Archive of Our Own

“You want to Dr. Frankenstein a dead demo? That’s your big idea?”

“Well, your plan is slow as shit,” Lucas says.

“And your plan is stupid as shit,” Erica retorts.

“What if we try both?” Joyce asks aloud. The siblings fall silent, look at each other, then shrug.

Before he thinks better of it, Mike bumps his knee into Will’s as if to ask him his thoughts. Mike’s heart rate picks up speed again as he waits for Will to respond—if he’ll even respond. It’s been a minute since they’ve communicated like this.

But then Will gently presses his knee against Mike’s. Yes. To share with the rest of the group, he voices his approval. “Let’s do it.”

With both plans decided, Mike, Lucas, and Joyce went back to the site where Robin and Murray were ambushed to pick up the dead demogorgon, Erica and Murray split up in search of Mr. Clarke, and Robin and Will stayed back to prepare a makeshift Dr. Frankenstein’s lab under the radio tower.

Now Lucas and Mike are stuck in the back of The Squawk van with the demo, with Joyce up front driving. Just like the one Will killed in front of Mike, this demo’s limbs are dislocated and bent in 90-degree angles, with its neck bent just as awkwardly to the right, facing Mike. Though it’s most certainly dead and he isn’t sure where its eyes actually are, Mike feels as though it’s looking directly at him. He shivers.

“Creepy, huh?” Lucas asks, drawing Mike’s attention away from the creature.

“That’s one thing to call it.”

His eyes drift back to the demo. This thing was breathed to life by the Mind Flayer and sent around to do Vecna’s bidding…at least until Will killed it. The longer Mike thinks about it, the more he connects the thing to Will. Will was in the same position, possessed by the Mind Flayer and a spy for both it and Vecna…but he never looked like this grey beast. The demogorgon's appearance is an outward manifestation of its beastly nature. Will, on the other hand, still looks like Will, if not older and stronger now than when he was first taken. Jonathan used to joke that Will grew into his hair, but after everything, it’s clear he’s grown in more ways than one. But beneath it all, he’s still the kid Mike met on the swings, the friend he bikes around Hawkins with, the most loyal member of the D&D campaign party, and the most talented artist Mike knows. Despite everything that’s happened, he’s still Will. Even when he was possessed by the Flayer, he was able to communicate through morse code—unlike the demos, he was never fully consumed.

Mike loathes the demogorgons and everything they’re connected to. But Will? With Will, he thinks the complete opposite.

So no, Mike decides, this demo and Will may have similar connections to the Upside Down, but they fundamentally couldn’t be more different if they tried.

“Do you actually think this is going to work?” Mike thinks aloud.

“It has to…I’m not letting Erica’s plan beat mine.”

“But do you think Will can handle it?” Mike looks up from the demo and meets Lucas’ gaze. “Potentially being inside Vecna’s mind?”

Lucas is quiet for a moment, and Mike worries it’s doubt that’s holding him back from answering. His stare is even more intimidating than the dead demogorgon’s.

Lucas’ eyes narrow. “Why are you so concerned about Will?”

Mike splutters. “Are-are you not?”

“Of course I am! But you’re…you’re acting like he’s something fragile.” When Mike just stares, Lucas continues. “His powers are strong like El’s, yet you send her into battle without question—”

“That’s not true and you know it.” Mike interjects.

Luke scoffs. “Oh really? Then where is she right now? Joyce has been worried sick about Hopper and yet you haven’t mentioned her once.”

“I care about El.”

“Not like how you care about Will.”

The way he says it, so matter-of-factly, renders Mike speechless for a moment. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” Lucas says, leaning back against the wall of the van. “Forget I said anything.”

Mike leans forward, rests his elbows on his knees. “Say it.” He doesn’t really know what the it is, but something is pulling at his heartstrings, tugging at him, begging him to know.

Lucas sighs. “You’re… different with Will. You seem more attuned to him than anyone else…aside from Joyce, I guess.” Mike opens his mouth to interject again, but Lucas plows through, “And I’m not saying this because I’m jealous of your friendship, or anything. I know we’re best friends…it just seems like Will is on this different plane of friendship…one Dustin and I can’t reach. It’s kinda like how I was with Max… before we started dating, obviously.”

Mike feels like he’s been stripped bare, naked for all to see. He’s always known Will was different, but he always just chalked it up to Will being his first ever friend. Right?

But Lucas compared Will to Max. His girlfriend. Sure, he emphasized before they were dating, but wasn’t their whole friendship just a build up to that? Even when they were friends, they were attached at the hip, completely and utterly inseparable despite her brother’s blatant hatred for Lucas.

Lucas was the one who told Max everything because he trusted her the most. Lucas was the one who brought her into the party and supported her when no one else did. Even before they dated, it was clear Lucas loved her—not more than Mike or Will or Dustin, but differently. That was obvious.

Does Lucas think the same about him and Will? That their friendship is just as obvious? If so, what does that even suggest? That Mike loves Will?

“Look,” Lucas backpedals, “I’m not trying to read into anything—”

Before Mike can stop himself he finds himself asking, “But what if you aren’t? Reading into it, I mean.”

He’s never voiced that thought out loud, and quite honestly, he feels terrified. Sure, he’s wondered why his friendship with Will has always felt different than all his other friendships, but again, he’s always chalked it up to the fact that he’s known Will the longest. That’s it. And yet, though Lucas has been looking at Mike this entire time, it feels as though something has shifted, as though Lucas is actually seeing Mike. He pulls his legs up to his chest and rests his head on his knees, trying to make himself as small as possible.

Lucas smirks. “Then that would answer a lot of my questions.”

“What questions?”

“Like... why you change your voice when you’re talking to him.”

Mike scoffs. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Your voice goes all soft. Like he needs to be handled with care or something.”

“It does not.” He feels his cheeks growing hot.

“Oh, trust me, it does.” Lucas clears his throat. “Will, are you hurt? Will, what’s wrong? Will—”

Mike chucks a bundle of rope at him, cutting his examples short. Lucas’ boisterous laughter bounces off the walls of the van, a stark contrast to the soft, gentle voice he was imitating.

“Oh, fuck off,” Mike says, but there’s no real malice behind it. He’s going to have to see for himself about this Will voice.

After that the two sit in silence, Lucas braiding and unbraiding the rope in his hands and Mike trying to do anything but think of Will and Lucas’ observations.

Eventually, the van comes to a halt. Pushing open the van doors, Lucas mutters, “Showtime.”

As Mike climbs out of the van he catches sight of Robin and Will standing on the roof of the radio station, giggling at each other.

Of fucking course.

“What’s going on?” Mike asks.

“We’re gonna have to resurrect it up here,” Robin replies. “The cords aren’t long enough.”

That kicks everyone into motion: Robin finalizing her adjustments of the wires and cords, Will hopping off the ladder to help Mike drag the demo out of the van, and the two injured—Lucas and Joyce—standing back. The last thing everyone needs is Lucas ripping open the stitches Murray had sutured or Joyce worsening her knee injury.

Mike and Will tighten the rope and tarp around the dead demo in silence. Mike can’t tell if the air is tense with all his thoughts swirling between them, because of how close the demo is in front of them, or if he’s just imagining the whole thing. He wants to say something but wants to hold off proving Lucas’ Will voice theory even more. Not like the revelation would change anything for Will… just make things a hell of a lot more confusing for Mike.

They stand shoulder to shoulder as they hold the demo steady for Robin to wheel it up on the pulley system she and Will created. Mike knows they haven’t turned the power on yet, but he feels as though there’s an electrical current running through them.

Surely, Will feels it too, right? He dares a glance at Will to find his attention upwards, focusing on the lifting demo. Completely oblivious to Mike’s restless mind and heart.

What the hell is wrong with him?

As soon as it flops onto the roof, Will climbs up the ladder to meet Robin. As they wire up the demo, they talk in hushed tones Mike can’t make out.

Maybe it would be better for everyone involved if Robin and Will are actually dating. Mike can maybe try to rekindle his relationship with El, Lucas will be with Max, and Dustin will be with Suzie. Everyone can be paired off, and Mike wouldn’t have to worry about the tightness in his chest right now.

And yet before he can stop himself, he climbs up the ladder to the roof.

“Hey, you guys almost done?” Mike asks, his voice a bit sharper than intended. At least he’s not proving Lucas’ allegations.

“Uh, yeah,” Robin says, clipping on a jumper cable to the demo’s arm. “Just finishing up on the last…got it.”

“Great. I’ll stay up here to make sure you don’t burn it to a crisp too early.”

“That might be a good idea after the poor pumpkin,” Robin says, sending Will into a fit of giggles. Mike’s itching to know what the hell is so funny about a goddamn pumpkin, but holds himself back. Swallows. Better for everyone, right?

As the two gigglemeisters head towards the ladder, Mike grabs onto Will’s forearm. He stops in his tracks and stares at Mike’s grip for a moment, then slowly draws his gaze up to meet Mike’s stare.

“Be careful, alright?”

The corners of Will’s lips quirk. “Yeah, I’ll try.”

Mike gives his arm a reassuring squeeze before letting go. As Will disappears over the side of the building, Mike sees Lucas below, watching the whole interaction with a smug grin plastered across his face.

Mike freezes. Fuck. He did the voice, didn’t he? His stomach flips at the thought.

Mike throws Lucas the bird and wishes more than anything that he was one, so he could fly away and not come to terms with the fact that Lucas is right—that Will is somehow different than everyone else. Different from how Mike currently is with El. But also different like how Lucas is with Max.

“Fuck,” he breathes.

Waiting for Robin to turn up the voltage, Mike tries his best to keep his breathing steady, but his racing heart betrays him. He feels more nervous than Joyce has seemed the past hour which is humbling, to say the least. And yet, he can’t stop himself from worrying. Worrying what will happen if things go wrong—for Will, for Holly, for everyone.

“Here we go!” Robin yells from below.

In a matter of seconds, sparks fly around the cable clips latched onto the demo. From the points of connection, black veins start to rise to the surface of its flesh and spread towards what Mike assumes is its heart. Its limbs start to twitch to life, and Mike stares with horror mixed with awe. Though he’d never say it to his face—his ego is big enough as it is—Lucas is a genius.

“It’s working!” Mike yells before racing to the ladder. He leaps off the last few rungs, not daring to miss a moment of the sorcerer working his magic.

Will sits with his legs crossed in a meditative position, taking short, deep breaths. Though he’s watching from a distance, Mike finds himself mirroring the rapid rise and fall of Will’s chest.

With a gasp, Will stiffens. While the rest of his body is ramrod straight, his hands tremble. Out of the corner of his eye Mike sees Joyce take an instinctive step forward. Only then does he realize he did as well.

As Will’s breathing becomes more labored, his eyelids flutter faster, revealing the whites of his eyes. Whenever Mike has watched El enter her mindscape, her eyes have been covered. Do her eyes always look like this when she’s in her trance?

Will snaps his neck to the right and Mike’s stomach drops. For a moment he’s brought back to the van, staring at the demogorgon with its neck bent at a deadly angle.

But Will is still breathing. Hard.

He then snaps to the left, sharply inhaling with the movement.

The way he moves back and forth reminds Mike of being on a roller coaster, lurching at every turn from the momentum. If only that was the type of ride Will was currently on, not this dangerous game of hopscotch through minds.

After three more twists and turns, each sharper than the last, Will abruptly settles back to his original seated position with a huff. His eyes are wide open, pupils dilated, focused on something past the people surrounding him. His breathing slows and his hands still.

“I think I’m Derek,” he says after a moment, voice grave. Mike sighs with relief. He’s in.

“Derek?” Lucas asks.

“He’s with the others.” Will swallows. “The other lost children.”

Lucas, Robin and Joyce are silent as Will explores through Derek’s eyes. Mike wants to do the same, avoid disturbing him, but after a minute can’t help but ask, “Do you see Holly?”

“No.”

Only receiving a quick reprieve after Will settled, Mike’s heart picks up speed again. Where the hell is she? Was she able to escape? A tinge of hope blooms in his chest.

“Henry…is searching for her.”

The only sound is Will’s breathing and the rustling of leaves from the trees in the distance, leaving ample space for Mike’s thoughts to run wild. Hope mixed with despair, faith mixed with fear. Like a mantra, Mike tells himself Holly is going to make it.

As he starts to conjure up hypothetical places in the Upside Down Holly may be, Will breathes, “Max.” Mike freezes.

“Max?” Lucas asks, voice full of hope. “What about Max?”

“She’s with Holly,” Will replies. Mike spares a glance at Lucas. Under the Squawk lights, his eyes seem to sparkle more than they have in months.

“But Vecna,” Will continues, dragging Mike’s gaze back to him, “Vecna’s hunting them.”

Lucas lets out a noise filled with agony, fear, and shock rolled up into one. Mike adds Max to his mantra: Holly and Max are going to make it.

Will starts breathing deep through his nose and pushing puffs of air out through his mouth, forming little clouds of smoke through the November air. His shoulders move up and down with each heave, far more aggressive than when he first entered the hive mind. Though Mike didn’t think it was possible, Will’s eyelids flutter faster than ever before. Though he knows what to expect now, it doesn’t change the growing pit in his stomach.

Will jolts back and forth, left to right, heaving harder and harder as he searches. Mike exchanges glances with Will and his watchface—while the seconds change, Will remains in this state.

One minute passes. Two. By the third, the beads of sweat that have formed at his hairline now trail down his cheeks. His tremors, having returned to his hands after the first minute, have since spread through his wrists to his shoulders. The four of them have closed in on Will, waiting with bated breath for him to calm.

Mike can’t take it anymore. “Do we snap him out of it?”

Lucas is already shaking his head. “He needs to find Max.”

Will grunts as his head snaps to the left. Mike flinches. “But it looks like he’s in pain,” he says, voice rising with each word.

“He can do this,” Joyce grits through her teeth. Based on the intense look she’s giving Will, Mike can’t tell who she’s trying to convince—Mike, her son, or herself.

With a loud gasp, Will freezes. When he opens his eyes, Mike no longer sees pupils so dilated that only a rim of green was visible. In their place is a milky grey film. Mike had seen his eyes like this from a distance back at the MAC-Z, but now only a foot away, he can see every detail.

Late one night a couple of years back Will taught Mike color theory. Using Will’s humongous box of crayons, they made swatches of all 120 colors and compared them to real-life objects. It took hours, and every few shades Will would ask Mike if he was bored or wanted to stop. But Will was interested in it, so Mike found a way to be interested in it too. Even when Joyce tried convincing them to finish their grid of colors in the morning, they refused.

They worked in backwards rainbow order, and by the time they got to green, Will entrusted Mike with creating some examples of his own. He explained to Mike that everyone sees colors differently, but every time Mike provided an example and Will offered up a different suggestion, Mike agreed. All of Will’s examples matched better than Mike’s ever could. Perfect matches, each and every time.

