Chapter Text
Cold arms were wrapped tightly around his torso, the boney limbs of the Demogorgon digging into his body. It took long, heavy strides as it ran through the Upside Down. Mike's head thrashed back and fourth with each step, worsening his already aching head.
Mike desperately pulled against the Demogorgon. His arms flailed and swung at it, but it didn't even seem phased, readjusting him effortlessly.
There was nothing Mike could do but let his body go limp. Any adreadeline that he'd had before had fizzled out to resignation.
He didn't know why he wasn't dead. Where was he being taken? He wasn't sure what exactly Vecna could want out of him. It was unlikely anyone would come looking for him, unlikely anyone had even noticed he was gone.
The world spun, dizziness making everything look like nothing more than a flurry of shapes and colors. He could distantly tell that he was shivering, his muscle tensing against the chilling air. He hadn't at all prepared for the freezing temperatures of the Upside Down.
The vertigo was beginning to blend into unconsciousness, and Mike had no resolve to fight it. As his eyes closed, he thought vaguely of Will.
An old memory flickered in his mind. Sneaking into AV club, hearing Will on the radio.
Dark. Empty.
That's how Will had described the Upside Down. As he was ushered through the woods by the Demogorgon, he couldn't help but realize how accurate that description had been. He wondered if this was how Will had felt.
Had he'd been in crippling fear? Probably not, Mike thought. Will was a fighter.
The Wheeler house had once been a quiet, orthodox home, a place where the silence would spontaneously make you walk on your tip-toes, act as cautious as one could.
Now, every morning the house suddenly came to life as Holly ran up the stairs, waking everyone up for breakfast. Mrs. Byers could be heard chatting with Mrs. Wheeler as they prepared breakfast together, playful fights between Jonathan and Nancy habitually occuring every morning.
It was one of the few changes that Mike enjoyed. He could tell Holly liked it, too. Her quiet, shy demeanor had changed to an exuberant, outgoing personality.
Loud, incessant knocking at his door suddenly woke him up. Holly's yelling could be heard on the other side of it,
"Mike! Wake up, breakfast is ready!"
He rolled his eyes, laying back down. Holly suddenly barged in, her blonde pigtails swaying dramatically as she stepped closer to him.
"I said," she theatrically raised her eyebrows, "wake up!"
Mike mumbled something in reply, which didn't seem to satisfy her. She grabbed a pillow off the end of his bed, viciously smacking him with it.
"Wake up! Wake up!"
Mike suddenly got up, and in one swift motion grabbed the pillow that'd been under his head and swung at Holly with it.
She screamed playfully, throwing her pillow at him and then sprinting out of the room.
Mike yelled after her, "this isn't over!"
He put his pillow back on his bed, then leaned over to pick up the pillow Holly had been using.
Mike glanced up as he noticed a hand already on the pillow. A hand belonging to Will.
"I think you dropped this," Will said, picking it up and putting it on Mike's bed. He then sat down, Mike instictively seated himself next to him.
"That was Holly, actually," Mike said, his hands resting with feigned casuallity in his lap. He couldn't help his awkwardness around Will. He didn't know where it'd come from, ever since he moved back from California he couldn't help being nervous around him.
He absently picked at a hangnail, looking up at Will.
"What's up?" Mike asked after a few moments of silence.
Will made eye contact with Mike, then looked away, clearing his throat.
"Well," he looked down at his hands. "There's actually been something I've been meaning to tell you."
Mike watched Will expectantly, waiting for him to continue. Instead, the air was filled with silence.
"…And what's that?"
Will looked up like he forgot what he was talking about. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it.
"It's, uh—"
Holly unexpectadly appeared in Mike's doorway. "Mike. Breakfast!" She hollered, not even acknowledging Will.
"Okay, jeez," Mike said in a playfully irritated manner, standing up.
He glanced back at Will. "You can tell me later, right?"
Will looked up at him, staring for a few seconds, then smiled. "Yeah, yeah, that's fine."
On the bike ride to school, Robin on the WSQK had revealed that another crawl was to occur tonight. Mike and Will had glanced at each other at this, a mutual feeling of anxiety forming within both of them.
A mixture of emotions always seemed to circulate inside Mike on crawl days. The first feeling he always felt was that of fear, swirling up from his stomach until it took over his entire body. There were far too many things that could go wrong, far too many of his friends put in danger.
This fear he felt would remove all motivation he had to focus on anything. Schoolwork would go by in a blur, he turned in papers unsure if he even wrote anything, his mind too preoccupied to care. For far too long his grades had gone down the drain. It'd gotten to a point where his parents were no longer surprised, no longer questioned him. 'Below average' was just a fact of life now, there was no reason to try and fix it.
But with the fear he felt came a feeling of excitement. Not excitement for the crawls themselves, but for what they entailed. If they were to succeed, then all of this would be over. He would no longer have to live in constant, crippling worry. He'd be able to return to normal life. Return to how it was before everything went downhill.
He arrived at school with Will, parking his bike out front. The two walked through the halls together, meeting up with Lucas and Dustin, although this time with his friends seemed to end before he could even get a word in. The four separated, all headed to different classes.
The day was agonizingly slow, although simultaneously Mike felt as though classes were ending before he'd even done anything. His distant mind failed to focus on a single word his teachers said, instead his mind drifted long and far to things that had nothing to do with school at all.
Before he knew it, he was sitting at lunch with an unopened milk carton and a sandwich in front of him. Will sat next to him, Lucas across from him and Dustin next to Lucas. The four didn't chat, instead intently focused on the radio centered between them.
Intertwined within normal mid-day radio-talk, Robin discreetly mentioned information having to do with tonight's crawl. Mike had a piece of paper in front of him, one hand idly picking at his sandwich while the other wrote.
