Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Mike’s waiting. “El. El, do you copy? Over.”

More waiting. It’s all he ever does. He’s waited for eleven goddamn months. Nothing.

Frustrated, he slumps back against the pillows of El’s old fort. He hasn’t had the heart to take it down—and he knows that’s ridiculous, it’s been almost a year— but he can’t let it go. Can’t shake the feeling that she’s out there, somewhere. 

He never saw a body.

And even if he did—well, after last November, it would take more than that to convince him. Sometimes seeing isn’t believing.

He shifts uncomfortably. He misses his old blanket. The blue and yellow one. It was his favorite. Really warm. Toasty. Nancy probably stole it. So far, she hasn’t fessed up.

But this thin, lame white sheet will have to do. Shit, it’s freezing. Mike hates fall.

“Mike, do you copy? Mike, do you copy?”

What the fuck is Dustin doing, calling him right now? Lucas, maybe. Will, for sure. But Dustin never bothers.

He presses the comm. “Yeah, I copy. Over.”

There’s a pause, leaden with staticy suspicion. “What the hell are you doing on this channel?”

“Nothing.” Mike swallows. “Over.”

“Well, Lucas and I have six bucks total. What’s your haul?”

Would it kill him to say over? Just once?

But—aw, nuts. The arcade. That was tonight? “Shit,” Mike blurts. “Shit, I dunno yet. Um, over.”

“What do you mean you don’t know yet?”

“Hold on!” Mike insists, clambering to his feet. “Call Will. Over and out.”

He slams the antennae down, then brainstorms. Will’s probably prepared. He’s probably up to his ears in quarters. Where can he—

Nancy. She has to have something. She’s, like, an adult. And she’s always shopping. 

Mike takes the stairs up two at a time, practically flying to his sister’s room. She’s not there, which is good. She’d kick his ass.

He rummages through her drawers, nearly gagging when he hits on a bunch of lacy bras and underwear. Nope. Gross, gross, gross— aha. Jackpot.

There’s a piggy bank in the third drawer. And it’s heavy.

Mike hauls it over to the bed, taking the stopper out and shaking it violently. Quarters begin to spit out on the girly comforter. A lot of them, too. Nice!

Of course, because he’s Mike Wheeler, and his life sucks, that’s when Nancy opens the bedroom door. “What the hell are you doing?”

Mike’s eyes widen. He freezes, looking from the filched coins to his sister, then back again. Shit. He’s gonna have to make a break for it. 

“I’ll pay you back!” he shouts, then gathers the coins in his fists, shoving them messily in his jacket pockets. He shoulders past Nancy, then hops down the stairs as fast as he can manage. “Bye!”

“Mike!”

Footsteps. Oh, god, she’s coming for him. He’s in deep shit. 

“Mike, get back here!”

Mike ignores her. He zooms past the kitchen, where Dad, Mom, and Holly are all gathered, in some sort of No-Mike, No-Nancy family meeting. Cool.

“Hey, no running in the house,” Dad calls blandly.

Mom stares after him, bewildered. “What is going on?”

Holly says nothing, because she’s only four, and she doesn’t talk all that much.

Mike makes it to the garage, to his bike, and his spirits lift. He’s done it. He’s made it. If he doesn’t count the fact that Nancy’s hot on his heels, running like her life depends on it. “Mike!”

He grips his handlebars tight, sprinting down the driveway with his bike. Freedom!

A second later, he’s riding into the night, pockets heavy with Nancy’s allowance. A job well done, if Mike says so himself. Which he does.

“Asshole!” Nancy shouts after him.

Mike continues to ignore her. He’s got a date with the Party.

Not a literal date. More like a friend-date. Like a… yeah. Whatever. 

They’re going to the arcade. That’s all he meant.

***

Mom honks twice as they pull into the arcade parking lot. From the front door, Dustin lifts his hand in a cheerful greeting, and Will waves back.

He waits for the speech.

“Okay, so I’ll pick you up in two hours. That’s nine o’clock on the dot, okay?”

Will shifts restlessly in his seat, one hand already on the door handle. “Okay.”

Mom pins him to the chair with her gaze. And her hand, which is now on his shoulder, fingers digging in like little clamps. “If anything happens, if you need to come home, just ask to use their phone and call me. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“And don’t—”

“Don’t walk or bike home, I know,” Will finishes impatiently. He has this whole thing memorized. And really, it’s not like he even brought his bike. How, exactly, would he be biking home? 

(On the back of Mike’s bike? Holding his waist? Leaning his cheek against his jacket?)

Anyway.

He gently shrugs Mom’s hand off and starts to open the door. So close. He can taste it. 

“Okay, but sweetie—”

“Mom, I have to go,” he says firmly.

Her eyes soften. “Have fun.”

“Okay. Love you,” he blurts, then gets out just as she returns the saying.

As soon as he’s in the open night air, he feels less suffocated. More free. He loves Mom, loves her so much, but these past eleven months have been… difficult. To put it mildly. And he gets it! He totally does. But he still feels squished. Embarrassed. 

Then he sees Mike, Dustin, and Lucas, and those feelings quickly disappear. In their place is only excitement and anticipation. The arcade is high on the list of things Will loves. Along with the Party members.

(One member in particular.)

Nope. Not thinking about anything. Will’s brain is empty. Just arcade. Games. Fun.

“Hey, Will!”

Heat blooms on his cheeks. “Hi, Mike.”

“How much did you get?” Mike asks curiously, holding the door open for him.

“Like… three dollars?” Will answers, blushing even more. Mike probably has a lot more money than he does.

But instead of laughing, Mike just smiles. “Woah! Nice. I have, like, five, but only ‘cause I stole it from Nancy’s room.”

Will snorts. “You’re gonna be in so much trouble.”

Mike shrugs. “Yeah, whatever.”

He’s so cool. 

No. Stop, Will. Stop being weird. 

They make their way over to the games, and before long, they’re engrossed in Dragon’s Lair, watching Dustin’s every move.

“To slay the dragon, use the magic sword!” the girl on the screen chirps.

“Oh, Jesus,” Dustin mutters nervously. “I’m in uncharted territory here, guys.”

Will’s eyes track the cartoon shapes and bright colors, and his hand tightens around the edge of the machine. “Down! Down, down,” he urges.

“I’m going!” Dustin shouts back, veering hard on the joystick. Too hard. Too clumsy. He’s not gonna make it.

But the knight dodges, and ducks, and he’s out of the way. Will lets out a whoosh of relief. “Come on, Dustin!” he encourages, the words mixing in with the rest of the Party.

After a few more seconds, their well-meaning cheers turn to all-out babbling, and Dustin waves an annoyed hand. “Shut up, shut up!”

The momentary distraction is all it takes. On screen, the knight is barbecued to a crisp, skin flaking off to reveal his white skeleton underneath.

Dustin’s face falls. “No. No, no, no! I hate this overpriced bullshit,” he exclaims, slamming a fist down on the machine. “Son of a bitch! Piece of shit.”

Lucas smirks, which is how Will knows he’s about to say something stupid. “You’re just not nimble enough. You’ll get there one day.” He wiggles his eyebrows. “But until then, Princess Daphne is still mine.”

In the game, Princess Daphne lets out a high-pitched coo, fluttering her long eyelashes out at them.

Yep. Stupid.

Dustin rolls his shoulders back, obviously choosing to ignore the taunt. “Okay, whatever. I’m still tops on Centipede and Dig Dug.”

“You sure about that?”

They turn to face Keith, the snarky high-schooler that works at the arcade. He’s currently shoving Cheetos into his mouth, fingers covered in cheesy dust. Gross.

“Sure about what?” Dustin asks.

Keith crunches on his Cheeto, a look of smug satisfaction on his pimply face. Slowly, Dustin’s expression turns to horror. “You’re kidding me. No, no, no!”

Together, the boys race over to Dig Dug, eager to check the leaderboard. Sure enough, Dustin’s been bumped down to second place. And whoever beat him won by a lot. As in, over ten-thousand points.

Dustin groans dramatically, slumping against the machine. “Seven-hundred, fifty-one-thousand, and three-hundred points!” Will reads out, unable to keep the awe from his voice. That’s so many. He’s never topped five-hundred thousand.

“That’s impossible,” Mike breathes, sounding impressed.

Maybe Will should practice more. Try and beat his record. Just… because.

Dustin whirls around to confront Keith. “Who is Mad Max?” he demands.

“Better than you,” Keith says bluntly.

“Is it you?” Will guesses.

Keith scoffs at him. “You know I despise Dig Dug.”

Oh. True. Also, his name’s not Max. Unless that’s, like… his middle name.

“Then who is it?” Lucas asks.

“Yeah,” Dustin adds. “Spill it, Keith.”

Keith smirks. “You want information, then… I need something in return.” Slowly, deliberately, he turns to Mike. The rest of them do, too.

There’s a beat of silence before Mike’s expression twists in disgusted realization. “No! Nonono, no way. You’re not getting a date with her.”

“Mike, come on,” Lucas pleads, pressing his hands together in a mock prayer. “Just get him the date.”

“I’m not prostituting my sister!”

Will bites his lip to hide his smile. Mike’s so funny.

Nancy, to Mike’s disappointment (and Will’s, kinda), is still together with Steve Harrington. Despite how sure both of the boys had been that her and Jonathan had something going on. Will is sure of Jonathan’s feelings—he doesn’t hide them well—and Mike insists that Nancy’s not stupid, and she would have to be supid to ignore such a good guy. But, so far, nothing. They’re just really, really… really close friends. Apparently.

Will hasn’t seen any other guy-girl friendships that close. But what does he know? He’s only thirteen. Nancy and Jonathan are practically adults. Maybe they’re just more mature, as much as he hates to admit it. Maybe they can be just friends, and brush off their feelings, without making anything weird. Will admires that about them.

“It’s for a good cause,” Lucas protests.

Dustin waves him off. “No, don’t get him the date. You know what? He’s gonna spread his nasty-ass rash to your whole family.”

Keith glares at them. “Acne isn’t a rash, and it isn’t contagious, you prepubescent wastoid.”

“Oh, I’m a wastoid?”

The guys keep bickering, but Will’s attention is caught by something else. A prickle at the back of his neck. The hairs on his arm standing on edge.

A voice, calling to him. Will. Will Byers.

Crap. Crap, can he not have one night?

He turns around, walking a few steps towards the glass door. There’s thick dust floating outside. Or at least, that’s what it looks like. Maybe he’s just overreacting. Maybe it’s just snow. It’s a little early for snow—not even Halloween yet—but it’s possible.

“Hey,” he says softly, still staring out the door. Then, louder, he calls, “Hey, guys, do you see the—”

He turns around, and they’re gone. Everyone’s gone.

It’s dark. Cold. He’s back. Back there.

Thick, ash-like particles scatter in the air. Writhing vines crawl up the walls and into the arcade machines, which flicker on and off like faulty lightbulbs. The whole room is gray, devoid of any music or life.

And through it all, there’s a voice. One that Will’s come to know almost as well as his own.

Come back, Will. Come home. Join us.

The front door crashes open, slamming against the wall. Will jumps, letting out a little panicked breath, and whips around to face the noise.

Come home. Come home.

As if in a dream, Will walks towards the door. It doesn’t even feel like he’s in control of his legs. It just feels like he’s being pulled. Manipulated. Like a puppet.

It’s even darker outside. And it’s storming. There’s no rain, just dust, but the thunder and lightning is fierce, glowing an unnatural, violent shade of red.

Will watches, rooted to the spot, as the whole sky lights up. He can feel it, coursing through his veins, his blood—the Evil. The devil. A hell-like presence, even if he knows this isn’t hell. It’s the Upside Down.

He’s not sure there’s much of a difference.

The devil is here. And it wants him back. It wants—it wants to—

“Will! Are you okay?”

Mike.

Will spins on his heel, and in the blink of an eye, everything’s fine. The arcade is just the arcade. Mike is there, standing at the door, tender concern in his eyes.

He’s gonna have to tell Mom about this, isn’t he? Man. He really thought this was gonna get better.

Why isn’t it getting better?

Will looks back out at the sky. It’s a normal shade of dark blue, twinkling with stars. The orange arcade sign spins harmlessly on its pole. “Yeah,” he says, once he can force his throat to form words again. “Yeah, I’m just…”

I'm just… hallucinating. Going crazy. Losing it, somehow, even though it’s been almost a year and this is stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Weak. 

“I just needed some air.”

Mike draws closer, slinging an arm around his shoulders. Will’s entire back tingles, going warm and fuzzy. Every nerve in his body lights up, bright and as obvious as the neon sign of the arcade.

Stupid. 

“Come on,” Mike says softly, leaning in close. “You’re up on Dig Dug. Let’s take that top score back, huh?”

“Yeah, for sure,” Will says, shooting him a smile. He focuses on his breathing. In and out. In and out.

Will is okay. He’s fine. He’s thirteen, and everything is perfectly normal. 

He believes that less every time he thinks it. Soon, he won’t believe it at all.

He doesn’t want to know what happens then.

***

The next day, there’s a note in Will’s locker. No, not a note—a newspaper clipping. The newspaper clipping. Oh, and a note. Fantastic.

ZOMBIE BOY.

Will’s school picture is defaced, his eyes X-ed out with red sharpie. 

He spares a glance down the hallway, then down the other way. No one looks at him. They never do. Or, if they do, it’s with a cruel curiosity in their eyes. Like he’s some kind of circus act. A sideshow attraction. 

A freak.

But he doesn’t see anyone who looks suspicious, or more out of character than usual. Whoever did this, whoever keeps doing this, is either long gone or an insanely good actor. Will doesn’t know which option is worse.

God, you’d think they would move on by now. Find something else to talk about.

But it’s Hawkins, and Will’s ‘death’ and subsequent resurrection is still the most eventful thing to ever happen here. By a long shot.

The bell rings, cutting off his sad thoughts. He takes a second to ground himself, breathing in and out, looking at the drawing of the Party on the inside of his locker door. At their smiling faces. The bright colors.

He crumples the newspaper, shoves it in his locker, and grabs his books. Maybe in class, he can turn his brain off. Focus on school. Maybe he could even try to figure out who ‘Mad Max’ is. That’s about all the Party seems interested in right now. Will should probably chip in with the investigation.

Sure. He’ll turn his brain off. He can do that.

He drifts down the hallway, feeling a little out of it, until he’s in Mr. Clarke’s class, murmuring soft greetings to the boys and slipping in his regular seat. Okay. He’s paying attention. He’s taking notes. He can do this.

Mr. Clarke slams a plastic pinkish-gray model down on the table. “Meet the human brain.”

A little on-the-nose, Mr. Clarke.

The class is silent. Out of the corner of his eye, Will sees Mike smiling. They all love science class. Mr. Clarke’s, like… the best teacher ever. And he runs AV club, which automatically makes him ten times cooler.

“I know, I know,” Mr. Clarke continues, waving his hands. “It doesn’t look like much. A little gross, even. Right? But consider this: there are a hundred billion cells inside this miracle of evolution.”

Woah. That’s wild.

Beside him, Suzie Suthers passes a note back to Maisy Hall. Sometimes Will wonders if they’re friends just because their names rhyme. Maybe he should try and look for a Bill to befriend.

Nah. He’s good with the friends he’s got.

“All working as one! And no, I did not misspeak. I did not stutter. A hundred billion.”

Yeah, Mr. Clarke. Got it the first time. Very neat.

In the back of the class, Brooke Peters’ bubblegum pops. The sound is extremely loud in the quiet classroom.

And then there’s a second, louder sound: the door opening and closing behind two new guests. The first is a girl with a sour expression, like she’s just sucked on a lemon, and flaming red hair. The principal’s behind her.

Mr. Clarke lights up. “Ah! This must be our new student.”

“Indeed it is,” the principal confirms. “All yours.”

Will perks up in his seat. They never get new students. Maybe the arrival of this girl will shift some of the school’s attention off of him. Hopefully.

The girl starts to walk back to the only empty seat in the room, but Mr. Clarke stops her before she can get too far. “Alright, hold up. You don’t get away that easy,” he jokes. He waves a hand at the front of the classroom, at the empty space by his desk. “Come on up, don’t be shy.”

Reluctantly, she pivots on the spot and trudges up front. She looks like she would rather be anywhere else. Like she wants to disappear. Will relates.

“Dustin, drum roll, please.”

Dustin happily obliges, slamming his textbook shut and drumming a revved-up beat on the cover.

“Class. Please welcome, all the way from sunny California, the latest passenger to join us on our curiosity voyage… Maxine!”

Dustin’s drumroll stops with a small, final-sounding tap.

“It’s Max.”

Mr. Clarke blinks. “Sorry?”

Max’s voice takes on a hard edge. “Nobody calls me Maxine. It’s Max.”

Max. Like… like Mad Max? Dig Dug Max?

All the Party members apparently have the same thought at the same time, shooting each other wide-eyed glances. “Mad Max,” Lucas whispers, raising an eyebrow.

“Ah,” Mr. Clarke says, regaining his footing. “Well, welcome aboard, Max.” He waves her off, and she walks back to her seat. The boys turn to watch her as she goes, now intensely interested. Who is this girl?

The sun hits her red hair as she sits. It almost looks like she’s on fire. It suits her.

Will thinks she’s kinda cool. Well, for a girl. It’s not, like, the most interesting thing in the world, but it’s something. A mystery. A distraction.

The Max-talk goes on all the way through the rest of the day. At lunch, it’s still a hot topic of discussion.

She skateboards, too. And she’s good. Maybe she is Mad Max.

The Party watches her from behind the school gate. “There’s no way that’s Mad Max,” Mike says dubiously.

Oh. No, Mike is right. Definitely not her. “Yeah,” Will agrees quickly. “Girls don’t play video games.”

At least, not any he’s seen. It’s not like they can’t, but… most of the time, they don’t seem to be interested. Like, at all. The ones he’s tried to talk to mostly just make faces at him and walk away, snickering behind their hands like he can’t see them. Although, now that he thinks of it, that might have more to do with him being ‘Zombie Boy’ than his love of video games.

“And even if they did, you can’t get seven-hundred and fifty-thousand points on Dig Dug,” Mike continues. “It’s impossible.”

Yeah. Exactly.

“But her name is Max,” Lucas argues.

“So what?”

“So—how many Maxes do you know?”

There’s a short silence as they all think about that.

“I dunno,” Mike mumbles.

“Zero! That’s how many.”

Dustin hums in agreement. “Yeah, and she shows up at school the day after someone with her same name breaks our top score. I mean, you kiddin’ me?”

“Exactly,” Lucas says triumphantly. “So she’s gotta be Mad Max.”

“And plus, she skateboards, so she’s pretty awesome,” Dustin says.

Oh. Oh, Will sees what’s happening. They like her. Like-like. The romantic kind of like.

Well, that’s… good for them. Super.

Mike pulls a disbelieving face. “Awesome? You haven’t even said a single word to her!”

Good point, Mike. See, Mike is always right. Always the voice of reason.

“I don’t have to,” Dustin insists. “I mean, look at her.”

Will looks. And then he does a double-take, because Max is gone. For a second, he thinks he’s having another episode, until he hears Dustin’s voice again. “Shit, I’ve lost the target.”

Will scrunches his nose. Obviously, he doesn’t know much about girls—but he knows you aren’t supposed to call them targets. That’s just weird. 

But Will’s trying to be a good friend, and support Dustin’s stalker-y habits, so he whips his head around, looking for Max’s bright red hair. “Oh! There,” he says, pointing to the stairwell. They watch as she gets to the top stair, then drops a crumpled-up paper into the trashcan below.

Hmm. Interesting. A clue, maybe?

Will looks at the others for approval, and by unspoken agreement, they take off running. He’ll admit, he’s having fun. It’s not his ideal way to spend lunch break—he could be drawing, or planning a campaign with Mike—but it’s still something new. Something he can do with his friends.

They stop short at the trashcan, not actually sure if they’re willing to dig in the garbage for this thing. Except Dustin, who dives right in. Will’s not complaining. He can dumpster-dive all he wants. Will’s not the one getting rotten-lunch smell all over his clothes for some girl.

As if the universe read his mind, a group of girls their age pass by, shooting them nasty looks. In this case, the judging is probably justified, because Dustin’s got his whole head and torso in the garbage. Will gives them a little wave, feeling very awkward. Nothing to see here! Move along, please.

“Got it!” Dustin exclaims, holding the ball of paper high in the air. “There we go.”

They all crowd around the note as Dustin unfolds it, anxious to see the result of his hard work.

“Stop spying on me, creeps,” they read aloud, voices mingling into a disappointed mush. Dustin and Lucas practically wilt on the spot.

“Well, shit,” Dustin mutters.

They had been kinda creepy, though. Will thinks Max has a point. He doesn’t like when people stare at him, either. And he has a lot of experience in that area.

“William Byers!”

Aw, man. It’s lab day. He’d almost forgotten. And after last night, it’s gonna be extra bad.

Principal Coleman nods at him as he turns around, an awkward acknowledgment. “Your mother’s here.”

Of course she is. Of course.

Will allows himself to mope for a second. To feel bad for himself. To wish that he could stay at school with his friends.

Then he sucks it up. “Bye, guys,” he calls, stepping towards the principal.

“Bye, Will,” the guys call back, waving him off.

The hallway is tense. Full of gawkers. People who want to catch a glimpse of Zombie Boy. Who want to gossip with their friends, wondering why he gets pulled out of class so much. Wondering if there’s something wrong with him. 

Will doesn’t meet anyone’s eye. Instead, he stares at the ground, at his too-big, hand-me-down tennis shoes, at his dirty laces. He tugs his backpack straps tighter on his shoulders.

Mom’s outside, leaning against the car, cigarette in hand. She smokes a lot more now. Jonathan says it’s because of stress. And though he doesn’t say this next part, Will knows it’s because of him. Because of the Anniversary. Because of November, fast-approaching, a jump-scare on their family calendar.

Mom spots him and snaps out of her daze, waving with a forced smile on her face. Will waves back, jogging down the stairs and heading to the car. Principal Coleman opens the door for him, like he’ll get in some sort of tragic door-related incident if he tries to do it by himself.

Will hates this. He hates the attention it puts on him. He hates the way he can’t forget, can’t move on, can’t be normal.

The lab is only one of the reasons, though. And it’s not even the worst one.

***

Mike watches Will crowd into his car, and as with every time, he feels a surge of relief. Will’s okay. Mike can see him, he’s right there, he’s fine.

But he was off today. Reserved. Not laughing at as many jokes, not inserting as many of his opinions. Just kind of… floating. Mike recognizes it, because he’s been there. Because he’s still there, a lot of the time. Even if he tries to cover it up.

Mike’s brain fills with anxiety, little half-formed imaginings of Will getting in a car crash on the way to the lab, of something going wrong with his tests, of the Demogorgon coming back.

No. Don’t think about that. Mike resolves to radio Will as soon as he gets home, though, just to check that everything went well.

(To make sure he’s still alive. Still breathing. Still safe.)

“You guys think he’s okay?” Dustin muses quietly, as they watch Will’s mom drive away.

“He’s always weird when he has to go in,” Lucas dismisses.

“I dunno,” Mike says, eyes trained on the car, disappearing over the horizon. If he squints, he can still see Will in the backseat, tiny and hunched-over. “He was quiet today.”

“He’s always quiet,” Lucas responds.

No, he’s not, Mike thinks. But he doesn’t dignify Lucas with an answer. Anyone who thinks Will is always quiet just isn’t paying attention. And—sure, it’s been different, this last year. Clearly. Will went through a lot, and he has Bad Days, and nightmares, and a shit-load of lingering trauma. He’s not very chatty on Bad Days.

But on regular days, days where he’s feeling like himself, Will isn’t quiet. He cracks jokes and makes little witty one-liners that never fail to make Mike smile. He asks everyone how their day was and what’s on their mind and if they need help with anything. He likes to talk about things, once he’s comfortable: his music, his family, his dog, his art. D&D. He’s not quiet, and Mike almost can’t believe that Lucas would claim he is.

But Lucas doesn’t know Will like he does: front and back, inside and out, eyes closed, upside down. Mike and Will can read each other better than anyone. And Will, as cheesy as it sounds, is Mike’s favorite book.

He’s just on a tough chapter right now. That’s all.

Mike will help him through it. He’ll help him, he’ll be there for him, even if it’s the last thing he ever does. Even if he has to die trying.

Chapter Text

The lab is really far away. The drive always takes ages. And the woods remind him of—well. Of that place. Of November.

But it’s daylight, so it’s not as bad. Not as memory-inducing. Still, though, Will stares out the window, trees blurring into dull streaks of color, and tries to shut his brain down. Tries to feel nothing. Think nothing.

Come home, Will. Come home.

Mom glances over. Once. Twice. Three times. “You feeling any better?” she finally hazards.

Will hadn’t meant to tell her about his visions. His episodes. If it was up to him, he would have powered through it on his own, like the mature, responsible teenager he’s determined to be. But a few months ago, he’d had one right in the living room. Right in front of her and Jonathan.

He couldn’t pretend to be okay after that. Couldn’t think of a lie to cover it up.

So they do the tests. And they’d been doing them anyway, before Will even confessed that anything was wrong, but now they’re more frequent. More insistent.

“Will?”

“Huh?” he blurts, jumping back to the present. What was the question again? “Yeah,” he answers tentatively, taking a stab in the dark. “Yeah, sorry.”

She shoots him a fond smile. “Hey. What did we talk about? We gotta stop it with the sorries.”

“Sorry,” Will says automatically, then feels like an idiot. “I mean—I mean, yeah. I know.” He straightens in his seat, wringing his hands anxiously. It’s starting to be a Bad Day. As much as he didn’t want it to be, it is. Maybe all lab days are doomed to be Bad Days.

Mom eyes his hands. “And there’s nothing to be nervous about, you know?” she says, with all the confidence of someone who isn’t about to be hooked up to a million random tubes and beeping machines. “Just tell them what you felt last night. What you saw.”

Will stays quiet. He didn’t even tell Mom that stuff about last night. He had just said: It happened again, and left it at that. She’s used to it by now.

She looks his way again, and Will starts to worry that she’s not paying nearly enough attention to the road. Even if it is the middle of nowhere, and they are the only people driving. There could be a deer or something. It could happen.

“Hey, I’m gonna be there the whole time. So it’s gonna be okay. Okay?”

Yeah, she is. She’s always there. Bordering on too much of the time, even though Will feels horrible for thinking that.

“Okay,” he says, small. He returns to his very exciting window stare. Catalogs the sights. Tree. Another tree. Ooh, a bush!

Tree again.

By the time they get to the lab, Will feels half-numb, half-queasy. He never really ate lunch today, what with all the Max drama. And he wasn’t super hungry, anyway. He hasn’t had much of an appetite lately.

Chief Hopper’s already waiting for them, leaning against his car, one ankle crossed over the other, cigarette in hand. Will’s gotten to know him way better than he ever thought he would, these past eleven months. They’re… friendly, he guesses. Not that Hopper’s a very friendly man to begin with.

“Hey, buddy.”

Will shoves his hands in his jacket pockets (he’s cold) and leans into Mom as she slings an arm around his shoulder. “Hey.”

Hopper accompanies them as they walk, their own personal bodyguard. Even if he is a little soft around the middle, and Will’s not super convinced of his bodyguard abilities, in the event of an actual crisis. But that’s yet to be seen.

The lab is big. Scary. Will doesn’t like it.

Everyone inside recognizes him. Some of them wave, and others just stare. Always with the staring. Will feels like a zoo animal, trapped behind solid plexiglass.

He zones out. Drifts. Focuses on Mom’s arm around him, Hopper’s steady presence at his side, right up until they get to the weigh-in station, and then both those things are gone. 

“You can take off your shoes and step on the scale.”

Will’s already got his laces untied. He knows the drill.

He breathes unsteadily as he steps on the cold platform, and watches as they adjust the little knobs. Sixty-eight pounds. One less than last time.

They give him some privacy to change into his hospital gown, and he takes a second to look at himself in the mirror. He looks like a ghost. Pale. Small. Scared.

Will straightens his expression out until he looks unaffected. Mild-mannered. Then he lies back on the bed and waits. His foot won’t stop jiggling, the only visible sign of nerves.

