Chapter Text
To say that the summer of 1985 was not Will’s favorite would be an understatement.
The main issue was the large spider-like monster (AKA the physical incarnation of Will’s sleep paralysis demon), that had somehow been made of human flesh and decided to terrorize him and his friends. Sometimes when Will closed his eyes, he would still see Billy’s body getting pierced by one of the Flayer’s legs, still hear Max’s blood-curdling scream.
Even though they defeated the Flayer in the end, the Party still lost. Billy was gone. Hopper was gone too. Will was never sure the exact nature of the relationship he and his mother had, but Hopper had always been kind to him. Saved him, in fact. He doesn’t know how it happened, all he knew was that his mom was there, and Hopper sacrificed himself to close the portal to the Upside Down for good.
Will lost a positive male influence, and his mom lost her…close friend (?), but El lost her dad. The man who had sheltered her when she was on the run, helped her learn how to be a kid. She was staying with the Byers in the meantime, moving into Jonathan’s room while Jonathan slept on the couch.
His mom kept talking about possibly moving. Somewhere bigger, somewhere for a fresh start. Will wasn’t sure if they had the money for that, but he knew looking at houses in far-off states and planning new interior decorations was a good distraction for his mom. So he let her do it.
And then there was his friendship with Mike. They had been drifting apart for a while, Mike just wanting to spend time with his girlfriend while Will just wanted to have a good summer. There was a fight, in the rain. Where Mike yelled some words at Will Will had known defined him for a while. There was the demolishing of Castle Byers, Will tearing it apart plank by plank, ripping up his favorite photo. Mike had apologized for what he said. Will had accepted it.
But now, it felt like someone had hit reset on their summer. Around mid-July, the Party started going out again. Riding their bikes around town, going to the arcade or the movies for the afternoon. They had started playing D&D again. There were still moments when they grappled with what had happened over the summer—the way Max mostly kept her headphones on every time they hung out, the way El would go quieter than normal for long periods of time. The weird awkward moments Mike and Will still had even though Mike assured him they were fine.
After what had happened, the Party deserved to have a normal rest of their summer. They deserved to be kids. So they were.
Right now, the windows in Will’s bedroom are open, the smell of rain leftover from a pop-up shower wafting through the room. Will sits at his desk, Walkman and headphones on. Max had to go help her mother with some house stuff, and Mike, Lucas, and Dustin all went to The Hawk. Will was invited, but declined politely. The movie they were going to see was Day of the Dead, and after being called “Zombie Boy” for a year and a half, anything dealing with the undead wasn’t something Will wanted to watch.
He took out a colored pencil from its box and started sketching lightly. He wasn’t sure what he was drawing yet. Usually, he just started doing some doodles, waiting to see if an image revealed itself as the lead wore down.
The Smiths played softly in his headphones. The mixtape was Jonathan’s gift to him for his birthday this past march, and he still hadn’t gotten sick of it yet. He moved the pencil across the stark white of the page, watching as yellow shapes emerged. Just lines and squiggles, nothing concrete yet. Then a curved line, joined to another curved line. A circle in the middle, another in that circle. Faint lines in the space between the circle and the corners where the lines met, soft strokes at the top.
He grabbed more pencils—brown and tan and black—going over the lines he had made to make them sharper, more defined. Shading within the circles, adding little areas of value in between. A bit of white highlight in an inky center.
Finally, he finished the sketch, and leaned back to look at his work. Mike’s dark eye stared back at him.
Ugh.
Most of the time, he ended up drawing Mike. Page after page in his sketchbooks were filled with drawings of Mike. full body sketches, portraits from the chest up. Images of Mike’s face captured in every angle, every lighting. At this point, Will knew Mike's face better than he knew his own.
He had been trying to stop drawing Mike, especially after everything that had happened that summer. He wasn’t supposed to like Mike in the way he did. It wasn’t natural. And he definitely should not be drawing him over and over again. But no matter how much he told himself that each sketch would be the last, Mike would reveal himself to Will in the lead of pencils or the swatches of paint every time.
He ripped the eye out of his sketchbook and crumpled it up, shooting it towards his wastebasket. He missed. Of course. Because he wasn’t a normal boy, who was good at sports and liked girls.
He turned a new page and decided to try to draw something else. Maybe a dragon?
He reached for a green pencil, then jumped in his seat, involuntarily.
What?
The pencil flew out of his grasp and onto the floor. Will pushed his seat back and tried to grab the pencil off the floor. Then, his heart began pounding. Fast.