They were down to the last two shades of red, and after looking at 118 colors, Mike’s eyes were drier than ever and his brain was muddled to mush. He stared at the last two swatches for so long that they seemed to blur into the same grid square. He wondered if Will was playing a trick on him, but thought better of it—Will wasn’t the type to make Mike look like an idiot.

And yet he felt like one when he finally gave up. “I don’t know Will. Both of these look like red to me.”

“Look harder,” Will encouraged, no signs of dry eyes or mush brain to be found.

Mike sighed and leaned in closer to the kitchen table, squinting at the supposedly two different colors. After a minute of looking, Will leaned in, so close the crowns of their heads touched. Will pointed to the first swatch. “See how Scarlet kinda matches the D&D dice we use?”

Mike blinked and envisioned the polyhedral dice he had owned since he was six years old. He nodded, his hair rubbing against Will’s. “Yeah, that’s…that’s perfect, actually.”

Will blindly reached for his pencil and, keeping his head glued to Mike’s, scribbled D&D Dice under the swatch. He then pointed the tip of his pencil to the swatch beside it, labeled Red. “What about this last one?”

Mike blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “A Coca-Cola can?”

Will nodded against Mike’s head. As he jotted down the example, Mike stammered, “Wait, actually?”

“Yeah, that was exactly what I had in mind.”

Before Mike could process that he actually got one right, Will broke out into a fit of laughter. Mike snapped his head up and immediately found the culprit through Will’s appearance—his hair was poofed out in every direction, staticky like after rubbing a balloon against his head or after getting electrocuted by a faulty outlet.

Will’s smile was like the color Sunglow, his laughter the sound of Carnation Pink.

Now, his eyes are a mix of Periwinkle and Timberwood, blended with a thick layer of White on top.

He rises to his feet as if gliding through water, smooth, using only his legs to push off the ground and stand. His arms remain at his sides while his hands ball into fists and release in time with his deep breaths, like two pumping hearts. His tremors have risen up his neck, ticking his jaw with spasms every other breath.

With gritted teeth, he opens his shaking hands and raises them to the height of his hip, sending shockwaves of tremors throughout his entire body. Mike will never forget the way Will looked when he was seizing on the grass, possessed by the Mind Flayer—this is different. Rather than laying on the ground, letting the Flayer consume him, Will is now standing tall, siphoning it. Rather than being possessed, he’s possessing. His shaking is a side effect of Vecna’s power coursing through him, Mike is sure of it. He really is a—

“Sorcerer,” Lucas breathes.

Awe and fear wage a war inside Mike’s head. Awe that Will—despite all his trauma, trauma Mike can’t even begin to fathom—is using the hive mind he’s been chained to for years to his advantage, leaping through minds in search of the one that started this whole thing. And fear—not of Will, but for him. The fact that Will can hold so much supernatural power inside his human body is awesome in every sense of the word, but what if it becomes too much for him to handle? Mike doesn’t doubt Will—he could never—but he wonders how much power Vecna is actually exerting. What if Will is only tapping into a percentage of Vecna’s max capacity?

Percentage or not, though, Will is taking as much as he can get. As if snapping a branch, Will jerks his wrists outward with a loud grunt.

“It’s working,” Mike whispers.

Will then shifts his invisible grip so that his left arm is raised out in front of him, palm splayed out as if he’s holding someone’s waist in place, and his right hand is hovering on top, rotating in a motion similar to twisting open the lid of a jar. Except it’s not a jar, Mike realizes—it’s Vecna’s head.

“Max!” Will yells through gritted teeth. “If you…can hear me,” he sucks in a deep breath, releasing a drop of blood from his nose. “You need…to run!”

Will is shaking from the tips of his toes to the crown of his head as he releases the guttural command, “Run!”

Before anyone has a moment to process what Will has done, his head tilts upward at an unnatural angle, as if someone wrapped a noose around his neck and is pulling on the rope. The sound Will makes is different than before. Rather than a grunt of exertion, this groan is laced with pain. Mike takes a tentative step closer.

Will is gritting his teeth so hard Mike’s afraid his jaw is going to snap. The imaginary rope drags his head around in a circle. His eyes are clamped shut, but his mouth is wide open, yelling in agony. The blood from his nose, at first a drop, now pours down to his chin.

Vecna knows. They have to get him out. Now.

He closes the distance between him and Will and grabs hold of his shoulders. He starts to shake him, teetering on a fine line of not wanting to hurt him from rattling him too hard but also wanting Vecna to keep his talons clawed into Will’s head.

“Will!” Mike shouts.

Joyce gently cups Will’s face with her hands, trying to coax him out of his trance. “C’mon, Will, honey.”

In an instant, Will is ripped out from Mike and Joyce’s hands, flying through the air and landing on his back twenty feet away. Mike’s legs start working before his brain does, because he’s already at Will’s side by the time he actually processes what the hell just happened.

Will is still. Too still.

Mike cups Will’s face with his hands. “Will?” he whispers.

Joyce yells her son’s name and collapses on his other side, grabbing onto his arms to try to wake him. Lucas and Robin crouch down close behind. With the way Joyce is shaking him, Mike can’t tell if he’s breathing or not. He feels a bubble of panic start to rise up his throat but he forces himself to swallow it.

Breathe.

With his left hand still cradling Will’s face, he guides his right hand to Will’s neck to feel for his pulse. Mike tries to drown out his own rapid heart rate to focus on Will’s, but it’s pumping too loudly through his eardrums.

Will is okay, Mike tells himself. Breathe.

When Mike finally feels movement underneath his fingertips and is sure it isn’t his own playing tricks on him, he sighs a breath of relief.

Will is okay. He has to be.

As Mike and Joyce situate Will’s limbs on the couch inside the Squawk, Lucas’ pacing footsteps echo off the linoleum floor.

“Can you stop that?” Robin asks. “You’re stressing me out.”

Lucas freezes. “Can you take me to the hospital then? I need to be there when Max wakes up.”

Mike glances up to find Lucas looking at Robin, and Robin looking at Will. Feeling Mike’s eyes on her, she meets Mike’s gaze and holds it for a brief moment. He can’t even bother to interpret what her stare means.

Lucas’ statement finally catching up to him, he looks past her, asking, “How do you know she’s waking up?”

“If what Will said was true…that she’s with Holly running from Vecna…she just might make it out.” He shakes his head. “No, she is making it out, and soon, if there’s anything I have to say about it.”

“Then why the hell hasn’t Will woken up?” Mike asks. “Robin burnt the demo to a crisp—you all saw the particles leave it. The hive mind should’ve been severed, and yet Will is…” he glances down at the couch to see Will lying stiff as a board, the only movement being his eyes shifting back and forth under his eyelids, “unconscious…or, whatever the hell this trance-like state is.”

Lucas takes a step forward. “So, what’s your point?”

“My point is, we don’t know shit about what’s going on. The best thing to do is—”

“To what?” Lucas interrupts. He closes in on Mike, asking, “Stand around here and do nothing? Twiddle our thumbs until Will wakes up?” Lucas scoffs. The only space separating them now is the couch and Will. “The exit has to be close. Will spoke through Vecna to tell Max and your sister to run.”

“And look where that got him!” Mike yells, his voice reverberating through the room. He hates that his eyes feel wet, hates everyone staring at him, hates that no one is understanding that Will needs to be attended to… that Vecna’s probably ripping Will apart from the inside out in retaliation for invading his mind all because Will is too selfless to put his own self preservation before anyone else’s suffering.

Mike feels Joyce’s gentle hand on his back, near his shoulder blades.

Mike deflates. “You know what?” he tells Lucas, “Go. If your theory is right, you should be there for Max.”

Before anyone can respond Mike walks past the couch, past everyone’s gazes aside from the one gaze he really wants but can’t have.

His feet falter for a moment at that thought.

He quickly recovers—he refuses to interpret what that meant—and heads into the sound booth. Once the door closes, Mike finds himself in a soundproof box surrounded by vinyl records, cassette tapes, and equipment so foreign to him it’s almost laughable.

Mike, like the rest of his family, has always been a reader. He’d prefer a new comic over a new record or CD any day of the week. He doesn’t dislike music, he just never really found a connection to it. But over the last few months, Mike has listened to more music than he’s ever had in his life. Ever since the Byers moved in, the Wheeler house—especially the basement—has been a radio station of its own, with music either blasting from Jonathan’s boombox or leaking from Will’s headphones from his Walkman turned up at full volume. The brothers had to start their collection mostly from scratch aside from the few cassettes they had shoved in the compartments of Argyle’s pizza van, but between birthday gifts and minimum-wage jobs, eighteen months wasn’t long for the two music lovers to rebuild their library.

Countless nights were spent with Mike on the couch reading and Will lying on the floor drawing with The Clash, David Bowie, and The Cure filling the silence. One time, Will caught Mike humming along to “I Want the One I Can’t Have” by the Smiths.

Mike had no idea he was until the song was fading and Will was popping the cassette tape out. He scrambled up to his feet, saying, “If you liked that one, I think I have a few others!”

Mike looked over the top of his comic, watching Will shuffle through his cardboard box of cassettes. “I mean it was alright,” Mike said from the couch, feigning nonchalance. “The best one on that album, I think.”

“Okay,” Will said, his head buried in the box. “I can work with that.”

When he resurfaced, Mike quickly averted his gaze back to his comic. Drawing forgotten, Will placed five cassette tapes atop his sketchpad.

“I’ve got three songs in mind I think you’ll like, but I also have some honorable mentions I just want you to hear…they-they all kinda have a similar vibe, so hopefully they’re good.”

“I’m sure they will be,” Mike said softly.

And they were.

Will first played “This Charming Man” by the Smiths. Once the song started, Will gave Mike his undivided attention. While Mike pretended to read a page in his comic, Will watched Mike’s every movement and facial expression to gauge a reaction. Will’s intense gaze bore through the pages, burning Mike’s cheeks.

He gave up all attempts at reading after that and instead focused on the ceiling as the next two songs—“Disorder” by Joy Division and “I Melt With You” by Modern English—blasted from Will’s Walkman headphones.

Will’s honorable mentions then lead to Will just playing his favorite songs, as per Mike’s request.
He explained to Mike how “Should I Stay or Should I Go” by The Clash used to be his all-time favorite song—so much so that it kept him grounded when he was first taken and later when he was possessed by the Mind Flayer—but he had discovered so much new music since then that that song had become one on an ever-growing list of favorites.

A knock on the glass startles Mike out of his thoughts. She nods her head to the door as if to ask Can I come in? Mike nods.

“You okay?” she asks, gently letting the door close behind her.

Mike sighs. “Yeah. Did Lucas…”

“Yeah, he took the spare bike. I’m gonna meet him in a bit, but I just wanted to check on you first.”

Mike can’t help but ask, “Why?”

“What do you mean, ‘why’?”

“Why do you care?”

“I…I don’t know. You seemed pretty upset about Will.”

“And you’re not?” Mike counters.

“Of course I am.” Robin blinks. “What the hell is your problem?”

“My problem?”

“Yeah. First you snap at Lucas, and now you’re snapping at me. I don’t understand what either of us did to offend you but–”

“Lucas didn’t do anything wrong.”

“But I did?”

“No! B-but I barely know you, and now you’re close with Will and…and I didn’t even know you guys were close…Will and I have been living together for fuck’s sake! But you’re running off together and having inside jokes and…it’s just…I don’t know.” Mike sighs. “I think I’m just exhausted and took it out on Lucas because he knows Max is going to wake up but we can’t say the same for Will…and…and now I’m taking it out on you when I really should be frustrated with Will but I can’t because he’s in some weird sleep state none of us know how to pull him out of, and–”

“W-wait. Hold on,” Robin interrupts. “Why are you mad at Will?”

Mike stares at her for a moment and feels so incredibly stupid. Does he really have to say it?

Apparently yes, if her slight head nod, urging him to spit it out, is any indication.

“That he didn’t tell me he has a girlfriend,” Mike mutters.

Robin is silent, staring at Mike with her mouth slightly open, and Mike has to say something, anything to fill the chasm of awkwardness he’s just split open. “I mean, I don’t care that you guys are dating. I just thought Will and I were best friends… that he’d tell me that sort of thing.”

A beat of silence passes, and Mike feels like he’s going to start yelling again.

“You thought I was dating Will?” she eventually asks, voice seeping with incredulity.

Now it’s Mike who needs a beat of silence. “You-you’re not?”

Robin then bursts out laughing, so hard she doubles over and has to grab onto the table next to her. Mike is frozen, though his cheeks burn hot. He’s never felt more humiliated. And yet, there’s a feeling buried deep within him that lifts at the sound of Robin’s laughter.

When she finally has enough air to get a word out, she says, “God no! I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love Will, but I–” she clears her throat, stands upright. “I’m dating someone else.”

And that buried feeling lifts slightly higher.

“Oh,” is all Mike can say.

“Yeah, ‘oh’. So can you drop the deflecting dick act now?”

“Deflecting dick?” When Robin doesn’t say anything, just tilts her head and crosses her arms, Mike scoffs. “Fine. Consider it dropped.” She doesn’t know the half of it.

Robin smiles. “Good. I’m gonna head to the hospital, but if you need anything, or if anything changes with Will, call. I’ll have my Walkie.”

As she turns to leave, Mike’s eyes fall to the table she had just doubled over on. More specifically, the Walkman.

“Wait!” he calls.

She drops her hand from the doorknob and turns.

“Do you know how to make a mixtape?” Mike asks.

“Uh, yeah…why?”

He straightens. “I think I want to make one for Will. Listening to music helped Max before…maybe it can help Will too.”

The corner of her lips quirk into a smile. “Alright,” she says. She nods her head to the right. “There’s a whole wall of vinyls over there. Go pick a few you think he’d like, and I’ll get everything set up in here.”

A little bit of hope blossoms in Mike’s chest. As he hops off the stool and heads out of the sound booth, she’s already making quick work of plugging and unplugging wires and cords.

Halfway out the door, Mike turns. “Hey, Robin?”

Preoccupied with the turntable, she replies, “Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

She then looks up from her hands, meets Mike’s gaze, and smiles. “Anytime, Dick.”

“Hey, I said I was dropping it!”

She shrugs. “I never said I was.”

Mike rolls his eyes and closes the door behind him.

Mike couldn’t just choose a few, but when he returns with twenty vinyls in tow, Robin isn’t even the least bit surprised. She has him write down all the songs on a piece of paper in the order he wants them played, along with the songs’ corresponding track numbers on the vinyls. All the songs Mike chose are ones he remembers Will playing at least a dozen times over the last few months. He also threw in the three songs Will had played especially for Mike, just in case Will hears it and remembers that night like how Mike does whenever he hears them.

