.

Will’s mom stands in front of it, frowning as she watches her run over. “Honey, I don’t think—”

“I’m not going after him, I  just need some air,” she pleads, voice wobbling, close to tears. “I left everything there,” she says, pointing to the table.

Will’s mom moves aside and lets her run upstairs, and Will can see El’s face crumpling right before she reaches the top. 

Mike stands in the middle of the basement, hands still at his sides. He looks up at the staircase, as if he can’t believe what just happened, and then at the rest of them, to check that they’ve seen it too.

Lucas purses his lips and shifts the bag on his shoulder. “Sorry, man,” he sympathizes. “Maybe she just needs to cool off, or something.”

“I don’t know how to help her,” Mike whispers, voice strained, going frozen at the realization. And Will realizes too, that this is probably immensely difficult for him to deal with, given that he so ferociously prides himself on being able to protect them all, lead them to success. 

“Do you want me to talk to her?” Will asks, and he promised himself that he wouldn’t get involved, but seeing Mike like this evaporates any reasonable, logical idea he’s previously decided on. 

But Mike just shakes his head, not even acknowledging him with a glance, and grabs his bag, rushing upstairs. “C’mon, Lucas, let’s go,” he calls, voice devoid of any emotion, immediately back to business, back to the plan.

Lucas gives Will a wide-eyed look, probably at a loss for what to do in this situation, but he too runs after him. 

And just like that, their first crawl begins.

December 1986

They’re all gathered at the Wheelers' house for Christmas when it happens again.

Holly bounces around the living room, chattering about one of her imaginary friends that was telling her about a secret message. Nancy tries to wrangle her down and tie her hair up, reassuring her that it’s probably just Santa coming to visit her, gathering ideas for next year’s presents. 

Mike, Will, Dustin and Lucas sit on the couch and armchairs around the coffee table, where they’ve set up a game of Spades. Lucas and Will are paired together, glancing at each other as they try and silently decide their next move.

But Dustin is crazy good at this game, and Mike is crazy good at strategy, so they’ve kind of been at a disadvantage from the start. 

Will places a queen of spades down, exchanging a grin with Lucas. But Dustin just calmly places his card down on the table and smirks. An ace of spades, getting their team to five hundred points easily.

Lucas groans, head in his hands. “This is so unfair,” he whines. “You’ve won the last four rounds.”

“Suck my ass,” Mike sticks his tongue out at him, and holds up his hand to high-five Dustin. 

He’s been pretty upset about El, who’s chosen to celebrate with Hopper tonight. She hasn’t made any contact with Mike since their fight, ignoring him whenever they’ve gathered for the past two crawls. Mike initially tried to reach out to her, to get her to talk to him, but she’s been insisting that she needs space to think, to train.

So he’s been sulking around the house for the past month, going to his bedroom straight after school to bury himself in bed and read comic books. He’s broken up with El before, when they’d fought about something stupid the summer after eighth grade. But he seems to think that they’re truly over this time, so he hasn’t tried making any grand gestures or anything to win her back.

And more than anything, Mike just appears to be worried for her, not even that sad because she’d dumped him. He asks Will’s mom how she’s doing every time she comes back from Hopper’s cabin, much less concerned with the state of their relationship than with her overall well-being.

Will has asked him if he wants to talk about it, like a normal, good friend would do in this situation. But he always just smiles softly and dismisses him, asking instead for help with his new ideas for campaign scenarios.

He’s in a good mood today, joking around with the three of them and challenging them to multiple cookie-eating contests, which he somehow manages to win every time.

Mrs. Wheeler comes into the living room, wearing her Christmas apron and comically large oven mitts on her hands. “I’ve set up the materials, boys,” she brightly announces.

Lucas lets out a cheer, completely forgetting about the game he’s so horribly lost. “Thanks, Mrs. Wheeler!” he exclaims. 

The Wheeler’s house is always a spectacle around Christmastime, and Will has got to hand it to Mike’s mom for how much effort she always puts into the display. There’s a massive tree in the corner of the living room, which had been assembled right after Thanksgiving. Mike and Will had helped decorate it, Will teasing him whenever he found an ornament that had yet another baby picture of Mike on it. 

Their fireplace is extra decked out this year, with eight stockings hung up, pushed together to account for the Byers’ gifts as well. Mrs. Wheeler had enlisted Nancy to help her place candlesticks on every windowsill and ledge in the house, but she’d doused them in peppermint extract so that every room now smells overwhelmingly of candy canes. 

They file into the dining room, finding the table to already be set up with four identical gingerbread house decorating stations. Mrs. Wheeler made sure to include all of the additional supplies in little jars, filling up the table with gumdrops, marshmallows, chocolate chips, and even the cinnamon candies none of them ever eat.

“What should we do this year?” Dustin asks, surveying their options for icing, candy, and wafers.

They’ve been doing the gingerbread decorating contest since their first Christmas as a friend group, when they were eight years old. Every year, they decide on a different theme to work within, and then vote on who made the best one. Will remembers that year they’d become obsessed with D&D, and had based their gingerbread creations off of houses they thought their characters would want to live in. Mrs. Wheeler did not like that one, since they’d used the red icing as blood and poured it all over the houses, scaring little Holly. 

“We could do Hawkins landmarks,” Lucas suggests. 

“What, to have the most boring gingerbread house contest ever?” Mike snorts.

“Jesus, fine!” Lucas huffs. “You come up with something then!”

“We could still do the Hawkins thing and not just limit it to...houses,” Will offers.

“What, like assemble the pieces into something else?” Dustin asks.

“Yeah. So that it’s not just buildings.”

Mike tilts his head to the side, considering the idea like it’s an extremely serious decision to make. “Yeah, that’s actually pretty cool,” he says, mouth quirking to the side.

“It’s not like it’s that far off from my idea,” Lucas huffs, but he sits down next to his station and starts sorting through his materials. 

They start sketching out their ideas, pencils scribbling on the large sheets of parchment Mrs. Wheeler had set underneath the gingerbread. 

“I don’t know if you guys are going to understand what I’m going for,” Dustin frowns, and glances at what Mike’s drawing on his paper.

Mike shoots him a glare and covers up his drawing with his forearms. “Well, don’t look at mine!”

Will suppresses a smile, partly because Mike always gets so defensive over these things, and also because he’s come up with the perfect idea himself.

Lucas starts the timer soon after that, and they all get to work, joining their slabs of gingerbread with sticky icing. Mrs. Wheeler comes in every once in a while, snapping pictures of them with her Polaroid, printing them out to add to her collection of photos from when they were little. Mike always complains when she gets too close, whining about how they’re not five anymore and being taken pictures of is totally lame.

Holly skips up to the table, Santa hat practically falling off her head from how big it is. She plants a magazine on the table in front of Mike, a Christmas-themed Teen Magazine edition with girls in elf costumes on the cover. 

“Holly, not now, I’m focusing on this,” Mike says, gesturing with his head to his gingerbread while he pipes a whole line of frosting on the edge of a square. 

“It’s just gingerbread,” Holly deadpans. “I want you to do the horoscope section,” she demands, pointing to a spot on the page. She’d recently been obsessed with reading the little one-liners assigned to each birth month in the monthly magazine, analyzing what they meant for each person.

“Go ask Nancy.”

“I already did. It was really romantic, it said she would be encountering a tall, handsome man at a Christmas party.”

Mike drops the piping bag and stares at Holly. “Nancy’s dating Jonathan,” he says dryly.

Will bursts out laughing, causing the blue icing he’s been carefully piping all over the top of his gingerbread to smudge. 

“Homewrecker,” Lucas whispers, which just sends all of them into a round of giggles.

“So what?” Holly rolls her eyes. “Clearly she has options.”

“Fiiine,” Mike sighs, and holds up the magazine to flip to the section in the back. “Sagittarius,” he read out loud. “You will soon realize that a very important person is closer than you think.”

Lucas snorts. “That’s kind of spooky.”

“No it’s not!” Holly crosses her arms. “I think it means I’m going to have a crush soon! Georgia from my class just got her first one before break started.”

Will can’t help but huff out a laugh at that, amused by her idea that having a person to like was a special prize given to you by the universe.

If only she knew.

“Okay,” Mike says, handing her back the magazine. “Good luck with that.”

“No, I want you to read yours too!” she insists, shoving the magazine back at him.

Mike breathes out a long sigh, scanning the page until he finds his own horoscope. “You and a fellow Aries will soon get engaged under the moonlight’s glow,” he says, using the voice he does when something dramatic happens in one of their games.

“Oh my god,” Holly bounces up and down. “Do you know anyone who’s an Aries?!”

Mike actually thinks about it for a moment, the crease forming between his eyebrows. “Will’s birthday is in March," he says slowly.

“Ugh!” Holly exclaims. “You guys are so boring.” She flounces out of the kitchen, magazine in hand, on the hunt for other people she can annoy.

Will stares intently at his gingerbread, trying hard not to let the embarrassment show on his face. He can already feel his cheeks flushing, and curses himself for being so easily affected by Mike’s joking.

“Dunno why she didn’t like that,” Mike says, shrugging nonchalantly.

“Piss off, Mike,” Will rolls his eyes, forcing out a small huff of laughter. 

“Why not? Don’t want to get married to me?” Mike asks, wiggling his eyebrows at Will.

“Ew,” Lucas says with a snicker. “Who’d want to marry you anyway?”

Mike turns to him, mouth dropping open. “Excuse me?! I have several advantageous qualities! I know how to make pancakes. I’m entertaining. You won’t get sick of me! I’ll be nice to you. I wouldn’t make you wash the dishes, because I wouldn’t want to either. I’d—”

“Not so sure I’d count those as advantages,” Dustin mutters, making Lucas laugh again.

Mike ignores him, rolling his eyes. “Anyway, I’d marry Will,” he announces. 

Will drops the small bag of powdered sugar he’d been opening, causing the white dust to explode all over his hands and the lower half of his face. “What?” he splutters, wiping the sugar out of his mouth.

Mike bursts out laughing, and Will is at least somewhat thankful that the sugar is covering up the bright red flush creeping up his neck.

“I’m serious!” Mike insists. “We’re living in the same house anyway, what’s the difference?”

It’s the same thing he’s always done, the same lighthearted, teasing act he puts on to try and improve every situation. It’s so easy for him, somehow, to just say things in such a straightforward, blunt manner. But now that they’re older, it feels different, like it’s a conscious choice he’s making rather than his instinct to make everyone around him feel okay. 

And of course he’s always paid this sort of unwavering attention to Will, making sure he felt included in anything they did together as a group, especially that year after he’d come back from the Upside Down. Mike would wait for him when his shoe came undone, or sit next to Will at lunch, or pick him whenever they had to work in pairs. Will was used to that—it was part of the reason why his annoyingly persistent feelings formed in the first place. 

Except it’s never really been about anything romantic, and even the most obvious of his efforts had usually stuck to complimenting him or making him laugh, but now Mike is apparently dead set on the idea of them getting married, for some godforsaken reason.

“Just think about it,” Mike continues. “Will is good at drawing. He could make all of the wedding invitations easily! And clearly he could make our cake, too.” He glances over at Will’s gingerbread, pointing for Dustin and Lucas to look too. “See, he’s making Lover’s Lake!”

Lucas leans over to get a look at Will’s creation, which is really just a bunch of gingerbread slabs laid flat and iced with blue frosting to mimic the large expanse of water. “Dude, this is sick,” he grins. “I don’t know why I even try.” He gestures to his own gingerbread, which seems to be a lopsided replica of the town’s church. 

“It’s…recognizable,” he tries, giving Lucas a hesitant smile.

“See! He’s humble, too. And a good friend,” Mike adds, like he’s introducing a new contestant on a reality show. “I couldn’t think of a better person to spend the rest of my life with,” he croons, and reaches over to try and grab Will’s hands, his gingerbread completely forgotten.

Will squirms away from him, laughing along with Dustin and Lucas, praying that this dramatic act of Mike’s will end soon, will be over so he doesn’t keep having to pretend like his racing heart doesn’t have anything to do with the joke.

He briefly wonders if this has anything to do with the reaction Mike had to his hair a few months ago, if he’d suddenly seen Will in some new, surprising, light, deciding that his improved features would do just fine for a suitable marriage prospect. And then he wrinkles his nose, appalled at himself for coming up with such a ridiculous idea. 

Besides, your hair is back to normal, now, his brain unhelpfully supplies. 

“I guess,” Lucas shrugs. “I mean, I don’t think that’s untrue,” he rushes to add, backtracking to make it clear he too can see Will’s potential as a suitor, which is completely insane. “But like, then where’s the romance of it all? Where’s the payoff, where’s the grand proposal?”

Dustin lets out a bark of laughter. “You’ve grown so uncool, Lucas Sinclair.”

Lucas gives him an unimpressed look over the roof of his gingerbread church. “Don’t let me remind you of the songs you used to sing to Suzie,” he says flatly. “I didn’t forget.”

But Mike doesn’t seem to hear them, his eyes out of focus, eyebrows furrowed. “I don’t know,” he finally says. “I think I’d rather get married to one of my friends anyway. That way you know each other really well. All the romance stuff kinda seems, I dunno, complicated.” 

His eyes flick to Will, then, as if he’s checking something. As if he wants Will to agree. 

And Will does agree, on another level entirely, in fact. Mike has no idea how much he agrees. He racks his brain for something to respond with, a joke or a funny reaction or even just an acknowledgement of some sort. But every idea he comes up with feels stupid, or worse, true.

Lucas rests his icing on the table, leaning forward and looking earnestly at Mike. “Listen, man, I know you’re upset about El right now, but I promise it’ll work out!” he says, trying to sound upbeat. “She’ll come around, and if not, there’s plenty of other girls out there.”

Mike frowns, that crease between his eyebrows deepening. “No, that’s not what I—”

“Mike! Mike! Mike!” Holly comes bolting into the kitchen, a horrified look in her big blue eyes. “I showed Mom and Dad what their horoscopes were, and they didn’t match up with each other. Nancy says to ignore it, but I think they’re going to split up! You need to do something!”

Will wins the gingerbread competition that Christmas, largely due to the fact that the blue icing was creative enough to bump up his lake to first place, barely competing with the other three, highly forgotten, undecorated Hawkins monuments.

January 1987

Mike accidentally steps on one of the creaky floorboards as they tiptoe into the hallway, giggling slightly, and Will immediately tells him to hush up. They manage to make it down the stairs without further incident, shuffling through the kitchen to the sliding door leading to the backyard. 

Hopper had mentioned that there were a few sensors the military had placed throughout Mirkwood forest, making it easier for them to track when there was any movement or noise occurring in those sections. This made it more difficult for El, who used a lot of that space to train, forcing her to constantly watch her step.

Nancy and Jonathan had decided that they could try and mute the sensors, keeping them intact so that the military wouldn't suspect anything but rewiring them so that they couldn’t pick up anything new. They’d asked Mike and Will to come with them and keep watch while they dealt with the circuitry, the convenience of all living in the same house coming in handy.

“You guys sneak out of Mike’s bedroom and go out the back door,” Nancy had explained “And then meet us at the edge of the woods down Cornwallis.”

Mike had teased her for knowing how to slip out of their house so easily, but she’d just thumped him on the head and chastised him for never appreciating her sage advice.

It was the first time anyone really acknowledged their sleeping situation, other than his mom and Mrs. Byers when they were little, and Will had realized Mike and him sleeping in the same bed actually seemed…normal, to anyone else. It was an explainable situation: Will suffered from nightmares, everyone knew this. Mike was his closest friend and could calm him down, everyone knew that too. 

Plus, Will had remembered, of course two teenage boys sleeping in the same bed didn’t sound weird to anyone else, because there wasn’t anything inherently weird about it. He was the only one overly conscious about the space between them when they slept, the only one who knew every single lilt in Mike’s breath that indicated whether he was asleep or not. 

The worst reaction they could possibly face is a bit of light teasing for being scared, maybe on Will’s behalf. If they were a boy and a girl, though, they would never be able to get away with it. 

If they were a boy and a girl, Will thinks, a lot of things would be different. 

But anyway. 

They shrug on their coats, moving slowly so that the sound of the nylon rubbing against their arms is as minimal as possible. Their boots wait for them outside the door, placed there by Jonathan, who’d brought them up from the basement when he’d left before them.

Will sits on the snowy stoop outside, Mike sliding the door shut behind them. They pull on the boots, which have nearly frozen solid from the subzero temperature. 

Mike huffs a laugh, his breath coming out as a visible white cloud. “I can’t believe Nancy wanted us to do this when it’s freezing.”

“We’re helping the greater good,” Will remarks, and Mike throws a handful of snow at him. He takes off after that, seeing Will’s stunned expression, cutting through the snow in their backyard. 

Will shoots off after him, thankful that at least the snow keeps their footsteps silent. He catches up to Mike at the edge of the backyard, throwing the massive snowball he’s gathered during his run straight at his head. The snow explodes over him, and Mike nearly falls over from impact. 

He shoots Will a rather unthreatening glare, and then they’re on their bikes, pedaling through the slush on the roads to the far edge of Mirkwood, where Jonathan and Nancy wait for them next to her car.

“It’s about a ten minute walk from here,” Jonathan explains. “There’s an area where they’ve put up probably around ten sensors, so we’re going to go tree by tree and disable them.”

Nancy hands them both flashlights. “We’re going to stay on the main path. Make sure you guys can always see us.”

So Jonathan and Nancy set off on the path to find the sensors, Will and Mike trailing behind them. 

Honestly, it’s not so bad, not as dark, anyway, since the bare trees and the snow on the ground makes the area glow bright white. It’s really kind of pretty, and maybe in a world where the Upside Down had never existed, Will would come here more often to clear his mind.

But then here’s a slight rustle of leaves behind them, and Will practically jumps, edging closer to Mike.

Mike swivels around to shine his flashlight at the noise, moving it around to try and find where the noise had come from.

Nothing moves, and no more noises sound. The forest is silent for a few seconds.

And then a squirrel jumps out of one of the bushes off the path, scampering away out of the flashlight’s beam.

“Sorry,” Will mutters, moving away from Mike. He hadn’t realized how close they’d gotten, arms practically glued to one another. 

Mike shakes his head, smiling softly. “S’fine,” he murmurs. 

They keep walking after Nancy and Jonathan, who are now a little farther than them on the path.

The bare branches of the trees creak overhead, smaller ones breaking off every now and then from the weight of the snow. As they keep walking, the trees morph into large pines, casting shadows on the path, plunging them into further darkness.

“Are you scared of Vecna?” Mike suddenly speaks up.

“You’re asking me this while we’re literally walking through a pitch black forest with flashlights?”

“Sorry,” Mike says sheepishly.

Will smiles quietly, warmth blooming in his chest. “It’s fine. I mean, my nightmares of him are usually scary,” he says slowly. “But that’s mainly because he always threatens to kill everyone I love, like he did to Nancy last year. That scares me.” He turns the flashlight around in his hand, adjusting the setting so that it glows brighter on the path ahead of them. “But like, of him? I don’t know, I feel like I’ve seen him so much that his presence doesn’t really scare me anymore.”

Mike hums, a thoughtful noise, like he’s turning it over in his head.

“I’ve never seen Vecna,” he says after a moment.

“He’s kinda like…a demogorgon with an actual face. And much bigger,” Will tries to explain.

“Okay, so terrifying.”

“Mike Wheeler, are you scared of Vecna?” Will teases.

Mike laughs, a short, incredulous huff. “I mean, yeah! I can’t believe you aren’t. I don’t even know what I would do if I had to see him half as frequently as you. I think I’d literally die on the spot.”

“Well, I’ll save you, if Vecna comes and gets you,” Will says, wiggling his fingers in Mike’s face, watching him squirm away.

“Really?” Mike raises his eyebrows, a teasing grin creeping onto his face. But there’s a note of sincerity in his voice, the same one that would come out when they’d make promises to each other in Castle Byers, and Will is reminded of how real the possibility of that attack actually happening is. 

“I mean, I don’t  know if I’ll actually be able to do anything,” Will quickly adds. “But I won’t run from him if I see him.” 

Nancy and Jonathan turn around, then, momentarily blinding them with their own flashlights before blinking them off.

“The sensors are in this area,” Nancy calls, walking towards them. “Jonathan spotted one on the tree over there.” She points to the base of a large pine tree, a few feet off the main path. 

“Do you want us to come with you?” Mike asks.

