Archive of Our Own

Hands seize his shoulders before he can even fully understand what he's looking at.

For a second, everything is blurred together:, smoke, ash, tears, sunlight breaking through clouds that had hung over Hawkins for what felt like his entire life. Then Jonathan's face comes into focus in front of him, pale, exhausted, and streaked with dirt, but smiling.

His expression looks wrong after everything that has happened, after who they've just lost.

Relief crumples Jonathan's face as he pulls Will forward, wrapping both arms around him so tightly it almost hurts. A kiss lands against the top of his head. Jonathan gathers him up like he's afraid that if he lets go, Will might disappear again.

Will lets himself be held because Jonathan is his brother and the war is over.

Soldiers are ushering them around, Mike is screaming, his mom is arguing with someone, Hopper is shouting. In his peripheral he can see Lucas reach towards Max before stopping himself, arms held up, terrified. Dustin is dragged into a car.

It's over and Jonathan is holding him.

Henry, the Mind Flayer, the Upside Down. Every twisting vine that had wrapped itself around him is gone.

The demo creatures are gone.

Jane is gone, too. She'd taken it all with her.

“EL-! ELEVEN-”

The realization lands unevenly, pieces of it slotting awkwardly into place. The victory feels fractured, somehow, impossible to hold all at once. Everyone had dreamed about this ending for years. They had fought for it, bled for it, and lost pieces of themselves to it. Jane had just died for it, and now it was here.

Will swallows hard and lowers his forehead against Jonathan's collarbone. His brother's shirt is damp with sweat and smeared with some weird hard grey residue that smells like plastic, and beneath it he can feel the frantic hammering of Jonathan's heart. Jonathan is alive, his mom is alive, Mike is alive. Dustin, Lucas, Max. Robin, Hopper, Steve; alive.

Not Jane.

He feels strangely empty.

For the first time since he was twelve years old, the connection is quiet. It is completely, utterly gone. No awareness or pressure at the back of his skull, no voice in his ears or tingling under his bones.

His thoughts are his own, there's no heartbeat thumping out of time in his chest, and the goosebumps on his skin are just from cold air.

Mike screams again and Will flinches. Jonathan cups the back of his head for one blissful second before they're being pulled apart, a gun shoved into the base of Will's spine, someone telling him to lift his hands and move.

Jonathan reaches for him, but Will just moves, not letting himself cry.

Jane is dead. The gun prompts him forward faster, and he squeezes his eyes shut. He can't think about Jane. If he thinks about Jane, he'll think about the way she smiled before she left. The way she'd looked at all of them, the way she'd chosen this.

He ends up next to Murray of all people, shoved into the back of a black van, his hands cuffed behind him. His stomach curdles, sick. He turns to his shoulder to cough and his mucus is black.

___________________________________

They pumped it out of him. His insides are clean now.

Will presses his knuckles hard against his stomach until a dull ache begins to bloom beneath the pressure. He takes a slow breath, then another, forcing air into lungs that suddenly feel too small. His bedroom is quiet.

There is no pressure curling around the back of his neck, no cold sensation creeping down his spine, but rather a heaviness lodged in his throat.

He's two weeks free from the lab and his spit is clear. Every connection that had bound itself to him, every piece of darkness that had rooted itself inside him, is gone forever.

His head is quiet. His body belongs to him.

His bedroom is filled with the kind of silence he used to dream about. His old house back under his mom's name, prescription bottles on his nightstand, his friends one walkie away, just like childhood. His mom's already begun hanging the Christmas lights.

Will stares at the wall across from his bed and swallows hard.

His stomach twists.

Slowly, he rolls onto his side, curling inward without meaning to. His palms settle against his lower stomach, fingers spread wide, hands bigger than they used to be. Or maybe all of him is bigger, and he's aging, and his body is just more his now than he can remember.

His eyes burn.

No demos, no Mind Flayer, no Henry, no Hive Mind. Just Will.

Will squeezes his eyes shut, a shuddering breath leaving him. He curls tighter beneath his blankets, pressing his hands harder against his stomach until the pressure begins to hurt.

He feels so empty.

Just one heartbeat, only his voice in his head, one lonely body curled up in bed.

___________________________________

The summer air is hot on his skin, making it stick with sweat. His ankles hurt from the chafing on his shoes and a glance down shows him that he's wearing an old pair, a few sizes too small. He doesn't remember putting them on.

The days have become slippery lately, difficult to hold onto. Time passes and hours disappear, weeks vanishishing. Sometimes he blinks and realizes an entire afternoon is gone, lost somewhere inside the fog that settles in his head when he’s not focusing.

His mom says it's grief, that he needs time to process it all. She says that his trauma is deep and complex, along with other words that Will knows she read from books in the library, concerned for him.

The doctors say his hormones are still recovering from prolonged stress, that his body spent too many years in survival mode and doesn't know how to stop. They say he'll get better in time. It's been a year.

Jonathan says it's his medication. Mom stopped taking hers back when they were still children, after a breakdown led to her smashing all of her pills and crying at the kitchen table. Jonathan doesn't say it, but Will knows he wants to get rid of Will's, too, because he's convinced it's ‘draining the life out of him.’

Will sometimes thinks about opening the lid to each one and crushing them all into a power. He could take them all at once that way, get mom's money's worth one last time. It would make a slurry in some water, like when Dustin used to eat wet sand.

Will doesn't, though. He takes the recommended amount each day with a glass of orange juice, holds it down until lunch, and then loses it all, the process repeating daily.

He blinks, and he's staring at a door, rusty and old, with a small welcome sign swinging on it.

His knuckles are already knocking by the time he's done swallowing the sickness in his mouth. He lets his eyes soak in where the rust has peeled the paint, pressing his left hand against his stomach.

Empty, as though something was removed and never replaced.

He's grieving Jane.

She should have gotten older, graduated, maybe even learned to drive if that was something she wanted. She could go to college or get a stupid office job, or move across the world and spend her whole life on vacations.

Will remembers the girl, new to Lenora, trying so desperately to be normal. The way she'd watched other teenagers, and the way she'd studied them like she was learning a language she could never quite speak herself. She used to copy who she could, stealing Will's clothes without asking or taking his mom's makeup to try on when she thought everyone else was asleep.

She had wanted it so badly, the opportunity for a normal life, the chance to become a normal girl.

She would never have either. She doesn't even have a body to bury, her grave empty and hollow behind Hopper's cabin.

The grief settles heavily in his chest, tinged with a familiar taste of regret, because that isn't why he's here.

The door creaks open. "Hello?"

Max narrows her eyes at him from the doorway, squinted. She says everything looks cloudy, like she's sifting through dirty water. He wonders what he looks like to her, if his clouds are dark and grey or the same as everyone else's.

“...Hi, Max. Sorry to bother you so late.”