Eventually, Mom and Hopper come back in. They don’t talk much. There’s a thick kind of quiet in the room, so bitter that Will almost chokes on it.

The nurse that comes in to draw his blood is silent. She rubs the solution on his inner arm with a heavy hand, latex gloves pulling hard against his skin. Will stares at the ceiling until his eyes burn. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.

The needle pinches: a stinging, hot pain, but far from the worst he’s ever felt. He doesn’t even flinch.

Dots. EKG. Beeping. Beeping, beeping, beeping. His head hurts. His stomach is all tense and fluttery, like he might throw up.

Lab day sucks.

“Sir Will! How are you?” Doctor Owens casts a look around the room, greeting Mom and Hopper. “Mom. Pop.”

Nobody corrects him.

Doctor Owens is the only good part of these days. He’s always really friendly, and doesn’t look at Will like he’s a specimen. He gives him brightly colored lollipops after his appointments.

“Let’s take a look, see what’s goin’ on here,” he continues jovially, pulling up a chair next to Will’s bed. “I see you shaved off a pound since we saw you last.” He glances down at his paperwork, then back up at Will. Tries for a conspiratorial smile. “Must be making room for all that Halloween candy.”

Will’s not really in the mood to smile back. He rolls his head against the headrest, gazing blankly at the wall. He looks at the posters, the medical equipment, the peeling wallpaper.

Owens doesn’t give up. “What’s your favorite candy? Desert island candy, if you had to pick one.”

“I dunno,” Will mumbles.

“Come on,” he encourages. “Life or death situation, what would you pick?”

Well, Will’s been in a life or death situation. And there was no candy involved. But Doctor Owens is trying really hard, so he takes a second to think about it. “I guess…”

He glances over at Mom. Reese’s Pieces, she mouths, and he rolls his eyes. But they are pretty good. “Reese’s Pieces?”

Owens nods, satisfied. “Good call. Good call. I’m more of a Mounds guy, but I’ve gotta say—peanut butter and chocolate, come on. Hard to beat that.”

Will knows what he’s doing. It’s obvious. But he’s grateful for it anyway. Distractions are always helpful. 

Then they get down to business. Owens leans back in his chair, all casual-like. “Alright, so tell me what’s going on with you. Tell me about this episode you had.”

Will closes his eyes for a second, remembering. Come home. Come home. Come—

“Well,” he starts, already a little weak, “my friends were there. And then they just… weren’t. And I was back there again.”

“In the Upside Down?” Owens clarifies.

Where else? 

Will nods in confirmation. The wires around his head jostle with the movement.

“Alright, so what happened next?”

“I heard this noise—” Come home. “So I went outside, and… it was worse.”

Owens’ brows furrow together thoughtfully. “How was it worse?”

“There was this storm,” Will explains. He sees it for a second, burning red in his mind’s eye. Crashing thunder. Spiderwebbed lightning.

“Okay. So how did you feel when you saw the storm?”

What is this, a therapy appointment? But Owens is a good guy, and he’s nice to Will, so he answers as honestly as he can. “I felt… frozen.”

Mom looks sadly at him. She seems upset. Quiet.

“Heart racing?” Owens asks knowingly, like he gets it.

He doesn’t. Not at all.

“Just frozen,” Will corrects. 

“Frozen—cold frozen? Frozen to the touch?”

“No. Like… how you feel when you’re scared,” Will admits. “And you can’t breathe or talk or do anything.” He hesitates, not sure how much he should say. But if it’ll help, if they can figure out what’s wrong with him, if they can fix him…

“I felt… I felt this evil. Like it was looking at me.”

“It was evil?” Owens asks, and it feels a little patronizing. Like he’s talking to a kid. Or maybe he’s just trying to understand. “Well…” He looks up at the ceiling, then clears his throat, looking back to Will. “What do you think the evil wanted?”

“To kill,” Will says automatically. There’s no real way to sugar-coat that—it’s the truth. 

The beeping on the machine speeds up.

“To kill you?”

Come home. Join us.

“Not me,” Will says. “Everyone else.”

Doctor Owens looks mildly alarmed by this. Probably not as much as he should be, though. Will still isn’t sure he’s getting it.

Next to him, Mom looks nearly paralyzed. Like she’s the one that’s frozen, now.

A long, horrible silence sits in the room. Will wishes he could shove the words back in his mouth.

Owens lets out a muffled cough, one that seems sort of fake. The kind you force, just to break the tension. “Well. Um—that’s all we needed from you, Will. What color lollipop do you want today?”

“Red, please.” Then Will thinks about the storm, about the glowing, violent light, and changes his mind, just as Doctor Owens is rummaging around in his lab coat pocket. “Actually—I’ll do blue. Sorry.”

“No worries,” he says, already morphing back into his usual, carefree self. Will wonders if it’s a mask. He has a lot of experience with those. “Aha! Last blue. You’re in luck, kiddo.”

With a small flourish, Owens presents the lollipop to Will, blue and shiny and round. Will takes it, carefully peels off the wrapper, and pops it in his mouth. This way, at least, he won’t be expected to talk anymore.

Owens stands to his feet, exchanging a significant look with Mom and Hopper. “Well, Will, I need to have a little chat with your folks. Why don’t you come down the hall and wait outside my office? Won’t take long.”

Will nods, because there’s nothing else to do, and they all follow Owens out of the testing room and down the corridor, in an oddly arranged, haphazard group. 

When they reach Doctor Owens’ office, Will takes a seat at the bench, and pulls off his backpack to set it next to him.

“You should draw a little, honey,” Mom says softly. “Make a nice picture, okay? We’ll be right back.”

“Okay, Mom.”

And they leave. Will wonders what they’re going to talk about. He wonders if they think he’s crazy. If they’re discussing the best way to deal with him, to get rid of him, to lock him up.

No, no—they wouldn’t do that. It’s probably just about his medical results. Right?

But then, why wouldn’t he be allowed in the room?

Will digs in his backpack for blank paper and his new colored pencils. Distraction. He needs a distraction. Mom told him to make something.

And he already knows what he’s going to draw.

***

Mike pokes at his untouched broccoli. He’s been eating less, these last few months, but Mom hasn’t noticed so far. He almost wishes she would, that she would confront him about it, that she would force him to talk. To open up.

But he doesn’t even know what he would say. There’s too much. There’s nothing at all.

“After dinner, I want you to pick out your toys for the yard sale.”

Mike taps his fork against the edge of his plate. “Fine.”

Mom looks up. Arches an eyebrow. “Two boxes’ worth.”

Mike looks up, too. “Two boxes?” he repeats disbelievingly. Usually, he only has to pick one or two things. Old stuff, stuff he’s outgrown. But this is a lot. 

“You heard me,” Mom says evenly. Next to Mike, Holly tilts her head back and dangles a piece of ham over her open mouth. 

Mike watches her for a second, then turns back to face Mom. “I’m fine giving away a couple, but the others just have way too much emotional value,” he argues. 

There’s a short, tense silence. Mom tilts her head, swirling her wine around her glass. “Emotional value,” she repeats, looking unconvinced.

“They’re hunks of plastic, Michael,” Dad says flatly.

Mike decides to go a different route. If he can’t appeal to them with emotion, he’ll try logic. The this-isn’t-fair approach. “You already took away my Atari!”

Mom doesn’t miss a beat. “If you didn’t want to lose more toys, you shouldn’t have stolen from Nancy.”

Screw Nancy for ratting him out. It was only five fucking dollars. “I didn’t steal, I borrowed,” he snaps. Not like he had any intention of paying it back, but she doesn’t need to know that.

But she’s on a roll now. “Oh, and you didn’t curse out Mr. Kowalski last week either, right? Or plagiarize that essay? Or graffiti the bathroom stall?”

Mike rolls his eyes. “Everyone graffitis the bathroom stall.”

It’s true. They do. They write stuff about all the Party members on there. A lot of it’s about Will. Stuff that Mike knows would break his heart if he saw. So when he saw ZOMBIE BOY, written in huge red letters… he’d covered it up. Sharpied a huge cartoon dick over it, and filled it in, so none of the letters were visible. And it’s the boys’ bathroom, anyway. Not like an extra dick’s gonna hurt anyone.

And he’d meant to do the essay, really, but he’d spent all night trying to radio El, and he didn’t want to get distracted, because what if she answered? What if he was too deep in the essay-writing zone to hear her voice? And then Maisy’s essay had fallen out of her backpack the next day, and he still didn’t have anything written, and it was just… easy. Convenient. Not to mention that he’d caught her and her friends talking shit about Dustin the week before, making fun of his speech impediment. She deserved to be knocked down a peg or two.

And Mr. Kowalski is just an asshole. Mike hates him. 

Dad points a finger at Mike. “So if your friend jumps off a cliff, you’re gonna jump too?”

Yes. 

Mike zones out for a second, remembering. The wind in his ears. The imminent feeling of death. His sneakers against the quarry, the swoop of his stomach. 

Of course he’d jump. He already has. 

But he can’t tell them that, so he says nothing. Just takes a deep breath in through his nose, and lets it out through his mouth. Calming down. Trying not to lose his temper, which seems to be a harder and harder feat these days.

Mom softens, just a tad. “We know you’ve had a hard year, Michael. But we’ve been patient.” She shrugs, looking a little lost. “This isn’t strike one. It isn’t even strike three.”

Dad butts in, mouth still full of mashed potato. “It’s strike twenty. You’re on the bench, son.” He swallows. “And if it had been my coach, you’d be lucky to still be on the team.”

Mike doesn’t know why Dad keeps insisting on these sports metaphors. He should know Mike doesn’t know anything about benches or strikes or coaches. It all just goes over his head, which pisses him off even more. 

They’re treating him like a toddler. It’s infuriating. 

“Two boxes,” Mom finishes, hard finality in her tone. “Two.”

Mike stabs his broccoli extra hard. He hates his life.

The rest of dinner is high-strung and awkward. Nancy’s not even there to kick under the table or snark at. She’s at Barb’s parents with Steve. They visit a lot, which is nice of them. But it’s also just another thing that makes Nancy so much better than Mike, so perfect without even having to try. Nice, sweet Nancy, who doesn’t copy stolen essays or draw dicks on the bathroom stall. Good, kind Nancy, who visits her dead friend’s parents every week. 

Nancy, with her great boyfriend, and her great grades, and her great life. Fucking—great.

Mike practically sprints down to the basement, eager to escape the judgy air of the dining room. To get to a parent-free zone, where he can actually breathe. Relax a little. 

The first thing he does, after settling down on the couch, is radio Will. “Will, do you copy? Over.”

His reply comes almost immediately. “Hi, Mike, I copy. What’s up? Over.”

At the sound of his voice, Mike slumps in relief. He knew Will was fine, obviously, but… it never hurts to check. To make sure. 

But also, Will said, Hi, Mike. With a period, not an exclamation point. Which is the last piece of evidence Mike needed to confirm that this is, in fact, a Bad Day. Most lab days are, he thinks.

“I just wanted to see if you were okay,” he says, softening his voice. “Over.”

There’s a long, suspicious pause. Like Will’s trying to decide if he should lie or not. But, because he never lies to Mike, he says: “It’s a lab day. You know how it is. But I’m okay. Over.”

Mike shifts a little, resting his chin in his free hand. He starts casting his gaze around the basement, trying to decide what he can afford to give away. What stuff he’s not especially attached to. “Do you want to come over?” he asks, a spur-of-the-moment decision. “I could keep you company. Over.”

Mike can hear the smile in Will’s voice when he responds. “Thanks, Mike. I want to, really, but it’s movie night with Bob. Over.”

“Ooh, Bob,” Mike teases, the corner of his mouth tugging up.

“He’s nice!” Will laughs. “And my mom likes him. And you didn’t say over. Over.”

“I’m flipping off my walkie-talkie right now,” Mike informs him, trying to stifle his giggles. “Over.”

“You are not. And besides, aren’t you grounded, anyway? I couldn’t come over either way. Over.”

“No, that was last week,” Mike reminds him. “Now, they’re just making me give up all my toys. Over.”

“Aw, that blows, Mike. I’m really sorry. Over.”

As if to put a fine point on his sucky life, Mom traipses down the stairs, two empty boxes in hand. “Radio away, Michael. Get packing.”

“I’ve gotta go, Will. Have fun with movie night,” Mike says, smile dropping. “Over and out.”

“Bye, Mike! See you tomorrow. Over and out.”

The basement is too silent after they hang up. Mom leaves without another word, and then it’s just Mike, his boxes, and his toys. He finds a couple old action figures and throws them in. That’s fine. Whatever.

Then he sees Rory. Remembers the first day he showed El around the house, showed her all his toys and cool stuff. And now she’s gone. Off somewhere he can’t follow, can’t locate.

He presses Rory’s speaker, a little melancholy now, and listens to the faint dinosaur noises he makes.

He’s keeping this one. The X-Wing, too.

And then there’s Will’s Rubik’s cube, which is now fully solved. Mike brought it to the hospital, early on, so Will would have something to do. After Will solved it, though, he gave it back to Mike. Said it was a present. 

Mike hasn’t touched it since. He doesn’t want to unscramble it, to undo all of Will’s hard work.

It goes in the Keep pile.

See, Mom? Mike thinks angrily. Emotional value. It’s a thing.

He looks back at the X-Wing. Then at El’s fort. Then at the X-Wing again.

Maybe he should… well, it’s as good a time as any.

He picks his radio back up off the couch and brings it over to the fort, folding his legs underneath himself. He’s getting a little big for this, honestly. But sitting in this spot makes him feel like he’ll have more luck, somehow. Like he’s closer to El. To her… spirit, or whatever. It’s stupid.

Mike clears his throat. “El, are you there? El?”

He waits. There’s only static.

“It’s me. Mike. It’s day three-hundred-fifty-two…” He checks his watch. “Seven-forty PM. I’m still here.”

Nothing. Mike swallows hard, trying to stay optimistic. Today could be the day. He just has to be patient. To wait.

He’s so fucking sick of waiting.

“If you’re out there, say something,” he urges. “Or give me a sign. I won’t—I won’t even say anything. I just want to know if you’re okay.”

Of course, she doesn’t respond. She never does.

Mike’s stomach sinks, heavy and awful-feeling. “I’m so stupid,” he mutters, and slams the antennae down. He folds himself out of the crawl space, going back to his dumb yard sale boxes.

That’s when he hears it.

“Mike.”

It’s distorted, and barely audible. But it—it sounds like—

He turns on his heel, skidding on his knees in his rush to turn the radio back on. “Hello? Is that you?” he blurts, heart racing in his chest.

The signal clears, and the voice that follows is very clearly not El’s. “Yeah, it’s me. Dustin. What’re you doing on this channel again?”

For a moment, Mike’s so disappointed that he can hardly talk. His mouth opens, and a small, strangled sound comes out. “Um. I—I was talking to Will,” he forces out. “Over.”

“Oh, okay,” Dustin chirps, unconcerned. “Well, I’ve been trying to reach you all day. We were right—Max is Mad Max.”

Is he serious? Okay, great. Who cares?

“Yeah, cool,” he says flatly. “I’m busy. Over and out.”

“But—”

Mike closes the antennae, this time with extra force. He can’t believe he thought—just for a second— God.

He’s an idiot.

He’s a fucking idiot.

Mike goes back to his boxes. He forces all his hope down to the bottom of his brain. It’s only making things worse.

***

After Mike hangs up, Will goes back to his drawing. He’s almost done with it now, just putting the finishing touches on the background. It’s pretty good, even if the subject is a little weird.

There’s a knock on his bedroom door, and a second later, Jonathan pokes his head in. “Hey, bud.” He holds up a stack of VHS tapes. “I didn’t know what you’d like, so I got a variety.” As he steps a little further into the room, he sets the movies on Will’s dresser. “Take your pick.”

Will shrugs, then looks back down at his drawing. “Whatever you want.”

Jonathan considers this, looking from the tapes to Will, then back again. “Alright,” he allows, not pushing it. And Will expects that to be it, the final pin in the conversation, but instead, Jonathan stays. He sits down on the bed, near Will’s folded-up legs. “What’re you working on?”

Will’s eyes flicker to his art. He doesn’t answer. He hadn’t considered that anyone would actually see it, and now he doesn’t know how to explain. How to cover up the true meaning.

But Jonathan obviously doesn’t pick up on Will’s sudden discomfort, because he leans a little closer, inspecting the drawing with a small smile. Like it’s a joke. “Zombie Boy? Who’s that?”

Will hunches in on himself. Doesn’t look at his brother. “Me,” he says quietly.

Immediately, Jonathan’s posture changes. He sits up straighter, eyes hardening. “Did someone call you that?”

Will keeps his eyes fixed on his drawing, pressing harder on the paper as he colors the trees in the forest. 

“Hey,” Jonathan says, trying to lean down and meet his gaze. His voice is all soft in that way that Will hates. That way that means he feels sorry for him. “You can talk to me. You know that, right?”

A muscle jumps in Will’s jaw. It’s already been a Bad Day, and even though the talk with Mike cheered him up, now he’s crossing straight back into annoyed territory.

When he doesn’t reply, Jonathan grows more insistent, nudging Will’s knee. “Whatever happened, it’s okay. Come on, talk to me.”

The seal breaks. “Stop treating me like that,” Will bursts out, voice already strained with pent-up frustration.

“Like what?” Jonathan demands.

“Like everyone else does. Like there’s something wrong with me.”

There is, his brain tells him, sounding almost mocking. There is, there is, there—

“What are you talking about?” Jonathan says, looking desperate to understand.

“Mom, Dustin, Lucas,” Will lists off, voice breaking in the middle. “Everyone.”

Not Mike. Never Mike—and he’s the only one. The only one that doesn’t talk down to him, who doesn’t watch his every move like a hawk, who doesn’t skirt around sensitive subjects and whisper behind his back.

“They all treat me like—like I’m gonna break,” Will says, shaking the agitation out of his hands. “Like I’m a baby. Like I can’t handle things on my own.”

Jonathan glances down guiltily.

“It doesn’t help,” Will continues, picking up steam now. God, he didn’t even realize how long he’s been building this up. Keeping it in. How much he wants to rant about this all the time, every minute of the day. “It just makes me feel like more of a freak.”

Jonathan’s eyes snap back up to his face. “You’re not a freak,” he replies, an automatic protest.

But Will knows the truth. And he’s not about to lie to his brother. “Yeah. I am,” he spits out. “I am.”

Freak. Zombie Boy. Weak. Delicate. Fa—

Tears burn behind his eyes. He feels angry. He feels embarrassed. Sad. He doesn’t even know what he feels anymore, because it’s all so confusing, because all his mental effort lately has been spent just trying to hold himself together. Keep himself afloat.

He can’t look at Jonathan’s reaction. Can’t see the realization in his eyes. The judgment. So he colors aimlessly, not even really paying attention anymore, eyes stinging with the force of his held-back tears. But he doesn’t look up.

The room is quiet. Thoughtful.

“You know what? You’re right.”

Will’s head snaps up, startled, as Jonathan sits more fully on the bed, turning to face him. “What?”

Jonathan watches him intently. “You are a freak.”

Will’s so confused right now. Like, he’s not wrong, but also… Jonathan isn’t supposed to agree with him. He would never.

Unless… he knows. He knows about all the wrong-ness inside of Will.

Will’s throat closes up. He can’t speak. He feels like he did before, like he did in the arcade—frozen to the spot. Numb with fear.

“I’m serious,” Jonathan insists. “You’re a freak. But so what? Do you wanna be normal? Do you wanna be just like everyone else?”

Oh. So it’s a pep talk, then. Jonathan’s not… he’s not trying to be mean. 

Will’s shoulders relax. He can breathe a little easier.

“Alright, being a freak is the best,” Jonathan continues, leaning close. “I’m a freak.”

Will takes a second to think about this. “Is that why you don’t have any friends?” he asks innocently.

It’s true. Other than Nancy, Will never sees Jonathan hanging out with anyone. He never brings anyone home. He really only leaves the house for school and work.

Jonathan looks stunned for a second, then lets out a disbelieving, embarrassed chuckle. He runs his hand through his hair. “I—I have friends, Will.”

Will scrunches his nose up. He’s not buying it. “Then… why are you always hanging out with me?”

Jonathan’s eyes go a little shiny with emotion. “Because—because you’re my best friend, Will,” he says sincerely. “And I would rather be best friends with Zombie Boy than with a boring nobody. You know what I mean?”

But that’s… it sounds almost too good to be true. And the little voice in Will’s head really doesn’t agree. He swallows over the lump in his throat, unable to answer.

There’s a short pause as Jonathan frowns, clearly thinking something through. After a second, he shifts on the bed, getting comfortable. “Alright, look. Who would you rather be friends with? Bowie or Kenny Rogers?”

Will pulls a face. “Ugh.”

Jonathan laughs, his expression bright and warm. “Exactly. It’s no contest.” He scrunches his lips to the side. It’s his speech-making face. His I’m-about-to-say-something-deep face. Will wishes he had a face like that. He can never think of good words, like Jonathan can. 

He waits.

“The thing is,” Jonathan says, visibly picking out his words. “Nobody normal ever accomplished anything meaningful in this world.” He meets Will’s eye, then, and raises an eyebrow pointedly. “You got it?”

Will considers this. “Well…” He sighs. “Some people like Kenny Rogers.”

Some people like being normal, is what he means. Some people say… things, about Bowie. The same things they say about Will.

Bob’s voice sounds from the hallway, light and cheerful. “Kenny Rogers? I love Kenny Rogers.”

Jonathan shoots him an amused look, and Will has to hold in his laugh. It’s really hard, though.

Bob wanders further into the room, absently checking out the VHS tapes on the dresser. “What’s so funny?” he asks, smiling big. He’s a nice guy. Will likes him, honestly. He makes Mom happy, and that’s more than enough for him.

“Nothing,” Will says, smiling back. Him and Jonathan watch as Bob picks up a movie, eyes lighting up.

“Mr. Mom!” He whoops in excitement, starting back out into the hallway. “Perfect!”

As soon as Will makes eye contact with Jonathan, he can’t restrain his laughter anymore. He snorts, hiding his warm face in his hands. That whole thing was just so funny. Bob’s a funny guy, especially when he’s not trying to be.

In his room, listening to his brother’s familiar chuckle, Will doesn’t feel so bad anymore. Nothing is fixed, really, but that doesn’t mean everything is ruined. It’s been a Bad Day, sure. But… maybe it doesn’t have to be a Bad Night. After all, it’s movie night. And how bad can that really be?

Thanks to Bob, they end up watching Mr. Mom, which is about a guy who epically fails at taking care of his kids. Will thinks it seems a little familiar. Relatable. But the dad in Mr. Mom is a lot nicer than his own dad. Funnier, too. Or at least, Bob seems to think so. He laughs, really loudly, at about every other line.

Mom’s laughing too, though. So it’s all good. Will’s having a nice time. And one of the rare perks of people babying him is that he gets free stuff, like extra treats and, in tonight’s case, a whole bowl of popcorn all to himself. Mom even put butter and salt on it, so it tastes really good.

Then the phone rings, and Mom jumps about a mile off the couch. Will’s heart sinks all the way down with guilt. She’s been so paranoid about the phone for the entire year. And he knows it’s his fault. He still remembers his desperate attempts to call her from the Upside Down, the way he was so selfish, so scared, that he put her life in danger. He knows that he worried her sick, ran her around in circles, made everyone think she’d lost her mind.

Not that she’s blamed him. Not at all. But that doesn’t stop him from blaming himself.

Bob puts a gentle hand on her thigh. “Hey,” he murmurs. “It’s okay, let it go. Probably just a crank call.”

Mom settles back onto the couch, nerves visibly easing a bit. “Okay,” she whispers back, pressing closer to his side.

Like Will said. Bob’s a nice guy. He’s good for them. Good for Mom.

The phone keeps ringing. Bob keeps laughing. The combination of sounds grates away at Will’s eardrums, until he has the intense urge to slap his hands over his ears and squeeze his eyes shut.

Despite all of that, the rest of movie night passes without incident. In fact, it goes so well that Will actually thinks this might end up being a Good Night, after all.

Right before bed, Will heads to the bathroom. Does all the regular stuff—pees, flushes, washes his hands. Nothing of note.

What is of note, though, is the sound coming from outside. It’s distant, but it sounds like… thunder. And Will knows it didn’t look rainy today. 

Slowly, he turns the tap off. His hands are still wet, but he doesn’t bother to dry them. He creaks the bathroom door open, then tiptoes out to the living room. The thunder gets louder. More ominous.

And there it is. Through the small, frosted window in the front door, Will can see it. The red flashing. Lightning.

This is no regular storm.

The whole living room lights up, then goes dark. Again and again and again. 

Will. Will Byers.

What do you want with me, Will thinks desperately. Please, what do you want?

His answer comes in the form of the front door, gradually creeping open, pried from its hinges by invisible hands. The storm is worse outside. Clouds fill the entire night sky. The floating ash is so thick, so furious, that it looks like a blizzard.

Will’s breath speeds up in his chest. Something flutters at the back of his neck; a horrible, crawling sensation inside of his skin. Like something’s moving around in there. Getting comfortable.

He takes a tentative step towards the door. Then another. And another.

Will keeps walking until he’s all the way outside, surrounded by ash and vines and rotting, decaying trees. The storm clouds are circling, tornado-like. Like they’re surrounding something. Something big.

And then he sees it.

The Evil.

It’s huge. Like a giant, smoky spider, with thick legs and an anvil-shaped head. It stands tall in the center of the storm, illuminated in quick flashes of lightning, heralded by loud booms of thunder.

Will can’t move. He’s rooted to the spot, eyes wide, despite every instinct in his body screaming at him to run.

The Evil turns its head. Looks right at him with its formless, eyeless face. Will feels it in his soul.

Come home, Will. Come home.

Join us.

Chapter Text

Eleven months earlier

“Go back to the beginning.”

“I told you everything,” Mike spits out. He’s tired, and dirty, and just lost his first (and only) girlfriend. Honestly, he just wants to get back to the hospital. Back to Will. And then he wants to sleep for about a million years. But no, apparently visiting hours are over, Michael, and there’s federal agents at our house, Michael.

Bullshit. It’s all bullshit.

“I understand this is difficult, Michael.”

Mike glares at the federal agent dude, whose name he still hasn’t been told. “I don’t know where she is,” he stresses. Again. And it’s not even a fucking lie. “And even if I did, I’d never tell you.” He clenches his jaw, meeting the guy’s stare head-on. “Never.”

The lady agent, the nice-seeming one, speaks to him in a soft, patronizing tone. “I know it’s difficult to accept, but the stories she told you are not true. She’s a very dangerous individual.”

Okay. Mike takes back the nice-seeming thing. Apparently, appearances can be deceiving, because this lady is a total bitch. And a liar. What the fuck does she know? Was she the one that watched El fight off the Demogorgon with her bare hands? Mike doesn’t think so.

He sits in a steely, defiant silence. Stares out the window. It’s crazy dark outside. He doesn’t even know what time it is now—the whole day’s been one stressful blur.

“If she contacts you, you must tell us. Otherwise, you’re putting your entire family at risk.”

The only thing putting his family at risk is these absolute morons at their house. Not El.

Then, through the darkness, he sees her.

Outside, the lights of the squad cars flash red, then blue. And beyond the glass, bathed in color, is Eleven.

Mike’s frozen, unable to look away. She looks like a ghost. Like a vision. Buzzcut, dripping blood, dirty pink dress, Mike’s borrowed jacket. Pain in her eyes.

He’s not even sure she’s really there at all.

“Do you understand, Michael?”

But… how is she here? She disappeared.

Shit. Shit, she’s alive. Holy fuck.

“Do you understand?”

No. Mike doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand anything.

He blinks, and El is gone. Vanished into the night. But that doesn’t stop the agents from following his gaze, from narrowing their eyes in suspicion.

“Fan out,” the man barks, waving a team of his coworkers out the door. “Check the perimeter.”

God, Mike’s so stupid. He shouldn’t have looked. Shouldn’t have put her in danger. He hopes she’s far, far away by now.

Mom and Dad talk idly in the kitchen, discussing the details of the case with some random people. Nobody knows anything. This is all so frustrating. They’re acting like El is some kind of criminal, like Mike is a naive little kid who didn’t know what he was doing, and ended up getting played.

