Chapter Text
His world shrinks in an instant.
The pain is real. Sharp. Immediate. As if someone has driven a red-hot wire straight through his optic nerve and into his brain.
Everything splits apart. One half of his vision remains; the other falls endlessly into a bottomless abyss.
Mike remembers exactly how it happened. Billy had completely lost control, slamming him hard against the wall. Unfortunately, an metal electrical junction box was mounted right there. The sharp corner caught him directly in the right eye.
He remembers Max screaming. Faintly. Distantly. She is screaming, too.
Fighting through the blinding agony, he tries to turn his head. Something sharp—he doesn't know what, bone fragments, shattered metal, hell, he can't see clearly enough to tell—comes flying toward his remaining left eye.
He doesn't close it. He’s never learned how to close his eyes when he should.
The pain arrives faster than fear. Then, darkness swallows him whole.
Not complete darkness, though.
After all of them are finally dragged, battered and bleeding, into the hospital, the doctors explain that the damage to his optic nerves is... strange. Like a tree struck by lightning. Not completely dead, but never capable of growing back the way it was.
His left eye still retains a cruel fraction of light perception. Blurred, unfocused shapes. Light and shadow smeared together, like moonlight seen from beneath the frozen surface of a lake.
His right eye has nothing. Not blackness. Black is still a color, a presence. This is absence. Raw, sterile, and absolute.
"You may retain some peripheral vision," one specialist says, using that carefully measured, gentle tone Mike already loathes. "But as for your central vision... we'll need more time to assess."
They don't. Mike already knows. When your world consists of nothing but vague luminescence and bleeding, blurry outlines, you don't need a medical degree to understand what's happened.
He's a writer. No. He used to be a writer.
It sounds ridiculous. He's only fifteen. Maybe he doesn't even qualify for the title. But he was. Ever since he first picked up a Dungeons & Dragons campaign book, he has barely put down his pen. Stories used to grow inside his head faster than weeds in July.
He wrote monsters. He wrote heroes. He wrote trapped boys.
He wrote about Will. He wrote about every fragile, terrifying thing they had survived together. He turned those haunting memories into something else. Something he could control.
Writing was the only time Mike Wheeler ever felt useful.
Now he's blind. Everything has been violently stripped from him.
He can't see his own handwriting. Can't see sentences lining up neatly across a blank page. Can't see whether a comma is in its rightful place. Can't see the perfect turn of phrase at the end of a paragraph that used to make him secretly proud.
He tries dictation once. His mom sits by his side, desperately trying to write things down for him. But the words come out of his mouth dead. No rhythm. No breath. Like a corpse with its soul surgically removed.
He needs to see. He needs his eyes to guide his hand down the path. Without that visual path, he can't go anywhere.
For three agonizing months, Mike shuts himself away. Completely.
He locks himself in the basement like a wounded, rabid animal, refusing to let a single soul near him. Karen learns to leave trays of food at the top of the stairs. Two sharp knocks. Then, her retreating footsteps. Ted doesn't know what to say, so he says nothing at all.
Nancy tries once. She marches into the basement carrying her usual, unstoppable determination, and comes back out fifteen minutes later with red, swollen eyes. She never utters a word about what happened down there. After that, she doesn't come back either.
Dustin visits three times.
The first time, he brings a brand-new tape recorder. Mike hurls it across the room, watching it shatter against the concrete wall. The second time, Dustin brings a pair of dark sunglasses. "You look like a badass rock star, Mike," Dustin says, his voice cracking. Mike doesn't respond. But when Dustin leaves, the sunglasses remain untouched on the table. The third time, he brings vinyl records, suggesting that maybe Mike can lose himself in music. Mike never even lifts his head from the sagging couch.
El's ankle is still healing. She and Hopper were badly broken, too. They got out of the hospital only a little before Mike did. She wants to stay with him, to help him navigate the dark. Mike simply reminds her that they've already split up. They're not boyfriend and girlfriend anymore. She doesn't need to waste her life on a broken cause.
"But we're still friends," El says, her brow furrowing in that familiar, stubborn way. "I care about you, Mike."
