Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter One

Do You Feel The Rain?

Mike squeezes his eyes shut and scrubs his hands over his face. He pauses there, cold water dripping from cold fingers, and releases a heavy breath. After a moment, he dries his neck, face, and hands on his mother’s good towel.

It’s fluffy and pristinely white, embroidered with a sprig of dainty yellow flowers, upholding some falsified image of put-togetherness to their guests. Mike reckons the Byers aren’t observant enough to notice or care about the quality of the hand towels, but his mother insists.

He keeps his eyes glued to the porcelain of the sink and lets the feel of his hair under combing fingers dictate whether he is presentable. He brushes his palms down the front of his striped shirt, two shades of blue, hoping that it’s ordinary looking.

He flexes his hands, his vision a little blurred at the edges. Lately, he’s had this growing feeling that he’s floating in some faraway place, gazing down on his reality like it’s a movie and he’s stuck in the projection booth, where the sound doesn’t come through quite right and the image is too far away to catch the plotline.

A knock at the door and he startles, dropped back into his body once more. He mutters an apology to Mrs Byers as he exits the bathroom, not quite meeting her eyes.

He’s silent during the whirlwind of breakfast, far away again. He doesn’t notice his mother asking for the bacon until Nancy kicks him under the table. He mumbles a sorry while he places his mug down to grab the plate, every eye on him in the new silence.

It’s been eighteen months since the ‘earthquakes’ that ripped through the fabric of their town, and everyone seems to have developed routines around this new existence of theirs, settled in. Mike doesn’t think he’s felt settled since the second he got back from Lenora in the spring. Maybe even before that.

Still, it’s worsening lately, the dissonance. Wake up, go to school, listen to the Squawk broadcast, wait for a crawl. It used to light him up, in the beginning, having a purpose in all of this. Sure, he was only assigned to a watchpoint to make sure Hopper wasn’t gunned down by the military on his way into the Upside Down, but Mike felt useful. The adrenaline rush he got when Hop made it in and out unscathed was incomparable. And his life would get immeasurably easier if they were to find and kill Vecna.

It reflected a need in Mike to be helpful; he knew that. He had never succeeded in it before. Not when Will went missing, not when the Shadow Monster came, or the Mind Flayer, or Vecna. Being there was never enough, would never be enough.

Mike blinks, and everyone around him is standing, shovelling the last forkfuls of scrambled egg into their mouths, gathering plates and silverware into stacks. He looks down at his own plate. There’s a half-slice of toast, so he concludes he must have eaten something before he stands, too.

He feels eyes on him as they bike to school, a careful gaze in the morning light. Will is chatting with Holly after the Squawk broadcast has ended, smiling often and pedalling leisurely, but his attention keeps drifting to Mike. He shivers involuntarily. From the cold. Yes.

When they’re dropping their bikes off in front of the school, Mike feels a finger prod his shoulder. He looks up.

Will says his name like it’s not the first time he’s had to.

Mike feels his own features slacken. “Sorry, what were you saying?”

Will frowns, a knot stitched in his brow. Mike watches the corner of his lips tug downward, and something squeezes his chest at being the cause.

“I just said I’d see you at lunch. Is- Is everything okay?” Will says.

Mike’s eyes flit back up to meet Will’s. A snake of something rotten coils up his spine. He ignores it. “Sorry, yeah. Everything’s good. I’ll see you at lunch, right?”

Slowly, unconvinced, Will nods. “Right.”

Mike gives him a close-lipped smile. “Cool.”

Cool. Right, yeah. Cool.

***

Mike has noticed that things are harder between crawls. That’s when the feeling of incompetence clings to him, scraping at every waking thought and weaselling itself into his dreams. But it’s made easier by his friends, the Party. They understand one another better than anyone else.

Dustin once said it was inter-dimensional beings and the shared experience of near-death that caused it, but Mike knows better. Long before monsters came to Hawkins, they had gravitated towards one another, seeking a solace no one else seemed capable of providing. With them quickly became the only time Mike felt any shred of normal, but now he feels like that’s fading too.

Lucas knocks his knee against Mike’s beneath the cafeteria table. “Earth to Mike? Everything okay, dude?”

Mike’s eyes widen as he meets Lucas’s, and then Dustin’s, and then Will’s. The question written across each of their faces is the same.

“Yeah, no. Sorry. I stayed up way too late, caught up in a comic.”

As Mike says this, he waves a dismissive hand and quirks his lips up in a guilty, unassuming way, like he’s apologising for his self-indulgence, and the fact that it’s affecting the group. He tries to blink his heavy, stinging eyes at a speed that could be considered normal and rubs at them when the task feels impossible. Lucas bumps their shoulders, the casual contact a comfort.

“All good, man. Just don’t make a habit of it.”

Dustin snorts across the table, shaking his head. “You sound like his Mom.”

“That just proves my point,” Lucas says, pointing his plastic fork at Dustin. “Mrs Wheeler is a sensible woman, and therefore,” He circles the fork in emphasis, and turns back to Mike. “He should listen to my advice.”

Dustin rolls his eyes and returns to picking at his lunch, but Mike spots his thinly-veiled amusement. It’s rare enough to get anything out of Dustin these days, so he lets himself laugh.

His smile twitches when he meets Will’s gaze, because Will is not smiling. Will is watching. It feels more like seeing than watching. Mike breaks away to look down at his uneaten lunch, forcing down the queasy feeling in his stomach.

***

Later that evening, Mike is leaning against his headboard when he hears a knock at his door. “Come in!” He yells.

Nancy pops her head in first, like she needs further confirmation before fully entering the room.

She speeds into his bedroom then and marches over to his closet. She has some sort of pink gloss on her lips, and her hair looks… larger than usual. She kicks something out of the way with a heeled foot and closes the closet door, staring expectantly at the wall.

Mike can only blink from his bed. “What are you looking for?”

Nancy spins around, lips parted. “You used to have a mirror there, right? Like a full-length one? I’m not imagining that.”

Mike stares at her blankly. “Um… yeah?”

“Right…” Her hands have found her hips, and her voice takes on its usual exasperation. “So where’s it gone?”

Mike, irritable all of a sudden, asks, “Well, where’s yours?”

A tiny shake of her head, disbelieving. “What- How does that matter right now? Mom put it in the office when she did it up for Joyce.”

“Well, it’s in the basement. My one. It was…” Mike hesitates. “It was reflecting the light into my eyes. From the window.”