He clutched at his chest, his breaths increasing rapidly. His entire body seized up into a stone. He couldn’t move. The only emotion in his brain was fear. Pure, undistilled fear.
Will choked out, trying to swallow some oxygen in his pulsing lungs. He felt like a fish out of water, flopping around and gasping uselessly.
Finally, he choked down enough air to yell, “Help!”
Footsteps stampeded down the hall, and his door flew open to reveal his mom.
“Baby? Oh my goodness, what’s wrong?”
She rushed to his side, rubbing his back gently and telling him it was okay. Telling him to just breathe. And then, as soon as the fear arrived, it vanished.
Will straightened up in his chair, breathing normally. His mom threw her arms around her son. “Are you okay? What happened?”
“I don’t, I don’t know,” he said, his voice hoarse.
His mom left the room for a second and came back with a cup of water, giving it to Will. Once he sipped it down, he turned to look at her. “I was just drawing, and then, out of nowhere, I was scared. But there was nothing that should have made me scared. It just…appeared.”
Joyce returned to rubbing her son’s back, making little circles over the top of his shirt. “Do you remember the doctor you used to see last year?”
Will nodded.
“He said sometimes you can get these things called panic attacks. And they can come out of nowhere, and you can’t figure out what’s caused them, you’ve had them before, remember?”
Will does remember. He remembers having a panic attack at the arcade, at school, even in the bathroom of his house. Little things that didn’t used to bother him, like a slug crawling along the sidewalk or a zombie horror movie, would set him off. Like he was just walking on eggshells all day, waiting for one to crack and take him with it.
“You probably had one of those. I know they’re scary, but you’re okay. You’re safe.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think it was a panic attack. I feel fine now, and usually when I have them, I feel weird for a while after. It almost felt like I was…” he trails off, not wanting to say the first word that comes to his mind.
Possessed.
“Dr. Owens said they can look different sometimes,” his mom said. “How about you just take it easy? And maybe we can see if we can’t see someone. A doctor.”
Will remembered the last time he saw a doctor for his…condition. It didn’t go well.
“Sure,” he said, knowing the Byers can’t afford a special doctor anyway.
—
The next few days passed without any more incidents. Mike tried to say the movie wasn’t that scary (Dude, you screamed in the theater, Lucas said), Max finished helping her mom with the chores, and the Party kept hanging out.
After what happened at the community pool, the Party didn’t plan on going back there anytime soon. But the sun continued to beat down mercilessly, and there’s only so much cooling-off that can be provided by a hose.
Thanks to some convincing from Mike, and the offer to do the dishes for a whole week, Mr. Wheeler let the Party use guest passes he gets from his golf club to use the pool there. None of them had ever been there, but supposedly it was wayyy nicer than the Hawkins pool.
“I heard they make smoothies, and they’ll bring them to you while you’re in the pool,” Dustin said as the Party biked to the club.
“I heard the bathrooms have bowls of mints, and you can take as many as you want,” Lucas said, Max smooshed against him on the single bike seat. Likewise, El clung to Mike. Makes sense. Couples should ride together. If Suzie (who Will still couldn’t believe was real) was here, she’d surely be on the back of Dustin’s bike. And Will would still be riding alone.
The Party arrived at the Loch Nora Country Club, presented their guest passes to the attendant, and walked through the iron gates.
“Oh,” Mike said, his face falling. “It’s just…a pool.”
Indeed, the Loch Nora Country Club pool was truly just a pool. It was larger than the Hawkins community one, but otherwise had nothing special about it. No smoothie bar. No mints. Not even a waterslide.
“Eh, pools a pool,” said Lucas, before stripping off his shirt and running to the ladder. A lifeguard blew her whistle. “No running!” she yelled.
Max rolled her eyes. “He didn’t even put on sunscreen.”
The rest of the party claimed their chairs, piling down towels and snacks and goggles to mark their territory. They pulled off their shirts or cover-up dresses, slathering sunscreen onto their skin at Max’s insistence. Max and El headed over to join Lucas in the deep end, while Dustin, Mike, and Will stuck to the chairs for a bit.
“Babes, ten o’clock,” said Dustin, pointing to a cluster of teenage girls in tiny bikinis walking over to a spot.
“Dude, you have a girlfriend,” said Mike.
Dustin shrugged. “I’m still allowed to look! You can keep browsing after you finish your shopping, you know,” he said, wagging his eyebrows. Mike snapped him with his towel.
“You need to stop hanging around Steve,” he said, but his eyes dashed over to the girls anyway.