“You're not a bother,” Max dismisses. Her hair is shorter now, thinner than it used to be. Her face still carries traces of what Vecna did to her. Marked by Henry for life, and forced to carry his brand even after she dies. Her bones will be permanently fractured, and Henry will sleep in her grave with her. Inside of her.

His throat tightens. "Can I come in?" The words come out weak, cracking a little, but he can't muster up any embarrassment.

Max's eyebrows furrow. She shifts awkwardly, balancing herself on a crutch as she steps aside. One hand remains wrapped around the doorframe, and Will immediately notices the way she's favoring one leg and putting too much weight on the other. Her jaw clenches from pain.

She's not supposed to be standing, Lucas complains about it constantly, and Will knows because he's heard Lucas cry about it. He’s begged her to listen to her doctors, and argued with her about using her wheelchair, and Will averts his eyes because he's a horrible person deep down and he knows that.

Will follows her inside. Before he knows it, he's sitting on a worn chair with a chipped mug cradled between cold hands. The tea is lukewarm.

Max drops heavily onto the couch across from him. She swings her legs up with visible effort and her feet are discolored again, purple around the edges. Her circulation was one of her biggest struggles, having to keep her legs elevated and blood flow stimulated. Physical therapy helps but Will can see the damage every time she pushes herself too hard, too desperate for results.

The sight makes his chest hurt, because Max survived and somehow her survival looks like this. Will got lucky. Truly, wholly, and thankfully lucky.

The room settles into silence and Will grips the mug harder. His fingers tremble, the porcelain crackling faintly beneath the pressure.

"What is it?"

His head jerks up. "What?"

"What is it?" Max repeats, watching him. Will loves her, but he's always hated this look, the way she searches for things he wants to hide. Always wanting to know more, to push until she understands.

"I'm sorry?"

Max sighs, slumping deeper into the cushions, her eyes on Will's hands. He lowers the mug until his fingers are against his thighs, resisting the urge to fidget.

"What is up with you?" She asks quietly.

Will doesn't look at her. The tea bag in his mug has split open, and tiny leaves drift through the water, darkening it, spreading slowly outward. He watches them sink. Infesting, and invading, taking over everything around them.

His stomach twists.

"Do you ever miss it?"

The question escapes before he can stop it, but Max's answer comes instantly. "No." Will feels himself flinch.

Max doesn't hesitate or wonder. Of course she doesn't miss it. Why would she? Henry stole everything from her. His stomach churns. The emptiness inside him stretches wider.

Max lets out a slow breath. "I'm so glad it's over." Will stares into his tea. "I miss things before it happened," she continues. "I miss skateboarding. I miss being stupid and sneaking into movie theaters and stealing ice cream and complaining about homework, you know? I miss when our biggest problem was figuring out how to not get caught doing something dumb."

Will swallows. “Sorry. I don't know why I asked.”

“Do you?” His tongue darts out to lick his lips, feeling them sting, sore from how often he finds himself gnawing on them. “You don't have to answer.”

“...I don't,” he lies, because it is the only thing he seems to do now.

“Good,” Max huffs. “No more fear and no more wondering who's going to die next.” She pauses. “I wouldn't go back," Max whispers, hesitating. "Not for anyone, and not to change anything. Wanting only makes it worse, okay?”

Her voice catches, and Will nods. His heart feels like it's tearing itself apart because he would, and he knows he would. He would change everything. He would've never ridden home that night, never gotten caught, never taken. He would've hidden better when he was there, run faster, stayed lost, taped his mouth shut, anything. Whatever it took.

"Is this about El?" Max's voice is gentle, and the kindness almost makes him sick, because it should be. It should be about Jane. It should be about the girl who saved the world, who died for all of them.

"...Do you..." The words crack apart, but Max waits, patient. Will stares into the ruined tea. "Do you ever wonder what happened to everything that lived there?" Silence. His pulse pounds. "Do you think anything survived?"

For a moment Max doesn't answer, then her expression softens. "Mike blew it up. It’s all dead," she says gently. "The gate's closed." She offers him a small smile. "They're not coming back, okay? They're gone for good.”

It's over. The words should make him feel better. Nothing survived. Not a single heartbeat, not a single mind, everything that once lived there is now gone. Whether they were scared, or hiding, or running for their lives, they're dead. Mindless beasts, driven by instinct and desperation.

"...Yeah. Yeah, you're right." His stomach twists again. "Sorry."

Max immediately shakes her head. "Don't be." Her voice cracks, and Will knows exactly who she's thinking about. "Listen," Max tries again, even though it's pointless. "All of this sucked, but we made it out.”

His stomach curdles, rotten and used.

Will lifts the mug to his lips and pretends to drink, carefully avoiding the chip in the porcelain.

___________________________________

Mike isn't here today but Will hadn't expected him to be.

A year is a strange amount of time. Long enough that people stop checking on you every day,that the casseroles stop arriving, and the sympathy cards disappear. Long enough that the rest of the world expects grief to have softened around the edges, for you to move on, for you to restart your life, or at least continue where you've left off.

But, a year isn't long enough for losing someone like Jane. Will doesn't blame Mike for staying home.

Jane had been the love of Mike's life, the person he'd crossed dimensions for, fought monsters for. The person he'd chosen over and over and over again. Everyone else lost a friend, and Will might have lost a sister, but Mike lost the future he thought he was going to have.

A wife, a house somewhere nice, and children of their own.

Children.

Will sees it every time he looks at him, when Mike shows up every other week for a mandatory party meetup. His hair gets longer and longer even though Will knows he hates the feeling of it on his neck, and that he's always preferred it shorter and more curled. It's grown tangled, but Will doesn't say anything then, either. He's been wearing fewer sweaters even though it's November again. He's been wearing less blue. The same black T-shirt every time, with stains on the bottom, smelling of cologne sprayed over body odor.

They're all grieving, some of them, like Nancy, are just better at hiding it. And others, like Mike, let their grief drown them.

Will tries not to show his concern. He'd tried to help back at the beginning, after it was over. He'd shown up every other day, knocking on the Wheeler’s front door and trying to come up with an excuse to drag Mike outside into the sunlight. Mike had sat him down at his kitchen counter and placed a plate of food in front of him, expression tight and pained, refusing to leave unless Will ate something.

The last time he'd tried, it took Will three hours to get through half of it, and it ended with Mike's hand pushing his bangs away from his forehead, Will kneeling in front of the toilet. Mike brushed his teeth for him after, with Will too out of it to object. It wasn't worth the humiliation to try again.

Lucas pushes Max's wheelchair several feet ahead of them, one hand resting on the handle while the other gestures wildly as he talks. Max rolls her eyes at something he says, but she smiles anyway, and Lucas immediately lights up like he'd won something.

Will falls behind. It's not necessarily intentional, but it gives him a second to relax his face, smile slipping and shoulders slumping. A brief moment without acting. Everyone else continues moving forward while he finds himself drifting backward. They’re all growing older, just without him again.