Nancy releases a long, slow breath through her nose. “You are… I don’t know what you are, Mike, but that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Mike scrunches his face up while she stares at him, before finally turning on her heel to leave. When she’s gone, he scowls to himself, thinking back on her attitude. What business is it of hers what he decides to do with his bedroom?

Whatever, he thinks, returning to the comic in his hands, trying to make out the words through the ache behind his eyes. Eventually, he leans over the side of the bed, pulls open the drawer and takes two painkillers from the bottle. He swallows them dry.

***

The next morning, he feels better. Like, suspiciously so.

He had fallen asleep at some point, earlier than usual and without changing out of his clothes, but he hadn’t woken up at all during the night. That was a blessing, and such a rare occurrence nowadays that he didn’t even need to snooze his alarm. The most pressing issue was that he was bursting for the bathroom. Really bursting.

He throws on an outfit and detangles his hair with his fingers before rushing out of his bedroom. He tries the handle of the bathroom door. Locked. Enraging.

A call comes from downstairs. “Breakfast!”

And Mike yells back, “Coming!”

He knocks on the bathroom door several times. “Nance, come on!” He waits, huffing a breath. “Let me in or I’m gonna take a whiz on the floor right here!”

The door opens.

Mike winces. “Sorry, Mrs Byers.”

“Whiz away,” she says as she passes him. Nancy exits her room then, too; another witness. She mouths a disappointed ‘wow’.

Mike stares into the empty bathroom. “Shit.”

And then it’s breakfast again, like a time loop. It’s not the worst reality to be stuck in, and he doesn’t hate it by any means. No one is in immediate danger, and there’s no current supernatural threat to their existence. Just a dormant one. One that killed Eddie and Chrissy and countless others, and put Max in a coma and split Hawkins in half, and one that could theoretically re-emerge at any moment.

So, yeah, maybe things could be better, but breakfast at the Wheelers’ is loud and not the place for those kinds of thoughts. Mike limits his thinking to the hot coffee in his hands – more of a habit now than a necessity – and leans into the awareness he feels today, after a good night’s sleep. He feeds his larger-than-normal appetite and complains to his mother about having to collect Holly from school, even though he knows he’ll do it anyway.

Everyone rushes out the door with the same commotion as every other day, and Mike and Will mount their bikes and take off. Somehow, they always manage to be just short of late. Mike has to call back to Holly to get her to hurry up. It feels like a rite of passage to give his sister a bit of a hard time. Nancy had done it with him, and he turned out okay. For the most part, at least.

The trip is accompanied, as usual, by the Squawk’s morning broadcast and the whir of helicopters and military vehicles. They circumvent the MAC-Z and groan when the broadcast cuts off prematurely. Holly squeaks her goodbyes when they pass the elementary school.

Will is quiet when they reach Hawkins High. They stow their bikes by the entrance.

“Are you going by your locker?” Mike asks. “I need to grab my history book.”

Will nods. “Yeah, I’ll come with you,” he mumbles.

“Cool.”

Mike notices the hushed conversations and side glances of his fellow students before he hears Andy. He shares a look with Will, and they speed up to the sound of Lucas’s voice.

“…touch Dustin again, I’ll kick ‘em so hard they’ll pop like water balloons.”

Mike clenches his jaw and covers the last few feet between them. “I say kick away. Stop this meathead from reproducing and further infecting the world with his unique brand of idiocy.”

Andy sniffs, and his head ticks to the side. He seems to realise that he’s outnumbered and turns back to deal the final blow. “Hope you brought a change of clothes, Henderson.” He shoves him against his locker. “No one wants to see that shit.”

As Dustin flips Andy’s departing figure off, Mike notes the ripped collar of his shirt. His Hellfire shirt. Something twists inside him.

“You’ve gotta stop provoking them, man,” he tells him on the way to class.

“Oh, so this is my fault? For what? Wearing a t-shirt?”

Mike would quite like to shake him with more than necessary force.

“You know it’s more than just a t-shirt,” Lucas says.

“Look, I can’t just be like you guys and turn the other cheek while they spread their bullshit about Hellfire – about Eddie.”

Mike feels the comment contort his features, almost insulted. “Eddie never gave a rat’s ass about what those mouth breathers were saying about him, and you know it,” he says. “You know what he would care about, is finding and killing Vecna.”

Dustin spins on him. “Do you seriously think I don’t care about that, Mike? Really?”

Frustrated, Mike tries to reach him again. “I think you’re fighting two battles here and you need to be fighting one.”

Will steps up to Mike’s side, and he’s suddenly weirdly conscious of the exact distance between their shoulders. “Mike’s right, Dustin. What if you get hurt, like seriously hurt?”

“And you’re drawing attention!” Mike’s gaze is drawn to Lucas, who lowers his voice and scans around them. “Remember what Hop said. We need to keep our heads down.”

“Follow the rules,” Will says. “Blend in.”

“Stay focused on our next crawl,” Mike inserts.

“Do you even hear yourselves right now? Blend in? Follow the rules? That’s not what we’ve ever done…”

“Jesus Christ,” Mike inhales. Dustin's really not getting it.

“We stay true to ourselves. We’re supposed to stay true to our friends. We stand up for what’s right, no matter the cost.”

 Lucas looks down. “You’re not listening to us.”

Dustin straightens. “No. You’re not.”

He’s halfway gone before anyone has a response for him.

“Dustin!” Will calls after.

“Unbelievable,” Lucas mutters, as Mike defeatedly says, “Let him go.”

***

It’s late into their lunch break, and the party is out at Eddie’s bench. Mike spills his figurines out onto the open map on the table and grabs his notebook from his backpack. The scrawling letters are shaky and rushed.

North, G1, 10PM, two hours.

He blames the illegibility on the pressure of the situation. They had to decode Robin’s message quickly, and he had to focus on what she was saying and Will’s indications of when he should be writing stuff down. Very overstimulating.

Once the figurines are in place, Mike runs through the plan. Usual observation post. Main to Cornwallis. The border of G1. Simple and efficient.

Dustin complains, something about Vecna and Lucky Charms, and Mike sighs.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says. “We stick to the plan.”

Dustin does this often. Mike knows he wants revenge – for Max, for Eddie – he wants that too. When he thinks about how badly he wants it, his heart tightens, and it feels like the world is about to cave in. But they have to be methodical. If they missed something by skipping a zone? If Vecna was hiding in the one place they didn’t look? When someone makes that decision, mistake or not, it’s their fault if things go to shit. Mike won’t let that happen. So, one zone at a time.