Will should be looking at the girls. He was a fourteen year old boy, no girlfriend to speak of. He should be jumping for the chance to ogle some scantily clad sixteen year olds, right?
But they just looked like girls to him. Like a reference in a still life. They looked good, sure, but he wasn’t as excited about a still life as he would be, say, a portrait.
And the portrait he really, really, wanted to draw was sitting shirtless on the lounge chair next to him, less than a foot away.
Will picked at his fingers, trying desperately not to sneak a look at his best friend without a shirt on. It shouldn’t be weird. They grew up together. They’ve seen each other in various states of undress countless times. Somewhere around 13 though, when they started shooting up like beanstalks and getting deodorant tossed at them by their moms, Will realized it was weird to want to see his friend shirtless so much. It was weird to like it.
“I’m going in,” he said, standing up.
Mike raised an eyebrow. “In your t-shirt?” he asked.
Well, yes. Despite being completely comfortable (a little too comfortable) being around his friends shirtless, Will didn’t want to take his off. He didn’t want the people around him to see the ugly scars that mottled his torso—the thick keloid scar at his hip from getting stabbed with a fire poker, the Lichtenberg figures that traced along his upper back.
“Skin cancer kills, Mike,” he lied. “The less skin you show, the better.”
Dustin snorted. “Ok, Nun Byers,” he said.
Will shook his head and joined Max and El in the pool.
—-
Two hours passed. The party’s skin had turned to prunes, and Lucas had indeed wound up with a light red flush against his shoulders. They loaded up their bags, pulled on their cover-ups, and left the pool.
They biked back, all going their separate ways. Lucas went to drop off Max before returning to Maple street. Dustin stopped at his road. El was going back to Mike’s house for an hour before returning to the Byers. Will didn’t like thinking about that.
He liked El, he really did. They had gotten closer since she moved in. Before she arrived, he had never talked to her much—her being Mike’s girlfriend at all. He figured they’d get along, considering they were both kind of quiet and shy and the only two people in the Party who truly knew what the Upside Down was like. When she took the room next to his, Will was relieved to learn his theories of getting along were right.
El had quickly found an interest in art, and he would spend hours teaching her how to draw and shade and paint. And her powers came in handy when he needed to reach something off a tall shelf, or clean his room a little quicker, or prank Jonathan with flying pillows.
But she was still Mike’s girlfriend. Even in a world where liking your best friend in the way you should like a girl was okay, Mike still wouldn’t be interested.
So yeah. Will always felt a twinge of jealousy every time he looked at El, or talked to El, or hung out with Mike and El. He knew that made him a bad person—she had been through so much, with the lab and her escape and now her adopted father dying. He should be nicer. And he was nice. But he couldn’t stop his thoughts.
It should be me instead.
Will tried to shake it out of him. Those weren’t good things to think about your best friend. He wanted a normal summer. Hating your mother’s deceased boyfriend's daughter-figure turned housemate because she was dating the boy you’ve been in love with for probably your whole life even though you weren’t supposed to be in love with boys wasn’t normal.
A stabbing pain erupted in Will’s knee, causing him to slam on his bike brakes. “Owww,” he hissed, hiking his knee up to examine it. He must have kicked a rock up.
But his knee looked the same, all tanned and moley.
What?
It felt like he had gotten the skin rubbed off his knee. He could feel it, so vividly. Tender, burning flesh, phantom drops of blood streaming down his calf.
But there were no marks. No cuts. Not even redness.
He poked his knee, softly. When he touched his own knee, the pain vanished. As soon as he pulled his finger away, it returned.
Huh.
—------
As the hot days of summer dragged on, the weird feelings didn’t disappear. They would pop into Will, taking complete control of his body, before vanishing without a trace. The feelings would be rushes of anger, fear, sadness. Once, Will’s big toe throbbed like he had stubbed it (he didn’t). Another time, he felt like his lungs were filled with water. That sensation went away after a coughing fit. Will swore he could feel the water leaving his lungs as he hacked onto his bedroom floor. But as usual, there was no water.
Will knew that the emotions of teenage boys could be…turbulent. The gym teacher had told his health class all about mood swings and raging hormones. But these weren’t mood swings. Will wasn’t the type to have mood swings, anyway. Will never really had any emotions of his own. Sensitive, his mom said once at a parent-teacher conference in third grade. He’s always just felt too much, especially what the other people around him feel. Will knew being sensitive was a bad thing, particularly as he got older and realized it was a synonym for queer.