Dustin slows the way he always does, just enough so Will doesn't end up walking alone, keeping pace. Dustin has always been good like that, in ways most people don't notice.

His hair is longer now, too, curling around his ears. His jacket is covered in pins from bands Will has never heard of, mixed with others Jonathan would immediately recognize. There are patches stitched onto the sleeves and worn spots near the pockets, things from Eddie and things from Dustin himself, growing into a new version. Dustin's eyes still look tired, that spark buried down, but he's been getting better.

Whether he's been pretending the way Will has, Will can't tell. He can't bring himself to ask, either.

The diner is busy when they arrive, a quick stop before the lake.

Max wants to float on her back in the water, letting the current get rid of the gravity and helping ease the pain. Lucas wants to sink his toes in the sand, and make a castle. Dustin is tagging along because Steve is busy, and Will is coming because if he didn't they would get worried. Will doesn't like worrying them.

If Dustin didn't come, Will wouldn't have either. More people means more conversations he won’t have to join, and Will can fade into the background. So, he's glad that Steve is busy at the radio station. Steve has somehow become Dustin's best friend, and Will doesn't comment on it because he knows he shouldn’t, even though he feels something bitter eat away at him from the thought of Dustin leaving them behind.

Lucas has Max, and Dustin has Steve now. He tries not to think about Mike.

Lucas folds Max's wheelchair and slides it beneath the table before helping her into the booth beside the window. His hand lingers at her elbow a second too long, and Max rolls her eyes, but they both smile at each other.

Will looks away. Dustin offers him the window seat, but Will steps aside. "You take it."

Dustin pauses. "Will-"

"You like the window." It's easier that way. The least he can do is take the aisle seat, the one nobody wants. Dustin studies him for a second before sliding in. Nobody argues.

The waitress comes, orders are placed, and Will feels a sense of dread settle over him. A hot dog for Dustin, grilled cheese for Lucas, a burger for Max, and a salad for Will.

Nobody comments on that either, or on the fact he's lost weight, or on the dark circles under his eyes, or on how he's pushing food around instead of eating it. Everyone is pretending and Will is grateful for it.

The dressing is sharp and vinegary, turning his stomach in circles. He stares down at the bowl, lettuce, tomato, cucumber, something safe. It's just food.

His fork spears a piece of lettuce, raising it to his mouth. Lucas says something and Will lowers it again, pretending to look interested. Dustin laughs and the lettuce falls back into the bowl, a piece of cucumber coming up next but lowering when Will nods to something Max says that he doesn't even process.

Dustin nudges him with an elbow and looks down to his bowl, confused. Will flashes a smile. The conversation flows around him, muffled like he's underwater. The buzzing in his ears grows louder, and his fingers tighten around the fork. Another nudge, and Will swallows down the urge to gag.

The lettuce glistens wetly, coated in dressing, slimy. He forces himself to take a bite.

Crunch, then softness, then mush. The dressing sits on his tongue, sour and rotting. Will chews, turning it into a pulp. His stomach twists, and something hot crawls up his throat.

Across the table, Lucas has stopped talking, staring in concern. There's a reason Will tries not to eat with the party, especially not around Mike.

"Hey, aren't you gonna eat that?”

Will blinks, feigning cluelessness. "What?"

"The salad."

"Oh." His voice sounds distant, and he resists the urge to kick Lucas under the table. He was just being a good friend. Kind, worried, someone dependable. "Yeah. Yeah, sorry. I was just thinking.”

Lucas leans forward. "About what?"

“Hm?”

“What were you thinking about?”

“...Mike. I'm worried, that's all.” He adds a shrug at the end of it, but Max sighs anyway.

“Should we call?”

“I already did, he didn't pick up.”

“Why don't we call again? Maybe he'd even pay for lunch,” Max adds, wiggling her eyebrows. Dustin looks to him, as if waiting for Will to respond.

Will shoves another bite into his mouth so he doesn't have to answer, trying to choke down the regret biting at him. The texture is unbearable, cucumber hard compared to the mush of the tomato, dressing too thick, like he swallowed a mouthful of oil and insects, or something wriggling.

His vision blurs.

Black, red, moving. Growing. He drops his fork, a hand moving to press against his mouth, protective. He had to cover it. It was safer.

Eggs twist inside him in clusters, little heartbeats, life unfurling beneath his skin. They were so hungry, all of the time. Everything he ate went to them, but he could never get them satisfied. They were so demanding. His stomach feels empty.

He swallows, and his body rebels, throat tightening, catching the lump halfway down. He can feel it constrict, pulse loud in his ears. He swallows again and the lump moves, as if it were something alive. Burrowing, trying to return home.

They were safe inside.

His stomach lurches and the room tilts. Tea leaves in Max's mug, the dressing in his bowl, all infesting. Like maggots in a corpse, digging themselves in deep.

His chair scrapes backward, and he doesn't look at the others, one hand covering his mouth as the other digs into his stomach hard enough to make him stumble.

"Will-!"

The bathroom door crashes open and a second later he's collapsed over a toilet. The food comes back up, acid burning his throat, eyes watering. His body shakes as he heaves, mouth feeling raw.

It's hot on his tongue, but that's good. Heat burns.

His stomach convulses again, empty. There's nothing inside, no chittering, no connection.

A hand lands between his shoulder blades and Will jerks so hard he nearly falls sideways. Cold fingers, hands against his face, something forcing its way inside. Something entering places it doesn't belong. Growing, changing, belonging. Claiming.

Will makes a broken sound. He feels so, so empty. He shouldn't be this empty inside.

"Will-"

"Call Mike!"

"What? Like he'd actually pick up?"

The voices blur together, and another wave of nausea hits. Will retches, his stomach contracting painfully, vision going black. He can't look.

What if they're moving, struggling, desperate?

The back of his neck stays silent. Were they dead? Another round hits, and his fingers slip on the porcelain, forehead against the rim of it. Did they suffer inside of him? Did he not feed them enough?

“I called him-”

“Is he coming?”

Did they call for him? Did they understand he couldn't save them? Another painful contraction wracks his body. The acid burns, far too hot. They can't survive the heat.

If he looks, will he see little corpses burning alive?

"Will!"

Will lets out a broken keening sound before he can stop it, his fingers curling against his stomach, digging in, protecting something that isn't there anymore.

"Will- Will, come on, come on-"

Hands grab his shoulders, strong and warm. Will is pulled backwards, gathered up close. A broad chest presses against his back and a hand slides to the nape of his neck, thumb moving slowly.

Mike.

A mouth, Mike's mouth, mouth presses against the crown of his head, breathing hard like he ran. Or biked, most likely. "What happened?" His voice is rough, but his hands are gentle.

"We don't know," Dustin says somewhere nearby. "We were just eating and then-"

The words blur, and Will tucks his face against Mike's shoulder, his knuckles pushing in deep. Mike smells awful, like sweat and dirty laundry. He smelled like this last week, too. Mandatory party meetings.