Robin explains to Mike how the cords run from the turntables to the mixer, and how whatever passes through the board is recorded directly onto the cassette. She also walks him through how to cue up the next song on the idling turntable, lining it up by ear so the transition from one song to the next comes out as clean as possible.

After that, aside from the music playing and Robin giving a few pointers here and there, they work in surprisingly comfortable silence—Mike cueing up the vinyls, and Robin doing everything else.

As “I Melt With You” fades, Mike stifles another yawn—he’s lost track of how many—and glances at the clock above Robin’s head. 4:32 AM. They’ve been holed up in the sound booth for hours now, with only uneventful check-ins with Lucas and Will for breaks.

“Annnd, that’s a wrap,” Robin says, popping open the boombox compartment and taking out the tape. When she places it in Mike’s open palm, he’s surprised at how heavy it feels. He weighs it in his hand.

“Does music weigh anything?” he asks aloud.

“Uhh, I guess it depends on what type of weight you’re talking about. Physical weight, no…but emotional weight? Absolutely.”

Mike rolls his eyes. “It must be exhaustion playing tricks on me, then.”

“Yeah, maybe,” she says. She’s wearing a smirk on her face Mike doesn’t like, similar to Lucas in the van.

“Coffee?” Mike offers. Anything to get out of this sound booth.

“Oh, god yes.”

Mike slides the cassette tape into his pocket—and is Robin sure music doesn’t weigh anything? It feels like he just put a brick in there—and, before heading to the kitchen, pops his head in the lounge. Will hasn’t moved, but Joyce has sprawled across the other end of the couch, fast asleep. Her hand is still clasped around Will’s as if she’s anchoring him, protecting him from being thrown through the air again.

Mike’s mind plays an instant replay of when Will was, quite literally, thrown out of Vecna’s mind like one of Holly’s rag dolls. He shivers, and though he knows it’s not from the cold, he tells himself the coffee will warm him up.

He’s watching the coffee pour into the glass pot drip by drip when Robin finds him. He watches her distorted reflection place a boombox on the table behind him.

“You know how to use this?”

Mike scoffs, and eyes focused on the pot, replies, “Yeah, I’m not a complete idiot.”

“Alright, alright, just checking,” she concedes, slipping into her leather jacket.

The coffee pot beeps. Mike pours each of them a cup, filling his to the brim first. As he starts to do the same for her, she stops him. He glances over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow.

“Unlike you,” she says, heading to the fridge, “I’m not a heathen.” She grabs a carton of milk from the fridge and walks back over, saying, “I don’t know how the hell you can drink black coffee.”

Mike shrugs. “I’m gonna need all the caffeine I can get.”

She fills the rest of the paper cup with milk. “You can sleep, you know,” she says, voice soft.

“I will when Will wakes up.”

She dumps a generous spoonful of sugar into the cup. “Will looks like he’s catching up on his beauty sleep,” she says, stirring her milk with a splash of coffee. “You can too,” she singsongs.

Mike takes a sip of his coffee; he welcomes the steam on his face and the burn of it down his throat. “Do you actually think that?” he eventually asks. “That Will is resting comfortably like that?”

Robin sighs. “No, but it’s nice to think that he is, right?”

Though a small part of him agrees, hopes that Will is just recharging after exerting so much energy, a larger part of him knows that’s not true. He’s the way Will’s eyes are moving back and forth—it’s clear his mind is still very much awake. He’s somewhere deep in the recesses of his own mind with no way out. Mike’s free hand reaches for his pocket, feels the imprint of the tape protruding from it.

“Let’s just hope this works,” he says.

Robin nudges his shoulder. “It better. We spent long enough on it.”

Mike walks into the lounge with his second cup of coffee almost finished and a fresh one for Joyce. His hands are slightly trembling from the caffeine, but he embraces it. He can’t rest—he refuses—so shaky hands will have to do.

“Thanks, sweetie,” she says, rubbing the sleep away from her eyes.

Mike sits on the arm rest near Will’s feet. He hasn’t moved from his corpse-like position, though his eyes are still shifting back and forth, searching for something underneath his lids. Mike hates the unknown of it all. It’s yet another instance of him watching, unable to do anything.

Unless…

He shifts and pulls out the tape from his pocket. With permanent marker, he labeled the front FOR WILL and filled the back with the track list comprising twenty-two meticulously chosen songs.

Staring at the track list, he suddenly feels very self conscious. What if these were all terrible choices? It’s no help to Will if all the songs suck. He’s got to like at least one of them, though, right? The Clash is a given, obviously. But the others? Maybe he should just play the London is Calling album and call it a day. Surely that would be a certifiable win in Will’s book. But does he love all the songs on that album? Maybe the mixtape is actually the safer option. At least there’s some variety?

“Uhm,” he looks up to find Joyce already watching him. “Robin and I made this to play for Will. Music had apparently worked for Max and Nancy in the past, so…” his voice trails off.

“I think that’s a great idea,” she reassures him. “Let’s try it.”

Mike nods and heads back to the kitchen to grab the boombox. He hesitates for a moment outside the sound booth, seriously contemplating grabbing the vinyl, but thinks better of it. Robin is right—they spent a long time making that mixtape. Mike didn’t just choose random songs on a whim—he remembers Will mentioning he liked almost every song on the mixtape at some point or another. It’ll be okay, he tells himself.

When Mike returns, he faces the boombox towards Will. With trembling hands—the caffeine really must be kicking in—he places the cassette tape into the compartment. He takes a deep breath, then presses play.

As “Radio Free Europe” by R.E.M. plays through the speakers, Mike takes a seat on the floor, leaning his back against the couch by Will’s torso. He pulls his legs close to his chest and rests his head on his knees. He stares intently at the boombox, willing it to emit its soundwaves directly into Will’s mind, and siphoning the melody to form a life preserver out of the lyrics. He imagines the preserver is large enough for Will to slip into, and drags Will out of whatever mindscape he’s in, back to reality.

But nothing happens.

Because Will is the sorcerer, and Mike is just a paladin.

He sighs, and lets a tear fall down his cheek.

Mike and Joyce listen to the first seven songs in silence, with no sign of life from Will aside from the steady rise and fall of his chest. Mike hasn’t taken his eyes off the boombox.

As the instrumental intro of “Everything Counts” by Depeche Mode plays, Mike hears Joyce shift.

“I think I’m going to take a shower. Would you mind staying with him?”

He closes his eyes for a moment. “No,” he says, “I don’t mind.”

“Thanks.” She gently ruffles Mike’s hair as she passes. “Get me if anything changes, okay?”

“Yeah,” he mutters.

The voice in the back of his head taunts him, saying, If she’s going to shower, clearly she doesn’t think the music is doing anything, right?

“She could’ve at least waited until the mixtape ended,” he mumbles under his breath.

He stretches out his legs under the table and cranes his neck to look up at Will. His face looks peaceful, stoic and smooth in unconsciousness, but his restless eyes, shifting back and forth, show otherwise.

“Where are you?” he whispers.

He faintly hears the groaning of metal shelving sliding across the floor, blocking the staircase to their hideout in the basement. Little by little, everyone contributed to making it a livable space—they restored the bathroom, brought in a pull-out couch for a makeshift bed, and stocked up on nonperishable food and changes of clothes. Mike has never really taken advantage of it, but depending on how long Will is like this, he may have to.

Mike’s mind wanders to the times he’s visited the hospital with Lucas to see Max. Lucas isn’t a superstitious person, but he’s very particular when it comes to her. He always sits on her left side to hold her left hand, believing that gives him a stronger connection to her heart. Though Mike has been sick of it for months now, Lucas always insists on playing “Running Up That Hill”—he doesn’t mind if they talk over it, but it always has to be on, no exceptions. When he’s not catching Max up on recent happenings, Lucas reads her books she notoriously hates, hoping she’ll wake up just to argue with him.

Maybe that’s what Will needs—music and a connection to the person playing it.

Mike stands and cracks his spine, ankles, and wrists while trying to glance over at the staircase as nonchalantly as possible. Joyce is nowhere to be seen. Mike gingerly takes the seat on the couch where Joyce was—the horizontal section of the L-shaped couch, near Will’s head—and crosses his legs.

Does he grab his hand? Is that weird? He’s held Will’s hand countless times before…what difference does it make now?

Mike’s hand is hovering when he notices the order of Will’s hands—his right hand lies over his left. Inches away from contact, Mike glances around the lounge, as if waiting for someone to pop out from around the corner and catch him. But catch him doing what, exactly? He has no idea. He then looks up at the ceiling. What the hell is he waiting for?

Ever so gently, he reaches for Will’s right hand and clasps it. He’s not surprised to find it cold—Will’s hands almost always are—but it’s freezing. Mike makes quick work of warming it, cupping both his hands around Will’s and rubbing back and forth.

After a few minutes, Mike reminisces aloud: “Do you remember that one time we went sledding and you forgot your gloves?” He laughs softly. “Your fingertips were so blue they looked like you dipped them in ink.” He blows hot hair into Will’s encased hand. “I had to warm your hands exactly like this for twenty minutes until they got back to normal.”

Mike gently places Will’s right hand down by his side and repeats the warming process for his left hand.

“You know,” he says in the silence of transitioning songs. “It’s much easier without you laughing or pulling your hands away every two seconds.” Though he’d give anything for Will to do it right now. “You’re probably the most ticklish person I know, it’s insane.”

He blows air onto Will’s hand and continues rubbing. “When this is all over, we have to try sledding on the rifts. I know the Hawkins Middle kids have kinda taken it over, but I think we can scare them off…and we can do it in the spring so you won’t have to worry about needing gloves.”

When Will’s hand is warm enough to Mike’s standards, he gently rests it back on the couch, but before letting go, he hesitates. He stares at his right hand clasped around Will’s left wrist for a moment. Before he can think better of it, he slowly adjusts his grip to intertwine their fingers. He doesn’t know if he’s ever held Will’s hand in this way, but it feels comfortable enough to him. He glances at Will to see if it’s comfortable enough for him too, but Will doesn’t move. Shocker.

Mike rubs gentle circles onto the back of Will’s hand. “Who knew sorcerers’ hands could be so soft?” he wonders aloud. “Especially when Vecna’s skin looks so…well it doesn’t look smooth, that’s for sure.” He shrugs. “Must just be a Will Byers thing, then, because you definitely didn’t siphon that.”

When “I Want the One I Can’t Have” starts to play, Mike smiles. Will has played it enough times for Mike to know the lyrics, so instead of humming the melody as he once did, he now softly sings the first verse in sync with the Smiths. Like a kick-drum pedal keeping the beat, Mike taps his thumb against Will’s hand.

As the first verse repeats, Mike says, “I know you play this song whenever I’m with you because you know I like it…and I-I don’t even know if you like it…maybe you’re as sick of it as I am of ‘Running Up That Hill’... So, if you secretly hate this song, I’m sorry, but,” he raises his and Will’s hands up to his lips like a microphone and sings, “It’s all over, all over, all over my face!”

He has to be delusional at this point. He’s been running on zero hours of sleep for way too long, and yet this is the most awake he’s felt in days. Without letting go of the makeshift microphone that is their intertwined hands, Mike rises to his feet and pretends he’s performing a concert only for Will.

He holds up two fingers with his free hand as he sings, “A double-bed,” and points to Will as he continues, “And a stalwart, lover for sure.” He leans in towards Will, “These are the riches of the poor!”

He then gets down on his knees, singing to Will, “And I want the one I can't have, and it’s driving me mad…It’s all over, all over, my face!”

During the instrumental he bops his head back and forth, his hair swishing a half beat behind in each direction.

He then rises back to his feet to sing the next verse, overly animating each line. At some point he finds himself playing an imaginary electric guitar with his free hand, and plays into it further as he sings into Will’s hand, “These are the riches of the poor!”

So far gone into the song, Mike grabs the side of Will’s face as he sings to him, “I want the one I can’t have, and it’s driving me mad.” He leans and sings into their hands, “It’s written all over my face.”

He lets go of Will’s face and reverts back to bopping his head. He then attempts a vocal run, while singing the last “On the day that your mentality…” but his voice cracks in all the wrong places. He couldn’t care less.

He’s bouncing from foot to foot, dancing here, there, and everywhere while simultaneously trying not to rip Will’s arm out of its socket.

As he holds out the last note, he slides to the floor with his back facing the couch. He then uses his and Will’s hands to strum as he shreds the closing instrumental on his imaginary electric guitar.

As the song fades to silence, he holds their intertwined hands close to his racing heart. He’s in the middle of catching his breath when he hears a sharp intake of breath.

Mike whips his head up to the couch to find Will staring down at him, chest rapidly rising and falling. Rays of the morning sun peek through the blinds, making the golden flecks of his hair glisten and his wide eyes—now back to his normal Asparagus crayon color—sparkle. Mike blinks and wonders for a brief moment if this a sleep-deprivation induced mirage. When his brain finally catches up, telling him Will is awake, he scrambles to his feet and practically collapses on top of him, wrapping his arms around Will’s middle to envelop him in a bear hug.

Will huffs from the air being knocked from his lungs and Mike instantly pulls back. “Oh shit, sorry.” He’s so caught up in the fact that Will is actually awake that he forgot what caused his unconsciousness in the first place. He slinks his arms out from under Will and gently grabs his shoulders, giving him a once over before landing back on his wide eyes. “Are you hurt at all?”

Will shakes his head without taking his eyes off Mike. “No,” he whispers. Clears his throat. “Uh, no, I-I don’t think so,” he says a bit louder.

“Here,” Mike coaxes, gently guiding Will up to a sitting position. He watches Will’s face for any signs of lightheadedness—though his breathing has slowed, he now looks frozen, tired eyes wide and chapped lips slightly parted.

“Uhm.” Mike lets go of Will’s shoulders. Shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “Do-do you need water? Food?” Will looks so pale Mike is positive food is the last thing he actually needs right now. “I, uh… What can I do to help?” he settles for instead.

Will blinks as if finally waking from his stupor. “I-uh…” His eyes flit up to meet Mike’s. “I think I just need a minute.”

“Yeah, uh, sure.” Mike sits on the table next to the boombox and rubs his palms on his jeans to have something to do. He watches Will slowly roaming his eyes around the empty lounge, and Mike’s right knee starts bouncing on its own accord.

“Your mom’s in the shower,” he supplies dumbly.

Will just nods.

He probably should get Joyce, but some selfish part of him glues him to his seat, telling him to relax and relish in the fact that Will is okay. Holding on to this little secret for a minute or two won’t change much in the grand scheme of things, right?

Another selfish part of him wants to ask Will a million and one questions, but after witnessing so many episodes of Will’s in the past, the rational side of him tells him to wait, that Will has to orient himself first.

He’s taking a sip of the now room-temperature dregs of his coffee when Will eventually speaks, so softly Mike almost doesn’t hear him.

