Chapter Text
Will had always felt different. His disappearance from Hawkins in 1983 was simply more fuel to the fire that had been started long ago, caught spark long before he could think to stop it.
He knew what people thought of him from a very young age, even if only subconsciously. Quiet, they whispered. Sensitive, like it was a crime for a boy to be affected by the world around him. Like it was a crime to feel. And maybe it was.
The bubble of floaty feeling in his chest whenever he looked at his best friend certainly felt dangerous. Or rather, fragile. Because if anyone ever knew, that bubble would burst, and release a blastwave like a supernova exploding into space, delivering shock to everything in its path, irrevocably catastrophic.
But it would be bright. Will Byers would be bright, letting go of that secret knowledge, if only for a moment. One, gorgeous moment.
It almost made him want to say it aloud.
But then Mike had to go and fall in love with El, and who could blame him really—god knew El was one of Will’s favourite people in the world—and that hurt. It hurt that he would find his great love in someone new, instead of Will who had been there every day for as long as either of them could remember, on the swings, on their bikes, in the dim, cosy light of the Wheelers’ basement, transformed to an oasis of fairytale in the warmth of the weak lights.
But Will could handle that.
What he couldn’t handle was his friends getting older, beginning to drift apart, despite all they had been through together. And he couldn’t handle his best friend screaming at him in the rain, his heart breaking into smithereens like every raindrop was the fall of a hammer, and Mike finally looking at him and actually seeing him—
And then rejecting him.
It’s not my fault you don’t like GIRLS!
He knew the Upside Down had changed him, but in that moment, he had been alienated.
Everything Will was afraid of being rejected for, rejected in a single moment. Rejected by the person he perhaps loved most in all the world.
All the love that made up his terrible heart suddenly sank, the thing that had kept him afloat for all those years in and out of darkness—his love, somehow so wrong.
But how could love be wrong? Was it not pure, selfless, to want the best for another person and do everything in your power to lead them to it, bring it to them, even when you were dragging your heels from every day to the next, fighting to feel alive?
Even when they didn’t want to do that for you?
At least, not anymore. There was a time when Will Byers thought Mike Wheeler might have loved him back. Before California.
In California, his heart ached for El. And then came Mike, crashing in like usual, not a clue in the world where neither Will nor his sister were concerned, and somehow, Will still loved him, between Mike and his love as disco lights flared overhead and Will faded away into the background. He still wanted to be nowhere but by his side—in any capacity, if not be in every. But if El was happy, Will resolved, he would be happy too.
Even if he hid his tears in the back of that stupid pizza van when he told lies to protect himself. Lies to protect El and Mike too. Supposedly.
In the end, those lies had saved no one.
Not when Vecna had revealed to Will his plans, and Will had sobbed out his deepest secret to a crowd gathered on the crumbling couches of the Squawk. Not when those plans had come to nothing, and Will was left feeling like the breath had been snatched away from him, every chance for him to do things at his own pace ripped away by a monster masquerading as a gentleman in a waistcoat.
Not when Mike had looked away when it mattered most.
Not when El had disappeared with the fog, and the scream had torn from Will’s throat, ringing in his ears.
There had been a single moment of light, of them thinking they had won—despite the soldiers wrestling them to the ground, against the sides of the van—smiling because it was over.
But it wasn’t, because there was El, on the edge of the rubble, and then—nothing but emptiness. After everything, everything lost.
Now, two years later, Will thinks, they are still rebuilding from the dust.
Jonathan has gone away, and with him Nancy and Robin, like a wave, and Steve they barely see, because why would they. There’s no monsters left to fight.
With every person that leaves, Will’s heart feels a little more heavy. There’s no more pretending; no one is a child anymore, and any semblance of a childhood was a brief instance of sun through a wealth of clouds, and it was built by a boy who called himself a paladin and told his friends stories, immortalised them in folders with foam stickers of their names like he too could feel it all slipping away before the true shadow even revealed itself.
It was the Clash and his smiling brother behind the shelter of a closed door, four boys on bikes, and then two girls. There was a loverboy swinging a bat filled with nails, and the girl whom everybody couldn’t help but fall in love with, and a rockstar in his own right, and the first person who ever told Will plainly that his love was not wrong, but something to be coveted and celebrated.
His mom, tousling his hair at the breakfast table while Jonathan cooked eggs to perfection, every time. They had little, yes, but their little world had been enough.
Now there were just the tumbling bricks and teeth-grinding dust of an abominable building, as Hawkins Lab finally crashed to the ground. And yet, Will had still cried as he watched it fall from a distance, because that had been El’s first notion of home. A poor imitation, but the image of the building held memories of her nonetheless.
Now, Lucas and Max have gone off to Europe for a year after working their asses off at a number of odd jobs for six months, and Dustin has gone off to college. Mike’s gotten his driver’s license, and is working on at least two manuscripts that he won’t let anyone read.
Will hasn’t done much. Well, he’s started exercising a bit. He finds it helps him focus during the day, makes him tired at night so his sleep is blissfully dreamless instead of filled with nightmares.
They’re all gone, and Will is left behind, alone with nothing to show for his time spent idling in a town he can’t decide whether to call home.
Except he’s not alone. Mike has stayed behind as well.