So stupid.

Mike isn't taking care of himself. Will hasn't been taking care of him either. If Will couldn't take care of Mike, how could he possibly take care of anything else either?

"Are they alive?"

The bathroom goes still and it takes Will a brief second to realize he even spoke. His breathing sounds too loud, ragged and shaky, hoarse and torn.

"No." Max's voice cuts gently through the silence, again. "They're dead. I promise, Will. They're all gone, every last one of them. We're safe now.”

Will squeezes his eyes shut. Every last one of them. The sob tears out of him before he can stop it, ugly and violent. He presses his face into Mike's shirt and the fabric smells terrible. He knows he's getting vomit on it, but he can't bring himself to care.

His fingers digging into his stomach, his knees pulling upward, searching desperately for something he already knows isn't there. Nothing. Empty.

Mike's hand tightens against the back of his neck. "It's okay, Will. It's okay." His lips brush Will's temple. "Shh, it's alright. I've got you.”

Will shakes his head, eyes closed so tight that he sees lightning spark. The same kind that he used to see as a child, red and big, striking across the sky. A monster made of air looking down at him. Crying whines calling after him, even as he ran. Calling for comfort that Will never gave.

His stomach feels hollow, scooped clean and wrung out, used and discarded.

Mike's hand squeezes again, warm against the back of his neck, occupying the space where the connection used to live. Will feels something deep inside his chest shrivel a little, decomposing.

___________________________________

“You should have called me sooner!”

“And then what?! You would've ignored us? Again?”

The shouting bleeds through the basement walls. Everything feels distant. His lips sting. They're split down the middle again, and he keeps biting them without realizing it. The sharp pain is easier to focus on than everything else.

There's a shell on the leg of the table, a shedding from a spider. He imagines peeling off his skin and turning it inside out, getting the chance to start new and untouched.

He imagines taking his bones apart one by one and soaking them in boiling water until every trace of the Upside Down disappears. Or maybe he could remove his eyes and rinse away every memory they've ever seen. Tunnels, vines, eggs. Jane, standing there. All of it, gone.

“You don't know what it's like-”

“I DO!” Lucas snaps.

Will could end the argument so quickly, if he wanted. He could give them something else to pay attention to. He could get rid of the contamination inside of him. One easy movement. So quick.

“I do know what it's like, Mike! And you know what? I'm worried about you. I'm so damn worried about you. But I'm sick of you treating the rest of us like garbage while we're trying to help!”

Will closes his eyes.

“Guys,” Dustin says, tense but trying. He's so good, even now. Will's never met Eddie, but he knows Eddie would be proud. If he wasn't, then he wasn't the man Dustin made him out to be. “Can we not do this right now?”

“No.” Mike sounds terrible, his voice rough. Will can't help but like it anyway. “No, let him talk.” Will hears movement, a footstep, something being shoved. “You think I'm a piece of shit, right?”

“Mike-”

“You do!”

“That's not what I said-”

“You meant it.”

Will squeezes his eyes shut tighter. He doesn't need to see Mike to picture him, exhausted and wearing the same clothes for a week in a row. Dark circles, the glare he gets whenever anyone mentions Jane.

“You think I'm a piece of shit,” Mike says again, his voice cracking. Will would comfort him if he could. Mike could press his head against Will's chest, and Will could run his fingers through Mike's hair. Mike could settle his hands at Will's waist, or press a palm to his navel, nuzzling at Will's neck with his nose. Will could take care of him. They could move somewhere safer, somewhere without stress. If they had the opportunity, maybe they would- that is to say, if they had the chance, if Mike wanted to, Will would even raise-

“I don't care what you think about me. You can hate me all you want, but Will is staying here.”

“No, he's not.” Will needs to stop having silly thoughts, because they get him nowhere. “I'm not leaving him here.”

“You don't get a say-”

“Look around, Mike!”

The basement goes silent. Will doesn't need to look around, he'd already done that. The place is disgusting. Soda cans cover nearly every flat surface and empty bags of chips litter the floor. Dirty laundry spills from baskets and it all smells faintly sour, like stale air.

The couch beneath Will crunches when he shifts, crumbs press into his side, something pokes at him through the gap in the cushions.

He barely notices anymore. A year ago he would've, but now he doesn't have the energy.

“He's my responsibility.”

His stomach twists. Responsibility. Will's fumbled all of his, already. None of them survived.

“He's a person, Mike! Do you even hear yourself?! Please- please tell me you hear yourself.”

“I’m not an idiot, I'm trying to help him!”

“So are we!”

“I can take care of him better than you can, he's been like this for God knows how long, and where were you, huh?! Off sucking face with your girlfriend?”

“You weren't there either!”

Will's chest hurts, the silence wrapping tight around his throat. This had to be what suffocation felt like. It had to be.

Lucas sighs, voice softening. “Look- he's not yours, okay? Stop acting like you own him, because we're all Will's friends.”

“...You don't get it.”

“No, Mike. You don't get it. You don't get to do this again. We're not kids anymore-”

What did you think, really?

“I know that-”

“You don't! You can't just claim him, and snap at us the second we try to get close. I'm not letting you push me away because you think you can handle this, when you can't.”

Will doesn't know what Mike's face looks like. He doesn't want to, not when he knows the look is either some form of hurt or some form of enraged.

He knows exactly how deep those words hurt, the way Mike needs to be needed. Jane's not around to need him anymore. Maybe that's why Mike doesn't shower, or brush his teeth, or get out of bed unless he's eating. There's no point for him anymore, not without her.

His hands drift downward, settling against his stomach. It's instinctive, like running your tongue along a gap in your teeth and pushing against sensitive gums, or picking at a scab that won't stop bleeding.

His palm presses gently against the flatness beneath his shirt. It's flatter than it's been in years, not like when he'd gained a bit of weight back in California. Pizza every other day, a can of coke while he painted, ice cream and a spoon when he missed home. It's all gone now, that happy weight he'd been working towards, the one Jonathan seemed relieved by.

The thought pulls him unexpectedly backward, back before the Upside Down. Empty cupboards, a bare fridge.

His father used to get so hungry after drinking, slamming things onto the counter and scolding whoever was home. Taking money from mom's purse to go to a bar, ordering food there and coming home smelling like booze and burgers.

Taking his share and theirs too.

Jonathan used to push his food onto Will's plate after their mother had pushed hers onto Jonathan's, splitting meals that were never large enough.

Will remembers lying awake at night with his stomach growling, his hands against his tummy. It was worse in the summer, when he didn't have school lunch to sustain him for the day, or when Mike's family went to their vacation house with extended family for three weeks.

He remembers being little and learning how to ignore it, the teeth in his stomach eating away at himself, demanding more. So empty, waiting for Mike to come home and come over. So greedy for a child, but so empty.

His throat tightens.