The more people care, the angrier Mike gets. It feels like pity. As if he's entirely helpless. As if he's some useless, pathetic baby who needs constant looking after. He tells her to get out.
Lucas comes with Max. Billy had brutally broken Max's legs before his own remaining humanity forced the Mind Flayer to relinquish its hold. Her leg is seriously injured; it might never fully recover. But she is infinitely braver than Mike.
She stands at the top of the basement stairs, a heavy crutch tucked beneath her arm, and speaks directly into the darkness below.
"Hey, Wheeler. Welcome to the disabled club. The membership perks absolutely suck, but we do get parking privileges."
Mike wants to laugh. He can't. He thinks he’s fundamentally forgotten how.
Max waits a moment, her voice dropping its defensive edge. "You won't be like this forever." She pause. "I'm not talking about your eyes. I'm talking about this asshole version of you." Then, softer, bleeding with unspoken thing: "But you've gotta figure that out yourself."
"We're here for you, man." Lucas says.
They're all here. But Mike doesn't want them here. He wants the old version of himself back. The version who sat at his desk at three in the morning with a cup of freezing coffee, smiling because he had just penned one perfect sentence.
He wants the version who can see Will's face. The version who can read every unspoken, delicate thought from a single shift in Will's expression.
Will. He's the person Mike thinks about most. And that is exactly why he cannot bring himself to face him.
Will hasn't come down to the basement. Not yet.
Before Mike completely locked the world out, Will had visited him every single day. Starting in the crowded hospital ward. Starting when Mike was still heavily wrapped in sterile bandages, barely understanding the shape of his new reality.
Will would sit beside his mattress for hours and read aloud. Anything. Fantasy novels. Comic books. Old D&D campaign notes. The childish storybooks they had illustrated together when they were just kids.
Will was different from everyone else. He didn't treat Mike like fragile glass. He didn't carefully, awkwardly avoid talking about all the things Mike might never be able to do again.
But Mike still wanted to drown in his own isolation. Maybe, at his core, he was just an impossible, miserable asshole.
He told Will to stop reading. Will didn't stop. He told him to get lost. Will stayed right there in the chair.
Mike tried his best not to listen. He curled tight beneath the hospital blankets, pressing a pillow bruisingly over his ears. Will's voice seaped through the fabric anyway. Like rising water. Mike remembered every single syllable. Those stories had been his children—things he had created with his own hands, pulled from the void. And now, Will was bringing them back, placing them in front of him like a mirror.
Mike couldn't see that mirror. But he knew exactly what it reflected: A blind person. A permanent burden. Someone who couldn't even read his own words anymore.
"It'll get better, Mike. There are other ways," Will said gently during his seventh visit. "You could learn Braille. Or I could write things down for you, you dictate, and I'll be your hands—"
Mike snapped. He was so brutally tired of it. Tired of Will seeing him reduced to this.
He was supposed to be Will's protector. He was the brave paladin. The leader. The one who carried the torch for everyone else. He was supposed to shield Will from the dark, not the other way around.
"What do you know?" Mike remembered spitting out, his voice cutting sharper and meaner than he had ever intended. "Your eyes work fine, Will. You can see perfectly. You have absolutely no idea what this feels like! You don't know what it's like to watch something that is entirely yours get violently ripped away from you!"
Will went entirely quiet. Mike couldn't see his face.
The exact millisecond the venom left his mouth, a crushing regret suffocated him. He always did this—used the sharpest, ugliest thing he could find as a shield. Hurting Will. Again.
He imagined Will's expression. The exact same shattered look from that rainy day. Mike wanted to grab a knife and tear out his own vocal cords. He didn't deserve a voice.
"I do know what that feels like," Will said softly, his voice so quiet it sounded terrified of disturbing something fragile in the room. "I know what it's like to have something that belonged to you taken away."
A heavy, suffocating pause.
"I know what it's like to lose time. I know what it's like to lose my childhood."
Silence gripped the hospital room. Then, barely audible:
"And I know what it's like to lose you—"
He didn't finish the sentence. Mike didn't ask him to.
Their silences had never been empty voids. They were packed to the brim with words left unsaid. Actions never taken. Golden steps neither of them had quite managed to cross. Since they had been five years old on that preschool swing set, their silences had always been louder than anyone else's loudest conversations.
