Chapter Text
Mike finished the last sentence at 2:14 a.m.
He stared at it until the words stopped looking like words and started looking like a dare.
THE END.
His cursor blinked beneath it, patient and indifferent, as if it hadn’t just watched him bleed out onto a screen for nine straight months. Mike let his hands drop into his lap. His wrists ached. His neck ached. Everything ached in that satisfied, hollow way that came after you’d held your breath for too long and only remembered to exhale once it was over.
From the other room, the radiator clicked. A car passed on the street below, tires hissing on wet asphalt. Philadelphia never shut up completely. It only lowered its voice.
Mike saved the file. Then he saved it again, like it would somehow vanish if he didn’t. He emailed it to himself. He backed it up on a flash drive he kept taped to the underside of his desk like a paranoid teenager hiding contraband.
Then he sat there, the blue light washing his hands pale, and waited for the rush that was supposed to come with finishing your first book.
It didn’t.
What came instead was a slow, creeping awareness of what finishing meant: someone was going to read it.
He pushed his chair back and stood. His knees cracked.
On the wall above his desk, between a framed Hawkins High graduation photo and a cheap poster from a local bookstore, there was a small shelf. On it sat a handful of old things he couldn’t bring himself to throw away: a bent D20, a faded Hellfire pin Dustin had mailed him in college as a joke and a promise, and a tiny plastic figurine—paint worn at the edges—that looked like it had fought a thousand imaginary battles.
The paladin.
Mike picked it up and turned it between his fingers. The paint on the shield was chipped where a younger Mike had dropped it on concrete. He remembered that drop vividly, like his brain kept a catalog of useless details on purpose.
He set it down carefully, as if it mattered.
Then he shut the laptop and went to bed.
He didn’t sleep.
“You finished.”
Marian Adler said it like a fact and a miracle at the same time, which was why Mike paid her.
She sat across from him in a coffee shop near Rittenhouse Square, a folder open in front of her like she was about to diagnose him with something. Marian looked like she belonged in publishing in the way you could never quite describe—sharp haircut, sharp eyes, clothes that cost more than his rent without looking like they did. She had the kind of calm that came from always knowing what the next step was.
Mike wrapped both hands around his cup even though it was already lukewarm.
“I finished,” he confirmed.
Marian’s smile widened. “Mike Wheeler, debut novelist. Congratulations.”
He made a sound that might’ve been a laugh if it didn’t get stuck halfway out.
“Don’t do that,” he said.
“Do what?”
“Say it like it’s… like I’m—” He stopped, because the words he wanted weren’t cooperating. “Like it’s normal.”
Marian leaned back, studying him. “It is normal. For writers.”
Mike’s gaze flicked to the window. Outside, people walked dogs and carried tote bags and looked like they had never once seen the sky split open.
“Right,” he said, flat.
Marian let it go, which was another reason Mike paid her.
She tapped her folder. “Okay. We’re going to talk edits, timeline, marketing, cover copy, all the fun stuff that will make you want to chew through your own arm. But first, there’s one question we need to answer.”
Mike’s stomach tightened. “If this is about the ending, I’m not changing—”
“It’s not about the ending.” Marian’s tone was too knowing. “It’s about pictures.”
Mike blinked. “Pictures?”
“Your contract with Greywren includes illustrated plates. They want it positioned as crossover—literary fantasy for adults, but accessible. Think beautiful objects. Think giftability.”
Mike stared at her. “They want… drawings.”
“Not ‘drawings.’ Illustrations.” Marian’s mouth twitched. “There’s a difference.”
Mike’s fingers tightened around the cup. He hadn’t thought about that. He’d thought about everything else: the cover, the font, the way people would look at him if they knew what half the metaphors really meant. He’d thought about whether he should have changed names, whether it was too obvious to people who’d been there, whether Joyce would cry if she read chapter nine.
He hadn’t thought about someone else’s art being inside it.
“I thought—” Mike cleared his throat. “I thought I’d just… do it without.”
Marian’s eyebrows rose. “You can’t. It’s part of the deal.”
Mike opened his mouth. Closed it. A familiar helplessness pressed behind his ribs, the same feeling he got when the power went out at the worst possible time, when the lights flickered and everyone froze and he could feel his brain trying to count exits.
He set the cup down carefully so it wouldn’t rattle.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. Fine. So… we find an illustrator.”
“That’s what I do,” Marian said, bright again. “I find you an illustrator.”
Mike forced himself to breathe through his nose. In. Out. In. Out.
Marian slid a single sheet of paper across the table. “I’ve already started a list.”
He glanced down. Names, websites, portfolios. Some were local. Some were in New York. One was in London.
His eyes snagged on a line halfway down the page.
William B. — NYC — portfolio available upon request
Mike’s vision blurred for half a second, like his brain had tried to reject the input.
He blinked hard. Looked again.
William.
Not Will.
William B.
The paper might as well have been on fire.
Marian was still talking. “—and that one is newer, but the editor at Greywren actually asked about him specifically. His work is—”
Mike’s voice came out too quiet. “Him?”
Marian paused. “Yes?”
Mike swallowed. His throat felt dry, suddenly, like he’d just biked too fast in cold air.
“Can I see the portfolio?” he asked, and he hated how steady he sounded.
Marian smiled like she’d been waiting for him to be cooperative. “Absolutely. I can set up a meeting. He’s in Manhattan. Convenient.”
Manhattan.