Jonathan shakes his head. “No, we really just need the cover on this side,” he motions to a rock-covered hill. “Their base is a few miles in that direction, so if they were to suspect something was up, they’d come from there.”

Will nods, sitting down on one of the larger rocks to face the hill. Mike sits down next to him, and Nancy and Jonathan, thoroughly protected, head off into the trees.

“You know, that’s what Eddie used to say a lot,” Mike pipes up after they’ve sat in silence for a little bit.

“That he wasn’t scared?”

“No, he was definitely scared,” Mike laughs. “It was more so the facing your fears thing. He was really good at that.”

“What was he like?” They’d talked about Eddie before, mostly when Mike would remember a funny moment and tell him as they biked to school. But still, Will feels like he knows more about how heroic his last moments were rather than any genuine characteristic of his. He wants to know what it was that had caused them to grieve him so deeply, despite only knowing him for half a year.

“He was very picky,” Mike starts, and Will huffs a laugh. “Like, he was very particular about who he would spend his time with, and what he liked. But that made him very knowledgeable about what was actually good in the world. I wish I knew half the things he knew about music, or people or whatever.”

“Metallica,” Will says with a small laugh, remembering the tape Steve had found at the station.

“Yeah, Metallica,” Mike laughs. “He was very genuine with the things he did, too. I mean, I’m sure you’ve heard about how he was involved in drug dealing,” he huffs, shaking his head. “But even that, I think—I mean, Dustin said he was trying to help his uncle make rent, and I guess that was just the fastest option. And his hair…like, he was awesome,” Mike gushes, holding his hands by his chest to show how long it was.

“I wish I got to meet him,” Will sighs. “Jonathan probably would have liked him too.”

“I dunno, you kinda remind me of him.”

“Me?” Will scoffs, disbelieving. “You literally just described him as like, ridiculously cool.”

“Well, maybe not that…” Mike says, a playful glint to his eye, and Will shoves his shoulder lightly. “I meant more that he sort of did whatever he wanted. He never really cared about what people thought, and you’re like that too.”

Will wants to disagree, wants to tell him that he does care a lot about what people think, otherwise there would be a lot more things he would allow himself to do. Allow himself to feel. Maybe he would allow himself to sit closer to Mike on this rock, actually lay his hand between them instead of letting it hover awkwardly over the surface. 

But that would require too much explaining to do, so he lets Mike have it this time.

“Do you care what people think?” he asks instead, because he doesn’t have anything else to say. And also, he realizes, he doesn’t really know. The Mike he knew from when he was little always seemed fearless to Will, making fun of the bullies at recess or standing up to Nancy. But then Will had missed a lot of the more recent years, the teenage years, and he doesn’t really know how Mike would react to different social situations, or how he would behave at school. They’ve been attending classes, but the school keeps undergoing construction and calling for weeks of vacation. Besides, throughout all the Upside Down fighting they’ve done and lurking around they’re currently doing, who has time to think about awkward teenage experiences? 

But Will’s always had this sort of hunger in him when it comes to Mike, a desperate need to know everything about him so that he might feel like he can have as many parts of him as possible, even if it’s not the one he wants the most. 

Mike smiles, well aware he’s deflecting the compliment, but thinks about his questions anyway. “I don’t know,” he finally decides. “I guess in some cases I don’t care, especially if someone else is in danger. Then I care about that person a lot more than I care about being a certain way.”

“Like with the jerks at school?” 

“Yeah.”

“Mouth-breathers,” Will rolls his eyes, and they both grin at each other. 

Mike leans his forearms on his knees, fiddling with the wrist strap on his flashlight. “But I care what my parents think, a little bit. And they care a lot about what other people think, so I guess that sort of counts in a roundabout way.”

“I don’t think it does,” Will says, glancing over at him. “They’re parents. We kind of have to care what they think, at least while we’re living with them.”

“I care about what you think,” Mike says quietly, turning his head to him

Will ducks his head at that, heat creeping up his neck despite the cold. “You don’t have to worry about what I think,” he murmurs.

I’ll always think you’re amazing, he wants to add.

Mike shakes his head. “No, I do,” he insists softly. “I know I joke around a lot, but,” he takes a breath, “you’re one of the only people whose opinion actually matters to me.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Sometimes before I do things I imagine what you would say, how you would react. And then I know if it’s the right choice or not. Usually it works out pretty well,” Mike tilts his head, flashing a grin at him.

And Will has to steel himself, to remember that Mike’s his friend, his best friend, and that everything he’s saying is meant to uphold that, and that it will never mean what he actually wants it to mean.

“That’s funny,” Will says softly, not really finding it funny at all.

Mike shakes his head. “I was being serious,” he says, earnest as always, grin shifting into a small smile.

“I do the same thing,” Will admits, before he can tell himself to stay quiet, to push it down. Mike had said it first, remember? Then again, Mike was always saying things like this easily. “Because it makes sense to me. Your choices always make sense.”

“I guess that’s good to know,” Mike breathes. “I second-guess myself a lot.”

“Yeah, but—” Will starts, ready to object. “Why? You’re the bravest person I know.” And this he allows himself to say, allows himself to admit under the guise of comforting him, or reassuring him of his strengths. 

Mike raises his eyebrows, high. “That’s rich coming from you.”

“Huh?

Mike gives him an incredulous look. “Will, you made it out of the upside down! That could literally pass as the definition for brave. I don’t know why you constantly act like it doesn’t matter!”

Maybe because I was twelve? Maybe because I haven’t done anything useful since then? Maybe because bringing me back to the real world caused so many more problems? If I’d just stayed there, in the Upside Down forever, none of you would have to deal with—

Mike. Focus on Mike.

Will looks at him, trying to find the words to explain it, as if his eyes, the sharp line of his face, would somehow give him the answers. “No, but…you’ve always had a different sort of strength. It’s like, you were always so protective of everyone staying together, of everyone making it out okay. You were so determined to get me back home, I know, and then you did the same thing for El, calling her every day like that. And I remember when I came back from the Upside Down, when I was having all those visions and was at the lab every week, you were just so happy that we were hanging out again, that I was home with the rest of you guys, and because of that you were never scared of me,” he says, voice tight. “Not even when I was terrified of myself.”

Mike’s eyes soften, the flashlight going slack in his hands. The corners of his eyes crinkle slightly. “I could never be scared of you,” he breathes.

And maybe Will wouldn’t normally take that as a good thing, and let it fester inside him as another reminder of the fact that he could never really do anything useful, anything intimidating. But it’s Mike who’s saying it now, Mike, who has never once looked away from Will in fear, or awkwardness, or discomfort. 

It’s a reminder of the fact that they’re friends, best friends, and Mike knows him better than anyone, knows that the inside of him isn’t rotten and crumbling and filled with remnants of the Upside Down. Mike isn’t scared of him, he isn’t disgusted, so he won’t leave.

I’m scared of you, though, Will thinks. I’m scared I won’t ever get to say half the things I want to say to you.

Mike stares at him, the crease between his eyebrows forming, searching, searching—

“Will, did you ever read—” 

A branch cracks behind them, and Will’s heart leaps in his throat, body going rigid with fear. 

Mike moves closer and grabs his hand, intertwining their fingers together before slowly turning around. 

But then there’s footsteps and the crunch of leaves and Jonathan’s huffed laughter sounds from between the trees, and Will breathes out a sigh of relief.

“We got them all!” Nancy announces, holding up the mini screwdrivers she’d brought proudly.

They make their way back to the edge of the woods, Jonathan and Nancy walking in front of them like before.

But until they reach the car, the entire time they walk through the forest, Mike doesn’t let go of his hand. He just grips it tighter, sticking next to Will the whole way back, thumb shifting against his knuckles every so often.

Will thinks it’s rather ironic, the fact that this is the most stressful walk he’s ever been on in this forest, and he tries his best to imagine he’s nine again, and that it’s normal for Mike to hold his hand whenever he wants. 

That it’s normal for the space between them to serve as a mere suggestion, even nonexistent, rather than a boundary he’s so tirelessly tried to maintain. 

March 1987

As they continue searching the Upside Down, Hopper decides that the lot of them needs to learn how to fight, properly, if they’re going to play any substantial role in their final battle. 

Somehow, Steve is put in charge of assembling the group and initiating these lessons, though Will thinks his only qualification is being, well, stronger than most of them. But also Nancy’s volunteered to help, and she’s pretty good at firing a gun, so at least that’s something. 

Will pulls aside the shelf, and Mike ducks his head as he enters through the secret door. They’re kind of matching today—both wearing Mike’s old band tees, him in The Smiths, Will in The Clash. Will has grown the past year, way more than he’d expected when he’d first packed his clothes for the Wheeler’s house. Nothing fit him anymore, save for a few things he’d gotten from Jonathan. So he was now living entirely out of Mike’s closet, who’d given him permission to take whatever he wanted.   

That was a little confusing for Will, at first, since Mike had always been…protective over his clothes when he was younger, especially the ones that had graphics of comic books or music he liked. He’s never let any of them borrow his prized collection of t-shirts when they slept over, claiming that they were special.

But Mike didn’t seem to care much now, never stopping Will from wearing anything of his. He would even pass Will clothing in the morning when he was rummaging through his messy closet, not bothering to look twice at whatever he had given him. So maybe he’d grown out of his previous habits, or something.

Will and Mike go down the stairs, finding the rest of the group already there: Lucas and Erica, Dustin, Robin, Nancy, Jonathan. The older kids had set up a few foam mats in the center of the room, providing padding for any accidents bound to occur.

Steve clatters down the stairs, a crate of juice pouches and cheeze-its in his arms. He drops it on the edge of the communications desk, wiping the sheen of sweat off of his forehead.

“Welcome to Hawkins’ very own fighting ring,” he announces, arms wide, and Robin snorts. “You’ve all gathered here to learn, to serve as pupils in the elite art of not dying. Please line up against the wall.”

“This is going to take forever,” Dustin groans.

Steve rounds on him, holding up a finger to his lips to silence him. “There will be no interruptions,” he says gravely. 

Dustin just sighs, and gets in line with everyone else.

“We’re going to start with some demonstrations, and then we’ll get practicing,” Steve continues. “I’m going to show you all how to successfully grapple with someone.”

He walks back and forth along their line, surveying each one of them closely. “I’m going to need a volunteer,” Steve says, taking a rather large breath, “that is fit to challenge me in a duel.”

His words are loud and clear, seemingly aimed at all of them. 

Except he’s really only looking directly at Jonathan. 

Nancy, having been dealing with this weird sort of catfight (dogfight?) they’ve had going on since Jonathan's moved back, crosses her arms and lets out a huff. “Steve, I said—”

But Jonathan is already pulling up his sleeves, his eyes darker than usual. “It’s fine, Nance,” he dismisses her, and steps out of the line to meet Steve where he stands. “I’ll fight you."

Steve nods, satisfied, and the two of them start circling each other on the mat.

“There’s no reason for this to be as dramatic as it is,” Robin whispers, making Dustin laugh.

“That’s their less attractive masculine qualities coming out,” Nancy mutters, done with the whole ordeal already.

“Assuming Steve has attractive masculine qualities to begin with,” Dustin snorts.

“I heard that!” Steve shouts. “Wait ‘til I’m done with him, and then I’ll beat your ass too, Henderson!”

Jonathan uses that moment to come at him, pushing his chest and tackling him to the ground. 

Steve lets out a cry, grabbing his shirt and practically flinging him off. He crawls over to Jonathan, holding his middle down so that he can’t get up, and waits for maybe five seconds before getting up.

“Okay,” he huffs, out of breath. “That’s one way to do it.” 

Jonathan gets up behind him, a sour expression on his face. 

Nancy shakes her head at Steve, clearly disappointed in his aggressiveness, and Will knows that seeing it only makes Jonathan feel worse about the whole situation. The more Steve provokes Jonathan, the more riled up Nancy gets, which makes it seem like she thinks of him as the stronger person, rather than her current boyfriend.

Will hopes they figure it out soon. He barely even remembers a time when they weren’t together.

“My turn,” Erica declares.

She walks right onto the mat, kicking off her shoes and sending them flying somewhere.

Steve rubs his hands together. “Alright, Sinclair Jr. If you’re sure. Don’t be offended if I take it eas—”

Erica runs right to him, sets herself, and then roundhouse kicks him straight in the center of his chest. Steve stumbles back from the impact, falling down almost cartoonishly onto the mat. 

“What. The. Fuck,” he wheezes, voice raspy as he lays on the mat. 

Erica laughs, somewhat manically, absolutely delighted. “You’re dead, Harrington,” she says smugly, and then skips off. 

Jonathan fist bumps her as she rejoins the line, quietly pleased, causing Nancy to bat his shoulder disapprovingly. 

“So—” Steve huffs as he gets up. “So that was a demonstration of how you absolutely kick someone’s ass. Good job,” he says, then grimaces as if he’s pained to say it, “Erica.” 

One day, Will thinks, Steve could probably make a good teacher. 

“Good game,” Erica taunts, planting her hands on her hips.

Lucas grins, patting her back approvingly. “You’ve made me proud,” he sighs, shaking his head and smiling to himself.

Erica just rolls her eyes.

“Okay,” Nancy announces. “We’re done with…whatever that was.”

Robin hums loudly in agreement, patting Steve’s back sympathetically as he joins the line.

Nancy unstraps the rifle on her back, adjusting it in her hands. “We’re going to go over some basic terminology,” she starts, walking back and forth down the line so that everyone can see the details of her presentation. “This is the barrel.” She gestures along the main, cylindrical part of the rifle.

“Gee, Nancy,” Mike drawls. “That’s news to me.”

Nancy pins him down with such a withering look that even Will, who’s standing next to him, can feel the weight of it. 

Mike immediately shuts up.

“This is the trigger, and above it is the safety. You have to release the safety to fire, but obviously we’re going to keep it on for now.” She brings the rifle up, mimicking someone aiming at a target. “To decide where you’re going to shoot, you have to look through the sight up here. It takes some practice, so we’re going to train outside later and shoot at some targets I’ve set up.”

Will admires her a lot, possibly more than he does most of his friends. There’s nothing inherently aggressive about her; she used to be completely disinterested in anything violent altogether, yelling at Mike to turn down his action TV shows when they were younger. But she’s internally brave as hell, and makes up for her lack of physical strength with how absurdly good she’s gotten at shooting. She’s much better than she was a few years ago, when she’d held a gun for the first time. 

It must be genetic, that tenacious quality, because it’s something Will’s quite used to seeing in Mike, who is quick to learn anything he puts his mind to. 

“I don’t think Yuri is going to let me carry a gun,” Erica points out. “What’s the use of learning how to shoot if I can’t hit someone?”

“Good question,” Nancy smiles. “Luckily, if we run into any military interference, you have the opportunity of disarming them. You just have to do it carefully, because they’re the ones with the guns.” She comes up to the line of them, then, grabbing Mike by his arm and pulling him to the mat. “And luckily for us,” her lips quirk up, “we have a willing volunteer.”

“Nancy, I don’t want to—”

Nancy just shoves the gun into his arms, positioning it so that he’s holding it as if he’s ready to aim at her.

Mike gives up resisting her, getting into character and circling her, rifle in hand. She holds her hands up, like she’s retreating, defenseless, and he lowers it slightly to see her clearly. But in that moment, Nancy rushes towards him, ducking under the span of the rifle and coming up from under him to twist his wrist. Mike yelps, not expecting the quick move, but he tries to regain control of the gun with his other hand.

Jonathan tucks his hands under his elbows, a proud expression on his face as he watches his girlfriend, and Will thinks it’s almost comical, the two of them standing next to one another, each looking at a different Wheeler. He thinks that in another life Mike and Nancy could have been royalty, fair skin adorned with heaps of silver jewels, Will and Jonathan serving as their butlers or pages or something. Watching the prince and princess from close by.

He really needs to stop reading all those comic books.

Nancy twists Mike’s other hand, which finally makes him drop the gun. She rushes to pick it up,  twirling it around to show everyone her success in the demonstration, and they all clap. 

Mike huffs in frustration, shifting his weight restlessly on the mat. “Okay, now show me,” he demands.

Nancy smirks, but apparently she’s mature enough not to annoy Mike further. She shows her brother the move she did, demonstrating on him slowly until he understands where she’d aimed to hit him.

After a moment, they run it again, Nancy starting with the gun this time, and Will watches as Mike disarms her on the first try, mimicking what she had done earlier with the twisting motion. He finishes off by quickly reorienting himself, pointing the gun at her, and she raises her hands in defeat.

He grins as he drops the rifle, shooting a triumphant glance at Will, who might as well be swooning, nearly going weak at the knees. Then Mike turns back to Nancy, motioning his finger in a circle to indicate that they should do it another time. 

They start running the exercise again, this time Nancy coming at him from a different angle.

Steve claps his hands once, drawing everyone’s focus to him. “Let’s split up into pairs and practice,” he says. “You can decide if you want to work on grappling, or join Nancy outside once she’s done. It’s not fair for you guys to have to fight against us,” he says, motioning between the younger and older group, “so I’m just going to sort you into—”

“That’s just not true,” Lucas protests. “We could take you guys easy.”

“Oh ho ho, you better watch your mouth, Sinclair,” Steve says mock-threateningly. “Henderson said the same thing to me once, and let’s just say it did not end well for him.”

Dustin crosses his arms, muttering something about a clear unfair advantage.

“But have it your way,” Steve shrugs, clearly having given up on trying to direct them.

They start splitting off, Erica giggling as she bumps Lucas’s shoulder, claiming she can’t wait to whoop his ass.

Steve comes over to Will, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “Feel free to sit this one out if you want,” he says cheerfully. “We could use someone to keep score.”

Will feels his chest tighten, a thick lump form in his throat. It had been foolish of him to think that he could get away with this like normal, that he could exist within the group of them as someone capable, even strong.

And obviously he doesn’t know how to fight, not even a little bit, but he's pretty sure Lucas and Dustin hadn’t had extensive training either, and yet no one bats an eye when they start grappling on the edge of one of the mats. He knows why, he knows, but it doesn’t lessen the sting of the blow. 

Jonathan, who stands next to him, takes a few steps towards Steve until they’re basically face-to-face. “Will can do whatever he wants to,” he spits out.

Steve raises his hands in defense. “Sorry, I just thought—”

“Thought what?” Jonathan snaps.

“That maybe he could use a break? I don’t know, Jonathan, I was just trying to be considerate.”

Jonathan shoves him, a hand pushed flat on Steve’s chest, and Will has never felt more invisible in his life.

Mike, somehow hearing Steve from the mat, abruptly stops struggling to get the rifle from Nancy, and rushes over to them.

“I’ll practice with you,” Mike blurts out, still out of breath from the exercise.

Will winces, a flash of embarrassment rolling through him. “You don’t have to,” he says quietly.

And though it feels different, to have Mike try and fix something, than it does when his mom or Jonathan do it, Will doesn’t want him to feel like he has to. It’s sweet, of course, but it really shouldn’t be anyone’s problem but Will’s, who’s created this entire mess to begin with.

Also, Will doesn’t want to try and fight Mike. He worries that he’ll somehow end up hurting him, and that’s only half the problem.

The other half lies, well, in the fact that fighting with Mike would require touching. A lot of touching. Will’s been trying his hardest, he really is, making sure to sleep on the farthest possible sliver of bed since the hand-holding thing. Mike has seemed to regain his skill of being casually affectionate like when they were young, laying a hand on his shoulder as he passes by his chair at breakfast, or bumping their arms together when they walk. But Will, having festered in his emotions for so long, finds it impossible to be so close to him all the time.

“Nah. We’ve gotta practice. Right, Steve?” Mike asks, tilting his head as he looks over at their appointed group leader.

Steve shrugs, unphased. “Whatever you want. I just didn’t want you to feel pressured,” he says to Will. 

Jonathan cracks his knuckles beside him, still fuming. “How ‘bout round two, Harrington?” he offers.

Steve accepts, obviously, and Nancy’s groan is loud from across the room.

Will follows Mike to an empty section of the mat, slipping  off his shoes and leaving them on the edge. 

They stand on opposite sides, staring at each other.

“I don’t want to fight you,” Will admits, arms awkwardly hanging by his sides.

“You won’t hurt me,” Mike shrugs, a small smile playing on his lips.

Will’s mouth drops open, indignant. “I could if I wanted to!”

“I mean, you could try.”

