Chapter Text
The Upside Down looks wrong when you enter it like this, not falling, not tearing through, not being dragged by your feet with your eyes squeezed shut and the air punched out your lungs. It smells like wet iron and rot. It always has. Will knows that smell better than he knows his own house. It gets into your nose and stays there, long after you’ve left, long after people tell you you’re safe now.
Four years later. It's still the same.
But it’s not the way this place smells that makes it wrong. It’s not the sky, that sky that’s always stuck in that unmoving, stormless bruise of blue and black and red. It's not the ash drifting down like it's snowing something burned and wretched. Or the vines creeping up buildings and writhing along roads like they're looking for something to take back. Someone to take back.
It's the silence.
Not the absence of sound. The upside down is loud and thundering and violent with it. But inside, there’s only this weight. It presses and presses. A pressure in your chest that never lifts and presses even when everything around you is screaming and unbearable. The kind that makes you hear your own pulse and every thought you’ve ever thought, stacked on top of each other, demanding to be counted. Count all of them. Count how close they are. Count how little room there is to breathe around them.
This is what it feels like right before something ends, Will thinks.
He keeps his hands folded in his lap; fingers locked together so tightly his knuckles ache. He doesn’t trust them not to shake. He doesn’t look at Mike. He hasn’t looked at Mike since they left the Squawk. Since he’d said it.
I don’t like girls. I had this crush. He’s just my Tammy.
The world hadn’t ended when he’d said it. That almost made it worse. Everyone hugged him. Everyone had held him– hands on his back , his shoulders, in his hair. They'd kissed his cheek. They'd whispered I love you because what else would they have said. Because the world hadn’t ended when he’d said it.
And it was supposed to make the weight lift. That’s what people said. Like truth is a lever. Like saying the thing automatically makes everything lighter. Like a world off your shoulders.
But as the silence pressed in, he felt it there as he always had. That heavy and constant thing that had been born on a swingset. That innocent soft warmth that had bloomed low in his stomach and kept growing and growing and growing no matter how hard or carefully Will tried to prune it back. He'd felt it get heavier every year since he’d recognised it. Since he’d realised there were things you weren't supposed to want. Since he’d noticed his eyes lingering too long. Since he’d learned to pull his hands back at the last second. To keep that warmth small and contained and manageable. Something that wouldn’t spill. Something that wouldn't grow. Something that wouldn’t ask for more. Want for more.
He’d always been good at that. At surviving by staying quiet. Look where that got you, a voice thinks. It isn’t his, not exactly. It was the voice in his head when Vecna had his vines around Will’s neck and his fingers on his face. It slides under the thought instead of speaking over it, like a hand pressing between his shoulder blades.
The truck lurches over something buried beneath the road and Robin swears under her breath from beside him and Will looks up to her and she gives him a tight smile and a nod and Will thinks maybe she felt it too before Vickie.
He was just my Tammy.
Mike’s voice cuts through the noise. “You ready?” And Will turns just as Mike's hand reaches for El’s arm. El nods. It’s automatic. Familiar. That wasn’t directed towards him. There’s many names for that warmth in him he’d realised. And he’d have to kill each one. He had started with hope. He watches as El brings her hand up to his. “Ready,” she replies in her clipped way.
Will holds onto one of the hand straps as Hopper opens the back of the truck. The wind whips at their jackets, tangles hair into eyes and bites into skin and teeth. Weapons are checked and rechecked. Someone hands him a flashlight and a crowbar he doesn't remember asking for. He doesn't really know what he could do with a crow bar against a demo anyway. It feels weirdly light in his palm. Everything does, suddenly. Like gravity is somehow weaker here.
Will steps down last.
The ground beneath his shoes pulses faintly, like something breathing. The vines recoil at the sound of their footsteps and then creep close again, testing. Watching. Will can’t help watching too. Someone is recounting the plan. Recounting everyone's roles. Calling out people’s names. Will hears his own, distantly, like it’s being spoken from underwater.
Anchor. Signal. Fallback.
He nods when he’s supposed to. Moves when he’s told. He’s good at that too. He feels it then, clean and sharp and sudden, like a hand closing around his heart, that chill at the nape of his neck. The world tilts. The sounds smear together. The ash freezes in the air, hanging, unmoving.
Vecna doesn’t appear. Not at first. Not all at once. But he doesn’t have to for Will to know it’s him. But the vines stiffen. And it’s like the world holds. The voice comes first. It’s almost kind how soft it is. “So.”
Will blinks.
That’s his mistake. Because there he is.