Will tells himself it doesn’t mean anything that Mike had stayed, that it had nothing to do with him. Because it doesn’t.
But sometimes he thinks Mike is trying to rebuild their friendship, too.
Things haven’t been the same since that last night marred by horrors, since the sun had set on Will’s confession. Since Mike had professed their best friend -ness, and Will had thought he was about to say something else. Maybe a shared sentiment. Or just “you’re still the same Will to me.” Or “I’m not weirded out.” Or anything. Will would have taken anything, anything that had betrayed just a little more of Mike’s thoughts than best friends.
But things aren’t bad, either. Things just feel… different. New, like fresh, untouched snow, and Mike is cautiously placing the toe of a boot into the glittering expanse, breath held, and a tiny candle flickers in Will’s chest at the thought, a hope that he and Mike could be like they were when they were young.
Younger, Will reminds himself, because he is still young. But the few years behind them make him feel old.
The Upside Down is gone, but the trace of something otherworldly still remains.
The memories are one thing, the ghost of his powers another entirely. Will had been able to tap into the hive mind, control the masses of what crawled in the world below. With that world gone, he had assumed all notion of power would be gone from him too. They all had.
But strange things have begun to happen. And Will tells no one.
⭒ November, 1989 ⭒
The first time it happens, he is drawing. It’s the first time in two years that he has drawn, actually. Before this, the last he’d drawn had been Vecna’s spires, hastily rendered in blood red on a barn wall. But now, for the first time in years, he has the time to take a breath, to sit down and let a picture form in his mind before he lets it flow to his hands where he traces the beginnings out in a fresh sketchbook, until the beginnings become a little colour-and-paper world before him. He draws by light from the lamp on the corner of his desk, warm and steady, not a flicker in sight.
The sigh of happiness leaves his chest without a conscious thought, and he finds himself smiling.
And then his fingertips spark.
He leaps back from the desk, up out of his chair, his breathing coming in gasps.
He didn’t see so much as feel it, and though his mind scrabbles for a scientific, logical explanation—the static of the dry winter air, a faulty wire on his desklamp—because he is so fucking done with the supernatural, he knows in his bones that this light had come from him.
He collapses back into his chair, staring at his hands.
Automatically, he reaches up to touch gingerly beneath his nose. But his fingers come away clean; there’s nothing there. No blood.
He starts backpedaling again. He must have imagined the sparks, if nothing else. He stares at his hands, as though the explanation will manifest itself before him.
He sits in silence for minutes, though it feels like hours, just staring and turning his hands over in front of him in his lap.
But the sparks never reappear.
The furrow settles in his brow, anxiety clutching a fist beneath the ribs on his left side. He draws hard, hasty lines the rest of the evening.
⭒ March 22, 1990 ⭒
The second time it happens, he nearly gives himself away.
The doorbell rings at four in the afternoon.
Will is in his room, drawing, as he finds himself doing more and more these days. It’s as though a dam has broken within him; the moment he started drawing again, he couldn’t stop. The ideas ebb and flow like tides, but there’s always something there, niggling, at the corner of his mind, begging to be rendered in graphite, charcoal, oil.
The way the light flits through the trees when he bikes over to the Wheelers’, past the forest, replacing Mirkwood with Lothlórien. The way the dandelions wind up through the grass every spring, stretching for the Sun, and they are childhood in a fleeting, fragile globe, because Will has not grown up enough yet to see past their beauty and call them weeds.
The way the light filters through Mike’s lashes as he dips head when Will makes him laugh.
Will puts the final stroke—who is he kidding, he’s going to come back to this a million times because he’s a perfectionist—on the portrait, staring for what he thinks might be a little too long. He’s getting better. Mike’s paper likeness is devastatingly close to the real thing. Will can almost hear his laughter now.
Which is why he has a small heart attack at the sound of the doorbell. He slams his sketchbook shut.
“Will!” his mom calls. “Can you get that?”
“I’m drawing!” he calls back. It’s a childish thing to do, but in that moment, he feels as though he’s been caught doing something wrong, cheeks flushed and heart racing, even though there’s no one there to see. See him staring lovingly down at a portrait he’s drawn of his best friend.
The doorbell rings again.
“Will!” it’s Jonathan who yells this time. He’s home briefly for Will’s birthday.
Will wonders faintly why there’s two of them unable to just go see who’s at the door, but he’s calmed down enough to shout, “Coming!” and run down the stairs.
When he flings open the door, it’s immediately obvious why he had to be the one to open it.
“Surprise!” the Party yells in unison.
“Oh my god, you’re here?” he says, and his voice breaks slightly. “You’re all here?!”
“It’s your birthday, doofus,” Max says as she pulls him into a hug. “Of course we’re gonna be here.”
Will hugs her back tightly. “I just, I wasn’t expecting this.”
Lucas pulls Max off Will so he can hug him too. “That’s kinda the point of a surprise, Will.”
“We weren’t gonna miss your birthday,” Dustin pipes up, and barrels in for a hug as well.
“Even with your schoolwork?”
Dustin pulls back, shrugging. “It’s basically Spring Break, anyway.”
Will laughs, and his friends smile back at him. All except the one who isn’t there.
“Where’s Mike?” Will asks, in what he hopes is a casual manner.