“We don’t stop looking,” he continues. “Even if it takes a hundred more crawls, a thousand.”

He catches Will’s eye as he nods at him. Mike is filled with that purpose again, the one that keeps him going between crawls, that makes all the hardship worth it.

“We don’t stop until we’re goddamn sure that wrinkled, noseless, rotting bastard is dead and gone and never coming back.” He extends his hand between them, palm down. “Everyone in?”

Lucas’s hand meets his with a slap, followed by Will’s softer addition. Mike turns slowly to Dustin, his brows twitching in question.

“I wanna see Vecna’s heart on a platter,” Dustin says, with a vulnerability Mike recognises beneath his hardened stare. “Just wish I could do it myself.” He steps up and adds his hand. “For Eddie.”

Mike’s heart pangs with the thought of Eddie. He shuts it down – fast – and echoes Dustin’s words with the rest of the group, even Will. “For Eddie.”

“On three, ‘kill Vecna’,” Lucas says. “One, two, three…”

“Kill Vecna!”

Lucas starts hooting, hopping up onto the bench and throwing himself at his friends. Mike catches him with a cry, and the laugh splits through him like relief.

“Wanted to see if you guys had my back,” Lucas says through a grin.

“Yeah, I have your back,” Mike says. He gives Lucas a quick shove after they set him down, the weight of the moment settling warm in his chest. Reality sets in quickly afterwards, and he checks his watch. Lunchtime’s almost over. Something like sadness washes over him. Or apprehension.

He looks back up to find Will across the other side of the bench, slumped and holding onto a tree trunk for leverage. “Will!” He yelps without thinking, rushing toward him. How had he not noticed he wasn’t with them?

Mike catches him by the shoulder, schooling his voice into steadiness even though his pulse is pounding rapidly through his ribcage. “Hey, are you okay?”

Will is swaying a little and breathing heavily in and out. Mike can feel each inhale into the hand he has pressed to his back.

“Yeah, it’s okay. It’s okay. I’m fine.”

A pit drives itself into Mike’s stomach. “W-Was it him? Was it Vecna?”

“I don’t know. I just had this crazy feeling, and then the sky was spinning, and…”

He sounds scared. Mike hates it.

Will looks up at the sky in memory and leans back against the tree. “I don’t know,” he repeats. “I guess maybe it’s nothing. I don’t know.”

Mike drops his hand as Will’s breathing begins to steady.

“Maybe I just get nervous sometimes before crawls.” He stays looking at Mike, who’s searching for something reassuring to say and falling flat.

“Yeah, I- I get nervous too,” Lucas says finally. “But the sky doesn’t… spin for me.” He spares a glance at Mike. “It ever spin for you?”

Mike swallows. He doesn’t want to talk about what happens to him between crawls. He looks at Will again. “Maybe he’s close.”

Will's eyes are wider now, another hitch in his breath. Mike holds his gaze and can’t help but reflect Will’s fear.

The bell rings, startling him; startling them both.

“Okay,” Mike says. “Squawk, six o’clock. Not a second later, right?”

“Six o’clock,” Lucas repeats.

Mike touches Will’s shoulder again. “Are you okay?” He asks, one last time.

Will pushes off the tree and nods assertively.

“Are you sure?” He presses, just in case. Will relaxes a little, nods again. Mike touches his shoulder once more as they start to head back, though he’s not sure why. To be sure, he guesses. Just to be sure.

***

Mike frowns and checks the time again. Things are beginning to drift out from his control. Holly had been late earlier, and now it’s Dustin. Late and unreachable.

At least with Holly, she was easy to find, and Mike wasn’t actually delayed in getting to the Squawk, even if he was worried he would be. He thinks back on the conversation with a gnawing feeling. He had gone back on his decision to give his sister a hard time, understanding how it felt to have a parent called in on you by your teacher, even if it was about imaginary friends and not about…

Anyway. He redirects his thoughts. Holly said she was scared. Mike understands scared, so he told her what he thought she’d want to hear. What he wishes someone could have told him when he was a kid.

“Monsters aren’t real, Holly.”

She had shaken her head. “I don’t believe you.”

So he invited her in on his secret. Mike the Brave.

Mike the Brave could fix anything, protect anyone. Holly the Heroic could be the same. He fished the figurine Will had painted out of his bag. A cleric. Divine powers, spells of protection.

He handed the piece to Holly. “She’ll keep you safe, I promise.”

That seemed to relax her, her saucer eyes flashing with glee. Mike feels sadder about it now, his little sister, terrified, and him, ignorant to it. But he has boxed it off, managed it as best he can. She won’t be as worried, and hopefully, she’ll come to him if she’s scared again.

But Dustin… he doesn’t know what to do about Dustin.

His vision centres on three figures in the distance, and he begins to smile. Hopper, Eleven and Mrs Byers. El starts to jog, and he mirrors her. They meet in the middle in an embrace that Mike sighs into as she slides a hand into his hair. He really doesn’t deserve her.

They talk, for a bit, on the roof of the Squawk. Things have been so difficult lately, in all ways, but El is easy. El has always been easy. She accepts things that wouldn’t make sense to other people.

Like when Mike had asked her, in a painful, long-winded way, if they could just be friends, and she said yes in a concise, intelligent way. And when he asked if they could keep it a secret, for a little while, and she said yes to that too. She asked expected questions, like why and for how long, but she also listened to his blubbering attempts at answering, patient in the silence of her bedroom in Hopper’s cabin.

“It’s just… so complicated right now. I don’t, really know… who I am anymore, or who we are anymore, like together. I feel like I’m dragging you down with me or something. And I-I mean,” he paused then, tried to clear the lump from his throat. “I love you, I do. But not the way you… need… me to? Or-,”

A tear slipped down El’s cheek.

“No, I’m sorry. God, I didn’t mean-,” Mike whispered, leaning over his crossed legs to press the tips of his fingers to her knee.

She was smiling, if a little pained, wiping at her under eyes. “I understand, Mike,” she said. “I think- I think I feel the same.”

Mike’s eyes grew wide. “You do?”

El nodded. “I do.”

“You do,” he huffed.

A weight he had been dragging around lifted off him then. In the lightness, he would later find fear and doubt and more questions than he could answer, but back then, he only felt relief. And guilt, for not giving her the truth their new friendship promised her, even if it was shrouded in a million other things that are impossible for Mike to pinpoint, both then and now.

