Chapter Text
The Wheeler household was quiet, save for the scrape of silverware against plates. A casserole sat half-eaten in the center of the table, steam long gone. Mike pushed a limp green bean around his plate and felt his mother’s careful gaze flicking to him every so often. Across from him, Ted Wheeler wiped his mouth with a napkin before clearing his throat unnecessarily loud.
And so, Mike knew what was coming.
"So," Ted began as he placed the napkin neatly on the table with deliberate calm. "Any more thoughts on that gap year of yours?"
Mike swallowed. "I already told you, Dad. I'm starting at the new grocery store when they open. End of August. I'll work and earn some money while I figure things out."
Ted kept going with that monotone voice of his, the one Mike had grown to hate, the one that made him want to throw himself at a brick wall.
"You figure things out by going to college, Michael. Not by-"
"Ted," Karen cut in gently, though the tension in her fingers betrayed her true feelings. "Mike just needs time. After everything that's happened-"
"Time," Ted repeated, unimpressed. "That's what everyone who gets stuck on a low-paying nine-to-five job needs. The world doesn’t stop because you're unsure, Michael. If anything, it moves faster."
Mike wanted to argue - You weren’t there. You don’t get it - but he knew it wouldn’t change anything. His father saw hesitation as failure and he'd already decided what kind of fate awaited his slacker of a son. There was a time when Mike had hoped that having his family targeted by supernatural forces might have humbled his father. Unfortunately, hope had quickly been proven foolish. Ted Wheeler was, to his entire family's collective disappointment, still Ted Wheeler.
Across the table, Holly piped up, obviously attempting to clear the storm clouds that had gathered over them. "But Will’s leaving, right?"
Something in Mike’s chest twisted into a tight, unmanagable knot at those words. Leaving. "Yeah. He’s going to New York. The SVA."
Ted muttered something about "even the Byers' kid knows to do something with his life," obviously meant for Mike to hear, but he pretended not to.
Karen om the other hand brightened, seizing the lifeline. "Oh! That’s exciting. He’s so talented. He’ll do amazing things there."
Mike forced a smile. "Yeah. He will."
He meant it. He really did. But the idea of Will - his Will - boarding a train and vanishing into some crowded city hundreds of miles away made his ribs feel too tight. The thought of a life without him, wether spent at college, in front of grocery store shelves or down in his cold and lonely basement, didn't make sense to Mike. Yet here he was, just a few months away from waving Will goodbye for good.
It’s not like that. You’ll visit. You’ll call.
But it wouldn’t be the same.
Ted sighed, signaling the end of the discussion. "Just don’t get too comfortable slacking off. Life doesn’t wait for people who stand still. It's getting tougher and tougher out there by the second. Only the people with real backbone makes it somewhere."
Mike stabbed at his food, biting back the words crowding his throat. As if you have any kind of backbone to speak of. Spend one more day stuck in that armchair of yours and you won't even be able to stand straight.
But of course, those words stayed where they were, lodged deep in his throat together with all the other insults he wished he had the courage to throw at his dad. Instead, his chair scraped loudly against the kitchen floor as he pushed back from the table, leaving his half-eaten meal behind.
"Thanks for the dinner, mom."
"Mike-" Karen started, but he was already walking away, footsteps heavy on the stairs leading down to the basement.
The door clicked shut behind him, sealing him in the dim glow of the single bulb still hanging from the ceiling.
The basement had always been theirs - the Party’s official headquarters, the place where they'd fought monsters both real and imaginary, where they'd whispered secrets and laughed so hard their ribs ached. But now, it just felt like a museum.
Will’s drawings - some fresh, some faded with time - were still pinned haphazardly to the walls. A dragon, a knight, a field of sunflowers in front of a castle. All things Will saw in his head that Mike could never quite picture until they were right in front of him. Then there was the D&D table, an absurdly intricate creation Lucas had somehow built last summer between work shifts, that took up half the room. And Dustin’s notes - calculations - were still scrawled on graph paper, taped to the edges like the remnants of some grand experiment.