Lucas throws his hands up. “Typical! We come all this way, and you wanna see the guy that’s been here all along.”
“I assume you want to see him too,” Will says, “having come all this way.”
“Oh we’ve been hiding out in the Wheelers’ basement for the past few hours so we’ve seen plenty of him,” says Max.
“Still,” Dustin frowns, “he did say he’d meet us here.”
Right on cue, Mike comes sprinting up the garden path. Will tries to ignore the swell of his heart in his chest. “I’m here, I’m here! I’m not late.”
“Uh, you definitely are,” Dustin retorts. “We said four PM, remember?”
Mike makes a face. “It’s four-oh-three, Dustin.”
Dustin turns back to Will. “He’s not what you’d call punctual.”
Will shakes his head with a smile, because he doesn’t care. He feels as though a veil of grey has been lifted off of his eyes; the Party is reunited. The world is just that much brighter with them all together.
“Come in,” he steps aside. A chorus of unnecessary thank yous ensue, except for Mike, who’s last through the door, and says, in what can only be described as a cliched vampire voice,
“I thought you’d never ask, Sorcerer,” and makes as though to sink his teeth into Will’s neck.
Will’s breath hitches, but Mike steps away almost immediately, grinning at his own joke. He follows the others into the living room.
Will closes the door behind them all, and thinks about just how far he’d let Mike go for a joke.
⭒
It’s when his mom brings out the homemade cake that she put her whole heart into—and definitely took no less than three people to salvage before it was brought here now—when they’re all sitting around the rickety second-hand dining table in dim, warm light, singing Happy Birthday to him in several different, incorrect keys, that the tears start in his eyes. Happy tears.
He can’t remember the last time he cried happy tears. And yet, it tugs at his heart to look around the table and see El missing, so there must be some sadness in those tears too.
But he feels so loved. Warmth spreads through him.
And the light licks like flames at his fingertips.
He buries his hands in his lap, then thinks better of it and sits on them instead. The others are still singing, so they haven’t noticed anything, and Will intends to keep it that way. He tries to control his breathing, and sits through the end of the song, sits through the start of his mom cutting cake, then makes some nonsense excuse about wanting a glass of water from the kitchen, and hurries from the room.
In the kitchen, he opens the back door and ducks outside. He starts shivering immediately, but that’s kind of the point. He hopes it will be enough to distract the light rising within him.
And maybe the Universe feels kindly inclined toward Will Byers just this once, because it’s snowing.
It’s not thick, but little flakes gather rapidly on the sleeves of his sweater, in his hair, tapping against his nose, and the shock of seeing snow when he can also see tiny sprouts of green starting on the trees all around is indeed enough to push back the light.
The screendoor squeaks.
“Hey,” Mike steps outside. “What’re you doing out here? You do know it’s your party, right?”
Will snorts, stepping from foot to foot to try to keep warm. “Thanks for the memo.”
Mike bumps his shoulder against Will’s, and warmth ricochets through him. “Anytime. So, come on, what’s happening out here?”
“Mike,” Will frowns at him pointedly. “It’s March.”
“Um, yeah, obviously? Did I forget to mention the reason it’s your party is that it’s your birthday?”
“Mike. It’s snowing.”
Mike looks at him blankly, and his body clearly understands before his mind, because his shoulders are hunched as he rubs his arms for warmth. Then he lifts his face to the sky.
Will watches as snowflakes begin to settle on Mike’s lashes, glittering.
“So it is,” Mike says quietly.
There is a certain silence to snow, Will thinks. Even when it does not lay in blankets, the moment it begins to fall, a hush settles over the world. Everything is softer, more beautiful. But then, Will loves springtime without the snow, too.
He’s beginning to think he loves everything when Mike is around.
“I didn’t notice until you said it.”
A smile creeps onto Will’s face. “I noticed you didn’t.”
Mike rolls his eyes at Will, then looks back up at the sky. “Snow, in March,” he murmurs. “When it felt like summer yesterday.”
“That’s the Midwest for you.”
“I don’t know.” He continues to stare up at the sky, until the snowflakes grow fatter, and he blinks them away. A tiny tear of melted snow runs down his cheek as he turns back to Will. “It seems magic follows you.”
Will opens his mouth, but then finds very suddenly that he has nothing to say to this.
“You’ve got to stop looking straight up like that,” he says instead, quickly. “You’ll blind yourself.”
Mike smiles at him. “It’s just so hard to look away.”
The blush that floods Will’s cheeks seeps all the way down to his freezing toes.
“Idiot. You’re literally crying snow tears.”
“What?”
Will gestures meaninglessly, sputters, because why the hell is he even talking right now. “The snow! It melts on your eyelashes and you look like you’re crying!”
“Oh,” Mike says. “So that’s why it feels like my eyes are freezing shut.”
Will rolls his eyes. “You’re ridiculous.”
Mike wipes at his eyes. “Jesus Christ. I think they’re just watering now.”
Will sighs. “Here,” he says, and doesn’t think. He just pulls his sweater sleeve over one hand, raises himself up on his tippy toes, and dabs the tears from Mike’s face.
Mike stills beneath his hand. The tension dissipates from his brow, his eyes no longer scrunched up.
Will wobbles on his toes, and Mike, eyes still closed, grabs Will’s other wrist to steady him, holding his hand against his chest.