This is a different kind of emptiness. He's hungry, but this is more, somehow. A hollow space and a sinking absence every time he breathes, like he's been robbed somehow.

His hand presses harder.

There's relief at the pain being his own, but the grief claws at him, ugly. Will curls inward, arms wrapped around himself, protecting a place that no longer needs protecting, with nothing to keep safe inside.

No secrets.

He never wanted the connection, or the monsters, but now that they're gone, he can't stop reaching. It's like he's learned to live with callouses on his feet, and now his soles are too soft to touch the ground.

He presses, and presses, and nothing presses back.

___________________________________

“When's the last time you ate something? Besides this morning.”

Lucas' voice is quiet when he asks it. Will closes his eyes.

The room sways faintly around him, or maybe that's just Lucas moving. He's being carried from one room to another, away from the shouting, away from Mike’s hurt and Dustin’s worry and the argument that had collapsed beneath the weight of them all. They were too tired to help each other. There was no point.

Lucas' arms are warm. He smells like cologne and laundry detergent and the lingering sweetness of whatever soda he'd been drinking earlier. Orange, maybe. Something citrusy and bright, not his usual New Coke. He must be trying something different. Will hadn't noticed.

The scent reminds Will of gas stations and movie nights and summer afternoons. Jane used to like orange soda. It was her second favorite, right after grape. Did Lucas know this, or was it accidental, the way he integrated Jane into his life?

Will doesn't have the energy to linger on it for long. Lucas shifts his grip.

“You're so light. You shouldn't be this light.” Will feels his chest tighten, and Lucas swallows. “It can't be healthy, Will.”

Will says nothing. There's nothing he could explain, no way to make sense of it. Lucas wouldn't understand, because no one would. Not Max, and not the party. Maybe Jane would have, if she were here.

There's no way to word it better, to make it palatable to digest. Every meal sits in his stomach like a stone, every empty feeling throbs and being full burns because he knows he won't keep it down, and he can't keep making himself go through it over and over again.

There aren't words for any of it, and if there are, Will doesn't know them.

Lucas adjusts him again, pulling him higher against his chest. Will lets himself be moved, his head falling sideways, his cheek pressing against a strong shoulder. It feels silly to be carried, but he can't bring himself to care about being babied right now.

“...I'll knock some sense into Mike. He's being an idiot, so- I'll get him out of his ass, okay? And maybe into a shower, if I can.”

The corner of Will's mouth twitches.

“See? He needs one. I am serious, though.” His arms tighten slightly. “And- whether or not he's there- I'm here. You know that, right?”

The question hangs between them, and Will doesn't know how to answer it. Lucas has always been here, before their problems were government level. He's always been Lucas, someone reliable and sweet and trustworthy. A good friend, and a better person.

He's Will's best friend. Mike hasn't been like a friend to Will in a long, long time. So, of course Lucas is here. Will can feel himself slipping away from him despite that.

His hands drift toward his stomach again, an unconscious movement he can't stop. A dull ache, a phantom sensation.

His knees pull upward slightly, curling closer. He hopes he doesn't make Lucas think of Max. He wasn't there to see her spiral, but Max had it worse compared to the rest of them.

She was more deserving of this. She deserved mugs without cracks, and she deserved to be the one getting carried to a car, and buckled in the passenger seat.

The air was cold, chilly the way it always was during November.

He hopes Max has a blanket around her shoulders, wherever she is.

“Looks like it might rain,” Lucas murmurs, and Will lets his head loll against the window.

___________________________________

He can't draw.

The realization shouldn't hurt as much as it does, but it stings anyway. He can't draw, and it isn't for lack of trying or because he doesn't want to.

Some mornings he wakes up determined to get something down on paper, and he'll stare at his desk from across the room and tell himself that today will be different. He'll pick up a pencil, or he’ll paint. He'll make something beautiful or not, just to get the twitching out of his fingers.

Then, the hours pass, the sunlight shifts, and nothing happens.

His sketchbook remains exactly where it was, untouched and waiting. He can't remember the last time he's opened it, or what his last doodle was, or what he was thinking. It could have been before everything was over, or maybe sometime after when his head was fuzzy.

He doesn't know. His fingers have felt bare for a while, unstained by graphite and his nailbeds free from dried paint. There's no eraser bits stuck under his fingernails, and his skin isn't coated in various colors.

The sketchbook sits open on his desk beside the window, a paperweight on the top. Beside it sits a plate of food, dinner or lunch, Will can't remember. The peas have been pushed into little piles, and the mashed potatoes are flattened and mixed into the meat. A few bites are missing, but it's grown cold.

A single fly is sitting on top of a lump of meat, little legs shifting. It burrows itself into the food, taking and taking. So dirty. Forcing itself inside. Laying eggs to feed its children on the tiny corpse.

The wind flutters through the open window, colder. It'll snow any day now.

Will isn’t ready to see it. The power always goes out at least three times, when the storms get too rough for Hawkins. Frigid, dark, flickering lights that give out.

It feels wrong to miss it.

He wakes up drenched in sweat most nights, sometimes tears, sometimes both. The nightmares change but the feelings never do. Spindly hands, dark tunnels, vines around his wrists. A voice in his head, slithering in his ears, sharp nails digging into the sides of his face to force his jaw open. Tiny, fearful chitters. Little flower faces hissing, demanding he run, worriedly watching.

His body remembers. He seems to remember more each and every day that passes. Will looks away from the violated meal, and rolls on his side.

A pill bottle looks back at him. Will flutters his eyes closed.

If Henry were to come back, Will thinks he would kill himself. He can't handle another end of the world. He doesn't think he could take it. He understands Jane, in that way. It's easier to let it happen.

It only hurts more if you resist. Henry was right about that.

“Will?”

His brother's knuckles rap on his bedroom door, voice soft. Will forces himself to sit up, tugging his nightstand drawer open and ignoring the shaking sound of pills falling into it.

“Yeah?”

“Sorry to bother you, bud. I have an interview I really need to get to, but I'll bring you back something, okay? Is it too cold for a milkshake?”

“...No,” Will settles on. “It's not cold at all. Vanilla?”

“Not strawberry?”

“Not today. I'm sorry.”

“Don't apologize. I'll be back in a few hours- mom finally got a new remote, so the TV’s all yours if you want it.”

“Where is she?”

There's a pause, and Will lets his back hit his bed again.

“...She's out at the cabin with Hopper. Spending the night, I think.” There's a sigh, and Will can hear his brother's forehead come to rest against the door. “...Dad called, too. I think that's why. Don't worry about it, okay? That's adult stuff. You just- get some rest and watch a movie, okay? I love you.”

“Love you,” Will whispers back, even though his throat feels like it's constricting. His dad called about adult stuff.

If his dad was around more often, would Will have ended up more like him? He's familiar with the weight of a gun in his hands, of fingers gripping his hair and yanking, of angry spit hitting his face when he cried. He was also familiar with kisses on his forehead and his drawings hung up on walls.