"Two hours," he said, placing the paper in the center of the table so everyone could read it.
Lucas whistled. "They've been doing more burns lately."
"You think they found something?" Will asked.
Mike looked over at him, lips parted as he continued to pick at his food that he'd yet to eat.
"Burns have been longer, too," Dustin added, tapping the paper.
"We're getting closer," Lucas said, glancing at Mike.
Mike stared down at his food, a shiver going down his spine. Closer. Just the word itself made his skin crawl. He wasn't sure if he wanted to be closer. Mike wished he could skip that part. Go straight to after, not have to deal with the inbetween.
"Mike?" Will spoke, breaking him out of his haze.
He looked over at him, letting a small smile form on his face.
"Yeah. We're getting closer."
Nancy was up in front of the projector, discussing their plan for tonight. Though, most of it went over his head. Her words jumbled into meaningless gibberish, leading to him giving up on even trying to listen.
Instead, he glanced down at his hands. His fingernails were short, chewed down as far as they could be. He could recall many times he'd subconsciously bitten too far, a sharp pain that'd break him out of a trance.
He wasn't sure when it had began. The nail-biting, but also everything else. He could recall back when this had all started. After they'd found Will, it almost felt like everything had returned back to normal. They were playing D&D again, watching movies together again. He'd bicker with Nancy, play with Holly. He was almost able to ignore the dull ache he felt without El enjoying life with him.
When it started happening again, really happening again, it felt as if walls he'd spent so long meticulously building back up suddenly came crashing down all over again.
Perhaps there's another timeline. A place where, instead of him continuing to stay on this rollercoaster of pain and chaos, he was able to escape before it got worse.
He tried to tell himself it was meant to happen. Everything was going go turn out fine. He'd learn, reflect, grow. Years from now, perhaps this would all just be a distant memory. He'd laugh with his friends, solemnly reflect on these times, be able to treat it like nothing other than stuff that happened when they were kids.
But that fantasy felt far away. It wasn't something tangible, wasn't something he could feel. The future was distant and the present felt like it'd been paused for years. He'd been thrown into this time loop, he would have moments where it seemed like everything was okay again until that fantasy was thrown in his face.
"Mike?"
He looked up to realize everyone was looking at him. Nancy stared at him sternly.
"Were you even listening?"
Mike glanced around the room, eyes landing on Will, who was watching him with a concerned expression.
He quickly averted his gaze.
"I'll be doing lookout with Lucas," he responded to Nancy.
"No. Since Dustin hasn't shown up, Lucas is filling in for him and you'll do lookout alone."
"Oh," He glanced back down at the floor. "Okay."
His muscles relaxed as the focus was removed from him, everyone looking away.
Aside from one person, who seemed to be staring right through his soul. Mike put much effort into avoiding making eye contact.
A few minutes later, Nancy walked outside to make some of the final preparations for the crawl. Mike stood to follow her, but a familiar voice stopped him.
"Mike," it was Will who spoke, walking over to him. "I go with you, if you want."
"Oh, well–"
He was quickly interrupted by Mrs. Byers.
"No, Will, you're staying here with me. I won't have you that close to a gate."
Mike glanced between the two, watching as Will's face shifted into one of mild annoyance.
"Mom, he's–"
Mike removed himself from the conversation before it could escalate into something he didn't want to be apart of. He wasn't entirely sure if he wanted Will doing lookout with him anyways. A couple hours by himself didn't seem so bad.
He sat up in what him and Lucas called "the watch tower," but was really just an abandoned building at the military base. In his hand was his radio, his eyes intently focused on the trucks pulling into the base.
"They're about to open the gate, over," Mike spoke into the radio.
Hopper's gruff voice came in. "Yeah, I see it. Just tell me when I can go."
There was silence for a few seconds, until Mike spoke again. "You forgot to say over, over."
"Shut up," Hopper responded, an exasperated tone in his voice. "…over."
Mike lightly smiled, his gaze still focused on the ground. There were still two soldiers that'd see Hopper if he moved.
One walked away. They were running out of time, there only being a few more trucks needing to enter the gate.
"Mike, any day now," Hopper said.
The second soldier moved.
"You're clear, over."
Mike watched as Hopper came out of his hiding spot, swiftly climbing onto the back of the last truck. As the gate closed, Mike leaned against the wall, switching channels on his radio.
"He's in, over."
It was Robin's voice that responded, "Alright, great. You sit tight, over."
Mike set down the radio, grabbing his bottle of water out of his backpack. As he sipped it, he noticed what looked like a crack forming in the ceiling.
He stood up, furrowing his eyebrows as it widened, a rift forming.
Suddenly, long, thin hands reached through the crack, opening it wider until it was able to launch itself onto the floor.
Mike's eyes widened, dropping his water bottle as the Demogorgon landed. He auickly reached for the closest "weapon", which was an old board on the floor.
As the creature swung it's arm at him, he attempted to swing the plank into it's side. The Demogorgon easily snatched the board from his hand, snapping it in half and throwing it out the window.
Mike's breath hitched, eyes desperately scanning the room for anything else he could use to defend himself. His eyes instead landed on his radio.
As the Demogorgons arm came lunging at him again, he dived for the floor, grabbing his radio.
His voice was urgent, laced with fear, "Robin! I–"
But before he could continue, the radio was seized by the Demogorgon, discarded onto the floor behind it. There was nothing Mike could do nothing but cower, his arms raising to try and defend himself the best he could.
Though, instead of pain reaching him, he was unexpectedly hoisted up by the Demogorgon. The creature tucked him under it's arm like he was a basket of laundry, propelling itself back through the gate and into the Upside Down.