He was an emotional chameleon, taking on the form of whatever surrounded him did. But a lot of times when he had these…episodes, he was the only one there. So he wasn’t just being empathetic. And they weren’t his own emotions. He knew that for sure. They didn’t feel like the way he felt when he was angry or sad or hurt. The feelings felt like wearing a shirt that was too tight. It was on his body, but it was uncomfortable. It wasn’t supposed to be there.
Plus, there was the way they came and went, the way they’d take over his entire body and make him their victim before vanishing. There was only one other thing he had felt before that was like that.
Deep down, he knew what was happening the day of the very first episode. A word he was scared to say.
Possession.
It was the only explanation. Will had felt the Mind Flayer’s emotions before, his anger and coldness and pain. Out of nowhere, he starts feeling anger and pain. They didn’t defeat the Flayer like they thought. He was still out there, somewhere.
When he came to this conclusion, he struggled with whether or not to tell the Party. He knew he should. Friends don't lie. That was the pact they had made all those years ago, and friends definitely don’t lie when it comes to monsters from other worlds.
But they had been through so much that summer. So much death and pain. He saw the way his friends smiled again, the way they could breath a little easier, walk a little lighter. He didn’t want to ruin their good moods. He didn’t want to tell Max and El that the sacrifices of the people around them had been for nothing.
So he decided these phantom feelings would be his burden. Just for a week or two, just enough for his friends to have a summer. Then he would drop the ball. Then, they would deal with it.
—--
A week passed. Will kept his secret to himself, not wanting to bother his friends. He stood, tight lipped, as the Party threw dice across a table or whizzed down the street on their bikes.
You alright, Will? Mike asked him the other day. You’ve been quieter than normal.
Will had nodded. Just tired, he lied.
The same emotions were present. The rushes of sadness, the occasional flash of anger. Once, embarrassment, which confused Will. he wouldn’t have thought an ancient interdimensional monster would be embarrassed.
But again, there was no other explanation for what Will was feeling. It had to be the Mind Flayer. It was the only thing that made sense.
The newest sensation that had introduced itself to Will’s body was a dull, throbbing ache just above his ankle. Will knew it wasn’t something he did to himself, because it came and went with that sense of otherness that accompanied all the other emotions. So maybe the Mind Flayer had gotten injured somehow during the final battle. Maybe that meant when Will did gather the courage to tell his friends about the strange emotions, there was a chance that they could defeat the Mind Flayer for good and the emotions and feelings would be gone at last.
But that was a problem for future Will. he promised himself he’d let his friends get a bit of a summer first.
The Party was hanging out in Mike’s basement, bowls of chips and candy between them, fighting over what movie to watch that night. Dustin wanted The Goonies. El and Max wanted The Breakfast Club. Mike said he was fine with whatever. Lucas wanted whatever his girlfriend wanted to watch.
“It’s three against one, dude,” Lucas said. “We’ll watch Goonies another night.”
“Mike and Will still have to vote.”
“Mike’s just gonna vote for whatever Will wants! He always does that.”
Will looked over at Mike at that. He was laying with his back against the couch, wearing black, ankle-length pants despite the sweltering heat. When he led the Party down to the basement, he had limped a little. Fell off my bike and scraped my knee, he said.
His eyes moved up from Mike’s pants to his face. His night-dark hair falling just into his eyes, the constellation of freckles across his nose, the red scratch arching across his cheek, still healing. One of the many battle wounds they sustained over the summer.
Will flashes back to the sleepover the two had shortly after Mike had gotten his stitches out. He had woken up to find Mike staring in the bathroom mirror, rubbing concealer stolen from Nancy across the scabbed wound. It’s going to scar so badly, he said when Will came to check on him. I don’t want people to make fun of it in school next year.
Will grabbed the concealer out of Mikes hand, gently brought his hands up to Mike’s face and turned it so he could get a better look at the half-covered cut. I think it looks… he paused, not wanting to say the first word—pretty—that came to his mind.
Cool, he settled on. Like a battle scar.
Mike laughed softly. I guess it is a battle scar, he said, leaning into the mirror to inspect the wound further.
Since then, he hadn’t covered up the scar.
“He-llo? Earth to Will?” Max poked him in the shoulder, hard. Despite the pain, he smiled a little inside. It was the most Max-like she had sounded in almost a month. Since Billy.
He snapped out of his admiration. “What?”
“Lucas asked what movie you wanted to watch,” she said.
“Oh, um,” he paused. “Goonies, I guess?”