Will draws his hands back to himself. Mike’s fingers slip from his wrist, and Will’s heart hammers in his throat.
“There,” he whispers.
Mike opens his eyes. “Thanks.”
Will stares at him for a beat too long. “Cake?” he blurts.
A wry smile twists Mike’s mouth. “Always. Lead the way, birthday boy.”
Will blushes in the dark, and hurries inside before there’s time for Mike to see.
⭒ April, 1990 ⭒
The third time it happens, he is alone again.
He is not lonely, just alone. He feels safe in his bed, the window cracked to let in the cool spring breeze, his mom’s and Hopper’s voices floating up to him from the floor below. They now live in a quaint house on the other side of the forest—just far enough from other houses to not be suburbia, but close enough to civilisation to not be another cabin in the woods.
The night is quiet, and he has finally crawled into bed after a long day of just him and Mike. Hanging out, like they used to.
For hours, they had talked through hypotheticals for a DnD campaign that will probably never be played, because the party has dispersed and now it is just Will and Mike.
Will’s heart aches at the thought. He sometimes has to remind himself that he still has Mike, that he’s not going anywhere. Not that Mike has promised not to leave, or anything, but he’s confessed to having no plans that will take him away from Hawkins anytime soon. So if Will can’t have it all, all of them, all together, no Upside Down and just the rest of their beautiful, peaceful lives ahead of them, then at least Will has Mike. It is Will and Mike, like it always was, how Will always hopes it will always be.
Mike had detailed his new idea for a political-intrigue campaign, in which the Party are invited to a celebration at the palace of a nearby kingdom, and things quickly go south. He described the food-laden long tables in a great ballroom shining with candlelight, and the dark corners at the edge of the scene that lead to trysts and conspiracies on the cobblestones of a frozen courtyard, all whispers and knives and betrayals and pacts. Will could see it all glittering before him, and he’d drifted away in the fantasy, chin leaned on his hand as Mike wove stories from thin air, for no one but him. Only him. Just them, in the basement, across the table from each other. Just Will, gazing at Mike, having to remind himself not to let his eyes drift to Mike’s mouth.
Now, lying in bed, it reminds Will of one of the last nights the party played DnD before each went their separate ways. Sitting across the table, watching Mike frighten them all with his tales of shadowy figures, one last time.
He remembers the stupid plastic fangs Mike pushed over his teeth and bared at the rest of them, how briefly, an image of Mike sinking his teeth into Will’s neck had flashed before his eyes, before his body burned with embarrassment at the thought.
His body knew better than his mind.
Of course Mike wasn’t his Tammy. He’d believed that like a depressed person smiling at their reflection in a mirror because psychology had told them they could trick themselves into thinking they’re happy that way. He’d believed in it because he needed to, like a star stubbornly holding itself up against gravity though the end would always be the same—collapse, defeat.
Will supposes he has reached defeat, now. He will never get over Mike Wheeler unless he gets far, far away, with Mike nowhere in his sights. And if Mike calls, Will’s foolish heart will latch and hold onto the phone cord for dear life and cling forever. And if he visits, Will will entertain stupid, childish fantasies that always end with Mike’s arms around him, nights in the same bed with no space in between them.
Sometimes it fills Will with despair, how much he will never get over Mike. That is, unless he tries really, really hard to get over him. The problem, of course, is that Will doesn’t want to do that. His unending crush gives his brain too much of a sugar high, drunk on romantic thoughts that will never happen.
And so he thinks of Mike without inhibition, thinks of their feet accidentally touching beneath the table that night with Dustin and Lucas and Max sitting around them, pretends there’s a chance it wasn’t accidental.
He thinks of today, of sitting at that same table, but on the same side this time. He thinks of their elbows brushing and makes up the same stories about their elbows as their feet. Makes it sound like a gentle love and not a desperate fantasy.
Mike may be a storyteller, but Will is a liar.
He lies to himself until his heart beats faster and he’s smiling at nothing in the dark, alone in his bed but hand in Mike’s in his mind. Mike’s hands are soft for but the callouses from the handlebars on his bike, his fingers are clasped between Will’s, and his thumb traces soft circles over the skin between Will’s thumb and forefinger. Dream-Will sighs and nestles closer, sinking into the warmth of Mike’s chest, and dream-Mike pulls him closer, arm around his waist, hand resting on his hip. His eyes are bright in the darkness, full of a light that has nothing to do with filaments and electricity, and everything to do with Will.
Real-Will sighs happily into the dark.
Except it’s no longer dark.
A soft glow is emanating from his chest.
He looks down, and jolts at the sight.
The light falters.
His breathing comes in rushed gulps, and he throws off his blankets, sits up and pulls his knees to his chest instinctually, like making himself smaller will protect him from whatever this is.
He scrambles to find what led to this—what he was doing, what he was thinking—before he remembers the pattern of thoughts from before, and his heartbeat slows.
Mike, laughing this afternoon at something Will said, something stupid that he now can’t even remember what was. Mike, telling Will to hold on a second, then rummaging through plastic bins Will didn’t even know the Wheelers still had, before pulling out the wizard’s hat Will thought had ended up in boxes for Goodwill. Then Will laughing, and Mike grinning, perching again on the chair next to Will’s before leaning—just a little closer, enough for Will’s heartbeat to quicken—to place the hat on Will’s head. Mike, reclining, arms folded, to admire his work in the form of a starry purple hat placed on a rightful head, like some knight in a tale, returning home from a quest with a prize for his princess.