It’s his way of getting Will comfortable, getting him riled up so that he’ll be able to move, and put aside their friendship for a second. It’s a trick, but it’s working, goddamnit, and his body thrums with this sudden need to fight Mike, to grapple him down onto the mattress and get him to shut up. 

(Though, a deep, shoved-down part of him definitely knows it’s not just a…competitive urge.)

He starts walking towards Mike, who lets him get pretty close before swerving and scampering the other way.

Mike runs around the mat, avoiding him, teasing him, but Will eventually breaks. He makes to lunge one way, but then changes his direction at the last minute, so that Mike is running directly at him instead of away.

They both crash to the ground, laughing, and with jolt Will realizes that they’re really not good at this. They’d really be pretty lame as enemies.

Will ends up on top of Mike, trapping him down with his forearm, looking around to see if anyone catches his achievement. But Dustin is watching Lucas and Erica have it out, Steve and Jonathan are wrestling in the corner with Nancy and Robin rolling their eyes, and nothing around him changes. 

He doesn’t bother counting the seconds, thinking he’s already won, and lifts his arm off. But then he looks down at Mike’s face, and that’s the ultimate mistake.

Mike’s cheeks are flushed from exertion, his soft hair curling around the edges of his face, and plastered to his forehead with sweat. His mouth hangs slightly open, chest rising and falling as he breathes in short, shallow breaths.

His eyes meet Will’s—soft brown, so soft, and his eyebrows knit slightly as he looks at him.

Will doesn’t move, can’t get his body to move, just stares down dumbly at Mike’s face. He’s beautiful, so beautiful, and it’s almost sickening how utterly incapable it leaves him. 

But then Mike lifts his leg and knees him right in the stomach, using the distraction as momentum to roll them over so that he’s the one pinning Will down on the ground. 

Will groans, his eyes squinting shut in pain as he tries to catch his breath.

“I’m sorry,” Mike breathes. “Did I hurt you?”

And there’s a slight strain in his voice, an edge of concern, and Will needs to show him he’s okay, to show him he didn’t do anything wrong—

So he opens his eyes, and…well.

Mike is leaning over him now, his forearms planted on either side of Will’s face, body angled perfectly over him. His breathing is loud, he’s panting, and his hair hangs from his forehead, caught between them, covering his eyes. There’s a thin sheen of sweat on his upper lip, and Will has the sudden impulse to wipe it off him, lick it—

God, it’s crazy how much he used to dream about being in the exact position he is right now. Under very different circumstances, though. Of course. Of course.

“No,” Will forces out, and honestly he’s forgotten what the question was, but he’s pretty sure it had something to do with pain, and not a hint of discomfort resides in his body.

“Okay,” Mike whispers, and Will thinks he’s also forgotten what they were supposed to be doing, because he doesn’t move his hands, doesn’t move his body off of Wills. 

His eyes dip slightly, eyelids hanging low, and Will swears he’s getting closer, that their faces are moving closer to one another. 

Will draws in a ragged breath, feeling the heat of Mike’s breathing hanging in the air between them. Mike’s eyelids drop lower, lower, and his eyes are almost fully closed now, so Will’s flutter shut too, and then—

“You’re supposed to be a military soldier, not a vampire, Mike,” Dustin’s snarky voice cuts through the air.

Mike’s hand slips, and he crashes down face-first on the mat next to Will's head. He scrambles to get off and stands up, wiping the back of his hand under his nose and frowning when he pulls it away and notices the blood all over it.

“Shit, are you okay?” Will asks, hurrying to get up and rush over to Mike, because he’s hurt, and that hadn’t been the point of their practice.

“S’fine, yeah,” Mike says, avoiding his gaze, and lifts up the edge of his t-shirt to hold it under his nose, stopping the blood.

Will has to force himself not to stare, to look up, look away from the taught line of Mike’s stomach, glimmering with sweat. 

He really needs to get a grip. Mike’s bleeding, for God’s sake.

“Uh, it looks kinda bad,” Lucas says, trying not to laugh, and Mike flips him the finger with his free hand. 

Nancy comes over with a tissue for him, and Mike replaces his hand with it. The blood has trickled onto his forearm, and he licks it off absentmindedly.

Will blinks, frozen.“Are you sure you’re—”

Mike’s eyes snap up to Will’s, then, still licking the blood off the back of his hand, and Will feels like he’s going to combust, his face burning. 

“Yeah?”

“No, nevermind,” Will breathes, heart hammering in his chest.

Mike glances down at Will’s shirt, which, as he looks down too, is stained with a small splatter of Mike’s blood. It must have happened when he’d gotten up, his body brushing against Will’s.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” Mike says, wiping his nose again. “You can take another one of my shirts when we get home.”

April 1987

It’s Mike’s sixteenth birthday today, so Steve has generously offered to throw him a party at his house since his parents are gone, promising it’ll be cool. 

They’ve been seeing each other quite frequently, Steve and Mike, between all the fighting lessons, visits to the Squawk, and their frequent illegal crawls. It seems that Steve has made it his mission to teach him about the glory of teenage life, which Dustin teases him for, claiming that he must miss it, since he peaked in high school.

Will does his part to make it as special as possible for Mike, hanging out with him until everyone else is done setting up the party, and then riding their bikes to Steve’s house together. He walks Mike around the front lawn, covering his eyes with his hands until they reach the white picket fence leading to the backyard. 

Steve lets out a cry once he sees they’ve arrived, running towards them and tackling Mike with a giant bear hug. “Finally, Wheeler Jr.!” he laughs. “Welcome to your fête magnifique!” he says, in possibly the worst French accent Will has ever heard.

Mike gasps with laughter, regaining his footing and blinking his eyes open. He steps onto the grass, grinning when he sees what Steve has done to the backyard. 

There’s colorful lawn chairs scattered all over the space in little groups, and where there aren’t chairs, Steve has placed patterned rugs on the grass with slouchy beanbags thrown around. Towards the back, a drink station is set up on a folding table, a large bucket of something bright pink taking up most of the space. Steve’s even brought a keg, which sits next to the table.

A firepit glows in the center of the yard, ingredients for s’mores laying on the stone ring surrounding it. Dustin has gotten his hands on something from the chemistry lab at school that turns the fire different colors, and the flames are now switching between a purple-ish and a green.

Lucas and Dustin run up to greet them, grinning ear to ear. 

“This is going to be wild,” Lucas says, eyes lighting up. 

“Whatever that pink stuff Steve made s’really good, too,” Dustin says happily, swaying a little bit as he gives Mike a hug in greeting. 

Will laughs at the slowness in his moevements—clearly, he’s already gotten a head start.

Robin is standing behind the drink station, having been appointed a bartender tonight. She’s brought her friend from high school, that red-haired girl Will has seen her hanging out with a few times. She gives them a wave once she spots them, mouthing happy birthday to Mike.

Nancy comes up to them, handing red cups to both Mike and Will. “Happy birthday,” she smiles, reaching up to kiss her brother on the cheek. 

Mike laughs, trying to bat her away, but he’s much taller so there’s no hiding his embarrassed flush. 

“Don’t drink too much of that,” Nancy warns, but it’s only really a light suggestion because her eyelids hang low, clearly having become a victim of Jonathan’s weed already.

Steve trails behind them as Mike takes it all in, waiting patiently for his reaction. “Does it live up to your standards?” he asks, teasing but clearly still anxious to see if he’s done well.

“This is amazing,” Mike says, and he fist bumps Steve, trying to appear casual, but Will knows he’s practically jumping up and down inside.

The four of them have never really done anything, well, cool, never even dreaming that they’d one day attend one of those high school parties kids would always rave about. Even on the off-chance that they would somehow gain popularity and get invited, there would be no time, no space for those kinds of things in between the whole saving the world thing.

Steve grins, dropping his arm over Mike’s shoulders, which looks funny because they’re basically the same height. “It’s time to get this party started!” he cries, pumping the air with his first.

The small group of them lets out a cheer, and then Robin hits play on the boombox, and the backyard fills with chatter.

Time seems to pass in weird increments after that. Will drinks his red cup, and then somehow he’s had three more, and Mike seems like he’s already on his fifth, draining the pink juice like it’s nothing. 

They dance to the music Robin has chosen, a mix of classic hits from the last couple of years and other random songs Mike has mentioned at the Squawk. Dustin starts a game of trying to throw rocks into the colorful fire pit from across the yard, but he makes a rule that every time someone misses they have to drink. It ends pretty quickly, though, because none of them make a single shot.

More people start coming in, most of them Steve’s friends, and then some other kids from their grade like Lucas’s basketball friends, or the science club students. 

At one point, Will swears he sees Lucas doing a keg stand, Steve nearly bent over laughing from the angle his legs are at, but it really could also be an alcohol-induced hallucination.

Mike hands Will another red cup, and the two of them collapse on the beanbags near the front of the yard. He’s completely flushed all over, Will can see the pink glow of his face when the porch light hits him at full force.

A group of Steve’s friends walks by them, hollering when they see Mike and flashing him hang loose signs.

The tall one of the bunch reaches into his jacket and pulls out something small. “Delivery for the birthday boy!” he calls, wiggling his eyebrows at Mike while waving a little baggy in the air. He throws it to Mike, laughing about how he’ll be having a good time tonight, and then the group makes their way over to the drink table. 

Mike stares down at the bag, wide-eyed as he takes a small white paper out. He holds the bag up to his face, squinting at the ground-up weed inside, and then wrinkles his nose as he catches a whiff of it. Pinching a little bit of it between his fingers, he arranges it as best he can on the paper he holds with his other hand, but when he tries to roll it, too much of the weed somehow makes it outside the joint. 

After a few minutes of watching him struggle, never managing to get it no matter the amount he puts in, Will starts laughing, even though he’s been trying his best to let Mike figure it out.

Mike empties the weed back into the bag, dropping the paper in his lap. “I’ve only really seen them do it in movies,” he admits, ducking his head in embarrassment.

“Here, let me do it,” Will offers, and Mike hesitantly passes the bag to him.

Will takes out a new paper, laying it flat against his knee. He presses some of the weed in the center, evening it out into a straight line with his finger. Passing the rest of the bag to Mike, who stares at him like he’s grown two heads, Will rolls the paper into a thin cylinder, then brings it up to his mouth, licking the edge to seal it off.

“Did he give you a—”

“Yeah,” Mike responds immediately, passing him the lighter.

Will lights the end of the joint, inhaling deeply. He passes it to Mike once he’s done, coughing slightly from the strength of it. 

Their fingers brush when Mike takes the joint from him, wrists knocking against each other when they pull back.

“How on earth do you know how to do that?” Mike asks, his voice coming out a little bit breathless.

Will smiles sheepishly, shrugging awkwardly. “Jonathan taught me in California,” he admits. “You kinda have to smoke weed over there.”

Mike just keeps looking at him, brown eyes curious, jaw hanging open slightly.

“What?” Will asks, suddenly self-conscious.

“It’s cool, I dunno!” 

Will laughs it off, and he really must have had too much of Steve’s pink concoction, because he reaches over and grabs Mike’s hand. “Here, breathe it in, and make sure it goes all the way to your lungs,” he says gently, holding Mike’s hand up to his mouth.

Mike brings the joint to his lips, doing what Will said and inhaling with determination. He starts coughing as soon as he blows it out, waving his hand to disperse the smoke.

“Sorry,” he gasps out, half-choking as he apologizes for the smoke in Will’s face.

“It’s okay,” Will says, and with a jolt he realizes he’s still holding Mike’s hand, and lets go of it instantly.

Mike, still coughing, looks down at his hand where Will had touched it, as if it were his first time noticing that it had been there in the first place.

Will passes him his red cup, and Mike winces as he glances down at the pink liquid before tipping it back. It takes him a second to swallow, and he holds it in his mouth for a second with his eyes blown wide, which makes Will laugh.

“Where’s Wheeler Jr.?!” Steve calls out into the crowd, pumped up from having just finished a keg stand. He smiles widely when he spots Will and Mike, hopping over to them, drunk off his ass. “I have a present for you, birthday boy!” he announces. 

Mike giggles at this, smiling stupidly at Steve. “What is it?” he asks. 

“You just have to,” Steve hiccups, “sit in a circle and see!” He starts running around to everyone, swinging his arms wildly and telling them to gather around the firepit. 

Will and Mike drag their beanbags closer to the firepit, passing the joint between them and sometimes to Lucas and Dustin, who come over to see what weed is like.

Steve stands up on the stone ring around the firepit, his arms spread wide. “Since I need money for my car and didn’t want to splurge on Wheeler Jr.,” he starts, making everyone laugh, “I decided to go for a much more valuable present.”

Dustin starts drumrolling on the ground in front of him, to which Steve salutes him solemnly. “That is, of course—” he declares, and then forms his hands into fists to stop the noise “—my grand wisdom.” 

Mike bursts into a fit of giggles, Will joining in because genuinely, Steve is just ridiculous.

“Don’t laugh,” Steve warns. “I’ll stand here and answer anything you guys ask, swear.”

That gets their attention, especially Dustin’s, who grins widely. 

“Were you naturally born with so much hair, or has your body started growing it to compensate for your abnormally small brain?” he asks.

Will doubles over laughing, watching Lucas high-fiving Dustin from his peripheral.

“Serious inquiries only, Henderson,” Steve shakes his head. “I don’t answer to clowns.”

One of Steve’s friends leans in excitedly. “Ask him about the time Julie Thomas asked him out nine days in a row!”

“No, no, please don’t make him start,” Robin groans from the other side of the circle.

Lucas raises his hand, then, suddenly inspired.

“Yes, my pupil?” Steve calls.

“How do you convince a girl to go on a date with you?”

“Well, Sinclair, you’ve got to woo the girl.”

Robin flings her hands up, officially done with his antics. “You are so full of shit, Harrington!”

“And yet I always pull,” Steve shrugs, grinning down at her.

“How do you do that?” Lucas asks, still focused on his question.

Steve starts counting off his fingers. “First, you’ve got to let her know you’re interested. Girls aren’t as into that whole ‘bad boy’ thing as you’d think. Start flirting with her, leaving clues or something. Second, you have to be consistent about it. Don’t push too much, but don’t give up just because she doesn’t like you at first! Clearly she just has to see the potential. And finally,” he stops, taking a breath. “You have to plan the date of a lifetime, Sinclair. Buy her flowers, expensive chocolates, pick her up from her house, the whole shabang.”

“Like take her to the movies?” Lucas asks.

“Think bigger! Think of something you know she likes, something special. If she sees you put in enough thought, she’ll know you care!”

“A concert?”

“That’s better! And then, once you’re almost done with the date, once you know she’s happy,” Steve instructs, looking down at Lucas’s wide eyes. “You kiss her.”

Lucas lets out a gasp, and Dustin, who sits next to him, snorts with laughter.

But Mike, who—as Will now notices—is perched on the edge of his beanbag, listening to Steve’s every word, raises his hand.

Steve swivels to face him, pointing at his hand.

“How?” Mike asks, barely louder than a whisper.

“Well, you can take her somewhere quiet, like your car, an alleyway, or something, and get reaaaaal close to her. If you don’t think she’s into it yet, just ask. Ask to kiss her. Girls love confidence.”

Lucas nods, head bobbing up and down with fervor as if he’s had personal experience with the strategy. 

Mike places his forearms on his knees, head angled up to look at Steve. “And how do you kiss her?”

Steve jumps off the stone ring, crouching down so that he’s eye level with Mike. Everyone else in the circle leans in, trying to hear whatever so-called wisdom is about to come out of his mouth.

“Don’t use your tongue immediately,” Steve starts, and that declaration is met with a few cheers from his friends. “Don’t forget to use your hands, either,” he continues. “Girls like it when you hold their face, or their waist or something while you’re kissing.” 

Lucas nods again, and this time Dustin swats him on the back of his head.

“Close your eyes and tilt your head when you lean in,” Steve continues. “And break apart every so often, let the poor girl breathe,” he adds, huffing a laugh.

Mike looks up at him, mouth open slightly as he takes in the information. He swallows, nodding slightly, like he’s trying to memorize the words. 

Will, in his drunken state, lets himself mourn the future where Mike studies Steve’s strategy, using the moves on some girl he likes. 

And then he briefly wonders what’s all this fuss about kissing a girl, anyway? Is it because they’re softer, or prettier, or even more graceful than most boys? He glances at Mike then, trying to see if there really is anything about him that’s different from all of those things, and finds that he can’t think of anything. 

“Oh! And I almost forgot…” Steve leans in even closer, now, bringing his face up to Mike’s ear and holding a hand over his mouth so that no one else can hear. Steve whispers something to him, smirking when he pulls away, seeing how Mike’s cheeks darken to a deep flush. 

“What did you say?!” Lucas demands, practically jumping off his beanbag in outrage.

“That’s only for our birthday boy to know!” Steve calls cheerfully, standing up bouncing back to the firepit.

“And then?” Mike asks, voice still breathless.

“...and then?” Steve turns around, raising his eyebrows.  “Well, you…yeah, you know what? I think you can figure it out for yourself.”

Everyone breaks into laughter, and Steve takes a dramatic bow.

Some time later, after probably thirty more of Steve’s friends have somehow joined the party, Will sits in a more secluded part of the yard, on a beanbag by the fence. The music playing through the speaker has gotten significantly louder, and it feels like the ground shakes with the thrum of the bass and drums.

He’d smoked the whole joint with Mike, and then another with Jonathan, whose tolerance is something truly astronomical from the habit he’d picked up in California. Him and Nancy are in another corner of the yard, looking quite cozy on a swing that hangs from the large oak tree half-hidden by its branches. 

Dustin and Steve sit together on the edge of the porch, legs swinging as they take turns sipping a beer. Steve had brought up Eddie when he’d poured a can of coke into his beer, claiming that he’d taught him the ratio that made it taste good. Dustin had run up to him, wanting to know if it was disgusting or actually a brilliant invention, and that got them talking about Eddie’s other weird ideas. Will is glad he’s talking about it, that he’s found a way to open up to Steve, who he treats like his big brother. 

Lucas is talking it up with a group of Steve’s friends, who’d also graduated, but had played on the basketball team as seniors. They listen intently as he tells them the story of a recent game he’d played, mimicking how high he’d jumped to get in the shot that won the match. But he too has had so much to drink, and he falls on his ass when he lands, making the group erupt in laughter.

Will scans the yard, looking, wondering where—

“Hi,” Mike’s voice comes from next to him, and Will turns around to find him sitting on the beanbag next to him. 

“When did you—”

“Just now,” Mike says easily, and Will wonders how he can always somehow tell what the right thing to say is.

“‘Cause I can see what you’re thinking,” Mike responds, and Will widens his eyes as he stares at him.

“How did you know?”

“I just guessed,” Mike shrugs. “I can’t actually read your mind. You’re just easy to figure out.”

Will frowns a little. “Really?”

Mike smiles, as if the answer is obvious. “You have tells,” he says simply.

“Tells?”

“Like this,” Mike says, then reaches forward and touches the spot between his eyebrows. He presses his thumb into the skin, moving it around as if he’s trying to rub out the creases there. “That shows up when you’re confused.”

Will feels heat spread across his face, painfully aware of how easily Mike touches him. 

Mike grins, just barely, and then moves his thumb down to Will’s cheekbone. “This happens when you’re…embarrassed,” he murmurs.

“Yours, too,” Will responds, before he can think better of it.

“You’re saying that you embarrass me, Will Byers?” Mike asks slowly .

“Yeah.” There must have really must have been something in that drink, because Will doesn’t look away. “And I think you like it when I do.”

And then Mike does the strangest thing: he laughs, ducking his head like he’s flustered, caught off guard. The tops of his ears turn red, and he reaches up to rub the back of his neck, but he doesn’t deny it.

Will leans back in the beanbag, satisfied, and maybe that’s the trick to it all. Treat it like a competition, whatever the hell is going on between them, and focus on winning. If he wins, maybe he won’t be in such danger of letting his true feelings slip out.

Mike giggles, then, and Will looks up to find a mischievous glint in his eye. Already planning his payback, probably. 

“What?” Will laughs.

“Nothing,” Mike says, eyes twinkling. “This song is really good,” he says, swaying a little.

Will knows he’s just distracting him, but the weed has made his bones feel like jelly, and he thinks it’s seeping into his brain, too, one big pile of goop forming in his head. “I know,” he says, too tired to find out what Mike’s plotting, and also “Heroes” is good.