“I saw Max and Holly.”

Mike’s eyes flit to Will’s, though his attention is focused somewhere out the window, distant. The only movement is his fingers mindlessly fiddling with the frayed hem of his shirt sleeve.

Mike puts his cup down slowly, fearing that if he moves too fast he’ll spook him. He hums softly, half in acknowledgment and half to prompt Will to keep talking.

“They were in your house…b-but not? I-it was like the house was in the middle of some red abyss…” He adds as an afterthought, “They were trying to escape from the window.”

Though Will still isn’t looking at him and Mike can barely wrap his head around what Will is saying, he nods anyway as if he understands.

“I-I don’t think I was in the Upside Down…it felt different, somehow.” He huffs in what Mike assumes was an attempt at a chuckle. “If I didn’t look out the window, I could’ve fooled myself. It almost looked real.” His voice breaks on the last word, and his eyebrows scrunch together as he looks out the window, like he can’t quite believe that there’s a blue sky and green grass out there instead of a sea of red. Mike has the sudden urge to reach out to him, to grab his hand and tether him here, to reality.

Impulsively, he gives in…sort of. With Will’s hands preoccupied, Mike leans forward and gently grabs his thigh instead. He feels the muscle tense under his palm, making his fingers twitch. His brain screams at him to pull away—that this is obviously too much and Mike is only making Will more uncomfortable than he already is—but then Will’s thigh relaxes. Mike glances up at Will’s face, which has since turned away from the window and is now fully turned towards him. His gaze flits between Mike’s hand and his eyes. His eyebrows are still scrunched, as if he’s trying to understand a different yet similarly difficult aspect of reality.

“You’re here now,” Mike says, squeezing Will’s thigh in emphasis.

He stares at Mike for a moment before he nods, eyebrows relaxing. The corner of his mouth twitches. “I guess I have you to thank for that.”

Mike stills. Thank him? For what? After a second it clicks, and Mike’s heart soars. He can’t believe he’s actually done something rather than just sitting around and watching. He feels useful for once—needed, even—and it’s one of the best feelings in the world.

“So, the mixtape worked?” he asks, voice light and airy, and the way it sounds tricks Mike into thinking Lucas somehow spoke through him with his Will voice impersonation. Except it wasn’t an impersonation of Mike—it was just Mike himself. Dickhead, he thinks, and whether it’s directed at Lucas or himself, he isn’t sure. Maybe both.

But he’s still riding on the high of being needed until Will blinks slowly. “Mixtape?” he asks. He looks completely and utterly confused, and Mike deflates at the sight. It must be written all over his face because Will opens his mouth to say something, to probably backpedal on his question if Mike knows anything at all about Will, but he doesn’t get the chance.

“Will?” Joyce calls from behind them.

Mike rips his hand from Will’s thigh as if his thigh had somehow transformed into a white-hot metal rod without him realizing. Refusing to look at Will, he focuses on the laces of his scuffed Converse. Shame emanates from every pore. He feels ashamed for reflexively pulling away from Will as if he got caught doing something wrong—ashamed for touching Will in the first place; ashamed that he assumed the mixtape worked; ashamed that he’d assumed Will wasn’t strong enough to wake up on his own. Most of all, though, he’s ashamed for thinking he was needed, and even more so for feeling happy about it.

“Mom!” Will exclaims, and Mike dogpiles his shame train by chastising himself for not informing Joyce as soon as Will woke up.

He leans out of the way for Joyce to squeeze past, and as she does, Mike gets a whiff of lavender and honey. The soap scent is so inviting he thinks he might just take a shower himself—maybe he can wash his shame down the drain.

As mother and son embrace, Mike finds his way out. He stands silently, yet Will somehow senses it. Over Joyce’s shoulder his eyes snap open and lock onto Mike’s, sending a silent plea of don’t leave.

Mike swallows. How can he say no? He can’t—he feels like he could never say no to Will—so he nods. He can’t bring himself to sit back down on the table, though, not when his entire body is yelling at him to retreat, so he stands over the Byers like a waif.

Seeing Joyce and Will together makes his heart ache. Maybe once Will calms down he’ll meet Lucas at the hospital to check in. His mom was in horrific shape when he left her, littered with gashes and scrapes feebly covered up by stitches and bandages. He hasn’t even seen the damage the demo has done to his dad yet. Some son he is, he thinks, adding another layer of shame to weigh down his bones. He’s surprised he hasn’t been pressurized into a pancake yet.

Joyce pulls back and holds Will’s face in her hands. “Honey, what happened?” Though her back is facing him, Mike can tell she’s crying—he hears it in her voice. Will flits his eyes to Mike again, which seems to remind Joyce that Mike is in the room with them. She quickly moves over to the side of the couch, leaving an open space by Will’s feet. Will draws his legs together and nods to the empty spot. Sit, his gesture says. Please, his eyes beg.

And like an obedient puppy, Mike does. He mirrors Will’s position to fit his lanky limbs on the couch. The tips of his Converse are a hair’s breadth away from grazing Will’s socked toes.

“I-I was telling Mike how I saw Holly and Max,” Will says. “I think they’re going to make it out soon.”

Joyce smiles and places a hand on top of her son’s. “Lucas thinks so too. He’s at the hospital with Robin now waiting for Max to wake.”

Will nods and returns the smile weakly.

“How…how did you do it?” she asks.

Will rests his chin on his knees and stares blankly in Mike’s direction. After a minute, he sighs. “I-I don’t know…When I entered the demos’ minds, I wasn’t able to actually read them…I mostly just got a feeling…a feeling to act purely on instinct, like a wild animal or something. It was hard to force them against that instinct—to stop—but once I was in…I was in. But this…wi-with Vecna…it was different. I saw through his eyes in flashes…he-he kept trying to push me out, and it… it felt like my entire body was being crushed under a thousand pounds. But when I got those flashes…I felt like I was in control, even if it was only for a moment…I-uh, I think that’s how I was able to speak through him and sorta move him how I wanted.” Will’s eyes are brought back to focus, zeroing in on Mike. “I couldn’t hear what he was thinking, though...I-I didn’t even get a feeling.”

Mike shifts under Will’s gaze.

“I did hear him talk to me, though,” Will continues, back to looking through Mike rather than at him directly. “He-he knew I was there…told me to ‘Get out’...until he… he forced me out.”

Mike shudders at the memory, and it’s either a really violent chill that racks him or Will shaking too that makes the couch vibrate. Mike bets on a mix of the former and the latter, judging by the way Joyce wraps an arm around Will’s shoulder and pulls him close.

“And then what?” she gently prompts. “Did you see anything after that?”

Mike didn’t think it was possible, but Will manages to pull his legs even closer to himself, creating what Mike believes is now a chasm between their feet. Will shuts his eyes tight, so tight his eyelids crinkle, and nods.

“It was dark, at first, but I-I knew I was trapped…tr-trapped in vines. I-I felt them constricting me…choking me.” He turns his head to the side as if he’s there, looking around at his surroundings. “Everything was covered in black vines…I-I couldn’t even tell where I was until he reminded me—showed me—a younger me through his eyes.”

Joyce gasps. Mike can’t breathe.

Though Mike has never seen where Will was trapped in the Upside Down, he had gotten a pretty good visual a few months ago. With Jonathan working an overnight shift at the diner downtown, Mike had taken over his makeshift bed in the basement for a movie night and sleepover with Will. They’ve done it countless times over the months they’ve lived together; it was like a ritual recurring every Tuesday and Thursday as per Jonathan’s schedule. Mike would argue those nights were one of the few pros of being forced into quarantine with a curfew, but on this night in particular, the curfew was the last thing keeping them indoors. During the first week of August there was a terrible storm raging through Hawkins—one the town hadn’t seen in over a decade—with wind gusts reaching over 65 miles per hour, knocking over trees, streetlamps, and telephone poles on almost every street.

It should’ve been no surprise then when the power cut out midway through Star Wars: Episode 5, just as Luke was throwing a thermal detonator into an AT-AT during a battle on Hoth, yet both of them practically jumped off the couch when the television screen went black as did the rest of the basement.

“Fuck,” Mike groaned. “We were just getting to a good part.”

He felt Will’s knee stiffen against his. He turned to Will to see what the matter was, but his eyes hadn’t adjusted to the abrupt darkness yet. With everything around him black, the only senses of familiarity were Will’s knee gently pressed against his and the couch cushions beneath him; the faint scent of lavender wafting from the laundry room and off of Will’s freshly cleaned clothes, with a mix of citrus hand soap Will loves, and buttery popcorn sitting in a bowl somewhere on the table in front of them; and the sound of rain pelting every side of the house, with wind howling as a fierce accompaniment.

“You okay?” he asked the darkness.

Will sat in silence for a moment, long enough for Mike to open up his mouth to ask again, before he replied, “Uhm, yeah. I just…I’m just not used to the dark.”

Mike racked his brain for a memory of his surroundings when he slept with Will because did they not always sleep in the dark? He then remembered the night light in the corner of the room, hidden from him on the couch, but eye level with Will when he slept. With his vision adjusted enough to see Will in the shape of a dark blob, Mike stood.

“I’ll try to find a flashlight or some candles. Stay here.”

The dark blob sat so still Mike questioned if it was actually Will sitting there or a blanket draped over an abnormally large pillow. He backpedaled, his voice soft, “Or you could come help me look, if you want.”

Without saying a word, Will rose to his feet and trailed behind Mike up the stairs. The rest of the house was asleep, oblivious to the power outage, leaving them plenty of candles to decorate the basement with. They gathered as many candles and matches they could carry, then lit each corner of the basement in silence.

Mike had his back turned, lighting one of the last candles, when Will finally spoke. “I’m sorry.” He apologized so quietly, Mike thought he misheard. When he spun around, he found Will sitting crisscrossed on the couch, his hands fiddling with a loose thread from the cushion, looking right at him.

Shaking the match flame out, Mike asked, “Sorry for what?”

“For…for, I guess, being too childish to be afraid of the dark. I-I mean I can sit in the dark, it’s just…I’d prefer not doing that. So, uhm, sorry you had to get up when we could’ve just gone to sleep.”

The word sorry had been written into Will’s DNA for as long as Mike has known him, yet it still surprised him almost every time he heard it. Will always thought he was doing something wrong, and Mike wouldn’t have any of that. He spoke his thoughts aloud, “You have nothing to apologize for.” He glanced around the room before his eyes landed back on Will’s. The candles gave a warm yellow glow to the basement, complementing Will’s honey brown hair. “Besides, it looks nice,” he added, and whether he was talking about the room or Will’s hair he’d never admit to himself, but if asked he’d insist on strictly the former.

With the TV no longer an option for entertainment, they found themselves back in a familiar rhythm of Mike reading and Will doodling, except rather than Will lying on the floor and Mike sprawled above, they sat toe to toe on the couch together, each working under their own candlelight. Engrossed in his current issue of Swamp Thing, he didn’t realize Will had left the couch or called his name twice.

When he felt a gentle hand on his shoulder, he jolted with a small yelp, and Will’s hand flew back as if he’d burned him. Before Mike could look up from his comic, Will was already rushing out a string of apologies. Will looked more panicked than Mike felt at the interruption, the apples of his cheeks reddening with what Mike assumed was embarrassment. Not for the first time, Mike felt his stomach swoop at the sight.

“What’s up?” he asked, gently cutting Will off.

“No, you, uh, can keep reading…I-I didn’t mean to distract you like that.”

“I was at a boring part anyways,” he lied, dog-earring the page and placing the book on the table beside the now empty bowl of popcorn. In truth he was in the middle of a battle sequence, but one not nearly as exciting as what was interrupted when they were watching Star Wars. At least he could say he could jump back into it later—who knew when the power would actually be restored.

He swung his legs off the couch and straightened in his seat, giving Will his undivided attention, and even the dim candlelight couldn’t hide Will’s cheeks darkening. No red ink from his comic could recreate that shade, but maybe the Fuzzy Wuzzy crayon color could come close.

“Can I show you something?”

It had been a while since Will showed him his artwork—every time Mike asked to see what he was working on, Will had told him it was part of a bigger project, one he’d show Mike as soon as he was done. Mike’s heart lifted at the thought.

“Did you finish it?” he asked eagerly.

Will averted his eyes to somewhere over Mike’s shoulder before nodding.

“Yeah, I-uh, I spread it out on the floor by the stairs.”

Mike quickly rose to his feet and spun around. When his eyes fell on a mural of dark paper spanning from one end of the basement floor to the other, he froze. There had to be at least twenty pieces of printer paper spread out across the floor, each intricately designed in deep blacks and blues yet taped together to create a cohesive scene he couldn’t quite make out under the flickering candlelight.

As if he was terrified the papers would disintegrate to ash if he moved too quickly, Mike took a tentative step forward. He blindly grabbed for the flashlight standing atop the baluster, but before he could turn it on, Will grabbed his wrist.

“Wait.”

Mike stared at the papers dumbly and let himself be dragged by Will around the perimeter. They were probably moving slower than a standard walk, but it was too fast for Mike to make out any details.

They approached two foldable chairs Will must’ve set flush together, not quite in the middle of the floor mural, but jutting far enough into it to disturb the shape of the piece.

Will stood in between Mike and his art. He shifted from foot to foot and swallowed. “Okay, I’m going to need you to close your eyes for a second.”

“Wh-what?” Mike sputtered. He hadn’t even gotten a chance to look at it yet and now Will is already closing it off?

“Just…trust me. You’ll understand in a minute.”

Mike sighed. “Fine,” he conceded, shutting his eyes and handing over the flashlight.

“Okay,” Will said. “I’m going to lay you down on your stomach.”

Mike snapped his eyes open to ask Will what the hell he meant by that, why this sounded so clinical, but Will was faster. He quickly cupped his free hand over Mike’s eyes, creating a makeshift blindfold.

“I told you to trust me,” Will said, laughter lacing his words.

Mike felt his cheeks grow hot and his heart beginning to hammer out of his chest. Couldn’t he go back to seeing Will’s cheeks rosy, not his feeling like they were on fire?

“Fine,” he grumbled again, trying his hardest to feign nonchalance.

It must not have worked because Will giggled. Giggled. He’d heard Will laugh plenty of times before, from breathy chuckles to full-belly laughter, but whatever came out of Will’s mouth was new territory for Mike. His stomach swooped again.

Will let go of Mike’s wrist and face, sending a rush of cold to the places now exposed. He heard one of the foldable chairs scratch against the floor before Will’s hand was on Mike’s wrist again.

“I’m warning you now, this is going to be a bit weird, but trust me, please?”

The way he asked—rather, pleaded—was enough to keep Mike’s eyes from opening again. He nodded.