It doesn’t matter, though. Not really. El is alive, and that alone is worth any trouble Mike might get into. She’s out there somewhere. He just has to wait for her to call. To come back.

Will’s alive, too. And as soon as visiting hours start up at the hospital tomorrow, Mike will be there. Bright and early. Maybe he’ll even bring that Rubik’s cube that Will loves so much. And some colored pencils—he thinks there’s some new ones in his desk drawer that he never opened. Maybe he could even make him a mixtape. There’s tons of stuff that Mike thinks Will would like. Songs that he’s heard in the past few months that reminded him of his best friend. 

Somehow, things will be okay. It’ll turn out alright, because his best friend and his maybe-sort-of girlfriend are both alive, despite everything that’s gone down in the past week. Mike just has to be patient. To let all of this die down and get back to normal. Like how it used to be.

He looks out the window and hopes that wherever El’s runs off to, she’ll be safe. That she’ll find someone to take care of her. Even if it’s not Mike.

But she’ll come back. He knows she will.

***

October 31, 1984

Will starts his morning by throwing up slugs. As often as this happens, you’d think he’d be used to it by now: the burning in his throat, the bitter, rotten taste of slime on his tongue. But it never gets better. And it never goes away.

This, at least, is a secret Will has managed to keep. He can’t imagine what would happen if he told Doctor Owens he’d been throwing up live slugs for almost a year. He’d probably never be allowed to leave the lab. 

Without warning, Mom bursts into the bathroom, looking harried and frantic. “Will?”

He straightens up, looking from the toilet, to the recently-vomited slug, back to Mom. “…Yes?”

“What are you doing?” she asks, eyes huge with panic. 

Will blinks at her. He looks at the slug again. There’s no way she can see it from that angle, though. He just has to play it cool.

“…Peeing?” he says, gesturing vaguely at the toilet bowl.

“Oh. I—okay. Okay,” Mom repeats, all frazzled-like. She waves at him to go about his business, and slowly shuts the door. It closes behind her with a solid click.

Will flushes the toilet, and apathetically watches the slug spiral down the drain. That was weird. Even for Mom. But they’re coming up on The Anniversary, now, so everyone’s bound to be a little on edge. He wishes he could make it easier for her.

He pushes the worry away to the back of his brain. Shoves it in his locked chest of Bad Thoughts. It’s Halloween today, and Will loves Halloween. The Party has perfect costumes all picked out, ones they’ve been planning for months.

The Ghostbuster outfit is already laid out for him on the bathroom sink, so he changes into it, nearly tripping over the leg holes in his excitement. This day will be perfect. He’s sure of it. No slugs, or episodes, or evil voices. Just him and the Party. And a crap-ton of Halloween candy.

When Will comes out of the bathroom, Mom’s already waiting for him. “Aw, look at you,” she coos. “So handsome. I have the rest of your little pieces in your room, honey. Your… gadgets.”

“It’s a Proton Blaster, Mom,” he groans, following her down the hall.

“Of course,” she says, mock-seriously. 

She helps him with the rest of his costume, like he’s a five-year-old that can’t dress himself. But it’s fine, and she seems a little out of sorts this morning, so Will’s not about to complain.

He stands very still as she zips up his jacket, then grabs the Proton Blaster from the bed. “Let’s get this on,” she murmurs, pulling his arms through the straps. “There we go.”

She takes a second to inspect him, and then her eyes catch on something by his back. “Oh, you need some tape for that,” she says, frowning, and makes her way over to Will’s desk.

Will looks down at himself, checking over their combined handiwork. He looks cool. Really cool! 

He bets Mike looks even cooler. A little thrill of anticipation goes through him as he thinks about going to school and seeing everybody’s costumes. They’ve done a good job this year. Their hard work, all their planning, really paid off.

There’s some rustling noises by his desk as Mom grabs the tape. Then, there’s a worrying moment of silence. Mom’s too quiet. Like something’s scared her.

“What’s this?”

Will looks up, and immediately pales. It’s the drawing he’d done last night, after his episode. The one of the Evil. He shouldn’t have left it out where she could see it, but he got so tired after drawing it that he passed out pretty much right away.

“Nothing,” he lies, fidgeting nervously with his hands.

She fixes him with a serious look. “Did you have another episode?”

“No, it’s just, um… a sketch, for a story I’m writing,” he says unconvincingly. He hates lying to her, but he doesn’t want her to worry. Besides, if she knows he had another episode, she might not let him go trick-or-treating tonight. And that would suck. He’s been looking forward to this all year.

He waits anxiously, half-expecting her to call him out. He can tell she doesn’t really buy it. But surprisingly, she just sighs and sets the drawing back down on the desk. “Okay,” she says. “Okay. Let’s go and get some pictures, baby.”

Will scrunches his nose. “I’m not a baby,” he protests, relieved that everything is good now. He hasn’t ruined the day. It’s fine. 

As they walk into the living room, Mom holds her hands up. “Oh, well excuse me. I should have known. You’re a very mature thirteen-year-old.”

“Exactly,” Will says, grinning. She laughs and ruffles his hair, seeming a little lighter than she had before. Success. 

Jonathan’s already set up with his nice, fancy camera. He directs Will to stand in the middle of the living room, and Will smiles big, giving two thumbs-ups. 

Jonathan smiles back at him. “Okay, three… two… one.”

Click! 

“Great. Now hold up the Proton Blaster,” Jonathan instructs, adjusting his camera a little. Will bets these pictures will be great. His brother’s super talented.

He complies eagerly, grabbing the Blaster and pointing it out at the lens. See? He knew this would be a good day. He just knew it. He’s having fun already.

Next to Jonathan, Mom presses her hands over her mouth, looking all mushy and emotional. She looks like she did right before she dropped him off for the first day of kindergarten. Like she can’t believe he’s growing up so fast.

“Alright, now turn to the light.”

Will turns to the light. His heart is soft and fluttery. Happy.

Yeah. It’s a Good Day.

***

Mike hates taking pictures.

Like, sure, his costume is really cool. He’s proud of it. He likes it.

What he does not like is standing awkwardly in his living room as Mom snaps a camera in his face, telling him to smile and look happy for once.

No thanks. He just wants to get out of here. Out the door.

“Alright, that’s the last one,” he insists. Please, let it be over. Please, please, please—

Mom takes out the most recent polaroid, waving his request away. “No, come on. Just one more. Please?”

Mike pulls a face. She takes the picture anyway.

Mom has way too much energy for seven in the morning. Mike wonders if she had an extra cup of coffee or something.

“Ah!” she coos excitedly, taking out the horrible-looking picture and flapping it in the air to dry it. Then, to Mike’s horror, she raises the camera again.

“Can I go to school?” he asks incredulously. Like, really. They’re burning daylight here. Plus, he’s looking forward to seeing the Party today. To seeing all of their costumes together, in action and not just in theory, mapped out in his imagination. He bets Will’s killing it as Egon.

“Wait, wait,” Mom blurts, putting the camera up by her face. “Okay, say: Who you gonna call?”

Mike balks. “No!”

The camera flashes. The camera does not care what Mike wants. And neither does Mom, apparently.

“Okay, that’s it,” he says, fumbling for the door handle. “I’m leaving, bye—”

“Mike!”

“Bye,” he repeats loudly, dashing out the door and heading for his bike. Ugh, moms. Really. It’s not like he’s a little kid anymore. He doesn’t need to have Halloween photo-shoots.

He hops on his bike and starts down the street, relishing in the feeling of freedom: the wind in his hair, the pump of his muscles, the hard pressure of his sneakers against the pedals. It’s a nice day already: not too cold, but not warm, either. Perfect Halloween temperature.

Lucas and Dustin meet him on the trail, and they look awesome. Mike can’t wait to roll up to school in these costumes. They’d worked so hard on them, finding old recycled boxes and painting them black for the Proton Packs, drawing and coloring little buttons and knobs. They’re even movie-accurate; they had a Party movie night so that they could pause Ghostbusters at all the right spots and copy down the suit designs.

Again. Mike’s really excited for Halloween. They’ll probably be the talk of the school. Ghostbusters was a really popular movie this year, after all.

Somewhere along the ride, Dustin starts singing the theme song, and they all join in. It’s a little silly, a little kiddish, but it’s Halloween, and Mike thinks he can let himself have fun, just for one day. 

He wishes Will were biking to school with them, like he used to, but his mom drives him now. She hardly ever lets him out of her sight. Which is… yeah, Mike gets it, but at the same time, he’d be safe with Mike. With the Party. They’d protect him; of course they would. And after last year, they have some more experience. Mike is fully prepared to kick some Demogorgon ass, if it ever comes back. He’s a teenager now, and he’s way stronger than he was last November. He’s been doing… push-ups and stuff. He can almost do ten in a row now, and he knows Lucas can only do eight.

By the time they pull up to school, they’re riding in a little synchronized trio, halfway through their third repetition of the song. They pull up to the bike rack in a practiced glide, and Mike sets his feet down against the asphalt, grinding to a halt.

“Who you gonna call?”

“Ghostbusters!” Will chants, skipping up behind them. He seems really happy, right off the bat. And once Mike takes him in, that makes sense—his costume looks sick. Almost better than the rest of them, even though it’s basically the same thing. Will just makes it work, somehow.

“Hey, Spengler!” Mike greets enthusiastically, hopping off his bike to go hug Will.

Will squeezes him tight, then turns to Lucas. “Egon!” Lucas cheers, giving him a quick bro-hug. 

“Venkman!” Will returns happily.

Wait—but that’s—

“Woah, woah, woah,” Mike says, putting a hand on Lucas’s shoulder to turn him around. He sees his nametag for the first time, and… what the hell? Not cool, man. Not cool at all.

“What?” Lucas asks innocently. Like he doesn’t know, when he definitely does. Clearly, this was a planned attack.

“Why are you Venkman?” Mike asks, and he actually would really appreciate an answer. He wants to see how Lucas explains his way out of this one.

Lucas gestures to himself, looking smugly pleased. “Because I’m Venkman,” he says, like it’s obvious.

Idiot.

“No, I’m Venkman,” Mike protests, pointing at his nametag. Duh.

Will looks hesitantly between the two of them. “Why can’t there be two Venkmans?” he suggests.

And Mike knows Will’s only trying to keep the peace, but Lucas is obviously in the wrong here. “Because there’s only one Venkman in real life,” he insists. “We planned this months ago.” He gestures around the party, doing a quick, aggravated roll call. “I’m Venkman, Dustin’s Stantz, Will’s Egon, and you’re Winston.”

Lucas stares at him, unmoved. “I specifically did not agree to Winston.”

Mike takes a second to consult his memory. It had been back during movie night. He’d said you’re Winston, okay? and Lucas had shrugged. An agreeable shrug, though. And he definitely didn’t say anything about being Venkman, because Mike would one-hundred-percent remember that. “Yes you did!” he protests.

Will clears his throat awkwardly, rocking back and forth on his heels. “I don’t think he did,” he says, voice small.

For a second, Mike feels utterly betrayed. Will’s supposed to be on his side. Will’s always on his side. And Mike’s always on his. That’s just how they operate.

“No one wants to be Winston, man,” Lucas says, shooting him a stink-eye.

Mike throws his hands up. Unbelievable. “What’s wrong with Winston?” he demands.

“What’s wrong with Winston?” Lucas repeats. “He joined the team super late, he’s not funny, and he’s not even a scientist!”

Oh. Well, those are all… somewhat valid points. But Mike’s not giving up. There’s only one Venkman. And it will be him.

“Yeah, but he’s still cool!” he tries.

Lucas raises an eyebrow. “If he’s cool, then you be Winston.”

Ha. Good one, Lucas. “I can’t,” Mike says, and really, that should be obvious. Lucas is just fucking with him now.

“Why not?” Lucas asks steadily. He’s not backing down.

Definitely fucking with him.

“Be—because—” Mike stutters, flushing a little. He feels suddenly, intensely embarrassed. Lucas has the edge now, and they both know it. And Will’s right there. Lucas is making him look lame in front of Will, which is just not cool at all. Again. Mike feels like that has to violate some sort of Party rule.

Dustin’s right there, too. But somehow that doesn’t seem as important. Dustin already knows Mike’s lame.

“Be—because you’re not Black?” Lucas says sarcastically.

Yes.

“I didn’t say that!” Mike argues, flushing even more. Man, he looks like a total jerk right now, doesn’t he? He just wanted to be fucking Venkman, dude. There can only be one of each of them, because otherwise, the whole thing is ruined. And everything has to be perfect today. It just has to.

“You thought it.”

He did. That’s true. But isn’t it, like… disrespectful, for Mike to dress up as a Black guy? That’s a thing, right? Even he knows that. Is Lucas still just fucking with him?

But he doubles down. “I didn’t!”

“You did!”

Mike can do this all day. “I didn’t!”

“Guys.”

They ignore Dustin. “You so did,” Lucas yells.

“No way!”

“Guys!”

And with that, the argument is over. Mike thinks there was no real winner. It’s impossible to say, really. Lucas had some good points. Mike also had some good points. Now he’s just mildly embarrassed and pissed off, though, which makes him more pissed off in turn. He doesn’t want to be in a bad mood. It’s Halloween! 

Stupid Lucas.

They turn to look at whatever has Dustin’s panties all in a bunch. And that whatever turns out to be the hoards of kids getting off the buses. Very much not dressed up.

Mike’s stomach sinks all the way down to his ass. So much for not being in a bad mood.

“Why is no one else wearing costumes?” Dustin asks weakly, staring out at their classmates. He looks like someone just told him his cat died. Although maybe he’d be happier about that, even, because Dustin’s not the hugest fan of Mews, from what Mike knows. It’s more of his mom’s cat than his.

Cats aside—this is a crisis. A very serious, potentially-Halloween-ruining crisis. And it’s Will’s first Halloween since last year, since the Upside Down, and Mike just—he really wants everything to go right for him. That’s all.

“Crap,” Lucas mutters. 

Yeah. Crap. 

They’ll be the talk of the school, alright. Just not the way Mike thought they’d be.

***

Will feels like some sort of super-loser today, which really, really sucks. He’d been so excited, and now everyone’s just laughing at him. Laughing at all of them.

Then again, at least Will’s not the only one getting stared at today. At least the whole Party is in it together. 

“When do people make these decisions?” Dustin mutters, keeping his eyes trained on the floor. Laughs echo around the hallway, and Dustin’s cheeks go red.

“Everyone dressed up last year,” Will remembers, feeling extra self-conscious. Last year, it had been fun. Halloween was one of the last normal days Will had before everything went wrong.

“It’s a conspiracy, I’m telling you,” Dustin says.

Mike nudges his arm against Will’s; a silent show of support. “Just… be cool,” he says casually.

Easy for him to say. Mike’s, like, the coolest person ever.

Ricky from science class sticks his tongue out at them as they walk by. “Who you gonna call? The nerds!” he cheers.

“Yeah, real mature, Ricky,” Dustin shoots back, but they hurry away anyway.

Mike’s locker is the farthest away this year, so he splits off first. He looks mostly unbothered by the teasing, which Will is extremely jealous of. “Bye, guys,” he throws out behind his shoulder, sauntering down the hall like some sort of popular main character in a movie.

Will has to stop himself from sighing. “Bye, Mike!” he calls back, and Mike lifts a hand in response, without looking back.

As soon as he’s gone, Dustin pounces. “So,” he says, with clear purpose. “Max Mayfield.”

Will narrows his eyes. “What about her?” he asks. They continue to walk down the hallway, in the direction of Will’s locker.

Dustin shares a glance with Lucas. “We were thinking that—that maybe we should invite her to come tonight. Since she’s new, and she probably doesn’t have anyone to go with.”

More like since you guys have giant crushes on her, Will thinks. The corner of his mouth pulls up. He can’t deny that they have a point, and Max seems cool. If they can even convince her to come, which is a hard feat in itself. She seems cool, yeah, but almost too cool. She probably doesn’t even go trick-or-treating. She probably goes to, like… high school parties, or something. 

“So you need my vote?” he guesses.

“Exactly,” Lucas answers. “Are you in?”

They reach Will’s locker, stopping by the side of the hall. A couple girls snicker as they pass them, and Will shrinks a little. “Um. What did Mike say?”

Dustin looks at Lucas again. Their silence is extremely obvious. “You didn’t ask him?” Will asks incredulously. “He’ll be upset, guys. Come on.”

“No, no, no,” Lucas rushes out. “We’re just asking you, because whatever you decide, he’ll be fine with. Everyone knows that. You guys are, like… a matching set, or whatever.”

Will flushes pink. “Oh.”

He takes a few moments to think it over. Dustin and Lucas wait impatiently, eyes wide and toes tapping against the floor. Honestly, Will was kind of looking forward to it being just them tonight. Just the Party, like it used to be. But Dustin and Lucas seem so excited, and Will doesn’t want to get in the way of this thing with Max. And besides, maybe they should branch out more. It never hurts to have more friends.

Mike will be fine with it, he reminds himself. He’ll understand.

“Yeah,” Will says finally, smiling at them. “Yeah, of course. Go ahead and invite her.”

Dustin grins, with all his new adult teeth, and Lucas does an enthusiastic double fist-pump. Their excitement is contagious, and Will ends up laughing happily, even with all the judgy looks and glares surrounding them. This is why he loves his friends. They always make everything better.

Maybe this can still be a Good Day. Will just has to stay positive. He’s totally got this.

He waves Dustin and Lucas off, and opens his locker. Happy Halloween, guys, he thinks, eyeing his drawing of the Party. Happy Halloween.

***

By the end of the day, Mike’s in a shit mood. People laughed at them all day, even though the jokes got stale and totally not funny by the time second period rolled around. And Will didn’t seem too bothered by it, but Mike thinks he’s probably just doing that thing he does, where he pastes on a smile and pretends to be fine. 

There’s been an anger building up in him all day. He wants to punch everyone who was making fun of them. Who was making fun of Will. And on top of that, Dustin and Lucas have been saying they invited Max Mayfield to come trick-or-treating with them, and they didn’t even ask him. 

But they must have gotten the majority vote anyway. Which means they asked Will—and what’s worse, Will said yes. He probably just felt pressured into it or something. Doesn’t he want it to be just the four of them? That’s how it’s supposed to be.

This Halloween is supposed to be perfect, and everything’s going wrong. Mike wants to scream.

He just—he can’t believe Will didn’t even talk to him about it. They always talk through big decisions like that! Well, a lot of the time they don’t even need to, because they’re automatically on the same page. But Will should have asked him. Should have gotten his opinion, because Mike would have said no.

He doesn’t want to go trick-or-treating with Max Mayfield. He wants to go with Will. And Dustin and Lucas, even though they’re being assholes.

And El. If she were here. But she’s fucking not.

“Do you think Max likes Hershey’s bars?” Dustin worries.

“Dude. Of course she likes Hershey’s bars,” Lucas says confidently. “She’s perfect.”

Mike rolls his eyes.

Behind them, a car engine revs. Mike doesn’t pay it much mind. The road’s clear, so they’ll probably just go around.

Stupid Max. Stupid Dustin. Stupid Lucas, and his costume-copying self. They’re all ruining what was supposed to be the best day of the year. Will’s first Halloween since everything happened.

“I can’t believe Patrick said that thing about us—”

“Looking like shit-stains,” Mike finishes sullenly, tuning back in. “That wasn’t even funny.”

“Or accurate,” Dustin says, looking down at his costume. “This is beige.” 

There’s a long moment of silence, no sound except for their rolling bike tires and the car engine behind them.

“Really, everyone dressed up last year,” Dustin muses, mostly to himself.

“I know, man,” Lucas mutters. “It’s bullshit.”

The car gets louder. Closer.

Dustin whips his head around. “Um. Hey, guys?”

And that’s when Mike’s fight-or-flight instincts finally kick in. Shit, this dude is gunning for them. They have to move. Fast.

The blue, shiny sports car gets right up behind them, California license plate in tow. There’s only one person it can be.

“Go, go, go!” Lucas screams, doubling down on his pedals.

“Mike, you need to haul ass!” Dustin shouts.

Him?! What about Dustin? Mike’s going as fast as he can!

They veer sharply off the road, and the car veers in the other direction, just barely missing them. Dustin loses balance and topples into a pile of leaves. “Oh, shit! Holy shit!”

Mike helps him up, and the three of them stumble back to the road to stare after the car, baffled and shaken-up. 

“Was that…?” Dustin breathes, gasping for air.

Lucas eyes the license plate as it disappears down the street. “Mad Max.”

Oh, yeah. Perfect Max. Nice.

Mike brushes the dirt off his jacket, frowning hard. He hates this girl already. She’s ruining Halloween.

He can’t wait to go trick-or-treating. He’s sure it’ll be real fun, hanging out with the girl who almost killed them.

Jesus. What a fucking awful day.

Chapter Text

Mom’s hands are all over him: adjusting his Proton Pack, fixing his zipper, straightening his nametag. Will feels very squished.

“Listen. Stay close to your brother, okay? And listen, listen, listen—” Her hands tighten on his shoulders, spinning around to face her. She crouches to meet his eye, looking extremely concerned. “If you get a bad feeling or anything, you just tell him to take you straight home.”

Will nods so quickly he feels like his head might fall off. “Okay.”

“You promise?” she presses.

He shoots her a little thumbs-up, smiling. “Okay,” he repeats. He’s so ready. There won’t be any bad feelings, or whispers in his head, or scariness. Just him and the Party. Him and Mike.

A quick zip of excitement races through his belly, and he immediately forces it down. None of that, either. Normal Will, coming right up. Good Friend Will. Cool Will.

“You ready, bud?”

Cool Will, who has to bring a babysitter to go trick-or-treating. Even if it is Jonathan, and Will loves him—it’s still embarrassing.

“Yeah,” Will says, with a little less enthusiasm, as he follows his brother out to the car. Jonathan’s got one of Bob’s film cameras for the night, so at least they’ll have lots of good videos to re-watch. Will gets bad nights, sometimes. He can’t sleep on those nights, can barely even breathe. But maybe if he has some nice, happy memories to watch, those nights will be a little better. A little easier. It’ll be like the Party’s right there with him.

They crowd out the door, Mom and Bob close on their heels. “Be safe!” Mom calls nervously.

Jeez. It’s like she thinks the Demogorgon’s gonna pop out from the bushes or something.

Nope. Nope, not even gonna joke about that. Nevermind.

“I hope it doesn’t suck!” Bob calls, with a thick, cheesy vampire accent. Or at least, that’s what Will thinks he says. It’s a little hard to tell, with the huge fake fangs in his mouth, muffling all his words.

Will snorts out a laugh, instantly feeling a little better. Bob really is funny when he’s not trying to be.

By the time they’re off on the road, though, his mood sours again. He’s trying so hard to stay positive, he really is… but just the fact that he’s being driven over by Jonathan, and not biking with the Party, is enough to make him feel different. Like the odd one out. He’s already had to miss out on a bunch of hang-outs this year, and all the daily bike rides that he used to be a part of. 

And it’s silly, but what if the guys get closer because of that? What if Will starts to get left out? What if they make new memories and inside jokes that he won’t be in on?

He knows his brother probably had a better way that he wanted to spend his night, too. He says Will’s his best friend, but Will’s almost positive that he’d rather hang out with Nancy. It’s barely any contest, because of course Jonathan would rather be with a girl his own age than with his lame kid brother. Zombie Boy.

“I just don’t get what she sees in him.”

Will’s head snaps up. “Huh?”

Had Jonathan been talking about something? Had Will zoned out that badly? Or was his brother just finally deciding to voice his thoughts out loud?

“Bob,” Jonathan clarifies, pulling a face.

Oh, okay. Will probably didn’t miss anything, then. He breathes out a heavy breath, looking back out the windshield. “At least he doesn’t treat me different,” he says quietly. “I mean, I can’t even go trick-or-treating by myself. It’s lame.”

Jonathan tries for a smile. “You think I’m lame?” he jokes, mock-offended.

Will doesn’t take the bait. “No, but—it’s not like Nancy’s coming to watch over Mike, you know?”

Because, for the millionth time, Mike is cool. Mike gets in trouble at school and mouths off to teachers and even then, he can still leave the house without constant supervision. His parents trust him to take care of himself.

Will knows it’s not fair to compare the two situations. Mike didn’t go missing for a week and almost die in an alternate dimension. Of course he didn’t. That would only ever happen to Will, because he’s too weak to defend himself. And what that means, naturally, is that he can’t be given any space to breathe. Any room to grow. It’s like Mom thinks that the second he’s out of her sight, he’ll go missing again.

But he can’t spend his whole life under her thumb. It’s not fair. It’s almost been a whole year now, and nothing has changed. 

At the mention of Nancy, Jonathan’s expression goes a little soft. He’s probably wishing he was with her—and maybe that’s enough. Maybe that’ll convince him.

Will crosses his fingers and waits.

And waits some more.

Nothing. Jonathan keeps driving, eyes fixed on the road. Apparently, their conversation is over.

Will sighs heavily, watching the Wheeler’s house appear through the window. Everybody’s already in the front yard, laughing and cracking jokes, pretending to zap each other with their Proton Blasters. Will feels a sharp pang of loneliness. He’s already missing out, and the night hasn’t even started.

When Dustin sees their car, he lifts a hand in greeting. “Hey, Will!”

Will raises a hand back at him, plastering on a close-lipped smile. He tries to get his spirits back up. So what if Jonathan’s gonna be there? Jonathan’s great. Maybe it’ll be fun. 

As the car rolls to a stop, Will unbuckles his seatbelt and picks up his Proton Pack off the floor. He starts to turn towards the door, steeling himself. Preparing to pretend like nothing’s wrong. 

“Hey, listen.”

Will turns back to his brother—who still hasn’t unbuckled, or made any move to get out of the car. His hopes rise, just the tiniest bit. “Yeah?”

“If… I let you go on your own. Do you promise to stay in the neighborhood?” Jonathan says, biting down on a smile.

Will lights up. His whole body, head to toe, zings with excitement. “Yeah!” he says eagerly. “Yeah, yeah, totally!”

“And be back at Mike’s by nine,” Jonathan adds.

Bolstered by his success, Will tries to push his luck. “Nine… thirty?” he says hopefully.

“Nine.”

Good enough. “Yeah,” Will agrees, like a broken record. In the last three seconds, his night has gone from kinda sucky to totally awesome. For these next few hours, he can be normal. Free.

God, he freaking loves Jonathan.

His brother sticks a hand out over the middle console. “Deal?”

Will beams back at him, giving his hand a firm shake. “Deal!”

“Alright.”

Nearly trembling with joy, Will opens the car door and starts to get out. He can already see Mike and the guys in the distance, waiting for him.

“Hey,” Jonathan says, and holds out the camera. “Don’t let any of your spazzy friends use this, okay?”

Man, and he’s getting the camera? Jonathan’s the best!

“Okay!” he chirps, carefully taking it from his brother’s grasp.

Jonathan leans an elbow on the console, grinning at him. “I hope it doesn’t suck,” he says, doing an unbelievably bad impression of Bob’s vampire voice. Will can’t help but laugh, all the giddiness bubbling out of him at once.

He bounds towards the Wheeler’s front yard, and is immediately greeted by every member of the party.

“Will!”

“Egon!”

“You ready for tonight, man?”

Will smiles back at Mike, cheeks flushed and skin tingling. He’s warm tonight. Not a single goosebump, not a hint of chill. He’s warm.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m ready.”

And for once, he actually means it. He really, really does.

***

“Trick or treat!”

Mike almost feels a little too old for this. Like maybe thirteen is the last year that it’s socially acceptable to go trick-or-treating, and then you start going to real, teenage parties instead.

But the night’s gone well so far, and Will looks like he’s having a good time, so he can’t be too bothered, to be honest. He’s just gonna have fun. He’s not gonna think about any of the shitty stuff that happened today, or the simmering anger-resentment-annoyance sitting low in his stomach. He’s gonna push it down, like he always does, and ignore it. Have a good time. For Will. For himself.

“Oh! Well, aren’t you cute! The little exterminators.”

Mike’s smile drops right off his face. Exterminators? Seriously? He knows this lady’s, like, a million years old, but that’s no excuse. Ghostbusters is a must-watch for all ages.