Mike’s brain supplied an image without permission: Will at thirteen, pale and shaking in a hospital bed, Mike sitting in a chair beside him, refusing to go home. Will at fifteen, rain soaking through his shirt, turning away so Mike wouldn’t see his face. Will at seventeen, in a van with the desert outside, speaking like the words would kill him if he said them too directly.
Will at eighteen, cap and gown, eyes bright and terrified and relieved. Will at… older, somewhere else, far away, someone Mike didn’t know.
They hadn’t talked in a long time.
Not because of a blow-up. Not because of a clear ending. Just… life, and distance, and the kind of grief that made you avoid the people who remembered you before you learned how to pretend you were okay.
Mike’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He ignored it.
“When?” he asked.
Marian checked her calendar. “Next Thursday. Two o’clock. His studio is in Chelsea. I’ll email you the details.”
Mike nodded like a person who wasn’t about to throw up.
He tried to tell himself it was a coincidence.
Byers wasn’t an uncommon last name. Willow could be anyone. Will could be anywhere. Will could have changed his name, he could have—
Mike stopped himself on the sidewalk outside the coffee shop, because the thought had hit with the kind of certainty that felt like being punched.
Will drew.
Will always drew.
Mike could still see his old drawings in his mind, the way you saw faces in dreams: knights with swords too big for their bodies, monsters made of teeth, a dark storm cloud with too many eyes. He could still see the painting Will made—the party, the dragon, the heart on Mike’s chest.
His hands started to shake. He shoved them into his pockets and walked.
He didn’t call anyone.
Not Dustin. Not Lucas. Not Nancy.
He didn’t call Will either, because he didn’t have Will’s number anymore.
He told himself that was normal. People lost numbers. People drifted. People didn’t keep the same friends forever.
He told himself a lot of things.
Thursday came anyway.
New York in November was the kind of cold that felt personal.
Mike stepped out of Penn Station and immediately got swallowed by bodies, noise, steam rising off street grates. He adjusted the strap of his messenger bag and checked the address Marian had emailed him for the tenth time.
A studio building. A receptionist. A security check-in.
A checkpoint.
That word sat wrong in his mouth. It belonged to a different life.
He forced his feet to keep moving. He followed the directions. He rode the subway, then walked the last few blocks with his collar up and his hands stuffed into his pockets.
The building looked like every other renovated warehouse pretending it had always been chic. Big windows. Clean brick. A metal-framed glass door with a keypad.
Inside, the lobby was warm and smelled like polished wood. A security desk sat beneath a minimalist light fixture that probably cost more than Mike’s car.
A man in a navy blazer looked up. “Can I help you?”
Mike’s mouth went dry again. “Uh—yeah. I have a meeting. Two o’clock. With… William B.”
The man’s fingers moved over a keyboard. “Name?”
“Mike Wheeler.”
The security guard glanced at the screen, then at Mike, then back at the screen like he was confirming reality.
“You’re early,” he said. “He’s in the building. Take the elevator to eight. Suite 8C.”
Mike nodded too fast. “Thanks.”
The guard handed him a visitor badge. MIKE WHEELER, it read in block letters, like the world needed reminding.
He stuck it to his jacket and headed toward the elevator.
Halfway there, the lights flickered.
Just once—so quick most people wouldn’t have noticed. But Mike’s body noticed. His spine tightened. His breath caught.
His brain did the old thing: exit routes, threats, the irrational certainty that something was about to crawl out of the walls.
He stopped walking.
The lights steadied. The lobby stayed calm. The security guard didn’t even look up.
Mike exhaled slowly and forced his hands to unclench.
“It’s fine,” he muttered to himself. “It’s just a building.”
He stepped into the elevator.
The doors shut with a soft hiss.
For a second, the elevator felt too small. Too quiet. His reflection stared back at him in the brushed metal. Twenty-five, older in ways that didn’t show on paper, hair longer than it had been in high school, jaw a little sharper. But his eyes—
His eyes still looked like someone waiting for a phone to ring.
The elevator chimed at eight.
When the doors opened, a hallway stretched ahead, white walls, framed prints, a long bench, a potted plant that looked expensive and fake.
A door labeled 8C sat at the end.
Mike walked toward it.
He reached for the handle.
Then he heard a voice behind him.
Soft. Familiar. Not louder than it had to be.
“Mike?”
He stopped so abruptly his shoulder jerked, like his body had tried to pull away from the sound and couldn’t.
Slowly, he turned.
Will stood there with a portfolio under one arm and a messenger bag slung across his chest, hair longer than Mike remembered, curls softer, face sharper at the cheekbones. He looked… good. Not “good” like a movie star. Good like someone who had learned how to live in his own skin.
His eyes were still the same, though.
Dark. Watchful. Too honest.
For a second, neither of them moved.
Mike’s brain supplied the only coherent thought it had:
Oh.
Oh.
It landed in his chest like a dropped weight.
Will’s mouth parted slightly, like he’d started to say something and changed his mind. His gaze flicked to Mike’s visitor badge, then back to Mike’s face.
“What are you—” Will stopped. Swallowed. Tried again. “What are you doing here?”
Mike’s throat didn’t work.
He forced it to. “I—” He cleared his throat, embarrassed by the crack in his voice. “I have a meeting.”
Will stared at him like Mike had just said the sky was green.
“With… you,” Mike finished, because it felt stupid not to.
Will’s shoulders rose with a breath. Fell. He blinked once, slow, like he was resetting.
“Oh,” Will said.