Will clasps his hand over his heart, gasping until his breathing slows and he dares to lift his hand away from his chest.
The glow is there again, pulsing softly, blooming over his heart. He stares at it, unblinking, almost until his eyes start to water.
It reminds him of something, that bloom. He rifles through the comparisons in his head like a stack of cards—a flower, the mandalas they made in Mrs. Harris’ class in fifth grade, the Fibonacci spirals Dustin’s always going on about—but nothing satisfies.
Then it hits him.
The light blooming over his heart looks like a gateway to the Upside Down.
A shiver ratchets down his spine, and the light disappears completely in time to his shock. A prickling feeling that makes the little hairs on his neck stand up follows. Instinctually, his hand rises, palm covering the back of his neck.
Is this Vecna? Has he stuck his claws in Will’s back again, one final time?
But how could it be? Will watched his mom kill that monster, hacking over and over until her arms must have ached from the effort—yet she had shown no signs of tiring. But what else could it be—who else? The Upside Down is gone, Vecna is dead, so who is calling the shots now?
A new unknown, the thought of some new horror, almost terrifies him more than knowing it is Vecna.
The devil you know, the devil you don’t.
His thoughts spiral until he is gasping again, sucking in the air like he’s just learned how, and he covers his mouth.
Suddenly, his bed is not safe, the open window is like an open flame, and the shadows the night makes of the world outside is like oxygen, fueling the blaze.
He stumbles out of bed and to the door, throws it open, then falls back against it when it’s closed again. He shuts his eyes, opens them again when he recoils at the dark.
His pulse is loud, drowning out all else, but he forces himself to count, to breathe, until the false vignette recedes from the edges of his green vision and his hearing is no longer just a ringing sound.
Out of the deep end again, he notices the light on the lower floor is still on. The sound of his mom’s and Hopper’s voices flit up from below.
It calms him somewhat. He decides to follow that comfort.
Downstairs, he walks into the kitchen. His mom is smiling, and Hopper is laughing. It’s clear Hopper is laughing about something she’s just said, and for a moment, still unnoticed, the moment hangs crystalised in the air, his parents happy and in love.
In love. He knows that one. Fleetingly, he wonders what it might be like for someone to love you back.
“Will!” his mom’s voice cuts into his thoughts, and she’s looking at him, still smiling.
“Hey kiddo,” Hopper says. Honestly, Will doesn’t mind.
“Still up, honey?” his mom says to his silence, smile slowly fading. “I thought you’d gone to bed.”
He tries to speak, tries to form the words, but nothing he tries is right, so in the end, nothing comes out at all.
His mom’s brow furrows in concern, and Will is sure he mirrors the expression. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
Will meets her eyes, and he doesn’t want to say it, because saying it will make it real. But he doesn’t want to lie either.
He shrugs. “Just thinking. Couldn’t sleep.”
“Come sit,” she says. Hopper remains silent, but pulls out a chair for him.
Will pads over to the table and sits down on the proffered chair.
“Wanna tell us what about?”
“Or just your mom,” Hopper offers.
Will shakes his head in Hopper’s direction. “No, it’s fine. I’m just thinking about… Everything.” Not a complete lie.
A silence stretches, and they seem to recognise he’s not going to say any more. But they understand better than most parents could.
Hopper nods once. “You want hot cocoa?”
Will nods.
“Alright,” Hopper gets up with the sigh of someone with bones much older than his. “I’ll make cocoa.”
“Thanks,” Will says quietly. He looks up, into his mom’s concerned eyes.
She reaches out and ruffles his hair. He squints, but not in discomfort. His mom ruffling his hair is so familiar, he almost thinks this will all be okay, no matter what.
“I’m here if you need me,” she says simply, and Will smiles.
⭒ June, 1990 ⭒
The fourth time it happens, he is on his way home from buying groceries.
Or rather, he had been on his way home from buying groceries—actually, just milk, because that’s what they keep running out of because it’s been used for cereal and coffee and hot cocoa and apparently every other food stuff under the Sun—when he’d strayed from his path.
A smudge left behind by the last of the daylight dusts the horizon a vibrant pink. Heat still radiates from the asphalt. He’s rolling his bike along, the carton of milk tucked under one arm.
And the ground is vibrating beneath his feet. It feels like an earthquake.
He freezes.
But then he realises it is not an earthquake, nor a supernatural event passed off as one, but plain old sound, reverberating through the ground.
He keeps walking, more slowly now, until the nonsensical vibration gives way to music.
He recognises the familiar synths and bass, the beat pounding in time to his heart. He wouldn’t have missed that sound anywhere, the way The Cure always knew how he was feeling. They’d released this album a little over a year ago, around the time when the Party had all graduated. Will had bought it immediately, using approximately a fifth of all the money to his name, and had let the tears stream down his cheeks as he listened to it alone in his room, the door shut.
Disintegration sounded like ending, like the final curtain coming down, like fear and hopelessness and horror, like falling in love beautifully and losing it over, and over, and over, and sometimes still looking back on it with fondness in the afterlight, despite how wretched it had made you feel.