He doesn’t honestly remember exactly what he had said about the why. Something about timing, and questions people would have, and assumptions people would make. He does remember having to describe the social implications of a breakup to El, which he’s pretty sure helped. Because his friends having a rivalry with her friends would be difficult, considering the Venn diagram of their friendships is a circle. And Mike really – he stressed this – really didn’t want to lose her as a friend.

He hyperventilated in his bedroom for hours afterwards. About what, he isn’t certain. The questions, maybe, if someone found out. The implications. Whatever. It’s whatever.

Because El is beside him now. And she’s listening to him, and accepting him, and she hasn’t told anyone they’re not together, even though it’s been almost seven months. And Mike hasn’t had to think about why he isn’t ready to tell people yet because she hasn’t asked him yet. And maybe it’s because they can have talks like these, about things that he would rather die than discuss with anyone else, like the future, like hope. And because no one questions it when they do this in a quiet, secluded place. Mike needs it more than almost everything else in his life right now, this peace.

He feels the same love thrumming through him now that he feels when Lucas jumps onto him just to test his loyalty, or Dustin wakes him up on movie nights by stacking as many items from Mike’s basement on him until he notices. Even when they visit Max and he tells her something disgusting on purpose, something he thinks would make her glare at him and direct a faux gag at El. Something that might wake her up, he had thought to himself before, as futile as that sounds.

When he made that connection, that what he wanted from El was friendship, it had shaken him to his core. Being with El had been a load-bearing pillar in his life for as long as he could remember. He really, really didn’t like thinking about the nature of his feelings for her, whether they were always this way, or whether they had changed at some point. Had he always been this way, or had he changed?

He never has the answers to these questions, or he never lets the thought dwindle long enough to find them. A part of him knows it’s easier because they’re still living it, the lie, and he doesn’t actually have to face it. A big part of him, really.

He has dreams about it, what people would ask. Why didn’t you tell us? Why did you need to lie in the first place? What are the two of you hiding? What are you hiding, Mike?

What are you hiding?

Mike, Mike, Mike.

He looks back from the sunset to El.

“You’re worried,” she says.

He hums. “About the crawl, yeah.”

“Friends don’t lie.”

Mike nods at that. It’s an interaction they have often, where El is implying Mike is hiding something, but not prying, and Mike pretends like he doesn’t know what she’s talking about. He doesn’t deserve her.

“Hey lovebirds!”

They peer over the edge of the roof. Lucas is grinning up at them.

“Chief’s almost ready. Let’s do this. Come on.”

Mike looks at El and buries his guilt. He nods again. She gives him a reassuring smile. They stand.

Another crawl. Mike gets to feel helpful. What could go wrong?

Chapter Two

The Quiet of Some Disaster

Mike’s parents are in the hospital, both of his sisters are in the Upside Down, and his best friend just killed three demogorgons with his mind. Three. With. His. Mind.

Everything that could possibly have gone wrong with the crawl went wrong. Mike remembers watching his parents’ bloodied bodies being carted down the sterile hall, while a nurse tried to explain how exactly they were supposed to stand by and wait. He remembers trying to wait, popping twice the recommended dosage of pain pills to ward off the pounding in his head, and filling up on coffee that only fuelled his internal distress. He remembers coming to the conclusion that all the help he tried to give Holly did jack shit, when the monsters he had convinced her were not real, were, in fact, very much real, and very much out to get her. And what did he do only make it worse?

He remembers all of this, in a distant, far-off way. It’s like he was looking down on himself again, watching the words he chose and the movements he made, but not quite influencing them. Passive, but not indifferent.

He’s not faraway now, though. He’s as present as ever. And yeah, there’s the guilt creeping through every thought, and the terror in his very bones, but there’s hope now, too.

In the Squawk, Lucas, Erica, Robin, Murray, and Mrs Byers all stare at Will with varying degrees of awe and confusion. And Mike…

Mike feels less scared now than he has in months. The fear that’s been following him around has taken a backseat to this. He had been right before they infiltrated the MAC-Z; Will was a sorcerer. Will can save them.

“As far as crazy theories go, I’ve had crazier,” Mike had told him. “And with Eleven in the Upside Down, we really need some magic up here.”

Will’s gaze shifted, shy and smiling. He reached out a slow hand to shove Mike in the chest playfully. Mike, who should have expected it, shouldn’t have stumbled. Shouldn’t have lost all the words in his brain and shouldn’t have walked away. Or… no. He should have- Shouldn’t have-

Shouldn’t be thinking about it right now. At all. He’s not. He wasn’t.

“We get Will close to the hive mind,” Joyce is saying. “Once he is, he jacks back in. Only this time, he doesn’t go after a demo – he goes after Vecna. One blow takes him out, ends him. Ends his army, ends this nightmare. That’s it. What do you think?”

Mike glances around, at Erica and Lucas, then over to Will.

“What- Any ideas, thoughts?” Joyce shrugs with an encouraging smile. “There’s no bad ideas.”

“I mean, I think it’s a- a great plan. I mean, it’s a great plan, right?” Robin inputs, still icing her face after the crash. She shoots a hey and a wave at Murray, who is slouched in his seat.

Murray holds her gaze for a moment, and Mike wonders at what they might be communicating in it. Apprehension? About what? Will is a goddamn powerhouse; what is there to be apprehensive about?

“Yeah, no, yes. It’s a great plan,” Murray says with a tight smile. “It’s just, it’s just-,”

“Will,” Robin cuts in. “You took out that demo with your mind?”

“I mean-,” Will attempts.

“Three, to be exact,” Mike says. He holds up his one, two, three fingers. Three. He watched it happen, the mixture of terror and confusion giving way to something fluttering and warm. Will. His Will. Or- Not like- He means-

“Simultaneously,” Lucas adds. Mike nods his head rapidly.

Murray’s head tilts in consideration. “Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit.”

Mike can hear the smile in Robin’s voice. “A real-life wizard.”

“A sorcerer, actually,” Erica corrects. “His powers are...”

“Innate,” Mike finishes. “Yeah, thank you.”

Will looks pleasantly awkward, he thinks, under all this attention. Rewarding is the word Mike is looking for, the explanation for the warmth in his chest. He knew Will was incredible from the start. He knew it first, and now everyone else can see it too. So yeah, rewarding. But there’s a swirling sense of something else in there, at the thought of it not just being Mike who knows it, so he might have to work on it a little longer, his word choice.