But none of them were here.
And soon, they really wouldn't be. They'd be off to college. Chasing dreams. Moving forward. Doing everything that Mike hadn't quite figured out how to do yet. And the table would collect dust. The notes would seem like incomprehensible nonsense. And the colors on Will's drawings would fade and never again be replaced with new ones.
Mike dropped onto the couch - their couch - and let his head fall into his hands. The silence pressed in, heavy and suffocating. The emptiness after his friends was drowning him before they'd even left.
It was almost on autopilot that Mike grabbed the walkie from the side table (because yeah, even in ‘89, they still used them - old habits die hard), and flicked it on with a sharp click.
“Will. You there? Over.”
Static crackled for a long moment. Mike was just about to repeat the words when-
“Always.” Will’s voice was warm, familiar, like the first sip of hot cocoa after walking home in the snow. “What’s up? Over.”
Mike exhaled. "Just wanted to know what you were doing. Over."
The static hissed for a second before Will’s voice came through again.
“Just… going through my stuff. Trying to figure out what to take with me, what to toss. You know how mom is - she’d have me packing my baby teeth if she could.” There was a small chuckle, but Mike didn’t laugh. Instead, his fingers twitched around the walkie. Stuff. Packing. Moving.
It shouldn’t have felt like this. It wasn’t like when Will had left for California - back then, it was all wrong, ripped out of their hands too fast, and Mike had spent every night staring at the ceiling, wondering if he was okay. This time, Will was leaving because he wanted to. Because he was chasing something good. But that didn’t stop the quiet, selfish part of Mike’s brain from screaming: But what about me?
He swallowed hard and forced his thumb down on the button. “You want company? I can come over. Help sort through it. Over.”
An even longer silence stretched over the walkie - long enough that Mike almost thought the connection had cut out. Then Will’s voice came back hesitant.
“Uh- yeah. Yeah, sure. If you want to. Over.”
There was something about the surprise, even disbelief in his voice that made Mike’s stomach clench. It shouldn’t have been surprising. They were best friends. They hung out all the time.
Except they didn’t. Not there. Not at the cabin.
Mike hadn’t set foot in Hopper’s old place since, well, since everything had happened. He hadn’t been ready. Hadn't had the courage. But now, the idea of Will packing away their history without him there, boxing up pieces of them like they were just old junk-
He couldn’t let that happen.
“I’ll be there in a few,” Mike said, already standing, already grabbing his car keys off the hook. “Don’t throw anything away until I get there. Over and out.”
The walkie clicked off before Will could respond, and Mike took the stairs two at a time. He ignored his mother’s questioning look as he bolted past the kitchen because, damn it, he was not losing this too.
The old Chevy Nova that his father had reluctantly bought him six months ago sat in the driveway. Its red-brown paint was dulled by years of Indiana weather and the passenger door was slightly rusted at the edges. His mom had called it "freedom." Mike mostly just saw it as another thing he hadn’t lived up to. But tonight, he was grateful for it.
The engine groaned to life after a stubborn second of protest, and Mike peeled out of the driveway faster than he should have, gravel kicking up behind him. The bike would’ve taken over half an hour, winding through Hawkins’ back roads. The car? Ten minutes, tops, if he pushed it.
And he pushed it.
Trees blurred past as the radio crackled with static - he never bothered fixing the antenna - as his grip tightened on the wheel. He could already picture Will in that cabin, surrounded by half-filled boxes, tossing things into a garbage bag without realising what they meant. The stupid crayon drawings they’d made when they were nine. The ripped D&D character sheets. The notes passed during class when they were supposed to be paying attention.
What if he threw it all away? What if he didn’t even notice what he was losing?
Mike’s foot pressed harder on the gas.
Seven minutes later, the Nova skidded to a stop in front of the cabin, kicking up dust. Mike didn’t even shut the door properly behind him, he just sprinted up the porch steps and pushed inside without knocking.