Dart was different from the rest of the monsters because of Dustin and his innocent care.

Dart was so small. Terrified and hiding, sending pulse after pulse of fear through the connection, radiating it down Will's spine. Lost and separated from everyone and everything it knew, fully dependent on Dustin for survival. Burning, and hungry, and alone.

Will remembers the frantic chittering, the confusion, the need. Dart wasn't born evil, he was born hungry and Dustin stepped up to the plate where Will didn't.

Maybe the rest of them were born the same, hungry and scared and doing anything for survival. A wolf isn't evil for eating a deer, they don't feel hatred for their prey, they only feel an empty stomach and desperation. Will remembers the sharpness of their teeth, the freeze of their fingers, all in a way nobody else does.

He also remembers their fear in a way nobody else does, too. Sometimes he wishes they had, and somebody else had been forced to understand, but he knows better than to wish that on someone.

The tears begin to gather, hot and painful. He wipes them away but it doesn't help, his shoulder shaking, breath hitching with a little wet sob.

Back then, when the connection was strongest, Will often couldn't tell where he ended and they began. The emotions blurred together, fear became shared, pain became shared, and loneliness became shared too. Sometimes he wasn't sure whether he was crying because he was sad or because something else was.

During the final battle he felt it, that fear magnified. Hundreds of minds screaming at once, never words he could understand but chitters he was too well-versed in knowing. It was stupid, but Will remembers begging through that very bond, praying that they wouldn't get involved, that his friends wouldn't get hurt, that it wasn't a death wish they were walking into. When they made it into that wasteland, it was empty, hundreds of little calling cries worried for him. They'd listened, more worried for Will than they were scared of Henry.

It was the same relief he felt when his mother was waving her axe around, shivering behind her, and begging that she wouldn't be hurt. A chitter, a flash of concern, and an obedient bow of the head.

They didn't want to die. They didn't choose Henry, or the Mind flayer, or to become what they were. All children are born innocent, Will thinks. They're born hungry, and needing guidance. Henry took advantage of that, forcing them against their will.

His stomach clenches, nauseating, and he rolls onto his side, lightning against the back of his eyes, nails digging into his sides, arms wrapped tight.

He'd done the same, too. He'd done it for Mike, for Lucas, for Robin. It might not have been out of cruelty, but the reason didn't matter. Henry forced, and Will has done the exact same.

A sob lodges in his throat, and he swallows it down. It slips past anyway. He buries his face deeper into the pillow. His palms press hard against his stomach, and there's nothing there.

The shame hurts more than the guilt does. What kind of person could mourn this?

If Jane were alive, just how disgusted would she be with him?

He presses his face harder into the fabric to muffle the sounds he's making, raking his nails through skin, feeling his ribs burn with each breath.

___________________________________

“Will? Would you just come out so we can talk?”

The knock echoes through the bathroom, soft and careful. Mike is still trying to be patient, then. He's too good to Will, even now.

Will closes his eyes and lets his forehead rest against his knees. The bathwater lost its warmth a long time ago. Hours, maybe. His skin is covered in goosebumps, and his legs ache from being pulled against his chest for so long. The water sits cold and still around him, lapping faintly against the porcelain whenever he shifts.

He can't bring himself to get out.

There's another knock. “Will? It's been thirty minutes- please, I just want to talk.”

The sound seems distant somehow. Everything feels distant lately. It's almost spring again, and flowers have started growing through the ground.

Will stares at the tile floor. He's never noticed how dirty it is before. There’s grime settled into the cracks between the tiles, tiny black lines running through white grout, and long strands of his mother's hair cling to the floor beside the toilet, tangled and curled. Jonathan's soap sits abandoned on the edge of the tub, brittle and half dissolved into a sticky mess.

Normal things, evidence of people living. Will wonders what evidence of himself is left behind, what people associate with him, what traces remain after he leaves a room.

If he disappeared tomorrow, would anyone notice the things he'd left behind? Would his mother still find his hair caught in the drain months later? Would Jonathan still expect to hear him moving around down the hall?

Would Mike still reach for the phone before remembering there was nobody to call?

The thought makes his stomach twist. He hasn't been answering any of Mike's calls for months. Will didn't need Mike to be worrying about him.

Dustin did his homework for him and turned it in, and Will skipped his classes because his teachers wouldn't remember to care whether zombie boy was present or not. He hasn't been to a party meeting in a month, or so.

Max stopped by yesterday to tell him that physical therapy was getting better. She's eighteen now, and she can finally start walking with crutches. She's getting better, slowly. Healing.

“Will, come on.” The doorknob rattles. “You're freaking me out.” Mike sounds closer now, worried. “I'm sick of you pushing me away. I'm serious, Will. I'm not joking around.”

Will imagines him standing on the other side of the door, one hand gripping the frame, eyebrows drawn together. Waiting, the way he always is.

Will lowers his gaze. His fingers are wrinkled, his legs torn from his nails. He should get out. He knows he should, but he doesn't move.

Did his mother feel like this?

When he disappeared and they found his fake body, when she was told her son was dead, did she feel this grief? Did she spend hours staring at empty spaces, searching for bits of him everywhere she looked?

Did she sit in his room wondering why his clothes still smelled like him? He hasn't washed his old flannels that Jane preferred. He hasn't washed his sweatshirt, either. The one from the end of the world. It still smells like slime, like terror.

Did she feel this impossible knot of grief and relief and guilt and love all tangled together until she couldn't separate one emotion from the next?

Will presses his face harder against his knees, the ache in his chest deepening.

“At least let me know you're alive in there.” Mike's voice cracks, and the sound makes Will's throat tighten immediately. “Will, I'm serious, and I mean it. I'll break this door down.”

If he wasn't so tired, he would have laughed. Instead, he closes his eyes.

Jonathan left for work hours ago, his mom did too. The house had emptied around him while he sat here, unmoving and unemployed, eighteen years old and stuck.

Everyone else is moving forward. Lucas has plans, Max has dreams, and Dustin won't stop talking about the future in the small time they share walking through school hallways. Even Mike, shattered and grieving and barely holding himself together, is still trying. Mike's been changing, bit by bit.

His arms have been getting broader and his face sharper, his eyes a bit more mean each day. Jane would have gone insane if she saw Mike now, still surviving with this new bitterness in him.

He comes by every day after school, and Will keeps the front door locked, because he's a coward.

Jonathan must not have locked it earlier on his way to work.

“Will-! I'm trying to- to be patient, but if you don't say something I'm going to have to like, call the cops- come on-” the knob pulls, a blunt force hitting the door.

If Will were really killing himself in here, like Mike thought, he'd be long gone by now. It's mean to think about, but he wonders if Mike tried the same thing with Jane and he didn't save her either. It would be mean to make Mike see his body right now, after Mike's been working so hard on getting better.