Eventually, exhaustion won the war. Mike couldn't keep doing this. All he did was break Will over and over again.
"You should go," Mike whispered. "Please."
Will didn't move. Then, finally, he stood. Mike heard the familiar, hollow scrape of the plastic chair against the linoleum floor. Footsteps slowly approached the edge of the bed.
A warm hand found his trembling fingers.
Will's fingers were warm. His nails were neatly trimmed. There was that deeply familiar, hard callus along the side of his middle finger—the one formed from years of tightly holding pencil.
Mike forcefully pulled his hand away, retreating into the blankets.
"Just go."
His voice was terrifyingly, hollowly calm. Strangely, he couldn't feel the burning anger anymore. Not sadness, either. Nothing. Only an echo. Everything had been completely excavated from his ribcage, leaving behind a vast, empty hole.
"You deserve someone whole, Will."
Will didn't answer him. Mike only heard the ragged hitch of his slow intake of breath. The agonizingly slow, trembling exhale. As if he were holding back something too massive for a human chest to contain.
Then, he heard the scuff of those familiar sneakers against the floorboards. Farther away. Farther still.
The door clicked open. The door clicked shut.
And that was the last time Mike heard Will's voice.
That was three months ago.
Now, Mike sits in the damp darkness of the basement with his knees drawn tightly to his chest.
Papers lie scattered in a chaotic radius around him—things he used to write, things he can no longer read. All those neat, meticulous rows of black ink that once filled him with absolute pride are nothing but meaningless shapes now. His notebooks still sit on the desk beneath a heavy layer of dust, covered with a white cloth like some beloved pet that has been permanently put to sleep.
Mike doesn't cry. Every single day, he is swallowed whole by a vast, unyielding emptiness. He doesn't even possess the energy to move a single finger. The ambient air feels so heavy that even the simple act of breathing takes a conscious effort.
Summer is over. The weather outside has begun to cool, and the basement is freezing. Mike wears a sweater that is far too thick and pants that are far too thin, utterly unable to find a comfortable temperature no matter what he does.
Then, he hears footsteps on the wooden stairs.
Not his mom's. Karen walks softly, with a hesitant lightness, as if she is terrified of crushing what little remains of Mike's shattered dignity.
Not Nancy's. Nancy walks fast, her heels striking with the sharp, efficient energy of someone who always has somewhere critically important to be.
Not Dustin's. Dustin always talks while he walks, rambling even when nobody is listening.
These footsteps are slow. Steady. Deliberate.
Mike's heartbeat violently speeds up. His body recognizes them first. His heart remembers long before his traumatized brain does.
Will.
Will comes down the stairs, every single step planted firmly against the wood, as though making some kind of silent declaration. Then, he stops. Mike can tell exactly where he is standing. The fifth and seventh steps always creak under weight; the sixth one remains silent. Will stops on the sixth.
"Mike."
Just his name. Will's voice sounds lower, deeper than it did three months ago. Or maybe it is only because it has been so long that Mike's memory has artificially softened it. Either way, Will doesn't sound much better than Mike feels.
"What are you doing here?" Mike hears himself ask. His voice is incredibly rough, like gravel scraping against gravel. He hasn't spoken in hours. Or days. He honestly can't remember.
"Came to see you."
"You've seen enough. You can leave."
Mike hears Will move. From the sixth step to the fifth, then the fourth. Then, his sneakers are standing directly on the concrete basement floor. The quiet footsteps turn toward the couch.
"Your hair's gotten longer," Will says quietly.
Mike thinks maybe he has finally, completely lost his mind, because Will sounds like he has missed him. Really, agonizingly missed him. Or maybe that is just Mike’s own desperate projection. He says nothing.
"Your sweater is inside out."
Mike instinctively looks down. He can't see a thing. He can't tell whether the knit fabric is inside out. He had just grabbed the thickest garment his fingers could find in the dark and pulled it on. Maybe it was backwards. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe it had belonged to Nancy. He doesn't care.
But the exact millisecond Will points it out, Mike feels utterly pathetic. He isn't just blind; he can't even take basic care of his own body anymore.