“What does that matter?” Lucas asks. Mike almost rolls his eyes.

“It matters,” he and Erica say in tandem.

“Can we all just focus, please?” Joyce says. Mike leans back onto the couch.

“How about…” Murray begins. “We let your boy get some rest, Joyce. And then we can set him loose on our little interdimensional friend.”

Lucas raises a hand. “And the rest of the boys, please.”

“Don’t forget the girls, dipshit,” Erica shoots back.

Joyce’s eyes flash with contemplation, and she nods at Murray. “Yes. You’re right. We can brainstorm a plan in the meantime, bounce a few ideas off each other.”

The adrenaline in Mike’s system is slowly wearing off. He’s all out of painkillers, and his headache is returning full force. It’s sharper after such an exhausting few days, making his whole face hurt and his eyes sensitive to light.

Robin starts talking logistics and lists their sleeping arrangement options. Mike volunteers for the floor in the basement, after Will is assigned the sofa down there. Someone needs to be with him in case something goes wrong, and Mike is the lightest sleeper, so it’s a given. He wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway if he were upstairs, knowing Will was somewhere else.

He scavenges a few seat cushions and a ratty blanket and slips through the basement entrance, trotting down each step. Will is already lying down, eyes open, staring at the ceiling, when he reaches the bottom. It looks like his mom has tucked him in, which Mike would comment on if he weren’t so exhausted. He drops his array of cushions onto the floor, a respectable distance from the couch. Will sits up onto his elbows and grimaces at the sight.

“How’d you manage to draw the short straw?” he says.

Mike can’t help his smile, even if it’s weak. “I consider myself lucky, sleeping next to a sorcerer.” He arranges the cushions to resemble a bed. He looks up as he settles cross-legged over the blanket. “Twelve-year-old me would be ecstatic.”

Will is silent, staring off behind Mike.

Mike rubs at his nose, squinting his eyes. “Everything okay?”

He blinks and shifts his focus to him. “I really thought- When that demo went after you, I really thought…”

“But you saved me,” Mike answers, voice soft. “Us. You saved us.”

Will’s mouth twitches downward.

“No, seriously, Will, it was amazing. It was… God, I can’t put it into words right now.” He scrubs at his eyes. “I need sleep. And then, I promise, I’ll tell you all about it.”

The quietest responding, “Okay.”

Mike doesn’t spend any time staring at Will’s little smile or his arms or chest or the mess of his hair. He doesn’t. He sits up straighter and pushes to his feet quickly. “I’m gonna grab some water. Do you want water?” He rushes out.

“Um, sure?” Will says. Mike nods.

At the sink, his head reels from the pace he sped over at. He takes two plastic cups and fills them with a shaky grip. After, he lets the cold water run over his wrists and hands, focusing on that sensation over the increasing ebb of pain in his mind. He places his now cold, wet hands over his entire face, tilted over the sink to let the water drip into it.

A stabbing pain through his skull. He winces and waits for it to pass. When he drops his hands, they’re tinged with red, spreading outward in swirls and vines. Shit. Not right now.

He cups more water in his hands and washes it away, off his hands and face, swishing some around his mouth to drown out the metallic taste and spitting it into the sink. The nosebleeds normally pass quickly. At least, the last few have. But what follows...

He grips the edge of the sink. He doesn’t want to wake up crying or sweating or gasping in front of Will. Maybe this was a bad idea.

“Mike?” He hears Will call. Shit.

His heart starts to race. If he’s learned anything over the last few months, it’s that it’s sleeping that causes problems. So he could always just, stay awake? Keep an eye on things, make sure Will is okay.

“One sec,” he calls back, in as loud a voice as he can muster. He dries his hands and face on a rag, double-checking that the nosebleed has stopped. He exhales.

He hands the cup to Will and averts his eyes as he sips it. “Thanks,” Will whispers.

“Don’t mention it,” Mike says as he slips beneath the blanket.

Will reaches back to turn the light off. “G’night, Mike.”

“Night, Will.”

Mike concentrates on the faded pattern of the sofa and keeps his ears trained for any signs of a change in Will’s low, steady breathing. He won’t fall asleep. He won’t.

***

“Mike.”

He groans.

“Mike.”

A hand on his shoulder, shaking gently.

“Wake up.”

Reality clicks into place, and Mike sits up rapidly. He snaps his head to the side to check on Will, scanning him from head to toe. He’s awake, hand hovering over Mike’s shoulder and blanket fallen down around his hips.

“What happened? What’s wrong?” Mike hisses into the quiet. The light is on, he notices.

Will slips off the couch, and Mike crosses his legs beneath him. To his confusion, Will sits in front of him and mirrors his position.

“Nothing happened,” Will says. “I just wanted to talk.”

Mike’s brow furrows. He doesn’t mind – not by any means – but the act is so unlike Will that he can’t quite comprehend it, even with the thrum of his headache gone.

“About what?” He answers, fully awake now.

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

Will’s pupils are blown wider than normal. Mike holds his gaze. Why is his pulse racing?

“O-kay?”

Will waits a moment, and Mike takes it to scan his features for something, any indicator of what might be wrong. He hesitates on Will’s lips before he-

Wait, no. Not that. He didn’t mean-

“Why do you look at me like that, Mike?”

Mike flinches. Will’s eyes are wide and innocent, but there’s something in his tone that makes Mike recoil. He shuffles back in the makeshift bed. Will’s pupils blow wider, the black pool drowning the rest of his iris, swallowing it whole. He slinks forward. With his hands braced behind him, Mike feels his fingers graze his knee and inch upward slowly.

A voice that is not that of his best friend asks, “Isn’t this what you want, Michael?”

He tries to pull away and shakes his head, adamant. So adamant. A tear slides down his cheek.

The person who is not Will leans over him, closer and closer, until he can see every line of Will’s face. His hand squeezes Mike’s thigh. “You’ve never thought about this?” The other comes up to slide behind his neck, freezing cold. “Or this?”

Mike’s mouth opens and closes, searching for words in a sea of terror, words that don’t come. He can feel Will’s breath on his lips and the soft touch of their noses. He closes his eyes, and his cheeks grow wetter. “Leave me alone,” his voice cracks.

“Tell me, Michael,” the thing says. “How would you feel if they knew who you are?”

Its hand forces his head to the side. His father, his mother, his sisters, Lucas, Dustin, El – they’re all watching, wide-eyed and disgusted. Disgusted at him, by him. His stomach turns.