Will’s grip on Mike’s wrist was so gentle it felt more like a caress than a tug towards the chairs. Will fanned out his palm against Mike’s back, sending a shiver through his spine. Will leaned Mike forward and whispered in his ear, “I’m going to have you lay on both the chairs with your head peeking through, but I think you’re going to have to get on your knees first.”

Mike’s mouth and throat were bone dry; his brain short circuited. He couldn’t get any words out, so he just nodded.

Will guided him to the floor, and when his knees hit the cool wood, he shivered at the change in temperature. He rested Mike’s elbows and chest on the foldable chair, then shifted his hand from Mike’s back to cradle the back of his head, guiding Mike’s head through the gap of the chair.

When Mike was situated, Will let go and stood back. Mike felt Will’s eyes on him, felt his heart thumping against the chair’s upholstery, but he refused to open his eyes.

“Uhm, actually, can you lift your leg up?” Will asked sheepishly. “I’ll guide the chair under you.”

Mike forced himself to speak. “Uhm, which one?”

“Your left first, sorry.”

Mike silently obeyed. Will grabbed his shin and slid the chair under him, raising Mike off the floor. He then lifted his right leg, and Will repeated the process, slotting Mike’s leg into the gap of the chair, right beside his left. The second chair ended right before Mike’s knees, making the position rather uncomfortable. Will quickly noticed and slid in another chair at the end.

After he lifted Mike’s ankles up and rested his feet on the third chair, he asked, “Is that comfortable?”

It was certainly better than before, but not great. “Yeah,” Mike lied.

“Sorry, it was much easier when I did this myself.”

“And I’m sure it would’ve been even easier with my eyes open,” he teased.

Will scoffed. “But that would’ve ruined the experience.”

“Well, can I experience the experience now?”

Suddenly unsure, Will hesitated. “Uh, yeah. Just give me one more second.”

Mike listened to a pattern of Will’s feet padding around the basement, followed by a light blow of air. By the third blow, the smell of burnt wax and smoke had slithered its way into Mike’s nostrils. Mike couldn’t take the anticipation anymore; he was tired of all these ‘one seconds’. He was about to give in to the urge to peek when Will released a shaky breath somewhere in the distance.

“You can open your eyes now.”

When Mike did, he was met with darkness. He knew Will’s hands weren’t covering his eyes, yet he still blinked to check if his eyelashes would hit Will’s palm. They didn’t.

Will had blown out every candle.

But then he clicked on the flashlight.

Laying down and through the chairs gave Mike a view of the artwork head on, so much so that it inhibited him from looking anywhere else. He was forced into the scene, trapped in the confines of the foldable chairs.

Upon first glance all Mike could make out was that he was in some dark, dilapidated building. White spores flew around him like falling snow, similar to the ones after the “earthquake” that ravaged Hawkins a few months prior. The only light source in the room came from a small, wrought iron window straight ahead that revealed nothing but a vague grey expanse.

The more his eyes adjusted, the more details he could take in. He realized the craggy walls were not weathered away cement like how a typical eroded building might look but were actually covered in black vines. The vines had a silvery, weblike film over them, highlighted under the window’s light. The way the vines interlaced one another, shaded and illuminated at every twist and curve, made them look alive, slithering towards Mike like snakes ready to strike.

That was when his eyes snagged on a particularly long vine stemming from the far right corner. His eyes trailed the vine’s path until he landed at its head, its wide mouth open and teeth bared like a mutated Venus flytrap, level with Mike’s mouth.

He gasped and jolted backwards, smacking his head on the back of the chair. As he hissed a curse, Will apologized from somewhere to his left, giving Mike a much needed—yet unfortunately painful—wake up call.

This was all just one big art piece.

The vine’s mouth was drawn so proportionally it looked three-dimensional, its large head deceiving Mike into thinking it was so close it could actually touch his lips if he leaned forward just an inch more. He looked up towards the couch where he assumed Will was, only to find more hand-drawn vines taped to the back of the couch.

Vines were everywhere—no matter where Mike turned his head, he found more, seemingly closing in on him. He suddenly felt too trapped in his current position, like he was actually constrained by the vines he was surrounded by. He squirmed, and the creaking chairs echoed.

He feared he already knew the answer but needed to hear Will say it.

“Will…what is this?”

Will’s reply was so quiet it was almost a whisper. “The Hawkins Library.” He left in the Upside Down unspoken, but Mike knew. This was where Joyce and Hopper had found him, when Vecna had ensnared him almost four years ago.

Mike knew Will didn’t possess photographic memory—he’d always been jealous of Dustin because of it—so the fact that Will had drawn this with such detail and precision…it was evident Will had seen this place again and again, long after he’d been rescued and resuscitated. Mike realized this wasn’t just a memory—it was a living nightmare captured in crayons and colored pencils, drawn the way an artist paints a portrait of a sitter: the subject alive and right in front of them.

In that moment a deluge of emotions washed over Mike: fear of being trapped in the Upside Down; relief at realizing he wasn’t actually trapped there, that it was only a drawing; shame at feeling that relief when it had been very real for Will; nausea at seeing an adaptation of the place where Will had suffered; guilt for not saving him sooner; awe at the sheer talent Will possessed to achieve such realism on such a large scale; and pride in knowing Will survived this and was still here to open Mike’s eyes and heart to the experience.

The cave became blurry as tears welled up his eyes. He grabbed onto the sides of the chair for support. “Will…” he said, voice breaking. “This is…” incredible? terrifying? He forced his gaze to the ceiling, refusing to let any tears make the colors bleed and mar the mural, before he rephrased. “I’m sorry.”

“Mike, you have nothing to be so-”

“No,” he interrupted. He wouldn’t let Will downplay this. “You,” his eyes roamed the library, taking in every detail, “you had to face this all alone.”

Will was so silent Mike didn’t dare to breathe. But then the couch creaked, followed by Will’s footsteps, so soft the rain and howling wind almost drowned it out completely. As he walked towards Mike, he kept the flashlight trained on the mural, but the beam changed angles regardless, casting lights and shadows like a rising and setting sun.

The white beam stopped moving once it shone from somewhere directly in line with Mike’s head. It was the only proof that Will was standing so close.

Mike fought everything in him to not turn around or climb out from his cage. He instead forced himself to look at every square inch of the mural, to take in everything he could from Will’s eyes, to see him and understand him in a brand new way.

The two of them stayed like that for some time, Mike engraving each piece of paper into the back of his mind, and Will looking down at Mike in his art with a bird’s eye view.

“I’m not anymore,” Will whispered.

Mike’s ears are ringing, and as he comes back to himself he realizes he’s no longer lying down on foldable chairs in his basement but sitting on a couch in the Squawk. His eyes focus back on Will, who’s since crumbled in on himself. His left arm is wrapped tight around his legs while his right hand pulls his hair taut. Joyce rests her hand on top of Will’s, trying to loosen his grip from his hair, but he doesn’t let up. His eyes are shut so tight Mike thinks he’s going to pop them back into his skull, and Mike immediately knows Will is reliving whatever he saw behind his eyelids.
Mike can’t stand the space between them, like the couch cushions they’re sitting on are two separate islands, so he shifts positions from sitting to kneeling, his shins acting as drawbridges over the gap between cushions, and he grabs Will’s knees. Though Will keeps his eyes closed, Mike meets him at eye level, hoping that whenever he does actually open them, he’ll be forced to see something familiar, something real.

“He told me I don’t belong in this world…that-that I belong in his. I-I belong to Vecna…I’ve been his… his vessel this entire time.” Will chokes on a sob, and Mike subconsciously grabs Will’s knees tighter. “I…I’ve been making the tunnels for him in my sleep…working for him without even realizing it…I…I’m…I’m a monster.” Will can barely get the last word out as a full-body sob racks him. He’s now hyperventilating, his shoulders rapidly rising and falling, and though Joyce tries to hold him steady it’s to no avail—he’s so lost within himself he probably doesn’t even realize Mike and Joyce are there.

Mike’s brain is too muddled to understand what Will means by ‘making the tunnels’—the only thing on his mind is to snap Will out of his current state. Before he can think about what he’s actually doing, he grabs the sides of Will’s face in his hands, his grip gentle yet sure. He feels Joyce’s eyes on him, but he doesn’t care. She’s not his focus right now.

“Will, listen to me. You are not a monster.” Will tries to shake his head but Mike holds him in place. “You are not like Vecna, Will,” he says, voice firm.

He repeats the sentences like a mantra until Will’s sobs slow to a steady trickle of tears. He’d gotten so used to seeing Will’s eyelids that when Will does eventually open his eyes, Mike’s breath catches. Inside rims of red is the most vibrant shade of green Mike has ever seen, and for a moment he wishes there was a way to show Will himself, to show him how bright his irises look, an example of complementary colors—Mike believes the term is—in the highest form.

It’s a shame Will’s eyes are the brightest when he’s so broken. How beautifully tragic, Mike thinks.

With each tear that streams down Will’s face Mike has the urge to wipe it away with his thumb. He doesn’t, though, just holds his face tighter. His own eyes feel wet.

“You said it yourself, you didn’t know what you were doing with the tunnels-”

“But he’ll just keep using me,” he interrupts, “like-like some tool of his…I can’t stop him…I’ll always just be his.” His gaze is steady on Mike’s, unflinching, almost pleading tell me I’m nothing. Confirm what I already know.

But Mike won’t have any of that.

“No,” he says, shaking his head. A tear escapes and slides down his cheek as he continues, “No. You may have gotten your powers from Vecna, but you have the power to wield it.” Will doesn’t blink. “He would’ve never let you kill three demos—let alone one… he-he wouldn’t have let you into the hive mind to begin with if he knew what you were capable of. You got inside his mind, for fuck’s sake.” Mike chuckles wetly, finding everything he’s saying surreal but couldn’t be further from the truth. “You controlled him as if he belonged to you. That was all you, not Vecna.” He brings Will’s face an inch closer to drive home his point, “That monster doesn’t define you. You do, you understand?”

Will scans Mike’s face for any trace of a lie in his words, but Mike knows there aren’t any, just heaps of conviction. He believes everything he says whole heartedly, and if Will doesn’t trust that, then Mike will do everything in his power to convince him until he’s blue in the face.

“He’s right, honey.”

Mike flinches at the sound of Joyce’s voice. He quickly drops his hands from Will’s face as if she hasn’t been a witness to this entire conversation, as if she’s only just now stumbled in and didn’t see how intensely, how full of emotion, Mike has been gazing at Will.

The way Will is currently staring at Mike could’ve convinced him he just slapped Will across the face and somehow blocked it out. When Mike blinks, Will’s look of shock and hurt hardens as if it was never there. He turns to Joyce and she reiterates Mike’s sentiment, but Mike tunes her out, instead focusing on his open palms resting on his thighs and the gnawing feeling in his stomach that he did something wrong. What that is, though, he isn’t sure.

Will looks between Joyce and Mike and nods. “Okay,” he says, but his voice lacks conviction.

Mike’s eyes flit up to meet Will’s. He cocks his head to the side. “Okay?”

“Okay, I believe you.”

“Believe what, exactly?” Mike taunts.

Will rolls his beautifully tragic eyes. “I believe I’m not a monster.”

“Sorry,” Mike cups his ear with his hand. “I couldn’t hear you. Could you say it again?”

“I’m not a monster,” Will repeats, actually sounding like he might believe it.

Mike cups his other ear and leans in. “One more time? I couldn’t hear it on this side.”

Will slaps Mike’s hand away and laughs. “Fuck off,” he says, and Mike beams. The gnawing in his stomach fades to a light rumble—Will’s laughter is anything but wrong. Mike could argue it couldn’t be more right, actually.

“You know,” Will says, still chuckling to himself. “I actually shouldn’t be surprised your ears aren’t working when you were so tone deaf earlier.”

Mike sits back on the couch, crisscrossing his legs and arms as he asks, “What d’you mean?”

“I heard you…singing to the Smiths.” The way he enunciates the word suggests Mike did the complete opposite, but he’s more shocked Will heard him at all.

“You…you did?”

Will nods, a soft smile blooming on his tearstreaked face.

“At first, I just heard muffled bits and pieces of songs…like it was a faulty radio playing from another room, or something.” Will shrugs. “I think I convinced myself it was just my imagination…but then my hands felt…warm? I-I don’t know how that happened, but it seemed to help loosen up the vines.”

Mike’s jaw pops open at the revelation. Will felt Mike warming up his hands. Before he can dwell on it, Will continues, “And then I started to hear singing…soft, at first, but once the chorus came through I heard it loud and clear.” He laughs to himself. “It-it was like you were standing right in front of me…singing to me… Your voice even seemed to echo off the walls.”

The light rumble in Mike’s stomach is taken over by a familiar swoop.

“It kinda pulled me out of it…made me realize there was something on the other side.” He shrugs. “I don’t really know how I broke free after that…I guess I just focused on your voice.” He scrunches his brows together as he says, “I think the last thing I remember is ripping the vines apart and falling on my face.”

Mike had spoken through Vecna’s trance once before, but that time it was to reach El. She later told him that she only started to hear his voice after he told her he loved her, and found the courage to break free and fight back after he listed reasons why.

Though Mike didn’t outright tell Will he loved him, is it a similar sentiment? Mike knows love comes in different forms—romantic and platonic, familial and in partnership—but above all there’s love in friendship.

That has to be it, right?

He has too many thoughts threatening to overwhelm him completely, so he pushes them down into a jar deep within him and twists on the lid.

“So, I’m really that bad of a singer?”

Will grins. “The worst.”

Mike throws a nearby pillow at him, mumbling a “fuck off,” and Will laughs.

Will laughs so hard that the lid on Mike’s overflowing thoughts cracks, letting the most eager one escape.

Mike loves Will.

What type of love that is, Mike can’t find out—he’s already taped the crack over.

Mike doesn't remember falling asleep, but he wakes to a familiar voice calling his name.

“Guys!” Lucas yells again, voice brighter than the afternoon sun seeping through his closed eyelids.

“Max!” Will exclaims, and the couch shifts with a creak.

Mike slowly stirs, and when his eyes finally crack open he finds the space opposite him empty. His limbs and neck carry a dull ache from sleeping so awkwardly, and as he unfolds his legs to stretch, he groans.

“Wait!” Lucas yells. “Be careful.”

Only then does Mike’s brain catch up. He leaps off the couch and spins so fast he sees spots in the corners of his vision. As he blindly reaches for the couch’s armrest to steady himself, he takes in the scene—Max sitting in a wheelchair, Lucas standing beside her holding her left hand, and Will kneeling in front of her, hesitantly reaching for her right hand, with Robin conversing with Joyce in hushed tones behind them.

Max is awake.

“Holy shit!” he cries, jogging over to the trio with a smile so wide his cheeks hurt. She flinches before slowly turning her head from Will to Mike’s general direction.