It was quiet. Not the heavy, suffocating quiet of his basement, but something hollow, like the house had already started emptying itself, or maybe it had been empty for a long time. Joyce wasn't there humming in the kitchen. Hopper didn't mutter about closed doors. All that could be heard was a low thrum of music drifting from Will’s half-open bedroom door. Mike followed the sound, but the closer he got, the more the melody twisted in his chest. He didn't recognize that song.
Usually, he knew Will’s tapes. The mixtapes of The Clash and Bowie they’d played on loop during late-night studies, the Cure albums they’d belted out badly in Mike’s basement. But this was a voice he didn’t recognize, singing lyrics about train tracks and leaving.
Mike forced a breath through his nose, then plastered on a grin - the kind that didn’t betray the don’t go don’t go don’t go screaming inside him - and pushed Will’s door open.
The bedroom was messier than expected. Will was usually neat, organized - the opposite of Mike's disaster zone. But today, things were different. Clothes spilled out of open drawers, albums had been yanked off the shelf and left in haphazard piles.
And there, in the middle of it all, stood Will, surrounded by a sea of open boxes.
"Mike-" He startled, whirling around to look at him. "That was fast."
Mike's smile felt glued in place. "Yeah. I, uh, took the car. If I don't use it I think dad might sell it again."
Will scoffed as he threw an old, yellow flannel onto the bed.
"Are you really packing already?" Mike asked, aiming for casual but missing the mark. "You've still got months, dude."
Will shrugged "I'm not packing. Just sorting. I'm making a pile for charity-"
He pointed to a small pile on the bed, a reminder of how few things Will had actually owned in his life. He'd grown up with Jonathan's hand-me-downs, clothes and toys that had already been worn out long before they ended up in Will's hands.
"-and a pile for throwing away," he finished, pointing to a significantly larger pile on the floor.
Mike's stomach clenched. Throwing away? Why was he already getting rid of things? "But… why?"
Will carelessly tossed another handful of papers toward the trash bag. "Can't save everything, right? This place is small. There wouldn't be any room to stack boxes."
"No, but - these?" Mike grabbed the stack of drawings before Will could discard them.
Will blinked. “I mean… yeah? They’re just stupid doodles from middle school. I don’t need-”
Mike snatched the pile before Will could finish. “This is art, Will. You don’t just toss it!”
The top sheet was a pencil sketch of the Party - all of them, crowded around Castle Byers, their younger selves grinning like they’d never known fear. Mike remembered that day. They’d eaten popsicles until their tongues turned blue, and Will had drawn the whole thing in one afternoon while the others played Atari. Now, Will was looking at it like it was just paper.
Will frowned, arms crossing. “Mike, it’s my stuff. I can’t take everything to New York.”
Mike clutched the drawings tighter. “Then I’ll keep them.”
“Why?”
Because when you’re gone, these might be all I have left of you.
Mike swallowed. “Because you’re being insane, that’s why. You don’t just throw away memories.”
Mike waited for the protest, for Will to tell him he was being weird or hoarding trash, but the argument never came. Instead, Will just looked at him with an expression that was hard to read: something between fondness and a quiet, aching kind of sadness. He let the drawings go and shifted his focus back to the mountain of clothes on his bed.
He reached into a cardboard box and pulled out a beige, slightly wrinkled jumpsuit. The fabric was a bit frayed at the cuffs, and the stitching around the collar was uneven, clearly the work of a mother who had spent hours with a sewing machine and a dream.
Mike felt a sudden, sharp jolt of memory. "No way. You still have that?"
"The Ghostbusters suit," Will murmured, holding it up. A small, lopsided smile touched his lips. "I think my mom would have had a heart attack if I'd tried to throw it away. She still talks about how hard it was to find that specific shade of tan fabric."
Mike could remember that day as clear as day: the walk through the middle school hallways, the suffocating heat of the costumes, and the absolute, crushing silence of a room full of eighth graders who had suddenly decided that dressing up was for babies. They had stood there - him, Will, Lucas, and Dustin - four neon beacons of social suicide, blushing a deep crimson while the rest of the school stared.