The guys shoot each other uneasy glances, and Will’s camera-holding arm droops a little in disappointment. He’s been recording all night—like, seriously, all night. And Mike’s not a huge fan of being filmed, because it makes him think of his mom’s overeagerness to quote-unquote document memories for every single holiday, every single year; of a shiny lens in his face and the increasingly insistent commands to smile, Michael, at least try and look like you’re having fun. But for Will, he can make an exception. This is Will’s night, and he can do whatever he wants. He can make a goddamn movie, for all Mike cares.

They reluctantly grab handfuls of candy (and not even good stuff, either) and trudge out of the uncultured old lady’s yard.

“If I get another Three Musketeers, I’m gonna kill myself,” Lucas groans.

Dustin frowns, looking down into his pillowcase. “What’s wrong with Three Musketeers?”

“What’s wrong with Three Musketeers?” Lucas echoes incredulously.

“No one likes Three Musketeers,” Mike says.

“Yeah, it’s just nougat,” Will agrees quickly, bobbing his head along with Mike’s words. Mike smiles a little at the statement. Him and Will are always on the same page.

Except about the Max thing, apparently. But she never even showed up, that flake, so it’s fine. Mike will let it slide.

“Woah. Just nougat? Just nougat,” Dustin repeats, in an apparent state of disbelief. “It is top three for me.”

Lucas wrinkles his nose. “Top three?”

“Top three!”

Mike rolls his eyes. “Oh, god. Gimme a break.” He shares a little conspiratorial glance with Will, like, can you believe this guy?

Will smothers his giggle with the back of his hand. Mike feels very warm, suddenly. Which is weird, given that it’s like forty degrees out, and these costumes have shitty insulation.

Dustin waves a hand in dramatic illustration. “No, I could eat, like, a whole bowl of nougat. Straight-up.”

“Ugh,” Will mutters, pulling a disgusted face.

Then, there’s an ear-splitting scream. The skitter of tennis shoes on asphalt. Someone in a mask. Mike doesn’t know what’s happening, he just knows that his heart’s beating out of his chest, and the only thought in his mind is: Protect Will.

He stumbles back, throwing an arm out in Will’s direction without even thinking about it. Protect him. Protect him. Protect—

The mask is ripped away, and—Jesus fucking Christ. It’s just Max Mayfield.

Mike’s chest heaves as he tries to gulp air back into his lungs. His hatred of the new girl increases a hundred-fold.

Why would she do that? Why would she…

God. What a bitch. Mike really doesn’t know what Dustin and Lucas see in her.

Max tugs the mask free, and it briefly gets caught in the tangles of her long red hair before she yanks it fully away. “Holy shit!” she says, grinning. “You should have seen the looks on your faces.” She quirks a teasing eyebrow at Lucas. “And you? Who screams like that? You sound like a little girl.”

And with that, she turns on her heel and starts off, still laughing to herself. Like all of this is completely normal and fine. The Party stares after her, frozen in their spots, still recovering from the shock and weirdness of the last few moments.

After Max realizes she isn’t being followed, she whips back around. “Hey, you guys coming or not? Ooh, I heard we should hit up Loch Nora. That’s where the rich people live, right?”

She laughs again, bubbly and friendly, and turns back around. It’s a complete one-eighty from the Max Mayfield who walked into Mr. Clarke’s science class, with a scowl permanently etched onto her freckled face.

Mike hates her. It’s irrational, and stupid, and maybe a little petty—but he hates her. He hates that she almost ran them over with her stupid California sports car. He hates that Dustin and Lucas are so obsessed with her. He hates that she’s intruding on their Party, interrupting what was supposed to be a special night. A perfect night.

Dustin and Lucas share an excited glance and run off to follow Max, Will close on their heels.

Mike stays behind, sneakers dug stubbornly into the ground, and huffs out an annoyed breath. So much for having a good time.

He takes a second to mope, and then he trudges after the guys. Not like it can get much worse from here. He might as well power through.

***

Will’s having a blast. Max Mayfield, although she’s spent most of her time with Dustin and Lucas, is actually really nice. And funny. Will’s heard some of her jokes from the back of the Party, but he’s stopped himself from laughing at them, because he can tell Mike doesn’t like her. Even if he’s not really sure why.

But he caught wind of Mike’s sullen drift away from the group, and he’d fallen back to keep pace with him right away. Will wasn’t gonna let Mike walk on his own. It’s… dangerous.

It had nothing to do with him wanting to walk alone with Mike, so close their shoulders brushed with every other step. Nothing at all.

Mike hasn’t been super chatty, courtesy of his sour mood, but Will doesn’t mind. He’ll just wait it out until Mike’s ready to talk, and in the meantime, he’ll keep recording. He’s got enough footage to last him weeks worth of Bad Nights. And if Mike plays a starring role in most of it… that’s between Will and his little lock-box of thoughts. No one else needs to know.

“It’s, like, totally tubular!”

“Totally brodacious, bro.”

Max snorts, waving Dustin and Lucas away. “Stop! My ears are hurting.”

Will smiles a little, watching them through the camera screen. After that, though, they get too far away to hear or see properly, so Will turns his lens back to Mike. 

Mike, who still looks pretty pissed-off.

Finally, he opens his mouth, looking like he’s been bursting to ask all night. “Did you agree to this?”

It’s more of an accusation than a question.

Will hesitantly lowers his camera. If he and Mike are about to get in a fight, he doesn’t want it on video. That would be the opposite of helpful, on Bad Nights. 

“What?” he asks softly.

Mike nods his head at the Max-Dustin-Lucas trio. “Her. Joining our Party.”

Joining their—oh. Oh no. Mike’s got it all wrong. No wonder he’s upset.

“It’s just for Halloween,” Will tries to tell him, softening his voice even more.

Mike keeps his eyes fixed on Max. His expression is flat, but Will can sense the hurt behind it. “You should have checked with me.”

Will shrinks guiltily. “They—they were excited,” he stammers. “I guess I thought you’d be okay with it.”

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Now Mike’s mad at him. Will hates when Mike’s mad at him, especially because it rarely ever happens. So when it does, he knows he’s really screwed up.

And he deserves this. Big-time. He and Mike always talk through decisions like this, if they’re not on the same page right away. Will knows that. He shouldn’t have said yes so fast. Idiot.

Mike looks back at him, teeth gritted in annoyance. Annoyance towards… him? Crap. Will’s heart races uneasily in his chest. 

“She’s ruining the best night of the year,” Mike spits out, and stomps away, up the driveway of the next house.

Will stares after him, stomach sinking with unhappy feelings. Tears burn behind his eyes. He made Mike upset. That’s his fault. Mike’s right, he should have talked to him first.

After a few seconds, he tries to gather himself. Twists his pillowcase around in his hand, takes a deep breath, and starts the solitary march up the driveway. But before he can, a red, devilish mask swims into his vision. “Watch it, Zombie Boy!”

Will jumps back, pulse hammering. But he doesn’t get any sort of break—they just keep coming, clowns and serial killers and vampires with realistic, dark red blood dripping from their fangs.

“Trick or treat, freak!”

“Boo!”

And with the last word, Will’s pushed over the edge, literally—falling back to the ground with a hard thud. The second he falls, everything changes.

He’s in the Upside Down. 

Dark. Cold. Everyone’s gone, he’s alone, he’s scared, he’s twelve again, huddling in the night with a broken shotgun and a blue and yellow blanket.

His camera and pillowcase scatter on the ground. He hopes the lens isn’t broken, but he’s too distracted to check. He scrambles to his feet, taking in the towering dead trees, the midnight blue sky, the huge floating particles that sting his eyes and skin. “Mike?” he calls, desperation building in his throat.

No answer. Mike’s gone. Everyone’s gone.

He takes a few, stumbling steps forward. “Mike!” he screams, voice raw. “Mike!”

Sounds echo around him: low growls, high-pitched whimpers and chitters, the shifting of slimy bodies. 

And Will’s weak. He doesn’t even have any protection. All he has is his fake Proton Blaster and a pillowcase that’s half-full of Halloween candy.

He’s frozen. Frozen with fear, just like he always is, he needs to move—

Come home, Will. Join us. Come home. Join us. Come home. Come HOME. COME HOME—

In front of him, lit by streetlight-blue orbs, it appears. Just a shadow at first, growing thicker and thicker and huge, towering into the dark sky.

The Evil.

One by one, its smoky spider-limbs unfold, spiraling in the air until its bullet-like head is revealed. It swings around to look at Will. To meet his eye.

COME HOME.

Will’s legs finally get with the program. He spins on his heel, the soles of his shoes wet and slippery, and runs.

He runs straight up the driveway of the nearest house, cuts across the yard and through the chain-link gate, and down two flights of brick stairs. There’s a small alcove at the bottom of the stairs, just big enough to hide his whole body. So he sits, tucks his knees up to his chest, buries his face in his lap, and tries to stop hyperventilating.

Where are you, Will? You cannot hide.

Will counts his heartbeats. Onetwothreefourfive—onetwothree—one—on—

This isn’t real, he tells himself. It’s an episode. A nightmare. I’m dreaming.

How are you dreaming when you never went to sleep? his brain shoots back.

A strangled breath shudders out of him. Too loud, too loud, he’s gonna get caught—

“Will!”

Will gasps, eyes flying open, shoulder burning where Mike’s touching it.

Mike.

Mike’s here. He’s alright.

His eyes are huge and worried, fixed on Will with almost unnerving intensity. “Will, what’s wrong?”

Will looks around, taking in his surroundings: warm yellow lamps, deep red brick. He’s okay. He’s safe. He’s not in that place anymore, and Mike’s by his side.

Mike’s really close by his side, actually, crouched in front of him with his entire arm draped protectively over Will’s chest. Will feels very tingly all of a sudden, which is something he pointedly does not think about.

“I couldn’t find you—are you hurt?”

Mike’s words are dripping with desperation, with concern. He was looking for me, Will thinks, eyes brimming with unshed tears. Even though we fought. Even though I upset him.

He doesn’t deserve such a good friend. But the fact that he has one anyway is something he’ll always be grateful for, even after Mike’s gone. After he leaves.

Will doesn’t want to think about Mike leaving.

Dustin and Lucas skid into the alcove, identical looks of worry on their faces. Max is close behind them, but she mostly just looks confused. 

“Is he okay?” Lucas pants, breathing heavy.

Mike barely spares him a glance. “I dunno.” He turns back to Will, leaning down to look into his eyes. “I’m gonna get you home, okay? I’m gonna get you home. Hold on.” With that, he wraps his arms around Will and helps him to his feet. Will shamelessly leans into him, closing his eyes. His face feels wet. He’s probably crying.

Home. That sounds nice. Warm. Safe.

Dustin rushes forward, setting a hand on Mike’s arm. “Alright, take it easy—”

“I’ve got him,” Mike says firmly, tightening his grip on Will.

Dustin steps away, looking a little stung. “Mike.”

Mike glares back at him, slinging an arm around Will’s shoulders. “Keep trick-or-treating. I’m bored anyway.”

They start walking away, but before they get too far, Will hears Max asking, in a loud whisper: “What’s wrong with him?”

He closes his eyes, another few tears slipping out. Everything, Max, he thinks. Everything.

***

The scariest part of the night, by far, was losing Will. Mike hadn’t been scared by any of the teenagers in masks or by that one elaborate haunted house in Loch Nora—but the second he’d turned around to find Will missing, fear struck the dead-center of his chest, spreading all the way through his body. For a second, he’d been back to that day, one year ago, when Will had disappeared. 

Find him. Protect him. Keep him safe.

And he did. He is. He doesn’t care what Dustin or Lucas think—they hadn’t been paying attention to Will all night. They’d been too busy with stupid Max.

Then again, Mike had been too busy being petty over some stupid argument that didn’t even matter. He doesn’t know what he would’ve done if that was all it took—that one second where he left Will behind—for him to go missing again. It would have been his fault.

He keeps a protective arm around Will’s shoulders the whole way back to his house. If anything else tries to get him, in real life or in his head, Mike will be ready. He’s not taking his eyes off him for the rest of the night. If it was possible, he wouldn’t take his eyes off of Will ever. But that’s probably a little weird to think. So he’ll back off, eventually.

But for now, they’ll go to Mike’s, and they’ll wait out the thirty minutes until Will gets picked up. That way, if anything goes wrong, at least they’ll be together.

As they open the front door, Mom sticks her head out of the kitchen. She’s dressed like some sort of movie star, hair all big and poofy, makeup dramatic and over-done. “Michael? What are you doing home already?”

Mike gestures to Will with his free hand. “Will wasn’t feeling good. We’re gonna go hang out in the basement until Jonathan gets here.”

She smiles understandingly. “Alright, honey. Feel better, Will!”

“Thanks, Mrs. Wheeler,” Will mumbles. It’s the first thing he’s said in almost thirty minutes.

“Let’s go,” Mike murmurs gently, tugging on Will’s shoulder. Will follows easily. He always does.

Once they’re down in the basement, Mike sets Will’s camera down on the table, taking extra care with the fragile parts. He’d been carrying all of Will’s stuff for the entire walk, after he found it scattered in the middle of the road, so it’s a relief to put it down. 

Will’s still shaking, trembling all over, like he’s ice cold. Mike’s not even sure if he knows he’s doing it. 

After making an executive decision, Mike dumps both of their pillowcases out on the table, candy spilling over the edge and onto the floor. Silently, he herds Will over to sit on the couch, then sits next to him and starts to sort through their candy. Will’s favorite candies—Reese’s Pieces and Snickers—go in one pile, and Mike’s favorites—Mars Bars and Skittles—go in the other. Everything else goes in the middle, for them to share. It’s the way they always do it. 

There’s a companionable silence in the air as Will comes down from his episode, breathing steady breaths against Mike’s side. Mike rubs his shoulder, hands him pieces of candy from his pile, and waits for him to talk. He’ll wait here all night if they need to. It’s fine by him.

Eventually, once they’ve amassed a good pile of wrappers on the floor, and their fingers are sticky with chocolate and sugar, Will speaks. “It’s like… like I’m stuck.”

“Like—stuck in the Upside Down?” Mike guesses, carefully keeping his tone neutral. He knows he was hard on Will earlier, and he doesn’t want him to think he’s still mad. That stuff was all dumb, anyway, and it doesn’t matter anymore. Will’s safety is more important. By a long shot.

Will sighs, shaking out his hands in his lap. “No. You know how—how in a View-Master, when it gets, like…” He makes a little frustrated gesture that Mike immediately interprets.

“Caught between two slides?”

“Yeah,” Will says, relieved. “Yeah, like that. It’s like one side’s our world, and the other…”

Mike watches him patiently. Waits him out.

“The other slide… is the Upside Down,” Will finishes, swallowing. It looks like it’s difficult for him to even say the words. 

They glance at each other. Mike can tell Will’s not done, so he bites back his own commentary. Waits some more.

“And there—there was this noise, coming from everywhere.” As he remembers, Will’s eyes go wide, his voice strained. “And then I… I saw something.”

Mike’s pulse ticks up. “The Demogorgon?” he guesses.

But Will shakes his head, looking haunted. “No. It was like this huge… shadow, in the sky. Only, it—it was alive.” He goes still, staring at the ground. “And it was coming for me.”

No. No, why is Will in trouble again? This can’t be happening, it can’t—

“Is this all real?” Mike asks, trying to keep his voice even, despite the overwhelming panic in his brain. “Or is it like the doctors say? All in your head?”

Please, be all in your head, he thinks. Because Mike can’t do this again. He can’t watch Will go through this again, and just do nothing, powerless to stop it, unable to help. It would kill him, and he knows it.

“I don’t know,” Will answers, which isn’t very comforting. “Just…” He meets Mike’s eye, pleading. “Just please don’t tell the others, okay?”

Despite how fucked-up the situation is, Mike feels a little shiver of pride. Will trusts him over everyone in the Party. Mike is the sole protector of Will’s secrets. It makes him feel like he’s doing something right for once. Like he’s being a good friend.

Will stares somewhere past Mike’s shoulder, looking sad. “They wouldn’t understand.”

Mike thinks on this for a moment. Tries to come up with something to say in response, something useful. Something helpful.

“Eleven would.”

There he goes. That’s it. 

Will watches him closely. “She would?”

“Yeah,” Mike says, becoming more certain. “She always did.”

Truth be told, El would be a bigger help to Will right now than Mike is. El would know what the shadow monster is. She’d know about the View-Master slide vision. About what’s causing it. About how to stop it, how to fix it.

All Mike can offer is some shitty advice and a pillowcase of candy.

And now that he’s started thinking about El, he can’t stop. Everything that he’s bottled up, been too afraid to tell the Party, comes spilling out. He can tell Will. Will understands. He won’t judge him. 

“Sometimes I feel like I still see her,” Mike admits shakily. Through the window. Behind the trees. In the radio. “Like she’s still around. But she never is.”

He shakes his head, eyes stinging with emotion. “I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy.”

Mike shoots a hesitant glance at Will, but there’s no trace of disgust in his expression. No judgement. 

“Me too.”

Relief pools all through Mike’s body. He knew Will would get it. He just knew it. Will’s his person. His best friend. They can practically read each other’s minds.

He’s so grateful for Will, so genuinely appreciative, that the tears in his eyes nearly spill over. “Hey, well,” he says suddenly, meeting Will’s bright gaze. “If we’re both going crazy, then we’ll go crazy together. Right?”

A smile works its way onto Will’s face, breaking through all the sorrow. He looks back at Mike, eyes glossy with tears. “Yeah,” he agrees. “Crazy together.”

Mike smiles back at him, despite the heavy lump in his throat.

They don’t need to say anything else. The weight of their friendship hangs in the air, stronger than ever.

Neither of them are okay. Mike’s more sure of that than he’s ever been.

But what he’s more sure of—what he’s positive of—is that they have each other. And that’s all that matters, really.

***

Before Mike goes to bed, he calls El. It’s stupid at this point, almost a year of unanswered calls—but it’s habit now. He can’t break it. Maybe, one day, she’ll…

No. She won’t.

Mike lets out a harsh breath, then presses the Comm. “It’s day three-hundred-fifty-three today,” he says. “I had a bad day today. I don’t…” 

Tears build heavy behind his eyes, his nose, his throat. He can barely breathe. “I don’t know,” he finishes, stuffy and upset. “I guess I just wish you were here. We all do.”

He pauses, then says the routine line. Like an actor going over his script. “If you’re out there, just please give me a sign.”

There’s no sign. There never is.

He waits. Listens to the static. “Eleven?”

Stupid. God, he’s an idiot.

Mike slams the antennae down and crawls out of the fort. He’s not sure how much sleep he’s gonna get tonight, but anything is better than this.

He doesn’t know how much longer he can pretend that he’s alright. He doesn’t know if he can pretend at all, anymore.

Chapter Text

Every morning, Mom loses her keys. And every morning, it’s the same crisis as before. Each time, it’s the end of the world. The keys will never again be found.

And every morning, without fail, Mom finds her keys.

But Will is a good son, and he loves his mom, so he joins the search. He looks under boxes, in laundry hampers, inside old shoes. The right and left.

The keys are definitely not in any of those places. But it doesn’t hurt to check.

Mom runs into the living room, upending several throw pillows in her wake. "Jesus.” She pokes her head over the top of the couch, pointing her big, worried eyes at Jonathan. “Have you seen them?”

“We’re looking, Mom,” Jonathan assures her.

He’s not looking. 

“Yeah, we’re…” Will peeks inside his backpack. Making sure he has his homework, and searching for the keys. Two birds with one stone. “Looking,” he finishes absently. Math homework, check. Science, check. English… Oh, check. Nice.

“Aha! Found them.”

Bob’s here? When did that start happening?

Bob, the key savior of the day, dangles the missing objects in his fist. “Hiding under some jeans, the silly little buggers.”

Mom sighs in relief, then kisses him on the cheek, accepting the keys. “Oh, thank you. Thank you. You’re a lifesaver,” she murmurs.

As she strides over to grab her coat, walking with purpose, she sets her sights on Jonathan. “Can you take Will to school today? I can not be late again.”

Jonathan ignores the question, eyes flicking behind her. “He’s staying over now?”

Mom’s face gets all annoyed and scrunched-up. “Just take him, please,” she says flatly.

Bob clears his throat. “I can take him.”

Mom stalls, pursing her lips in thought. “Will you make sure he gets in okay?”

“Yeah, of course!” Bob beams at Will. “What do you say, big guy? You wanna go for a ride in the Bobmobile?”

Will wrinkles his nose. He doesn’t like big guy. He likes Bobmobile even less. 

He absolutely does not wanna go for a ride in the Bobmobile. Will shoots a panicked glance at Mom, but she just smiles back, giving him two thumbs-up. “Have fun, honey!”

Will senses that he’s not winning this one.

Reluctantly, he trudges after Bob. He can see Jonathan hiding his laughter behind his hand, which is not cool. Will would much rather be riding with him, but not if he’s gonna be a jerk about it.

The “Bobmobile” is less of a mobile and more of a crappy old car. It’s red, though, which is kind of nice. Or so Will guesses. He’s not much of a car guy.

They ride for a while in silence. Will hasn’t spent much time with Bob one-on-one, and he doesn’t exactly know what to say to him. His mind is occupied, anyway: full of thoughts of the shadow monster and Will’s subsequent freak-out.

The way Mike took him back to his basement. Rubbed his back. Told him they’d go crazy together.

Objectively, these are all things meant for the lock-box in Will’s brain. He needs to shove them in there and stop obsessing.

But he almost doesn’t want to. He wants to analyze the memory, to pick at it and pull it apart until he gets to the bones.

Crazy together.

What does that mean? Was Mike just being nice? Just being a good friend?

Probably.

Will’s so stupid.

Eventually, Bob turns his head, a friendly smile on his round face. “Was that you I heard milling around last night, or was that a ghost?”

Right. Because he’s staying the night now.

Will hadn’t exactly been able to sleep. And the vomit-slugs had been extra vicious last night, like some kind of punishment. “Yeah,” he agrees quietly. “Me, probably.”

Bob nods understandingly. “Another nightmare?”

“Um… no,” Will hedges, looking back out the window. He’s not lying, really. It had been more of a waking terror. A bad daydream. 

There’s a moment of silence, quiet music from the radio filtering into the car, and Will thinks that must be it. The conversation is over.

“Did I ever tell you about Mister Baldo?”

What.

“Mister… Baldo?” Will repeats skeptically. He’s sure he would have remembered if Bob told him about someone named Mister Baldo. Jeez.

Bob laughs, acknowledging how silly the name is. “Yeah.” He adjusts his grip on the steering wheel, glances over at Will, then starts in on the story.

“I was a little younger than you, standing in line for the Ferris Wheel at the Roane County Fair.”

Will’s immediately more interested: if the name caught his attention, the mention of the fair is keeping it. He’s always wanted to go to a fair. They seem so fun.

“Mhm,” he hums attentively, sitting up straighter in his seat.

“And suddenly,” Bob continues, “I feel this fat white glove tap me on the shoulder. I spin around, and there he is. Mister Baldo.”

Will keeps listening. Only, he wishes he hadn’t, because the next thing out of Bob’s mouth is a truly horrific clown impression. “Hey, kiddo! Would you like a ballooooon?” 

He stretches out a clawed hand towards Will, and Will bites down on a smile. The impression is just… so bad. But that’s Bob all over. Embarrassing himself without a care in the world.

“Go ahead, laugh,” he encourages, chuckling along with Will. “It’s funny.” He tilts his head consideringly. “It wasn’t funny back then, though, I can tell you that.”

Will watches as Bob becomes a little lost in the memory—old fear resurfacing. “I couldn’t get him out of my head,” he admits. “Every night, he would come to me in my dreams. And every night, when he came to me… I ran.”

He ran. Just like Will.

All Will ever does is run.

“It got so bad,” Bob says, “that I made my mom stay in the room with me until I could fall asleep. Every night.”

Wow. At least Will’s not that bad. But… if this keeps going for much longer, he could see himself getting to that point. Too terrified to dream.

“Really?” he asks quietly. 

“Really,” Bob confirms. “It went on like that for months. And then one day, the nightmares suddenly… stopped.”

It sounds too good to be true. Will’s eyes go wide, trying to imagine a world where his nightmares stop. Where he doesn’t have to be afraid of the dark anymore. Of the cold.

Bob shoots him a sideways smile, eyes flicking over Will’s expression. “Wanna know how?” he asks conspiratorially.

“How?” Will blurts.

“Well, I fell asleep. And just like always… Mister Baldo came to me,” Bob starts. His face draws tight, becoming more serious. More determined. “Only this time, I didn’t run. This time, I stood my ground. I just looked at Mister Baldo in his stupid face—and I said go away. Go away!”

He shouts it with such ferocity that Will jumps a little, heart racing. He didn’t know Bob was so… well, brave. 

Maybe he could be brave too.

He imagines standing up to The Evil. Telling it to go away. Standing his ground, instead of running like a coward.

Bob shrugs, looking humbly satisfied. “And just like that, he was gone. Never saw him again.”

Gone.

It sounds too good to be true.

While Will grapples with this, Bob grins at him. “Easy-peasy, right?”

Slowly, Will starts to nod. “Easy-peasy,” he repeats thoughtfully.

Could it be that easy?

Bob snaps his fingers. “Just like that.”

A small smile stretches over Will’s lips.

Yeah. Just like that.

***

By the time Bob pulls up to Hawkins Middle, Will’s spent about ten minutes wallowing in his own growing dread. It creeps up on him every time he passes the familiar landmarks, every time he crosses the threshold of the school.

Zombie Boy.

The legacy follows him everywhere. The stares. The rumors.

He can’t outrun it. And he can’t outgrow it.

All he can do is live with it. Otherwise, he’d have to drop out of school and become a hobo or something, and enduring some whispers and taunts seems like the better of those two options. 

“Have a great day, kiddo,” Bob calls cheerfully, as Will slides out of the passenger seat.

He doesn’t respond, because saying okay, or I will, would be a lie. None of his days are all that great anymore, no matter how hard he tries.

And god, is he trying. 

Will re-adjusts his backpack straps on his shoulders and starts the solitary trudge up to the front entrance. He can already see the heads starting to swivel, the eyes beginning to widen. The school’s celebrity has arrived.

The school’s laughingstock, more like.

Will’s gaze flits between the sidewalk and his peers, caught in an awkward, uncertain shuffle. He hates being the center of attention like this. He hates it.

All the way to Mr. Clarke’s class, kids steer clear of him, giving him a wide berth, like they think he’ll give them some sort of disease.

(Maybe he will.)

He tries to ignore it. Walks faster and faster, tears burning behind his eyes, feeling nearly numb, until he makes it to class. To his seat.

To Mike.

And the rest of the Party, of course. Except Dustin, who’s weirdly absent. Will doesn’t know what’s up with that, and to be honest, he barely has it in him to care.

So it’s just Mike and Lucas, which is fine. They’re talking about their Halloween candy hauls when Will walks in, but the conversation goes stale shortly after he sits down.

“Hey, Will,” Mike greets softly. “You okay?”

“Mhm,” Will murmurs, ducking down to unzip his bag and pull out his notebook. His bangs fall into his eyes as he leans over, and he huffs out an annoyed breath, clearing them away. 

He sits back up, and glances at Mike. Mike’s eyes are firmly fixed on him, definitely staring—but it’s somehow different than the stares Will gets from the other kids in school. This look is… Well, Will doesn’t know how to describe it. It’s like Mike’s staring just to take him in, to commit every detail to memory.

But Will’s probably just projecting.

To the box it goes.

Will zones out, then, half-listening to Mike and Lucas’s chatter as they wait for class to start. Five minutes later, though, the bell’s rung, and Mr. Clarke’s started lecturing, and Dustin… still isn’t here. Which is, again, weird. 

Will hopes he’s okay.

“The case of Phineas Gage is one of the greatest medical curiosities of all time. Phineas was a railroad worker in 1848 who had a nightmarish accident.” Mr. Clarke draws a thick black line through the skull on the projector, and his Expo marker squeaks along the plastic. “A large iron rod was driven completely through his head.”

Dutifully, Will jots down a few notes: Phineas Gage. Railroad worker, 1848. Iron rod through head.