It sounded like the same word, but it meant something different.
Behind them, somewhere in the building, a door opened and shut. Someone laughed. The normal world kept turning, inconsiderate.
Mike’s fingers curled around the strap of his bag. “Your name is—”
“William." Will said quickly, then grimaced. “Yeah. It’s… work stuff. People call me that. It’s—” He stopped again, frustration flashing across his face. “Hi.”
Mike’s chest tightened.
“Hi,” he managed.
Will took a step forward, then stopped as if he wasn’t sure he was allowed to get closer. The space between them felt loaded, like it was full of all the years they hadn’t spoken.
“I didn’t know it was you,” Mike said, because the silence was unbearable.
Will’s eyes flicked to the door at the end of the hall. “I didn’t know it was you either.”
Mike let out a breath that came out too sharp. “Marian said—”
“My agent,” Will said. “She just… sends me gigs.”
Mike nodded, too many thoughts colliding. “Right. Yeah. Okay.”
Another pause.
Will’s gaze dropped to Mike’s hands, then to his face again. “You wrote a book?”
Mike’s laugh came out wrong. “Apparently.”
Will’s mouth twitched like he wanted to smile and didn’t trust himself.
“Can we…” Will gestured at the door, small and uncertain. “We should—uh. We should do the meeting. Right?”
Mike’s heart thudded hard enough he could feel it in his throat.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. Sure.”
Will walked past him, close enough that Mike caught the scent of laundry detergent and cold air on his jacket. Will’s shoulder brushed Mike’s arm, just barely, and Mike’s entire body went still like he’d been touched by electricity.
Will didn’t look back. He unlocked the door and pushed it open.
“After you,” Will said, voice careful.
Mike stepped inside.
The studio was bright and warm, sunlight spilling through tall windows. Sketches were taped to the walls—character designs, landscapes, ink studies. A long table sat in the center, scattered with pencils and paper and mugs. It looked lived-in. It looked like Will.
Mike stood just inside the doorway, suddenly unsure what to do with his hands, his feet, his face.
Will shut the door behind them.
The click of the latch sounded too final.
They were alone.
Mike turned slowly, taking it all in, and then his gaze caught on a drawing pinned to the far wall.
A knight. A heart on the chest.
Mike’s breath left him.
Will’s voice came from behind him, quieter now. “I kept—” He stopped, then tried again, like he was braver than his nerves. “I kept some things.”
Mike turned.
Will was watching him like he expected Mike to bolt.
Mike didn’t move.
He couldn’t.
Because all he could think, standing in Will’s studio with the sun on the floor and the past sitting between them like a third person, was:
Oh fuck.
And the worst part was—
It didn’t feel like an ending.
It felt like the moment right before the dice hit the table.
The click of the latch still rang in Mike’s bones.
A studio door wasn’t supposed to sound like that. It was supposed to be a normal sound in a normal building in a normal city, not a closing-off, not a sealing, not a now you’re trapped with it.
Mike stood with his back half-turned toward the room like he didn’t trust the air.
Will didn’t move for a second after shutting the door. His hand stayed on the knob, fingers curled like he could undo it if Mike panicked.
Which—Jesus—was the kind of detail Mike noticed now. Not consciously. Not in a thoughtful, tender way.
More like: threat assessment, but for feelings.
The studio looked like Will, in the way a space could look like someone without being dramatic about it.
Bright windows. White walls. Paper everywhere. Sharp pencils. Soft graphite smudges like fingerprints. Mugs that didn’t match. A plant in the corner that was half thriving and half dying, stubborn in the way Will had always been stubborn.
There were sketches taped up—tight character studies, landscapes with too much sky, creatures that made your stomach do the old uneasy flip. There were ink washes that looked like storms caught in glass.
And on the far wall, pinned with two clean pushpins like it mattered, a drawing of a knight.
The knight’s chest bore a simple emblem: a heart.
Mike’s breath left him so fast it almost hurt.
Not because he hadn’t seen it before.
Because he had.
Every day.
In his apartment in Philadelphia, above his desk, right where his eyes always went when his sentences got stuck—Will’s painting had lived there for years. The one from the van. The one with the dragon and the party, the one where Mike’s stupid paladin had a heart on his coat of arms like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
He’d taken it with him when he left Hawkins. He’d rolled it, carried it, unpacked it like contraband. He’d tried to pretend he hung it up because it was good art.
But the truth was uglier and simpler:
He hung it because it kept him anchored. Because sometimes his brain would start to slide sideways into the old years—into gates and sirens and screams and the wet sound of something moving through the dark—and he needed one solid object to look at and think: we were a party. we had rules. we had each other. this meant something.
He hung it because he couldn’t take down the only thing that still felt like a promise.
He hung it because it was Will.
And now here, on Will’s wall, the heart stared back at him again like the world had gotten bored and decided to be cruel in a new way.
Behind him, Will cleared his throat.
“Uh.” A pause. “You… you can sit.”
Mike realized he’d been standing in the exact same place for too long, holding his messenger bag strap like it was going to stop him from falling through the floor.
He forced his feet to move.
There was a long table in the middle of the room with paper scattered across it in organized chaos—everything was messy, but nothing was careless. Mike lowered himself onto a stool like he was afraid it might bite.
Will hovered for a second, then moved to the kitchenette tucked into the corner.
“Coffee?” Will asked.
The question sounded like a lifeline thrown across a river.
“Yeah,” Mike said too quickly. “Yeah. Coffee’s good.”