Lucas lets out a shout, then, and they both turn to find Steve trying to lift him high above his head, on top of the keg.

Nancy grins as she watches them, instructing Lucas to hold his hands out like he’s flying, based on the pose she’d seen in some promo for an upcoming movie about dancing. Jonathan snaps a picture with his camera behind her, smirking to himself.

Lucas starts thumping on Steve’s back with his legs, demanding to be let down, but that just sends them toppling right onto the beanbags with a wham. 

Mike bends over with laughter, nearly falling onto Will’s lap, and Will is so giddy he feels like they’re nine again, running around Castle Byers while chasing each other with paper swords. 

“C’mon,” Mike calls, suddenly in front of Will’s beanbag, tugging at his arm to get him to stand up. 

Will gives, obviously, because it’s Mike, and stumbles as he gets up. “Where are we going?” he asks, stumbling on his jelly legs as he follows after him.

Mike laughs again, running through the yard and dragging him past the gate, to the narrow walkway along the side of the house. It’s darker, here, the light from the porch not quite reaching them.

“It’s too loud,” he explains. “And there’s too many people I don’t know anyway.”

They lean back against the house, rough brick cooling their sweaty skin from the humid night air.

“It was nice of Steve to throw this for you,” Will says after a moment.

“Yeah,” Mike agrees, nodding slowly.

They’re quiet for a little bit, leaning back and listening to the music echoing from the backyard. Steve’s shouts are loud enough to hear, and Mike huffs a laugh every time another one of his drunken statements makes its way to them.

Will stares at him, and he suddenly has this horrifying thought, and he can’t remember if he’s said—

“Happy Birthday, Mike,” he breathes.

Mike turns to face him, still leaning on the wall, head tilted slightly. “Thanks,” he murmurs.

Then he moves a tiny bit closer, so that their arms just barely brush against each other, and Will can feel the warmth radiating off of him.

“Will?”

“Yeah?”

“Have you…” Mike starts, but breaks off with a laugh and shakes his head.

“Have I what?” Will asks, a giggle escaping his lips.

“You know,” Mike says, leaning closer.

“Mike, I have no idea what you’re saying!”

“What Steve was talking about,” Mike says softly. “Have you ever…?”

Oh, Will thinks. He’s talking about kissing. 

He’s talking to me about kissing.

“No,” he says quietly, face heating, suddenly feeling very inexperienced. “I would’ve told you if I had,” he adds, because this is probably another way of Mike’s to ask if they’re still best friends, if they still know everything about each other.

Mike swallows, and looks down for a moment. “I don’t know if I’ll ever…” he trails off, his voice so low and so soft and he’s so close to Will. He bites his lip, hesitating, and for some reason he looks scared, unsure of himself. “...get to do that again,” he murmurs, looking up and searching Will’s face. 

“I’m sure you will,” Will whispers, though it feels like it physically hurts to think about Mike kissing someone else, someone he’ll inevitably find in the future.

“Will, did you…?” 

Will stares at Mike, at his soft, tousled hair, at the sharp lines of his face, at everything.

Mike takes a sharp breath, one inhale, and any traces of laughter completely dissolve from his face.

The world stops for a dizzying second.

And then Mike surges forward, nearly pinning Will against the brick wall, and kisses him. 

Will can’t move, can’t breathe, because Mike’s lips are pressing into his and he feels like he’s sinking into the grass beneath them. His mind is racing, hands hanging like heavy weights by his sides, and he’s completely at a loss for what to do in this situation, how to act when your best friend kisses you at his sixteenth birthday party.

But then Mike stumbles backwards, breaking away from him, hands tightening into fists by his sides. “Sorry, sorry, I don’t—I don’t know what I was thinking, I just had to—”

And then Will’s brain comes back to life, maybe for one split, stupid moment, and he knows so deeply that he has to do something, that he can’t let this go, that this might be the only chance he ever gets to do this. 

So he pushes off the wall, grabs the collar of Mike’s shirt, and drags him back, crashing their lips together.

Mike stumbles as he loses his footing, but then he immediately responds, bringing his hands up to Will’s face, tilting his head to deepen the kiss. Will’s heart nearly stops, his hands fumbling for somewhere to hold, something to touch, and he hesitantly skims his fingers along the hem of Mike’s shirt.

As if sensing his uncertainty, Mike slides one hand down from Will’s face and grabs his hand, planting it firmly on his own waist and drawing them even closer, bodies pressing gently against one another. They’ve moved backwards without realizing, and now Will leans against the wall, and Mike's hands on his hips, digging into the fabric of his shirt. 

It’s so warm, the air so humid, but Will leans in more, arching slightly to get close, press closer to Mike. He tastes like the pink stuff, like candy, and Will shivers slightly, reaching up to tangle his fingers in Mike’s hair. Groaning, Mike runs his tongue against Will’s bottom lip, and it feels so good, and he’d never imagined that it could feel like—

Will gasps, breaking the kiss and stumbling back half a step. He leans his head on the wall, closing his eyes and drawing in shallow breaths. 

Mike lets his hands drop from Will, though it takes him a second to do so, touch lingering against him. 

“I don’t—” Will forces out shakily, out of breath. “Mike, I shouldn’t have—”

Because God, Will had kissed him back like an idiot, like a selfish fucking idiot, when Mike is clearly drunk off his ass and doing something he normally really, really wouldn’t do. 

He opens his eyes, wincing at the rush of color swirling in his vision, making him dizzy, and musters up the courage to look at Mike.

Mike looks beautiful, of course he does, flush spread across his face, lips still swollen slightly. His eyes go wide he looks up at Will, eyebrows furrowing with uncertainty. It almost looks like he’s sad, like he’s sorry or something, and it just makes Will feel worse.

“We don’t have to tell anyone,” Mike whispers, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

Will is immediately drawn to the motion, following the sweep of Mike’s hand against the soft outline of his mouth, because his own lips were there a second ago.

“Will?” Mike asks, and Will immediately snaps out of his trance. He’s so stupid, so insanely gone, and—

“Yeah,” he manages, swallowing thickly. 

“Okay,” Mike says. “Okay, ‘m gonna go back.” He wipes his mouth one more time, and then turns around and stumbles back into the backyard. 

Will slumps against the wall, legs giving out from under him as he slides onto the grass. His brain is buzzing, and he’s trying to think, trying to make sense of what just happened, trying to find a way to recover from this, can’t his brain tell?

The music gets louder, drifting around to the side of the house, another Bowie song that Mike and him used to put on all the time. And Will drops his head against the wall, hands in his hair, nails clawing at his scalp, as if there’s somehow a way for him to pry into the skin and tear his brain out of his skull. 

He is foolish, to think there is a way out of this.

Will doesn’t know how much time has passed before he returns to the yard, needing to find someone, find Steve and say goodbye because he needs to go home and forget about the disaster he’s caused, but his home is the Wheeler’s house, and his bed is Mike’s bed, and—

He shuts his eyes, gripping the edge of the fence to steady himself. He breathes, one, two seconds, tasting the sharp bite of spring’s night air.

There aren’t that many people left, just the main group of them and a few more of Steve’s friends. They sit in the beanbags around the firepit, draining the last of the pink liquid into their red cups, chattering about something funny that had happened during the party. Mike sits next to Lucas, his back to the gate, as if he’s been preparing for the moment that Will would come in, purposefully positioning himself so that he wouldn’t see.

None of them hear Will when he shuts the gate closed with a click.

And then out of nowhere, Mike leans forward, hands his cup to Lucas, and vomits all over the grass in front of him. The group of them rush to voice their concern, asking if Mike is okay, but he just sits up again, wiping his mouth and laughing about something. 

Will feels his heart give out, the tightness in his chest plummeting right down to his stomach. 

It’s way past midnight by now, the sound of an owl hoot echoing through the dark sky, stars twinkling up above, and nobody at this party knows that Mike Wheeler, Will’s best friend, had kissed him against the wall of Steve’s house.

He wonders if it had even happened at all.

Late April 1987

Will sits on the concrete wall that faces the basketball court, swinging his legs back and forth and watching how the rubber sole on his heel hits the stone. They used to be Jonathan’s, Will remembers the grin on his face when he’d opened the box on his ninth birthday to reveal the bright red pair of Converse. They’re faded now, more of a rosy pink than a red, but Will likes them anyway.

Mike hops up on the wall beside him, scooching over so that there’s barely any space between them “Hi,” he says. “Do you want to walk home together? Dustin and Lucas are staying behind to finish their science project.”

Will nods, then shakes his head. “I want to stay here for a little bit so Jonathan can get me when he’s done with school.”

Mike’s eyes go wide, and he leans in close. “Is your dad home again?” he whispers. 

Jonathan had told him not to tell anyone, making him promise as they’d biked to school that morning. 

At his silence, Mike’s eyebrows furrow, and he leans back to look at him. “Will, you promised!”

And it was true. Will had also promised never to lie to Mike, a rule they’d decided on when it became clear that they both had frequent issues at home. “Don’t tell anyone!” Will pleads. “I think he could get in trouble if people found out he was here.”

Mike huffs, a conflicted look on his face, but he sits close to Will again. “I won’t tell anyone,” he grumbles, sticking out his pinky for Will to wrap his own around.

“Thanks,” Will says softly.

He kicks his feet against the wall again, smiling when Mike kicks his too, purposefully hitting it at the opposite time as Will. 

“Do you want to sleep over at mine?” Mike asks. “You can stay with me until he’s gone.”

“Are you sure?”

“Mom won’t mind. Dad’s on a business trip again so it won’t bother him either.” 

Will smiles widely, filled with gratitude for his best friend, because he must be a saint, a saint that had been sent down from heaven to choose him, to stay with him.

Mike wraps his arm around him, his hand resting on Will’s shoulder as he hugs him. “You can stay with me whenever you want,” he laughs. “I can just hide you in the basement and pretend I don’t know where you are.”

Two kids from the grade above them walk by while dribbling a basketball between them. “Stop hugging, weirdos!” They call out as they pass Mike and Will, snickering between them. 

Will shakes out of the hug immediately, scooting away from Mike and crossing his arms tightly around himself. His dad also doesn’t like it when he and Mike play close together in Castle Byers. Actually, he doesn’t like Mike that much at all. And even if Jonathan says not to listen to him, that he’s being an idiot, Will thinks it’s better not to cause trouble, or do something attention-grabbing.

But Mike doesn’t let him get away, chasing him and moving to sit closer, pulling Will’s arm out from his defensive hold to take one of his hands between his own.

“They’re just stupid,” Mike says. “Mouth-breathers.” He grins wide, the upper tooth he’d lost last week, resulting in a large gap in his smile.

“Yeah,” Will nods, matching his grin. “Mouth-breathers.”

It’s morning now, soft sunlight streaming in from the cracked open window, the fresh scent of early spring gentle on his skin. 

Will gets out of bed, bending down to pick up the t-shirt he’d discarded the night before. Mike’s side of the bed is cold, Will can feel it. He must’ve gotten up early. 

He’s been getting up early for a few weeks now. Since—

Tugging on the shirt, he crosses the room and opens the door. 

Mr. Wheeler’s voice floats up from downstairs, and Will freezes as he hears Mike’s shouting accompanying it.

“It’s gotten to a point, Michael,” Mr. Wheeler grumbles, letting one of those long sighs he lets out through his nose.

“It’s not bothering anyone, dad! I don’t see what’s the problem with it!”

Mr. Wheeler snorts sharply, his voice rising. “It bothers me to know that my son is walking around with a full head of hair, flouncing it around like some sort of supermodel!”

“I don’t flounce anything!”

“You may as well be!”

“It’s just a teenager thing, dad!”

“Don’t try fooling me, Michael. I don’t see anyone else your age walking around with hair like that. Your friend’s hair is perfectly normal!”

“His name is Will,” Mike snaps. “You know it is.”

“Well, Will better be leaving a good influence on you, because I want that hair gone!”

Mike’s footsteps are rapid, scuffing against the floor and then tapping nervously every now and then, and Will realizes he must be pacing.

“I’m telling your mother to book an appointment tomorrow!”

Mike starts stomping up the stairs, then. “Fine!” he yells over his shoulder.

He nearly trips when he rounds the banister and sees Will outside his bedroom door. “Sorry,” he mutters. 

“Are you okay?” Will asks, desperate for him to say something, to talk to him, to give him some sort of reaction. 

Mike just shrugs, pushing past him into his bedroom and closing the door.

Will’s hands fall uselessly by his sides, and he starts walking over to the staircase. Mr. Wheeler had always gotten to Mike when they were little, nitpicking at his flaws during dinner or dishing out humorously-concealed jabs when he got home from school. Mr. Wheeler has always been very invested in making sure Mike turns out completely normal, that is, when he actually notices his son. But ever since Hawkins has started undergoing construction, leaving everyone at home for longer periods of time, he’s gotten increasingly more…aggressive about it. 

Mike doesn’t like to talk about it to anyone, not to Will, not even to Nancy. But they’ve been at each other's throats, him and his dad, for the past couple of months, tension building up and up, and Will wishes Mike would just give in and say something to him about—

The bedroom door opens again, and Mike’s head sticks out. “I’ll tell you about it later,” he says, and then shuts the door again.

And Will finally senses a little bit of relief at that, at the fact that they must really be normal again because that’s what they do, they tell each other things and talk about whatever’s on their mind. It’s what they’ve always done.

Well. Except in certain cases.

One specific case, in fact.

The case of Mike Wheeler, getting absolutely plastered on his sixteenth birthday, listening to Steve’s advice about the foolproof way to woo a girl, and then kissing Will against his house.

That, they haven’t talked about at all.

Actually, Will is pretty sure that Mike doesn’t remember it happening.

He’d woken up that morning after, somehow in Mike's bed, somehow with Mike next to him, neither of them knowing how exactly they’d gotten back. Mike had thrown a hand over his eyes and groaned  about the light and the noise and how hard it was to have a hangover, eventually going downstairs to bring them both a cup of water. It was all so normal, and Will had kept waiting for Mike to bring up the kiss, to kick him out of his bed and banish him from his house for doing something so reckless while he was clearly drunk.

But the moment never came.

It’s been practically three weeks since Mike's birthday party, and still, nothing has come up.

They still share Mike’s closet, getting dressed with their backs turned to each other. They still sit across from each other at breakfast, sending each other funny looks whenever Mr. or Mrs. Wheeler says something annoying. They still bike to school together, passing by Lucas’s house for him to join them on the way. They go visit Steve and Robin together, hang out in his room together, read the same comics, watch the same TV shows, without leaving each other’s side.

Everything is perfectly normal. 

So Will really does think he must not remember.

Except—

There was this tension building between them for the past couple of months, and though Will can be stubborn and critical and pessimistic, he’s not blind. Something had been there, something new and different and completely unlike anything else they’d had before.

Something had made Mike Wheeler stop in his tracks and gape at his hair, joke about having him as a romantic interest, hold his hand—

Something had made him start letting his hand linger on Will’s as he passed him plates at breakfast. It had made him sink closer to the middle of the bed when he went to sleep. It had made him stare at Will a little bit longer than he’d used to, and Will knows because, well, he’s the one usually looking at him.

Will never quite managed to find out what that something was.

(Flirting with him?

No.)

But nothing like that had happened in the entire time since the party. Since the kiss. It was as if the last few months had been a complete dream, and Mike was still real, but Will had somehow been living a second life in his head, a life where they were edging towards…who knows.

Whatever weird tension it was that hung between them disappeared. Mike still lays a hand on his shoulder as he passes, but he always removes it quickly. He still sleeps next to Will in bed, but he keeps to the opposite side. He jokes around, as always, but he never pushes, never prods, never teases.

Never goes too far.

And maybe Will has an abnormally slow reaction time to things, but he just doesn’t know how to deal with this. His brain constantly screams at him to take his chance! Cover it up! Mike doesn’t know, he doesn’t remember, and Will doesn’t have to remember it either, if he never brings it up. If they both pretend it never exists, it won’t exist, right?

But Will knows. He knows it happened and he knows deep down that he hasn’t made it up, because he’s had so many dreams about Mike and kissing Mike and touching Mike and his mind can’t imagine what it feels like to hear the soft sigh he let out when Will had kissed him back. 

He will ignore it, he truly will, but he can’t go one day without the memory of it replaying in his mind, reminding him of what he’s done, what both of them have done.

Will, have you…?

Then one day about a week ago, Mike must have noticed that Will had been out of it, that he wasn’t acting as normal as he usually did. 

Are you okay? he’d asked.

And Will had said yeah, of course, because there is no way he can explain.

There’s no way to tell Mike that he had kissed him, drunk, at his own birthday party.

Mike had held out his pinky, and Will had wrapped his own around it, and sworn.

(It wasn’t the right promise, but it was one of his own—Mike can never, and will never find out about the kiss.)

And yeah, Will promised he would never lie to Mike.

Except this one time, he thinks he has to.

May 1987

Will wakes up with a start, chest heaving as he hauls himself up to a sitting position. His vision slowly adjusts to the dark room, and he can feel the sweat sticking to his hairline, dried streaks of tears staining his cheeks.

“Will?”

Mike is sitting up on his side of the bed, blanket bunched around his legs. Will turns to look at him, wide-eyed, motioning to his throat, because he can’t get in enough air, can’t fill his lungs.

“It’s okay,” Mike says, voice low. His hands come up to grasp Will’s shoulders, firmly holding him in place. “You’re going to be fine, I’m right here,” he promises, and reinforces it by placing one of his hands on Will’s chest, right over his heart.

Will breathes, unevenly, at first, and then deeper, slower, watching Mike’s chest as he breathes, mimicking the movement. His eyes flick up to Mike’s face, and a wave of relief washes over him, because he knows the person sitting beside him. 

He knows him so well.

“You were awake?” Will asks once he’s able to breathe, once he’s calm, and it’s really more of a statement than anything. 

“I couldn’t fall asleep,” Mike says, and slowly loosens his grip on Will, letting his hands fall back onto the blanket in front of him. “Thinking.”

And now that Will is calm again, he can actually look at Mike. Properly.

His short hair is mussed up, like he’s been trying to sleep for hours, rolling over restlessly in bed. His eyes are heavy-lidded, and they look tired, his whole body sagging a little as he leans against the wall. He’s breathing slowly, the rise and fall of his chest drawing Will’s attention. He isn’t sleeping with a shirt on, too warm, and Will feels the blush rosy on his cheeks as he realizes he’s been looking for entirely too long now. 

They’d all done another crawl that night, investigating one of the forest areas. Hopper had barely made it out of the base on his way back, jumping out of the truck at the worst possible moment and nearly getting caught by a soldier. He’d gotten injured in the Upside Down while searching, too, tripping over a rather gnarly vine and landing badly on his hip. It slowed him down immensely, and by the time he’d made it back it was already midnight.

El had taken it hard, getting increasingly frustrated when he hadn’t come back yet. She’d started pacing anxiously in the basement, convinced that Hopper was going to die, that he was going to leave her again. Mike had tried to talk to her, to calm her down, but she wanted nothing to do with him, or his attempt at reassurance. 

It’d hurt him pretty badly, Will could tell, not being able to help someone he cares for.

Maybe he’s been up thinking about that, wondering what he could have done better, said better. Mike always worried about those things.

“Sorry I didn’t wake you,” Mike says. “I was watching, but it didn’t get bad until right before you woke up.” 

“That's creepy,” Will teases, refusing to dwell on the fact that Mike was looking at him while he slept, afraid of the unhealthy things that would do to his already-pounding heart.

“Shut up.”

They sit in silence for a little bit longer, Will focusing on his breathing and trying to calm his thoughts, focus on anything but the minuscule space between them. Eventually, he sinks back onto the mattress. He turns around, back to facing the wall, and closes his eyes. Mike lays down next to him after some time, twisting under the blankets. 

Will’s about to fall asleep, finally warm enough and calm enough to—

“What was it about?” comes Mike’s voice from the other side of the bed.

“Vecna,” Will answers after a moment, because it always is.

Mike shifts under the blanket, turning around to face him. He lays a hand on Will’s shoulder, tugging on him gently to get him to turn around too. “I don’t want you to get another nightmare,” he whispers. 

Will does turn, laying his hands underneath his pillow and scanning the darkness for Mike’s face. He finds his eyes first, brown and soft. So soft.

Mike waits for him to talk, the way he always does.

“I was held in one of his…hideouts,” Will starts, voice hesitant. “The main one, I think. I was tied to some sort of pillar. He was…pumping something into me, I don’t really know, like, parts of himself or something,” Will forces out.