Disintegration sounded like Robert Smith had carved Will’s thoughts from out his head and slipped them into a projector like a slide, baring his life and his love against a blank wall for Will to see, to read, to disentangle. It was everything he’d needed it to be.
It’s the title track playing. He follows the sound, until he finds himself standing in front of the door to a bar.
A wooden, clearly handpainted sign declares the name of the place to be The Carnation Club, an extravagant name for a place that looks about as run-down as anywhere else in Hawkins, and would blend into the scenery of any town square in the Midwest. The windows are dusty and shielded by the heavy curtains inside. The paint on the facade is chipping, and beneath he can see brick with illegible writing, in the kind of typography you’d have found outside a general store some thirty years ago.
But the music makes it different. Will hasn’t heard Disintegration played in public since its release. Things would probably be different if Robin still worked at the Squawk, but she doesn’t, and this album is not exactly easy listening.
Before he’s fully thought it through, he’s locking his bike against a speed limit sign, pushing open the door to the club, and stepping inside.
The bar is one big, open room, and the lighting is about as dim and red as a darkroom, smoke clouding the air and revealing little of the patrons within. He fights the urge to cough, knowing it will only out him even more as an outsider, and waits for his eyes to adjust.
The first thing he sees is the people dancing. But not the average bobbing up-and-down he’s seen at the weddings of family friends, not the awkward stepping here-and-there of teenagers at the Snowball, but something else entirely.
Those dancing move uninhibitedly, every motion a full-body act, eyes closed, arms rising and falling in time to the music, carving out patterns in the smoke, swaying in full submission to the sound.
His eyes catch on the glitter that sparkles on someone’s cheek, the gothic dress of a purple-haired girl, the red lipstick smeared across a boy’s mouth.
That’s when he notices: there are women dancing with women, and men dancing with men. And no one bats an eye.
Someone brushes past him, shouts something that sounds like Sorry, darl’, over the thrum of the music, and shoots him a wink. It’s a boy, not much older than him, dressed in a collared shirt and jeans just like anyone else Will might have seen on the street, but his eyes are lined in black, and the image is instantly burned into Will’s vision.
He looked so cool. And he didn’t act as though Will was an outsider, didn’t ask him what the hell he was doing in this bar, this bar, of all places. He just assumed Will belonged there.
Will’s heart beats unsteadily, not out of fear, he thinks, but in a sudden deliriousness with the weight of what he’s discovered here.
He sinks into an armchair that stands helpfully at the side of the room away from the bartop, the kind of chair that should have no business being in a bar, yet does not seem out of place here.
He realises he’s still clutching the lone carton of milk from his long-forgotten grocery quest. He sets it down on the floor, hoping no one will notice a newcomer who never meant to come here at all, but was suddenly possessed and arrived here as though by fate.
For moments, maybe minutes, he sits in silence, just watching. His hands itch for his sketchbook, but upon inspection, he doesn’t have so much as a pencil in his pockets. If he had, he might have drawn on the milk carton.
And then, he sees it: a rainbow flag hanging down from the rafters at the back of the bar where the room narrows, drawing the eye to it like a focal point. It looks slightly battered, slightly dirty, worn beneath the touch of hands like it’s been hung a thousand times. At least, Will imagines it might have been pulled down more than once, by people like Troy.
But here, before him, he sees the truth: that there are other people like him, and they embrace who they are, just like Robin does and how Will has begun to, and they are not alienated. They are at home amongst each other, and they are dancing to the same music Will loves. He thinks he could do an entire study in highlights and shadows of the way the light spins off their sequins and glitter and bright-eyed stares.
He feels it before he sees it this time, the warmth that starts in his heart and runs down to his hands like it’s trying to escape.
His eyes snap to his fingertips. The sparks there are unmistakable this time, light tracing the lines of his veins, and it’s almost blinding in its contrast against the red glow of the room around him.
“Hey!” someone yells, and Will stands immediately, dizzy in his fright. “No white light! Didn’t ya get the memo?”
Fortuitously, the light chooses this moment to dim, and Will’s heart slows to a manageable pace, though his palms are sweating and the back of his neck has gone cold.
Then someone laughs, and the same voice as before calls, “Ruins your night vision, can’t see the stars.”
“Shut up, Beaky,” another person says, and is met with laughter. Will sighs in quiet relief.
Then he makes for the door.
He’s tired of being afraid. He remembers that now. It’s that same feeling he had when Vecna sent the demogorgons in for the kill—to kill his friends, to kill Mike, to kill his mother—and he wouldn’t let the fear win any more. Yes, he was still afraid when he raised his arms and tore them limb from limb, but he did it anyway, because the cost of doing nothing would have been insurmountable in the end.
Vecna would not have needed to kill him, with those images seared into his brain. Will thinks he might have done it himself.