"So what?" Mike spits out defensively.
Will walks closer, the air shifting, and crouches directly in front of Mike. Mike can feel the immediate warmth radiating from his body. That familiar, faint woody scent of Will. All Mike wants, with a terrifying intensity, is to sink into it and drown.
"You don't want me to see you like this," Will says, his words starting to tumble out faster and faster. "I know that, Mike. But you never stopped to ask whether I wanted to see you like this."
"No one would want—"
"I do."
Mike's ragged breath catches violently in his throat.
"I want to see you," Will says, his voice finally cracking under the weight. The tears are obvious now, bleeding into his tone. "No matter what you look like. No matter what version of you this is. I want to see you, Mike. I love you, whether you are whole or broken, whether you are falling apart or not. I am hopelessly, entirely in love with you."
Will's voice trembles, echoing in the quiet basement. "I've spent my whole life wanting you. And now you're blind, and suddenly you think that means I shouldn't want to be here with you? Stop deciding what's best for me."
Something dead in Mike's chest starts beating again, a painful, heavy thud. He has no earthly idea what expression he is making right now. Probably an ugly, twisted one.
Will's fingertips gently brush the back of his hand. It is as light as a dragonfly landing on water. Then, his entire hand settles over Mike's knuckles. Warm. Solid. Comfortingly familiar. He gently turns Mike's hand over, palm up, and their long fingers lace tightly together.
"Remember?" Will asks softly. A single, heavy tear lands on Mike's bare arm. It feels scalding hot. Hot enough that, for the first time in three months, Mike desperately wants to cry.
"You wrote a story once. About a boy who wakes up in a winter that never ends. His whole world is buried under miles of snow. He can't find his way home." Will swallows hard, his grip tightening. "Then he meets another boy. Smaller than him. The second boy says, 'I'll take you home.'"
Mike remembers.
"'How do you know the way?' the first boy asks," Mike whispers, the memory striking him.
Will's voice grows even softer, thick with emotion. "And the other boy says, 'I don't. But I know you shouldn't be here alone.'"
Mike remembers every single word. He had written that story when he was only eleven years old. Will had only recently come home from the hospital back then, fragile, terrified, and quietly recovering from the Upside Down. Mike hadn't known how to help him, hadn't known how to fix his trauma. So, he had written a story.
In that fictional world, the person being saved wasn't the small, skinny boy. Mike had intentionally made Will the rescuer. Because Mike believed, with every fiber of his being, that Will Byers could save people—even when everyone else thought he was the one who needed saving.
Will had never been some fragile, helpless little thing. He was a survivor. Someone who got back up again and again and again.
When Mike wrote that story, he had no idea it would someday become a literal prophecy.
"That was just a story," Mike says, shaking his head, trying to pull away from the overwhelming emotion.
"No." Will squeezes their joined hands until it almost hurts. "You shouldn't be here alone."
When the tears finally come, Mike doesn't even feel them at first. He only notices the sudden, warm wetness tracks on his face. The sharp ache in his sinuses. The heavy sensation of his chest filling with seawater. His body is crying, but no sound comes out.
He thought he had run entirely out of sadness months ago.
Will pulls him closer, moving awkwardly into his space. Mike is taller than him, and it has been so long since they’ve shared a physical embrace that they’ve momentarily forgotten how their bodies fit together. But Mike doesn't care; he buries his face, pressing his forehead hard into the warm hollow of Will's neck.
"I'm staying here," Will whispers into his messy hair. "Whether you want me to or not. I'm staying." His voice wavers, but the underlying resolve is ironclad. "You can yell at me. You can tell me to leave. You can pull your hand away a hundred times." Will tightens his arms, locking them around Mike's body. "I'll come back a thousand."
Mike completely breaks apart.
His entire body shakes like a machine that is finally coming undone. His eyes—the ruined eyes that can't see the world anymore—hurt horribly. Not because of the physical injury, but because hot tears are rushing through places that have been left dry for too long.
He cries for the words he'll never see again. He cries for the sentences he'll never write again. He cries for the proud, unbroken version of himself he can never go back to. Months of heavily suppressed grief pour out of him all at once in ragged, silent sobs.