Will nodded like he was relieved Mike picked something easy.
The machine whirred. Water hissed. Normal city sounds that weren’t trying to be ominous.
Mike stared at the table, because if he looked at the heart on the wall again he was going to do something embarrassing, like speak.
Or worse—feel.
Will set a mug down in front of him. The ceramic was warm, slightly chipped at the rim. Not fancy. Real.
Mike wrapped his hands around it automatically.
Will sat across from him but not too close. Close enough to be in the same scene. Far enough to breathe.
They looked like two people about to have a business meeting.
Mike’s body did not believe that for a second.
“So,” Will said, and he sounded like he was stepping onto ice. “Marian said you’re… publishing.”
Mike flinched at the name because Marian made everything real. Marian turned panic into contracts.
“Yeah,” Mike said. “Greywren.”
Will’s eyes flicked up. “That’s—” He stopped, then tried again like he was making sure the sentence stayed neutral. “That’s big.”
Mike shrugged like it was nothing. Like he hadn’t spent nine months bleeding into a keyboard.
“It’s… a thing.”
Will’s mouth twitched once, like he almost smiled at the understatement. It didn’t stick.
“And they want illustrated plates,” Will said. He kept his voice light, but there was something tight underneath it. “Which is why I’m here.”
Which is why you’re here.
Not: You came back.
Not: I didn’t expect you.
Not: What the hell happened to us.
Just: business.
Mike nodded. “Yeah.”
Will reached into his portfolio and slid out a few printed samples.
“Okay,” he said, brisk now, grateful for structure. “I’ll show you some work. You tell me what you like, what fits the tone. Then we talk scope, deadlines, all that.”
He placed the first print on the table.
A forest. Dense. Dark. The kind of trees that felt like they leaned in to listen. The light between branches looked wrong, like it had teeth if you stared too long.
Mike’s brain immediately supplied wet leaves, static, the hollow feeling of being watched.
He inhaled slowly through his nose.
“It’s… intense,” Mike managed.
Will nodded. “That’s kind of the point.”
He slid the next one forward.
A ruined library. Shelves collapsed. Books split open like bodies. A spiral staircase leading down into a black hole that seemed to swallow light itself.
Mike felt his throat close.
He forced himself to swallow.
“Atmosphere,” Mike said, like he was reviewing a movie and not trying not to have a flashback in front of Will Byers.
Will’s gaze stayed on his face instead of the art.
“You okay?” Will asked.
Mike blinked hard. “Yeah. It’s good. It’s just—good.”
Will held his gaze for a beat longer than necessary, like he could see the lie sitting in Mike’s mouth.
Then, mercifully, he didn’t push.
He kept going.
A dragon. Not cartoonish. Not heroic. Something storm-shaped, all teeth and tendons, the kind of creature that looked like it had always existed.
A cracked clock face with hands sharp as knives.
A house with an angle that made your eyes want to slide away.
Mike’s pulse didn’t settle. It never really did anymore.
Will finally pulled out one last print and set it down gently, like it was fragile.
A quiet scene this time: a boy standing on the edge of a cliff, looking out at a sea that wasn’t a sea. The horizon was too flat. The sky was too empty. The boy’s coat blew back in the wind. You couldn’t see his face.
But you could see what he was holding.
A small object in his hand, close to his chest.
A heart-shaped token.
Mike’s fingers tightened around the mug.
That image wasn’t from the Upside Down. It was from somewhere worse.
A place where you stood on the edge of something and couldn’t decide if you were brave or just tired.
Mike cleared his throat. “That one.”
Will’s pencil—when did he pick up a pencil?—paused above the paper beside him.
“What about it?” Will asked.
Mike stared at the print until the lines blurred.
“It feels like…” He struggled, because words were always the thing that got away right when he needed them. “Like the moment right before you—”
He stopped.
Will didn’t.
“Before you jump,” Will said quietly.
Mike’s eyes flicked up.
Will’s expression was careful, but his voice was too honest to be accidental.
Mike’s chest tightened like it always did when someone got too close to the truth.
“Yeah,” Mike said, hoarse. “Before you jump.”
Silence stretched, tense and alive.
Will set the pencil down.
“Tell me about the book,” he said.
Mike’s stomach dropped. “What?”
Will gestured at the prints like they were a bridge. “Tone. Themes. What you want the plates to do.”
Mike stared at him.
The real answer to tell me about the book was: it’s about us.
It was: it’s about the way Hawkins never left my body.
It was: it’s about the girl I loved who became a war, and the boy I loved who became a ghost in the room.
But Mike couldn’t say any of that without the room combusting.
So he started smaller.
“It’s fantasy,” Mike said.
Will’s eyes didn’t change. He didn’t laugh. He didn’t do that polite publishing nod.
He just waited.
Mike exhaled. “But it’s not—like—dragons and castles fantasy. It’s… grief in armor fantasy.”
Will’s mouth twitched faintly. “Okay.”
“It’s about a guy who thinks if he keeps everyone together, nobody dies,” Mike said. “Like… if he stays the leader, if he stays useful, he stays… necessary.”
Will’s gaze sharpened like he’d heard something familiar.
Mike kept going because stopping would make him crumble.
“And then someone leaves,” Mike said. “And he realizes being necessary doesn’t mean being enough.”
Will went still.
Mike watched his throat move as he swallowed.
For a second, Mike thought Will was going to say her name.
El.
Instead Will said, very softly, “Is that why you wrote it?”