Ugh. Gross. Also, ouch.

Mr. Clarke finishes off the line with a dramatic flourish, then paces slowly around the board to stand at the front of the room. “Phineas miraculously survived. He seemed fine. And physically—yes, he was. But his injury resulted in a complete change to his personality.”

Someone else is staring at Will now. He can feel it, like an uncomfortable itch at the back of his neck. 

“So much so that friends that knew him…”

Will turns around, making direct eye contact with Max Mayfield. Immediately, she slouches in her seat, averting her eyes. Pretending she hadn’t been looking.

Man. Will thought she was cool.

But apparently she’s just like everyone else. Apparently, she thinks of Will as Zombie Boy, too. And she’s barely been in Hawkins for a week.

“…started referring to him as No Longer Gage.”

No longer Gage. No longer Will.

No longer anyone. 

All he is now is what he’s been through. What he’s still going through. It’s consuming him. Eating him from the inside out—literally, if the slugs are anything to go by.

Sometimes, Will wishes he had just…

Well. That’s probably not a very good thing to think. That’s the kind of thought that would get him sent straight to Doctor Owens, “for his own good.”

No one seems to care about the things that actually are good for Will. It’s definitely not all the doctor’s visits. All the constant smothering and babying. It can’t be.

“At the time, this was known as the American Crowbar Case.”

Will sighs and picks up his pencil again. American Crow—

The door slams open, and Mr. Clarke blinks in surprise. Dustin’s on the other side, rumpled and panting with exertion. “I am so sorry, Mr. Clarke,” he breathes out, stumbling to his seat. “Really, I’m so sorry. Please, continue with the class.”

He starts struggling to shrug off his backpack. “Don’t mind me. Really, continue, please. Thanks.”

And he sits.

Mr. Clarke takes a second to adjust, then takes the interruption in stride, continuing on. “Although it wasn’t a crowbar—it was a rod, as I said.”

Their teacher’s voice trails off as Dustin jerks his head at the Party, then leans in. Will, Mike, and Lucas lean in too, trying to hear him better. “We have to meet,” Dustin whispers loudly. “All of us. At lunch. AV Club.”

In an effort to balance himself, Will rests his elbow on Mike’s desk. Next to Mike’s elbow. And it’s not weird. It’s totally normal.

Mike shifts his arm, just the tiniest amount, until his elbow is nudging up against Will’s, the soft fabric of his sweater against the rough plaid of Will’s button-down. Will feels, very suddenly, like he’s on fire. Like he can’t breathe.

His heart pounds in his ears; an unsteady, tripping rhythm. Ba-bum, ba-bum, ba—

Mike furrows his brows. “Why?” he whispers back, considerably quieter.

“I have something that you won’t believe,” Dustin says emphatically, eyes wide.

Will doubts that. He’ll believe pretty much anything, these days. Not much fazes him anymore.

Except for Mike’s elbow, apparently. Which he can still feel, tingling along his arm as if they’re touching skin-to-skin.

For a second, Will imagines them in the same position, but wearing t-shirts. His entire brain short-circuits.

Stop. Stop. STOP. 

It feels like Will’s fighting tooth-and-nail to shove his thoughts away—so much that it actually physically drains him, leaving him flushed red and nearly breathless.

Mike accepts the answer with a begrudging nod, and they all lean back in their seats, returning their attention to the lecture.

Will’s breath trembles in his throat. His grip on his pencil is shaking as he sets the lead against his paper.

He doesn’t write a single word. He can’t even hear Mr. Clarke.

Dustin’s not done, though. He twists his whole body around in his chair— super obviously—to whisper-shout at Max. “AV Club! Lunch.”

Oh. So… is she joining their Party, then? For real? Will wishes someone would have told him about that.

He recalls the prickling on his neck, the heated intensity of her stare, and shrinks a little in his seat. Great. That’s just what he needs—someone in the Party that thinks he’s some sort of freak.

She might not be wrong.

Mr. Clarke’s expression flattens, and he looks to the ceiling for strength, before looking back to the front row. “Dustin!”

Dustin turns around innocently. “Yes, my lord.”

Jeez. Only Dustin, dude. Only Dustin.

Mr. Clarke doesn’t seem surprised by the nickname—he’s used to Dustin’s oddness by now. “Would you care to join the class?” he asks pointedly.

Dustin doesn’t react to the sarcasm. In fact, he brightens, digging around for his textbook. “Please! Yes.”

“The case of Phineas Gage,” Mr. Clarke directs him.

“Phineas Gage,” Dustin repeats obediently.

“Page 104.”

“104. 104…”

“Focus.”

“Focusing,” Dustin assures him, setting his book on the desk. “Focusing.”

He turns back around one more time. AV Club! he mouths at Max. Will doesn’t turn around to see her response. He doesn’t want to get in trouble for not paying attention.

Also, he doesn’t really care if Max is coming or not.

Mr. Clarke clears his throat. “And he began to curse, using terrible words that I don’t dare repeat here.”

Bad words, Will adds to his paper, with a little frowny face after it. His heart isn’t fully in it, though.

He’s still thinking about Mike’s touch. About his arm, just barely brushing his own.

About crazy together.

Right now, though, it feels like Will’s going crazy alone.

Just like he always does.

***

Oh, god. What is that thing?!

It’s disgusting.

“His name is d’Artagnan,” Dustin says proudly.

D’Artagnan makes a horrible, croaking chitter, waddling around the Proton Pack on stubby stumps of flesh.

Will shivers.

And then, horrifyingly, Dustin reaches out to grab it, with his bare hands.

EW.

Will’s gonna throw up.

Dustin looks up at them, face full of clear adoration. “Cute, right? And he likes nougat.”

Will wonders when Dustin’s last check-up was. Maybe he needs glasses. Or some sort of prescription medication, because that… thing… is about as far from cute as you can get.

Again. Ew.

“D’Artagnan?” Mike repeats judgmentally.

“Dart for short,” Dustin replies, like that’s the issue—this thing’s lack of a nickname.

“And he was in your trash,” Max clarifies. Because she’s a part of their Party now, apparently. Cool. Whatever. Will doesn’t care. 

It’s just kinda… weird. But it’s not like anyone cares about his opinion, except maybe Mike. So.

Dustin nods excitedly. “Foraging for food.” He glances down to Dart, then to Max. His expression turns thoughtful. “You wanna hold him?”

Max backs up several steps, holding up her hands, palms-out. “No.”

“He doesn’t bite!” Dustin says cheerfully, already moving forward to dump the creature into her outstretched hands.

“I don’t want to—” Max starts, but it’s too late. Her mouth twists in disgust and horror, and she fidgets restlessly, shifting Dart from one palm to the other. “Oh, god, he’s slimy!” she yelps, then passes him off to Lucas, like the world’s grossest Hot Potato.

“Ew, he’s like a living booger,” Lucas groans, looking nauseous. He stands to his feet, passing Dart off to Will across the table.

“Ugh!” he says. Dart is slimy. And wet. Like a slug, or a snail without its shell. So gross. “Oh, god,” he mutters, stomach churning, and practically throws it over to Mike, completing the circle.

Mike doesn’t recoil. He doesn’t groan, or yelp, or complain. Instead, like the brave paladin he is, he holds Dart steady in his cupped palms, then brings him slowly up to eye level, inspecting him with a critical gaze. Dart chirps, swishing his thick tail. It’s impossible to tell what emotion this relates to. Does this thing even have emotions?

“What is he?” Mike asks curiously, still holding Dart. 

Dustin’s lips turn up in a grin, his face lit a warm yellow from the table lamp. “My question exactly.”

Mike sets Dart carefully on the table, surrounded by a circular hose as a makeshift fence, while Dustin plops a stack of thick textbooks on the table. “At first, I thought he was some type of pollywog,” he says, widening his eyes and looking around at the Party.

“Pollywog?” Max repeats.

“It’s another word for tadpole,” Dustin explains belatedly. “A tadpole is the larval stage of a toad.”

Max rolls her eyes. “I know what a tadpole is.”

“Alright,” Dustin allows. “So you know that most tadpoles are aquatic, right?” He flips open one of the books, thumbing through its pages until he reaches the frog life cycle section. “Well, Dart isn’t. He doesn’t need water.”

Something’s pushing at the back of Will’s brain. Something insistent, but slippery. It’s like it’s on the tip of his tongue, but he just can’t…

It’s familiar. But he doesn’t know how, or why.

“Yeah, but aren’t there non-aquatic pollywogs?” Lucas points out.

“Terrestrial pollywogs?” Dustin defines. “Yep. Two, to be exact. Indirana semipalmata and the Adenomera andreae.” He raises an eyebrow. “One’s from India, one’s from South America. So how did one end up in my trash?”

“Maybe some scientists brought it here and it escaped?” Max guesses.

Mike’s staring intently at Dart, leaning in slightly over the table. “Do you guys see that? It looks like something is… moving inside of it.”

Great. Like this thing couldn’t get any grosser.

Dustin peers at Dart curiously, then swings the lamp over to shine some light on him. Almost immediately, he turns his small, circular mouth up, letting out a bone-chilling screech. Will jumps back, heart pounding, as Dart starts to run away, tripping over the hose and across the table, right into Dustin’s waiting palms.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Dustin soothes, smiling big. “I’ve got you, little guy. I know you don’t like that, it’s okay.”

This is… concerning. And judging from Lucas’s face, he agrees.

But Will’s realization—the strange familiarity—is turning around in his head, unlocking piece by piece. Something about the light…

“And that’s another thing,” Dustin says eagerly, looking around at the Party. “Reptiles—they’re cold-blooded. Ectothermic, right? They love heat, the sun. But Dart hates it. It hurts him.”

“So if he’s not a pollywog or a reptile,” Lucas says, “then…”

“Then I’ve discovered a new species,” Dustin says, beaming with triumph. He strokes Dart on the back, forcing another chitter out of his mouth.

A… familiar chitter.

Will stares at Dart.

Slimy. Wet. Cold. Like a slug.

Like a slug.

Will closes his eyes, imagining it: his vomit-slugs, forcing their way out of his throat, sliding down the sink drain, the toilet drain, the bathtub drain. Traveling through the pipes. Alive. Growing.

How many Darts are out there? What has Will done?

Oh, god. This is bad. This is so, so bad. Why didn’t he think of this before? The slugs had to go somewhere. He should have squished them or something, instead of letting them escape into the world. What if they’re… evil?

But Dustin looks so excited. So loving. How is Will supposed to tell him?

Dart chirps again, preening up against Dustin’s pets, and the sound echoes in Will’s mind— colddarkscared— creatures of the night howling, vines pulsing, Will running, lungs burning—

The bell rings, and he snaps out of it.

The Party files out of the AV Club door, talking a mile a minute, trying to decide if they should show Dart to Mr. Clarke or not. Will trails along behind them, feeling nearly frozen. 

“I’m thinking about calling it Dustonius Pollywogus. What do you think?”

Max scoffs. “I think you’re an idiot.”

They walk further down the hallway, laughing and chatting, while Will slows to a stop, trying to stave off a panic attack. He has to tell someone about this. He has to…

This is bad. Really, really bad.

And it’s all his fault.

Will thinks of a very bad word, then. One that’s worthy of a penciled-in frowny face. One that Mr. Clarke would definitely not be repeating.

***

Will’s been quiet today. Mike gets it, though, after everything that happened last night. But if even this new, gross species that Dustin’s discovered won’t cheer him up, Mike’s not sure what will.

After school, Will’s nowhere to be found, even though the Party made specific plans to meet by Mr. Clarke’s room. So Mike searches high and low for him, far and wide, until he finally checks the lockers. Will’s moving slowly, staring off into space with a haunted expression as he closes his locker door.

“Will,” Mike greets softly, stepping a little closer. “Are you coming? Let’s go show Mr. Clarke.”

Will doesn’t respond. His fingers shake where they grip the edges of his lab notebook. His eyes are wide as he walks up to Mike. He looks terrified.

“What?” Mike blurts, pulse picking up in his throat. Still, Will doesn’t respond, only walking closer and closer until he’s nearly toe-to-toe with Mike. “What?” he repeats, lowering his voice.

Will glances around the hallway, then back at Mike. His eyes are huge. So big that Mike can see the rings of green at the centers, little flares of hazel around the edges. Weirdly, he can’t look away. 

“It’s about d’Artagnan,” Will says finally, in a grave whisper. “Can we…” He looks around again. “Can we go somewhere private?”

“Bathroom,” Mike blurts, and grabs hold of Will’s elbow, leading the way. Whatever this is, it seems serious. Something’s wrong. Mike can tell.

The last bell’s already rung, so no one’s inside the boy’s bathroom. Once they walk in, Will paces alongside the sinks. He reaches the wall, then spins around and turns back. His chest is rising and falling rapidly.

“Will, what is it?” Mike asks hesitantly. “Whatever it is, it’s okay. You can tell me.”

Will stops pacing and peers up at him, suddenly nervous. “…You promise you won’t be mad?”

“What? Of course I won’t,” Mike says in surprise. “Of course. I promise.”

Literally, unless Will’s, like, killed someone or something like that, Mike doesn’t think he can be mad at him. Maybe not even then, because Mike’s sure Will would have a good reason for murder. It would probably be justified. And then Mike would help him hide the body, or whatever. Like a good friend.

Will lets out a slow, shaky breath. “Okay,” he says. “Okay. So for the last year, I’ve kind of had this… problem.”

Mike nods. He doesn’t say anything, not yet, because he doesn’t want to scare Will, or force him to say more than he’s ready to. He just listens.

“I’ve been…” Will squeezes his eyes shut, looking pained. “I’ve been throwingupslugs,” he rushes out, in one big smushed exhale.

Mike blinks at him. “Sorry, what?”

“I’ve been throwing up slugs,” Will repeats, and that’s…

“What?!” 

Mike tracks his eyes all over Will’s body, checking for some outward sign of sickness. No one that’s been throwing up slugs can look this normal, this fine. Right?!

“For a year?” he breathes out, voice trembling. “I… what? Why didn’t you say anything? Does it hurt? Are you okay? Is it gross? Is it an Upside Down thing? Is it—”

“Mike.”

He stops. “Sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry. I’m not mad, I’m just… worried.”

“It hurts a little,” Will admits, then, at Mike’s expression, immediately adjusts. “I mean, it’s not that bad! I’m used to it, really. And it doesn’t happen that often. It… It is pretty gross, though.” He shrinks a little, shuffling his feet around in embarrassment.

Mike wants to hug him. To comfort him. So he does, opening his arms and letting Will tuck himself into his chest. It feels safe. Warm. Mike feels inordinately pleased with himself— this is something I can do. This is a way I can help.

Even if he’s pretty much useless otherwise, at least he can make Will feel better.

After a moment, they separate, and Mike furrows his brows in thought. “You said this was about Dart?” he recalls.

Will nods. “Yeah. I think the slugs… I think they are Dart. Or, like, they grew up to be Dart. He just looked so familiar, and I couldn’t figure out why—but then I heard the noise.”

“What noise?” Mike says automatically. Chills skitter down his spine. He can’t help but imagine it—Will in pain, hunched over the toilet seat, sweating and crying as he forces something Dart-like out of his throat. And Dart’s so slimy, too, and disgusting—

Why didn’t he tell them? Why didn’t he tell Mike? 

His doctor, even? Anyone.

He must have been so scared.

But it’s just like Will, isn’t it, to suffer in silence. That’s just who he is, and it fucking hurts. Mike can’t stand it.

Will’s the bravest person he knows, to be able to go through all of this and still be here. Still be standing, walking and talking and going to school like nothing is wrong. If Mike was the one throwing up slugs, he probably wouldn’t survive it. It makes his throat feel funny just thinking about it, like a horrible, tickling itch that he can’t escape, no matter how much he squirms.

And Will’s been doing it alone.

Well, not anymore. Not if Mike has anything to say about it.

“It was the same noise I heard last night,” Will confesses. “When I was… when I had my episode.”

“You mean when you saw the Upside Down?” Mike says, mind racing. Oh. Oh, fuck. So that means…

“Dart’s from the Upside Down,” he whispers, horrified. “Shit, we have to tell them! They’re about to show Mr. Clarke!”

Will’s eyes widen. “Let’s go,” he agrees, and high-tails it out of the bathroom.

Together, they race down the hall, all the way to the science classroom. Please, let them not be too late. Please, please, please—

“Stop!” Mike yells, slightly out of breath as he shoves his way in through the door. He grabs the Proton Pack—still closed, thank Jesus— and whips his head around to their teacher. “I’m really sorry, Mr. Clarke, it was just a stupid prank,” he says, thinking on his feet. “I told him to stop.”

Dustin glares at him. “What the hell are you doing?”

“We need to go,” Mike pants, stumbling back towards the door. The Proton Pack jolts in his arms.

“Mike—”

“Right now,” he insists. “RIGHT NOW!”

The scream must have done it, because Dustin, Max, and Lucas run after him, leaving Mr. Clarke in the dust.

AV room. They’ll be safe there. There, Mike can explain.

Max tries to follow them in, but he shuts the door firmly behind them. “Party members only!” he shouts, ignoring her indignant noises of protest. This is an Upside Down thing. A Will thing. And Mike is not about to let an outsider in on it, regardless of any stupid crushes the guys have on her.

They gather around the table, and Mike puts the Proton Pack on the table, breathing hard.

“Why’d you do that, Mike?” Dustin says angrily. “I mean, what the hell, man?”

“It’s for a good reason,” Mike assures him. “If you’d just let me explain.”

“Fine. Whatever.”

Lucas raises an eyebrow. “Start talking, dude.”

Mike shares a glance with Will, who looks… nervous. Humiliated. 

He remembers Will’s words from last night. Please don’t tell the others. And, of course, now he kind of has to, at least about some of it, but…

Mike’s not gonna betray Will’s trust. He won’t tell the guys about the throwing-up-slugs thing. They don’t need to know that—he can just talk around it.

“Will saw a creature,” Mike starts calmly. “From the Upside Down. And it looked and sounded like Dart. Are you guys getting it yet?”

Will’s expression slackens in relief, and he shoots Mike a small, grateful look. Mike smiles sideways at him in acknowledgement. Your secret’s safe with me. Don’t worry about it.

Max’s voice comes, muffled, from the doorway: “Hello! Guys, come on. Can I come in yet?” She bangs on the wood to punctuate her question. 

“No!” Mike shouts back, unwavering. 

Lucas bites his lip, staring at the Proton Pack. “I don’t understand.”

“What do you not understand?” Mike asks incredulously. Seriously, how hard is this to process? Mike got it in, like, a second.

“Will saw something that looked like Dart?” Lucas repeats, clearly thinking the sentence over as he says it.

They all look at Will, who says, in a hesitant voice, “Kind of. But… there was no tail.”

“But then he heard it yesterday,” Mike jumps in, rushing to Will’s defense. “The exact same sound.”

Dustin tilts his head. “Why didn’t you tell us before?” he asks Will.

“Well, I wasn’t sure,” Will says quietly.

“So it’s a coincidence,” Dustin concludes, which is so not fair. Dustin’s a science guy, he should know better than that. He’s just biased, or whatever, because he’s all weirdly attached to Dart. 

“Or not,” Mike says firmly. He looks back at Will, gaze softening. “What if when Will was stuck in the Upside Down… he somehow acquired True Sight?”

It’s something he’s been thinking for a while. If any member of the Party is gonna get superpowers, of course it would be Will. And it makes sense, really. With all that stuff Will was saying about the Viewmaster. About being caught between slides.

“True Sight?” Lucas asks, because of course he doesn’t remember. Slacker.

“It gives you the power to see into the ethereal plane,” Dustin explains, eyes widening with realization. 

Lucas looks at the both of them, then sighs in frustration. “Elaborate.”

“Maybe these episodes that Will keeps having… aren’t really flashbacks at all,” Mike proposes. “Maybe they’re real. Maybe Will can somehow see into the Upside Down.”

“So… that would mean…” Lucas hedges.

“Dart is from the Upside Down,” Mike finishes.

Duh.

Lucas nods in agreement, finally getting it. “We have to take him to Hopper.”

And Mike’s not really Hopper’s biggest fan, but he did help them out last year. And he is always stopping by, telling Mike to let him know if he needs anything. And he is the only one on the police force that knows about all this stuff. 

“I agree,” he says.

“No,” Dustin argues. “No way. If we take him to Hopper, he’s as good as dead.”

Is he serious?

“Maybe he should be dead,” Mike says, venom in his tone. This thing hurt Will. It crawled out of his throat. And Dustin wants to play house with it? No fucking way. Mike’s not budging on this one.

“How could you say that?” Dustin gasps, looking utterly betrayed.

“How could you not?” Mike says desperately, voice straining with emotion. “He’s from the Upside Down!”

He hurt Will. He hurt Will. 

That’s the only argument Mike needs. He’ll kill Dart himself if he has to.

“Maybe,” Dustin says stubbornly. “And even if he is, that doesn’t automatically make him bad.”

Um, yes. Yes it does.

“That’s like saying that just because someone’s from the Death Star, doesn’t make them bad,” Mike protests.

Dustin pouts. “We have a bond.”

“A bond?” Mike snaps. “Just because he likes nougat?”

“No, because he trusts me!” Dustin yells back, getting fed up now.

“He trusts you,” Lucas parrots skeptically.

“Yes! I promised him I would take care of him,” Dustin says. Out of the corner of Mike’s eye, he can see Will’s expression softening with sympathy. He’s always been much kinder than he should be. If he’s not gonna stand up for himself, though, Mike will just have to do it for him.

Inside the box, Dart lets out a loud screech. The Proton Pack rattles, and they all step away from the table. Almost imperceptibly, Mike moves so that he’s standing in front of Will, arm held out as a shield.

Protect him. Protect him. Protect him.

It’s a growing, ever-constant mantra in Mike’s brain, these days. He’s glad for it. It makes him feel useful. Like he has a purpose. Like he’s doing something.

Dart continues to scream, sounding pained. The box shakes, then flips on its side. Mike grabs the closest thing he can use as a weapon, which ends up being the desk lamp, and hefts it up by his head.

“Don’t hurt him!” Dustin yelps.

“Only if he attacks,” Mike says steadily, keeping his eyes trained on the table. This thing’s not gonna get Will. He won’t let it.

“Just open it already,” Lucas tells Dustin, backing up towards the edge of the room.

Dustin swallows nervously, then grabs the button to release the doors. He jams it with his thumb, and Dart comes rolling out, huge and swelling. Mike recoils with disgust, but keeps his grip on the lamp firm. 

Protect him.

Dart lets out a loud, wet sound, and Dustin drops the release button. “Holy shit,” Lucas mutters.

On its stubby, short legs, Dart crawls towards Mike. He feels his heart rate speed up. Be brave, Mike, he reminds himself. His fingers tighten around the base of the lamp. This is for Will. He needs you.

Then, like some horribly realistic Pokemon evolution, Dart sprouts two hind legs, claws breaking through the thin red viscera of his sides. Mike forces back a gag.

“Oh, shit!” Lucas says, flinching back and covering his mouth.

Dart screeches. His mouth is full of tiny, sharp teeth—and that’s the kicker. Mike’s had enough of this shit.

He swings the lamp down with all the force he’s got, hyperaware of Will trembling behind him, trying to hold back his terror. 

Protect him!

It’s almost a scream, now, insistent and loud in the back of Mike’s head.

I’m trying, he thinks, a little desperately.

“No!” Dustin shouts, diving for Dart. There’s a mad scramble around the table, and Dart jumps into the air, landing somewhere on the floor. With his newly-formed legs, he skitters along the linoleum, leaving a trail of slime in his wake.

And of course, because they have the worst luck ever, that’s the exact moment Max Mayfield opens the door.

Dart makes a frantic dash for freedom, turning the corner and disappearing. “Oh, shit,” Mike blurts, running out the door. The Party bulldozes after him, Dustin with so much force that he bowls Max right over onto the ground. They both let out pained oofs.

“Where’d he go?” Lucas asks, breathing hard.

“I dunno,” Mike says, eyes tracking down the hall.

Max struggles to her feet. “What was that?”

“Dart!” Mike answers, swinging around to face her.

“What?”

“You let him escape!” he accuses.

“Why did you attack him?” Dustin counters, fisting a hand in Mike’s shirt.

Mike ignores him, rolling his eyes and pushing past him to start down the hallway. “Come on,” he calls, to the rest of the Party.

“Don’t you hurt him!” Dustin yells after him. “Don’t you hurt him!”

Well, he hurt Will, Dustin. So all bets are fucking off.

Jesus. Mike hates today.

Chapter Text

Mike didn’t want to spend his afternoon pacing the halls, Supercomm in hand, looking for a baby slug monster that his best friend vomited out of his stomach. But sometimes life takes you weird places.

He lifts his walkie to his mouth, eyes scanning the hallway. “East is clear. No sign of Dart. Over.”

Mike takes the stairs two at a time, anger simmering low in his stomach. Stupid Dart. Stupid Dustin. Stupid Max, for letting this thing roam free when she’s not even part of the Party in the first place. “Where’d you go, you little bastard?” he grumbles under his breath, still on high alert.

The radio crackles. “West is clear, too,” Dustin says. “Will?”

“South is clear. Lucas?” Will checks. “Anything?”

There’s a long second of silence. Then, sounding slightly out of breath, Lucas says, “Nothing here, man.”

Shit.

Mike pushes his way into the gym, looking around cautiously. The gym’s a big place. Dart could be anywhere.

Over in the back corner, a door swings open. Mike freezes.

No one comes out of it.

Slowly, he walks over to investigate, tension building thick in his throat. The hallway behind the door is eerily dark, lit a faint red from the exit sign. He figures he might need a weapon in a minute, so he grabs a nearby mop and holds it in front of him, stick end out, as he walks.

Mike pokes his way into the boys’ locker room, on the lookout for… for what? Dart? An intruder? The school janitor? He really doesn’t know.

Something by the wall clatters, and Mike jumps about a foot in the air, whirling around to face the sound.

Nothing.

But then he hears it again, from the other side this time. Mike presses his back against the row of lockers and takes a moment to steel himself, grip bruising the mop handle. He’s got this. He’s got this. He’s got—

“Agh!” he yells, a mighty battle cry, and ambushes the source of the noise with his mop.

Jesus Christ. It’s just Max.

“What the hell are you doing?” she demands, pressing a hand over her heart. For a split second, her eyes are very wide (probably from the surprise of Mike jumping at her with a cleaning tool), before her expression gives way to judgement and suspicion. Like she has any right to feel either of those things.

Mike puts the mop down by his side. Some good that did him. “What are you doing?” he shoots back. “Why are you in here?”

She shrugs. “I’m looking for Dart.”

“This is the boys room,” Mike snaps.

Max looks at him like he’s stupid. “Yeah, so?”

God, he’s had enough of her. “So, you should go home,” he bites out, throwing the mop handle to the ground. It isn’t half as satisfying as he wanted it to be, but he storms off anyway.

Max, the brat that she is, stomps after him, skateboard in hand. “Why do you hate me so much?”

Well, as much as he thinks it, he doesn’t actually hate Max. That would probably be a little mean.

Mike just wants her to go away.

“How can I hate you?” he says flatly, walking faster. “I don’t know you.”

“But you don’t want me in your Party,” she protests, like this is some sort of capital offense.

“Correct,” he says, in an uh, DUH! sort of tone.

“Why not?” she asks, like a two-year old that won’t stop pestering him— why, why, why? And Mike would know—Holly went through that same phase, and it bugged the shit out of him. He doesn’t know why! Go ask an adult or something. Though, from Mike’s experience, they probably don’t know either. Sorry, Holly. Welcome to the real world.

Anyway.

“Because you’re annoying,” Mike says, spinning on his heel to face her. She wants to know why? Oh, he’ll tell her why. He has a whole laundry list in his head. “Also, we don’t need another Party member! I’m our paladin, Will’s our cleric, Dustin’s our bard, Lucas is our ranger, and El is our mage.”

He snaps his mouth shut, flushing at the accidental mention of El. Fuck, he hadn’t meant to say that. He never talked to Will about her officially being in the Party… and she’s gone, anyway. She’s gone. So it’s a moot point.

But that space is still open for her, if she wants it. If she ever comes back. Even if Mike’s the only one still waiting.