And so he storms into the night, not caring who hears him or who sees him, because he is so fucking over this. All he wants to do is draw, and have stupid, cliche family outings with his mom and Jonathan and Hopper, hang out with the Party when they reunite again for Christmas, sneak back into The Carnation Club again, maybe get an ear piercing so he can wear earrings like David Bowie, and watch movies in the basement with Mike, and walk along the train tracks with Mike—aimlessly reminiscing about an alternate reality in which they all traversed the woods with no intent but to fantasise about faraway kingdoms and quests—and bike to and from their houses, and watch the sunset with Mike from the roof of the Squawk because Robin secretly made them a copy of the key, and stare into Mike’s eyes for long enough to convince himself that he’s over him, that now he’s looking just because can, without his heart trying to burst from his chest or the blush rising to his cheeks or without letting his hand sit empty on the table next to Mike’s, hoping he will reach for him—and he and he wants and he wants and he wants.
Oh, how Will Byers wants.
He’s tried not to. But Will fell in love probably the moment Mike asked him to be his friend. He couldn’t have stopped it, had he even wanted to try. And he fell more and more hopelessly in love for every day that went by. In love from little things, like Mike glancing over at him whenever something funny or stupid happened, or remembering his favourite comics after Will mentioned them once. He fell in love from things that probably felt small to Mike but were big to Will, like Mike telling him everything that had happened while he was gone, or putting his arm around Will in the moments before Will began to drift in his mind and slip into the shadows. In love from the big things, like Mike saying they’d go crazy together. Mike, saying Hawkins wasn’t the same without him.
He knew that other people could sense it too, that his feelings for his best friend went beyond what was acceptable for two adolescent boys. The stares of those people, their snide remarks, and the outright slurs—when fear of difference made people into monsters far worse than those below—told him it was wrong. But deep down, nothing about it felt wrong. It felt more right than anything else, like his sense of self was coming into focus whenever he let out his breath for long enough to think about it, really think about what he felt and not what others tried to impose upon him.
And in the end, the thing that had alienated him was what had saved him, saved everyone from the demogorgons that night. This thing that he had thought was such a weakness—it is the greatest power of all.
Now, he’s beginning to think that while this—whatever it is—may be an aftereffect of Vecna, it doesn’t mean he’s back. Because this feels nothing like the Hivemind and the Mind Flayer.
No, the light feels warm. Not that it wants to be warm; the light doesn’t seem to want anything. It is Will who wants, and he wants to feel that warmth again, the light like an embrace.
But he can’t let it keep happening like this, out of the blue. He needs to learn to control it, and he can’t let the light go out before he has a chance this time. So he thinks of light to call forth light—shining in the eyes of the people at The Carnation Club, reflected by their glitter, absorbed by their dark clothes, mirrored in their motions—because it’s all he’s got to go on.
Outside, it’s dark now, and he’s running, awkwardly cradling the light in his hands. It dims more for every moment that goes by.
He reaches the woods before he realises he’s even decided to go there.
He stops, right on the edge of the treeline, and stumbles, shoes scuffing as he catches himself right before he falls.
He tilts his head back slowly. The trees tower over him, and their branches shift, creaking against one another. He can barely see out here, so maybe “Beaky” was right about the white and red light, because his night vision is as good as nothing.
A leaf crunches nearby. Something sways in the shadows, and he thinks it’s a person until he realises it’s just another branch.
The light flickers in his hands.
“No, no, no, no, no, no—shit!”
He sits down roughly in the dead leaves, pressing the heels of his lightless hands to his eyes. He tries to revive his train of thought, remembering the pride flag, the boy with the black eyeliner, The Cure, Disintegration, glitter and lipstick and velvet—but he can feel he’s distracted, and the warmth doesn’t come.
“Fuck!”
“Hey! Who’s there?”
He swears again as the beam of a flashlight wends its way through the dark, then scrambles to his feet and turns and runs deeper into the woods.
When he finally stops, the trees almost do too, parting into an open space in the middle of the woods. No Moon shines overhead, and between the cover of the circling trees, the dark is absolute.
No one has followed him.
“Okay,” he says to the empty clearing.
The air is warm, even with the wind wrapping around the trees, and his shoulders sink.
He closes his eyes and thinks of drawing in his room in the warm light of his desk lamp, undisturbed, only limited by how fast his hands can move as the ideas flood his head.
Here, in the forest, his fingertips tingle.
He thinks of the bar and the red gleam that recalled Jonathan’s dark room, thinks of music and the dancing, thinks of joining in.
A small spark.
He thinks of the glow from the bare light bulb in the Wheeler basement, and below it, the DnD board and the Party all together.
Or what’s left of them.
It hits him like a tidal wave, extinguishing any semblance of a flame he had cradled against the wind.
El. Poor El. After everything she’d been through, every life she’d had ripped away from her, every torment and terror that she—that no one—should have ever even seen in nightmares. The familiar sadness curls fingers around Will’s heart. So many strangers had been against her, people who knew nothing of her and were only too happy to refuse to know. Cowards in white coats, girls in rollerskates and neon scrunchies, men who carried guns like they had a right to point them at a child. And in the end—
He can’t breathe.
“No,” he says aloud, shakes his head like he’s still a child too, like that will banish the thoughts from his head. A tear slides down his cheek, and he falls to his knees in the clearing, hands trembling.
“No.” He tries to keep his voice firm though the sound that comes out is half-strangled by the sob caught in his throat.
He shuts his eyes against the dark, and tries to think of something brighter.
He thinks of lamplight, thinks of sunlight, thinks of fire. Fire, burning in pockets on the road between the rubble of the Downtown Hawkins main street, fire, like the burning stars above him, fire, coursing through his veins, fire—
You’re a real-life, honest to god sorcerer!
