Chapter Text
“If I s-stay…”
A sharp breath. Chattering teeth. An exhale.
“There w-will be trouble…”
Will’s nose is running, and his lungs feel heavier with each passing moment. Any heat provided by his own body has finally depleted. A weight tugs at his eyelids, begging him to sleep, but he can’t.
“If I go it will b-b-be…”
The goosebumps along his forearms are not from the bone-deep cold, but the nauseating fear skittering through his taut muscles, forcing his eyes open and keeping his brain alert.
Something is coming. Will doesn’t understand how he knows, but he knows nonetheless.
He grips his shotgun to his chest and runs his fingers along it to find the trigger. His hands are almost numb by now; they tremble more with every approaching footstep.
Something is coming – that beast that skulks through the eternal night. Will doesn’t know how much longer he can outrun the thing. He doesn’t know how much longer he wants to.
***
Mike has always been a light sleeper. It’s nights like this that he is grateful for it.
What started as heavy breathing has escalated into choking gasps and thrashing. Tears spill silently from Will’s eyes and into his ears. He throws his limbs about like he’s running from something, something Mike has to save him from, even if it is a horror of Will’s own creation.
It’s been a long time since the last one, and tonight is bad, Mike can tell. With bare knees chafing against the rough carpet, he places a soft hand on Will’s shoulder and leans down closer to him. He tries to ignore the anguish in his best friend’s features.
“Will?” He whispers, keeping his hand fixed in spite of his writhing. “Hey, hey, it’s Mike.”
He brushes the hair off of Will’s damp forehead and swipes at the fresh tears.
“You’re safe, Will. You’re home, and I’m here. We found you, we rescued you.”
Mike swallows and reaches under the covers to clasp Will’s freezing hand in his. It takes some time, because Will’s fingers are clenched into a tight fist and his arms are trembling, but Mike manages to force their palms together. He withholds a wince at the strength Will exerts in his grip, squeezing Mike’s hand until it feels like his bones might pop.
“You’re dreaming, Will,” Mike continues gently. “It’s just a dream.”
Mike knows the drill. He’ll talk, he’ll reassure, he’ll wait. As long as it takes.
Eventually – and with a gasp – Will’s eyes shoot open. His whole torso rises until he’s sitting up, pin straight and panting. His eyes glow with unshed tears, blown pupils tracking his surroundings before landing on Mike’s. His hand relaxes.
“You’re okay,” Mike repeats, nodding his reassurance into each syllable. “I’m here. You’re home.”
Will nods in tandem, almost mechanically, his brows still knotted together. Mike gets the sudden (and ignorable) urge to press the crease between them away. The fear and confusion slowly leech from Will’s face until his pupils return to a normal size and his breaths reach a steady pace.
“Can I touch you?” Mike asks, even though he already has his fingers slotted between Will’s. When his chin dips mutely, Mike draws him in by the shoulders and wraps his free arm around him. “It was just a dream. We got you out.”
Will hums. He’s still shaking, curled around Mike. “Just a dream,” he echoes, sounding far away.
“You can sleep up with me tonight, yeah?”
Will nods into Mike’s neck, eyes screwed shut. They stay there for a few more minutes, with Will’s breath sending shivers down Mike’s spine, until they can no longer feel a difference in the heartbeats coming from their pressed-together chests.
***
Will fumbles about blindly in a box in the Wheelers' basement labelled ‘WILL – WINTER’. The sound of Holly’s yell echoes down the stairs. “Breakfast!”
A hand reaches from behind him to pass him a long-sleeve sweater. He blinks and takes it with a mumbled thanks.
“Bad night?” Jonathan asks.
Will frowns, but nods as he tugs the sweater on over his shirt. Jonathan always seems to notice when something is off, which Will is equal parts grateful for and irritated by. On days like this, he often feels like Jonathan is coddling him. As if one nightmare could push him over the edge, as if he’s not just reliving shit he already survived.