Mike frowns, and his hand sneaks under Will’s pillow to find one of his hands, to run his thumb over the ridges of his wrist. Will lets him.

“I think there’s something of his inside me,” Will continues, his voice cracking slightly. He swallows past the hard lump in his throat, and turns his face into the pillow, embarrassed. How is it that he cries this easily, even after experiencing constant trauma for years? They’ve all been through so much, and they’ve all suffered, but he constantly feels stuck behind, like he’s still twelve and freezing somewhere in the Upside Down. 

“He’s left like, a part of himself inside me, and I can’t get it out,” Will chokes out, voice muffled by the pillow. “I can feel it sometimes, all this anger he’s dumped in me, like he has too much and wanted to put it all somewhere, to shove it inside of someone else.”

Mike’s hand comes up to his face, thumb brushing away the tears that leak from the corners of his eyes, and it’s so gentle it almost makes Will cry more.

He’s too susceptible, sensitive, and it’s costing him, costing all of them. How much more would they all be able to get done if he wasn’t falling apart every two seconds, if he was stronger and resisted the darkness ripping through his body? How much more could he do, how much more useful could he be if he could control it? 

“I don’t know if we’re really that different. Vecna and I,” he confesses, breath hitching.

“No.”

Will sniffs, bringing up his hand and dragging it under his nose. “What?”

“No,” Mike says again, huffing a laugh, as if he can’t believe what he’s hearing. He moves his hand under Will’s chin, turning his head so that he faces him again. “You’re like, the best person I know.”

“Yeah, but—”

Mike cuts him off with a press of his finger to his lips, and Will knows they’re talking about nightmares right now, but God if it doesn’t make a shiver run through him.

“I refuse to believe that he’s in there,” Mike insists. “Someone needs to believe that, and I do. I believe it more than anything,” he says earnestly, then draws in a breath. “If he’s there, inside you, why can’t I see him?” His brows furrow, and he blinks a few times., like he really doesn’t understand. “I look at you so often."

Will tries to breathe, tries his best to breathe because Mike had just calmed him down from a nightmare, and how could he begin to explain the speed of his racing heart now? How could he—

“But if it’s just me,” he swallows, “Why is it so hard for me to do anything? Why am I so weak?”

Mike freezes, the crease between his eyebrows deepening, deepening. “What?” he breathes.

Will sighs, closing his eyes, and he’s so sick of being weak, of being so inherently useless. It’s been piling up, now that they’re not fighting anyone and he has no excuse for the crippling sensation, and it's the first time he feels so much resentment towards it, a need to get it out of his head. 

“Will, you are not weak,” Mike’s voice cuts through his thoughts, and then his hands are on either side of Will’s face, thumbs gently sweeping the tears away again. 

He opens his eyes again, and Mike is so close to him, his warm breath ghosting his face. “I’ve got to be,” he sighs. “At least a little.”

“You’re not,” Mike insists. “You were the one who survived the Upside Down, resisted the Mind Flayer and shook him out!”

“Yeah, but—“

“You’ve moved schools,” he continues, because he knows Will was going to protest and say that those things don’t count. “And then moved back. You’ve still kept fighting this whole time, never once giving up, and that takes strength, you know it does.”

Will watches him, silent, heart beating erratically.

“Vecna scared you, but Will, he’s scared all of us. And he uses you, has used you constantly as some sort of vessel for his fucked up plan, but Will, that hasn’t made you weak. You aren’t weak, because you’ve withstood it this whole time. If you were really that fragile, don’t you think you would have died, already?” Mike huffs a laugh, thumb moving across his cheekbone.

“Sometimes it feels like I did,” Will admits softly. “It feels like I never came back from the Upside Down. Like this is all just one elongated dream, or something.”

“You couldn’t make me up. I’m too real,” Mike exhales, pressing his thumbs once into Will’s skin, and letting his hands drop. But he sniffles, then, a small noise, and turns his head away.

Will immediately reaches for him, tugs on his shoulder to pull him back, ignoring all the sirens blaring in his head not to touch him, because Mike is sad.

“What’s wrong?” Will breathes.

“I don’t want to lose you again,” Mike whispers, his voice low. “I’ve lost you too many times.”

Will promises himself, swears, then, that if another moment comes, and he has a chance to do something, to mobilize his body, he won’t be so weak anymore. He owes it to Mike, at least.  If it’s for Mike, Will would get over it. He'd do anything for him.

He finds Mike’s hand under the blanket, fingers hesitantly touching his. And then Will reaches for his pinky, wrapping it with his own, and holds it there for a few seconds.

Mike smiles, acknowledging his silent promise. “What’s your favorite color?” he asks, and Will can’t help but smile.

It was a game that they’d come up with when they were younger, when Will had started seeing the Mind Flayer for the first time and experiencing panic attacks because of it. Mike would calm him down, help him breathe, and once they’d talk about it, he’d ask Will questions about stupid things until he’d forgotten about the fear completely. 

It was silly, and definitely childish, but it always worked.

“Blue,” Will answers.

Mike nods; he’d already known. “What’s your favorite song?”

“Pictures Of You,” he says softly.

“Favorite superhero?”

“Cyclops.”

“Favorite D&D class?”

“Paladin,” Will laughs, and Mike’s face splits into a grin.

“If you could have one wish, what would it be?”

“That you didn’t always have to do this,” Will admits, finally feeling the full force of the guilt that’s been festering since he’s woken up.

“I don’t have anything else to do,” Mike says, plainly. “You’re my favorite person,” he whispers, eyes soft, unguarded. He presses the side of his face into the pillow so that he’s tucked closer to the mattress, looking up slightly at Will.

Will feels his heart rise in his throat. His chest aches, and for all his efforts and utmost caution and restraint, he knows that there is nothing in this world that could ever stop him from being in love with Mike Wheeler. 

Mike doesn’t mind Will’s silence, taking it as a sign he’s finally calm, nightmare successfully forgotten. His hand creeps up again thumb running under his eyes, over his cheeks, collecting the tears again.

“Do you want to talk about El?” Will asks, because Mike’s hand is so soft against his skin, and he worries he’ll do something stupid if he doesn’t change the subject soon.

Mike frowns slightly, the crease between his eyebrows tightening. “No, not really,” he murmurs, eyes not moving from Will’s face.

“Okay,” Will swallows. “Goodnight, Mike.”

“Goodnight, Will,” Mike breathes.

A moment passes. Neither of them turn around. 

And then. 

And then Mike’s eyes slowly shift downwards, the same way they had in Steve’s backyard, that night, except now he’s closer, barely a breath away, and Will can see each one of his long lashes casting shadows under his eyes.

“Will,” Mike says quietly, his voice coming out strained.

There’s a bit of his shoulder that isn’t covered by the blanket, that’s lit up by the moonlight filtering through the window, and Will thinks it looks like pure porcelain. He doesn’t mean to touch him, doesn’t even let himself think about it, but his hand starts moving towards the strip of skin, drawn to it.

When Will’s thumb first presses down on his shoulder, Mike’s eyes immediately shift to the contact, his breath catching in his throat. “What are you doing?” he asks.

But Will doesn’t have an answer for him, doesn’t have an explanation for the pull in his chest, the surge of longing coursing through his body as his hand touches Mike’s skin. 

His thumb traces up, just barely, to the edge of Mike’s collarbone. There’s a small divot there, a scar Mike had gotten when he’d fallen off his bike for the first time and had fractured the bone. Will had come to the hospital with him, begging the doctors to let him into the room as soon as they’d finished putting in the stitches. He sinks his thumb into it, pressing for a moment, and then drags his fingertips against the length of his collarbone.

Will breathes out, a soft, low sigh, and Mike shivers slightly when the warmth hits his skin. His hand moves up to Mike's neck, fingertips skimming the surface, reaching for his pulse. He lets his thumb sit there, just for a moment, feeling the blood pumping beneath it. Mike lets out a quiet groan, tilts his head slightly, and closes his eyes.

And that works out for Will, perfectly, actually, because it just gives him more time to look at Mike, to stare at him unabashedly. His eyelids twitch when he feels Will’s breath on his face, eyebrows raising just slightly. The line of his nose is sharp in the glow of the moonlight, the angle of his jaw, and Will is struck by how much he’s changed, how different he looks, and yet the same as always.

His skin is the same, pale and smooth, the area around his nose muttered with light brown freckles, so light that Will can only see them from this close. His hair hangs down on his forehead, dusting the tops of his eyebrows, casting a shadow against the upper half of his face. 

And then Will flicks his eyes down, and—

His lips, God, his lips. The same lips Will has kissed, has tasted, has placed against his own.

He feels his heart stutter, and suddenly he’s scared of forgetting what they feel like. His hand moves up further, until it hovers just above his mouth. Will tentatively places his thumb on the edge of his lips, barely pressing. 

Mike opens his eyes, staring down at where Will is touching him, then back up at his face. He’s got that look in his eye, the same one that he’d had when he’d stared at Will while watching him roll the joint. It’s not…confusion, exactly, not surprise, but almost like, admiration? The flecks of light brown in his eyes shimmer, his pupils blown wide as he searches Will’s face.

Will removes his thumb, retracting his hand back to his side, fingers curled into a tight first. He wants, so badly, and—

Mike lifts his own hand, then, bringing it up to Will’s face and smoothing out the creases between his eyebrows. “Stop doing that when you’re looking at me,” he whispers, a hint of laughter in his voice.

And then he moves his hand down, sliding it under Will’s jaw, and kisses him.

Will melts at the warm press of Mike’s mouth, the slow drag of it, and it feels so different from before, from their drunken kiss at the party.

His hands find Mike under the covers, the smooth skin of his waist, and he pulls him closer, pulls their bodies together. Mike’s fingers move up from his jaw and thread in his hair, tugging, dragging Will into him so that he can kiss him deeper. 

Will moves his hands up, up, and then his hands are tracing Mike’s ribs and splaying wide on his chest. Mike leans into the touch, lets him move his hands wherever he wants, and even though Will doesn’t know what it means, even though he has no idea what they’re doing, what he’s doing, he keeps going. 

He parts his lips, opening his mouth slightly like Mike had done last time, but then Will feels him gently bite down on his bottom lip and he can’t help but groan at how good it feels, how much he wants it, and then Mike groans too, releasing his lip and breathing into his mouth, open, hot and—

Will gasps, jerking back, heart thumping hard. He draws in a ragged breath, and he feels like his mind is going to explode, and he feels the blood rushing in his body, rushing to—

Mike huffs out a laugh, having finally gotten enough air to regain his thoughts. He looks at Will, in the darkness, laying down in his bed, and his lips slowly curve up into a smile. “Night, then,” he murmurs, and then turns around under the blanket and curls up on his side.

Will turns over too, his heart never once slowing down, and he doesn’t know what’s wrong with him, why he feels like this, but he can’t stop smiling.

He may not know much, and he may be entirely confounded by his best friend, but he knows for sure that Mike Wheeler had definitely not forgotten about that night in April.

June 1987

Lucas, Dustin, Mike and Will are gathered in the Wheeler’s basement, sitting on the couches surrounding the small coffee table they usually play D&D on. Today, though, they’ve moved Jonathan’s stuff out of the room and have a map of Hawkins pulled up in front of them, covered in red pen markings and sticky notes.

“I think we should send Hopper to the furthest corner,” Dustin suggests. “He hasn’t been anywhere near that area yet.”

“But wouldn’t it be counterproductive to go out of order?” Lucas questions. “Just because it hasn’t been working doesn’t mean we should stop.”

“How much time do we have, though?” Dustin presses. “Just because we can’t find him doesn’t mean he isn’t plotting something.”

“He’s definitely plotting something,” Will says.

The three of them turn around to look at him, eyes widening in surprise. 

“Can you feel him?” Mike asks.

Will shakes his head. “Not…explicitly. It’s almost like I can just sense it? Like, I know he can’t be dead, not fully, otherwise there would probably be a greater shift in the way I feel.” 

“Maybe that could be helpful, though,” Dustin muses. “Maybe at least when we do finally kill him, you’ll know.”

Not if I somehow die with him, Will thinks, and then desperately tries to banish that morbid thought from his head, forcing himself to nod.

Mike looks at him, frowning, as if he can tell what’s going on. He glances away when Will meets his stare, going back to studying the map. “Wait,” he mumbles.

“What?” Lucas asks.

“What’s over there?” he asks, pointing at the far edge of the map with his pen, where a large oval is drawn.

“Like, the stadium?” Dustin asks.

Mike's eyes go wide, and he slowly brings the pen up to his mouth, tapping it lightly. “We haven’t checked there, right?”

“No,” Will answers. 

“Hm.” Mike chews on the end of the pen, holding the clicker between his teeth. He doesn’t look away from Will this time, and instead rakes his eyes up, then down, scanning him where he sits. 

Will feels heat creep up his neck, and he watches as Mike shifts the pen to the other side of his mouth, never once breaking eye contact. When he sees Will’s mouth drop open slightly, the corner of his mouth lifts, just a hint of a smirk, and Will’s stomach flips.

“What were you thinking?” Lucas interjects, oblivious to their silent exchange.

Mike breaks the stare first, turning to look at Lucas, and Will lets out a long breath.

To say that this has been happening once in a while, the staring and playful grins and silent challenges, would be a massive understatement. It happens multiple times a day, and Will is barely hanging on, anxious when he wakes up every morning for whatever’s about to come. 

Every day at breakfast, it becomes a game between them to see who can eat slower, to see who can sit there for longer and stare at the other without leaving the table. Mrs. Wheeler thinks that something is genuinely wrong with them by this point, that they’ve grown dense now that school’s out and there’s no need for them to use their brains anymore. Will wins. Will always wins. (He’s quite good at staring at Mike; at least it comes in handy for something.)

At night, Will and Mike lay flat on their backs, on opposite sides of the bed, except every so often one of them will inch closer, towards the center of the bed. As soon as their fingers skim against each other, they’ll jerk back, breathing unevenly until they eventually fall asleep. When they wake up, Mike stares at Will as he climbs out of bed, tracing the shape of his chest with his eyes. He snaps out of it once Will puts a shirt on, glancing back down with a flush spreading across his cheeks. 

Whatever tension hung between before the party had doubled, and now it damn near impossible for Will to think straight with Mike nearby.

Will’s not new to watching him, to studying him during the day or while he sleeps and wishing. And he’s always had thoughts about Mike, hopeful ones, but they were so much easier to suppress when he hadn’t known what his mouth felt like against his, what his tongue could—

He takes a deep breath, trying to focus on whatever Mike’s started saying now.

(And no, they haven’t talked about the kiss, either of the kisses.)

“We’ve mainly been looking in forest areas, near Mirkwood,” he explains. “Maybe Vecna wouldn’t be hiding somewhere isolated at all. Maybe he's hiding somewhere that’s busy all the time in the real world.”

“Where a lot of people go,” Dustin adds, nodding along.

Will’s breath catches in his throat as he realizes. “Which could hurt as many people as possible as soon as he opens a gate.”

Mike nods, eyes lighting up once he sees they’re on the same page.

“So you think we should just, what, ditch the plan we have right now?” Lucas asks.

“It wouldn’t hurt to check, just to see if that’s his motive,” Mike points out. “There isn’t really anywhere else that would be half as populated as the stadium, so if that’s really his plan, we could find out.”

Lucas tilts his head, considering. 

“We can go back to the normal plan after that,” Mike says, tapping his pen against the map. “My plan isn’t really a plan, I just think we should try a new direction.”

“No, it is, it’s a good one,” Lucas finally says. “We’ve got nothing else, anyway.”

Mike smiles, satisfied, and starts chewing on the end of the pen again.

And it hits Will just how smart he is. It makes sense, really, since Nancy’s sharp as a whip. But Mike’s usually more focused on bringing them all together, on holding them tight, and Will sometimes forgets that to support everyone like that requires immense attention to detail on his part. After all, he’s the one who figured out Will was the spy when inhabited by the Mind Flayer. He’s the one who spends time writing all of their campaigns, adding in expressive dialogue and obstacles for them to overcome.

Maybe Dustin gets a lot of credit for being super smart, and he really is, but Mike is a crazy good strategist. Will feels a rush of affection rise in his chest, and he can’t help but smile softly as he watches him.

Mike meets his stare, throwing them back into another one of their competitions. 

“That’s a really good idea,” Will breathes, eyes flicking across his face. 

“Actually, yeah, it’s worth looking into,” Dustin starts nodding, marking the stadium on the map with his own red pen. “I’m gonna go see if I can reach Steve!” he declares, and then runs upstairs to find his walkie.

Lucas follows him, saying something about wanting to call into the hospital to see if Max is okay, Will doesn’t really know, because it’s honestly kind of hard to hear anything right now.

And then the two of them are left alone in the basement, sitting on opposite sides of the table.

“That was a really good idea,” Will says, eyes still locked on Mike’s face.

“I know,” Mike responds, flashing him a toothy grin. “You’ve said.”

“I mean it.”

“Really?” Mike teases, his grin getting impossibly wider.

Will’s eyes shift downwards to Mike’s hands, to where he’s holding the pen and clicking it in and out. “Really,” he breathes.

Mike clicks the pen again, drawing out the sound. The energy between them is palpable, Will can almost taste it, and he can’t help but hold his breath.

“Say it to me again?” Mike whispers, daring.

Will shakes his head, hiding a smile. “It’ll get to your head,” he murmurs.

This, he can do. He does not know what Mike wants, not exactly, but he knows that he can at least give him this. They’ve been messing with each other for years, and no, there’s never been anything so…charged about it, but he knows how to push him, what buttons to press to get the reaction he wants.

“It’s already up there,” Mike grins, tapping the side of his head a few times with the pen.

“That’s…not good,” Will breathes.

Mike laughs, eyes sparkling with amusement. “And what are you gonna do about it?”

Will looks up at Mike’s face, then, at his lip he’s biting down on slightly, and finally, he’s had it.

Would it really be so terrible if he kissed him? If he truly walked around the table, sat down next to Mike, and kissed him? 

It’s almost unbearable, the temptation coursing through his body, and if he’s being absolutely objective with the situation, it…kinda seems like Mike doesn’t exactly, well, hate the idea.

Mike has kissed him twice, and true, the first time he’d been so drunk he couldn’t even walk in a straight line. But the second time he’d been fully sober, completely coherent, and even though Will’s no expert on kissing (it’s only happened twice) he is an expert on Mike.

He doesn’t know why Mike has kissed him, doesn’t know what it means for him…feelings-wise, but he knows for sure that he’s done it twice, that he must like it at least a little.

He must want it, at least a little.

Besides, what does he have to lose? He knows what it’s like not to talk to Mike, not to be able to call him and tell him about anything on his mind. It had made him miserable, of course, but at least he knows what it’s like. He knows he’s survived it.

Maybe just to kiss him again, to feel their lips against each other, Will would risk that.

And what’s that thing Dustin always says? If you hypothesize something, the only way to check if it’s true is to just…test it.

He steps over the table, sitting down on the map so that he’s facing Mike, level with his face. Will slowly brings his hand up, skimming the surface of his nose, his cheekbones, his eyelids. He’s so soft, and it nearly leaves him dizzy.

Mike closes his eyes, swallowing loudly. Will places his hand underneath his jaw, drawing him closer, listening to him breathe, but then he hesitates, heart pounding in his ears.

And then Mike nods, barely more than a small movement of his head, and that’s more than enough for Will.

He leans in, tilting Mike’s head with a press of his fingertips, and kisses him.

Mike brings his arms up to wrap around Will’s neck, kissing him hard, and he’s smiling, teeth clashing against Will’s every couple of seconds. Will can’t help but grin, too, and they have to break apart for a moment, resting their foreheads together. 

And normally Will would be shaking, completely out of his mind, but he’s got to remember that even for all of his brains and looks and charm, Mike is just Mike, the same one he’s known for years. He lets out a breathless laugh, and Mike matches it, shaking his head slightly.

“Okay, good,” Will says. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted—”

“Yes, yes,” Mike breathes out, and kisses him again. 

Will presses into him instantly this time, taking his bottom lip between his teeth, sucking on it gently until Mike groans and opens his mouth. His tongue slides into Will’s mouth, heavy and warm, and he can taste him everywhere. Will moves his hands to Mike’s hips, reaching under his shirt, running his thumb along the smooth skin of his side.