Not all at once. Not the way monsters are supposed to appear. He’s already there, like he’s been standing in the space Will wasn’t looking at even if he was. The air feels tighter around him, like the world has drawn in a breath and decided not to let it go.
Thorns. Vines. A body made of things that shouldn’t hold together, shouldn’t stand upright, shouldn’t have a face. His eyes are wrong, too white, glazed, reflective, like they’re looking at something inside Will instead of at him.
Will doesn’t move. He can’t. His body remembers this too well. He does too. Remembers hands around his throat. Fingers against his temples. The way panic had gone quiet right before everything went dark.
He blinks again and tries to keep his eyes shut but he can’t. It’s like they're being pried open.
There’s a boy in front of him now. Not much older than Will. Blond hair plastered to his forehead, a white jumpsuit streaked and soaked with blood. His mouth is twisted into something so furious he almost looks scared. Henry. Another blink.
A child.
Too small. Too thin. Shoulders hunched inward like he’s trying to take up less space. Will remembers how it felt to be like that. That small. He’d always been small for his age. Short. Weird. Queer. He’s got the same bowl-cut hair. The same too-big eyes. One hand trembles at his side, fingers twitching like he’s bracing for something that’s already happened.
Will’s breath stutters. His heart does too. And he shuts his eyes again or at least tries to but they won’t. All they allow is. Another blink. And he’s Vecna again.
Thorny. Tall. Impossible.
“This doesn’t change anything,” He says, stepping forward the vines on the ground following him. “You thought that if you gave it a name, it would lose its teeth.” The ground pulses beneatjh Will's feet again. “You were wrong.” Will’s fingers twitch around the crowbar. He doesn’t lift it. He knows it wouldn’t matter.
Vecna steps closer. Not fast. Never fast. He moves the way inevitability moves. Slow. steady. Because when you know everything about your prey. You don’t need to pounce, do you?
“You didn’t lie,” he says. “But you didn’t tell them everything, William.”
His voice doesn’t rise. It doesn’t need to. The thing, the warmth in Will’s stomach ebbs at the thought of it. Like something that’s been there longer than the buildings, longer than the roads here in the upside down.
The vines at Vecna’s feet curl and uncurl, slow, deliberate. Patient. “There is a difference,” he continues, almost conversational, “between being honest and being complete.”
He tilts his head. Studies Will the way someone might study a crack in a wall they know will spread. “You have always understood that.”
Vecna takes another step. The ground pulses beneath Will’s shoes in time with his heart. Or maybe the other way around.
“Everyone keeps something,” Vecna says. “A room they do not open. A thought they do not finish. A name they do not say aloud.”
His eyes gleam. Not hunger. Not anger.
“And I,” he says softly, “I know you, William. You believed that speaking would make you unreachable. That once you were seen, there would be no shadow left for me to stand in.”
He stops directly in front of Will now. Close enough that the air between them feels thin. Drawn tight. His hand lifts to Will's face and Will feels cold all over. “That was never how it worked.”
The world shifts.Not violently. Not like the tearing-open in the vision Vecna has shown him before. This is quieter. Like a memory being offered. And Will can’t refuse it. The ash stops falling. The sound drains away.
And Hawkins is there.
Not the ruined version. Not the Upside Down. The old one. It’s all painted in Technicolour, how he remembers it as a kid. Bright. So bright. And whole. The one Will knows so well. His home. Joyce and El outside in the yard playing fetch with Chester. Jonathan taking a photo on the porch. But they look odd. like theyre made of plaster and painted with acrylic. But the scene shifts before Will can dwell on it. The school hallway. Lockers dented and painted and familiar. The gym. The bleachers. El. Max. Dustin. Robin. Lucas. Mike. Nancy. All of them. Smiling. Waving. They look wrong. They are wrong. They look past Will instead of at him. Through him. Like he’s something remembered incorrectly. Maybe he’s remembering them wrong.
“This is the world you think you chose,” Vecna’s voice slides in again, calm as ever.
The scene breaks through again.
There’s blood. So much blood. Necks snapped and feet twisted and arms broken. Will wants to shut his eyes. He tries to shut his eyes. But he can't. He wants to look away. He needs to look away. But he can't. Will’s breath is coming in shallow, and fast and measured. His eyes prick, and a tear rolls down where Vecna’s hand is touching Will’s cheek, almost gentle, and the world responds to it. The image fractures. The people, his people, fall with a simple thud.
Their bodies surround Vecna. Ash settles over them. “This,” Vecna says, “is what remains when you are finished pretending. ”
Will tries to move. He can’t. Vecna leans closer.