“I vote for Goonies too,” Mike said immediately after. Lucas groaned.
“See, I told you he always votes for what Will wants! It’s embarrassing. It’s like he can’t make decisions for himself.”
Mike scoffed. “I so can make decisions for myself, and I want to watch Goonies! Not because Will wants to watch it.”
A bitter taste surged in Will’s mouth, heart beating a little faster. He fought the urge to swallow. This emotion, he couldn’t quite place. All he knew was that it wasn’t one of his. God, why can’t I go one night without these stupid feelings?
Will tried to focus on something else. That's what he had been doing whenever one of these feelings possessed him. Tried to distract himself. His eyes darted around the room, glancing at all his old drawings tacked up on the walls of the basement, counted the chips still left in a bowl.
Lucas threw his hands up in frustration. “Fine! We’ll flip a coin. Since we’re tied.”
The feeling receded. Mike dug around in one of his pant pockets and pulled out a nickel. “Will this work?”
Lucas snatched it from him. “Heads, Goonies. Tails, Breakfast Club.”
He threw the coin in the air, the Party’s eyes fixated on the flash of silver. It fell back onto Lucas’ palm, him flipping it over onto the back of his hand.
The image of Thomas Jefferson’s head greeted them.
Dustin whooped, while El and Max groaned. “Goonies it is!” he said, throwing his hands in the air.
Mike grinned at Will, Will smiling softly back. Then Mike’s eyes fell onto El, going a little softer in an apology.
Will’s heart swelled, a rush of nervousness exploding through him. His stomach fluttered, and his palms felt sweaty. His heart beat a little quicker, his cheeks blooming warm and red.
He wasn’t a stranger to feeling this way around the Party. He felt like this around Mike frequently. But years of yearning from afar had dulled that feeling into something smaller, more manageable. It wasn’t as all consuming as it could be, because Will had gotten good at pushing it down and ignoring it.
There was no doubt about it, the feeling flooding Will’s nervous system was pure lovesickness, the crushiest crush to ever crush.
But it wasn’t Will’s crush.
While he recognized the feeling as love, it had that same, too-tight feeling that accompanied all the other strange feelings he had been getting. The feeling that it wasn’t right, that whatever it was taking over his body didn’t fit. The sudden rush of love wasn’t one of his emotions. He was 100% sure of that.
That was weird. All of the other emotions—anger, sadness, fear, pain—were things he had felt in some way when he was possessed by the Flayer. Those were emotions the Flayer was capable of feeling. Sour, negative emotions. The kind the Flayer thrived on.
But here was a positive feeling. Possibly one of the most positive feelings someone could feel. He was pretty sure the Mind Flayer didn’t experience romantic love. So maybe it wasn’t the Mind Flayer after all.
But if it wasn’t the Flayer, then where were the emotions coming from?
He shook that out of his head. Problem for future Will, he reminded himself. Just let your friends enjoy something.
—
That lovesick rush had interrupted Will a few more times since then. He would be minding his business before being overcome with bubbles and butterflies. A few times, it happened when the Party was hanging out. But twice, when Will was on his one. One of those times, when he was doing chores and desperately wishing El was here instead of wherever she had gone off that afternoon, using her powers to help them clean the bathroom ten times quicker. The other time, while trying not to be bored to death by The Great Gatsby, his assigned summer-reading book for school.
Both of those times, he wasn’t thinking about or around Mike. so it wasn’t his crush on Mike. And again, he was fairly certain the Mind Flayer didn’t even know what love was. Despite his theories, he still couldn’t come up with a source for these emotions.
Other than the rush, the only major change was that weird pain near his ankle. It had been recurring more frequently, a little sharper this time. It wasn’t to the point where it was interfering with Will’s life. Like the rest of the emotions, it was more of a nuisance than anything.
The pain was with him right now, as he biked to The Palace to meet the rest of the Party. El was on the back of his bike this time, clinging tightly to him. She had recently declared September 1st to be her birthday, and Will had been saving up money from mowing neighbor’s lawns and walking dogs to hopefully buy her a bike of her own.
If he said it wasn’t so he wouldn’t have to see her on the back of Mike’s bike all the time, he would be lying. But he truly wanted to be a good friend for her. Boyfriend be damned.
They pulled up to the bike rack where the rest of the Party—minus Mike—greeted them.
“Damn,” said Lucas. “We thought you guys would be the last ones here.”
El nodded. “Mike said he would be running late on the phone today. He twisted his ankle so he’s a bit slow.”