Max perks up, like a ginger-haired shark smelling blood in the water. “El? Who’s El?”

Mike panics. He hadn’t prepared for this. “Someone. No one,” he stammers.

Annoying as ever, Max raises an unimpressed eyebrow. “Someone or no one? Which is it?”

Mike tries to think of the quickest answer that will satisfy her—one where he doesn’t have to explain El’s powers, or the Bad Men, or any of the events of last year. “She was in our Party a long time ago, okay? She moved away.”

And with that, Mike turns and walks off. He doesn’t even know where he’s going, really—just away. Away from stupid Max and her stupid questions.

Max skateboards after him, because apparently walking isn’t cool enough, or something. “She was a mage?” she prods. “Well, what could she do? Like, magic tricks or something?”

She skates up next to Mike, waiting for an answer. He just rolls his eyes and keeps walking.

Max slows to a stop in front of Mike, widening her eyes. “Well—I could be your zoomer,” she says smugly.

“That’s not even a real thing.”

“It could be!” she insists, then starts skating circles around him, in some sort of lame zoomer audition, or something. “See? Zoomer,” she says, holding her arms out.

“Mind-blowing,” Mike says sarcastically.

She skates in another easy circle. “Come on, you know you’re impressed.”

“I don’t see any tricks,” Mike tells her. “You’re just going around in a circle.”

She smirks. “Oh? Well, if it’s so easy, you try it.”

Fuck.

“No,” Mike says immediately.

“Why?”

Jesus. Again with the whys.

“Because I don’t know how!” he answers, getting aggravated now.

“So… you have to admit it’s impressive,” Max concludes grandly, smiling big. This little shit. She thinks she’s winning.

Mike splutters. “I think if I spent, like, all day practicing, I could do that,” he points out. But it’s a weak argument, and he knows it. He needs something better.

He’s got nothing.

Max snorts with derision. “I’d give you a million bucks if you could.”

Annoying.

“Okay, you’re making me dizzy,” he tells her, eyeing her freckled face as it approaches and disappears from his peripheral vision. “Please just stop.”

“I’ll stop if you let me join your Party,” Max says, grinning.

“Come on, just stop,” he whines. Yes, whines. Because he’s super annoyed, and tired, and this is stupid. They’re supposed to be looking for Dart, anyway.

“It’s a simple question,” she sing-songs. “In or out?”

Mike fights the smile pulling at his lips, because despite everything, she is kind of funny. Maybe. “It doesn’t work like that,” he starts to explain, eyeing her smugly pleased face. “We have to do a majority vote, and—”

There’s a great clattering sound, elbows and knees on hardwood, and Max wipes the fuck out. Mike blinks at the spot where she’d just been. What just happened?

He rushes over to help her off the ground, because he’s a nice person like that, okay, and not because he likes her or anything. “Jesus! You alright?”

Max rolls her head to the side, clutching her hip, then clasps his hand to pull herself up. “Yeah,” she grunts. “I think so.”

“What happened?” he presses.

“I don’t know,” Max says, looking lost. “It’s like—a magnet or something was pulling on my board.” She shakes her head, seemingly annoyed with herself, now. “I know that sounds crazy,” she mutters.

It does, and Mike would almost brush it off as Max’s embarrassment over falling, but… it also sounds familiar.

It can’t be.

Mike glances at the gym door. No one. 

She’s not here, dumbass.

But it doesn’t hurt to check, right? Shit, if there’s even a chance…

He paces towards the door, then breaks out into a run. If El’s really here, there’s no time to lose.

Mike bursts out of the gym, into the empty hallway. He looks right, then left.

Fucking nothing.

Jesus Christ. He’s an idiot, isn’t he?

Mike can’t keep doing this to himself. He hates this. Hates himself. Hates the stubborn flickers of hope that live between his ribs, praying to be set free.

She’s gone. Alive, sure. But gone. And she’s not coming back.

Whatever. They need to keep looking for Dart, anyway. There’s no time for distractions.

***

The bathroom isn’t a fun place for Will. It never has been, really. Obviously, you go in there to do your business, which isn’t the most pleasant thing to begin with. Then, in middle school, the bathroom suddenly became a canvas for people to say all kinds of mean things. Will doesn’t know how he missed the memo; if there was some write-slurs-on-the-wall meeting that he missed at the start of the year, or if people just instinctively knew to do it. 

Either way, the bathroom is home to plenty of claims about Will and his friends. Some true, some not.

Will’s eyes drift to the corner of the wall. Byers sucks co—

He flinches; a full-body movement that ripples through his already-weakened muscles. He tears his gaze away, staring blankly out the far-side window.

That one’s new.

Anyway, there’s some other not-fun things about the bathroom, too. Like the memories of all the baths Will took after the Upside Down, trying so hard to get warm, trying so hard that he scalded his skin, red all over, and wasn’t allowed to bathe alone for almost a month afterwards. Instead, Mom or Jonathan would sit on the closed toilet lid, eyes closed, while they talked to him about their days or his day or whatever else they could think of to pretend that the situation wasn’t really weird and everything wasn’t wrong. 

Will’s blank stare catches the edge of a sink, and he shivers again—this time with additional nausea, not just fear. If he concentrates, he can still feel the slimy writhing in his stomach, up the length of his esophagus, filling the cavity of his closed mouth. He can see the black ooze against the white porcelain.

His fault.

And now, there’s a new Bad Thing about the bathroom; another sense-memory to add to the list. Dart’s chirps and chitters, echoing off the tiled wall. 

He sounds scared. Lost. 

It’s almost like the reverse of Will’s time in the Upside Down, he thinks. To Dart, is this place, the middle school bathroom, just as scary? To a creature who has only known Dark and Cold—the inside of Will’s stomach, the bottom of Dustin’s trash can, the confined space of a cardboard Proton Pack—is the light too much to handle? Too overwhelming?

Will’s terrified out of his mind. But he’s alone in this bathroom, and he’s the only one that can help Dart. If nothing else, he needs to do it for Dustin. For his friends.

If the conversation in the Bobmobile is anything to go by, at least one person seems to think Will has it in him to be brave. So maybe he should start trying.

Slowly, he moves towards the last stall, where the horrible noise is originating from. He pushes the door open, ignoring the Zombie Boy moniker written by the latch—and there he is. Will’s stomach-slug, all grown up and hissing at him from behind the toilet.

With a shaking hand, Will lifts his Supercomm to his mouth. “Guys… I found him,” he whispers. “Over.”

The over is very important. Mike gets mad when people forget. Will tries his best to always remember.

“Where?” Dustin asks, with no regard at all for proper radio etiquette. He always forgets.

Will presses down hard on the side button. “In the bathroom,” he replies. “By Mr. Salerno’s. Over.”

“Copy that,” Mike responds immediately, a firm assertiveness in his voice. “On our way. Over and out.” Will closes his eyes and lets out a shaky breath, instantly relieved.

Mike’s coming. It’s okay. 

He opens his eyes and repeats the statement to Dart, keeping his tone quiet and warm. “It’s okay,” he assures him.

An image plays through Will’s mind: twelve-year-old him, huddled up in Castle Byers, staring up at a towering monster. Cold. Scared. He imagines the same image, but flipped. Tiny Dart, staring up at a huge, unknown threat. Also scared.

“I’m not gonna hurt you,” Will whispers. “You’re safe.”

There’s an infinite heartbeat of time; Will’s own pulse pounding in his ears as he and Dart look at each other. In some weird, deranged way, he’s almost like Dart’s mom. Or his… incubator.

(Ew.)

Then Dart opens his mouth, a miniature version of the Demogorgon’s roar, and any maternal thoughts are quickly dashed. His teeth are tiny, but they’re still sharp. Deadly.

Will’s fingers spasm with fear, and he drops his walkie on the ground. He wants to pick it up; knows it’s expensive and Mike will be upset if he stops responding, but there’s no time.

Will runs away. Just like he always does.

He makes it out of the bathroom and stops at the top of the stairs, breathing hard. Dart could be right on his heels. He could chomp into him with those razor-sharp fangs, lock onto his leg and take out a chunk of meat. He could—

The hallway lights flicker.

No.

No, no, not now.

On and off, on and off. Dark and light.

Then, only Dark. Cold.

The walls are a pulsing blue; living and breathing. Squirming with vines that Will can still feel in his throat, airway closing, so close to death that he’s kissing it. Ashy snow floats eerily in the air.

Come home, Will.

Around the corner, by the Hawkins Cubs logo, smoke pours out of the floor. Out of the walls.

It’s coming for him.

Will turns tail and sprints away, arms and legs pumping, adrenaline coursing through his constricting veins. Animalistic whines and roars echo in his ears, along with the low, venomous roar of the Evil. The shadow monster, given a terrifying voice.

He just needs to hold on for a little longer. He needs to get outside, and then Mike will find him, he’ll be safe, he’ll be okay—

(Stop lying, Will. Stop.)

He ignores the voice. He doesn’t even know if it’s his own anymore.

Will keeps running. Keeps lying. Keeps hiding away his fear, right in the dead center of his heart.

You belong here, Will. Join us.

***

Mike’s so stupid, god, he took his eyes off Will for, like, five seconds and now he’s got Dart—he wasn’t supposed to run into Dart at all, Mike sent him to the South hallway because he thought he’d be the safest there. The monster likes it dark and cold, and the boys’ bathroom is always so grossly warm, the AC’s always broken—but none of that matters, because Will has Dart, and Mike needs to be there right now.

Splitting up was such a bad idea. This is how people die in horror movies. Why did anyone think it was a good idea for Mike to be the Party’s leader? He obviously doesn’t have a single fucking clue what he’s doing.

And no one’s going fast enough, Jesus, what’s the hold up? “Let’s go,” Mike urges, taking the stairs down two at a time. “Come on, down here!”

“We’re coming!” Lucas groans. A second later, rubber hits plastic, and he and Max join Mike on the stairs.

Mike half-sprints into the bathroom, pulse racing. Dustin’s standing by the wall, looking vaguely suspicious. Mike narrows his eyes. “Where’s Dart?”

Dustin shrugs, eyes skittering nervously around the room. “I dunno,” he mumbles. “Not here.”

“What?” Mike huffs out, exasperated. That can’t be right. Mike had heard Will very clearly on the walkie, and Will never lies. Especially not about something this important.

He starts checking the stalls.

“He said by Salerno’s, right?” Max says uncertainly.

“Yeah,” Dustin agrees. “Maybe Will has him.”

Wait.

Wait one fucking second.

Mike halts his bathroom stall shake-down, turning slowly on his heel to face Dustin. “Say that again.”

“…Maybe Will has him?” Dustin repeats, shifting from one foot to the other.

Mike’s eyes dart around the bathroom, catching on a particularly nasty sentence about his best friend. He flinches. That one’s new—he’ll have to bring a marker in here later and cover it up, before Will sees it.

Unless he’s already seen it. Because he said he was in the bathroom, right? Right?

So why isn’t he here?

Then Mike spots it. Will’s Supercomm, dropped carelessly on the ground. He would never leave it behind, not on purpose. An image of Halloween night splays through Mike’s brain: camera and pillowcase strewn against the asphalt. A cracked lens.

“Guys,” Mike says quietly. He crouches down to pick up the radio, holding it with his own in a careful grip. He looks back up, searching the faces of the Party members. Searching for…

“Where’s Will?”

***

It’s so dark out here, nearly pitch-black, but Will can still see the shadow in startling clarity as he glances behind his shoulder. He runs, and runs, and—

Bob’s words play through his mind. An easy smile, a plump hand slung over the steering wheel.

Only this time, I didn’t run.

Will stops. He stops, because Bob’s right, and Will’s alone. No one is here to save him. To rescue him. He has to do this himself.

This time, I stood my ground. 

Deliberately, Will turns to face The Evil. It’s big. It’s so, so big, with a million dark legs creeping out over the roof of the school. It screeches as he looks at it; a horrible nails-on-a-chalkboard sort of sound, but louder. Worse. 

I said: Go away. Go away!

Will takes a deep, trembling breath. “Go away,” he whispers. His voice cracks down the middle, so he tries again. “Go away!”

Once he starts, he can’t stop. It’s a chant, a desperate mantra, a flimsy shield. 

Mike’s not coming, is he?

The monster looms closer. Louder. 

Come home, Will.

“Go away!” he screams, throat rubbing raw. “Go away, go away, go away!”

Why isn’t it working?

He’s trying, he’s trying so hard. He’s doing what he’s supposed to, doing what Bob told him to do. Being brave. 

And nothing’s happening.

He should have kept running.

Will watches, horrified, as the shadow-arms combine into one big twisty tornado, drilling right down into the dead grass in front of him. The wind picks up until it’s a deafening roar, whipping his hair off his forehead and pushing his sleeves up his arms. He stumbles with the force of it. “Go—go away,” he manages a final time, barely audible.

He sounds like a baby.

The tornado surrounds him. Dark, dark, dark. Cold.

And then the arms force his mouth open, and it’s like last year all over again, those last moments before sleep, because he can’t breathe— God, it hurts so bad, he can’t—he can’t—

Will closes his eyes. They’re stinging with pained tears, with the force of intrusion. 

Easy peasy, right?

Yeah, Bob, he thinks, hazy and edging on delirium. Easy peasy.

Smoke rips through his nostrils, his throat, his eyes, his ears. It fills his lungs, and he still can’t breathe, he wants his mom, wants Mike—

But he’s alone. Crazy alone. Dying alone.

Typical.

Bob smiles at him, sunny and sure. Just like that, he says, and snaps his fingers.

Just like that.

The Evil fills his head, fills everything, everywhere, until it’s all he can think, all he can hear.

Welcome home, Will.

***

Where is he, where is he, where is he?

Mike’s not losing him again. He’s not.

Panicked beyond belief, he sprints through the halls, through empty classrooms, the gym, the locker room.

Nothing.

Last time Will went missing, it happened outside. Where Mike couldn’t get to him.

He’s not going to make the same mistake twice.

So Mike runs out the door, sneakers hitting pavement, then dirt, then grass, until he sees him.

Will.

At once, a heavy sense of relief settles into Mike’s stomach, because Will’s here, he’s okay, he’s safe—

But is he?

The relief vanishes, as quickly as it had come. Will looks… almost frozen. He looks like he did on Halloween, pupils twitching behind his eyelids, fingers flexing at his sides, legs locked in a dead halt.

“Will?” Mike calls, getting as close as he dares. He reaches out a shaking hand, places it on his best friend’s shoulder. “Will!”

No response. It’s like he’s in a coma or something.

With his other hand, Mike lifts his Supercomm. “I need backup. Will’s on the field.”

He doesn’t bother saying over. There are more important things at stake, and his head’s all fuzzy with fear. It can’t be, though, not now, because Will needs him. He needs Mike, the brave paladin. The leader.

Mike’s not sure how much of that guy he has left in him. How much of that guy he ever had in him.

But he tries anyway. For Will. For his person, his very best friend in the entire world. A boy he would do anything for.

“Will, please wake up,” he whispers, tears prickling at his eyes. He smooths a thumb over Will’s shoulder, a vain effort to comfort him. “Please. It’s okay, you’re safe now, I’m right here—”

“Will!”

Mike’s thumb stops moving. He feels, suddenly, a little embarrassed, though he’s not sure why. He shakes it off. “I just found him like this!” he calls over, to Lucas and Max and Dustin and… Ms. Byers? When did she get here?

Not important. Focus on Will.

“I think he’s having another episode,” Mike informs them urgently, because someone must know what to do. How to help. Will’s mom must know, out of everyone.

Sure enough, she runs straight up to him, placing firm hands on both his shoulders. Mike immediately removes his own hand, worried that he’s intruding.

“Will? Will! Will, sweetie, wake up! It’s Mom!” Ms. Byers smooths her hands down Will’s arms, frantically trying to reach him. As Mike watches, his own hope begins to drain away.

It’s not working. 

It’s not working, and what if Will is stuck like this, what if he’s hurt?

Ms. Byers moves her hands to frame Will’s face. “Will, wake up. Can you hear me? Wake up.”

Silence. Will twitches. His eyes remain firmly closed.

Will’s mom starts to get distinctly teary-eyed, and Mike takes a second to rub at his own reddening face, when he’s sure no one’s looking. “Will, please,” she begs. “Please wake up, honey.”

Mike takes note of all the things that Ms. Byers is doing, just in case he needs to do the same at some point. Touching Will’s face. Calling him honey.

Actually, scratch that. That’s a little…

He’ll stick with the shoulder touches, even if they don’t really seem to work. It’s not like this method is having a much different result.

“It’s Mom!” Ms. Byers yells, clutching Will’s arms so tight it must hurt. “It’s me!”

Will’s eyelids continue to flutter, the barest hints of white peeking out below them. He looks like that creepy little girl from The Exorcist—and that movie gave Mike nightmares, if he’s being honest, so he’s more than a little scared.

He’s not as scared for himself, though, as he is for Will. Jesus, Will doesn’t deserve this.

(Mike does. Mike deserves to be standing in his place, frozen solid, heart racing with pain and fear.)

And them, just when all seems lost, Will’s eyes open. 

They open, and now they’re almost too wide, hazel shot with green, and his mouth parts in a wheezing sort of gasp. 

“Will!” Mike shouts, lost amidst all the other shouts of relief. Momentarily forgetting Ms. Byers, and all the other spectators, he moves in to hug Will, wrapping his arms around his middle.

Will’s frozen for another few seconds, before his arms hesitantly come up to hug Mike back. “Mike,” he whispers. “Where—what—”

They separate, and Ms. Byers wraps her son in another tight hug. She smooths a hand over his hair, and he melts into the embrace, shaking all over. “Mom,” he says, voice broken and sniffly. “Are you okay?”

“Am I okay?” she repeats, edging on hysterical. “Am I okay?!” And with that, she laughs, shocked and relieved and worried, all at once.

Mike scrubs at his face again, harder this time. 

“Oh, baby,” Ms. Byers says, squeezing him once and letting go. She stays close, wrapping a protective arm around his hip. “Let’s get you inside, okay? Let’s get your things and go home.”

“Home,” Will repeats, a little dazed. Then he snaps out of it, nodding slowly. “Okay. Alright.”

Mike wants to jump in. Wants to help. But he can’t; he doesn’t know how. Doesn’t know what Will needs right now, other than his mom. 

Mike’s always so fucking useless.

“Bye, Mike,” Will mumbles, as he’s dragged away. “Bye, guys.”

“…Bye,” Mike whispers, lifting his hand in a half-hearted wave. The others are near-statues, fear and disbelief rooting them to the spot.

He watches Will leave, heading for the school, before he realizes something. “Will! Wait up!”

Will and his mom turn around as Mike jogs closer, huffing with exertion. “Your Supercomm,” he says, holding it out. “You dropped it.”

“Oh,” Will says tiredly, eyeing the radio. “Thanks.”

He makes no move to take it, arms shaking violently at his sides, so Ms. Byers takes it for him. “Thank you, honey,” she says to Mike. “For everything. Now go home, okay?” She eyes the sky nervously, like she knows something Mike doesn’t. “It’s not safe out here,” she adds, in a low undertone.

Mike knows what that voice means. Upside Down stuff.

Shit, maybe Will really does have True Sight.

But that would mean…

Well, that would mean he’s in danger again. And Mike’s not gonna slip up this time. He’s gonna help him. Protect him.

He just has to figure out how.

Chapter Text

Will’s silent as Ms. Byers herds him to the car. He hasn’t said much since grabbing his stuff. Since his Episode. It’s like he’s a robot, here but not really, not like he is on his Good Days.

Mike stands on the school’s front stoop and watches him leave, rubbing his hands restlessly against his khaki pants. He wishes he could do something. It hurts, seeing Will like this. It always does.

“Okay, that totally freaked me out,” Max mutters, once Will and his mom are out of ear-shot. She looks around, eyes wide. “Did that not freak you guys out?”

Lucas ignores the question, staring grimly at Will. “Two episodes in two days,” he notes.

“It’s getting worse,” Mike agrees.

At that, Lucas glances over. “You think it’s True Sight?”

Mike turns to answer, though he doesn’t have a fully formed response in his head yet—but Max interrupts, anyway, so he can’t say anything.

“What’s True Sight?”

Jesus. It’s so obvious that she doesn’t know the first thing about D&D. That she doesn’t belong in their Party. Mike doesn’t know how the others don’t see it.

Lucas clicks his tongue in agitation. “It’s nothing.”

Ms. Byers’ car starts up, a familiar rusty revving sound. She’s had the same car for as long as Mike’s known her, which is a really long time. Mike’s dad gets a new car every couple of years, and each one is uglier than the last.

Mike watches as Will’s taken away, out of sight and out of reach. Lucas’s words roll around in his head.

It’s not nothing. In fact, it’s a really big Something. A really scary Something.

Mike just wishes he knew what it was.

***

The car ride is eerily silent. Well, not exactly. It’s an outside-quiet. But inside—inside of Will’s head, that is—it’s loud. It almost feels like he’s still in that tornado, still fighting the storm.

But he’s not, he reminds himself. He’s in the car. With Mom. He’s safe.

When they get home, it’s just them. Jonathan and Bob are out at unknown places, but whatever the reason, Will’s glad for it. He doesn’t need witnesses for how bad this conversation’s about to be.

Before they do anything, Mom makes him a steaming cup of peppermint tea. It’s his favorite, but he doesn’t touch it. It’s too hot.

She pulls out a seat at the dining table, and Will timidly follows, setting his full mug down on a coaster. He tries to steady his breathing. She’s not mad, he thinks. Just worried.

It’s a good reminder.

“Will,” she starts, deliberately measured. “What happened?”

He shifts his gaze to the side. “I don’t remember.”

He hates lying to her. But he has to at least make the attempt. Don’t tell her, his brain screams. She’ll think you’re weak. A coward. She doesn’t deserve someone like you for a son.

His brain is right. All he ever does is upset her. Worry her. 

Mom crosses her arms on the table and sighs heavily, already disappointed. “I need you to try.”

Will takes a shaky breath in, then out. “I was on the field, and it—and then—and then it all went blank,” he stammers, trying to gloss over the details. “And… and then you were there.”

Nervously, he looks up.

Mom looks even more disappointed now. She shakes her head slowly, squeezing her eyes shut, like she has a headache. “Will,” she murmurs, opening her eyes to look at him. “I need you to tell me the truth.”

Will hunches in on himself, dimly terrified. He sucks at telling the truth. He doesn’t want to tell the truth.

Don’t do it, his head says.

“I—I am,” he protests weakly. He knows, though, that she can see right through him. He also sucks at lying. Will thinks, sometimes, that he just sucks at talking in general. Maybe he should try shutting up. Making himself smaller. More invisible.

Mom stares at him searchingly. Upset that he lied, maybe. After a tense second, she huffs out a breath, slaps a hand against the table, and gets up. Walks away.

The steam from Will’s tea rises into the air, and he flinches away. It’s boiling. 

After Mom leaves, he zones out, busy worrying. Did she just… is she done? Was she that disappointed in him, that angry and sad and upset, that she just… left?

Maybe she’s reaching her limit, finally. The one Dad got to, right before he went away. He told Will so, in one of the last conversations they ever had: I’ve had it up to here with you! 

Will doesn’t know what here is. He lives in constant fear of that here. He doesn’t know what the final straw was—if it was Will’s bright button-up polos, or his disinterest in baseball, or the period of time where his favorite color was dark purple. (It still is. He just doesn’t tell people that anymore.) Or maybe—and this is the most likely one—it was Will’s fascination with his best friend. His stick-figure drawings and bumbling, eager rants; his pathetic begging to go over to Mike’s house, or to let Mike come over.

Maybe Mom’s reaching that same boiling point. Maybe this episode in the field was her last straw.

But there’s a rustle of paper, and Mom returns to her seat, drawing in hand. Will’s anxiety eases, but only a little. Because on the paper, drawn in harsh blue lines, is Him.

Mom sets the drawing down right in front of Will, patting it pointedly. And it’s not—it’s not a drawing he recognizes, which is even scarier. He didn’t draw this… so who did?

His question is answered just a moment later. “This… shape,” Mom starts, voice thin. “I saw it on the video tape from Halloween night. It’s the same shape as—as your drawing.”

Will looks at her, wide-eyed, then tears his gaze away, staring down at the table. He can’t do this. He doesn’t know how. He doesn’t want to.

Mom leans in close. Conspiratorial. “These episodes that you’re having,” she starts. “I think Doctor Owens is wrong. I think they’re real.”

Will’s eyes burn hot. He keeps staring at the table.

“But—but I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s going on,” Mom says, desperation seeping into her tone. “So you have to talk to me. Please.”

At the please, Will glances up. Their eyes are all shiny and watery now, both of them overwhelmed and worn out. Mom holds his gaze. “No more secrets, okay?”

Well, that’s a tall order. If Will told her all his secrets, everything that’s crammed inside his box, they’d be here all night.

But maybe he can start with just one. Maybe this way, she won’t leave. Maybe this way, some of that disappointment, worry, fear, will ease from her expression.

Will nods.

Mom’s breath stutters out of her, hesitantly relieved. “Okay,” she whispers. “Did you—did you see this thing again? Out on the field?”

The Evil burns bright behind his eyelids. He can feel it every time he blinks.

Again, he nods, the barest dip of his chin. “Yes.”

Mom shakes her head, distressed. “What… what is it?” she ventures, seeming like she doesn’t exactly want to know the answer.

That’s fine, though, because Will doesn’t have one. “I don’t know,” he confesses, voice beginning to strain. Tears pool by his lashline, threatening to drip down his face. “It’s almost—it’s almost more like—a feeling,” he tries to explain, feeling hot and itchy and wrong, all over. Like his skin is too tight.

A feeling. Dark, cold, evil, wrong. Sensations that have become so familiar to Will that he barely registers them anymore.

“Like the one you had that night at the arcade?” Mom guesses, trying to connect the dots. 

Will nods yet again, head jerking with the force of it. “Yes,” he whispers, terror creeping in at the mere thought of it. 

Come home, Will. Come ho—

“What does it want?”

Will sucks in a sharp breath, tears warm and wet underneath his eyes. “I don’t know,” he lies. “It came for me, and—and I tried,” he tells her, begging her to see the importance of it. Begging her to see that he’s not weak, or he doesn’t want to be, at least. That he doesn’t always run away. He just wants her to be proud of him. To think that he’s brave.

“I tried to make it go away,” he sobs, fully crying now, despite how much he doesn’t want to. “But it got me, Mom.” His voice cracks and crumbles with the weight of his pent-up emotion.

This probably isn’t helping; he’s crying like a little kid, he’s so pathetic— and she’ll never see him as brave. Not after this. 

“Well, what does that mean?” she pleads, like Will can even explain it. But he’ll try. He’ll try, for her, even though the memory is already too much, too painful. 

He needs to be a man. Be strong.

That’s why Dad left, right? Because Will wasn’t enough of a man?

God, he’s trying. He’s trying so hard.

“I felt it… everywhere,” he chokes. “Everywhere. I—I still feel it.”

Curling around his heart, squeezing its way in between his ribs, snaking through his lungs, up his throat, clouding his brain. Throwing open his little chest of Bad Thoughts, rearranging all the furniture in his head. 

Evil. It wants to kill. It wants to destroy.

Mom’s expression softens with sympathy, and Will cracks, letting out a high-pitched sob; a fragile hitching of breath. “I just want this to be over,” he admits, and lets Mom fold him into her arms. It’s a small comfort: her hand around his neck, the other smoothing down his spine. He feels held, by someone other than Him. By someone good, someone loving. Someone that cares.

“It’s okay,” she soothes, even though it’s not okay at all. “Hey, it’s okay.” She keeps a hand on the side of his neck, pulling back to look at him. “Listen. Look at me, honey.”

Will looks. His eyes hurt.

“I will never, ever let anything bad happen to you ever again,” Mom promises. “Whatever’s going on in you, we’ll fix it. I’ll fix it. I’m here.”

It’s a nice thought. But she can’t fix it, can’t fix all the badness inside of Will. It’s too much. Too big of a task, and Will would never ask her to take it on.

At this point, he doesn’t know where The Evil ends and Will begins. They’re linked. Intertwined.

Maybe it’s always been in him, to some extent. Maybe he’s always been like this.