He remembers Mike’s arms wrap around him, more tightly than ever, and he thinks Mike’s name falls from his lips. He’s on his tiptoes, reaching up, and Mike’s curls are against his cheek. He closes his eyes, breathing him in. Mike is warm, his frame solid beneath Will’s arms, and Will remembers the moment so vividly he almost forgets it’s a memory.
The light surges out through his palms. His eyes fly open.
It’s so bright it hurts. He squints against the sting as his vision adjusts. The warmth heats his skin, and he is the horizon at sunset.
The light knifes through the darkness, ending only where it meets the ground like it is some heavy sword he has laboured to raise. Experimentally, he lifts his hands as he would, were the beam of light in fact a sword.
And then he blinks, because suddenly, it is. He’s holding a sword.
He nearly drops it. He’s holding a sword. A sword made of light that flows from his hands.
Is he dreaming?
He nudges the point of the sword against his shoe, then pulls it away immediately. The point of the sword is not sharp, exactly, but it burns white-hot, exactly the same as when he’d touched a hot lightbulb as a kid, after his mom had repeatedly told him not to.
The brief shock of pain brings him back to reality. A sword is too dangerous when he doesn’t know what he’s doing.
Although maybe he knows more than he thinks.
He acts on something like instinct, drawing his hands together over the hilt of the sword until they form the shape of an opening clamshell, then curls his fingers into his palms. He clasps his hands together, and when he opens them again, he’s holding an orb of light.
Little ribbons of it coil and stretch to form the orb, and the light pulses softly, as it did when it glowed from his chest that night in his room.
He tosses the orb upward, and it lands as though upon an invisible axis, turning slowly in the air.
A laugh bubbles up in his throat, and he feels like a child, staring in wonder, laughing in delight. He feels he could float up into the night, with how much weight is gone from his chest.
This is not Vecna. No power of Vecna’s could make him feel so weightless, unfettered by the world. Will doesn’t know what this is, and part of him doesn’t care, because it feels at home in his body. He feels at home in his body.
Here, in the darkness, he is loved. And it all comes from him.
He wonders what Mike would think of this. Would he be afraid, as Will was? Supernatural powers in this town never heralded the coming of anything good. Or would he stare in wonder, call Will a sorcerer again?
The light burns brighter.
It is dangerous how this… magic… is tied to what he’s doing, what he’s thinking. The consequences of it could be catastrophic. For one, there’s the government, who are keeping tabs on them all for sure. If he keeps having outbursts like this, someone will notice, and one day, it will be the wrong person. Though Hawkins Lab stands no more, he has no doubt they’d find somewhere else equally macabre to lock him away.
He is dangerous.
He needs to stop this. Keep it hidden, so people don’t get hurt. The way they got hurt all the other times they tried to protect him.
He stretches a hand toward the sky, and the orb flies back into his grasp as though by magnetic force. He stares at it for a moment, still unable to comprehend that this light is his. Then he closes his fist over the orb, and the light melts back into his skin, and finally, disappears.
Then he runs.
Stray branches scratch his face as though trying to pull him back to the clearing. He resists the lure.
He has only a rough idea of where he’s going, but his feet pound steadily against the crunch of dead and dying leaves, and in minutes, miraculously, he breaks through the treeline just short of where he entered the forest.
The street lamps are dim compared to the light he has just held in his hands. The road is dark, and though he can hear sounds of humanity, they are far away, laughter and chatter muffled as though they belong to another world, beyond some veil.
There is no Upside Down, yet he carries it with him. Maybe he always will.
He finds his bike where he left it, kicks the stand and swings his leg over the seat in one smooth motion, and then he’s off down the road. The world flies by him, the wind rushing past his face, pulling fingers through his hair. The streetlights blur, dwindling in number as he gets farther from the town center, then disappear entirely as the forest slips back into sight.
He pedals fast, breathing hard. But there is nothing to run from this time. Nothing but himself. And exactly how long can you run from that?
Based on everything that’s happened in his short eighteen years, he thinks it’s not long.
But he needs to keep it all at bay, at least for long enough to form some kind of plan. And so he banishes the light from his mind, and thinks of the dark.
Hold back, like you hold everything back. Hold back your light, hold back your love.
But there are costs, to holding back your light, your love, your life. For one, it slowly kills you. For another, when your friends die anyway, they die not knowing how wonderful, how perceptive and special and cool they were. And you are left with nothing but the terror that is memory, and more questions than answers about what the world around you has become. Who you have become.
What a terrible price to have paid for there to be light in the world.
⭒
When he unlocks the front door, his mom is already halfway down the hall to meet him.
“Will?”
She looks distressed, and Will glances at his watch with a wince. He should have been more careful, not lost track of time. He’d said he’d be home at the time that was half an hour ago, and no one takes chances any more.
Mercifully, because she knows he’s tired of her worrying, though he understands it, his mom says nothing. Her mouth quirks in a small smile, and her shoulders visibly slump.
“Hey, honey,” she says, squeezing his shoulder. “Did you buy milk?”
He thinks of the carton, abandoned by the leg of an overstuffed armchair in a gaybar.
Shit.
Now how is he going to explain that one?