“Please,” he begs. “Please.”

Its hand moves to track a line down the side of his face, grabbing his cheeks and forcing his gaze to its own again. “How long do you think you can hide it?”

Mike’s eyes fall closed.

A bump of the knee. A brush of the elbow. A half-hug in an airport.

I’ve brought you in today, Mrs Wheeler, Mr Byers, because of an incident between your two sons.

Messages sent in looks. Words that never came out quite right. It’s not my fault you don’t like girls.

The column of his neck. The curve of his lips. The feel of his hand. He knows. He has to know. He hates you for it.

Why didn’t you tell us you broke up? Why did you break up at all? Who are you, Mike? Why did you leave me, Mike?

Boys don’t get married in playgrounds. Keep your son away from mine; I won’t have him turning into some...

Head nestled in his mother’s shoulder. After Will, always after Will.

The binder beneath his mattress. Paintings and letters. Dear Will. I miss you. Love From Mike.

Thoughts only behind closed doors, breaking through in his presence. The rush of a touch, a gaze dropped lower.

The sickness. The guilt. You used to have a mirror there, right?

Don’t look, don’t catch yourself. You won’t like what you see. Watch the drain of the bathroom sink, dry your hands, don’t look up.

They can see it, too. You know they can.

The memories give way to a misty red haze. It lifts slowly. The cloudy eyes of a creature, skin of vine and nightmares. All the anger and purpose in him drain at the sight.

“Hello, Michael,” Vecna says.

Mike’s breath is stuck in his throat. He is restrained by snaking vines around his shoulders, hips, wrists, ankles, neck. He twists and tugs to no avail.

“I have been watching you a long, long time.” His voice is low and guttural, squirming up Mike’s spine as he tries to wriggle out from his control. “And what a curious boy you are.”

He gives up, turning his face to the side as Vecna inches closer.

Cold breath on his cheek. “So… burdened. So afraid.”

He clenches his jaw and grits out, “Leave me alone.”

“This torment is all you, Michael.” A tilt of the head, the flare of his milky eyes. “But I think you know that. You’ve been so easy to play with. It was you who created this nightmare; all I had to do was make you relive it.”

Mike squeezes his eyes shut. This is just that. Another nightmare. He can wake up from this. Like visions in his mirror – this is not real.

“And the funny part is, you never tried to fight it. You never ran for help, even when you knew what was happening.”

Come on, Mike. Wake up. Wake up.

“That I did not expect. A self-hatred so profound, a shame so palpable that you would hide it at the expense of your life.”

A vine pushes his face from the wall, and his eyes are pried open by some invisible force. He can feel his heartbeat in his fingertips and the churning in his stomach.

“But I will not take your life, Michael. That is not what I need you for. The irony is that you are his weakness as much as he is yours.”

The wetness of his cheeks. He pulls against his restraints again and releases a desperate whine.  

“Tell our dear William,” Vecna pauses. “That I will return the children.”

A bottomless pit opens in Mike’s chest. No.

“I will return your sister.”

No.

“If he turns himself over to me. If he joins me.”

Even through the blur of tears, Vecna’s chilling stare slices deep into Mike’s soul. “We’re going to kill you,” he croaks. “He’s going to kill you.”

“Tell him that if he tries, I will kill you.”

“Do it.” Mike clenches his jaw. “Kill me.”

The corner of Vecna’s mouth twists cruelly. He’s entertained. “It will not come to that.”

Suddenly, the tightness around Mike’s throat and limbs loosens, and he falls hard onto his knees. He watches Vecna’s back as he retreats.

“You’ll have to kill me!” Mike yells after him. “Will would never. He would never!”

Vecna disappears in a cloud of red. A brightness begins to grow from somewhere on Mike’s left, a tear in whatever dimension he’s in. A circular door to his own reality.

Mike watches for a moment, from his hands and knees, as the people in his life scramble about the basement of the Squawk. Around him. He is sitting up on his makeshift bed, motionless.

How can he go back there? How can he tell them what has happened to him? How can he admit what has been happening to him?

“Any song, Lucas! Please!”

Will. Scared. So scared. And crying.

“Here! Here!”

Lucas’s hands shake as he shoves a cassette into Will’s. And Mike knows he has to go back.

He stands to his feet and begins to run.

Chapter Three

Turn and Face Yourself Again

The first time Mike felt seen, truly and wholly, was by Eddie Munson in his freshman year.

After a particularly long evening of D&D, Dustin and Lucas had biked off early for various reasons, and Eddie had offered to drop Mike home on the condition that he helped him clear up. Mike groaned, but accepted the offer. Eddie’s van had room for his bike, and it looked like it might rain.

It was quiet between the two of them. It had been a spectacularly hectic end to Eddie’s latest campaign, and thrilling as always, but Mike was undeniably tired.

“So, Wheeler, seeing as I’m graduating this year, someone’ll have to take over as DM, put the new generation of nerds on the right track, y’know? Whatcha think?”

Mike couldn’t help but frown. “Yeah, it won’t be the same without you, man.”

Eddie turned to lean against the table, crossing his arms. The movement pulled his Hellfire shirt taut against his shoulders. His eyes flashed with excitement. “That was a question. I’m asking you.”

Mike paused, and a knot formed in his brow. He faced Eddie across the table and rubbed a thumb across the centre of his opposite palm. “Asking me what?”

Eddie blinked. “To take over.”

Mike’s fingers froze. “What?”

“Yeah. I know you’re only a freshman, but you’ve got it already, man.” He gestured loosely up and down in Mike’s direction. “You do. Lucas and Dustin never shut up about your campaigns.”

Mike feels his face heat. He hadn’t even considered the possibility of something like this. Time behaved differently for him. He was lucky to get a year without some kind of interdimensional monster coming after his friends and family. The idea of him taking charge of Hellfire and carrying it on until graduation? He’d never actually envisioned himself getting that far.

“Mike?”

His gaze flitted from the floor to Eddie, who was closer now. “I don’t know, Eddie. You really want it to be me?”

He couldn’t help but feel strange, having such a relaxed conversation with someone like Eddie, someone so full of energy and deviance. And there was a current flowing beneath Eddie’s words and in his gaze that made Mike feel like he was trying to tell him something. That made him worried. What if he wasn’t understanding him correctly?

Eddie nodded. “I see a lot of me in you, you know? I was a little lost at your age, too.”