Welcome home, Will.

He shivers, and melts back into Mom’s embrace. “I love you, honey,” she whispers, petting his hair. Her nails scratch against his scalp, and it feels nice. He feels little again. Safe. 

“It’ll be okay, baby,” she repeats. “I love you so much.”

“I love you too,” Will whispers back, tucking his face into her neck.

He ignores the voice in his mind. The one that says she shouldn’t love him. That she wouldn’t, not…

Not if she knew the truth.

***

Mom holds him while he sleeps. It’s another reminder: she’s not leaving. He’s not too much for her, hasn’t scared her away yet. She’s still here.

But Will can’t sleep, not for a long time. Mom’s hands link loosely around his waist, muscles relaxed and limp, and her breath fans out over his shoulder, smelling faintly of smoke and peppermint tea.

Will’s terrified. 

His mind doesn’t feel like his own. It feels like a smoothie of intrusive thoughts, like a festering darkness. More than there usually is, too. Every Bad Thought he has, that he would usually shove away in his box, is magnified by ten. No, by a hundred. It feels like all that stuff is rocketing loose, pinging around inside his head like speeding Pac-Man ghosts. 

And he can’t catch up to them. Can’t chomp them away.

You’re defective, Will. Sick. But we can make you stronger. Make you better.

We can fix you.

No you can’t, Will thinks back. Nobody can.

There’s no response. Probably because he’s the only person inside his head, and he’s just going crazy.

Eventually, Will drifts off into a fitful sleep.

He dreams of sprawling tunnels. Of cold. Of death.

***

Mike’s feeling a lot better this morning. He didn’t get a lot of sleep, but that’s okay—he was up all night, making plans. Figuring out how to help Will.

And he’s got it. He knows what to do. Or… one thing, at least. It’s a start.

Anyway, he already radioed Lucas, and he’s totally down to come early to school. So phase one is officially underway.

Mike smiles across the table at his little sister. She’s got mushed grapes all over her chubby cheeks. “Do you like those grapes, Holly?” he asks gently.

“Mmm-hmm!” she says enthusiastically, nodding so big that her pigtails fly with the effort. Mike snorts out an amused laugh.

To his right, Nancy shifts in her seat, then stands. She looks like she’s up to something.

Then she turns away from the table, innocently facing the toaster while she formulates her question, and Mike knows she’s up to something. She’s a really obvious lier, so she always hides her face when she does it. Mike squints at her suspiciously.

“Hey, Mom, I was thinking about spending the night at Stacey’s tonight?” Nancy says casually, plucking a piece of toast from the toaster. “We were gonna have a girls’ night—romantic comedies, do our nails, gossip…”

Bullshit. First off, Nancy hates romantic comedies. She thinks they’re cheesy as fuck. Second, who the hell is Stacey?

What’s she planning, and why isn’t Mike in on it? Well, if it’s Upside Down-related, that is. If it’s Jonathan-related, or even worse, Steve- related, he’ll pass, thank you very much.

“Sure,” Mom says easily, smiling. “Sounds like fun!”

Nancy nods, satisfied, and returns to her seat, full plate of toast in hand. She turns to Holly, crouching a bit to reach her eye-level. “Toast?”

Holly wrinkles her nose and shakes her head.

“No?” Nancy says, and nods again. She digs into her bread, and Mike watches her the whole time. While she’s chewing, their eyes meet. He narrows his gaze. I’m onto you.

She narrows hers right back. I don’t care.

Meanie.

They finish their breakfast in silence.

Just before she can rush out the door, though, Mike catches her, wrapping a hand around her wrist.

The way she looks at him, you would think he’d just slapped her across the face. “Can I help you, Mike?” she asks incredulously.

He doesn’t let go. “You’re not having a girls’ night,” he says, voice lowered. Mom and Dad are in the bedroom, getting ready for the day, but it doesn’t hurt to be careful.

Her expression shutters, turning surprised, then wary. “And?”

“And I want to know what’s up,” Mike insists. “Is it… you know… Upside Down stuff?” He says the last part in a near whisper, as if the words will carry through the walls, if only by merit of how scandalous they are.

Her face does something complicated, and Mike immediately knows the answer is yes. “What is it?” he presses. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

She sighs. “It’s something I’m working on with Jonathan, okay? I don’t want you involved.”

Mike hesitates. But the thought of his sister in any type of danger largely overrules how annoying she is. “…Can I help? Is there anything I can do?”

Nancy softens. She gently removes Mike’s hand from her wrist, pressing it between her own. “What you can do is stay out of trouble,” she says. “And stick with your friends. With Will.”

I’m already doing that, he thinks, a little aggravated. There has to be more. Some next-level stuff that he can help with. Especially if everything’s starting up again. If everything’s about to get bad, just like last year. But he knows a dismissal when he hears one, knows that Nancy thinks of him as her stupid kid brother and nothing more. She wants him out of the way.

“Okay,” he says quietly. And it is. He’s got his own plan, anyway. He doesn’t need her.

He forces down the disappointment. What disappointment? He’s totally fine. He’s so cool about this. He doesn’t even like Nancy. They’re just two people that happen to live in the same house.

Okay, that might be going a little too far. But still.

“So,” he says, smirking. “Jonathan.”

“Annnnd I’m leaving!” she replies brightly, flipping him off and grabbing her keys from the door hook.

“He’s too good for you!” he calls after her, but she’s already out the door. As she walks, she plugs her fingers in her ears, pretending not to hear him. “Oh, real mature!” he shouts, but he’s smiling, just a tiny bit. 

Despite it all, despite the fact that she doesn’t want Mike’s help, he feels a little lighter. A little like he’s got someone in his corner.

It’s a nice feeling.

***

When Will wakes, he’s nearly numb. Like his brain overloaded during the night, and it fried all the wires. Short-circuited his passageways.

He walks through the hallway, and for once, he actually does feel like Zombie Boy. A dead kid walking.

He catches the tail end of Mom’s phone call, and god, she sounds mad. “Just—just tell him to call me the second he gets in,” she stresses, just as Will turns the corner. “Please. Thank you.”

She slams the phone against the receiver with more force than usual, then pinches the bridge of her nose, turned completely away from Will.

She looks tired. Exhausted, actually.

(His fault.)

At the sound of Will’s approaching footsteps, Mom turns on her heel, making a concentrated effort to smooth all the agitation out of her face. It doesn’t work, not entirely—Will can still see the little eleven mark between her eyebrows, the furrowed divot of her chin. “Hey,” she greets warmly, reaching out to ruffle his hair. “How you feeling, sleepyhead?”

How does she do that? How does she mask her pain so well? Will’s amazed. He needs to learn.

“Any better?” she asks hopefully.

“Mm-mn,” he hums, a sad negative, and heads over to the table. The jig’s up at this point—he might as well be honest.

“Same as last night? Still… weird?” Mom continues, following in his tracks. 

“Yeah,” Will mumbles, taking a seat. 

Mom crouches down and presses the back of her hand to his forehead. “Alright,” she says. “Hmm. Can I take your temperature, sweetie?”

Will scrunches his face up. “…Only if I don’t have to go to the doctor,” he says eventually. “I don’t like it there.”

She did say, last night, that they would have no more secrets. And that’s a little one that Will can let go of. Something safe.

Mom purses her lips thoughtfully, thinking this over. “I… okay,” she says eventually. It’s a quiet, somber agreement. “I’m not sure I completely trust those lab guys, anyway. It’s…” She trails off, seeming to remember that Will’s right in front of her. And of course, that’s a grown-up thought, one that he’s not allowed to hear. He might be a little bitter about that. “Nevermind,” Mom says, shaking her head. “No doctors. I promise.”

“Okay,” Will says, quiet and pained. Now that he’s waking up, he can feel the hurt again. And it’s coming in hot. But as soon as he feels it, it drifts away, leaving him all shook up—like he’s just given a pint of blood with no food or water beforehand. Dizzy. Floaty.

Mom rushes off to get the little glass thermometer, then returns to stick it under his tongue. Will obediently closes his lips around it; a familiar action, and waits.

While he does that, Mom alternates between staring at the table and at him, forcing a small smile when their eyes meet. She’s worrying her lip with her teeth, clearly nervous about the results. 

After a minute, she holds her hand out. “Okay, let me see,” she murmurs, and Will passes it over. He cranes his neck upwards, trying to peek at the final temperature. But Mom’s turned the front surface all the way towards herself, and Will’s not tall enough to see over her cupped palms.

Her face does something weird—stuttering and scrunching up in a confused sort of surprise. Will clears his throat. “Is it a fever?” he asks hesitantly.

“No,” she says, looking up at him. Her eyes are big. Worried. “Uh, actually, it’s… cold. Do you feel cold?”

“No,” Will assures her. He assesses his mental state again, the feelings in his body, then tries to explain. “Just a little… out of it. Like I haven’t really woken up yet.”

Mom shifts at his response, sitting up straighter in her seat, eyes widening even further. Will sits up, too. “You promised no doctor,” he reminds her, nearly begging.

She points at him, nodding. “And I meant it,” she says, with forced levity. “No doctor.” There’s a second of silence as she thinks, then, with a soft voice, she says: “You know what? I’m gonna run you a nice bath, and it’ll warm you right up. And hopefully, that’ll get you feeling better, okay?”

Will wrinkles his nose. “Are you gonna come in?” he mutters, the memory of her sitting on the toilet lid fresh in his mind.

Some of the apprehension must show in his face, in his voice, because she quickly backtracks. “No, no, honey. You’re a big boy now, you can do it yourself. But I’ll be right outside, okay? Right here. How’s that sound?”

“Okay,” he mumbles. Mom places a comforting hand on his wrist, then heads off to the bathroom.

At least he can bathe alone. That’s probably the best part of the morning, if he’s being honest.

God knows that not much else is going right, at the moment. In fact, Will thinks it might be the worst Bad Day yet.

***

“Stop being a baby and do it already!” Mike shouts. Man, who even invited her? This is Mike’s plan.

“This is so disgusting,” Max grumbles. “Is this really necessary?”

Uh, duh. Sorry, Max. You wanna be friends so bad, you’ve gotta suck it up and dig in some garbage. It’s practically a rite of passage at this point.

Mike’s about to answer, with something hilarious and snappy, no doubt, when Dustin jogs around the corner, looking lost. He throws his hands up. “What the hell’s going on?”

Mike gestures to the long trash-poking stick in his hand, the one he’d gotten early that morning from the Hawkins junkyard. “What do you think? We’re looking for Dart.”

Right above Dustin’s head, two full trash bags fly out of the dumpster, spewing banana peels and yogurt lids in their wake. “Jesus!” Dustin yelps, jumping back.

A half-eaten tuna sandwich rolls over by Mike’s shoe. “Ugh,” he groans, stepping away. 

Lucas jumps over the top of the dumpster in some kind of Indiana-Jones type maneuver, which is honestly a little impressive. He lands directly in front of Dustin, smacking his hands together to get the trash-residue off. “Well, well, well. Look who finally decided to show up,” he greets. He crosses his arms, glaring. “After I drew the short straw. Real convenient.”

Well, that’s a little unfair. Mike was gonna dig around too. He was. Lucas is just going first, because he did pull the short straw, and it’s only right. And then Mike was gonna make Max go, since she’s new and all. And then, if they still haven’t found Dart, Mike will join the effort. It’s just—these are nice shoes. Brand-new. And he doesn’t particularly want to smell like shit all day.

It’s foolproof.

Next to him, Max holds back a gag, staring at Lucas. “You stink.”

Yeah. He really does.

Max apparently can’t handle the assault on her nostrils, and crosses over to stand next to Dustin. Immediately, he gets a big, stupid grin on his face, looking over at her with heart-eyes. “Hi, Max.”

She narrows her gaze. “…Hi?”

They shift uncomfortably, and Dustin’s smile drops a little as he turns to look at Mike. “Where’s Will?”

“He’ll be here,” Mike says, with more confidence than he feels. Because yesterday had been bad, but was it skipping-school bad? Staying-home bad? Mike wishes he knew. He hopes the answer is no. He needs the answer to be no.

Lucas raises an eyebrow at Dustin. “Are you just gonna stand there?” He grabs a pokey stick from its perch against the wall, and tosses it in Dustin’s direction. Dustin fumbles, almost dropping it, before steadying it in his hand. “Or are you gonna help?” Lucas finishes.

In unspoken agreement, they move towards the uprooted trash bags, and start jabbing at them. A few cockroaches scurry out, and Mike grimaces in disgust. He bets Nancy isn’t digging around in trash right now. Great plan, Mike. Super cool.

But it’s for Will. They need to find Dart, for Will.

He just needs to remember that. As long as he does, it’s all worth it. Every last rotten apple.

***

“All living things, from complex mammals to single-celled organisms, instinctively respond to danger. Expose a bacterium to a toxic chemical, and it will flee. Or deploy some other defense mechanism.”

Mike’s hardly listening. He never even got his notebook out, never even bothered getting a pencil. His textbook is closed, and so is his brain. Sorry, Mr. Clarke.

Worrying about Will is taking up all of Mike’s energy. All of his thinking power.

Because Will’s still not here.

It reminds him of that fateful morning, almost one year ago to the day, where Will hadn’t showed up to school. It makes something twist sideways in Mike’s stomach, panicked and traumatized and scared. Because what if…

What if it’s happening again?

Yesterday had been bad. Really bad. And they still haven’t found Dart, so they’ve made literally no progress. Done nothing helpful. Mike could fucking explode, with all this pent-up frustration. His best friend is in trouble, he’s hurting, and Mike’s sitting here listening to a lecture on bacteria. It’s ridiculous. It’s not fair.

Mike resolves to go to the Byers’ house the second school is out. He’s not making the same mistake twice, not letting Will out of his sight again. And he knows Ms. Byers probably has it covered, but an extra set of eyes doesn’t hurt, right? Mike can be helpful. He can. 

Honestly, he wants to leave right now. He would, if he thought he could get away with it. But as it is, he’s one skip away from a detention, and then he’ll be grounded, and then he’ll never be able to help Will. So, as much as it kills him, he needs to wait.

His eyes linger on Will’s empty chair. He pictures his best friend there, sitting and smiling and taking notes or doodling in the margins of his paper, soft strands of hair falling over his forehead.

He misses him. It’s only been a day, and Mike misses him so much that it feels like a physical ache. A hole in his chest.

“We’re very much the same,” Mr. Clarke continues. “When we encounter danger, our hearts start pounding. Our palms start to sweat. These are the signs of the physical and emotional state we call fear.”

Yeah. Mike’s familiar. He thinks they all are, at this point.

He closes his eyes and imagines Will on the field, with his pounding heart and sweaty palms. Scared. Fearful.

Mike feels it too. He feels it just as much as if Will’s heart was his own, was nestled inside his ribcage, beating a thumping rhythm against his sternum.

Pounding heart. Sweaty palms.

He doesn’t know where Will’s fear meets up with his, where it overlaps in their little Mike and Will venn-diagram. To be honest, he’s not sure they’re all that different. Mike’s always felt Will’s emotions, tucked right alongside his own. His matching half. His puzzle piece.

And right now, their edges are both jagged. Rubbed raw. Mike needs to smooth them over. He needs to fix it.

He will. Mark his fucking words, he’ll do it. 

Buckle up, Byers. Mike’s got a plan.

***

Will can already feel the heat rising from the tub, and he’s not even in the bathroom yet. It feels like the steam is wafting over on stagnant waves of air, penetrating every square inch of his bare skin. The water dripping from the tap sounds like gunfire. Loud. Pounding.

His pulse skyrockets. His neck prickles. Danger.

But that’s silly. It’s just a bath, right? He’s had plenty of those.

Still, this feels… different, somehow. Like he’s acquired a brand-new fear in the last day, one that’s not even his own.

Will’s chest heaves—up and down, in and out. Heart pulsing, expanding and contracting. He’s scared. Of the bath. 

It doesn’t make any sense. But that doesn’t change the fear, doesn’t make it go away. Doesn’t make it any better.

The tunnels pop into his brain again, dark and cavernous, and he flinches back, squeezing his eyes shut. That’s another new thing. Scary and mysterious. Will doesn’t like all these changes—it makes him feel like he doesn’t know his own brain anymore. Like it’s changing without his permission, too fast for him to catch up.

He does know one thing, though—and that’s that he can not take this bath. Almost unthinkingly, his feet shuffle forward; one, two, three steps, and then he’s crouching down to unscrew the drain. Even as he plunges his hand in the bathwater, it’s way too hot, scalding his skin unpleasantly and making him hiss through his teeth. Man, does Mom want him to catch on fire?

Will watches apathetically as the water swirls away, a little boiling tornado of danger. Good riddance.

He steps out into the living room, still clad only in his towel. Mom’s still trying to reach someone on the phone—Hopper, he thinks. But apparently he’s not answering, because she hangs up the phone and rests her forehead against the wall, looking completely defeated. Will almost hesitates to say anything—he doesn’t want to cause her more trouble.

But she did say no more secrets. He should at least try.

“Mom,” he says quietly, and she looks up.

“Yeah, sweetie, what is it?”

He exhales nervously, then says: “It’s too hot.”

Her expression changes into one of confusion, brows furrowing together, and she follows him back to the bathroom without further questioning.

Mom walks inside, and Will watches from the doorframe as she sits on the edge of the tub, swishing her hand in the draining water. She heaves a sigh, mildly annoyed. “I mean… I can cool it down a little bit, baby, but we gotta get your body temp back up.”

Will’s mouth moves without his permission. “No.”

It doesn’t even sound like his voice. His brain is swimming, and he’s practically yelling at Mom. But his feet are rooted to the ground. His skull squeezes and thrums, Bad Thoughts pounding away at the edges of his mind.

Mom’s face goes slack with surprise. “What?”

Again, his mouth moves. “He likes it cold.”

As soon as he says it, he realizes the truth of it. Of course He likes it cold. That makes sense. It slots neatly into Will’s brain, like an indisputable fact of life. One plus one is two. The sky is blue.

He likes it cold.

The fog in Will’s brain passes, and he blinks. Hm. That was a little weird.

Will wanders back into his bedroom, leaving Mom and her horrified expression by the bath. He feels a little off, still. 

But it’s probably nothing.

(It’s definitely Something.)

Chapter Text

Mom’s cranking the AC, and Will’s finally somewhat comfortable. He’s still got his shirt off, though—when he tried to put it back on, it had just made him feel itchy and sweaty and hot. 

He’s been zoning out all day. Just sitting here, waiting. Watching. Listening. 

Something is in his head. Something that didn’t come from him. At least, he doesn’t think so.

“Hey! Knock knock,” Mom murmurs, pushing the door open behind him. “We have a visitor.”

Will doesn’t turn around. He’s still waiting. Still watching. It’s everywhere.

Hopper—because of course that’s who it is—steps awkwardly into the room and around the bed to sit down next to Will. “Hey, buddy.”

“Mm,” Will says absently. He stares at the wall, but he’s not really seeing it. He’s seeing the tunnels. The passageways.

Death.

“So, your mom and I were just talking about these drawings you guys did,” Hopper says, gesturing to the papers in his hand. “Pretty scary stuff.”

Finally, Will looks at him, then down at the drawings. At The Evil. “Yeah,” he agrees quietly.

Hopper rotates his head to the side, gazing out at the room. “Cold in here,” he notes. “You’re not cold?”

“No,” Will admits. “He likes it like this.”

Immediately, Hopper straightens up. Narrows his eyes. “This… this shadow thing? From your drawing?”

“Mhm.”

“How do you know?”

On Will’s other side, Mom fidgets nervously with her fingers. Looks at him with her big worried eyes.

“I just… know,” Will says, because he does. There’s no other way to explain it. He’s not sure he even understands.

“Does he talk to you?” Hopper asks curiously, inspecting Will’s original drawing. 

Welcome home, Will. 

But that was before. Right now, his head is silent. There’s no voices—only pictures. Only the knowing. 

“No,” Will hedges. “It’s like… I don’t have to think. I just know things now. Things I… never did before.”

Hopper stands, then, and crosses over to Will’s desk, to sit at the chair opposite him. Will feels, very suddenly, like he’s being interrogated. Like this has shifted from an innocent conversation to something more deliberate. More pointed.

“And what else do you know?” Hopper asks, which—yeah, Will’s pretty sure that’s a standard interrogation question. 

He hunches his shoulders nervously. “It’s hard to explain,” he rushes out. “It’s like… old memories, in the back of my head. Only, they’re not my memories.”

The more he thinks about it, the more his head hurts, sides squeezing in like a crushed soda can. Tears begin to sting his eyes. 

“Okay,” Hopper says softly, encouraging him to go on.

“I mean—I don’t think they’re old memories at all,” Will realizes. “They’re…” He struggles to find the right word, but it’s hard. This is all so hard. “They’re now-memories, like they’re happening all at once, now,” he says finally. 

Hopper leans forward, elbows on his knees. “Can you describe these now-memories?”

Flashes of images play through Will’s head. Blue light. Hollowed-out walls. Sprawling, extensive.

But he can’t find the right combination of words to describe the pictures. He doesn’t know what they are. He only knows what he sees. Will’s always been bad with words. 

Hopper’s gaze on him is so intense. Like he’s a criminal. Like he’s done something wrong, something he needs to confess to. It’s scary. It reminds him of all the times Dad would sit him down, right before their “talks.” Only there was less talking and more hitting. More crying, on Will’s part, until he learned that would only get him hurt more.

“I don’t know,” he chokes. “It’s—it’s hard to explain.” 

Almost instinctively, he flinches back. He knows that’s not enough. That it’s not the answer Hopper wants. He knows that he’s being difficult, not cooperating. But he’s trying.

Mom leans in close to his side, nudging their shoulders together. Her sweater is soft against his skin, and she smells like cigarette smoke. That makes him feel even guiltier. She smokes when she’s stressed. He’s stressing her out. “I know it’s hard, sweetie, but can you just… Can you try? For us?”

Will resolves to try even harder, even though, at this point, his brain feels like it’s being beat to death. His throat clogs, thick and mucus-y, as he talks. His eyes gloss over. “It’s like… They’re growing, and—and spreading.” The next word is almost too hard to say. His breath hitches on a sob as he forces it out. “Killing.”

Mom leans in even closer, shifting a hand to rub over his bare back, the knobbly ridges of his spine. “The memories?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” Will cries. He feels pathetic. Useless. He wishes he could help them, but it hurts so bad, and he’s so confused, and tired—

A tear drips heavily from his lower lashline, and he squeezes his eyes shut, deeply ashamed. “I’m sorry,” he whimpers, and feels Mom’s arms wrap all the way around him. Even then, he’s too hot. He’s burning up, actually, but he still tucks himself into her chest and cries. Like a baby.

He just wants to go to sleep. To sleep, and have a nice dream, and wake up normal. Wake up fine, and happy, and safe. No weird thoughts, no voices, no pictures. Just him. Him before everything went wrong, before everything got all scary and complicated.

“No, no, no—it’s okay, sweetie,” Mom rushes out, long sweater-y arms around his hot neck and back. Will curls further into her, wishing he could disappear into her skin. Wishing he could disappear in general.

“Hey, baby,” Mom says, pulling away a little. Will can tell by her tone of voice that she’s figured something out. She’s smart like that, his mom. “What if… What if you didn’t have to use words?”

Will follows her eyeline, to where she’s looking out at his Will the Wise drawing. He picks up on her meaning immediately and straightens up, nodding eagerly. He scrubs roughly at his face, tries to sniffle the tears away. Okay, he can do this. He can help.

Within seconds, Will’s rushing over to his desk, and Hopper gets up, making space for him to sit. Paper. He needs paper, and… Crayons. It’s not perfect, not by a long shot, but it’ll do. 

The paper’s not big enough. He starts scribbling madly, incessantly, copying the image in his mind’s eye. Piece by piece, shade by shade. 

His mind blanks out. His arm moves on its own. All he knows are the tunnels. Shades of blue and purple and black, like a bruise. Like a black eye.

In the background, somewhere in the hallway, the house phone rings. They all ignore it. Will hardly even hears it.

He’s sweating, throwing papers carelessly to the ground as soon as they’re filled. It’s not enough. It’s not… It’s not…

***

Mike couldn’t wait until the end of the day. The school phone is really only supposed to be used for emergencies, like if you throw up and need to go home or whatever. But Will’s safety is a bigger priority than some random kids’ puke. They can get in line. 

“Come on,” he mutters, tapping his toe against the sidewalk. “Come on, come on, come—”

“You’ve reached the Byers! We’re sorry we couldn’t—”

Mike huffs, just once, and hangs up. Useless. 

He’s so worried about his best friend that his skin is crawling with it, with the familiar, helpless feeling of not knowing.

The Party’s waiting by the steps, sack lunches in hand, absently munching on sandwiches and chips and shiny red apples. Mike doesn’t know how they can eat at a time like this—he, for one, is way too stressed.

He tries to cool his head. Remember his plan. He’s Mike Wheeler. The paladin. The leader. He’s got this.

Even in his brain, it doesn’t sound very convincing. 

As he jogs back over, Lucas lifts his head, eyes lighting with tentative hope. “Anything?”

Mike frowns back, not bothering to answer the question. It’s time for phase two. “We need to talk!” he barks. “AV room. Right now.” He makes it up the stairs and towards the door, but Max stands, skateboard in hand, like she’s gonna follow them.

No. No way. This is about Will. And Mike’s not about to let some random girl, who just showed up, listen in on all of Will’s private information. On their planning session. It’s out of the question.

“Party members only,” he says firmly, narrowing his eyes.

Dustin, the traitor, looks at him, a soft plea written all over his face. “Come on, Mike.”

Like he’s being unreasonable. Has everyone lost their minds? Is the phrase girl-crazy really that accurate? Why is everyone acting like it’s okay to trust this stranger, like it’s okay to let them into their Party, the one they’ve bled for and cried for and worked so hard to build? It’s not fair. It doesn’t make any sense.

“No,” Mike snaps, to both Dustin and Max’s desperate expressions. They can puppy-dog-eye him all they want—he’s not budging. Not when it comes to Will. To their Party. “This is non-negotiable.”

He shoves his way inside, about ten percent angrier now. And then, behind him, he hears Dustin and Lucas apologizing, which ramps it up to twenty. They don’t owe anything to Max Mayfield. They don’t owe her shit, actually. She can’t just show up out of the blue, with her skateboard and her California sports car and her freckles and her bright red hair, and expect them to all be best friends. That’s not how it works.

Whatever. It’s not important right now. Focus on Will.

Mike treads the familiar path to the AV room, hopping up on the table to sit. As Lucas and Dustin trail inside, closing the door behind them, he wrings his hands together anxiously. Is he really gonna do this? It’s such a betrayal of Will’s trust, of his confidence in Mike…

But he needs Will to be okay. To be safe. And, as much as he hates to say it, that outweighs anything else. He hopes Will will understand. Forgive him.

“Will didn’t want me to tell anyone,” he starts softly—an immediate disclaimer. He needs Lucas and Dustin to know how important it is, for him to be confessing this. Sharing a secret that isn’t even his. They certainly can’t be spreading it to people like Max. 

“But on Halloween night,” he continues, and the memory of it flashes across his mind, chocolate-sweet and caramel-sticky, him and Will on the basement couch. Crazy together. “Will saw a sort of… shadow, in the sky.”

Mike hopes that’s a good description of it. He wishes Will were here, to tell the story himself.

“A shadow?” Lucas repeats. “Wh—what kind of shadow?”

But Will’s not here. For whatever reason, he’s not. So Mike squares his shoulders, and keeps on. “I don’t know,” he admits. “But it scared him. And if Will really has True Sight—I mean, if he can really see into the Upside Down… Maybe he saw that shadow again yesterday.”

Dustin nods thoughtfully. “So that’s why he was frozen like that?”

“Maybe,” Mike says, shrugging. He’s definitely missing information, vital pieces of the puzzle. He’s been trying to work it out, but… he can’t do it alone. Sorry, Will.

“Can it hurt him?” Lucas asks. “I mean, if this shadow thing isn’t from our world…”

The same question has been spinning around in Mike’s mind for days. He’s analyzed it from every possible angle, every possible viewpoint. Is Will in danger?

He thinks he knows the answer. But he wants to un- know it. He doesn’t want it to be true.