Will doesn't like being mean. He’s been mean a lot recently. Maybe it's the part that Henry left in him that makes Will this way, but he doesn’t want to think about that.

His mother was seventeen when she got pregnant with Jonathan. She dropped out of school and moved into a trailer with his dad, building a life from almost nothing. She was younger than he is now and carrying a child inside her, caring for a future that she was slowly making.

Will stares at the water.

He's never going to have that. It's something he's known for years, ever since his doctor's visits first started and the only thing that made living worth it was brown eyes. He knows he isn't going to marry a woman, and he knows he isn't going to build the sort of life Hawkins expects him to build. He knows he would rather spend the rest of his life alone than force himself into a lie he couldn't survive.

He knows he's never going to have children, not the way his mother did.

Will swallows hard, and because his mind is cruel, he hears that little chittering start up, even though he knows it's not there. Tiny little lives all in Will's hands, left to die.

Flushing toilets and running sinks, blocked drains that he fumbled with a plunger for. There was a frantic panic every time he found one, and the desperate hope that maybe it would just go away on its own. One wrapped carefully in tissues, one hidden in a trash can, one buried beneath grass, one abandoned behind a school dumpster. Small things. Tiny things, wriggling and alive, calling for him.

Things he never had the heart to destroy, even then when he was disgusted and too scared to tell his mom or his brother about the churning in his tummy.

Will remembers watching them burrow into dirt, disappearing beneath the ground, a strange pull at him every time. The awareness, and the connection, and the need. They would get so sad when Will would leave them.

His chest tightens painfully.

They had been so afraid, pulling him back into the Upside Down over and over again, begging him to help them, surrounded in an endless darkness. So impossibly afraid, searching for him to guide them, to take care of them.

Will had been a child, so small and needy and helpless, but somehow they had been smaller and needier and more helpless.

He feels sick, a bit breathless. He remembers the sensation of them pulling at him, calling him back, again and again.

He left all of them all to die.

Outside the door, Mike has stopped talking. Will wonders what Mike would say if he knew. If Mike understood how tangled he was and how much shame lived inside of him, Will wonders if Mike would keep coming by, even though Will never answers.

Will wraps his arms tighter around himself. He's never going to have children, and maybe that's for the best.

Will lowers his head, chin pained on knobby, bony knees, tears warmer than the bath water.

The window shudders in its frame. For a moment all Will sees are fingers gripping the glass, palms slipping as Mike tries to find enough traction to force the window up and open.

The sight pulls at something old inside him.

Jonathan used to do the same thing when they were young, standing on the toilet tank with one sneaker balanced precariously on the edge, cigarettes stuffed awkwardly into his back pocket, a lighter hidden inside his camera bag, whispering for Will not to tell Mom.

Will remembered sitting cross-legged on the floor while Jonathan climbed out into the dark, worrying and wanting to tell somebody but knowing better than doing so. Dad would get mad, and mom would scold him. He stayed quiet the way his brother asked, waiting until he came back to make sure he was safe, so Jonathan could tuck him into bed.

Their little secret.

Will had a lot of little secrets, once, growing inside of him, safer to keep quiet. They're all gone now. Will shouldn’t be sad about it.

A grunt drags him back to the present. "Jesus- come on.” Mike finally manages to force one long leg through the window, but he immediately loses his balance and his foot plunges directly into the toilet bowl. The expression that crosses his face would have been funny once.

Mike grimaces and yanks his foot back out, shaking water from his shoe. He doesn't complain or swear like he would have once, and he stubbornly continues climbing through the window until he's fully inside the bathroom. Will watches him silently.

Mike looks different. His hair is clean and curled, not greasy and tangled. It's cut short in the back so his neck can breathe, the way it used to be when they were children. The dark circles beneath his eyes remain, but they're lighter than he remembers from months ago. He tries not to look Mike in the eyes at school, keeping his vision on the ground. Mike tends to ask questions and worry himself sick, so it's easier to avoid him altogether.

It's spring now, and Mike's nose is pink, sunburned along his freckles.

Mike went outside and spent time in the sun. Maybe somebody dragged him there, or he forced himself, or maybe he just sat somewhere alone and thought about Jane. Will doesn't know, but the skin on Mike's face is peeling a little.

Mike pauses, standing awkwardly in the middle of the tiny bathroom, looking down at him. Will knows he looks pathetic, nude and curled up, vulnerable in cold water. His skin’s gone pale and his eyes have been swollen for the last few days, his hair tangled at the roots when he gets too lazy to brush.

He's eighteen years old and hiding in a bathroom like a frightened child. The awareness should embarrass him, but he feels too hollowed out to care right now. His gaze drifts back toward the tile floor. Cracked grout, loose strands of hair, stray dirt.

His stomach feels empty, a barren cavity beneath his ribs. He's so empty, but he can't eat. He already had food today, had choked down enough to keep his eyes open until his next struggle.

It is so quiet. Will hasn't known silence since he was twelve years old, a complete absence of another presence. It's so quiet so often, his ears ringing and his pulse so loud but so slow.

"...Come on." Mike kneels beside the tub, sighing under his breath. He dips a finger into the water and winces, pulling it out and shaking the drops off. “Jesus Christ, Will.”

The words come out softer than they should. Mike reaches for the drain and the plug pops free, water spinning downward in a spiral, a tiny tornado by Will's feet. Round and round and round. Will's eyes follow it, feeling a part of himself drain along with it.

Mike reaches out to tug Will's arms away from his knees, tilting his wrist to the ceiling. His thumb presses down on his pulse. The skin is clear. “...Sorry. I just- I had to make sure.”

Will doesn't say anything. If he were going to kill himself, he wouldn't make the cleanup so inconvenient, or make it so obvious. He had too many pill bottles, anyway. He wonders if Mike would take those away, if he knew what Will thinks about at night.

"You’re getting pruney.” Mike's voice is gentler now, pulling Will's fingers apart, focusing on the pads of them. So gentle. “You wanna get out?”

Mike would be a good father, one day.

Will looks up at him, and Mike swallows, his throat bobbing, expression twisted in grief. His Adam's apple dips, and the movement catches Will's attention for reasons Will doesn't want to explain.

There's stubble there, dark against pale skin. It climbs beneath Mike's jaw and disappears down his neck, a little on his chin. So small, barely visible, like Mike had shaved the other day. A small patch is longer than the rest, under his jaw closer to his ear, like Mike missed a spot.

Mike has stubble.

When did that happen? The idea of it sits wrong in his head. His Mike was too young to shave, and too small to have such broad shoulders. His face still had baby fat on it, not as sharp as this, and his skin was darker from always playing outside.

This has to be Jane's Mike, surely. A Mike that Will shouldn't get to see.

Mike with stubble, and sunburnt on his face, growing up. He's going to get grey hair one day, and lines will form around his eyes, and his life will continue. He's going to find a wife, and have a family, and he's going to have to shave every morning before work, and his wife is going to love him, and she is never going to know about Jane or about Will or about any of this.