Mike’s fingers went numb.
“What,” Mike said, and it came out wrong. “Why I—?”
Will didn’t blink. “To be enough.”
The words hit Mike like a punch to the sternum.
He tried to laugh it off. It didn’t work.
“I don’t know,” Mike said, because it was the only answer he could survive saying.
Will looked down at the table like he needed to stare at something solid.
Then he said, voice quieter, “I didn’t know you were a writer.”
Mike almost said you did. Because Will had been there—basement campaigns, notebooks, Mike narrating worlds into existence like it was the only control he had.
But Will meant now. Will meant adult you. new you.
“Yeah,” Mike said instead. “Well. I didn’t know you were—” He gestured vaguely around the studio. “This.”
Will’s shoulders lifted in a small shrug. “It’s just… work.”
It was a lie. Mike could tell because Will’s lies always sounded like someone trying to keep a door shut with their foot.
Mike nodded anyway.
“Do you have the manuscript?” Will asked.
Mike hesitated. “Not… with me.”
Will’s eyes flicked up, mild surprise. “You came to a meeting with your illustrator without—”
Mike held up a hand. “I know. I know. Marian has it. She said she’d send it to you if—if we agreed.”
Will’s mouth tightened at Marian’s name like it tasted sour.
“Right,” Will said.
He reached toward the prints, stacked them neatly, then stopped midway, like his hand had forgotten the rest of the motion.
Mike noticed his fingers shaking.
Not much.
Just enough that Mike’s body recognized it the way it recognized a gun being raised in a movie.
“You don’t have to do it,” Mike heard himself say.
Will looked up too fast. “What?”
“The job,” Mike said. He tried to keep his voice casual, but it cracked on the edges. “If it’s weird. If you—if you don’t want to.”
Will stared at him for a long second.
Then he said, careful and sharp, “Do you not want me to?”
Mike’s brain stalled.
Because the answer was complicated in ways Mike hated.
He wanted Will here. In his life. In his orbit. In a room again.
And he also wanted to run.
Because wanting Will meant admitting certain things about how Mike’s heart still behaved, and Mike had built his adulthood around pretending his heart was a broken appliance he didn’t need.
Mike swallowed.
“I don’t know,” Mike admitted.
Will’s eyes narrowed slightly, not angry—hurt, maybe, but wearing anger as armor.
“You don’t know,” Will repeated.
Mike felt the panic rise, quick and familiar. The sensation of being cornered without an exit.
“I want you to be okay,” Mike said, because it was safer than the truth and still true. “I don’t want you to get stuck doing something that makes you—” He gestured uselessly, frustrated with his own language. “That makes you feel like a mistake.”
Will went very still.
Mike felt like he’d stepped on a landmine.
For a second, Will didn’t speak.
Then he said, voice thin, “You read my mind or something?”
Mike flinched. “No. I just—”
Will let out a single sharp breath that might’ve been a laugh if it didn’t sound like it hurt.
“Yeah,” Will said. “You just… always do that.”
Mike’s chest tightened. “Do what?”
Will’s gaze flicked to the far wall.
To the heart.
“You say the thing you think I need to hear,” Will said. “And you don’t realize what it does.”
Mike stared at him, confused and suddenly terrified.
“What does it do?” Mike asked.
Will’s jaw clenched.
He looked away.
That was answer enough.
Mike’s pulse pounded in his ears.
And then—right on cue, because the universe loved timing—the lights flickered.
Just once.
Not dramatic. Not cinematic.
But Mike’s body responded like it had been trained.
His spine locked.
His breath caught.
His vision narrowed.
The memory hit him without permission: Hawkins. The streetlights going out. The air changing. The way the world tilted and you could feel something watching.
Will noticed immediately.
Of course he did.
He always noticed.
“Mike,” Will said, soft, like he was trying not to spook an animal. “Hey. It’s okay. It’s just—”
The lights flickered again.
Then they went out completely.
The studio dropped into sudden darkness, lit only by gray city light bleeding through the windows.
The coffee machine beeped once, sad and dying.
Somewhere in the building, a distant alarm chirped.
Mike stood up so fast his stool scraped.
His heart was already sprinting.
He heard himself say, too sharp, “No.”
Will’s voice cut through it. “Mike. It’s a blackout.”
Mike’s brain did not accept that sentence.
Because the last time the lights died, monsters came.
Because the last time the power failed, people didn’t always come back.
He couldn’t stop it. His hands shook. His mouth went dry.
Will moved quickly—quiet feet, steady, like he’d practiced crisis mode his whole life.
He grabbed a flashlight from a drawer and clicked it on.
A beam cut through the dark.
It landed on Mike’s face.
Mike hated how exposed he felt.
Will’s eyes softened.
Not pity. Not fear.
Recognition.
“Hey,” Will said again, gentler. “Look at me.”
Mike swallowed hard.
The flashlight beam wobbled as Will’s hand trembled just slightly too.
Which was—somehow—the thing that brought Mike back.
Not the words.
The fact that Will was scared too, and still chose steadiness anyway.
Mike forced his eyes to Will’s face.
Will held the beam lower so it wasn’t blinding.
“There’s no Upside Down,” Will said quietly. “There’s no… anything. It’s New York. It’s a building. It’s just a power outage.”
Mike’s throat burned.
He nodded once, sharp, like movement was easier than speech.
“Okay,” Mike lied.
Will’s mouth tightened like he knew it.