“I told you once, we could make something beautiful, William,” Vecna says. “You and I. A world without waiting. Without wondering who would turn away if they truly saw you. All you had to do was let me in,” he says looking around him at those crumpled bodies will cant get himself to see, “this will be your reality now.”
Something snaps.
No. It’s not a word Will thinks. It’s a shove. A reflex. The same way you jerk your hand back from a flame before your brain has time to tell you it hurts. Will feels the place Vecna is pressing against inside his head. The shape of the thought Vecna wants him to finish. Will doesn’t lift the crowbar. He pushes.
“Get out,” Will says.
His voice is thin. It shakes. It barely carries.
He feels Vecna then, fully, on the other side of it. The vastness. The hunger. The cold certainty of him. He stumbles back a step. Just one. The ash whirls violently, like the world itself has been disturbed.
“You don’t have the strength,” Vecna says, but something in his voice has shifted. The calm is fractured. Not broken.
Will!
Will’s knees buckle. He nearly goes down with them. His head throbs. His vision swims. Blood trickles warm from his nose, down over his lip. “Get out,” Will says, “Get out of my head.”
Vecna’s form blurs. The vines lash violently, thrashing against the ground, against the buildings, against the air itself. Vecna is wrenched backward, like a shadow torn from the wall it clung to. The pressure snaps away all at once.
Sound crashes back in.
“Will! Jesus are you-?” The ash falls again. The world rights itself. Will gasps, stumbling forward, catching himself on his hands and knees. The crowbar clatters uselessly to the ground beside him.
“Will!” Mike yells and Will sees his knees hit the floor in front of him, feels Mike’s hands on his arms, grabbing his shoulders, turning him gently, urgently.
“Hey, hey, look at me,” Mike says, crouching in front of him. His face swims in and out of focus. There’s fear there. Bare and unguarded. “You with me?” Mike asks.
Will swallows. His throat aches like he’s been screaming, even though he hasn’t.
“Yes,” he says.
It’s a lie. Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s just the closest thing he has to the truth right now.
Mike searches his face for another second. “Yeah?” Will nods and Mike stares at him for a second longer and then he nods, sharp and decisive.
Mike searches his face for another second. “Yeah?”
Will nods.
Mike doesn’t move.
He should. They should all be moving. Someone shouts something from farther down the street, Dustin, maybe, or Lucas, but Mike stays crouched in front of him, one hand still braced on Will’s shoulder as he looks back over his shoulder and yells something.
The warmth twists. It’s different this time.
Not hope. That one is already gone. Will had killed that one quickly. Efficiently. He’d barely felt it die. Maybe there hadn't been much to begin with. This one was different.
He didn’t have a name for a long time. It always sat higher in his chest, sharp and aching, like breathing too deep after being underwater too long. It flares now when Mike’s thumb presses unconsciously into the fabric of his sleeve, when his grip tightens just a fraction, grounding, real. This is the thing that believes in being chosen without asking. The thing that imagines a hand reaching for you and meaning it. The thing that whispers he sees you even when you know better.
Mike’s eyes flick, quick and searching, like he’s counting Will’s breaths without realizing it. “You’re sure,” Mike says, “you’re sure,” it’s not really a question but Will swallows and nods anyway. His tongue feels too big for his mouth. His heart is still skidding, trying to find a rhythm that doesn’t hurt, that doesn’t remind him of those twisted bodies and all that blood and when he sees Mike's face he has to look away just as quickly to avoid seeing that broken jaw. “Yes,” he says again.
Mike’s lips thin. He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t push. He doesn’t say okay. He shifts closer instead.
His hand slides down from Will’s shoulder to his arm, fingers wrapping there–not gripping, not urgent. Just there. Solid. Anchoring.
Mike’s voice drops, low enough that it feels like it’s meant only for Will. “Hey,” he says. “Look at me, look at me.”
Will does.
He wishes he hadn’t.
There’s something open on Mike’s face that makes his chest cave inward. Something raw and unguarded and familiar in a way that hurts worse than anything Vecna showed him. This isn’t panic. This isn’t confusing. Mike sees him. At this moment, with his eyes on him, Will thinks he’s stripped bare. “With me?”
The warmth surges, stupid and desperate, and Will clamps down hard on it and nods. He cannot afford this. Not now. Not here. Not when everything sharp and waiting in this world would gladly use it against him.
Name it, he thinks. Kill it.
Recognition. He decides and marks its execution.
Mike studies him another second longer, like he knows something’s missing but can’t quite put his finger on what. His thumb rubs once, absent, over Will’s sleeve. Then he nods. Sharp. Resolute.
