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The bar is louder than Will expects.
Not Hawkins-loud—not screaming engines or fireworks or the shriek of something tearing through the sky—but loud in a way that feels careless.
Laughter clatters against glass. Music hums low and constant, like it doesn’t care who’s listening. The air smells like citrus cleaner and old wood and spilled beer.
Will sits on a stool that wobbles just slightly, hands folded around a sweating glass of soda he hasn’t touched. He’s not here to drink. He’s here because it’s what you do when time moves forward without asking you.
Because it’s been 2 years since El died saving the world, and the world didn’t stop to mourn her.
He presses his thumb to the small metal shape resting against his chest.
The lock pendant is cool, even through fabric.
It’s ridiculous, he thinks, that something so small can still ground him. That a necklace can feel like proof of gravity.
He’s older now. Taller. His hair finally does what he wants it to do. People look at him in a way they never did when he was sixteen and raw and visibly haunted.
Someone notices him.
It happens gradually—first a glance, then another.
Will feels it like static, that familiar prickle between his shoulder blades. He doesn’t turn right away. He waits until the weight of it grows obvious.
The guy is leaning against the bar two seats down.
Dark hair, confident smile, the kind of person who looks like he’s always known where he was going.
He catches Will’s eye and lifts his glass in a silent question. Will hesitates.
This used to terrify him. Being seen. Being chosen by a stranger without context, without history. Now it mostly just makes him tired.
He offers a polite, distant smile and looks back down at his drink, hoping that will be enough.
It isn’t. The guy settles in the seat beside him now.
“That’s a cool necklace,” the guy says, undeterred. “Vintage?”
Will’s fingers curl instinctively around the chain. “Something like that.”
The guy shifts closer, close enough that Will can smell his cologne—clean, sharp. “Are you waiting for someone, or…?”
Will opens his mouth to answer.
He doesn’t get the chance.
An arm settles across his shoulders, familiar weight, familiar warmth. A thumb hooks casually at the edge of his collar, brushing the chain like it knows exactly where it is.
“Hey,” a voice says, calm and even, with something steel-threaded underneath. “Is there a problem?”
The bar seems to go quieter, or maybe Will’s brain does something strange and selective, filtering everything except him.
Mike.
Mike stands at his side like he belongs there. Like he always has.
He’s broader now, shoulders filling out his jacket, jaw sharper, eyes still impossibly earnest even when they’re narrowed just a little.
Around his neck, visible against his dark shirt, hangs a small silver key.
The guy blinks, glances between them. “Oh. I didn’t—”
“He’s taken,” Mike says, not raising his voice. Not needing to. His arm tightens, just slightly. A grounding pressure.
The guy mutters an apology and backs off, hands raised, already half-forgotten by the room.
Will stares straight ahead, heart pounding so hard he’s sure someone else must hear it.
Mike doesn’t move his arm.
“You okay?” Mike asks quietly, leaning in so only Will can hear.
Will nods, once. Then again. “Yeah.”
Mike smiles, soft and private, and presses a quick kiss into Will’s hair—an unconscious habit he’s never quite broken—before finally pulling away.
He slides onto the stool beside him like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
For a second, Will just watches him. The key glints under the low lights. It always does that—catches, flashes, reminds.
Two years ago, the world ended.
Two years ago, El stood in the center of the storm and chose everyone else.
The grief had been a physical thing back then.
Heavy. Crushing.
They’d survived because they had to. Because surviving was the only way to honor her.
And when the world finally stopped ending—when there no more monsters to run from—there was space. Too much of it, at first. Quiet that pressed in and demanded to be filled.
Somewhere in that quiet—realizations came.
Will had always loved Mike. He just hadn’t had the language for it before. He’d mistaken it for longing, for admiration, for the hollow ache he once called his ‘Tammy’ because it felt safer that way. Because naming it meant wanting something he didn’t believe he was allowed to have.
And Mike—Mike had loved him too. Maybe just as long. Maybe without realizing it until the world finally stopped ending long enough for him to look at what was still standing.
“You’re staring,” Mike murmurs, amused.
Will snorts softly. “You caused a scene.”
“I was iconic,” Mike says. “Get it right.”
Will laughs, the sound surprising even himself. It feels good. It feels earned.
His fingers find the lock again, thumb tracing the tiny groove where the key fits.
He remembers the night Mike gave it to him—hands shaking, voice steady only because he forced it to be.
“I don’t want to lose you,” Mike had said. “Not again. Not ever.”
Will leans over now, rests his head briefly against Mike’s shoulder. “Thanks,” he says, meaning a thousand things.
Mike slides his hand over Will’s, holding it for a moment. “Always.”
The music swells. Glasses clink. The world keeps spinning, careless and bright.
Will watches it all with new eyes.
This ending isn’t the one anyone expected. It isn’t the one that was written. But it’s real. It’s theirs.
And for the first time in a long time, Will doesn’t feel like he’s waiting for something to take him away.
He’s exactly where he belongs.