Will rubs slow, comforting circles across his trailing back. Mike clutches fistfuls of Will's thick sweater, breathing in the scent of him until his lungs are full. Will doesn't say anything else. He just keeps drawing those steady circles. Again. And again. Slow enough that time itself seems to grind to a halt.
The repetitive motion feels less like he is comforting Mike, and more like he is desperately reassuring himself: Mike is still here. Still breathing. Still trembling in his arms. Not gone.
Mike doesn't know how long he cries. Minutes. Hours. In this basement, time means absolutely nothing. Light means nothing. The entire universe shrinks down to the select things he can still touch: The rough texture of Will's sweater. Will's radiating body heat. Will's steady breathing. The faint, anchoring pressure of Will's fingers.
By the time the tears finally subside, his body is still trembling with exhausted aftershocks. His face remains buried deeply against Will's neck, his nose pressed to his skin. He can feel Will's pulse. Steady. Strong.
"Will." Mike slowly lifts his head.
His face is completely soaked, his eyelashes sticking together. When he opens his eyes, his left eye catches the faintest, blurry shift in the basement light. His right remains that endless void that isn't even black. He can't see Will's features. But he can feel him right there. Close. Close enough to feel the heavy moisture of Will's own breath against his lips.
"I'm sorry," Mike whispers.
Feeling the shift in the air, Will pauses. "For what?"
Mike wants to apologize for everything. For pushing him away for three agonizing months. For every cruel, venomous thing he had spat out in that hospital room. For simply not deserving a love this pure. The chaotic thoughts tangle together inside his head like spilled paint, every bright color mixed into one ugly, useless gray.
"...Everything," he finally says.
Will doesn't tell him it's okay. Because they both know it isn't something that can be easily erased with an "it's okay." Instead, Will only pulls him into a tighter, fiercer hug.
"The inside-out sweater is actually kind of funny," Will mutters, his voice still thick and wet with tears. "Your tag is sticking straight out. It looks terrible, Wheeler."
A weak, breathy sound escapes Mike's throat—somewhere balancing between a laugh and a sob.
"I can't see it anyway."
The exact millisecond the words leave his mouth, Mike freezes. It is the first joke, the first acknowledgment he has made about his blindness in three long months. He doesn't know if that counts as progress, or if it's just exhaustion.
But he hears Will let out a wet, genuine laugh. "So I can lie to you."
"Are you lying to me right now?"
"Yeah." Will sniffs, his grip incredibly warm. "You look perfect, Mike."
There is a bittersweet, devastating tenderness in his voice. "I just wanted you to stop apologizing."
Mike's nose stings fiercely again. Without a word, he buries his face back into the warm curve of Will's neck. As if it is the only safe, sacred place left in a ruined world. Will's skin tastes faintly of salt—maybe tears, maybe sweat, maybe both. Mike takes one final, deep breath, storing the scent away somewhere deep inside his lungs.
"Why did you come?" Mike asks, his voice muffled, heavy against Will's collar. "It's been three months. Why today?"
Will remains quiet for a long, stretching moment. Mike can hear his heartbeat. Steady. Deep. For some reason, that rhythmic sound makes Mike feel human again. Not just because a heart is beating—his own is doing the same—but Will's heartbeat is different. It is tangible proof that another person still exists in his dark universe. Someone who keeps actively choosing to show up for him, even when he is at his worst.
"Mom and Hopper went out to dinner. Jonathan and El were occupied with the TV. I spent the whole afternoon in my room drawing, and then..." Will pauses, his breath catching. "Then I painted you."
Something tightens suffocatingly around Mike's chest.
Will's hand clenches into a fist, gripping the knit fabric at the back of Mike's sweater. His knuckles tremble with the sheer force of it.
"And suddenly, I just got scared. Really, paralyzingly scared. I was terrified I'd never get to see you again. You've locked yourself down here for three agonizing months, shutting every single person out. I knew you needed time. I knew you were bleeding inside. I tried to respect that, Mike. I tried so hard to give you space. But—" His voice finally splintered. "But I miss you. God, I miss you so much. I think about you every waking second. I miss you so much my chest physically aches. I can't sleep. I keep telling Mom I'm fine. I keep saying you just need time, that I just have to be patient. But I can't do it anymore, Mike."