When they make eye contact, Mike falters to a stop. Her eyes aren’t their normal blue shade—they have a greyish-white film over them, reminiscent of Will's. Mike scans her body, checking her breathing to see if she’s still in a trance, when she smirks.

“Freaky, huh?” she says, voice hoarse with disuse.

“I,” Mike starts, taking a tentative step forward. “I don’t understand.”

Lucas bends down and brings their hands to his lips, kissing the back of hers. Her smirk softens, but her reply is devoid of emotion. “I’m blind.”

Blind.

Vecna, monster of illusions, blinded her. Mike feels sick, but there’s nothing in his stomach to purge.

He flits his eyes to Will, finding his hands now firmly encasing hers. He looks up at her with so much admiration there’s no room for pity. The longer Mike stares at the pair, he realizes Will doesn’t even look the least bit surprised. Did he already know?

“Fuck,” Mike breathes.

She scoffs. “Tell me about it.”

Mike glances at Lucas, finally taking in his swollen eyes and hunched shoulders. It’s as if exhaustion personified is pushing down on him, yet he still wears a soft smile so alight with love exhaustion holds no fighting chance.

“I was able to see when I was in there, though,” Max continues, turning to Will. “Lucas told me you were the one that possessed that son of a bitch? You’ve got powers now or something?”

Will laughs and shrugs sheepishly. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”

“He’s a sorcerer,” Lucas emphasizes, glancing at Mike with a knowing smirk. Mike opens his mouth to retort but Max speaks first.

“Thank you,” she says, voice earnest. “You…you gave Holly and I a chance to escape.”

Before Mike can think better of it, tell himself now isn’t the time, he asks aloud, “Where is Holly?”

Lucas tears his gaze from Max to glare at Mike, smirk long gone. The anger in his stare reminds him of Erica. Mike swallows.

“Mike,” Max starts, and the way she says his name makes his heart drop. Everyone is now looking at him, Robin and Joyce included, and he feels faint again.

Mind reeling about a dozen and one fateful possibilities, he takes another tentative step forward. “Is…is she-”

“No!” she exclaims, washing a wave of relief over him. “Well, no,” she backpedals, shaking her head. “I-I don’t think so, at least.”

Well, isn’t that reassuring.

“Her body isn’t here like mine was…it’s trapped in the Upside Down.” Mike’s blood runs cold as his memory of Will’s mural flashes in his mind. “She has to be awake in there,” she continues, “but I just don’t know where that is. I-I’m sorry, Mike.” her voice breaks on her apology, and he immediately strides towards her to close the distance between them. He kneels beside Will, their shoulders brushing, and he gently grabs her knees. Tears start to pool in her white eyes. “I-I wanted to take her with me but I knew I couldn’t… I should’ve stayed.” A tear escapes, but Lucas is already swiping it away with his thumb before it passes her cheek. She freezes in surprise at the contact before immediately melting into it. “She’s now all alone in there,” she finishes.

He swallows down the lump building in his throat and repeats the mantra Holly will be okay. She’s Holly the Heroic—she’ll fight with everything she has to make it out, Mike is sure of it.

“She might not be all alone,” Robin says. “If she’s awake somewhere in the Upside Down, maybe Steve or Nancy or-or Jonathan or Dustin…somebody will find her.”

“Let’s just hope it isn’t Vecna who finds her first,” Max says dryly.

Mike tries to rid that possibility from his mind, but like a parasite it eats away at him regardless. His mind jumps through memories of Will in rapid succession, nightmares of Mike just standing and watching like a highlight reel of relived traumas. He’s already made a vow to himself to never be that way with Will ever again, to take whatever steps necessary to ensure his safety, and he refuses to fall into that old pattern with his sister.

Max has metaphorically passed the torch to him; now he just needs to take it and burn Vecna to the ground.

Mike gives Max’s knees a comforting squeeze before reassuring her out loud: “Max, you did everything you could. The fact that you’ve made it this far proves it, so…thank you for helping her as much as you did, seriously."

“I’m sure I could’ve done more, though,” she presses. “I mean, look at me. I’m useless out here.”

“That’s not true,” Lucas immediately butts in. Max scoffs at him.

“No, he’s right,” Will says. “You were in Henry’s mindscape, know it inside and out. You can tell us how to take him down.”

Max sniffles. “I don’t know about all of that.”

“Any info you have, we’ll take,” Mike says.

It turns out Max had a shit ton.

Now in the shower, scrubbing his arms under a borderline scalding shower stream, Mike still can’t quite wrap his head around it all. His mind reels so fast even the soothing honey lavender soap can’t calm him. He tries to compartmentalize his thoughts into separate sections, but they keep getting muddled—there’s too much overlapping information.

After Vecna used Max to open the fourth gate, she somehow entered Vecna’s mindscape, where she traveled through his memories as an observer and learned about his past. By far the most shocking piece of information is that Henry went to Hawkins High; he had walked the same halls, sat in the same classrooms, and wrote on the same desks as Mike, Will, Lucas, Max, and Dustin. And if that isn’t unsettling enough, Max enlightened the group that Henry walked those halls at the same time as their own parents and Hopper. Joyce had said Henry was always a quiet and reserved kid, but she remembered Hopper being the most unsettled by him, finding him creepy and accusing him of killing a bunch of animals, even classmates’ pets.

Which, given Vecna’s current track record, isn’t surprising.

Still, the reminder of that news sends a shiver down Mike’s spine. He turns the knob on the shower farther to the right and welcomes the slight sting on his back.

Max explained that in order to escape, one must travel through the memories they’re inhabiting until they reach the very beginning, the moment that led them into the mindscape in the first place. Though she was trapped in Henry’s, she managed to find her own trail once. She jumped through time reliving nightmares of traumatic experiences, and when she finally reached the moment, the moment Henry used her to open the gate, she found the exit she was looking for. She raced towards it, towards the image of her body beside Lucas’ in the hospital, but she wasn’t fast enough. He found her. She was thrown back into Henry’s mindscape and ran as fast as her legs could carry her.

That was when she found the cave. With Henry on her trail she snuck her way inside but was immediately met with a dead end. She thought she was about to meet her own end, but then something unimaginable happened. Henry didn’t cross the threshold. He couldn’t—the prospect of it terrified him. She never knew why that was until Holly showed up.

Together, they traveled through Henry’s memories to find his moment: not the moment he became Vecna—because Max believed that was in Hawkins Lab, where she started the whole mind maze—but his very first moment with the Mind Flayer.

The Shadow Monster, as Henry called it, haunted him in the school bathrooms and corridors of his own home, taunting him to find it. No matter the distraction, be it his parents or his girlfriend—at least that’s who Max and Joyce assumed Patty Newby was—the Shadow Monster always found its way back to Henry when he was at his most vulnerable.

Mike can’t help but compare that experience to Will’s, a forever looming presence of death in the form of particulate matter. Hoping to somehow scrub away his spiraling thoughts, Mike wipes his face with a washcloth until the skin is raw. Still, Mike’s mind works on overdrive to process everything Max had said.

It wasn’t until Holly practically stumbled into Henry’s moment did they find the exit. Inside a recess of a cave, they found an older man bloodied and battered gripping onto a briefcase like a lifeline. He had pointed his gun at Max and Holly—or, at least that was what they thought—until a young Henry Creel, probably only ten years old, stepped into view. The man thought Henry was sent by someone to find him, and when Henry tried reassuring him that wasn’t the case, that he just wanted to help, the man shot Henry in the palm. Henry tried to take the gun away from the man, but the man was too strong. Henry then grabbed a nearby rock and pounded the man’s skull until he was practically unconscious and blood splattered Henry’s cheeks like freckles.

Max said it was obvious Henry killed the man in self defense, and though Mike wants to believe her, Henry has done such terrible things, ruined the lives of so many innocent people, that Mike can’t help but assume Henry killed that man in cold blood. Evil like Henry’s isn’t just learned, it has to be innate.

And yet, what Max saw next challenges that notion entirely. She and Holly watched Henry pry the briefcase from the man’s hands and open the clasps. Inside sat a black stone, crackled with red streaks as if molten lava coursed through it. As if in a trance, Henry picked it up and placed it in his injured palm. The man told Henry to resist it, that it would consume him whole if he didn’t, but Henry didn’t listen. The rock disintegrated to something akin to ash and rather than evaporating into the air, it buried itself into Henry’s palm. When he fell to his knees, screaming and writing in agony, Max and Holly ran.

When Max had gotten to that point in the story, Mike spared a glance at Will. His brows were furrowed, his jaw set, and he rubbed his palm absentmindedly, as if he were feeling a phantom pain without even realizing it. Mike scanned the room to see if anyone else was seeing what he was seeing, and when it was obvious they weren’t—they were too engrossed in Max’s retelling—Mike placed a gentle hand atop Will’s and mouthed a You okay?. Will had nodded in response, but Mike knew he was lying. He tried asking Will about it after Max finished, but he completely avoided him, preferring to talk to everyone other than Mike.

Which is what led him to the shower. Not even the hot water stings as much as Will’s avoidance.

Why did it have to be Will, of all people? Why couldn’t it have been Mike? Will was a pure, compassionate, artistic, beautiful soul—one Vecna had marred. If Will were a flower, Vecna had plucked him from the root and stamped on him until he was left crumpled and wilted.

Maybe Vecna saw himself in Will—based on Max and Joyce’s descriptions, Henry had seemed like a quiet, kind kid who just wanted someone to love and understand him. His vulnerability was exploited by that rock, just as Will's was when he was first taken.

It makes Mike sick, furious, and heartsick all at once.

As Mike squirts a dollop of shampoo into his hands, the shower head starts to whine a light, high-pitched whistle. He closes his eyes and tries to focus all of his attention on his hands massaging the citrus scent into his scalp, but the whine slices through his thoughts like a serrated screech. He shuts his eyes tighter, tries to force the sound out, but that only seems to make it worse.

The screech slowly morphs into a scream, one so familiar Mike could recognize it solely by the intake of breath in this lifetime and the next.

When Mike rips his eyes open he’s no longer in the shower—he’s standing in an open field in the middle of the night. The grass beneath his bare feet is grey and black, irrevocably decayed. He hears Will’s scream from somewhere in the distance, calling for Mike with so much pain laced in his name Mike starts running before he can even see where the voice is coming from.

Racing across the field, dead grass crunching under his feet, Mike yells, “Will!”

Like his feet know exactly where to take him, Mike finds Will sprawled on the grass, shaking on the ground, violently seizing. Mike slides to his knees, staining the jeans he’s somehow now wearing, and reaches for Will. The boy on the ground is smaller than Mike remembers—his hair takes up more residence on his head than his face does, and as Mike scans his face, he realizes just how young Will looks—how soft his jawline is, how round his doe-like eyes are. Mike glances down at his own hands and realizes they too are smaller than what he’s used to. He shakes his head to rid the rising questions and scoops Will up into his arms, holding him tight to his chest as Will’s body jolts against him. With one arm wrapped tightly around Will’s back and the other running his fingers through his hair, Mike rocks the both of them back and forth. Will shakes against Mike’s chest and wails, piercing Mike’s heart open like a knife. His vision becomes blurry as he rocks them faster.

“It’s okay, Will, I-I’ve got you,” Mike says, voice quavering.

“It hurts, Mike!” Will cries.

“I-I know.” Mike’s tears land on Will’s hair like raindrops. He wants to rip out whatever is inside of Will but he can’t. All he can do is just sit here and rock him until the pain subsides. “It’ll be over soon,” he croaks, both to Will and himself.

It should’ve been him.

The loud whine returns from somewhere overhead. Mike looks up, only to be met with the night sky. When he looks back down, he no longer finds Will in his arms, but his own mother. Her once blue nightgown is now stained red and tattered to shreds, revealing gashes slashed across her neck, chest, and arms. Her body trembles and the tips of her fingers involuntarily spasm. Her breaths come out like wheezes.

“Michael,” she rasps.

His head whips up from her body to her face, finding her cheeks marred with blackened teartracks of old mascara. His peripheral vision takes note of the ground haloing her face—what was just dead grass is now his kitchen titles, stained red like spilt wine.

“I-it hurts.”

Mike chokes on a sob. “You’re going to be okay, mom.” He raises a shaky hand to her hair, once bleach blonde now matted with blood and grime. “I-I’m so sorry.”

If only he had been there a moment sooner, he could’ve helped. He could’ve done something, anything, to fight the demogorgon off or at least give her time to escape. She shouldn’t have been alone to defend herself, and yet here she is now, injured beyond measure and struggling to breathe in the middle of their desecrated home.

It should’ve been him.

The blood is pouring out of her wounds too fast; he needs something to stanch the bleeding until medics arrive. Did someone even call for a medic? He needs to get to a phone. He’s too scared to look up at the cabinets for a dish towel, worried she’ll disappear like Will if he looks away.

Instead Mike reaches for the hem of his sweater and quickly pulls it up and over his head. But after the sweater passes over his eyes, he’s no longer in his kitchen—he’s in a classroom at Hawkins Middle. No one is in his arms this time; he’s not even holding his sweater anymore.

The ceiling lights flicker and flash around him until his eyes train on a young El across the room, hand raised to a demogorgon pinned against the chalkboard. She screams in sync with the demogoron’s screeching, a sound so piercing Mike curls up into a ball and covers his ears. Somewhere deep down he knows how this ends, knows that El disappears with the demogorgon to the Upside Down where she finds a small gate leading her back into the school’s hallways. Yet at this moment he doesn’t remember the outcome—it’s as if he’s living through the experience for the very first time. As far as he knows, El is dying right in front of Mike’s eyes, sacrificing her life for someone she doesn’t even know, for Will.

Though he may not possess the powers El does, he thinks it still should’ve been him to do the sacrificing.

The demogorgon’s screech is at such a high frequency it seems to not only pierce his ears but his eyes. Mike can’t help it when he closes his eyes and curls in tighter—it hurts too much.

The screeching fades to a more familiar yell, but when Mike opens his eyes he keeps his ears covered. As his eyes adjust he realizes he’s no longer sitting against the wall of a classroom, but now standing against the wall of a hospital room, watching Will yell and thrash against the bed he’s chained to. An oxygen mask is strapped over his mouth, fogged up from his breaths but barely muffling his shrieks.

“Stop!” He thrashes to the left and to the right, kicking his legs in an attempt to gain momentum. “Let me go!”

Mike slowly removes his hands from his ears and takes a hesitant step forward. He wipes the tears from his eyes, but they don’t stop streaming down his face.

“Will,” he says gently. “It’s me.”

“Let me go!” Will screams, but it comes out sounding more like a sob than a yell of anger.

Mike slowly approaches Will with his hands raised in surrender. “Will,” he coaxes, “it’s Mike.”

“No! Let me go! Let me go!” Will yells the phrase over and over again, only pausing to take a breath. With each step Mike takes towards him, Will’s voice only grows louder.