Before Will could say anything else, there was a loud buzz from the door.
A building intercom crackled to life.
“Attention,” a muffled voice said. “We’ve got a power issue. Elevators are down. Please remain calm. Emergency lighting should—”
The intercom died mid-sentence.
Will exhaled through his nose. “Great.”
Mike’s phone buzzed in his pocket like it had been waiting for drama.
He pulled it out.
One percent battery.
Of course.
A text popped up from Marian:
Need confirmation TODAY. Greywren wants illustrator locked by 5pm. Call me.
Mike stared at it.
Five p.m.
He glanced at the windows. The daylight looked wrong, washed-out in the sudden dim.
Will watched him. “Marian?”
Mike nodded, still staring at the screen like it might give him a better life if he stared hard enough.
Will’s voice tightened. “She wants an answer.”
“Yeah,” Mike said. “Today.”
Will’s laugh came out small and bitter. “Of course she does.”
Mike looked up at him.
Will’s face was half-lit by the gray. His eyes looked darker, bigger, like the dark made him younger for a second.
And Mike felt that old, sick twist in his chest—the one that had nothing to do with monsters and everything to do with the way Will Byers had always been the one thing Mike couldn’t bear to lose.
“Okay,” Mike said, forcing himself to sound steady. “We can—uh. We can talk through it. We can decide.”
Will’s flashlight beam swung to the table, to the prints, to the pencil he’d set down.
Then it swung up again—to the wall.
To the heart.
Mike followed it without meaning to.
Will’s voice came quiet, almost hesitant.
“That—” Will started, then stopped.
Mike’s stomach tightened.
Will’s eyes stayed on the drawing pinned to the wall like it was accusing him.
“You recognized it,” Will said.
It wasn’t a question.
Mike’s pulse bumped.
He tried for casual. “It’s a motif, right? Like—like your thing.”
Will looked at him like Mike had just tried to lie about the weather while standing in rain.
“Yeah,” Will said softly. “Sure.”
Mike didn’t know what to do with his hands. He picked up his mug again even though the coffee had gone cold.
Will watched him.
“Do you still have it?” Will asked.
Mike froze.
The mug hovered halfway to his mouth.
His brain scrambled for a loophole. For a way out. For a version of the truth that didn’t crack open the whole room.
But the blackout had stolen his easy scripts.
And Will’s face was too open in the dim for Mike to lie cleanly.
“Yes,” Mike said.
Will’s throat moved.
“Where,” Will asked, voice barely above a whisper.
Mike swallowed.
“In my apartment,” he admitted. “In Philly.”
Will’s eyes flicked up, startled. “You live in Philadelphia?”
Mike blinked. “Yeah. Marian—Greywren—everything’s out there. I—” He stopped because he didn’t know why he was explaining his address like it mattered. Like Will would come over. Like Will could.
Will stared at him like he was trying to picture a whole life Mike hadn’t told him about.
“And… the painting?” Will asked again, like he needed to hear the answer in full.
Mike’s chest went tight.
“It’s hung up,” Mike said, and his voice cracked slightly on the last word.
Will didn’t move.
Mike forced himself to keep going because stopping felt worse.
“By my desk,” Mike said. “Where I write.”
Will blinked hard once.
The flashlight beam dipped.
For a second, Mike thought Will might drop it.
Instead, Will’s jaw clenched like he was biting down on something.
“You kept it,” Will said.
Mike’s throat burned. “Yeah.”
“Even after—” Will stopped himself.
Even after El.
Even after the breakup.
Even after the lie.
Even after everything.
Mike’s eyes stung, unexpectedly, like his body didn’t care that he was twenty-five now and supposed to be normal.
“Yeah,” Mike said again, quieter. “I kept it.”
Will looked away.
He turned slightly, like he needed the wall to support him without admitting it.
“That’s…” Will started, then stopped, frustrated. “Why?”
Mike laughed once, sharp and ugly. “Why do you think?”
Will’s head snapped toward him.
The flashlight beam shook.
Mike regretted the tone immediately. He softened, because hurting Will—even accidentally—still felt like putting his hand on a hot stove.
“I don’t know,” Mike said, honest now. “Because it’s—because it mattered. Because you made it. Because I—” He stopped because the rest of the sentence was a trap.
Because I couldn’t take down the heart.
Will’s voice turned careful. “Do you—” He hesitated. “Do you look at it?”
Mike stared at him.
“What kind of question is that,” Mike tried to joke.
Will didn’t smile.
Mike’s laugh died in his throat.
“Yes,” Mike said.
Will’s shoulders rose with a breath.
“And when you look at it,” Will said, too softly, “what do you think about?”
Mike’s mouth went dry.
He could answer with something safe: the party.the kids. Hawkins.
But Will wasn’t asking safe questions.
He was asking like he was holding onto the edge of something and deciding whether to jump.
Mike looked at the heart pinned on Will’s wall.
Then he looked back at Will.
And the truth was there, sitting between them like a third person, ugly and tender and impossible to ignore.
“I think about…” Mike started, then stopped because his throat tightened.
Will’s eyes didn’t leave his.
Mike forced the words out anyway.
“I think about you,” Mike said.
The sentence fell into the dark like a stone into water.
Will went perfectly still.
Even his breathing seemed to pause.
Then, barely audible, Will whispered, “Oh.”
It sounded like the word Mike had thought in the hallway.
Only this time it sounded like it hurt.
The emergency light near the door clicked on suddenly, dim and red, flooding the edge of the room with a low glow.