And he gets it, in some ways. On one of the nights he stayed over at the cabin, he woke to Jane crying in the bed beside him, voice lost to the darkness, and all he wanted was to swaddle her in blankets and force her to stay in bed for the day. But that isn’t because he doesn’t think she can handle herself, it’s more because the days are crueller when the night is bleeding into them, and Will knows that better than anyone else.
So maybe he’s projecting. Jonathan has never explicitly told him he’s weak or incapable or any of the myriad of other things that Will fears himself to be. No, Jonathan ruffles his hair and tugs him in for a quick, tight hug instead. “Take it easy today, yeah?”
Will nods again, smoothing his fringe with an undeniable smile. “Yeah, course.”
***
Breakfast is normal in every way it can be. Somehow, despite now being a household of eight, Karen manages to feed everyone sufficiently.
Well, almost everyone.
Mike likes to pretend not to notice when his dad is left with the last, measly piece of bacon. On occasion, he’ll take extra just to watch the man’s temper flare when the plate reaches him. It’s a secret form of rebellion, just for Mike, because Ted has a tendency to make commentary on things that he doesn’t entirely understand, plaguing the breakfast (and dinner) table with the recycled garbage he hears on the radio or the television. And God knows Mike could never verbally oppose him, so he settles for this.
Today, Mike pours himself a generous mug of coffee and reaches across the table to do the same for Will. He ignores Nancy’s raised eyebrows as he passes the pot down the line.
“Don’t forget to collect your sister from school today, Michael,” his mother comments.
Mike has to resist rolling his eyes. “Over the past eighteen months, Mom, have I ever forgotten?”
His mother levels him with a glare. He gives her his best smile, channelling an angel son. She huffs and redirects her attention to the table.
“Debbie’s mother called. She said they were driving by a rift last night and it looked like it was acting up, so don’t forget to bring your lockdown kits in case there’s a breach and you get stuck, okay?”
Mike glances at Nancy. She shrugs.
“And please,” their mother continues. “If you do get stuck, call.”
Nancy’s lips curl up in a half-smile, half-grimace. “Of course, Mom. We’ve got clothes and food stashed at the station anyway, and I’m sure the school has it covered.”
“There hasn’t been a lockdown in months, Karen,” a voice grumbles from the far end of the table. “The government has it under control.”
Mike looks at Will and clasps his hands over his heart in false adoration, mouthing ‘the government’. Will hides his laugh behind a fist, his tired eyes crinkling. Mike can’t help his returning grin.
***
“Good morning, Hawkins and welcome back! This is Rockin’ Robin with my four-hundred and ninety-ninth broadcast, if you can believe it!”
The sound of trumpets plays, and Will beams at her crackling voice, manoeuvring closer to Mike to hear the broadcast better.
“We can thank the Lord for clear skies this morning – no funky spores and no angry clouds! Or, more accurately, thank our wonderful team of military personnel for keeping those pesky rifts in check and keeping an eye on the health of us ever-so-cooperative residents of Hawkins. This brings us to one-hundred and seventy-two days without a breach – that’s almost six months without a lockdown, my friends!”
A recorded cheer plays through the walkie attached to Mike’s handlebars as Will pedals beside him, turning back every so often to check on Holly.
“So, whether it’s God or the United States military you’re thanking today, be grateful we haven’t been subject to any more impromptu sleepovers when that alarm sounds at Melvald’s or the library or worse, Hawkins High. Or in my case, my overbearing grandmother’s house that last time – if you’re listening, I’m sorry Grams, but there’s only so much mahjong a girl can take in a twenty-four-hour period.”
Will tries not to stare at the movement of Mike’s shoulders as he drops his head to chuckle. They take the turn to avoid the MAC-Z, and Will keeps his concentration on the road ahead of him as Robin continues.
“But if the rumours are true, some of those lockdowns paved the way for budding romances. And I mean, what’s more romantic than forced proximity, am I right? And with those snowy spores floating outside the window? I’m blushing just thinking about it. And better yet, you can snuggle together in fear when that storm hits afterwards! So I’ve got a special song today for all of the lovers out there.”
The opening beat of the song begins to play, accompanied by the strumming of a guitar.