“Will!” Mike shouts, trying to amplify his voice over Will’s. He grabs onto his shoulders and presses his body down to the bed to hold him in place. Will squirms beneath him, whipping his head side to side.

“Stop! Stop it!”

Mike clenches his jaw and tightens his grip. As Will continues to yell, voice breaking and crackling with each plea, Mike removes all restraint and lets his tears flow in rapid succession.

“Let me go!”

“No!” Mike yells back. “I can’t!” His crying has advanced to weeping; he can barely see Will through his blurred vision.

He distantly hears something banging—is it Will hitting himself against the bed?

He thinks he hears his name, but it’s almost immediately drowned out by Will’s repeated plea.

“Let me go!”

Mike shakes his head. “No, I won’t let you go! I can’t lose you to this!”

Henry and Will may have had similar backstories, but Will will not share his future—Mike refuses. Henry let himself be consumed by the Shadow Monster, joining forces with the Mind Flayer to become Vecna.

Mike will not let Will succumb to the same fate.

“Mike!” Will yells, the banging getting louder.

“Yes,” Mike cries. He lets go of Will’s shoulders and cradles the sides of his face. “Yes, it’s me.”

He scans Will’s panicked face, finding no trace of recognition of Mike in his eyes. At first he’s confused—did he not just hear Will say his name?

Then Will’s breathing shallows to staccato, ragged huffs. The cardiac monitor beside his bed starts beeping rapidly, a high-pitched rapid alarm that should be alerting a doctor or someone who knows what that means, but no one comes.

For a split second Will’s mask wavers, revealing the innocent, terrified boy beneath. The flicker in his eyes surpasses fear of whatever is festering inside of him. No, Mike has seen this look once before, right before Joyce and Jonathan scooped him up from their shed to burn the Flayer out of him.

Will thinks he’s about to die.

The beeping machine quickens its pace, moving so fast Mike can’t keep track of whose heart it’s monitoring anymore—Will’s or his own. He doesn’t take his eyes off Will’s face as he screams, “Help! Someone, please help!”

Will’s eyes dart around the room, pupils dilating with each passing second, with sheer terror etched in his fading irises.

“Will,” Mike chokes. “Will, it’s okay, I’m right here.”

He screams for help again, but his voice cracks from the strain. No one comes—either they can’t hear him, or they don’t care.

Will’s eyes flit to Mike’s as the last ring of green fades to black. His body trembles, but with gritted teeth he forces his head up to meet Mike at eye level. The glimpse of Will Mike saw is gone, and the deep voice Will uses next crackles with power that isn’t his own.

“Let.” bang “Me.” bang “Go.”

The cardiac monitor’s beeping collapses to a single note and echoes off the walls. Will’s head slips through Mike’s fingers and drops to the pillow. His teary eyes stare at the ceiling, unblinking.

The wail that Mike releases comes from somewhere Mike didn’t even know existed, somewhere in the depths of his core, where years of guilt and love have mutated to unbridled agony.

With hands trembling so violently they seem to be vibrating, Mike reaches for Will’s face. He flinches at how freezing Will’s cheeks feel. That’s when Mike realizes his entire body is stiff and ghastly pale, as if he’s been dead for days rather than mere seconds. Mike bows his head over Will’s chest and sobs—gut-wrenching, body-racking sobs.

He hears the banging again but doesn’t care. Nothing matters anymore.

It should’ve been him.

A chill washes over Mike as if someone cut the heat, making Will’s body under him feel even colder. A distant voice says his name, and the fact that it almost sounds like Will makes Mike choke on a laugh. He didn’t know grief was a comedian.

“Mike!” the voice calls, much clearer than before. Mike knows for a fact who it belongs to, but he knows it’s not real. He’s cradling Will’s unmoving body right now, looking at his pale, dead face. He refuses to be the butt of some sick joke.

“Mike!”

With a jolt, Mike tears his eyes open, flooding blinding bright light into his vision, and gasps as if he’s just resurfaced from the depths of the ocean. He tries to squirm backwards, palms sliding against a slick wet surface, but soft hands cupping his face hold him in place. His eyes dart around the new setting, taking in everything and nothing at once. His shoulders rapidly rise and fall in time with his shifting gaze. Who’s hurt this time? His chest feels tight, too tight. Why does his chest feel so tight? He can barely breathe.

He can’t breathe.

Mike tries to focus on the square light above him, bleeding a yellow hue across the popcorn ceiling and releasing a light hum.

Bleeding…blood. His mother was bleeding out in his arms. Where did she go?

Where did Will go? Mike was just holding him, just watched him die.

He feels like the talons that thrashed his mother have clawed at his windpipe, strangling him.

He’s going to join Will soon, he’s sure of it.

“Mike.” The soft hands tilt Mike’s head down to meet their owner. Though Mike’s body is still racking with sobs, the hands don’t let up on Mike’s face, forcing his eyes to dive headfirst into a sea of green.

Not just any green, though.

“Asparagus,” Mike whispers in between ragged breaths.

Will, his Will, blinks. “Wh-what?”

Is this an apparition? Did Mike already die? No, if his rough breathing is anything to show for it, he’s still very much alive.

Then…does that mean…

“Will?”

Will nods and blinks back tears. “Yeah,” he croaks. “Yeah, it’s me.”

Mike thought he was inconsolable before, but what he does next is on an entirely different level.

He leaps into Will’s arms and practically straddles him. Collapsing into a fit of sobs, Mike releases remnant tears of grief, fear, and sorrow with new tears of relief and something he can’t quite name. He buries his head in the crook of Will’s neck and bunches Will’s shirt in his hands, preferring to breathe him in rather than the air around them.

He was so caught up in the comedown that he didn’t realize how abruptly he slammed into Will, so fast that Will didn’t have time to stop them from sliding across the wet porcelain and into the nearest wall of glass.

After a beat, Will’s arms tighten around Mike—one hand around his middle, the other threading fingers through Mike’s damp hair.

Will is alive.

In between wheezes Mike says, “I-I thought…I thought I lost you.”

Will adjusts his grip on Mike, pulling him flush to his chest. He gently traces his fingers down Mike’s arm. “You didn’t lose me, Mike.”

Mike shuts his eyes tighter. “I… I saw you die.” He chokes on a sob. “The Flayer c-consumed you, or something.”

“It’s okay,” Will coos. “That wasn’t real…I-I’m right here.”

Three loves. Mike had watched three people he loves die, or at least be on the brink of it, in rapid succession. He watched them suffer in pain and fear, and he couldn’t do anything to save them.

He loves each of them differently—one familial, one once romantic but has since morphed to friendship, and now one…something more. Not quite romantic, but something deeper. And while losing all three was terrifying, the third was the worst of them all.

Losing that third love, Mike realizes, is his greatest fear.

Mike has always lived to feel needed, like an innate urge to protect the things he cares for.

And yet, right now he is the one who needs.

He needs Will, more than anything he’s ever needed in his entire life.

“You…you can’t leave me,” Mike says, his voice sounding smaller, younger than his normal register.

Will rests his head on top of Mike’s. “I won’t,” he whispers into his hair. “I promise.”

Will holds onto Mike, rubbing circles on his skin or caressing his hair, until Mike’s breathing regulates and his tears slow to a light trickle.

When Mike finally opens his eyes over Will’s shoulder, he looks through fogged glass to see a wooden door cracked open and hanging off its hinges. One of Eddie’s spears leans against the sink beside the door, its metal tip crooked.

He pushes his palms off the glass and looks down at Will, swollen red eyes meeting swollen red eyes.

That’s when he realizes where he is…and how he is. His eyes trail from his bare arms to his chest, down his torso, farther. His eyes widen at the sight, and he scrambles off of him and slides to the opposite side of the shower. Which, given the small parameters, isn’t far at all. Mike pulls his knees to his chest and feels his cheeks flush. Will is staring at him wide-eyed, as if he had completely forgotten Mike’s indecency too.

“I’m sorry,” Mike squeaks.

Will slowly shakes his head like ridding a thought from his mind. “No, uh…i-it’s fine.” Will glances behind him and makes an attempt to stand.

“Wait!” Mike exclaims, hands thrown out in front of him. Will freezes. “Where are you going?”

Will slowly turns to look at Mike, his gaze superglued to Mike’s as if making a point to not look down. “To get you a towel,” he replies.

“Oh.”

Will laughs under his breath. “Yeah, oh.” They stare at each other for a beat before Will asks, “So, can I get you a towel or…”

“Yeah!” Mike interrupts an octave higher than intended. Feeling the blush on his cheeks bloom down his neck, he clears his throat. “Yes, yes please.”

Will smiles at him, so incredibly soft, Mike’s stomach flips. He watches Will stand and step out of the shower when he notices the back of Will’s lightwashed jeans are soaked through, creating a navy stain from the waistband to his calves. Through the glass, Mike then watches Will crouch to open the sink cabinet and take out a white bath towel, before stepping back into the shower stall with the towel extended towards him.

“Thanks,” he mutters.

Will stares at the wooden door as Mike wraps the towel around his torso. As he adjusts to a crisscrossed sitting position, he asks, “Did you do that?”

“What,” Will asks, still facing away from him. “Break the door?”

“Yeah.”

When Will turns back to Mike, his expression is unreadable. “Yeah…yeah, I did.”

Mike doesn’t make a move to stand, so Will takes it as an invitation to sit back down in the shower. “You… you were screaming my name and yelling for help… It’s like you thought I was dying right in front of you, or something. I-I tried knocking, but I don’t think you heard me so, I uh, did that.”

Mike’s blood runs cold. He was yelling out loud? Sure, his throat feels raw, but he just assumed that was from all the crying.

How much did Will really hear? How much did everyone hear?

Will seems to be thinking something similar, as he says, “Erica had radioed as soon as you went downstairs…said she and Mr. Clarke found everyone, but they needed all hands on deck to get them out.” He shrugs. “I assume they just needed help opening one of the metal rifts.”

“Everyone left?”

Will nods. “Joyce and Max can’t really do much, but they’re excited to see…well, reunite with everyone.”

Mike releases a sigh of relief, both at the fact that no one heard his pathetic wailing and that everyone is okay.

“I’m honestly surprised your mom left you here alone.”

He smiles and shrugs. “Yeah, she seems to be trusting me more.” He glances down to his hands. “Plus, I’m not alone.” His eyes flit back up to meet Mike’s. “You’re here.”

Mike scoffs and gestures his hands to his current state. “Some help I am.”

Will stares for a beat, brows furrowed. “I think it was long overdue for me to help you, after everything you’ve done for me.”

Mike shrugs and looks away. “I haven’t done anything.” Aside from stand, watch, and now cry.

“Oh really? Then what was that mixtape you made for me? Bowie? The Cure? The Clash? The Smiths? You had it all. You remembered all my favorites.”

Mike shies away from the praise, the blush returning to his cheeks, before turning back and pointing an accusing finger. “So you admit you like ‘I Want the One I Can’t Have’?”

Will stares at Mike for a moment with furrowed brows, scanning his face as if trying to read something etched in his skin. Then the corner of his lips quirks.

“Yeah,” Will says, “I guess you could say that.”

Mike leans his head back against the glass, exclaiming “I knew it!” to the ceiling.

As Will laughs, Mike’s eyes drift to the piece of steel protruding from the wall, pointing downwards at the drain sitting between them. “It’s weird,” Mike thinks aloud. “All I heard was that goddamn shower head wine, and then the next thing I knew…” He looks down to meet Will’s gaze. “You were here.”

“That, my friend, is called a panic attack. I’ve, uh, had my fair share of those.”

“Everything felt so real. It was like I was living through a manifestation of my greatest fear.”

Will doesn’t say anything for a moment, just processes Mike’s words. If Will heard everything Mike screamed, there’s no way he doesn’t know, right?

“Fear fucking sucks” is what Will finally says.

Mike pulls at a loose thread on the towel. “Tell me about it,” he mutters dryly.

Now that he thinks about it, he just basically shared that losing Will is his greatest fear in some really convoluted way, and yet he doesn’t have the slightest idea as to what Will’s greatest fear is. Sure, Will has been terrified of Mind Flayer and Vecna—Mike has seen plenty of that firsthand—but does he fear the potential of becoming Vecna? Dying? Something else entirely?

Mike repeats himself, this time more sincerely. “Tell me about it.”

“A-about what?”

“Your greatest fear.”

Will doesn’t hesitate. “Losing the people I love.”

Mike crosses his arms like a petulant child. “That’s not fair, you can’t just steal mine!”

Will grins. “But it’s truee,” he singsongs.

“You’re going to need to be a bit more specific.”

“You weren’t.”

Mike leans farther back, his shoulder blades now flush with the glass. He looks at Will through hooded eyes. “I thought I was pretty clear.”

“You said your panic attack was a ‘manifestation of your greatest fear’.” He uses airquotes for emphasis and scoffs. “That’s not specific in the slightest.”

Mike tries to read Will’s expression only to find curiosity etched in his features. How does he not know? He swallows before asking, “What did you hear me scream?”

Will pauses. “A lot of things,” he whispers.

“Like what?”

Now Will is the one who crosses his arms, becoming a perfect mirror to Mike. “I already told you.”

Mike closes his eyes. You were screaming my name and yelling for help like you thought I was dying right in front of you.

“Then you already have your answer.” Though it comes out as a whisper, Mike feels like he’s yelled it. The words seem to ring out, echoing off the shower walls.

Will sits quietly for what feels like an eternity. Mike tries to keep his eyes closed, but the silence stretches out for so long he forces them open. He finds Will staring back at him, eyes wide and his lips slightly parted. His eyes rove Mike’s face, holding a million and one thoughts Mike isn’t privy to.

Will now knows… knows that Mike losing him would be the most devastating, most terrifying thing to happen in his entire existence. At least that much is obvious.

But is Will frightened by this confession? Maybe it was too much? Will has enough shit going on that Mike worrying about him like they live in their own hive mind of sorts—one that if Will ceased to exist Mike would too—probably puts too much pressure on him. Fuck, he shouldn’t have said anything.

Mike looks down to see if his towel is still covering him; it is, but he feels completely and utterly exposed, naked inside and out.

He needs to change the subject, needs to get Will to stop looking at him like that…like he might feel the same way, some distant voice in the depths of his core hopes.

“Your turn to specify,” Mike says instead.

For what feels like the first time since Mike last spoke, Will blinks. When his focus zeroes back in on Mike, whatever thoughts were behind his eyes fade.

“Specify what?”

“Your greatest fear.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” Mike tries to tease, “Oh.”

“I, uh.” Will coughs and laughs dryly at his lap. “Okay.”

Fuck, he’s made Will uncomfortable, hasn’t he?

“You don’t have to!” Will’s eyes flit up to meet Mike’s, and it never ceases to amaze him just how green they are. “You don’t have to say something just because I did.”