“Okay,” Mike says, finally. He rises, pulling his hand away and the loss of it is immediate, startling, like a sudden drop in temperature. “Come on.”
He stays kneeling for a second after Mike moves away, letting the ground steady beneath him. The Upside Down hums faintly, restless. The vines creep closer, then retreat again, uncertain. He gets to his feet, wipes the blood from under his nose with the back of his hand, and follows the others deeper into the ruined streets. Will keeps his gaze forward and doesn’t look at Mike again. Even when Mike doesn’t go back to where he was. Will doesn’t look at him. He can’t. He doesn't know what his face would give away. He doesn't know how much his face did give away at the Squawk. Because he’d looked at Mike without meaning to. He had said he’d had a crush on someone looking right at him. And say the way Mike's brows furrowed. And he wanted to turn away. But he couldn't. He wanted to let go. Maybe some stupid part of him thought if he looked hard enough he could let go.
So he can't look at Mike right now, so Will just keeps looking ahead and Will notices it before he understands why.
The others have fallen in around Hopper automatically, boots crunching over broken pavement, weapons half-raised, eyes scanning. But Will can't help but catch on the space El leaves next to her. From the rest. He’d known something had happened between Hop and El in the upside down, but this wasn't that. This wasn’t the same. She was angled away, too close to Kali, shoulders almost brushing, their steps synced, arms swinging at the same time, like soldiers. Will wonders if this was a part of their training. El had told him so much about her childhood in the lab but Will felt like he didn't know anything at all looking at her and Kali now. They were not distant enough to be obvious and not close enough to look deliberate. Just angled away. Like the rest of the world has been nudged a half-step to the side.
It prickles at Will’s skin.
He slows without meaning to. Just a fraction. Too close. Too far. Something isn’t right. That’s when Mike notices. He just turns his head to Will and then back to El and Kali ahead, then back. “You okay?” He asks.
Will nods. Mike doesn’t say anything. He just looks away again, jaw tightening as he faces forward. He shifts closer. The pit in Will’s stomach warms again.
Not close enough to touch but close enough that Will can feel the warmth radiate off him, close enough hat he can feel a shift in pressure before a storm. Mike glances back at him more than once, quick and precise and Will can’t look at him so he focuses on the ground. On putting one foot in front of the other. On the space between El and Kali. On not thinking about how easily Vecna had stepped into him. How fast the world had rearranged itself around a single, terrible point.
Weak. Hollow. Small. He almost laughs.
The street ahead narrows, choked with collapsed storefronts and webbed-over cars fused into the asphalt. Hopper raises a fist. Everyone stops. They wait for a few seconds before chalking the noise up to some thunder or some tree falling over and move on.
Mike turns towards Will. “You good?” he whispers. Will nods and says “you don’t have to keep asking.” Mike doesn’t accept that. He studies Will’s face the way he used to when Will went quiet in that specific way. Like he was searching for more questions to ask. Because Mike Wheeler was nothing if not questions with more to follow. The look on his face was one Will had seen too many times, the one that meant something was wrong and Mike knew it but hadn’t found words yet. It’s the look he’d given him when Will had first come to school with a broken hand (a consequence of one of his father’s drunken nights), or said he couldn't come to one of their campaigns (Lonnie had said no) or when he said couldn't draw their characters anymore because his crayons were over (Lonnie had thrown them away). His eyes catch on Will’s nose, still red. The dried blood at the corner of his mouth.
“You’re bleeding,” Mike says.
“I’m fine.”
Mike exhales through his nose, sharp. “That wasn’t the question.”
“Hey,” Mike says again, quieter. “Back at the Squawk, about what you said…"
Will’s stomach drops.This is it. This is where Mike asks who he was talking about. This is where everything caves in. Where the careful balance Will’s been holding snaps and spills everywhere. He shouldn’t have said anything. Will almost tells him so, almost throws out something defensive and stupid and safe.
But Mike is looking at him with that searching look and Will can’t open his mouth. “You said Vecna—” Mike hesitates, eyes flicking once more ahead before locking back onto Will. “You said he showed you stuff, right? What did he show you?”
Oh. Never mind.
“I..I don’t know,” Will says, and this time it’s close to the truth. “Stuff.”
Mike’s jaw tightens. “Right.”
In front of them, someone shifts. Steve mutters something under his breath. The vines around the trees twitch, reacting to nothing and everything. Mike shifts closer, his arm brushes against Will’s once, the only holding the light and the beam flickers.
It’s not a long touch, but it's long enough that Will’s world narrows to him–dirt-smudged camo-jacket, split lip, that stain in the front of his sweater, that beanie he’s owned since he was seven, eyes too bright with focus, brows furrowed.