Will buries his face deeply into Mike's shoulder, his shoulders shaking. "I miss you."
A painful, throbbing ache rises behind Mike's eyes. His ruined optic nerves scream at the pressure, but he ignores it. He hears his own heartbeat now—not just the mechanical kind that keeps a physical body alive, but something fierce and loud.
"Will, I love you."
Mike reaches out into the void. His fingers search blindly, clumsily trying to navigate the dark to find where Will's heart is. His hand trembles in midair. He isn't entirely sure what his palm is touching at first, maybe the faded screen-print on Will's old T-shirt.
Then, Will safely covers Mike's hand with his own, pressing it firmly against his chest.
A heartbeat. Mike feels it thudding against his palm. Fast. Far faster than he expected. It is a heart that's afraid. A heart that's hopelessly in love. A heart that's doing everything in its power not to break apart into a million pieces.
"Your heart's beating really fast."
"Your fault," Will says, letting out a wet, breathless laugh.
Will gently lifts Mike's hand from his chest and presses it against his own face. Mike's fingertips brush against warm, damp skin. He slowly trails upward, mapping the familiar terrain. Will's eyebrow—thick, curved slightly downward in that perpetual worry. His forehead. Then lower. His eyelashes. Wet. Clumped together with tears. Still trembling against Mike's fingers like the fragile wings of an injured butterfly.
Slowly, meticulously, Mike begins reconstructing Will's face inside the theater of his mind.
His fingers stop right at the corner of Will's eye. A heavy tear is hanging there, trembling on the brink of falling. Mike gently wipes it away with the pad of his thumb.
"I haven't touched you in a long time," Mike murmurs.
"You spent three months rejecting me."
"I know. I'm sorry."
"You're always apologizing, Mike."
"Because I keep screwing everything up."
Will lets out a soft, melodic laugh. The beautiful sound instantly cracks open something frozen deep inside Mike's chest.
"You didn't screw up," Will says softly. "You got hurt."
"That's not an excuse for how I treated you."
"No one is saying it is." Will lowers Mike's hand, intertwining their long fingers once again. Their palms fit together perfectly, as though they were engineered for this exact alignment. "Being hurt is just being hurt. You don't need to apologize for your injuries, Mike. What you actually need..." He trails off, searching the dark for the right words. "You need to start letting people help you."
Mike swallows hard against the lump in his throat.
"I don't know how," he admits quietly. The confession feels humiliating, like admitting to the world that he never learned how to swim.
"I know," Will whispers gently. "That's exactly why I'm here. I'll teach you."
The basement falls into a comfortable quiet. Occasionally, the old heating pipes thump in the walls. Upstairs, Karen moves around the kitchen, the faint, comforting sounds of domestic cooking drifting down through the floorboards. The rest of the world has kept moving, even though Mike has spent three months pretending it ceased to exist.
Mike feels the shift in weight as Will stands up. "Come on."
Mike doesn't move. He can't see Will's eyes, but he can feel the heavy, protective weight of his gaze. The sensation feels strangely, beautifully unfamiliar.
"Where?"
"Upstairs."
"I don't want to—"
"I know you don't." Will's voice is infinitely patient. "But you haven't left this basement in ninety days, Mike. Your mom says you barely even shower."
A sudden, hot blush floods Mike's face. "She told you that?"
"She talks to me every day, Mike. She's worried sick about you. Nancy is, too. And Dustin, Lucas, Max, El... Hopper even said that if you don't drag yourself out of this hole soon, he's going to tie you up and throw you directly into lake."
A sound escapes Mike, somewhere balancing between a genuine laugh and a miserable groan. "Hopper wouldn't actually do that..."
"He absolutely would. You've met the guy."
Mike wants to argue, but he has, in fact, witnessed Jim Hopper throw a man into a lake before. Last summer, some drunk tourist had caused trouble near the docks, and Hopper had simply hoisted the man over his broad shoulder like a sack of flour and tossed him into the water. Mike can still remember the massive splash. The bright sunlight breaking into a tiny, fleeting rainbow through the scattering droplets.