“No,” Will sighs. “That was the rule. You specify, I specify.”

“Okay.” Something blooms in Mike’s chest, but he stamps it down. “As long as you’re sure.”

Will nods. “Yeah, I…I just need a second to figure out how to say this-”

“That’s okay,” Mike gently interrupts. “Take your time.”

Mindlessly tracing the floral stitchings in his towel, Mike watches Will tug at the cuffs of his sweater. His brows are furrowed so deeply Mike can barely see the tips of his eyelashes.

After some time, Will finally speaks. “Do you remember Max telling us about Henry and the cave?” He raises his bowed head to meet Mike’s gaze. “How he couldn’t go in because he was too scared?”

Mike nods.

“Well, when I was…wherever I was, Vecna showed me something similar. Some fear that’s like… my cave. I said before that my greatest fear is losing the people I love, which is true, but… it’s loss in a different way. Does that make sense?”

Not really, Mike thinks, but he nods anyway. Will smirks as if he sees right through him.

“Well, he showed me visions of everyone close to me—you, Mom, Jonathan, El, Dustin, Lucas, Max, everyone—dying, one by one. He…he dragged each death out in excruciating detail.”

Mike shivers. He had only seen Will die by the creation of his own mind, so the fact that Will watched multiple people die in probably as much—if not more—detail than Mike’s own vision makes him sick to his stomach.

Will was unconscious for six hours, at least. That’s six hours of straight torture. And yet Will is still here, sitting with Mike on the wet floor of this godforsaken shower all because Mike is too shaken up to move. Will is probably the strongest, most caring person Mike has ever met, and Mike is…well, Mike considers himself lucky just to know him.

“But,” Will continues, “I was able to resist them, in a way, by thinking of happy moments… moments of each person alive and well. It sorta grounded me, helped drown out the bad with some good, but he…I guess he caught on. So, he, uh, switched tactics.”

Will shifts and pulls his legs to his chest. “He went deeper into my thoughts, somewhere I barely go myself, and showed me what it would be like if everyone somehow survived. But this time, one by one, they just leave. I open up and share every part of me, share a secret I haven’t told a soul, and in response they…they stop loving me. They leave, and I’m left alone.”

“No one is going to leave you,” Mike says softly.

Will starts shaking his head before Mike finishes. “You don’t get it, Mike. I…I’m different. I don’t belong in this world, and apparently once everyone leaves, I’ll have no choice but to come crawling back to Vecna. He’ll be the only one waiting for me.”

I don’t belong in this world... Mike has heard that phrasing before.

He leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees, meeting Will’s eye level. “Will, I need you to know that that’s not true. Everyone loves you for you; no secret can change that.”

“It may not be true now, but there’s always a possibility.” He rips out a loose thread from the cuff of his sweater and drops it in the drain, saying, “I-I’m too scared to risk it, so I’ll take the secret to my grave, I don’t care.”

“No. You made the comparison yourself—this is your cave. Being too scared to move past it should only be Vecna’s weakness, not yours.” When Will doesn’t say anything, just barely shrugs, Mike continues. “Look, whatever the secret is, you don’t have to share it all at once… I just think you need to cross the threshold first, one step at a time.”

Will starts pulling at another loose thread. “And how would I go about doing that?”

“By telling me your secret.”

Will freezes.

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

He resumes his tugging. “Because it’s too much.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s…it’s complicated.”

“So un-complicate it for me.”

Will yanks out another navy thread and drops it in the drain. Mike leans forward and grabs his wrists, forcing Will to look at him.

“You promised you wouldn’t leave me, so now it’s my turn. I will not leave you, Will. Not in this lifetime, or the next…You’re stuck with me, sorry.”

Mike follows the trail of Will’s eyes, scanning his face for some falsity. “Promise?” Will whispers.

“I promise,” Mike affirms.

Will sighs before he smiles. “Okay.” He repositions himself to mirror Mike—legs crisscrossed and body leaning forward, with elbows resting on knees. Mike attempts to let go of Will’s wrists, but Will grabs onto Mike’s hands a millisecond after, clasping them together. Mike glances down at their joined hands, his cool slender fingers practically engulfing Will’s warm ones, and he feels as though his rapidly rising heartbeat is pumping right to his fingertips. Can Will feel it?

“Sorry, is this okay? I-I just feel like this might make it easier, but if it’s too weird-”

“No,” Mike interrupts. “This is…” nice? “fine.”

Will nods. Releases a short breath. “Okay…I, uhm…Fuck.” He squirms under Mike’s gaze, but Mike doesn’t let up, just gives Will’s hands a reassuring squeeze.

Should Mike be worried about this secret? He doesn’t feel worried. In all honesty, he’s more focused on the fact that he’s still naked and that they’re holding hands so comfortably it’s as if they’ve always been like this. Sure, they’ve always been best friends, but this feels different somehow. Momentous.

Will closes his eyes and takes a long deep breath in, then out. When his eyes open again, his brows unfurrow. Mike takes a deep breath of his own, forcing himself to calm too.

It comes out so fast Mike almost misses it completely.

“I don’t like girls.”

Mike blinks. “Wh-what?”

“I’m… gay.” Will says the word with a wince, as if he already anticipates Mike to slap him across the face, or yell at him, or do anything other than what Mike actually does.

Mike remembers one night a few years back, when they argued in the rain over El and D&D. He had assumed Will was jealous that Mike and Lucas were too preoccupied with their girlfriends to make time for him, and in response, Mike had told Will it wasn’t his fault he didn’t like girls.

Will had worn the same face he wears now—frozen, with lips slightly parted and eyes wide, open like tunnels that lead to the deepest depths of Will. It’s vulnerability Mike can get lost in if he looks for too long, with jagged, rocky walls of shame and fear already closing in to block the entrance.

Every so often, usually when shut eyelids fail to provide the blissful reprieve of sleep, Mike would stare at the ceiling and think of that night, regretting the insult he had thrown at Will. It had been a knee-jerk reaction to pin Will’s own hurt onto himself rather than taking accountability for the fact that Mike was the one who distanced. Mike was the one who caused Will’s hurt.

It stings even more now knowing that what Mike said, practically verbatim to Will’s confession, was as true then as it is now.

Will should really be the one slapping Mike, or yelling at him, or doing anything other than what he’s doing now—looking at Mike like he’s just laid his soul bare and wants Mike to see him, all of him, and take him as he is. And what is Mike doing? What he does best, it seems: standing and watching.

Will’s grip loosens on Mike’s hands, and that small movement acts like a catalyst, accelerating the closing walls behind his eyes. Will starts to pull his hands away, sliding them back towards himself ever so slowly as if that could make his hurt in Mike’s reaction—or lack thereof—less obvious.

Will shakes his head, chastising himself for saying anything, for believing that Mike could’ve understood. “You don’t have to say anything.”

Last time, Mike had missed the opportunity to enter the tunnel—he said something stupid and froze, and Will shut him out. Now, Mike sees history start to repeat itself, but he won’t let it.

No, this time he dives head first into everything Will has to offer, sliding in just in time to lock himself in.

He tightens his grip on Will and pulls their hands closer to him, tethering himself to Will like a moored ship. On the surface, the sea of Will seems familiar, full of countless likes and dislikes one can only accrue after spending a lifetime of knowing someone.

Will likes the color Canary Yellow, Crayola brand crayons but Rowney brand paint, Georges Seurat (specifically his painting Bathers at Asnières), Lucky Charms with 2% milk, Coca-Cola from the can (not the bottle), Mike’s mom’s lasagna but his own mom’s chocolate chip cookies, licking the frosting off before eating the cake part of cupcakes, butterscotch ice cream in a cup (not a cone), the movie Jaws, the TV show Josie and the Pussy Cats (though he’ll never admit it again), the day Thursday, springtime, the month of June, Halloween, history class, The Clash, David Bowie… Mike could go on.

But just like the ocean, Will remains largely unexplored. Mike wants to know all of it—Will’s hopes, fears, and dreams; his love, his loss—if he’ll let him.

“I’m sorry,” Mike finally says. “I-I’m sorry I was such a jerk, and I’m sorry that you felt like you couldn’t share that with me.”

Will blinks. “Y-you don’t think it’s…weird?”

Weird? Did Mike make too big of a splash? Does Will now feel Mike’s heart reaching towards his? Does he know how much Mike wants to know him? Is that weirding him out?

God, he sounds insane.

“What?” he asks, suddenly breathless.

Will cocks his head to the side and speaks slowly, almost unsure. “Me…being gay?”

Mike’s father has been pretty outspoken against homosexuals; most of the slurs thrown at the community he’s learned from his own father’s mouth. His family has never really been religious, so his father’s disgust mainly stems from the media he consumes—the biased news he watches, papers he reads, and radio shows he listens to act as his gospels and homilies. Over the last few months, years even, the latest news of the AIDS epidemic has been projected through every television or radio speaker on the first floor of the Wheeler house.

Huh, Mike thinks. No wonder Will always blasted music from his Walkman headphones or laid next to the boombox in the basement.

He suddenly remembers one night a few months back, when it was just the Wheelers and Will gathered around the dinner table, eating pasta drenched in olive oil and garlic—a staple, given the limited supplies a quarantined Hawkins had to offer. Jonathan had another late shift, and Joyce was spending the night with Hopper and El.

Without Joyce to carry on conversation, dinners were painstakingly long, the only sounds being silverware clinking against ceramic, or Mike’s mom chiding Holly for playing with her food.

Will and Mike used to talk at the table, but they quickly realized any conversation between the two of them became a conversation for everyone, regardless if others chimed in or not. So they ate their typical dinner meal in typical silence.

Thanks to his mom’s incessant complaining, mealtimes had become a means to drag his father away from the television screen. He usually didn’t speak—vowing silence in retaliation against his wife’s rule—but on the off chance he did decide to strike up a conversation, the topics he brought to the table were in response to the media freshest in his mind. These dinners transformed into a socratic seminar of sorts, one without the necessary academic setting and with a required assignment only Ted Wheeler completed.

While details changed with the latest updates, the news his father discussed could be simplified into three categories: AIDS, the Reagan Administration, and the Cold War. Mike had learned that the latter two options were the safest. Everyone usually nodded along except for Nancy, who would jump in from time to time to add some of the latest topics the editors were working on for The Hawkins Post.

But the first option always caused tension or, at the very least, blatant avoidance. The first few times his father breached the topic, the Byers were there, quick to cut in with witty rebuttals that oftentimes lead to discourse, but inevitably stumped him to silence. Mike enjoyed watching Joyce and his father argue like a tennis match, though he had a feeling Will didn’t find it as exciting. Will had never said it outright, but his body language spoke volumes: his entire body would freeze except for his eyes, which darted back and forth between their parents. He looked like a scared animal sitting on its haunches, reserving its energy to flee at the first given moment.

Mike’s father either seemed to have gotten the hint or just hated losing an argument. Either way, it became an unspoken rule between the mingled families that, for whatever reason, the AIDS topic should be avoided at all costs.

“So,” he started, dabbing the corner of his mouth with a napkin. “The Gay Plague is starting to spread from the cities.”

Mike heard Will’s breath catch, felt his thigh stiffen infinitesimally against his.

He had assumed Will didn’t like the topic because he was embarrassed by Joyce’s passion, or that he felt thrust into the middle without even saying a word.

But Joyce wasn’t there.

His mom hummed, more so in feigned acknowledgment, though it spurred him to continue. “Cases have skyrocketed over the last month. Seems like anyone who comes in contact with a queer gets it.”

This time, Mike clearly felt Will’s thigh tighten against his. This topic was sensitive for Will, Mike realized, not just Joyce.

“You can’t say that,” Nancy said, twirling linguine around her fork.

“What?” he scoffed. “Queer? What would you prefer I said? Fag?” He hissed the word as if he had to run his tongue across sandpaper to get it out.

Though they’ve had similar conversations before, it had never gotten to the extent of his father using that word. It echoed off the walls of the dining room, seeming to refract off the glass of the chandelier at a frequency that caused Mike’s ears to ring. His fork suddenly felt slippery in his hand.

“Ted,” his mom quietly scolded.

“No matter which way you dice it, they are killing people. Thousands of ‘em.” The disgusted tone he threw behind the word made it seem like ‘they’ was just as bad an actual slur.

“How many?” Nancy asked.

“Oh, I don’t know the exact number, but over 25,000 in the U.S. alone.” He slurped up a few noodles, and the sound made Mike’s skin crawl. “It seemed like only a few months ago they kept it localized to the cities. But that kid…what’s his name… Ryan White seemed to bring it here, to Indiana. Now, who knows how many kids got it?” His eyes slid to his left, to Mike and Will. “Could be right under our noses.”

Mike froze. He wasn’t gay—he was dating El—but Will? Just because Will was the softest, most artistic person in the party didn’t make him queer. That was just a stereotype. What the hell was his father trying to say?

Will had stopped breathing entirely; he was as still as the statues from his art history textbook he’d shown Mike earlier that week.

If Joyce were here, she would’ve already ripped him a new asshole. But she wasn’t there. If Mike considered that coincidence for a second longer, he would’ve thought his father planned this, to poke and prod Will when he was at his most vulnerable, with no one to defend him. It seemed like his father even assumed Mike wouldn’t do anything, just do what he did best—sat and watched. Mike still hates himself for how right his father was that day.

He shakes his head. How did his father know about Will before he did?

Unlike his father, though, he can’t understand how that label—gay—makes Will any different than how he was five minutes ago, five years ago, even fifteen years ago. Mike has been bullied and had insults thrown at him his entire life. Labels don’t mean shit to him.

He gives Will a once over. “You’re still Will, aren’t you?”

“Uh, yeah?”

He shrugs. “So then no, it’s not weird.”

Will stares with wide eyes, opening and closing his mouth a handful of times before deciding on an awed whisper. “Thank you.”

Mike smiles and squeezes Will’s hands. “Thanks for telling me.” Before he can talk himself out of it, he continues, “I, uh—” How does he even put this? “I’m…curious. How did you know?”

Will’s eyes rove Mike’s face, and he feels a warm blush bloom up his neck to his cheeks from his intense gaze. He didn’t mean for it to be a loaded question—he just wants to learn more about Will’s experience.

Will shakes his head as if ridding a thought, then shrugs. “I dunno, I think maybe I always knew? But I, uh, I h-had a crush on someone, and that kinda solidified it for me.”

“Oh.” Mike blinks. “Uhm, can I ask who?”

Will laughs dryly. “I think you just did.”

“You-uh, you don’t have to answer.” He shrugs in an attempt at nonchalance. So stupid, Wheeler. So, so stupid.

Will sits quietly for a moment, just staring at Mike as if Mike himself is the answer.

It takes a second for that thought to process.

“Oh,” Mike breathes.

“Yeah,” Will whispers, just as breathless. “Oh.”