This is the Mike Will remembers.
The one who wrote and rewrote campaigns. The one who read and reread that manual a thousand times and argued with the rest of them at every point. The one who mapped and remapped impossible plans with a pencil and a gut feeling and absolute certainty that if they tried hard enough, the universe would have to cooperate.
“It wasn’t that bad,” Will says then, because how could he deny this boy anything? “Just flashes of the future, we just all sort of drifted. Or I guess I did. I don’t know. It was just very confusing and I didn’t want th–”
“Listen to me,” Mike says, “we wouldn’t let that happen, okay? I wouldn’t. And if he’s in your head–”
“He’s not,” Will cuts in, too fast. Mike still for a few seconds, a few seconds too long and Will knows he doesn't believe him but Mike nods anyway and Will looks away. They can see the tower now, it’s coming in and out of the fog ahead and will fixes his gaze on it. For a few minutes, there’s only the sound of boots against dead ground, the wet drag of something distant shifting beneath the surface. Dustin is saying something, low and nervous, words blurring together. Someone laughs, too sharp.
Mike doesn’t say anything. He waits until the moment has almost convinced Will it’s over.
Then, quietly, “You don’t lie like that unless you’re scared.”
Will stumbles. It’s small. Barely visible. Just enough that Mike’s hand shoots out, instinctive, fingers brushing the sleeve of Will’s jacket and Will indulges for a few seconds before he pulls back like he’s been burned.
“I’m not–” Will starts, too fast again, and that’s when he knows he’s lost. His voice cracks on the first word, thin as glass. He swallows. Tries again. “I’m fine.” Mike looks at him. Not the way he used to when they were kids–wide-eyed, desperate, pleading, like they knew everything. This is different. Like he’s putting pieces together he’s been holding for a long time.
“You said that,” Mike says. “Back there. And just now. Same tone. Friends don’t lie, Will.” Will’s chest tightens and he looks away and keeps walking. “You do this thing,” he continues. “When you lie. You talk over yourswlf. You blink fast. You answer questions nobody asked.”
Will looks to his side again and shakes his head. “Mike, I don’t know what–”
“I’m not mad,” Mike cuts in, a tight smile. He exhales through his nose, and looks out at the rest of the group again, like he’s steadying himself. “I just…don’t want to miss it again. I don’t want you to think you can’t tell me. Like…like with that thing back at the Squawk.” Will looks away now too, and sucks in a long breath and looks back to find Mike already looking at him.
“I’m not lying,” Will says, and it’s true, it is. Maybe in the worst way, but it is true. “I don’t, I just…it’s weird. It’s all…I guess I am… you know, scared. But I'm not lying. I swear.” Mike holds his gaze for a second or two and nods once and that fire Will hosts stokes itself. Understanding.
The air feels heavier, pressing in, like everything is listening. Will feels it flare anyway. That stupid, treacherous thing in him, that stayed dormant and then bloomed for stupid insignificant moments like these. For Mike’s eyes on him like that. For the space between words where something else might fit.
Understanding.
Not the kind that demands answers. The kind that simply knows.
Will has felt this before. He’s felt it in basements and bike rides and hospital rooms. In late nights and shared looks and the way Mike always seemed to turn toward him, even when he didn’t mean to. He’d named it a long time ago, quietly, carefully, like you label a box you don’t plan to open.
It fed everything else. The hope he’d already strangled. The recognition he’d buried. The longing. The wanting. The terrible, stupid belief that some things could be mutual without being spoken. That you could be seen without asking for it. That someone could know you and still stay.
Maybe if he killed this one, the rest would finally starve.
Will exhales slowly and lets his shoulders drop, a careful imitation of calm. He schools his face into something smaller, flatter. Safe. He looks past Mike, at the dead street ahead of them, at the vines curling and uncurling like they’re listening.
“I just don’t want it to be an unnecessary problem,” Will says. He makes his voice light. Reasonable. The kind that makes people accept without digging. “We have bigger things to worry about.”
Mike’s mouth opens like he wants to argue. Like he wants to say something else. But then he closes it. He nods, once, sharp and contained, and turns back toward the others. The space between them widens by half a step. And then another
The thing in Will’s chest bucks, furious, like it knows what’s coming.
Understanding, he thinks and presses down hard.
He thinks of a movie theatre and glances and stupid jokes and arms around his shoulders. Just a crush. Just a phase. He was just my Tammy. Something you can outgrow. Something that ends. He walks forward and does not look back, there's bigger things to worry about.