The Party milled around outside of The Palace, waiting for Mike to show up. After about ten more minutes his lanky frame pulled into view, still wearing long pants even though it had been over two weeks and surely his scraped knee must have healed by now?
“Sorry guys,” he panted as he slung his body off the bike and fiddled with his lock. “Hurt my ankle the other day.”
“El told us,” Will said, a little too sharply. His body surged with a bit of jealousy, his own this time—Will used to be the one Mike talked on the phone with—before feeling bad about it. He was trying to be a better friend to both of them. Being jealous of El simply because her and Mike’s feelings for each other was normal and safe wasn’t her fault.
“Well, I'm here now,” Mike said. “You guys didn’t have to wait for me.”
Dustin clapped Mike on the shoulder. “Party rules. We don’t leave people out.”
They filed into the Palace, handing over their quarters and dollar bills, receiving their tokens in exchange. The Palace was crowded as usual, flashing lights and whirring buzzes in the background.
Mike and Lucas made a beeline to Star Wars. Max headed to Dig Dug, while Dustin ran to Pac-Man. That just left Will and El.
“What do you want to play?” he asked her.
She paused, sticking her lip out slightly as she thought, her eyes darting around the room. Then they locked onto a large white table in the background. “What’s that?” she asked.
Will looked. “Oh, that’s air hockey. It’s pretty fun. Wanna try?”
She grinned and nodded, Will smiling in return. She was fun to be around. Her excitement for everything was contagious. He really needed to be nicer to her.
The two headed over to the game, sliding their tokens in. The table hummed to life, bursts of air falling out the holes on the table.
“It’s pretty straightforward,” Will said, handing her the pusher. “You just try to hit the puck into the other person’s goal, while defending your goal.” El nodded in understandment.
He placed the puck into the center. “You can hit first,” he said. Then whispered, “no powers.”
She rolled her eyes. “I want to play the normal way,” she whispered back. “And Joyce said I could only use them in the house.”
She leaned across the table, swinging the pusher into the puck, and then it was on.
Will thought he’s pretty good at air hockey. He’s got good reflexes after years of dropping pencils only to pick them up mid air. But El is a formidable opponent, moving the pusher out lightning fast before returning to guard her goal.
Her beginners luck doesn’t last long though, because Will took advantage of the moment she was distracted by a buzz from the game next to them and shot the puck straight into the goal.
She frowned. “That’s not fair!”
Will smirks. “Nothings fair in air hockey,” he said.
She rolled her eyes again, but smiles a little, to let him know she’s only joking. She grabbed the puck out of where it’s fallen, placing it back in the middle. “Go again.” Will leaned in to make the first shot.
Then his body was overcome with another foreign emotion. Disappointment, giving way to frustration. It curdles in his bones, making him unconsciously clench his fists.
But he’s not frustrated. He’s having a good time with El. He's winning.
Across the arcade, a loud voice yelled “Damn it!”
Mike slammed his hands on the machine in anger. “I was so close,’ he growled. Lucas patted his back reassuringly.
“You’ll get it next time,” he said.
Mike whipped around. “I was two points away from getting the new high score!” he hissed. “Two Goddamn points!”
Even from twenty feet away, Will can still read his best friend's face like he’s deciphering the meaning of a painting. Mike’s frustrated.
Mike’s…frustrated.
Will’s blood ran cold.
That very first day, when he was terrified out of nowhere. Mike was at the theater, watching a scary movie. Which, according to Lucas, he screamed at.
His knee hurting that day after the pool. That must have been when Mike fell off his bike and scraped his knee up.
The ankle pain. Mike twisted his ankle.
The mushy, crushy feeling he’s been getting. When Mike and El are around each other. When Mike looks at El.
The emotions Will’s been feeling these past few weeks. The emotions he’s been perplexed as to where they came from. This whole time, they were Mike’s.
He’s somehow been feeling Mike's pain. He’s been feeling Mike's anger and happiness and love. Love for the girl who lives in the room next door to Will. Love that Will desperately wants to be the one receiving.
I'm feeling Mike’s feelings.
In this revelation, El got the jump on him, flinging the puck through the slot on Will’s end. “I scored!” she yelled excitedly.
Across the room, Mike gave her a thumbs up, and Will swelled with pride. Not his pride. Mike’s pride.
El seemed to notice something is wrong. “Are you okay, Will?” she asks. “Are you mad that I scored?”
He managed to shake his head. “No, you, you did great. I don’t feel well,” he stammers, and before he knows it, he’s heading for the door.