Mike remembered looking at Will, seeing the way he tried to shrink into the homemade fabric, looking so small and vulnerable. Without thinking, Mike had stepped in, swapping his professional, store-bought proton pack for Will's duct-taped disaster. He remembered the feeling of the sticky tape on his own shoulder and the way Will’s eyes had widened, a look of pure, unfiltered gratitude that had stayed with Mike for years.
"I can't believe you're actually considering tossing this," Mike said. He stepped closer, his hand grazing the rough fabric of the sleeve. "This is history, Will."
Will laughed, a genuine sound that filled the room and chased away some of the gloom. "You say that about everything, Mike."
"Yeah, but this time I mean it. This is a symbol," Mike countered, though he didn't pull his hand away from the sleeve. "You can't go to New York and forget where you came from. You need this as a reminder that you survived the Great Halloween Massacre of '84."
Will’s smile faded into something more tentative. He looked away, eyes drifting toward the small window of the bedroom where the Indiana dusk was starting to settle in deep purples and greys. For a long moment, he didn't say anything.
Then;
"Mike? Would you... I mean, do you think you'd have room in your basement? For some of my things?"
Mike felt his heart skip a couple of beats. "What do you mean?"
"Just some stuff," Will explained, gesturing vaguely to the boxes and the drawings Mike had already hijacked. " Things that belong here. In Hawkins. With you." He paused, searching Mike's face. "If it's not too much of a hassle. I just... I don't want them to be gone. But I can't take them all to the city."
A rush of warmth surged through Mike, a sudden, heady relief that felt like air returning to his lungs after being underwater. It wasn't just about the Ghostbusters suit or a few sketches. Will was asking him to be the keeper of his memories. He was intentionally leaving pieces of himself behind - anchoring his history to Mike’s house, to Mike’s life. It was a silent admission that no matter how far he went or how new his life became in the city, there was a part of him that belonged right here.
"Yeah," Mike said, no trace of hesitation. He stepped forward and gently took the Ghostbusters suit from Will's hands, folding it with more care than he'd ever used for anything in his own life. "Yeah, of course. I've got plenty of room. I'll make a whole section just for your stuff. Like a... like a museum. Or a vault."
Mike looked at Will, and for a fleeting second, he could swear he saw the shimmer of unshed tears in the corners of his eyes. It was a look of such raw vulnerability that Mike felt an instinctive urge to reach out and pull him close, to tell him that New York wasn't that far, that they were forever. But before the moment could break or become too much to handle, Will blinked and stepped back.
"I'm gonna go grab us some sodas and snacks," Will said, his voice a little breathless. "Stay... just stay here. And don't just go grabbing a bunch of stuff. I’m still the one who decides what stays and what goes, you know." He gave a small, shaky laugh and slipped out of the room, his footsteps fading down the hallway.
As Will retreated to the kitchen, Mike stayed rooted to the spot, suddenly hyper-aware of the room around him. He kept his gaze focused on the immediate area, intentionally avoiding the corners and the remnants of the decor. He knew that if he looked too closely, he’d see the ghosts of the girl who used to own this space. He’d see the lingering echoes of El - the way the room had been hers long before it became Will's. Since she had disappeared, the Party had treated her name like a bruise: they didn't touch it because they knew it still hurt. Max was the only one who dared to speak of her with any bluntness, but Mike and the others usually lapsed into a careful, suffocating silence. Yet Will had lived here. He had woken up every morning in her space, slept in her bed, and breathed the remnants of her absence for a year and a half. Mike felt a sudden, profound wave of respect for Will's strength. He couldn't imagine the mental toll of inhabiting someone else's ghost.
Mike leaned back against the dresser, his gaze drifting to a small, faded mark on the wall where a poster had once been. He didn't pretend that he’d stopped thinking about El. He thought about her every single day, but the thoughts had curdled over time. Now, when her face appeared in his mind, it was usually accompanied by a crushing weight of guilt. He felt a jagged, ugly sort of anger, too: anger that she had left him to navigate this wreckage alone. If she were still here, he reasoned, he wouldn’t be the guy taking a gap year to wander aimlessly. He’d have a purpose. He’d have her. And then the guilt would spiral back around, choking him for even feeling resentful toward someone who was gone.