The tears begin before he realizes they're coming. One moment he's staring and the next he's choking out a whine, shoulders hitching, sobbing wetly.

“Oh, Will- shhh, c’mere-” a large hand settles warm against the back of his neck, the other slipping down his wet back, tugging him close. Mike gathers him up against a sweater, something new Will hasn't seen before. It's green, with little blue flowers on the front. Will sobs harder.

“I've got you, it's okay- it's okay.” The words vibrate against Will's temple. “It's okay." Will shakes his head, and Mike's fingers squeeze against the sides of his neck, palm hot enough against his nape that Will feels himself sink into the touch. “It's gonna be okay. I promise.”

Mike's arms tighten. “I'm sorry. I've been trying to say it, but I just-... I'm sorry I've been such an idiot.” Will can feel how Mike's breath shudders, and he squeezes his eyes shut.

"She's your sister and I didn't even- I didn't even think about how this was affecting you."

The words stab straight through him, digging inside his body, twisting around the sensitive parts. It burns, but he can't bring himself to say anything, water drained, his body shivering in cold air. It's not about Jane, but it should be. He wishes it was about Jane.

Will misses her. He thinks about her every day, about the way she changed at the end, how she took care of him and never took care of herself. All Will seems to do is take and take and wear people down until they're bones. He loved her, and he misses her, but it's not about her at all. He's rotting, deep in his body, and he can't bring himself to tell Mike that. He’s already taken enough.

He wouldn't understand. Maybe at one point he would’ve, if Will had been more open during their childhood. Maybe if they were still twelve Mike would know what was wrong.

They haven't been twelve in a long, long time. Maybe it's Will's fault for missing it so badly.

Mike keeps talking and Will hears none of it. Mike has to reach around him to replug the drain, and it makes the faucet squeak. The metal whines as fresh water pours into the tub. Such small noises, but Will's heart lurches at them all the same.

Steam slowly begins to rise, water hot enough to turn his skin pink. Will's toes wiggle into it, and he can't bring himself to say thank you.

Mike climbs into the tub behind him, his jeans soaking and his shoes knocking against porcelain. Fully clothed, his laces still tied, uncaring. It must've been uncomfortable, but Mike doesn't complain. The water sloshes, spilling onto the floor.

“Mike,” he whispers, but the protest dies on his tongue.

“Hi,” Mike coos behind him, voice sweet. A hand runs down Will's back, soothing, and Will feels himself breathe a bit easier. “You with me?”

“What are you doing?”

It's quiet for a second before an arm wraps around Will's shoulders, tugging him backwards. Mike's legs stretch out on the sides of him, shoes on the wall, too tall to be cramped like this. “I'm sitting with you. If you want to take a bath all day, then- then I'll take one with you, okay? I'll sit here too.” Mike's heart thumps wildly against Will's back, and he lets himself settle. “I'm sorry.”

“Stop it.”

“Okay.”

Will knows he's biting back another apology, but he doesn't argue. It feels good to speak, like when you stretch after a long car ride and you feel your muscles sing. He'd forgotten how nice it was to speak to someone you loved. He should speak to his brother more, too. He should ask his mom how her day was, or ask Dustin what topic he was writing about for his college essay, or ask Max what happened during her session of PT, or ask Lucas if he finally got his license or was still driving on a permit.

“Did you bike here?”

“I drove,” Mike answers for him, and Will slumps further into his chest. He didn't know whether Mike drove his father's car or his mother's car, or if he had a permit, or how long he's been behind the wheel. “Why?”

He doesn't know Mike at all, anymore. Mike who had stubble and wore green sweaters with flower prints and who smelled a bit like pine scented cologne. Will doesn't respond, but Mike doesn't make him.

Will curls instinctively, drawing his knees up and leaning back against Mike, making himself smaller. Mike's hand moves slowly up and down his arm. “Will?”

Will closes his eyes, one hand drifting to his stomach, nails digging in. The pain helps.

“Are you hurting?” Mike's fingers wiggle their way on top of Will's, pressing in as if he could feel whatever problem was there and fix it. Will sighs, shoulders relaxing. The pressure helped more.

“No,” he breathes. “There's nothing there to hurt me.”

“...Is that bad?” Mike's nose brushes against his temple, thumb dragging up and down on Will's skin, palm wide and warm. Will slips his hand free from under Mike's and holds onto his wrist instead, inhaling. It doesn't hurt his lungs this time. “You said that like it was bad.”

“...No,” Will settles on again. “It shouldn't be.”

“Shouldn't? Does that mean it is? I just- I don't understand.”

“I know.” Mike's fingers scratch ever so slightly, caressing, and Will's stomach doesn't churn. He's almost forgotten what it's felt like to have heat against his skin, to soak it in. “You're never going to, and that's okay.”

“I want to, though.” Mike's body curls around his, clinging tight, and for a second all Will can think about is whether he held Jane like this too, when he begged her to stay. “I want to understand, but you need to talk to me, okay? I can't help if I don't know what's wrong.”

“I know,” Will repeats. Mike doesn't scold him for it though, just burrowing in closer. His other hand drags down Will's arm, catching his hand, and tugs it up so he can see each finger better. Will can feel him sigh, air puffing against his ear.

“Your fingers look like raisins.” Will doesn't open his eyes, but he believes him. “I miss you.”

“... I'm sorry.”

“Don't be sorry, just- let me help you. Please. I'm going crazy here, Will. I spend all day worrying about you, and I can't sleep because I get so- so scared that you're going to do something and I won't be able to stop you, or that- that you're going to-...” Mike cuts himself off, voice cracking.

“I love you,” Will murmurs, because he needs to say it. Mike's wearing wet jeans and filling in that ache and he has stubble on his chin and he misses spots when he shaves and Will loves him. He's not Will's Mike, but Will hasn't had Mike in so long that he can't help but love this Mike, too.

“I love you- please don't hurt yourself. I'm serious, Will.”

Will hums under his breath, and Mike's palm presses in harder. It feels less empty that way, his organs packed tight, his ribs stretching skin with every inhale. He should eat more. He should eat more, and he should speak to his friends and his family, and he should get up and out of the bathtub because Mike says his fingers are wrinkled and Will believes him.

“Does it help?”

“...Yeah. Yeah, Mike. It helps.”

Fingers press and they knead and air passes in and out of Will's throat, soft coos against his ear, little shushing sounds spilling down his spine.

“Tell me about it tomorrow. About- about everything. Let me help you.”

“...Okay.”

“Promise me, Will. Please.”

Mike always breaks his promises, the same way that Will keeps them close to his heart. Will huddles his secrets and lets them fester, and Mike destroys things before they can grow. It's just the way they are, and the way they always have been.

Mike's never had stubble, before. Mike doesn't wear green, either.

“...I promise.”