It made Will’s face look strange—half shadow, half blood-colored light.
Mike’s pulse pounded.
He tried to recover. Tried to shove the moment back into a box.
“I mean,” Mike said quickly, stupidly. “Not—like—just. Like. You know.”
Will’s gaze sharpened.
“Like what,” Will said.
Mike’s stomach dropped.
He was doing it again. He was panicking and reaching for word salad like it could build a ladder out of the hole.
Will took a step closer.
Not fast. Not threatening.
Just… closer.
“You always do that,” Will said quietly. “You say something real and then you try to kill it.”
Mike flinched. “That’s not—”
“It is,” Will said, firmer now. The flashlight beam trembled in his hand, betraying him. “It is. And I don’t—” He swallowed hard. “I don’t know if you realize how… how loud it is.”
Mike stared at him, helpless.
Will’s voice cracked slightly. “Because you can’t— you can’t say my name in a room without acting like it’s dangerous.”
Mike’s chest tightened so hard it felt like his ribs were trying to crush his lungs.
“I’m not—” Mike started.
Will cut him off, eyes shining now, furious in that quiet way Will’s anger always came out.
“Airport,” Will said.
Mike went still.
Will’s voice sharpened. “You didn’t hug me. You barely— you—” He stopped, breath shaking. “And then you called me sometimes. Sometimes. And I told myself it was normal. I told myself you were busy. I told myself it didn’t mean anything.”
Mike’s throat burned.
Will’s eyes went wet, but he didn’t wipe them. He never wiped them when he was trying to be brave.
“And then you keep the painting,” Will said, voice breaking. “And you hang it up. By your desk. Where you write. Where you look every day. And you’re telling me—what? That you don’t—”
He stopped.
He looked away sharply, like he’d almost said something that would kill him if it came out.
Mike’s heart pounded.
He could feel his own fear rising—not of monsters, not of lights flickering, but of the truth.
Of being seen.
Of being asked to name something he’d spent years refusing to name because naming it meant responsibility, and Mike was so tired of responsibility.
Will’s voice went smaller. “Just tell me what it means to you.”
Mike stared at him, breath shallow.
He could hear his own pulse.
He could hear the building settling around them, the distant murmurs of other tenants reacting to the outage like normal people.
He could hear the thin thread of electricity still in the air, like a storm waiting.
Mike’s phone buzzed again.
One percent.
Marian.
The world intruding.
Mike looked down at the screen like it was an escape hatch.
Will noticed.
His face hardened.
“Right,” Will said, bitter. “Of course.”
Mike’s throat tightened. “Will—”
“Don’t,” Will said, quiet but sharp. “Don’t say my name like you’re about to fix it.”
Mike’s chest hurt.
“I’m not trying to fix it,” Mike said, voice cracking. “I just— I don’t want to—”
“Lose me,” Will finished, and the way he said it made Mike go cold.
Mike blinked. “What?”
Will’s laugh was wet. “That’s what you always say, right? You don’t want to lose people. You don’t want people to leave.”
He swallowed hard.
“But you let me go anyway,” Will whispered.
Mike’s stomach dropped so fast it felt like falling.
“I didn’t—” Mike started, and then his voice failed him because the truth was: he did.
Not in one big dramatic betrayal.
In a thousand little choices.
A missed call. A delayed letter. A silence that got easier to keep than to break.
Mike stepped forward without thinking.
“Will,” Mike said, and it came out raw. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”
Will’s eyes snapped up. “That’s supposed to help?”
Mike flinched.
“No,” Mike said quickly. “No. It’s not. I just—”
He stopped.
Because there was no sentence that could undo years.
Because there was no apology that could rewrite the moments where Will had been waiting and Mike had chosen distance like it was safer.
Will’s shoulders shook once with a breath he tried to control.
Then he said, voice small and deadly honest, “Do you know why I changed my name?”
Mike froze.
“What,” Mike asked, because his brain had no prepared script for that.
Will’s eyes flicked to the door. To the red emergency light. To the darkness beyond the windows.
Then back to Mike.
“Because every time someone said ‘Will,’” Will said, “it felt like they were talking about a kid who disappeared.”
Mike’s chest tightened.
“And every time someone said ‘Byers,’” Will continued, “it felt like they were talking about a tragedy.”
Mike couldn’t breathe properly.
Will swallowed hard.
“So I became ‘William.’” His mouth twisted. “It’s stupid. It’s—whatever. It’s just… it’s a name that doesn’t come pre-loaded with everyone else’s memory.”
He looked at Mike again, eyes shining.
“But you,” Will said, voice shaking. “You’re the one person who—who could say my name and make it feel like home.”
Mike’s throat went tight.
“And you stopped,” Will finished, barely audible.
Mike felt something crack in him.
Not like a dramatic movie breakdown.
Like a seam finally giving way because it had been under pressure too long.
“I didn’t stop,” Mike said, desperate. “I— I thought—”
You were better off without me.
I didn’t know how to be around you without—without feeling—
Mike’s brain stalled. His fear spiked.
Will watched him struggle.
And then Will, cruelly kind, said the thing Mike didn’t want to hear.
“You’re scared,” Will whispered.
Mike’s eyes stung.
He tried to shake his head. He couldn’t.
Will’s voice was soft, almost tender now. “You’re scared to look at it.”
Mike’s chest hurt. “Look at what?”
Will’s gaze flicked to the heart on the wall again.
Then back to Mike’s face.