“If you think eighteen months is long, this next one set the record for the longest sustained note on a chart hit in 1978, at a whopping eighteen seconds. For the morning that’s in it, this is Bill Withers with ‘Lovely Day’.”
Mike throws his head back and groans. “She promised something from this decade today.”
Will adjusts his bike to tighten the gap between them. “Robin’s just trying to appeal to the masses. Not everyone can bear the Butthole Surfers.”
“Hey!” Mike whines. “You like the Butthole Surfers.”
Will laughs, open-mouthed. “Yeah, but somehow I’m pretty sure the rest of Hawkins would be more outraged by that band name than they have been with the supernatural stuff the government has been insisting is completely ordinary.”
Mike sucks his teeth. “Conformity’s killing the kids, I’m telling you.”
“What’s conformity?” Holly’s little voice asks from where she’s pedalled up beside him.
Will smiles as he watches Mike try and fail to explain, eventually brushing it off to ask his little sister about school.
He decides it’ll be a good day. Even if the dreams are back and worse, even if the night is creeping in. It’ll be a good day.
***
“Don’t forget: training tonight, yeah?” Mike says, wheeling his bike backwards, away from Hawkins High.
Lucas shoots him a thumbs-up. “Gotta visit Max first, but I’ll be there.”
Dustin shrugs half-heartedly. “Eddie.”
Will lifts a leg to seat himself on his own bike. “Headed there now,” he calls as Mike gets further away from them and closer to the elementary school. Mike replies with a two-finger salute.
They’ve all been training since the moment Hawkins cracked down the middle. Physical training, with guns and sprints and punching bags. Demogorgons are swinging pieces of wood, and demobats are flying beanbags.
Pace and accuracy, Hopper says, but also protection. Self-preservation over heroism. Yes, swing your baseball bat and fire your gun and throw your Molotov, but run when and where you can.
“That’s how we survive this,” Hopper said that first day of training, in the balm of spring. “We run, and we hide.”
“And we live,” Joyce added, with a glance at her son.
Mike snuck a glance at Will then, too, arms tight across his chest and chin dipping in agreement. He was their evidence.
“If we’re going in there – and we will all be going in there,” Hopper stressed. “We need to make it out alive. We’re searching, not attacking. This is defence, not offence, alright?”
Everyone nodded. No questions asked.
But Mike found himself with several when Hopper held Will back before they parted ways that evening, and more still when Will trudged back to Mike paler than before, slipping into the backseat of Nancy’s car in silence. It had to have been fear draining the colour from Will’s face, and to this day, though Mike knows what Hopper asked of Will, he has never understood what had him so afraid.
***
“If we’re going to do this, we need to know you’re not a liability, Will,” Hopper explained, seated across from him with his elbows on his knees. “We can’t let him use you again. I can teach you to defend yourself in the real world, but not up here,” he tapped a finger against Will’s temple. “That’s where Jane comes in.”
It had taken time for Will to grow used to it – Jane blindfolded in front of him, criss-crossed legs mirroring his own on the worn cotton of her bedsheets, the probing feeling deep in his own mind, so familiar and nauseating.
At the beginning, he had been so terrified that they had to stop every few minutes, waiting for his stomach to settle or his breathing to regulate itself. From then came failure after failure after failure.
“Will,” Jane would say, her voice soft but stern in that cavernous void she brought him to. “You have to resist me, or lead me away.”
Every atom in his body rejected it, but he couldn’t find a way to fight her. The second he thought about pushing her out, he seemed to open the floodgates and let her right in. Every time he’d come home shattered, brain aching and limbs tight with tension. It took months for the tiniest of wins, but just as the failures built on one another, so did the successes.
The streak of blood racing toward Jane’s grinning mouth is a symbol of one of them. Will grins right back.
“You’re getting too good for me,” she teases, trying to pout and failing. “You make me try too hard.”
He shoves her knee. “I had a great teacher.”
She sighs contentedly and flops sideways onto her bed with a bounce. Her short curls splay across the pillow like a halo. Will grabs a tissue from her bedside table and hands it to her. She wipes her nose and floats it from her hand into the bin.