But standing here, in the physical space she had occupied, the anger vanished. He remembered the way she used to look at him, the clumsy, earnest way they had tried to understand love, and the sheer, blinding brightness of the few moments they had truly been happy. Those were the memories that actually wounded him. The anger was a shield, something he could fight against, but the happiness was a vacuum. It reminded him of a version of himself that didn't exist anymore: a Mike who was certain, a Mike who was brave, a Mike who believed that the world could be fixed if you just fought hard enough.
He looked down at the Ghostbusters suit in his hands, the fabric rough against his palms. He knew that he wasn't just saving Will's things to be a good friend. He was trying to preserve a world where they were all still together, where the Party was an unbreakable unit and no one ever really disappeared. He was clutching onto these scraps of fabric and paper because they were the only things in his life that didn't feel like they were slipping through his fingers.
To distract himself from his own thoughts - the hurt, the everything - Mike knelt on the floor and began gathering the stray papers that had fluttered away during the chaos. His hand brushed against something sturdy, a colorful notebook with a spiral binding that had slid beneath the edge of the bed. It wasn't a sketchbook; it looked more like a journal. He knew he shouldn't. It felt like a violation, a trespass into the one place Will hadn't asked him to help clean. But the sudden curiosity was an itch he couldn't ignore. Mike flipped the cover open. There was no name on the front, just a single sentence written in a bold, determined hand on the first page: Things I want to do now that I finally get to live.
It was the phrasing that got to Mike the most: Now that I finally get to live. It wasn't "now that things are better" or "now that we're safe." It sounded like a declaration; that everything before this moment had been a rehearsal, a survival exercise, a long stretch of time where Will had been a ghost in his own skin. He thought of all the times they'd joked about their "adventures," but for Will, the adventure had really cost him his childhood.
He flipped the page. Spend an entire night by a bonfire without listening for monsters. Next to the words was a small, delicate sketch. A boy sat by a flickering fire, his posture relaxed, shoulders slumped in a way that looked like genuine peace. There was no weapon in his hand, no walkie-talkie clipped to his belt, and most importantly, the shadows surrounding him were just shadows.
And beneath it was another line written: Watch the sunrise because I stayed awake talking, not because I'm afraid to sleep.
The simplicity of it was what broke Mike. These weren't goals; they were basic human experiences. For most teenagers in Hawkins, staying up all night talking was a rite of passage, a funny story to tell on Monday morning. For Will, it was a luxury. It was a dream. A longing for the kind of normalcy that most people didn't even realize they had until it was gone.
A hot, stinging anger flared in Mike's chest, directed at the void, the Mind Flayer, the government, and the cruel, indifferent universe that had seen fit to rob them of these things. He felt a sudden, violent urge to rip the world apart if it meant Will could have every single one of these moments ten times over. How could someone be asked to be this strong? How could Will look at a sunrise and feel like he'd finally earned the right to see it?
"You getting inspired or...?"
The voice snapped Mike back to the present. He looked up to see Will leaning against the doorframe, a bag of cookies in one hand and two sodas in the other. He didn't look angry, but he wasn't exactly relaxed either. He shifted his weight as his eyes flicked to the colorful notebook in Mike's lap.
Mike lifted it toward him. "Is this kind of a bucket list, or...?"
Will shrugged, his gaze dropping to the floor. "It's just stupid stuff. I wrote it when I was... I don't know. Just thinking."
Mike didn't put the book down. Instead, he began to flip through the pages, his eyes scanning the lists and the tiny, heart-wrenching illustrations that accompanied them. Laugh until I can't breathe. Buy something just because I like it. The items were so humble, so painfully normal, that they felt like an indictment of everything they had endured. He saw a note about thanking Joyce properly, a doodle of a car on a road with no destination, and a small, nervous sketch of a pair of dancing shoes with the caption: Learn to dance, even if I'm terrible.