Mike breaks the kiss, suddenly, and falls backwards onto the couch, so that he’s laying down with his head on the armrest. He grabs the front of Will’s shirt and drags him down on top, barely giving him a chance to adjust before he’s tilting his head up to kiss him again.

“Finally,” Mike gasps in between, and Will doesn’t really know what he’s talking about, but this new position is making his head spin, his senses overflowing.

Will plants his arm down on the side of Mike’s head, the other hand digging into his waist, body pressing into him, needing to feel more, more—

And then Mike winds his finger through the belt loop of Will’s shorts and pulls him closer, hips flush against each other. Will shudders, a nearly breathless whine slipping from his lips. He gasps away, face flushing, and tightens his grip on the couch below him. He’s about to apologize, unsure, but—

“Holy shit,” Mike breathes, and then surges forward to shut him up. 

The press of his mouth is more urgent, now, and Will feels almost feverish as their bodies move against each other. He thinks that it’s slightly surreal, the fact that they’re making out while laying down on Mike’s couch, the same couch in the same basement they used to play in as kids, to come in and hide. 

Mike must realize it too, because he’s smiling again, wrapping his fingers tighter around Will’s belt loop, and Will can’t help but—

“Guys, come up here, Steve says we can meet up!” Dustin calls from upstairs.

Will’s brain short-cricuits, and he rushes to climb off of Mike, wiping his mouth furiously, patting down his shirt to attempt at making it look at least a little unwrinkled.

He’d forgotten they weren’t exactly alone, that their friends could come in at any moment, and what that could mean for him, for Mike—

He feels Mike’s fingers tap against his hand, and he looks down to find Mike staring up at him. 

“It’s okay,” he whispers. “He doesn’t have to know."

It’s that same phrasing he’s used at the party, we don’t have to tell anyone, and something about it catches Will off guard, something he can’t quite place. Maybe it’s just Mike’s way of trying to establish boundaries gently, to be careful with what they’re doing. It’s most definitely his way of asking Will that they keep it a secret.

Which is fine by Will, honestly. It’s safer, that way. Really.

“Are you gonna come upstairs?” Will asks.

“Yeah,” Mike groans, and then lays a hand over his eyes, grinning sheepishly. “Just give me a second.”

Will nods, squeezing his hand before letting go and heading up the staircase. He waits until he’s out of Mike’s view, leaving him down there, breathing heavy on the couch. And then he lets himself grin fully, wide and triumphant, because he knows exactly why Mike is waiting to come upstairs.

So his hypothesis was right, or whatever.

July 1987

It’s the hottest recorded day in Hawkins, the weather forecaster lets them know when they watch the news at breakfast that morning.

Mike has already been complaining about the heat a whole week prior, whining about having to go outside whenever Mrs. Wheeler asks him to go pick up something from the store.

Will doesn’t so much mind the heat, since he normally runs cold, but he does mind the fact that Mike now opts to sleep shirtless every night, which is severely detrimental to his own well-being. 

Detrimental, because it’s like that whenever they kiss, now, and Will’s hands somehow always wind up on Mike’s chest, like an instinct of sorts. 

And that happens a lot, every night, actually, Mike not even waiting until the door’s fully closed to pull them onto the bed, kissing for hours until they finally go to sleep. Or one of them will look at each other during the day, while they’re out, or spending time with friends, and they’ll sneak off to some corner, making out for as long as they can before someone notices they’re gone.

Will always glances over his shoulder, overly cautious of anyone who might see them and discover why they’re always running away together. He doesn’t want them to get caught, thinking of how El would react, how dangerous it could be for them. But Mike never seems stressed about it, at least not as much as Will, constantly telling him not to worry, not to think about it too much. 

And Will does try not to think about any of it too much, about what it means for their friendship, what it means at all, because they don’t talk about it, ever. 

It’s kind of just been silently decided, something they’ve mutually agreed upon to avoid complicating anything. Mike can tease Will whenever he wants, Will can do it back, they both can kiss each other at any moment of the day, but they cannot, will not, talk about it.

For two people who have maintained such a good relationship on the foundation of telling each other everything, of keeping no secrets from each other, this whole no talking thing is actually working pretty well.

Besides, Will is pretty confident he can manage not talking about it, given that he’s been working on an extremely comprehensive list of reasons why Mike Wheeler could be interested in kissing him.

It goes kind of like this:

1. Mike has not-so-long-ago broken up with his ex-girlfriend of over a year, losing the main source of kissing he’d usually have available.
2. Will is there. Will is always there. Will lives in his house, sleeps in his bed. Who else is so convenient?
3. Will is his best friend. Mike trusts his best friend, trusts him enough to be a good kisser, clearly.
4. Mike knows that Will won’t tell anyone. Mike is kissing someone else no-so-long-after he’s broken up with someone dear to him, someone he wouldn’t want to find out. Mike is kissing a boy after kissing a girl for over a year. Mike is kissing a boy.
5. Mike had asked Will if he had kissed anyone, and Will had said no. Mike has always made sure that he’s included Will, that he teaches Will everything he’s ever learned. Maybe he was worried that Will doesn’t know how to kiss, that Will would never get the chance.

So yeah. He’s doing pretty good.

Mike tucks his shirt under his chin and ties the drawstring of his swim shorts. Will and him stand by the front door, waiting for Steve to arrive so that they can all go to the lake.

Nancy and Jonathan had left earlier, taking her car to the movies because apparently they haven’t been out on a real date in a while, even though they constantly hang out. Jonathan said they’d meet the rest of them there, though, since this romantic date was supposedly ending with a picnic in the woods.

“Do I look fine?” Mike asks him, taking off his shirt, and Will begs his brain to keep his eyes up, away. 

“Yeah,” he says, because if he said any more he wouldn’t be able to stop.

Mike bites down his lip, clearly suppressing a grin. “So do you,” he says, eyes scanning slowly, purposefully down Will’s already shirtless chest, and then back up to wink at him.

Good lord.

There’s a sound of a car honking outside, followed by Steve’s shout of come out, losers!

Will opens the door and lets them out, Mike running up to the car and gripping the windowframe.

Steve is driving, with Robin in the passenger seat, Lucas and Dustin already in the back.

“Why can’t they bike?” Mike groans. “It’s hot.”

“Their houses were closer,” Steve shrugs. “Your pick. You want lake? If so, zip it and start riding."

That’s enough of an incentive for Mike, who runs over to the driveway where their bikes are and hops onto his. Will follows him, climbing on his own and biking out of the driveway. Steve gives another honk and starts driving down the road, checking the rearview every now and then to see if they’re still following.

Dustin and Lucas stick their heads out of the back window to poke their tongues out at them, and Will shouts back, the hot breeze against his face sticking his hair up as he rides.

Steve lowers all the windows as they drive, blasting music out of his newly installed stereo, and speeds down the secluded forest roads.

They get to the edge of the forest after a short time, parking behind Nancy’s car they find on the side of the road. Steve turns off the car and hops out of the driver’s seat, pulling out a cooler he’d somehow shoved under the seat.

Lucas carries a blanket for them to sit on, and Dustin pulls out some inflatable donuts from the trunk.

“Where’d you get all this stuff?” Mike asks Steve, gawking as Robin also comes out carrying a massive watermelon.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Steve says, wiggling his eyebrows.

“We raided his parents’ kitchen,” Robin laughs. “And they’ve got so much random shit in the basement you wouldn’t believe it.”

Lucas starts sprinting into the forest, then, calling for them to race him. Mike takes off after him, Dustin and Will following close behind. 

Lover’s Lake gets quite popular during the summer, kids and teens spending most of the day hanging out by the cool water when the temperature gets unbearable, like today. But there’s a special cove on the more secluded side of the lake, where the trees hang low and provide more shade, that people don’t usually know about. 

Apparently, it was a place they’d discovered last year, when they’d found the gate at the bottom of the lake. Steve had somehow noticed the area while he was running from the police, of all times. Once everything had calmed down, he’d explored it with Dustin, the two of them claiming it would be perfect for hotter weather. 

They cut through the trees, bags jangling as they lug their supplies with them. The ground starts to get more rocky, less even, and the trees start getting taller, trunks wider, until the leaves are too high up to see without them craning their necks. 

At last, they reach the edge of the forest, a giant, flat rock yielding to a perfect jumping off point to the water beneath it, and big enough that they can sprawl on the surface, too.

Lucas drops the blanket, flinging off his sweat-soaked shirt. He lets out a whoop as he runs off the rock and cannonballs into the lake, splash so high it sprays the flat surface.

Steve and Robin finally catch up to them, stripping their clothes too, Robin tying back her hair.

They both grin at each other and race to the edge of the rock, jumping in with matching splashes.

Nancy and Jonathan join them after a little while, bringing more snacks and a small radio they tune to the Squawk channel, because even Robin’s automated music is good. They sit on the edge of the rock, swinging their legs together and occasionally get splashed when one of the boys jumps into the water. 

Now, Mike and Lucas are seeing who can hold his breath underwater for longer. Dustin, who’s timekeeping, motions for Will to come near them, but the rocks are slippery underneath his feet. He leans back on the base of the giant rock, under the shade of the overhang.

“It’s too slippery,” he calls out to Dustin.

“You wimp, just swim!”

“It’s shady here,” Will protests.

Suddenly, something wraps itself around his legs and he’s dragged through the water, submerged within the deeper part of the lake where his feet barely touch the bottom. He sticks his head out, sputtering as he shakes the water from his eyes, and whips around to see Mike, dripping wet and grinning like a maniac.

“You were being lame,” Mike laughs, flicking droplets of water off his chest, and wow, Will can barely even formulate a coherent response and settles on splashing him with even more lake water.

Mike stretches and raises his arms above his head, and Will has to skim his eyes over the glistening skin because his hands have been there, and touched there, and marked there, and they’re so catastrophically far from the dimness of Mike’s bedroom.

Lucas finally emerges from underneath the water, gasping for breath while looking around, confused. “Yo, what happened to the contest?” 

Mike shrugs, guilty. “Gave up. I saw Will’s legs underwater and thought of a better prize.”

“Gross,” Lucas snorts, flinging water at his face.

Will stares at Mike. “You lost, then.”

Mike looks back at him, a small smile on his face. “I don’t know. Did I?”

“Can we eat, y’all? I’m starving!” Steve calls from the surface.

Lucas lets out a cheer, running out of the water, so Will pushes aside whatever that was and follows the rest of them onto the flat rock. 

Robin starts sawing at the watermelon with a jack knife she’s brought, but Steve has a better idea, lifting it up high and dropping it forcefully. The watermelon shatters into pieces, scattered across the expanse of rock.

Steve picks up one of the pieces, biting into the juicy red fruit, grinning around his mouthful. “S’good.”

“Ugh, gross, you’re gonna eat that?” Robin scoffs, grinning over the piece of watermelon she’s picked up and started eating.

Steve spits out the seed in her face, and she makes a gagging motion.

Jonathan grabs a beer from the cooler, shooting a quick thanks to Steve, and it’s nice that they’re getting along, at least enough for them to all spend time together. 

Dustin tries to grab a beer too, but Steve sees and wacks him on the head. “Your mom will kill me,” he says, mouth still full of watermelon. He reaches into the cooler, taking out a pack of freeze pops and throwing them to Dustin.

“I swear, you sometimes become so lame I can’t believe it,” Dustin sighs.

Lucas, always the optimist, grabs the freeze pops from him and tears off two. He breaks the wrapper, shoving both of them in his mouth, like a walrus with blue and red teeth hanging from his mouth.

Will laughs, tearing off a red one for himself.

“It makes it purple,” Lucas explains to no one in particular.

“Why not just…have the purple one?” Dustin says flatly.

Lucas rolls his eyes. “S’not as good.”

Mike chooses a blue one, ‘cause he always does, and Dustin sulks until Steve lets him finish the rest of his beer.

It starts getting cooler towards the late afternoon, the bright sun that had been glaring at them from the center of the sky sinking lower into the trees. They lay down on the rock, soaking in the heat of it while the breeze around them makes it bearable enough to be out of the water.

Eventually, Lucas wants to do something, and Mike immediately agrees, because they’ve both had the most freeze pops and the sugar is definitely starting to get to them. Steve asks if they should play Marco Polo, but Nancy doesn’t want to get her hair wet, and they’ve all had enough of the lake anyway.

“So move the game to land,” Dustin suggests. “Hide and seek.”

Steve grins excitedly. “In the forest, that sounds fun. We’ve got to start now though, before it gets dark.”

“I can look first,” Mike volunteers, because he must need to run, to get the energy off of him.

“Let’s not hide more than half a mile from here,” Dustin decides. “Not sure how far we could even run from a count down of a hundred anyway.”

Lucas and Will agree, and Robin and Nancy are already teaming up, scheming about the best places to hide.

“What’s half a mile?” Steve asks.

Dustin stares at him. “You can’t tell?” he asks incredulously.

Steve just rolls his eyes. “Not all of us have an internal compass like you.”

“You need common sense, not—”

“One hundred, ninety-nine,” Mike starts counting, and they all take off in different directions.

Will jogs for a while until he finds a group of pine trees huddled close together. He hides in the center of the group, not really fully covered, but he doesn’t feel like climbing so this is probably the best he can get on the ground. 

He’s never really…liked hide and seek, not after everything that happened. It doesn’t cause him as much anxiety now, when the sun dapples on the tree trunks, illuminating the forest. Dimmer light would make it feel too much like the Upside Down and then he would suddenly have to get really good at the game. 

And he had been good at it, the hiding, it probably being what ultimately saved him that time. He’d been good at it as a kid, in the real world, finding nooks and crannies of their house or of different rooms in school to hide in. Usually, though, Mike would join him, intrigued by the place he found. He’d read him comics while Will would draw, and they could sit in those tight spaces for hours without ever getting sick of each other. 

A leaf crunches outside, and Will hesitantly pokes his head out of the tree cluster to see if—

Mike appears from the other side of the tree cluster, rushing up to him, grinning hard. “Found you,” he breathes.

Will smiles, warm again, himself again.“I knew you—”

“Your lips are red,” Mike whispers, and he’s gotten much closer to Will than he was two seconds ago.

Will grins, running his tongue over his top teeth to taste the sweetness there, and then Mike is on him, his hand already on the edge of his face, pulling him in and kissing him.

“What about everyone else?” he manages to gasp out, but Mike's lips are on his again, not bothering to respond, just grinning into his mouth. He backs Will up against the tree, pressing into him, fingers hovering over his waist. Will winds his fingers in his hair, silky strands pooling underneath his hands. So soft.

And then Mike breaks apart, as if he knows what Will has been thinking, resting their foreheads together and letting out a long sigh. “I wish I hadn’t cut it,” he admits. 

Will frowns, hands still twisted in his hair. “I think it looks good,” he says, a shy smile taking over his face.

Mike grins, shaking it slightly so that a few droplets land on Will’s face. “Really?” he teases, but he honestly looks relieved, like he lives in some other world where there’s a possibility of Will not being so immensely attracted to him. As if he truly doesn’t know the effect he has.

“Yeah,” Will says, and then with an impish smile, adds, “You look good like that.” 

Mike flushes, his ears going pink as he runs a hand over his face. “Oh, shut up,” he groans.

Will can’t help but burst out laughing, letting go of Mike’s hair to lean back against the tree.

“I didn’t mean for it to come out like that,” Mike whines, but his mouth is curved into a lopsided grin. 

“What did you mean for it to come out like?” Will asks, biting down a smile.

“Like this,” Mike laughs, and grabs the back of Will’s neck, kissing him deeply.

He pushes him back against the tree, running his hands over Will’s jaw, Will’s neck, Will’s chest. 

Mike breaks apart, stilling for a moment, and his hand hesitantly lingers at the base of Will’s neck. There’s a scar there, a thin white line stretching from his collarbone to the top of his diaphragm, from when he’d been in the Upside Down. It’s rather ugly, actually, a bit raised and uneven from the rushed stitching the doctors in the emergency room had done when they’d rushed his barely-conscious body to the hospital. 

But Mike lowers his head now, breathing heavily over his neck, and his lips come down to replace his hand. He kisses the top of the scar, lips gently ghosting over the ridged line. 

“It’s really cool,” Mike says against his skin.

“Shut up,” Will laughs, and then groans as he feels Mike’s mouth lower, on the center of his chest.

Mike stops, then, coming up to stand level with Will, looking him straight in the eyes. “I’m serious,” he says softly. “I never get the chance to say it, but it’s really cool. I like it,” he adds, mouth quirking into a slight smirk.

Will can’t take the warmth in his chest anymore and surges forward, kissing him back. 

“I’m starting to think you’ve died, Mike!” Steve’s shout comes from somewhere nearby. “I’ve been squatting under this godforsaken bush for like, ten minutes, I give up!” 

Mike breaks apart from him, leaning his head down on Will's shoulder, laughing breathlessly. Will leans back against the tree, content, a little dazed.

He pokes Mike's side when he still hasn’t gotten up, the area where he’s the most tickling. Mike squirms and is forced to stand, looking at Will with an expression of mock-betrayal. 

“Lucky for you, I’m alive!” Mike shouts back toward Steve's voice. “I’m coming to get your ass, you better start running!” 

Will hears Steve let out a yelp, and then there’s a frantic rustle of leaves.

Mike takes off, flashing him a grin over his shoulder as he begins his hunt for Steve.

August 1987

They decide to finish off the summer with a movie night in the Wheelers' basement, a tradition they’ve kept for years. 

Lucas and Dustin accompany them to the video store, both wanting a say in the movie they pick out.

“It’s been Star Wars for the last like, three years,” Lucas complains as they pull open the door to the store, the little jingle sounding when they step in.

“It’s good!” Will protests, at the same time as Mike says, “Whatever.”

They wave hello to Keith, who stands behind the register. The store almost seems more dim without Steve and Robin running the place, even though Will knows all of the lighting has remained the same.

Lucas heads straight for the horror section, Dustin for science fiction, the two ready to cover as much ground as possible. Will and Mike split up, too, getting lost in the fantasy and action sections, respectively.

Will runs his fingers along the titles, reading them off in his head. He gathers a few that he thinks the rest of them would like, laying the pile down on the top of the shelf so he doesn’t have to carry them all at once.

After a few minutes, Dustin and Lucas poke their heads into his aisle and motion silently for him to come over. 

“What is it?” he whispers, and they both immediately shush him.

“Mike is talking to a girl,” Lucas breathes. 

Will freezes, his mind going blank.

A girl?

Like, a girl he’s interested in?

In all the haze of summer, hanging out with Mike every day and going swimming with him and listening to music on the floor with him and kissing him, Will had forgotten this was an option. He’d foolishly, naively, forgotten that this was a very viable option.

“You have to come see,” Dustin whispers, tugging on his arm to pull him into the aisle over, where they can see Mike standing at the front of the store, talking to some blond girl that faces away from them.

“I’ll bet she’s pretty,” Lucas says softly. “Look at her hair, man!”

The girl’s hair is long, curlingr slightly at the edges, and extremely shiny, which is honestly a little disturbing. She’s much shorter than Mike, reaching only around his shoulder, and wears a short pink skirt and platform flip-flops.

Mike’s spotted them, now, sending a hard glance over at Lucas and Dustin, clearly trying not to roll his eyes.

Will watches Mike and the girl, and studies them. They would be good together, he thinks. They’ve got a good height difference, they’ve got opposite hair colors. They met in a video store, that’s cute, right? Will doesn’t know. He tries to think about this logically, like it’s a math problem, rather than acknowledging the wave of rage coarsing through his body.  

His jaw tightens as Mike smiles slightly at the girl, and he’s just so upset with himself, because he’d been so good at control, so good at keeping everything on lock and now he’s gotten way too comfortable and way too loose and has allowed himself to get hurt again.

What was he thinking, honestly? That Mike was his?

And then Mike’s eyes meet his, glancing over the girl’s shoulder, and time stops. 

Soft brown, so soft.

Suddenly Will can’t think about any rage or any frustration and he’s not thinking about how stupid he’s been, because he’s thinking about Mike. Mike, with his messy black waves of hair, his love for good movies and comic books, his analyzing looks and insistent touch, and Will doesn’t want to lose him. He doesn’t want to lose him like he did three years ago, when Will came back from the Upside Down and just like that all they were talking about is some superhero girl Mike had fallen in love with.

Please, he thinks.

I’ve loved you for so long.

The girl says something, and Mike breaks the stare, tilting his head back down to look at her.