They spend some time in silence. Will lowers himself to lie by Jane’s side, nuzzling into her pillows with a sigh and letting his eyes fall closed. No matter how thrilling the wins are, he’s always drained after they train like this. It’s easier now than it used to be, with all barriers between them demolished after months of letting her break and enter into his mind.
“I feel something today,” Jane admits. Will hums. “And in you, there is something too.”
“I know,” Will says quietly, opening his eyes. “Something is changing.”
Softly, Jane says, “I don’t want anything to change.”
Neither does Will. He’s clinging to the shred of normality they have found here, at the end of the world.
The earth split in two and still he can hang out with his friends, spend time with his family. Everyone is alive and safe – or not in any immediate danger, at least. He’s gone months and months without feeling that snaking feeling up his spine, that spatter of goosebumps across the plane of his neck.
He has had near-full days where Vecna barely crossed his mind, curled up on Mike’s couch during a lockdown, switching between catching popcorn in his own mouth and throwing it toward his best friend’s. He has found so much good in this hellscape they’re trapped in.
Like giggling as he paints dark eyebrows and hollowed cheekbones on Jane and fixes a wig to her head so they can sneak in to see Max. Reversing Steve’s Beamer outrageously close to a street lamp and being barred from his driver’s seat for life. Ducking under the swing of Jonathan’s fists and catching him in the side. Racing Lucas to the farthest tree and losing by a frankly embarrassing distance. Collapsing into laughter with Dustin while helping him to adjust his grip on a shotgun, and receiving a well-earned berating from his mom as a result, plus a reminder from Hopper of his infamous rules.
It’s these moments, where Will feels happier than he ever imagined possible for himself, that he remembers what it is they’re preparing for. The reminder is always, always unwelcome. It’s like the clock’s tick, tick, ticking grows louder and louder until he can think of nothing but the inevitability of the end. It’s only a matter of time.
It makes him squeeze his loved ones tighter, it makes him treasure each word he hears and speaks that little bit more, it makes him consistently and constantly grateful for every passing second before certain catastrophe.
But more than anything, it fills him with immeasurable dread. It pokes at the goodness of every good moment, questions the worth in trying. It pushes him closer and closer to asking himself why, why, why bother?
If you know it will end, why try?
But Jane is looking at him with a spark of terror in her eyes, and he would give anything and everything to eradicate it, anything and everything to grant her some peace on the other side of this.
He wants happy moments for her that aren’t weighed down by some looming threat. He wants to replicate the goodness these eighteen months have given them over and over and over in a million different ways, in a world where there’s no alternate dimension pressing in on theirs. No fear, no risk, no guilt.
“Nothing is going to change,” Will insists. “I promise.”
Jane’s hand finds his and squeezes, her fear giving way to sadness. “Friends don’t lie, Will.”
He can’t find it in himself to reply.
***
Mike was never the fittest kid, and in all fairness – barring Lucas – none of the party were. It’s a direct consequence of being a nerd. D&D and athleticism are, in virtually all circumstances, mutually exclusive.
So in the face of interdimensional peril, and after long enough had passed that they believed they had the time to spare before an attack, Joyce and Hopper had taken it upon themselves to fix the group's obvious lack of preparation for one. But their ‘simple’ system – and its activities and rules and rotas – collapsed into chaos within six days.
Jonathan’s breakfast made a reappearance after Hopper demanded one too many burpees of him, Dustin nearly dislocated both shoulders trying to flip a tyre, and Mike almost shot himself in the foot on more than one occasion. That was only the half of it.
It was decided then that personal training plans were in order. Focus on your strengths, they said. Unfortunately for Mike, finding his strengths was more of a process of elimination.
“You can’t shoot, can’t block a swing, let alone dodge a swing you know is coming – what can you do, Wheeler?”
Joyce scolded Hopper from a distance as she passed an ice pack to Mike, but a snarky comment had already reached the tip of his tongue. He couldn’t help himself, or the smirk pulling at his lips. “I’m a pretty convincing prank caller.”
Hopper’s jaw clenched, and a vein in his forehead bulged. “I knew that was you, Wheeler!”