Slowly, Mike forces himself to stand. His legs are completely numb from sitting in the exact same cramped position for too long. As the blood flow violently returns, thousands of phantom needles stab through his calves.
He stumbles blindly forward. Will immediately catches him by the arm, bracing his weight.
"Careful."
"I'm fine." The defensive refusal comes automatically, a knee-jerk reaction. Mike forces himself upright.
"You can barely stand, Mike."
"I can too."
The exact millisecond the words leave his mouth, the world tilts, and he sways heavily to the left. Will catches him again, pulling him flush against his side. The two of them wobble awkwardly in the middle of the basement.
"You can't stand." This time, Will sounds absolutely, factually certain.
Mike opens his mouth to fire back, then slowly closes it again. Because he can't. His left eye only catches vague, shifting ghosts of light. His equilibrium has completely deteriorated after months of absolute stagnation. The whole basement feels like it's tilting beneath his feet.
"I can't stand," Mike repeats.
And strangely, uttering those words aloud doesn't hurt his pride. It just feels... honest. Admitting his weakness feels a thousand times easier than pretending he is still the invincible leader.
"I can help," Will says softly.
"...Okay." For Will, Mike takes a deep breath and finally accepts the lifeline.
Will drapes Mike's long arm securely over his shoulder, bracing Mike's tall frame with his own body. Mike is significantly taller, which makes the arrangement clumsy and awkward, but together they begin to navigate toward the stairs. Slowly. One painstaking step at a time.
Mike's toe accidentally kicks something on the floor. Probably an old, discarded manuscript page he had dropped months ago. The paper flutters softly across the concrete. The basement lightbulb hums its familiar tune overhead, and his left eye catches the faintest suggestion of that brightness.
Then, Will's breathing hitches. His voice changes, like something has gotten caught in his throat.
"Your eye..."
"What?" Mike asks, panicking slightly. "What is it?"
"Nothing."
"Will."
Will hesitates, his grip tightening on Mike's waist. "Your pupil. Your left eye... it still reacts to light. It just got smaller."
Mike completely freezes on the step.
So the light is real. Not an illusion. Not a cruel trick his desperate brain invented in the dark. Actual, physical light is entering his eye. His body is still fighting. Still working. Even if he can't form coherent images out of it, even if everything remains a smeared, blurry mess, the light is getting through. The world hasn't given up on him yet.
His eyes burn fiercely again, but this time, he doesn't let the tears fall. He just takes a long, stabilizing breath.
"Let's go."
They start climbing the stairs. One step. Two. Three. The old wooden steps creak familiarly beneath their combined weight. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Mike counts the numbers quietly in his head.
When he finally reaches the top landing, he stops dead in his tracks. He hasn't been up here in three months. The ambient air smells completely different from the stagnant basement. Beef stew. The rich, savory scent fills his lungs. And sunlight—a massive, dazzling blur of gold enters his left eye from somewhere down the hall. The living room window, probably. Late afternoon sun.
"Your mom is crying," Will whispers directly into his ear.
Mike turns his head toward the sound. A pale, shaking blur stands right where the kitchen doorway should be.
"Mom?" His voice comes out incredibly rough.
Karen doesn't answer him immediately. He can hear her approaching footprints—careful, yet hurried. Then, warm, familiar arms wrap tightly around his torso. They smell like beef stew, onions, and the exact same lavender hand cream she has worn for thirty years.
"Oh, honey." Her voice finally breaks into a sob. "Oh, my baby."
Mike clings back to her, burying his face in her hair. He can't see her expression, so he reads her through the violence of the embrace instead. Her hands are shaking against his back. Her heart is racing against his chest.
"I'm sorry," Karen weeps. "I'm sorry I didn't—I didn't know how to help you—"
"Mom," Mike cuts her off, his voice soft. "It's okay."
He doesn't even know why he says it. Objectively, nothing is okay. He's blind. He can't write stories anymore. He locked himself in a dark basement for three months and terrified every single person who loves him. None of it is okay. But Karen is crying, and he realizes he doesn't want her to suffer anymore.
"Are you hungry?" she asks, sniffing loudly and wiping her face. "I made beef stew. Your favorite."