He smiles at her again, saying something they can’t hear. And then the girl nods, adjusts the bag on her shoulder, and walks out of the store.

“Well?!” Lucas practically shrieks when Mike comes over to them. 

“Well what?” Mike asks.

“Are you gonna see her again, doofus?” Dustin grins.

Mike glances between the two of them, frowning. “...No?” he says.

Lucas drops his head into his hands. “Why, Mike, why?” he groans. “Did you even ask for her number?”

“Nah,” Mike dismisses him.

“You didn’t even try?” Dustin exclaims, wide-eyed. “She wasn’t that far out of your league, I prom—”

Mike swats him on the head. “I didn’t ask her. She asked me,” he shrugs.

Lucas and Dustin both gasp, grins returning to their faces.

“And what did you say?” Will asks, before he can help himself.

Mike locks eyes with him, steady. Brown. Soft. “I said no,” he says simply.

Lucas grabs him by the shoulder, shaking him hard. “You idiot!” he shouts. “You absolute fucking idiot! This was your chance,” he whines.

“Dunno. I didn’t really like her,” Mike says. “She wasn’t that interesting. She was renting out some sappy movie and asked me if I wanted to watch it with her. I hate those movies.”

It seems like too good of an answer, too simple, too rehearsed, and Will desperately tries to remember if there was anything else wrong with the girl, some sort of problem with her that got Mike to refuse. 

“Girls don’t have to have good taste in movies!” Lucas cries. “They’re not us.”

Mike shrugs again. “Not my problem."

“It becomes your problem when you reject the hottest girl that’s ever walked into the action section of the video store!”

Dustin sighs a long sigh, patting Mike on the shoulder like he’s a helpless case. “Praying for you, man,” he says, shaking his head.

“Can we go watch the movie, now?” Mike asks, shaking out of his grasp and crossing his arms impatiently. “I wasn’t looking for a girlfriend anyway.”

September 1987

Mike drops his backpack down by the entrance, kicking off his shoes and running up the staircase. Will follows him, laughing as he catches up to Mike and pulls him back by his arm, nearly causing him to fall off the stairs.

“You idiot,” Mike huffs as he opens his door, and practically shoves Will inside. He grins and starts kissing him, shutting his door closed with a kick. “I’ve wanted to kiss you all day,” he gasps.

They tumble into Mike’s bed, which still sports their untidy sheets from that morning. He never bothers to fold them, claiming that there’s no point when he’ll just be back in bed later that day, especially with how often they’re doing this.

Eventually they break, tired, and Will lays down on the bed to look up at the ceiling, studying the pattern of the dried streaks of paint.

Mike leans over him, tracing the edge of his lips with his thumb. “What are you thinking about?”

“Homecoming,” Will says softly.

Tickets had gone on sale today, so the whole school was sort of in a frenzy, especially since they were in junior year now and their class could receive more funding to put on their dances.

Dustin hadn’t been too phased by it, adopting more of Eddie’s rebellious nature every day. He’s called it a stupid social scheme to stop everyone from thinking about what was actually important, like science.

But Lucas had been all about it, starting to pray mid-lunch that Max would wake up in time so that he could drag her with him. If she doesn’t, he’d said, I’ll just wear a suit and do homecoming in the hospital.

Which is actually sort of sweet, Will thinks.

“What about it?” Mike laughs.

“I don’t really want to go,” Will murmurs, though he’s barely gone to any school dances and wouldn’t know if they were fun or not.

Mike shakes his head. “Me neither. Do you want to stay here and watch Star Wars?” he asks. “I’m sure Jonathan would let us borrow some of his weed, too.”

It sounds good, perfect to Will, actually. A little too good. And then he wonders if Mike really doesn’t want to go, or if he just doesn’t have anyone to go with. He’d always seemed to enjoy it when it was El with him, the few dances they’d had time for before California.

“Mike, why did you reject that girl from the video store?”

“What, over the summer?” Mike frowns.

“Yeah.”

“I didn't really like her,” he answers, the crease between his eyebrows deepening. 

“Oh. Okay.”

“I told you guys. She had no interests or anything.” He leans down again, looking down into Will’s eyes curiously before kissing him. 

They lay in Mike’s bed for a while, laughing and talking about other things that had happened that day, and then kissing some more.

Suddenly, Will thinks a very disturbing thought. He tries to shove it down, push it away somewhere, but his brain rejects it, sending the words bubbling up his throat.

“Mike,” he says, between kisses. 

Mike hums, tracing the line of his jaw and deepening the kiss.

Will gasps away, pushing him up so that Mike leans on his forearms, looking down Will. “Mike, you didn’t turn her down because of me, right?”

Mike frowns. “I mean—”

“We don’t have to keep doing this, you don’t have to keep showing me if it’s gonna get between you and—I don’t know, getting a girlfriend or something if that’s what you—”

“Showing you?”

Will purses his lips. “I…know you felt bad because I said I haven’t kissed anyone before, but…” he trails off, looking anywhere but Mike, who’s searching his face intently. “I just don’t want this to get in the way of something you want,” he whispers.

Mike sits up, and Will can breathe again. He looks so confused, the crease between his eyebrows deeper than Will has ever seen it. Mike brings his knees up, wrapping his hands around them. “It’s not getting in the way! I really wasn’t interested in her, Will, I promise,” he says softly.

Will sits up, too, one hand leaning on the bed. “If you’re sure,” he murmurs, and honestly, he should’ve just kept quiet, controlled himself better, never let this conversation happen in the first place. They weren’t supposed to talk about their…situation. It had been decided. And then Will had to go and mess it all up, because it’s awkward now, and they’re avoiding each other’s gazes. 

“Yeah, I am sure,” Mike insists, and then bites his lip, hesitating. After a moment, he takes a deep breath. “I’m not…showing you. How to kiss, or anything. I didn’t do it because I felt bad.” 

Will’s heart leaps in his throat, and maybe, maybe—

“It’s just for fun. Promise,” Mike says, but his gaze still isn’t on Will.

“Fun?” Will asks, the word tasting sour in his mouth.

“Yeah. It doesn’t have to mean anything, okay?” Mike whispers, almost pleads, a hopeful shimmer in his eyes. 

And Will could say yes, could so easily say yes and kiss him again, kiss him whenever he wants. They could do this forever, be like this forever, never once having to worry about thinking through it. But something prickles in his chest, and he knows he’s already decided.

Will shakes his head, avoiding Mike’s eyes. The guilt swells up inside him, the guilt of not telling him, not being honest, not stopping himself, and he has to close his eyes to steady himself.

“Will?” Mike asks, voice as soft as ever.

Will breathes out, one long, shaky, sigh, and in his heart, he tries to part from what they have now, silently saying goodbye to Mike’s laugh, his smile, his attention. And then he opens his eyes. “Mike, I’m not—” He takes a deep breath, trying to calm his racing heartbeat. “I’m—I don’t like girls,” he forces out.

Mike's eyes go wide, wider than Will’s ever seen them, and his jaw drops slightly. 

Will feels the sweat beginning to form on his hands, the room starts to spin, and oh God, he's doing this all wrong, isn’t he? He shouldn’t have said anything, because now Mike doesn’t know how to respond, doesn’t know what to think of him anymore. He must be disgusted, must hate him— 

“I’ve wanted to tell you for so long, I promise, I just couldn’t find the right time,” Will rushes to explain. “I know it was wrong, and I’m so, so sorry for lying to you this whole time. For tricking you,” he breathes, voice cracking slightly. “It—it has to mean something, because of that, and—” he swallows “—I can’t keep pretending that it doesn’t. It’s unfair to you.”

Mike stares, the hands around his knees going slack, his body very still. Slowly, he unravels his legs, leaning off the wall. “Will,” he starts, voice soft.

But Will can’t take it, can’t take hearing whatever’s about to come out of his mouth. “Don’t say anything,” Will begs him. “Please. I promise not to tell anyone about us,” he chokes out.

And then he pushes off the bed, crossing the room in three long strides and shutting the door behind him right as the tears start streaming out.

“Will, wait—!” Mike’s voice comes through the door. 

But he’s already flying down the stairs, down both the stairs, back to where he was supposed to be in the first place.

October 1987

Will lies awake in the basement, listening to the Wheelers' old pipe groan as someone turns off the sink from the floor above.

And then the dripping starts. 

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

He wonders if the Wheelers know that there’s a pipe leaking in their basement. He wonders if they know he’s used five towels so far to soak it up, soak up the puddle that’s been forming in the back corner of the basement.

He’s been listening to the pipe for three weeks now, memorizing the pattern of the water hitting the floor. Maybe he could become a plumber, when he grows up.

He’s been listening to the pipe for three weeks, because now he sleeps in the basement on the couch next to Jonathan. 

He spends all his time in the basement, when he doesn’t have to go to school.

He wishes he could go home.

Where is that, exactly?

Drip.

The door to the basement opens, and light fills the dark space momentarily as Jonathan comes down the stairs.

He lies down on the couch, pulling the blanket over him and adjusting himself on the springy pillows.

Jonathan takes a long breath, then. “Mike was up there,” he says. “He asked me if you were still sleeping down here.”

Will doesn’t say anything.

“I told him yes,” Jonathan continues. “But, Will—”

“I don’t want to talk to him,” Will cuts him off.

Jonathan lets out a long sigh, rolling over on the couch to look across the table at him. “I know I said I wouldn’t bother you about it, but it’s been a few weeks, and I really think you should talk to him,” he murmurs.

Will stays on his back, staring at the network of pipes on the ceiling. “Do you not want me to sleep here?” 

“No, Will, that’s not—I don’t mind if you’re here, this was supposed to be your room too.” 

“Yeah,” Will agrees, and then says nothing more.

Because really, there isn’t anything to say. 

Drip.

He wonders if Mike has gone to bed, or if he’s still in the kitchen, solving another crossword. He’d stopped doing that when they’d been sleeping in the same bed. He’d always fallen asleep immediately.

(Mike solves crosswords when there’s something he can’t fix in the real world. It makes sense, Will’s unfixable.)

Drip.

He wonders if Mike has been fighting with his father. Things have grown so tense in the Wheeler household, Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler are officially sick of having the Byers over. Their visit was never supposed to extend a few months.

Clearly, the Wheeler household has an affinity for things that aren't supposed to happen. The Byers visiting, this leaking pipe in the basement, Mike’s hands trailing his hips as his mouth—

Drip.

“Sometimes, with Nancy…” Jonathan trails off, sighing into the darkness. “I don’t always know how to tell her how I feel. It was like that when we were in California, I didn’t talk to her enough, and I…I don’t know. I could have lost her. I still feel that way when things build up and get stressful.”

Will doesn’t know where this is going. He doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything.

Jonathan sighs. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that talking does help. I’m like you, I—it’s difficult for me to get the words from my brain to my mouth in one piece, without something I don’t mean to say tumbling out. But the more I hoard it up in there,” he smiles, tapping at his head, “the harder it gets to keep it in.”

“But Mike’s not Nancy,” Will interjects, because it’s not the same thing, not even at all, because Nancy and Jonathan have a relationship that hinges on talking to each other, communicating, and it’s expected. No one expects anything from Will and Mike’s relationship. They have no relationship. They’re friends.

“Well, I used her as an example because she’s his sister, Will, not because—” Jonathan breaks off, grinning slightly and shaking his head. “I think that they would appreciate the same type of communication. They’re very…active,” he decides. 

Active. Active, like when Mike chases him on his bike in the heat of the summer. Active, like when Mike runs in the snow, ready to fling a fistful at him. Active, like when Mike pushes him into the bed, eyes smiling as he—

Drip.

And Will does see his point, at least about the Wheelers, because Mike's been annoyingly…difficult about the situation.

He’d started with knocking three times on the door to the basement. After Will had left his bedroom, he’d knocked on the basement door that first night. Then he’d started knocking in the morning, when Will was just waking up.

But Will never answered, so Mike never came in.

Then he’d started the staring. Mike stares at him constantly, now, every single meal, sitting across from him and just looking. He watches as Will pours cereal into his bowl of milk, watches as he passes Jonathan a plate of potatoes, watches as he gets up to pour himself a cup of water. And because Mike is always watching, and Will doesn’t want to meet his eye, he cannot look at him.

This has been the longest time Will has gone without looking at Mike.

His newest method of trying to get Will’s attention has been simply waiting. He waits for him on the front porch before he leaves for school, waits for him after school on the steps outside, waits for him outside the door to the basement so they can come to the dinner table together.

He never says anything when Will joins him, just waits. This one doesn’t so much feel like a strategy, a carefully-laid out trap. It feels like it’s just a habit he cannot break, like waiting for Will is a responsibility that surpasses any way he feels towards him.

They walk in silence, the distance between them larger than it ever has been before.

But Mike never pushes. Never pries. Never presses.

He still hasn’t told anyone, either. He acts totally normal around their friends, putting on a smile and addressing Will like nothing has changed.

And Will reciprocates, if only then, because he knows it would only get worse if other people knew about it, too. If it wasn’t just a shameful line of guilt stretching between the two of them, Mike to Will, Will to Mike.

Will doesn’t know what Mike has to say. Will doesn’t know if Mike has anything to say, any reaction at all, but he’s weak, he’s been weak, and it feels safer never to try and find out.

So Will is being a coward, hiding in the basement, avoiding Mike at all costs. 

If by some miracle he doesn’t mind Will being…abnormal, he will mind the lying, or the ignorance, or something else. There is nothing satisfactory about this situation. Nothing at all.

“Besides, that skill is useful to have in any case, not only in…” Jonathan says, and honestly Will had forgotten that he was there. 

When he registers his words, the heat rises in his chest, making its way to his neck, his face, because for Jonathan to insinuate that they—

“I don’t know, I just,” Jonathan huffs. “Even if you guys are just friends, I think that you have something stronger than that, a deeper connection than most people,” he says softly. “You’ve both been like that since you were really little.”

Drip.

Drip.

He wonders if the pipe in the basement had always been broken, or if it's just never been quiet enough for him to hear it. 

November 3, 1987

They run outside during lunchtime after Robin’s announcement on the Squawk, heading towards the woods behind school. Mike drops the map on the old picnic table, laying it flat and unraveling it.

He pulls a little drawstring bag out of his pocket, the blue velvety one that has all of their D&D characters inside. Mike keeps it on him all the time, claiming it helps him write their campaigns better if he can visualize the characters. 

“We’re going to take our usual spots, Lucas,” Mike says and turns to him, then plants their miniature characters on the spot labeled church. 

Lucas nods, excited like he usually is at the prospect of action, though he tries to hide it by keeping his mouth in a straight line.

Mike turns to Dustin next, showing him the miniature version of the van and the military truck moving together along the map. “You and Steve will follow him while he’s in the Upside Down. Remember to keep the telemetry signal between—”

“Negative sixty and negative seventy dB. Easy-peasy. I know, Mike.”

“Okay,” Mike nods. Him and Nancy have sort of assumed the leader positions of both their teams, Mike organizing the four of them, Nancy taking care of the older group. 

They go through the same procedure every time: same map, same trucks, same system. But Mike and Nancy never let up, never let them forget any detail of the plan. Wheelers worry, it’s a fact Will knows well. Wheelers also strategize. 

“Hopper’s going to be investigating sector G1 today. He’ll have two hours to look for Vecna, starting right after the military drops him off. Make sense?”

Lucas and Will nod, but Dustin looks apprehensive, studying the map carefully. “Isn’t G1, like…really vacant?” he asks. “It’s just got that Big Buy. What are the chances Vecna’s shopping for Lucky Charms?”

Mike shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. We’ve got to stick to the original plan. Nothing else has worked so far. It’s the only thing we can do right now, unless you want to just sit around and wait for him to attack.”

Will watches him, the way he stands tall, soft features molded into a hard expression. He’s so good at this, Will thinks, and then a newer, more depressing thought comes in: you can’t do anything about it anymore, wise guy. No more kissing for you. You’ve made sure to ruin that, all right.

“We’ve got to go about this methodically,” Mike continues. “That’s the only way we’ll know for sure if Vecna’s hiding in there or not.” He looks around at the three of them, taking in their expressions. “We can’t stop looking!” he insists. “Don’t you guys understand? Even if it takes us a hundred more of these missions to find him, we will find him.” The three of them nod along with him. “We can’t stop until we’re sure that his rotting, wrinkled corpse is in our hands and that he’s dead, and gone, for good.”

Mike puts his hand in the middle then. “Everyone in?”

Lucas is the first to nod, putting his hand on top of Mike’s and then Will can, too, because he usually would have been the first but that would require touching Mike’s hand, and...well.

The three of them turn to look at Dustin, who still wears a frown on his face. He sighs, then lifts his hand and slaps in on top of theirs. “I just wish I could be the one to kill him. For Eddie,” he murmurs, and Mike pats his back with his free hand. 

“Kill Vecna!” They shout together, and then lift their hands in the air while letting out small cheers. Lucas tackles Mike in a hug, which Dustin joins after a moment. Mike laughs, ruffling his hair.

And not once does Mike look at Will, like, really look at him.

Though Will can’t exactly be upset with that, given he’s the one who started the whole mess anyway, the one who ruined the beautiful arrangement they’d had.

They still aren’t talking. There’s been five crawls, two full months of school, and multiple friend group hangouts since Will..came out to Mike, and throughout it all they’ve barely said a word to each other. Mike had stopped trying to reach out sometime around mid-October, having finally taken Will’s silence as a sign that he truly didn’t want to talk about it. 

But Maybe Will should’ve just mustered up the courage, tried to talk to him, tried to have been less of a coward, and then maybe—

Something starts prickling at the back of his neck, something familiar. Will feels his heart drop, his breath hitching in his throat. He hasn’t felt this in so long, hasn't felt him in—

Will’s vision blurs, the world around him going dizzy, and even weirder, the sky is spinning, which usually doesn’t happen. He looks up, against his Will, against every fiber of his being, but he’s stuck in that position, watching the sky spin uncontrollably. The clouds swirl, blue and white mixing together to make this strange milkshake-y texture, and he swears he hears a group of children laughing, but there’d been no one around them, no children, and honestly Will kind of feels like he’s gonna throw—

He feels his body falling, down, down, and then he crashes against the trunk of a big tree, hands coming out to catch himself. Will leans against it, gasping, trying desperately to steady himself from whatever—

“Will! Will, hey, are you okay?”

And then Mike’s hand is on his shoulder, Will knows, he would know his touch anywhere, and he can finally draw in that first breath.

He nods, just barely. “Yeah,” he manages, swallowing air in with huge gulps. “Yeah, it’s okay, I’m fine.”

Mike doesn't move his hand, doesn’t take it away, and Will is anchored to it, feels himself grounded by the grasp of fingertips on his shoulder. He’s holding him, like he used to, never once wavering, never once showing any signs of disgust towards Will, towards his confession. Mike doesn’t seem to think he’s repulsive at all, actually.

“Was it him? Was it Vecna?” Mike breathes. 

“I don’t know,” Will lies. Yes, yes, ye— “I just had this—this crazy feeling, and then,” he swallows, “the sky started spinning, and I don’t—maybe it’s nothing?” he finishes weakly, turning around and resting on the tree, and the place where Mike’s hand had been a second ago feels cold. Frozen, like the Upside Down. 

Lucas frowns, a look of concern crossing his features. “Listen, man, I sometimes get weird feelings before crawls, too, but…the sky doesn’t start spinning for me.” He turns to look at Mike and Dustin. “Does it spin for you guys?”

Mike and Dustin shake their heads, obviously, obviously, because they don’t know what having Vecna inside them is like, thank God—

“Maybe he’s close,” Mike offers, and he’s looking directly at Will, talking directly to Will. “Maybe this means we’ll get him tonight.”

Will holds his gaze, and he’s not sure about a lot of things anymore, but he is sure that they’re meant to be in the same place, always, to take care of each other.

He nods, and once the school bell rings and they start heading back inside, he swears he feels Mike’s eyes flick to him every now and then, watching.

Later, November 3, 1987

Will walks through the empty hallways of the school, running his hands on the lockers jutting out against the wall.

He’d been called to the office right as last period ended, his name announced on the intercom as kids had filed into the hallway, excitedly chattering about their plans that night.

Lucas is waiting outside for him, having asked Will to join him in visiting Max after school. He plans on bringing his textbooks, reading her his English homework so that she doesn’t fall behind. It’s like learning by putting textbooks under your pillow while you sleep, he’d informed them.