“Whatever it is,” Will said. “Whatever it’s been. Between us.”
Mike’s mouth went dry.
He stared at Will, trapped.
And he hated that the only exit was honesty.
The emergency light hummed faintly. The flashlight beam shook in Will’s hand.
Mike’s phone buzzed again.
One percent.
Marian, demanding an answer.
The world demanding a decision.
Mike tried to speak.
No words came.
Then, without warning, the door buzzer sounded again—louder this time—and the intercom crackled back to life.
“Suite 8C,” the muffled voice said. “This is building security. We’re doing a safety check. Please respond.”
Will didn’t move.
Mike didn’t move.
They stared at each other like they’d been caught in the act of something illegal.
Will’s throat bobbed.
Then he said, hoarse, “I should—”
“Wait,” Mike said immediately, voice too sharp. Too desperate.
Will blinked at him.
Mike heard himself add, quieter, “Don’t leave. Please.”
The words hung there.
Raw.
Undeniable.
Will’s eyes widened slightly, like the sentence had touched something in him that was still alive.
He didn’t answer right away.
He just stared at Mike the way he used to stare at monsters in drawings—like he was trying to understand if they were real.
The buzzer sounded again, insistent.
Will finally turned toward the door, hand tightening around the flashlight.
“Yeah,” Will called, voice strained. “We’re here.”
A pause.
Security’s voice crackled back. “Are you okay in there?”
Will’s eyes flicked to Mike.
Mike nodded once, fast.
Will faced the intercom again. “We’re fine.”
Another pause. “Power should be restored shortly. If you need assistance, open the door and we can escort you out via the stairwell.”
Will didn’t respond immediately.
Mike could see the decision happening on his face.
Leave—escape—end the moment.
Or stay.
Will’s gaze cut to Mike again.
Mike didn’t say anything. He couldn’t trust himself not to ruin it.
So he just stood there, in the dark, with his hands empty, waiting for Will to choose.
Will swallowed.
Then he said into the intercom, voice steadying with effort, “We’re okay. We’ll wait.”
The line clicked off.
Will’s shoulders sagged slightly like he’d just done something brave.
He turned back to Mike.
The flashlight beam slid across the table, across the prints, across the scattered pencils—then finally back to Mike’s face.
Will’s voice came quiet. “I stayed.”
Mike’s chest tightened.
“I know,” Mike whispered.
Will blinked hard, like he was fighting tears. Like he was fighting hope.
Then he took a step closer.
Not too close.
Close enough that Mike could feel the heat of him in the air.
“Answer me,” Will said, voice trembling. “What does it mean.”
Mike’s throat burned.
He looked at Will’s face.
He thought of the painting above his desk. The heart. The paladin. The way he couldn’t write a single scene about loyalty without Will’s shadow falling over the page.
He thought of El—how love had been war and promise and disaster, how it had been real and still not enough to save her.
He thought of Will—how love had been quieter, steadier, more terrifying because it was the kind you could ruin with one wrong sentence.
Mike’s mouth opened.
A sound came out.
Not words.
Will’s eyes softened anyway, like he could read the truth before Mike could speak it.
And then—right in the middle of it, because the universe was committed to violence—
the lights snapped back on.
The studio flooded with bright, normal, merciless daylight.
The coffee machine restarted with a cheerful beep.
The emergency red glow vanished.
Everything looked suddenly ordinary again.
Too ordinary.
Mike blinked, disoriented, like he’d been pulled out of deep water.
Will flinched like the light hurt.
He stepped back quickly, too fast, putting space between them like he could shove the moment back into darkness where it belonged.
Mike’s phone buzzed one last time.
The screen lit up.
Then died.
One percent, gone.
Silence.
Will stared at the dead phone, then at Mike.
His voice was flat now, armor sliding back into place. “Marian wants an answer.”
Mike swallowed.
“Yeah,” Mike said.
Will nodded once, sharp, like he was making himself not shake.
“Okay,” Will said. “Then we decide.”
He turned away toward the table, moving too quickly, too professionally.
He gathered the prints into a neat stack with hands that trembled slightly at the edges.
Mike watched him.
And in the bright daylight, with the heart on the wall staring like an accusation, Mike realized something with a cold, sinking clarity:
He had come here thinking the book was the thing that mattered.
But the book was just the excuse.
The real deadline was standing in front of him, breathing, pretending to be fine.
Will set the prints down and didn’t look up.
His voice came quiet, tight. “Before we talk contracts…”
Mike’s heart hammered.
Will finally lifted his eyes.
“I want to show you something,” Will said.
Mike’s stomach dropped.
“What?” Mike asked, already afraid.
Will didn’t answer.
He just reached into a flat drawer under the table and slid it open.
Inside was a sketchbook. Black cover. Corners worn soft. The kind of book that had been carried everywhere.
Will’s fingers hovered over it for a second like touching it would burn.
Then he pulled it out and placed it on the table between them.
He didn’t open it.
He just pushed it toward Mike.
Mike stared at it like it was a weapon.
Will’s voice shook, barely controlled.
“If you’re going to write about monsters,” Will said, “you should at least know what they look like.”
Mike’s throat went dry.
He reached for the sketchbook.
And as his fingers touched the worn cover, he felt the hook sink in deep—because whatever was inside that book wasn’t just art.
It was years.
It was memory.
It was Will.
And Mike knew, with absolute certainty, that once he opened it—
there would be no going back to pretending.
End of Chapter 1.