"Yeah."
Karen goes entirely still in his arms. Mike can feel the shock radiating through her frame. For three agonizing months, he had refused nearly every single meal she prepared, sometimes only consuming a few cold slices of toast left at the top of the stairs. The moment he says yes, her grip around him tightens fiercely.
"Okay," she says, her voice still trembling with a beautiful mixture of relief and hope. "I'll heat it up right now. Sit down first. Will, can you help him—"
"I got him," Will answers instantly.
Karen disappears back into the kitchen, and the beautiful, ordinary sounds of everyday life fill the house. The click of the stove. The heavy thud of the refrigerator door. The clinking of silverware. Ordinary, mundane sounds. Mike never used to think they mattered. Now, enveloped by them, his throat tightens painfully. He never realized how desperately he had missed them.
Will gently guides him toward the living room couch (He guesses). Mike's hand reaches out, finding the worn fabric of the armrest. Old, familiar velvet. He rubs his thumb against a specific spot, finding a coin-sized stiffness—the ink stain from when he had spilled a fountain pen at age ten.
"I thought Mom was going to straight-up murder me," Mike says, a faint, genuine smile tugging at the corner of his lips. It really wasn't that long ago, but it feels like a completely different lifetime. Before monsters, before the dark. "She yelled, 'Mike Wheeler, no dessert for a week!' Then she spent two solid hours scrubbing the fabric with vinegar and baking soda."
Will laughs softly beside him. "Your mom never stays mad for long."
"No. She's just spent her whole life putting up with a stubborn husband and a bunch of even more stubborn kids."
Mike lowers himself onto the cushions. The old springs sink beneath his weight with a familiar, loud groan. This couch holds entirely too many memories. Movie nights. Campaigns. Late-night conversations that stretched until three in the morning before Karen finally forced them to bed. Mike remembers every single way Will used to sit here. The way he always tucked his hands protectively inside his knees. The way he'd cover his eyes during scary movies but secretly peek through the cracks of his fingers. The way his mouth fell slightly open when he drifted off to sleep.
Without thinking, Mike leans his head sideways, letting it rest against Will's shoulder.
"I should apologize to the guys. I've been a complete asshole."
"We can ask if they want to hang out tomorrow," Will says gently, his fingers beginning to comb soothingly through Mike's overgrown, messy hair. "For now, eat your dinner. Then, I'm helping you take a real shower."
"I can shower by myself," Mike mutters, his voice dropping an octave.
Suddenly, he becomes hyper-aware of how dangerously close they are sitting. Sure, he had occasionally wiped himself down with a damp towel over the months, and sometimes even managed a proper shower, but he definitely didn't smell great right now.
"I want to help," Will says, his voice turning slightly hesitant.
Mike is pretty sure Will is blushing furiously right now.
"Of course, if... if that makes you uncomfortable, Mike, I can just wait outside the bathroom door."
"That isn't the problem. I mean... we're... uh..." Mike stumbles blindly over his own words.
Only now, in the quiet warmth of the living room, does the reality of the situation hit him. They've never actually labeled what they are. Boyfriends? Are they officially dating now?
Oh God.
Is he gay?
The realization slams into him like a runaway freight train. For fifteen years, he has been completely, utterly convinced that he only likes girls. And he does like girls—he can appreciate them, he thinks they're pretty, he dated El. That means he isn't gay, right? But he also loves Will. Truly, deeply, agonizingly loves him.
"Hey." Will gently squeezes his shoulder, his thumb rubbing a soothing circle through the fabric of his sweater. "Relax. It's okay, Mike. You don't have to figure it all out right this second."
"No. I want to give you an answer." Mike's voice is stubborn. He has hurt Will enough over the past three months; he refuses to keep him hanging in limbo. "I just... Will, I don't know if I'm gay."
"We'll talk about it properly later," Will whispers, his voice dropping low as Karen calls out from the kitchen that dinner is ready.
Everything about today feels like a violent roller coaster, the strongest, most vibrant emotions Mike has felt in three long months. He takes a long, deep, stabilizing breath, anchors his fingers into Will's, and tries to steady himself for the world outside.