In seconds, he was covering the distance between them, his massive frame and outstretched hand thundering toward Mike. “Prank calling a police chief is a crime! I could have you arrested!”
“Mike, run!” Lucas called through cupped hands.
Mike jumped up and bolted across the junkyard with a grin. Over his shoulder, he watched the gap between him and Hopper grow and turned to jog backwards away from him. “Can’t arrest me if you’re unemployed!” He yelled, stretching his arms out to the sounds of his friends’ cheers. “And technically dead!”
Hopper’s pace slowed, and he scowled. Joyce approached him from behind and hid her amusement as she reached a hand up to squeeze his bicep.
“Hey, at least he’s fast,” she said.
Even with the distance, Mike could see Hopper’s eye twitching.
So Mike is a runner now. He’s the quickest out of everyone, somehow, and it’s endlessly rewarding. He’s so used to messing things up, but this he can do. Joyce can scribble something in her notebook and tell him two laps or six or ten, and he’ll do it. He’ll even come back asking for more. Especially if Will is jogging beside him, like today.
“Training with El go okay?” He asks. “I know it was a rough night.”
“Training with Jane was good, yes,” Will says, arms pumping in time with his feet. “It’s working at least. Like, I’m keeping her out, even if I’m tired or whatever.”
Mike nods, matching Will’s pace. “That’s good. I never doubted you.”
“Well, I definitely doubted myself once or twice,” he huffs. “But yeah, it’s good.”
“Good,” Mike repeats.
He swears Will’s cheeks flush deeper as they start another lap. “Yeah. Good.”
***
Will is absolutely exhausted.
Crammed into Hopper’s cabin, the entire group is talking over one another and ignoring his mom’s attempts to rein them in. With the establishment of such a strict training schedule, it was rare that they allowed everyone to train at the same time and on the same day. Too risky, by Hopper’s standards, but today must be an exception.
Will has managed to snag a seat on the couch, sandwiched between Mike and Lucas, with Dustin sitting on the floor between their knees. Nancy, Hopper and Joyce are standing in front of them, gesturing obscurely and pacing intermittently. Steve, Robin, and Jonathan have created a huddle by the door, deep in a disagreement about something Will hasn’t the energy to clue into.
Jane observes from her seat at the table in the kitchen, chewing on a peanut butter bar Steve gave her to ‘recharge’ after she flung various objects in the air for him to swing at. Will doesn’t think it’s fair that after a day of her own training and training with him, she has to assist with the rest of them. But Jane, as always, does so with a smile.
Will presses his palms to his eyes. She wasn’t wrong earlier about him being off. The feeling is back again, the chill. A sign that something is stirring.
“Everyone shut up!” Mike yells, so sudden that Will jolts and snaps his head his direction. In the resulting silence, there is only Mike’s questioning gaze. “Something’s wrong.”
“Um,” Will attempts. Jesus. “Yeah. Another breach, I think. Tomorrow.”
Dustin throws his head back onto the couch cushions. “Finally. Another crawl.”
Nancy pauses her pacing. “How do you know, Will?”
“It’s the same as every other time,” he explains. “The military are messing with the gates.”
“But can you feel him?” She prods again.
“He would obviously have said that if he could, Nance,” Mike snaps.
Will shoots him a look. “No, it’s different. I can’t- I haven’t felt him since we got back from Lenora. I can just feel it when they poke at the boundary. It’s like- like someone’s rattling the door handle before they go at it with a battering ram, if- if that makes any sense. But, you know, not quite since I’m not technically inside the house, but… yeah.”
Nancy’s brows are scrunched in that Wheeler way that tells Will she’s perplexed, and very much not happy with it. Wheelers don’t appreciate it when things evade them. “But it’s been six months since they last went in – why now?”
Mike flips his hands and spreads his fingers. “How would Will know that?”
“Mike.”
“What, Will? You’re not in cahoots with the military all of a sudden, are you?”
Will puffs a no, and Mike tilts his head in satisfaction.
“Exactly! The sooner we can pick back up on crawls, the sooner we can find that wrinkled, noseless, rotting bastard and kill him. Who cares why the government took a hiatus?”
