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The plan had been simple.
Go to Home Depot.
Acquire food.
Leave.
No detours. No property damage. No international incidents.
Will should have known better the moment Mike said, “Trust me.”
By the time they’d taken three wrong turns, they had set a Wendy’s on fire (accidentally. On purpose. It was complicated), and uncovered what may or may not have been a government bunker suspiciously close to Furcon, the original objective had dissolved into smoke, some of it literal.
Now they were standing in what had once been a perfectly normal car park and was currently, technically, an active crime scene.
Will reconsidered every life choice that had led him here.
Mike was pacing in tight, frantic circles like a conspiracy theorist who’d just connected red string to absolutely nothing. Smoke curled faintly behind them from at least two separate locations. Somewhere in the last hour, they’d cyberbullied an entire country, possibly triggered a minor apocalypse, and still had not acquired a single edible item.
Will crossed his arms.
He stared at Mike with the exhausted patience of someone who knew, deep in his bones, that trusting him again would absolutely-without question-make everything worse.
And yet.
Against all logic.
He was already watching Mike’s next movements as Mike insisted, once again, that he knew where to go.
Mike stopped abruptly.
He pointed at absolutely nothing with the confidence of a man who had never once been correct but refused to let that slow him down.
Will was done.
Completely, irreversibly, cosmically done.
“You’re not even listening to me,” Will snapped, because apparently arson and mild geopolitical disaster were not enough to earn him basic acknowledgment.
This, apparently, was the worst possible thing he could have said, because Mike did not know how to react for the first time possibly ever.
Mike stared at him like Will hadn’t been forced to endure a live commentary of every catastrophic decision since 2 p.m.
“I am listening,” Mike replied flatly. “I’ve been listening to everything you’ve been saying this entire time.”
“No, you aren’t though,” Will shot back, voice sharper than he intended. “You’re just too busy playing the victim to notice.”
Silence.
Actual silence.
For the first time-possibly in recorded history-Mike Wheeler did not immediately have a rebuttal.
He blinked.
Once.
Twice.
The world smoldered quietly behind them.
Will felt something in his chest twist, because he hadn’t meant-
Well.
Maybe he had.
Mike’s jaw worked like he was trying to force words through static. “I’m not-” he started, and then stopped.
And that was worse.
Because Mike always had something to say.
Even when he was wrong.
Especially when he was wrong.
Will exhaled, tension bleeding into the cold air between them. Somewhere in the distance, sirens wailed. Probably unrelated. Hopefully.
“We were supposed to buy food,” Will said, softer now.
Mike looked at him like that was the most devastating thing he’d heard all day.
“I know,” he muttered.
They stood there, the weight of burned fast food chains and hypothetical apocalypses settling around them.
After a long pause, Mike cleared his throat.
“…I do actually know where to go.”
Will stared at him.
He should walk away.
He should call Eleven, even Tiffany. Or literally anyone with a functioning survival instinct.
Instead, he sighed.
“Fine,” he said.
Because apparently this was his life now.
Mike’s face lit up with catastrophic optimism.
And, against every warning sign the universe had ever provided, Will followed.
They made it exactly twelve steps before something exploded.
Not a big explosion. Not, like, mushroom-cloud, call-the-President explosion.
More of a *pop*.
A sharp, electrical *crack* from somewhere behind the abandoned strip mall across the street. A transformer, maybe. Or a portal. At this point, Will felt it was rude to assume.
Mike froze mid-stride.
Will closed his eyes.
“Don’t,” Will said calmly.
“I wasn’t going to,” Mike replied immediately.
“You were.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You tilted your head.”
“I always tilt my head.”
“You only tilt your head like that when you think you’ve discovered a secret government conspiracy.”
Mike paused. “…It could be a secret government conspiracy.”
Will turned slowly. “We set a **Wendy's** on fire.”
“Allegedly.”
“There are witnesses.”
“There were witnesses,” Mike corrected, glancing meaningfully at the lingering smoke.
Will stared at him in horror. “Mike.”
“What? The sprinklers went off. They’re fine.”
“We don’t know that.”
“We *assume* they’re fine.”
“That’s not better!”
Another distant siren wailed, closer now. Definitely not unrelated.
Mike grabbed Will’s wrist.
“Okay. New plan,” he said quickly.
“No.”
“We investigate the pop-”
“No.”
“-which could be connected to the bunker-”
“Absolutely not.”
“-which could be connected to the thing we may or may not have unleashed-”
“MIKE.”
Mike stopped walking.
Will realized, that Mike was still holding his wrist.
The sirens grew louder.
For a second-just a second-it wasn’t about the bunker. Or the fire. Or the increasingly concerning sky, which now had a faint greenish tint like someone had applied a filter labeled “ominous.”
It was just Mike. And his hand.
Will swallowed. He shouldn't feel this way, especially as he knew Mike did not feel the same.