Mike tried not to get caught up in that comment. Lost? He wasn’t lost. “And that means I’d make a good DM?”

Eddie clicked his tongue. “It’s more about… being a beacon for kids like us. Kids who don’t really fit in or aren’t accepted. People conform to what society wants them to – get girlfriends and go to parties – and they wind up dead. I think Hellfire keeps people from drowning in that.”

“Dead?” Mike asked. Maybe that was a stupid question, he didn’t know. But if he was going to be a ‘beacon’ or whatever, he needed to understand. Eddie sighed and deflated in a way that was so unlike the man Mike had come to know that he stood up straighter.

“There was a boy I knew when I was a kid.” Eddie’s gaze moves away from Mike’s face. “He felt like there was no one who understood him, and maybe that no one ever would. That there was something… not right about him. And all that pressure from the world, it gets too much sometimes. And maybe then it’s easier to check out, to not be in the world anymore, to give up. ‘Cause you know, like… what’s the point?”

Mike stays staring at the side of Eddie’s face, but his mind rewinds to a cliff at the edge of a quarry, a freefall. The silence of his bedroom after the last moving van left the Byers’. He pushes his shaking hands into his pockets. Eddie meets his gaze again.

“Look, Wheeler, I’ve always had a flair for the dramatic, but Hellfire came to that boy when he needed it most, and that kept him alive. It gave him somewhere to be that eventually became somewhere to belong. Taught him that there’s a place for weirdos out in the world, no matter how much high school makes it seem otherwise. We exist, and there’s a place for us.”

Mike wanted to cry, for some reason, which made him really, really want to run away and hide. He felt sick. Eddie was looking at him with so much understanding that Mike could feel truths about himself bubbling up into his throat, truths he had spent a lifetime shoving down. 

“So if you meet a kid like that, or if you… if you are a kid like that, just- just go easy on yourself, okay? And take it from that boy that it won’t be like that forever, and that you can be the beacon.”

Mike nodded, blinking quickly. His heart was racing, but he didn’t run. “Yeah. Yeah, I get you. I- Um, thanks. Thanks, Eddie.” He rubbed his hand against the back of his neck. “I think I’d like that. To do that. To be the beacon, I guess.”

Eddie grinned. Mike’s stomach did this weird flip at the sight, and his mouth unwillingly curled up, too. Eddie clamped a hand down onto his shoulder. “That’s my boy,” he said. “That’s my boy.”

The world didn’t end that day, when Mike was seen by Eddie Munson, but when he died – and Hellfire with him – Mike felt like he lost that place to belong. He lost his beacon.

***

Mike thought that it was sleep-deprivation at first. He was up half the night reeling from whatever horrors his brain had conjured up, and the things he was seeing while he was awake were an extension of that. Simple.

When it got worse, and the images in his mirror showed up in passing windows and shopfronts, he decided to eliminate all potential sources. He removed every mirror from his bedroom and hid every reflective surface. He kept his eyes glued to the road ahead on his bike to avoid catching peripheral glimpses of himself.

What he saw wasn’t him. It was someone else. He doesn’t know how Vecna altered things, how he crafted the images he showed him, but the boy in the mirror was not Mike Wheeler. The boy in the mirror was something else, some other. He was… he was... That wasn’t- It couldn’t be Mike. It wasn’t- He wasn’t that.

Mike had a girlfriend. Who he loved the way he was supposed to. He felt the way he was supposed to, about her. Yes. That’s right. Mike wasn’t… that.

***

The fog lifts slowly at first. The red haze gives way to a stark white, where it stays for a moment before plunging him back into his body. With a gasp, his vision returns.

It takes a second to adjust. There’s yellow light spilling into the room from the windows at the top of the far wall. There are three times as many people there as when Mike went to sleep. And Will Byers has Mike’s face in his hands.

Mike lifts his own trembling hands to grasp Will’s wrists and stares into his big, worried, brown eyes. His chest is rising and falling, but it doesn’t feel like he’s taking in any air.

“Breathe, Mike,” Lucas’s voice comes from somewhere on his left, drowned out by the song that’s blaring from a stereo. “We’ve got you.”

Will’s lips are parted like he wants to say something, but can’t get the words out. Mike drops his wrists and wraps his arms around him instead, holding him so tight he doesn’t know if it’s Will’s or his own heartbeat pounding between them. He reaches out a blind hand to grab Lucas, too.

With two of the most important people in his life holding him, he chooses to trust that this is his reality, and not another nightmare. Mike doesn’t worry about hurting Will when he digs his fingers into his back, and he doesn’t worry about the tearstains soaking into his shoulder.

He has this shocking moment of clarity when he’s in the darkness with his eyes screwed shut. Why had he hesitated to come back here? His friends would never, never abandon him. Maybe, just maybe, it was a cruelty to envision them as those kinds of people.

“Mike,” Joyce says, so carefully. “Mike, honey, we need to know what happened.”

Lucas lets go first, but keeps a hand on Mike’s shoulder. Will disentangles himself next, and Mike shivers at the loss of contact. He scans each face in the room: Joyce, Murray, Erica, Robin, then Will, and finally Lucas. “I- It was-,”

Will’s fingers brush his knee, and the nightmare he has just lived slides through him again. He closes his eyes. That wasn’t real. It wasn’t real. He opens his eyes and meets Joyce’s.

“I need to talk to Will. Alone.” His voice comes out much lower than he had intended.

Lucas’s hand tightens on his shoulder. Mike tries not to read into it.

“We’ll go upstairs,” Robin says, loudly enough to make Mike flinch, and then, softer, “Sorry. We’ll go upstairs.”

Mike nods as Lucas drops his shoulder. He hasn’t looked at Will yet. The room clears quickly, but everyone shoots worried glances down the stairs as they make their way up.

“Mike,” Will whispers, and he turns to him finally.

Will is kneeling on his right, knee touching Mike’s own. His eyes are red-rimmed and his breathing ragged.

“Are you- Are you okay?”

Mike frowns. He really doesn’t want to cry. He wipes both of his hands down his face and hesitates there with his head down.

“No,” he answers. “Not at all.”

Mike can feel Will tense. “What did he say to you? Was it- Was it about me?”

The blood drains from Mike’s face, but he looks back up. Will’s eyes trace every corner of Mike’s expression. Mike nods once, twice.

“Vecna wants you to… join him. He says that he’ll give my sister back, give all the kids back, if you do.”

A sharp intake of breath. “And if I don’t?”