Then he hit the last one: Go somewhere without anyone knowing where I am (and mom still isn't scared).
Mike looked at his friend, who was still standing by the door, looking small and uncertain, as if he were waiting for Mike to laugh or tell him how pathetic it was to want these things.
"It's not stupid," Mike closed the notebook with a soft thud and held it out, but he didn't let go of it immediately when Will reached for it. "It's just normal stuff. You shouldn't even have to wish for any of this. That's what's stupid."
Will's fingers brushed against his for a second as he grabbed the notebook and clutched it to his chest "It's just... I don't want to arrive in New York and realize I've never actually done anything," he admitted weakly. "I don't want to be just scars, Mike."
He stepped further into the room, setting the snacks and sodas down on the bed before glancing back at Mike. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
Mike didn't answer immediately. He was looking at Will - really looking at him - and seeing the way the light caught the stray hairs of his fringe and highlighted the green in his eyes - the eyes that he'd watched slowly come back to life over the last year. The resolve he'd felt earlier crystallized into a plan. He didn't just want to help Will pack; he wanted to ensure that by the time September rolled around, this notebook was full of checkmarks and memories.
"Like what?" Mike asked. He stood up, feeling as his body suddenly surged with a kind of restless, manic energy he hadn't felt in a long time. "I'm thinking that we have exactly two months and some change before you head to the city. And I'm thinking that most of this list is completely doable if we stop being boring."
Will let out a short, startled laugh. "Boring? You're the one taking a gap year to work at a grocery store, Mike."
"Exactly! And right now I'm understimulated and bored out of my mind," Mike countered, stepping closer until he was firmly in Will's personal space. "I've got a car, I've got nothing but time, and I've got a best friend who wants to go on a road trip to nowhere. We're doing it, Will. All of it. We're checking every single one of these off before you leave."
Will stared at him with his mouth hanging open, looking as if he couldn't decide whether to be touched or terrified by the sudden intensity in Mike's eyes. He looked down at the notebook in his hands, then back at Mike, a small, tentative smile beginning to tug at the corners of his lips. The air in the room felt lighter, the ghosts of the room receding as the focus shifted from what was being lost to what could be found.
"You can't be serious," Will whispered, though the way he leaned in suggested he desperately hoped Mike was. "The road trip? The dancing? Mike, you hate dancing. You're gonna trip and break your legs or something."
"I can learn," Mike insisted, his voice brimming with a confidence he didn't actually feel, but was determined to project. "I'll be terrible, but you'll be terrible too, and we can be the most pathetic dancers in the history of Indiana together. It's on the list, Will. That makes it a mission. And you know I don't fail missions."
Will looked at the notebook, then back at Mike, and suddenly the skepticism in his eyes gave way to a glimmer of genuine excitement. He let out a breath, a soft, shaky sound, and clutched the journal to his side. "Okay. Fine. If you're really that desperate to be a terrible dancer, I'm in. But seriously, where do we even start? Most of these things take more than an afternoon."
Mike’s grin widened, that old, familiar leadership instinct kicking in - the one that used to direct them through imaginary dungeons and forests, now redirected toward something far more important. He leaned back on his heels with a mischievous glint in his eyes. "Well, first things first. You got a lighter?"
Will blinked, looking confused for a second before the realization hit. He let out a small, amused huff. "A lighter? Why do you-" He stopped, thinking for a moment, then looked toward the door and lowered his voice, as if he'd forgotten entirely that Joyce wasn't even home. "I probably have one somewhere. Mom still smokes in secret sometimes when she's stressed, so I'd guess there's one or two hiding in the kitchen junk drawer or the laundry room."
"Perfect." Mike didn't even wait for Will to move; he grabbed Will's arm and started tugging him toward the door, the momentum carrying them both out of the bedroom and into the hallway. The weight of the room - the memory of El, the boxes of discarded childhood - seemed to vanish behind them as they moved. "Then we're starting a bonfire. Right now. I don't care if it's a Tuesday in June. We're finding some wood, we're finding that lighter, and we're staying up until the sun comes up."