Okay, why not.

The secretary waves him in when he knocks on the doorframe to the office. 

“Will Byers?” she asks.

He nods, stepping in and approaching her desk.

She looks through her files, muttering something about how there’s too many damn kids at this school.

Eventually she finds what she’s looking for, a small yellow envelope, and squints at it through her glasses.

“Yep! This is the one,” she says, handing him the letter. “It was delivered to your previous address, but it must have gotten lost in the mail until you’d moved back here, so when they figured out no one lived at the California house anymore, they sent it to the school…”

She keeps talking, yammering on about the mail system, but Will doesn't hear her.

Will is staring at the letter in his hands, reading the sender address over and over again.

Mike Wheeler

13 Maple Street

Hawkins, Indiana

46299

Mike had sent him a letter.

Mike had sent him a letter while he was in California.

While Will was in California, sulking over the fact that Mike wasn’t sending him any letters.

He mutters a quick thanks to the secretary, and bursts out into the hallway, leaning back against the lockers.

Will had been so sure that Mike hadn’t tried to make any contact with him. He’s been so sure that he wasn’t interested in him that whole time, and they’d gotten closer now, so much closer, and then farther apart, and all this time Mike had written him a letter and Will hadn’t read it.

Because he didn’t think Mike had ever sent one.

But then, hadn’t Mike, last year—

I was going to send you more letters, Mike had admitted, when Will slept in his bed for the first time.

And then later, Will, did you read—

Will tears open the letter, rushing to unfold the paper.

September 17, 1985

Dear Will,  

How’s California? We just started school over here. 

Mom said I can come visit for spring break, cause I’ve been begging her every day and she finally let up. I hope it’ll be fun. Think of some things to show me over there.

Is there anybody that plays D&D at your new school? I don’t know much about California, but from what Max has described they sound like they’d be too cool to have that kinda stuff over there. I hope there is, though.

Is El okay? I should probably be asking her this rather than writing to you, but it seems like it’s just gotten more difficult for me to say what I actually mean. I’m worried for her, she didn’t look great when you guys left, and now she barely answers the phone anymore. Did she say something about me? Is she mad I’m not reaching out more?

And I guess I’ve also just been…not the best at talking to her, recently. I know I’m not being a good boyfriend, but I really can’t, and not because I’m trying to be a jerk, or anything. But for some reason, it always feels like I have to try with her, like I have to force myself to pick up the phone and call her.

I don’t really know why I’m writing any of this, I guess I just wanted to tell you. Not over the phone or something, otherwise I’d probably chicken out.

It’s not that I don’t love her—I do, I love her a lot. I just don’t really think I love her the same way Lucas loves Max, for example. Or Nancy and Jonathan. They’re always holding hands and they kiss a lot, and for some reason I just can’t seem to imagine myself doing that with El anymore? Lucas says it’s the absence, because apparently he’s an expert on it now that Max has dumped him. I didn’t want to tell him that I think it’s something bigger than that. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

When I really think about it, I don’t know if El is the problem at all. I think it has more to do with her being a girl. a girl. a girl.

I know that’s weird, so feel free to ignore this part if it grosses you out or anything. I guess I just thought you’d understand what I was trying to say. I never wanted to assume, but You always know how I’m feeling, so I thought I’d give it a shot.

I don’t know if I really understand the whole being with a girl thing. I’ve never really been into it like other people. It was exciting when I started dating El, cause we were both new to the whole thing and really just made out and went to the movies or arcade together. But the kissing got boring after a while, and everything else we did together I could’ve done with one of my friends. With you. I don’t know, maybe I just did the whole relationship thing wrong.

Please don’t tell El about this. I’m not going to dump her or anything, definitely not now that she’s lost Hopper and everything. Maybe I’ll bring it up with her when I come to visit. I don’t mind dating her. I don’t mind spending time with her. I’m just not sure if it’s like that for her.

Please don’t tell anyone else, either.

Other than that, school has been good. We’ve joined the Hellfire, at least Dustin and I have. This guy Eddie is running the campaign. He’s really cool, he wears a lot of chains and his hair is long. He’s like those guys we used to see on TV, the ones we said we wanted to be when we grew up. He also never really talks about girls, which is nice.

I wish you were here to be a part of it, he’d love you.

Lucas is getting pizza with the basketball team right now, and Dustin is using the science room to build something he’s been designing. I’m writing to you from my room, because I wanted to, but also because I’m bored, and nothing has been fun around here.

Everyone’s so busy with their own things, and even when they’re not, it just doesn’t feel like it used to, even when we all hang out together.

All I want to do is watch Star Wars, or write a new scenario that Eddie will be impressed with, or go buy push pops from the corner store and walk around. But those are all things I used to do with you, and now you’re not here.

Lucas and Dustin don’t get it. They think I just need to join another club, or something. 

They’re not you. Maybe that's why Maybe that’s why it’s so easy for me to sit down and write you this letter when I can't even call my own girlfr

I feel like I don’t know who I am without you. I don’t want to I suppose I should try and figure it out. 

Let me know if you have any tips over there in California. 

I miss when it was warm and you were still here. I miss talking to you. 

Write back soon.

From, 

Sincerely, 

Love, 

Mike

Will drops his head against the locker, breathing hard.

What?

Mike had sent this letter, and he’d never gotten it back, assuming it’d gotten to the correct address in California.

It had been sent, and Mike had assumed Will read it.

He’d assumed Will had known about it when he was in California, when they’d fought Vecna, the whole time they’d been living together. The whole time he’d been saying all that stuff to Will, saying his hair looked good, that he’d want to get married to him, the hand holding, the kissing—

Oh God, the kissing.

He’d been kissing Will for months on the assumption that he’d known he was—

On the assumption that he’d read the letter, that he’d known Mike had confessed that he didn’t think he could ever be with a girl. On the assumption that Will had figured out, by reading the letter, that Mike wasn’t into girls at all. 

He’d thought Will knew, that he knew and that it didn’t bother him, if they were still friends. He’d thought Will knew when he kissed him, that he knew and didn’t pull away, that he knew and kissed him back. And because of that, because he’d thought WIll had read his letter, he probably assumed that Will knew it meant…something to him, something more than just—

Obviously not, Mike had responded to him that one night, when Will had confessed he thought he was coming to California just for El.

I don’t know if I’ll get to do that again, Mike had admitted, when he was asking Will if he’d ever kissed anyone on his birthday.

I’m not interested in her, Mike had said when Will had asked him why he’d rejected that girl at the video store.

Mike had not only written him this letter, but sent it, so many months ago, expecting a reply.

But Mike had never gotten a response, never got back a letter with Will’s advice he so plainly asked for. The letter had been sent, for months, and he never heard back. Not when Will was in California, not over spring break, not once they started living together, not once they started sleeping together, not once they—

Not even when they’d kissed each other. 

After months of thinking Will must have been disgusted with him for the letter, he’d gotten close to him again, had found some insane courage in himself to just kiss him anyway, to see what would happen, not knowing what Will thought of his confession.

We don’t have to tell anyone, it doesn’t have to mean anything, Mike had said, over and over again. 

Will had thought, all this time, that Mike was ashamed of it, of the kissing, that he wanted to hide it. But maybe Mike was thinking of Will, the Will he knew never responded to his letter. The Will he thought had read the letter and ignored it, seeing something disgusting in his words and shoving it away.

The Will who wouldn’t want to tell anyone. 

Mike had been kissing Will, and Will had been kissing him back, and Mike thought all this time that Will knew about his confession, that he was kissing him back despite knowing that Mike didn’t like girls. 

And he had no way of knowing that Will felt the same, that Will knew exactly what feeling he was talking about in his letter, because he didn’t write back.

Maybe he’d been thinking that—

Maybe he’d written the letter not just as a confession of his subsiding feelings for El, but also as something else, something—

Maybe, if Mike wasn’t into girls, and had broken up with El, and had been kissing Will for months without any sign of regret, just maybe, he also—

“Will!” Lucas’s voice sounds from the end of the hallway. He’s poked his head in through the main doors, an impatient look on his face. “Come on, visiting hours are over soon!”

Will shoves the letter in his pocket, running down the hallway to meet Lucas.

His body thrums, mind racing, and he can’t get Mike’s words out of his head, the words he was supposed to read all those months ago. The words that could have saved them so much time.

But maybe he can still save something. Maybe he can get them to the place they used to be, if nothing else.

Maybe he can get them somewhere further.

He just needs to show Mike the letter.

(After tonight, after the crawl, he will.)

Even later, November 3, 1987

Will shuts the door to Max’s room quietly, glancing back at Lucas to find him holding Max’s hand tightly.

He sends up a prayer, to whoever’s up there, that if they chose anyone to save, any one of them, to choose Max. There are very few people in this world, Will knows, that love someone as much as Lucas loves Max. 

A nurse passes by him on his way to the vending machine, walking down the hallway with her cart of refills. It’s Robin’s friend, Will realized, the red-haired one that was at Mike’s party, but he doesn’t have enough time to wave to her before she turns the corner.

He walks up to the machine as he reaches the end of the hallway, putting in enough money for a coke. Lucas hadn’t wanted anything, and Will was really just trying to give them a moment alone, so he takes the longer way back to Max’s room.

It’s a quieter section of the hospital, the one where they mainly keep the older patients. A few other nurses walk by, checking in on the rooms as they pass. 

One of the room doors is cracked open, and Will gets closer to it, reaching over to close it and save the nurses some time, but he stops abruptly when he looks inside.

Robin is there, for some reason, Will hears her laugh before he spots her short hair. She’s talking to that girl, her friend, whispering something to her.

The red-haired girl giggles, arms coming up to wrap around her neck. And sure, Will’s no expert on girls’ friendships with each other, but he’s pretty sure that—

Robin leans down and kisses her, then, grinning as she reaches under the girl’s jaw to tilt her head up.

Will feels the air leave his lungs, his hand coming up to grip the doorframe, to steady himself. 

A girl kissing another girl?

Robin kissing another girl?

Like…as a joke, or?

The girl giggles again, breaking their kiss, leaning their foreheads together. They whisper something to each other, something that makes both of them smile, and then the girl props herself up on the sink so that she’s as tall as Robin and can kiss her deeper.

So no, not a joke.

And then it hits him, that moment when they’d visited the Squawk for the first time, and he’d been envious of Robin and Steve’s relationship, how they’d teased each other without seeming to worry of anything romantic happening between them, of people assuming. How he’d chalked it up to them just being older, more mature, but—

But maybe that’s not what it had been at all.

And if so, that meant Robin was…like him, and Steve didn’t care.

God, he’d been so blind, not seeing someone that was so similar to himself, someone right in front of his eyes. He’d been so blind, just like—

Just like he’d been with Mike.

The girl has her hands on Robin’s face, now, her hair, pulling on it and angling their heads together.

Will feels his hands slacken, and then the coke drops onto the floor, liquid fizzing out from the top.

Robin looks up in alarm, trying to see who’s at the door, and Will immediately turns tail, running back down the hallway.

He doesn’t stop until he reaches Max’s room, out of breath, praying that Robin didn’t see him, because he knows that the only thing worse than being gay is being, well, caught for it.

November 4, 1987

Things end up getting way more complicated than they initially planned for. 

The Wheelers' house is attacked that night during the crawl, a demogorgon breaking in and taking Holly. It had badly injured Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler, too, sending them both to the hospital for immediate surgery. Will doesn’t know how they are now, doesn’t know if they’re okay, but he does remember the look on Mike’s face when he’d come back from the hospital. 

It had been normal. Perfectly normal. 

So Will knows that means he’s currently breaking down inside, feeling a hundred times the guilt of a normal person, and trying desperately to keep it together. For Nancy, for the rest of them.

He wants so badly to go to him, to do something, to say something that will help him. But they’ve got another plan and the works, and everything's moving so fast, and they don’t have time.

Will is jogging through the hospital hallways with Robin, now, on a mission to get enough sleeping pills to knock the whole Turnbow family out. 

“Don’t worry, she’s not, like, my real granny,” she explains to Will, referring to the name she’d given the receptionist to get them in. “She’s just the name of some lady in this ward. I pretend I’m her granddaughter so that I can visit Vicky.”

It was still so jarring for Will to hear her talk about it, to hear anyone talk about a relationship, that kind of relationship, like it was normal. 

Robin had seen him yesterday in the hospital, despite his best efforts to stay hidden. She’d brought it up on their excursion through the woods this morning, hinting at the fact that it would be best if he kept it to himself.

He’d never tell anyone, never even think about it, because he knows what it’s like to have to keep a secret. He’s kept one before, a rather large one , actually. But she doesn’t know that. 

There’s just so many things Will wants to ask her, like if anyone else knows, if Steve is actually supportive of her like Will thinks he is, if her parents have ever suspected anything, and how did she manage to find another girl who was so willing to jump into a secret relationship with her, anyway? Was it really that easy?

Robin grabs his jacket, down, pulling him around the corner forcefully. “Shit, shit, shit,” she swears. “We have to get down,” she breathes, and pulls Will’s jacket again to make him crouch on the ground next to her. 

She pulls a small mirror out of her pocket, angling it so that she can see what’s around the corner of the hallway. “It’s Vicky,” she murmurs. “Wow, she talks so much, it’s just…” a small sigh escapes her lips.

Will feels his heart hammering in his chest, absolutely nothing to do with the stakes of their situation. Robin just talks so freely about her, so easily, and it almost reminds him of—

Vicky must be getting closer, now, because Robin is up again, dragging him down the hallway and ducking behind one side of the double doors. “I promised Vicky I would take her to Enzo’s tonight, and now I obviously can’t, and I’m going to have to ditch her again, for reasons that she can’t know, and she’s going to start fighting with me, and our plan will fail,” she rushes to say, and then lets out a long breath. 

Will bites his lip, unable to stop the smile spreading over his face, despite the stress Robin is under. “Okay,” he breathes.

Robin nods, and then instructs him to stay low and run after her. They sneak into a close-by room, presumably the one Robin’s fake granny sleeps in.

She leans her head on the door once they shut it, 

And Will has always been good at hiding his emotions, of carefully picking out what to say, but now there’s a person next to him who’s like him, who’s—

“You know, you could always just kiss her again,” he teases.

“God, I knew it was you and your stupid haircut I saw in the hospital!” she laughs.

Will smiles, sheepishly. “Yeah, it’s kind of recogniza—”

Robin turns to look at him, then. “Did I look like I knew what I was doing, at least?”

“I mean,” Will grins, thinking of the way Vicky had wrapped her arms around her. “Yeah, at least to me, it did.”

“I guess that’s something,” Robin huffs out a laugh, shaking her head slightly.

And then Will feels the questions tumbling out of him, and he can’t stop himself, can’t contain them any longer. “So, with Vicky, when you—met her, you know, how did you know she wanted to—”

“Make out?” Robin asks, a small smirk on her face. 

No. No, we’ve already done that, we’ve been doing that, he wants to say. We’ve been doing that for months, and I’ve also just found out that Mike is probably…like me. But what does it mean, what does it mean, what does it—

“To date,” he says instead, because his face is beyond flushed, now, and also because he really, really wants to know.

“Oh,” Robin murmurs, a small smile on her face. She looks at Will, scanning his face for a second before replying. “I volunteered with her, at the place Dustin goes to sometimes. There were, like, I don’t know. Signals.”

“Signals?”

“Yeah, you know. Like, a brush of the knee, a bump of the elbow, a shared look. It all just kind of…piled up together, like a snowball rolling down the hill, and then eventually it became obvious.”

Will swallows thickly. “How…obvious?” he asks, his voice coming out strained. Is making out obvious? He wants to ask. How about sharing a bed for eighteen months. Does that count? What about—

“It felt like that snowball became an avalanche,” she whispers.

An avalanche. 

What did an avalanche feel like?

Like this, the Mike in his head says, the one from that day by the lake who pulls him into a kiss. 

Holy shit, the Mike in his head says, the one from the Wheeler’s basement who adjusts them on the couch.

You’re my favorite person, the Mike in his head says, the one Will gets all to himself, the one whose softness emerges only once they’re tucked together, under his blankets.

Will knows what it’s like to flirt with Mike, to watch him from across a room, to make out with him in his bed, to be his best friend, and Robin is right, it feels like everything is crashing down on him, has been crashing down on him, like a relentless snowstorm. 

But maybe all those moments were just snowballs, like she had said, and the actual avalanche hadn’t even happened. Frankly, Will cannot imagine a scenario to top it off, a scenario greater in magnitude than everything that has happened between them 

(He can. He can, because now he’s seen Vicky and Robin making out in a hospital room, smiling at each other while planning their date, and he cannot erase it. He cannot let it go.) 

(He can let himself hope.)

A man wheezes from inside the room, and Robin runs towards his bed area. 

Will shakes himself out of his thoughts and runs after her, forgetting about his stupid snowy analogies.

November 5, 1987

Mike kicks a rock as they walk on the grassy path down the hill, his hand swinging in the space that hangs between them, bumping into Will’s every so often.

It’s the most they’ve touched in weeks, and Will feels a spark crackle every time their fingers collide with each other. But the stress from the past few days has made everyone more cooperative, more together, the same as it always does. So now Mike and Will are walking side by side, even though at this point Will has ignored him for so long that Mike really should have given up by now.

“It looks like your mom and Robin are getting along better,” he murmurs, tilting his head to the two of them walking in front.

“Yeah, I guess it must’ve helped that mom scared off that Demo right in front of her,” Will laughs. “It saved her ass.”

Mike looks at him, then, really looks at him, that crease between his eyebrows forming. “So, your mom, when she had the axe in her hand, did she…you said you could see her? Through the Demo’s eyes?”

Will nods. “Yeah. I was close to him that time, more connected. I could feel his anger, that anger I sometimes feel inside me. I could feel that I was in the Demo too, that I was in his mind, because I felt scared when I saw my mom standing there.”

“You wanted to protect her,” Mike nods, and he understands, of course he understands, because it's what he prides himself on most.

“Yeah, I wanted to, but I just couldn’t. It was like watching a horror movie, but there was no way to stop it, no way to turn it off.” Will sighs, his hand swinging and hitting Mike’s again. He’d forgotten how good it felt to talk to him, how in even the most stressful of situations, Mike is the only one he ever wants to talk to.

Mike frowns deeper, stopping suddenly in his tracks. “Are you sure you didn’t?” he asks, staring directly into Will’s eyes. 

“What?” Will breathes.

“It’s just—nothing lines up. I love your mom, really, but…I just don’t think a Demo would stop for her like not. Not even the most rebellious one,” he huffs a laugh.

“So you think—”

“I think you stopped it, yeah,” Mike finishes, grinning lopsidedly. “Is that really so crazy to believe?”

And God, Will wants to tell him about the letter so badly, to tell him he’d read it and that he knows, because Mike is giving him that look again and Will wants nothing more than to pin him up against the nearest tree and kiss him until they can’t breathe.

He wonders how long it will be until this is over, and for once in his life finds himself desperate to win this fight, desperate to keep living, to see what waits for him on the other side. 

He so badly wants it to be Mike.

“But that would mean that I was using Vecna’s powers, controlling the Demo like he controls them,” Will realizes, and he shakes his head, already rejecting the idea. 

“Well, you are kind of like Vecna,” Mike points out, a hint of laughter in his voice letting Will know he doesn’t really mean it.

“You’re saying that I’m evil and hell-bent on destroying the world?”

“Obviously,” Mike teases, and he’s joking, they’re joking with each other again, that’s something they can do. “I just think that maybe you’re like him in terms of powers. He’s a wizard, and so are you.” 

“In D&D, Mike, not in real life,” Will laughs.

Mike just stares at him. 

Will shakes his head again, and he can’t stop grinning, because they’re talking, and he doesn’t care that the idea is ridiculous. “Mike, you don’t actually believe that—”

“I believe a lot of things about you,” Mike says softly. “I think you’re more like a sorcerer, not a wizard, because your powers are innate. You don’t have to use a book of spells to cast magic. You just can.”

“Shut up,” Will scoffs, shoving his shoulder lightly.

Mike smiles, he smiles, looking down at the place where Will had touched him like he can’t believe it.

“I just think we could use a little more magic up here!” he shrugs, hands raised, and starts walking towards the trap door. “And you’re kind of magic,” Mike adds, grinning over his shoulder.

Will shakes his head, laughing, and he chases Mike to the entrance of the tunnel, closing the space between them.