Mike swallows. “He’ll kill me.”

The spot on the wall behind Will is suddenly deeply interesting. Mike doesn’t want to look at him; he can’t. He doesn’t know what to do with it, all the emotion running through his veins and pumping through his heart.

“Mike. Mike, I- What-,”

Will is stumbling over his words. Mike finds it in himself to look back.

“I’m sorry,” Will says. “It’s- This is my fault.”

“No,” Mike blurts, grabbing his wrists again. “Jesus, no, Will. If anything, it’s me. It’s all me. I- I should have said what was happening to me. I should have-,”

Will freezes, and something dawns in him. “Mike, have you-,” his lips contort like he’s trying to choose the right words. “Has Vecna been… stalking you? Like Max?”

Mike drops his wrists. Here it is. The conversation he’s been dreading. “I need… some water.” He pushes to his feet quickly. Too quickly. He tilts through the air until hands find his shoulders.

“Is this why you haven’t been sleeping?”

Mike winces, looks down at his feet.

“You- you- how long?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“How long?”

Will’s eyes again, so close to angry but never quite there. “A long time," Mike says. "Months.”

“Months!” He pushes Mike back by the chest. “Months. Why didn’t you tell me?  What is wrong with you?”

Mike stumbles back and catches himself. He stares blankly at Will, at his best friend. “Too much, that’s the problem.”

Disbelief rocks Will’s face. “I don’t understand.”

“And you won’t. No one will.”

Mike turns on his heel and marches over to the sink, where just a few hours ago he had stood, dreading this exact conversation. He fills and downs a cup of water in seconds, and then another. He splashes his face. Why are his hands shaking?

He braces himself on the sink’s edge, letting a long bout of shivers creep through him. He’s scared. He’s so scared.

Will’s hand on the centre of his back makes him jump. His apologies go over Mike’s head. He’s somewhere else.

He’s back in that other dimension, or back in his memories. Back thinking about marrying his best friend in a playground and how something so childish and fun became something disgusting and shameful. How he feels it inside him now, just like he did then.

How stupid it all feels when the world is ending, and his sister is trapped, and his parents are hurt. His mother, who held him even when she didn’t understand. I want you to feel like you can talk to me. I never want you to feel like you have to hide anything from me.

How Eddie had looked at him and seen him, and told him there’s a place for people like him. How Vecna got into his head and convinced him otherwise. The plane of existence he is on now, where he’s teetering between both beliefs.

His whole body is shaking. He needs to sit down. He doesn’t even say it out loud, but Will ushers him over to the couch.

They sit side by side, and Will rubs comforting circles on his back. Mike exhales, shaky at first and then steady. He looks at Will. His eyebrows, his nose, his lips, his cheekbones. Everything that makes him Will. He pictures him at every age since Mike’s known him; he memorises everything. He doesn’t let the shame in. This could be the last time Will lets him this close, so he savours it.

“El and I,” Mike says. Will’s eyes widen slightly like he has just remembered something. “We broke up. Six months ago. It started around then.”

Will’s whole face twists.

“Just-,” Mike interjects before he can speak. “Don’t ask why. I’ll get there, I promise. It might just, take me… a second.”

Will nods.

“You know you’re my best friend?”

He nods again.

“Okay. Well… I guess I- I… I don’t really know how to say it.”

Will’s eyes are big and expectant, and Mike doesn’t know if he can do this.

“You might not want to be best friends with me after this, which I would understand, but it’s not something I can fix or control.” He gestures with his fingers to try to explain.

“Mike, you’re freaking me out. Why would I ever stop being friends with you?”

“Will, I’m- I’m…” Mike closes his eyes. “I’m gay.”

His eyes snap open once it’s out. The word. Three letters. So foreign on his tongue.

Will looks beyond disturbed. Mike makes himself watch in case he runs off, and he never sees him again.

And then Will’s expression oscillates between confused and angry, and all of the other things Mike had expected.

“Are you… is this a joke? What did Vecna tell you?”

Mike flinches back. “Why- Why would I joke about this? I’ve spent the last six months being tortured for it, I’ve spent the last ten years praying it would change, Will, convincing myself I was wrong. So no, I’m not joking.”

Will blinks.

“And I know what that makes me, and I know you might not want to be friends anymore, which is fair, because honestly, now that you know I don’t think you’ll be able to ignore it anymore. Which will be uncomfortable for you. And I don’t think I can hide it. I really have tried, Will.”

Will is still blinking. “Hide what?”

Mike feels the front of his eyebrows draw upwards. “That I’m in love with you. That I always have been. I thought- I thought that was-,”

Mike is cut off.

Cut off by…

Will’s lips. He’s… what?

Mike pulls away. His mouth bobs open and closed. Will flushes pink, and Mike knows he’s a similar shade.

“Now I’m confused,” Mike says, with his hands up almost in surrender. Because Will Byers just kissed him.

“I thought- You just said- I’ve been obsessed with you since the day we met. I’m- I’m-," his blush deepens. "Also gay, Mike.”

“Will-,”

“I’m in love with you, too.”

Mike lets his words settle. He thinks and thinks and thinks. He stares into his best friend’s eyes, and the squirming, rotten thing inside him begins to unravel. It coils around itself and hisses and burns until it has disintegrated into nothingness.

And then Mike Wheeler kisses Will Byers, and the rest of the world falls away.

It’s romance movies and love stories and couples giggling in the park and holding hands and slow dancing and all of the things Mike didn’t understand before. It’s him and this person he’s known his entire life, this boy he will never know himself without.

His hands find Will’s waist, and Will’s find his hair. He pulls him closer. Will gasps, and Mike commits the sound to memory. For a moment, in all the horror, and with their reality on the brink of collapse, they are just the two boys they were in the playground, sharing some simple, inexplicable thing. Some thing that other people will gawk at and admonish but never understand.

Mike knows suddenly and with complete certainty that he doesn’t care. He knows that this is worth it, that it will always be worth it, as long as Will is with him.

And some day, long in the future, when the world makes space for love in all its forms, they will exchange vows in front of their friends and families, and no one will flinch when Mike pulls Will in for the millionth time to kiss him. And most of them won’t know that two boys who got married for the first time on a playground in Hawkins helped save the world before they got married for a second time.

This, their first kiss, paves the way for their last. On their shared deathbed, warm and old and grey. Thinking about playgrounds and radio station basements, they will defeat the odds for a final time by making it that far at all.