“I’m with Nance here,” Jonathan’s voice rings out from across the room. “It’s too weird. We can’t march back into the Upside Down without considering the possibility that they had a reason to stop going in there. Or that there’s a reason they’re choosing now to start again. We don’t want to be-,”
“Blindsided,” Dustin inserts at the same time Steve says, “unprepared.”
“Right,” Nancy takes over, pulling her thumb out from between her teeth to gesture outward. “We still don’t know what they’re even looking for. Why go in there unless there’s some kind of reward? Letting the Upside Down bleed through, exposing citizens, risking demo attacks, dealing with storm damage – it has to be worth something.”
“Well, we saw them do what, hundreds of tests, take countless samples,” Jonathan supplies.
Dustin hums. “Air, soil, vine, demo, demodog, demobat – there’s nothing in there they haven’t taken under the scope.”
“And why do they shut off the cameras when they go in there?” Robin blurts, looking like she’s about to explode with questions. “They have to be disobeying someone – otherwise, why bother cut surveillance? Who’s giving the order? Who’s defying it?”
Lucas breathes an exasperated sigh. “I’m with Mike – why do we care? We have a chance to find Vecna again after six months of waiting, and we’ve had the whole ‘why’ conversation a million times. Maybe it’s time we give up on understanding and focus on our objective: find Vecna and kill him.”
“Unless Vecna’s dead already,” Steve proposes.
Will drops back onto the couch cushions. How many times does he have to say he would know if Vecna was dead before they believe him? He sees his mom try to provide input, but she’s not quick enough.
“El can’t find him in her bath, and Will hasn’t had his goosies since the shake ‘n’ quake.”
Will half-scoffs.
Mike’s face fills with disgust. “Goosies?”
Steve ignores him. “The last – what, seven? – crawls before the hiatus, there were no demo-anythings in the Upside Down or attempting to sneak out of it. We weren’t exactly slaughtering enough of them before that to bring the population to zero. And last we saw Vecna, he was roasted like a turkey and pumped full of lead. That was before he fell three stories. Do we ever think we’re scouring a battlefield that we already, like, won?”
The room makes an expected descent from murmured responses into absolute chaos. It’s a miracle they held a civilised conversation this long in the first place. Will rubs at his temples and tunes out the noise. The only way this ends, in his limited experience, is a stern word from Hopper.
“…because I am scared!” Nancy says, raw enough to catch Will’s attention amidst the madness. “And you should be scared, too. Because if he’s still out there, he’s planning to end our world. So we can’t stop looking. Not until we know. Not until we’re sure.”
Will catches Jane frowning, eyes fixed on nothing at all. She meets his stare in milliseconds. He raises his eyebrows in question, to which she responds with a dismissive shake of her head.
“Maybe we should ask Will and El what they think,” Mike calls over the chatter. The room quiets.
“Good idea, Mike,” Will’s mom says with a pleased smile.
Will’s mouth bobs open and closed.
“Henry is not dead,” Jane states plainly. And that’s that.
***
Mike doesn’t bother pulling the mattress out from under his bed that night. The night before a crawl is always a rough one.
When Will enters the room and flicks his gaze to the floor, Mike barely spares a glance his way, patting the bed beside him before returning to his comic. He pretends not to notice how Will freezes, ignores the hesitance in his movements as he pulls the covers back and slips under them.
Later, as Mike stares at his ceiling, coloured only by the warmth of a nightlight and one forgotten glow-in-the-dark star, he speaks a reassurance. “We’re going to win, Will. For real, this time.”
Will’s hands twitch where they rest on his pillow.
Mike lolls his head to the side. “We’ve been preparing for this.”
Will doesn’t look appeased. “I don’t know, Mike,” he breathes. “I really don’t know.”
Mike tells himself that he knows, so Will doesn’t have to. They’re going to win.
Deeper into the night, when Will wakes screaming, Mike hesitates for only a second before he cradles him tight to his chest. He doesn’t push when Will won’t speak of what he saw; he only whispers words of comfort, soft and sweet and completely unfounded.
***