“I don’t know,” he says, instead of any of that. “Dustin?”

If anyone can shed some light on this thing, it’s gotta be Dustin. Dustin, who is historically right… most of the time. Not all of the time, not anymore, but he’s still the smartest guy Mike knows, other than maybe Mr. Clarke. But that doesn’t count, because he’s an adult, and their teacher.

Sure enough, Dustin says: “Well, if you’re in another plane, you can’t interact with the material plane. So theoretically—no, the shadow can’t hurt him.”

See? Smart. God, it sounds like something right out of a textbook. Or, more accurately, their D&D manual.

But even if the shadow can’t hurt him… Mike doesn’t know. He’s got a bad feeling about all this. So much so that calling it “a bad feeling” seems almost insane, because it’s way, way worse than that. It feels like…

It feels like the drop in his stomach when he saw the cops in the doorway, that day Will went missing. It feels like the ringing in his ears after he heard the sirens, echoing in the direction of the quarry.

Something horrible is around the corner.

“Yeah, if that’s even what’s happening,” Mike says finally, brow furrowed. “This isn’t D&D. This is real life.”

“So what do we do?” Lucas asks.

Mike looks up, relieved that there’s finally a question he can answer. He planned for this. “We acquire more knowledge,” he says confidently. “I’ll go to Will’s after school. See what’s going on. You guys stay here and find Dart.”

It’s just the scientific method—after you make a prediction, you gather data. Analyze it. Mike’s never been more grateful for science class in his life.

Dustin jolts in his chair. “Dart? What’s he gotta do with this?”

Mike fights not to roll his eyes. For such a smart guy, Dustin can be really dumb sometimes. Or maybe he just has a blind spot when it comes to gross, slimy animals that crawled out of his trash.

“Will heard him in the Upside Down,” Mike reminds him, unable to keep a bit of judgement from his tone. Keep up, man. “I don’t know how yet, but he’s gotta be connected to all this. He’s gotta be.”

The more he thinks about it, the more optimistic he starts to get. They’ve got the whole Party working on this thing now. Three heads instead of one. Mike’s actually doing something for once, actually making a difference. “If we find Dart, maybe we can solve this thing,” he stresses, looking around at his friends. 

And then, most importantly—

“Maybe we can help Will.”

***

Will doesn’t know how long he’s been coloring. He just knows enough time has passed that it doesn’t even feel like coloring anymore—no, it feels like some sort of animal instinct, arm blurring and muscles straining, crayons pressing so hard onto the paper that it almost tears.

He shoves another sheet to the ground. Another tiny snapshot, another little piece of the big picture. Somewhere in the deep, way-back of his head, he trusts that Mom will figure it out. Like he said, she’s smart like that. She’ll know what to do.

Will hasn’t felt this fevered, this urgent, about a drawing in… Well, since last year. Since Castle Byers.

(Huddled in the cold, Mike’s blanket around his arms, a shard of glass in his shaking fingers. Letters on wood. A smiling face.)

Those are the sorts of Bad Thoughts, Bad Memories, that have been loosed in his brain since yesterday. They’re rocketing around his neurons, screeching insistently: Look at me. Pay attention to me.

But Will doesn’t want to remember. There’s a reason he doesn’t visit Castle Byers as much anymore. There’s a reason that, when he does visit, he keeps the blanket spread out over the floorboards. He doesn’t look down. 

He’s swept all the glass away. In spring, when everyone had been cleaning the house, he borrowed a broom from the garage, trekked out into the woods, and did it all on his own. Because he’s thirteen now, and he’s supposed to be grown-up and responsible.

Lately, he’s felt about as far from those two things as it’s possible to get.

Lately, he’s felt—he’s felt—

It doesn’t matter. Will stares at the paper until his eyes hurt. He keeps coloring. Keeps pressing, like fingers on a fresh wound. Scraping, clawing, burning.

Killing.

***

The bike ride to Will’s house is familiar. Comforting, even though Mike doesn’t feel all that comforted. He passes Castle Byers on the way, sturdy and homey, and smiles. His smile drops a little, though, because Will’s not in it.

He keeps going.

Once he reaches Will’s house, he’s a little sweaty, but in that cold-sweat kind of way that means it’s almost Thanksgiving time. Still, he billows his jacket out a little, trying to dry himself off.

After he’s done that, he fixes himself up, tugging on his zipper until it’s straight. He wants to look competent. Presentable. Strong. 

He’s not so sure it works.

It’s the best he can do, though, so he starts banging on the door, fist closed in a tight drum. “Hello?” he shouts, just in case the house’s occupants are in the far back. “Will! You there?”

Nothing. He pauses, then knocks again, louder this time. “Ms. Byers?”

A second later, the lock clicks. Mike stands back as Will’s mom opens the door, looking frazzled. Already not a good sign.

“Hi,” he says, shifting from one foot to the other. He tries to look past her, but she keeps the door open only enough to let her body through, so he can’t see inside.

She forces a smile, one that’s weak around the edges. “Hey, Mike.”

He gets right down to business. “Is Will here?”

Please say yes, he thinks. Because if the answer is no— shit, he doesn’t know where else he’d be. And then it would be like That Day all over again, and—

Ms. Byers glances behind her at something. Someone? Is it Will? Mike stands on his tiptoes, but he still can’t see.

“You know what, honey? Now’s not really a good time,” she says apologetically. She wraps her cardigan around herself, like she’s caught a sudden chill. Actually, now that he thinks about it, the air coming from the front door does feel weirdly cold.

“Is he okay?” Mike presses, nerves crawling up his throat. Again, he thinks: please say yes, please say yes, please—

But she doesn’t say yes. Instead, she glances behind her again, which nudges her solidly into suspicious territory, and steps onto the stoop, closing the door behind her, which keeps her there. “Yeah,” she hedges, sounding uncertain. “You know, he’s… He’s not feeling real well.” 

She places a hand on Mike’s shoulder and begins to walk towards the steps, gently leading him with her. She’s trying to get rid of him, he realizes. In her own, nice Ms. Byers way. But still. 

Not cool.

“He’s laying down, alright?” she says. “I’ll tell him you stopped by.”

And with that, even though Mike doesn’t respond, she turns to head back inside.

Why don’t people trust him with this stuff? He can help! He’s been planning, and doing extra push-ups, and researching stuff in his D&D manual. Mike isn’t a little kid anymore, and he’ll do whatever it takes to keep his best friend safe.

He stands his ground. Plants his feet. Channels… Who’s a cool, strong adult? For some reason, the only person he can think of is Nancy. But, he’ll admit, she can be a little badass sometimes. 

He channels Nancy.

“It’s about the shadow monster, isn’t it?”

Ms. Byers stops in her tracks, one hand on the door handle. Slowly, she pivots to face Mike, expression raw with surprise. With confirmation.

Mike’s right. He’s right, and she knows he’s right.

They stare each other down for a second: Mike, the kid who used to swipe chocolate chip cookies off the counter, and Ms. Byers, who made those cookies. 

Right now, though, they’re just two people that love Will Byers. That want to keep him safe.

She sighs. Opens the door.

“You better come in, Mike.”

Finally.

Mike has to stop himself from cheering, or fist-pumping, or something equally as dumb.

It’s a near thing, though. He settles for a small, victorious smile.

Then he crosses over into the living room, and he sees it. Everywhere.

Growing, spreading. Shades of royal blue and purple; hastily scribbled puzzle pieces.

His smile drops right off his face.

Will’s not okay. Not at all.

Not if he made this.

Chapter Text

Mike’s here. Somehow, for some reason, Mike’s here.

It sets off a war of emotions in Will’s already-overcrowded brain. 

On one hand, Will doesn’t want Mike to see him like this. He’s embarrassed, shaking and sweating through his t-shirt that he’d put on as soon as Mike knocked on his bedroom door. The thought of being shirtless in front of him, in front of super-cool Mike Wheeler, all skinny and pale and scarred… It’s just…

No.

Then there’s the way Mike’s looking around the room, at all the drawings. He’s not scared, which is good. But he seems concerned, to say the least. Worried. Overwhelmed. 

Still, despite that, he’s been good to Will. Patient and accepting, all the way through his fumbling and inconsistent explanation of events. And that’s the other hand, isn’t it? The fact that Will has been dying to see Mike again since yesterday, since his Episode. The fact that Will is always dying to see Mike, in a way that’s honestly a little embarrassing.

The company is nice. Mom’s running all around the house, tacking up his drawings. Even Chester won’t come near Will—he whines and runs away every time they’re in the same room, like he can sense all the wrongness inside of him. 

But Mike is here. Here, in Will’s bedroom. Here, like he promised he’d be.

Crazy together.

Will holds tight to the phrase, like a brightly-colored life jacket in the rocky waters of his mind. 

Outside of his mind, in real life, Mike runs a careful hand over one of Will’s drawings. He’d burned through three packs of crayons, and about ten reams of copy paper—white, pink, green. Mom even had to dig some out from his secret Christmas stash in her closet, which made him feel bad. But he needed to do it. He couldn’t stop.

Mike looks up. “How are you feeling?” he asks gently, like he can read the stormy waves in Will’s brain. Like he’s paddling out there with a little wooden boat, desperately holding out a hand for Will to take.

Or maybe that’s too dramatic. Mike’s just being a good friend. Will needs to stop making such a big deal out of it.

Whatever. He’s got bigger things to worry about, anyway. For one, he’s boiling. 

But he’s not taking his shirt back off. Not until Mike leaves.

“It’s like… It’s like I feel what the Shadow Monster’s feeling,” Will answers honestly, when he remembers that Mike’s asked him a question. “See what he’s seeing.”

Mike continues to pace around the room, following the natural path of the paper tunnels—but he’s listening. “Like in the Upside Down?”

Will’s chest heaves another breath. It’s getting harder and harder to do that, even. To breathe. His lungs feel heavy. Sluggish. “Some of him is there,” he tells Mike, staring straight ahead at the wall. He can’t look directly at his friend right now—it’s too much. It’s not enough. 

He’s burning.

“But some of him is here, too,” he says, voice straining. 

Mike stops in the corner, by Will’s Jaws poster. He looks right at Will, with his huge dark eyes. “Here, like… in this house?” he asks nervously.

“In this house and—” Will’s face crumples up, ugly and pained. “And in me,” he admits, hating himself all the while. Hating the truth of it.

He is wrong. He is evil. This little piece of the Upside Down, of the monster, lives inside of him now. It’s making itself comfortable. He can feel it.

Maybe it was attracted to him, just like the Demogorgon was, all those months ago. Maybe something inside of Will called out to them. Like recognizing like.

You belong here.

Mike must notice something, then—the tense set of Will’s back, the harsh lines of his face, the dark bags underneath his eyes—because he rushes to sit down on the bed, leaving barely any space between them. Will takes a shaky breath, but Mike doesn’t say anything; only leans closer to his side, eyes trained on him. Waiting. Listening.

The full force of Mike’s attention is, as it’s always been, almost unbearable. It’s so, so much. But Will makes himself keep going, because this is important. He knows it is, because his skull is pounding like a drum, trying to stop him from talking. He doesn’t want Will saying this.

But if he tells Mike, maybe it’ll be okay. Mike will figure it out. He’ll know what to do. Of course he will.

“And the more he spreads,” Will chokes out, fighting the current in his head, “The more… connected to him I feel.”

“And the more you see these now-memories,” Mike finishes, easily connecting it back to their earlier conversation. Understanding, like he always does. God, he’s so smart.

Will nods. “At first I just—felt it,” he says. He lifts a shaking hand to the spot in question, prodding at it with his sweaty fingers. “In the back of my head. I didn’t even really know it was there. It’s like… when you have a dream. And you can’t remember it unless you think really hard.”

Mike nods along, just to show that he’s paying attention. That he gets it, even though Will’s not sure he does. He’s not sure anyone could know how this feels. Will himself would have never been able to imagine it, before last year. 

He feels like he’s dying.

Will’s leg starts jiggling incessantly in a constant, unsteady rhythm. The hand on his thigh jerks along with it, an automatic passenger. His whole body is shaking; little shockwaves of fear tingling through his veins. Through his blood. 

“It was like that,” he continues. “But now it’s like… Now I remember. I remember all the time.”

When Mike finally answers, his voice is incredibly quiet. Soft. “Maybe… maybe that’s good,” he says.

Will lets out a noise that’s harsh and strangled, somewhere between a scoff and a sob. “Good?”

“Yeah,” Mike replies, more sure now. He leans down, almost curling into himself in an effort to meet Will’s eye. Will can’t fully oblige him—his eyes keep flitting up and away, to the side. To the wall, to the drawings, to the window.

Jump.

He flinches. No, he thinks. Stop. Go away.

The voice leaves, replaced by Mike’s affectionate tone. “Just think about it, Will,” he urges. “You’re like a spy now. A super-spy! Spying on the Shadow Monster.”

Will tries to wrap his head around this. A spy. Like in a movie, or comic book. A good guy. A hero.

Trust Mike to turn this thing around. Somewhere, though the violent soup of his brain, Will is incredibly grateful. The tone of voice alone sparks something in him, fuzzy and warm.

But that’s far, far back, buried beneath all the chaos and agony and tunnels and death. Will says nothing. He’s still shaking, he thinks.

“If you know what he’s seeing and feeling,” Mike continues earnestly, “maybe that’s how we can stop him.” He looks up and around, at all the scribbled images tacked along the walls. “Maybe all of this is happening for a reason.”

The corner of his lip curls up sweetly as he turns his gaze back on Will, like he’s trying to prompt him to smile, too. Like he’s saying: Look. You’ll be okay. We’ll figure this out.

Will sniffles, rubbing at his reddened eyes. The movement scrapes along his eyelids, raw and painful. “You really think so?” he whispers.

Mike’s smile grows bigger as Will meets his gaze. “Yeah. Yeah, I really do,” he murmurs. 

It’s still too much—like looking into the sun. Will tears his eyes away, looking desperately around the room. His focus lands squarely on the floor by his desk. On Him, before Will even knew who He was. Dark and shadowed in charcoal crayon. Still menacing, still evil, even on paper.

Mike follows his line of sight, and his expression dims. They sit in silence for a moment, just looking. Feeling.

“What if… what if he figures out we’re spying on him?” Will manages, through the thick terror clogging his throat. He can’t even think about it. Can’t even imagine the punishment that would ensue, the amount of pain he would be in. 

More importantly, the amount of pain Mike would be in. Because what if the monster takes it out on him, too? The thought is enough for Will to want to call the whole thing off. To follow The Evil’s advice.

His eyes stray to the window again.

Maybe he would be better off. Maybe that’s the logical solution for all this. Will’s always been wrong, inside and out, sticking out like a sore thumb. And for the last year, he’s been even more wrong. He’s put all his friends and family in danger. 

None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for him. If he hadn’t gone missing that day.

“What if he spies back?” Will ventures, trembling all over. His voice is thick with tears, even though he doesn’t know how he could cry any more than he already has. 

He hates that Mike is seeing him like this. Hates that he’s like this in the first place.

“He won’t,” Mike says, immediate and fierce. Like he’s daring the monster to try and prove him wrong. See what happens, his tone says. See what you get if you mess with us.

Will’s heart thuds painfully in his chest—and at this point, he’s not even sure what’s causing it. The Evil, or… the other evil. He’s not sure which is worse.

“How do you know?” Will whispers.

Mike’s hand shoots out to grab Will’s own, with a speed and surety that almost shocks him. It’s like Mike has been thinking about this the whole time, dying to reach out and steady him. Comfort him.

Mike presses a little harder, and their fingers slip together, sweaty and small. Will’s lungs squeeze tight, and this time, he knows why. 

The firm hold of Mike’s hand stops the jiggling motion of Will’s thigh, something he didn’t even know he was still doing. Will’s bare heel presses against the carpet, and he grounds himself in the feeling. Tries to commit the moment to memory: Mike’s hand, the ridges of his knuckles, the shape of his nails. The sparks that are lighting in Will, all the way up, up, up, past his elbow and into the meat of his shoulder.

Burning. He’s burning.

“We won’t let him,” Mike promises, and his words are an anchor in the sea. Mike never lies. He never breaks his word.

Will shakes, and feels, and burns. He tries to remember. He tries to forget.

The voice in his head won’t let him do either.

***

There’s a man in the tunnels. He’s sweaty and dirty, scraped-up and bruised. Vines wind tight around his neck, his arms, his legs. Moonlight bounces off the walls, illuminating his pallid skin.

He has a twitching, bushy mustache. A billowing stomach, poking out over his brown belt.

Hopper.

The more Will looks, the more he sees. The more he feels. He sees Hopper’s hat, strewn carelessly on the dirt ground, sees his open, gasping mouth. Sees the way his skin is constricting around the slimy vines, the way he’s being squeezed half to death.

But he feels— he feels—

The exhilaration of it all. The sated pleasure of taking a life, of exerting that kind of absolute power over another living being. The pull and push, a beating heart in the palm of his hand. The knowledge that if he closed his fist, if he let all his anger, all his resentment, spill over into being, into doing—

Will is the observer, but he is also the observed. He’s in the driver’s seat, the backseat, the whole freaking car. He is the car.

He blinks, and then it’s Will with a sweaty, slippery hand around Hopper’s throat. A tendril, coiling snugly around his chest.

Do you see? Are you watching?

Will tries to scream, but nothing comes out. He has no throat, no lungs. His body is a vessel—a winding, snaking, killing machine. His actions are not his own.

Past Hopper’s bloated, mutilated body, there’s a shadow. And in the shadow, there’s a voice. 

Join us, Will. Come home.

No, he screams back, in the loud-quiet-dark of his mind. No, no, NO—

He wakes with a strangled gasp. His body jerks upright, sweating and small and terrified. 

For a second, the disorientation is overwhelming. It’s like his View-Master slide vision, his yellow walls flickering in and out, replaced with cold, fleshy tunnels. His drawings and toys replaced by writhing vines, as thick and as solid as a man’s arm. 

“Will!”

Will looks to the side… and there he is. Mike. His anchor. His life-vest.

He’s sleeping on the floor—they used to share the bed when they were little, but they must be getting too old for that now, right? Not that Will doesn’t want to. He wants it too much. He wants it so much that he’s petrified of showing it, of making it weird somehow the second Mike rolls into bed.

So Will had tried to take the floor, the old comfy sleeping bag that they’d dragged out of the closet. But Mike wouldn’t let him. He said if anyone should be taking the floor, it was him. Had insisted on it, actually. Said he could get a better view of the door, in case anything tried to come in. 

Looking at him, Will’s not sure Mike slept at all. His eyes are wide, jacket hood pulled up over his hair. He looks really soft. Like a teddy bear.

Will blames the thought on the fact that he’s not fully awake yet. 

Slowly but surely, the View-Master vision fades away, until it’s just Mike. Mike, with his blue hoodie, Mike, with his sleeves pulled up over his hands. Mike, with his big eyes and proud nose and familiar, comforting face. Mike.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, peering up at Will.

Will lets out a shaky breath. “Nightmare,” he says shortly. “Only… it felt so real.”

He looks searchingly at Mike, and Mike looks right back. After a second, they both wake fully up, and they realize. Their eyes widen.

“The Shadow Monster,” Mike says.

“Hopper,” Will replies. Then: “I have to tell Mom!”

Despite not having a clue what he’s talking about, Mike nods, and they bolt out of the bedroom, fighting off their sleepy limbs and tangled blankets. Will’s heart races as he walks further along the house, all the way into the living room.

Chester’s dozing on the couch, but as soon as Will comes in, he jolts awake, yelping and skittering into the kitchen. His nails clatter against the tile in his haste to get away. Will swallows over the lump in his throat, and turns his attention to Mom.

She’s sitting in the middle of the floor, drawings spread out in long ropes around her. The phone sits by her hip, pulled as far from the wall as it’ll go. She looks almost entranced, eyes unfocused and hands shaky. 

He did that. Will’s driving her crazy again, just like he did last year. It’s getting bad again—the drawings are just like the lights, just like the alphabet wall. If anyone walked in here right now, they’d send Mom off to Pennhurst or something. Both of them, actually. After all, Will drew all that.

Will forces down his guilt. He has a job to do. Mike said he was like a spy, and this is his first big chance to actually prove that. To be helpful. Useful.

To save a life.

“Mom,” he says gently, stepping a little further into the room. Mike lingers uncertainly behind him, but his whole body is alert. Protective. He keeps glancing at the front door, at the windows, like the Demogorgon’s about to shatter the glass.

Mom doesn’t turn around. Will tries again. “Mom.”

Still nothing. He walks right up to her, placing a careful hand on her shoulder. “Mom!”

She startles, reaching up to hold his hand, fingers tangling loosely together. “Yeah, baby?” she breathes out, sounding exhausted.

Will bites back the familiar response— I’m not a baby. Instead, he crouches down, meeting her eye. “I saw him,” he says urgently.

Her brow furrows. “You saw who, honey?”

“Hopper,” Will whispers. Mom’s expression grows even more confused. He rushes to explain. “I think he’s in trouble.”

Will hesitates at this next part, but… she needs to know. It’s his duty, as a spy, to give her all the information he can. No more secrets. 

He takes a deep breath. Lets it go.

“I think he’s going to die.”

***

Mike hasn’t slept in days. Not really. He’s gotten little snatches of sleep, quick power-naps here and there, but not last night. Last night, he’d been too focused. Too scared.

He’d watched the door all night. His eyes still burn with the strain of it.

But he finally feels useful for once, finally feels like someone needs him. Will needs him. Will needs him for reassurance, for support, for a friendly hand in his own, a watchful eye out for danger. 

As much as this situation sucks, Mike feels like he’s doing something right. Like he, as Will’s best friend, is living up to his full potential.

The thing is… it’s still really scary. Mike’s faced stuff like this before—interdimensional stuff, life-threatening stuff. But that was all under the shadow of a literal superhero, a girl who could save their asses at any moment. 

Now, it’s just Mike. Mike has to be the superhero. The paladin. The leader. He has to, for Will. 

And he’s trying. He’s shoving back all the worry, all the fear, all the absolute devastation that crawled across his skin and down his throat when he first walked into Will’s bedroom. When he first saw him, sweating and shaking and coming apart, surrounded by an incomprehensible maze of his own making. 

Mike’s never seen him like this. Never. In the hospital last year, he was weak. Frail. He slept a lot. Mike watched him sleep, watched the rise and fall of his chest, because it helped him remember that Will was there. Safe. Alive.

But this— this manic, frantic energy, this wildness in Will’s eyes—it makes him almost unrecognizable. It makes Mike wonder how much of Will is left in there, and how far back the Shadow Monster has pushed him. Mike can’t even imagine it, having a stranger in his head. Just himself is almost too much, sometimes.

In the last year, Mike had almost forgotten. How this all feels. How bone-chilling it is, this constant sense of danger. This constant state of hyper-awareness, always on, always waiting for the next shoe to drop. 

He wishes El were here. He thinks he’d feel safer, more secure, if she were. But he’s radioed her every day, with no response. 

Maybe she is gone. A year is a long time. A lot of things could have happened.

He tries not to think about that, because there’s nothing he can do in that situation. Here, right now, watching Will scribble like a man possessed— this is what he needs to focus on. His best friend, who needs him.

Even in this state, Will is incredibly talented. Mike bets that this picture looks exactly like the image in his head. The blues, the purples, the blacks—it looks sinister. Like something out of a comic book.

After another minute or two of aggressive coloring, crayons scratching the paper, Will stops. Ms. Byers leans over his shoulder, taking it in. “Is this where you saw him?” she asks. “Is this where you saw Hopper?”

Mike stands on his tiptoes, trying to see over Will’s head. Trying to mentally place the image somewhere along the rest, trying to make sense of it. 

“I—I think so, yeah,” Will stammers, so quiet it’s almost inaudible. 

“Okay,” she murmurs back, picking up the paper. Together, she and Mike begin to wander around the house, scouring the walls, the roof, the floor. Looking for the spot where it all ties up. Where it all fits.

Mike walks with her, and it hits him, suddenly, that he’s almost as tall as her. It makes him feel more confident. More adult. Mike, and no one else, is being trusted with this responsibility. He’s Ms. Byers’ right-hand man.

They spread out once they hit the living room, Ms. Byers looking near the couch and Mike taking the kitchen. She has the drawing, but that’s okay—he’s committed it to memory. He can see the lines and shapes and colors burning away behind his eyes.

Then he sees it: a blank spot on the fridge, three roads intersecting towards nothing. All that’s missing is the center. The heart. 

“Here!” he calls, pointing at the spot in question. Ms. Byers immediately perks up, hurrying towards the kitchen. Mike moves out of the way so she can fix the paper in its place, grabbing a piece of tape from her jacket to plaster it up. 

“Okay,” she says, crouching by the fridge. “So Hopper is… here.”

It takes a second for Mike to realize that she’s waiting for his assurance. He straightens up, summoning all the confidence he possesses. “Yeah,” he answers. “And now we just need to find out where here is, right?”

Ms. Byers nods. “Right,” she says, voice thin. 

Mike’s obviously not done a good enough job. He needs to think harder. “Did he say anything?” he asks, trying to dig around for clues. “I mean, before he left?”

She sighs, rubbing tiredly at her forehead. “Something about… vines?”

Vines? …Vines. Okay. They probably have vines in the Upside Down. That’s not too far of a stretch. So is Hopper stuck in the Upside Down, then? How would they find another gate?

Mike’s frantic brainstorm is cut off by the sound of approaching tires from outside. They both jump at the sound, looking at each other with wide eyes. 

“Hopper,” Ms. Byers whispers hopefully. 

Mike’s not as optimistic. But obviously someone’s here, so he follows her to the door. After craning his neck to see out the front window, though, Mike realizes who it is. He recognizes him from sleepovers at Will’s these past few months, from seeing him and Ms. Byers together around town.

It’s Bob.

Ms. Byers visibly deflates. “Stay here, honey,” she mutters in Mike’s direction—still sweet, even through her disappointment. “I’ll get rid of him.”

“Okay,” Mike replies, shooting her a small smile. She sends one back, harried and frazzled, then steps outside, closing the door behind her. Mike watches out the window for a moment as Bob ambles up to the porch, puzzles and movies in hand. Ms. Byers greets him, and they talk inaudibly for a bit. It’s starting to rain; thunder rumbling and clouds gathering in the sky. Little drops of water get all over Bob’s jacket.

Poor guy.

“Did you find it?”

Mike pivots around to see Will, sweaty and zombie-like, peering hesitantly out from the hallway. “Hey,” he greets, automatically softening his voice. “Yeah, we did. You wanna see?”

Will fidgets with the sleeve of his t-shirt. He’s changed from last night, but this one is already soaked through. Mike’s not sure why he doesn’t just take it off—he must be really uncomfortable. Of course, in all actuality, the house is freezing. But not for Will.

“Mhm,” Will answers quietly. Mike shuffles over, gently takes him by the wrist, and leads him over to the kitchen. He feels absurdly proud of his handiwork, even though he hadn’t really done that much. All he’d done was find a missing spot on the wall.

Still, it makes him feel… special, almost. Like he’s contributing. It’s plenty of steps up from last year, when he’d sat there like a loser and done absolutely nothing to help Will.

“It’s right here,” he explains, letting go of Will’s hand to point at the picture. “This is where Hopper is.”

“Okay,” Will murmurs, staring at the drawing. “Okay. But… where is that?”

“I dunno,” Mike admits begrudgingly. If he was proud, just a second ago, now he’s ashamed. He should have figured this out by now. He’s been here for hours. But he still has nothing. They’re just lines, weaving and sprawling and connecting. He can’t make any sense of it.

That’s when Bob walks in the door.

“Bob?” Will says in surprise, head turned toward the door. They’re too far away for him to hear, though.

“I guess he was coming to visit you guys,” Mike says. “Your mom said she was sending him away, but…” He shrugs, at a loss. “I guess we should go see what’s up.”

Hesitantly, they make their way into the living room. Bob’s jaw is fully dropped open, observing the papered-up walls with a mixture of confusion and awe. Mike imagines he must have looked similar, when he first walked in.

Still, he can see Will shrinking with embarrassment by his side, so he nudges their arms together in a silent show of support. I’ve got you. I’m here.

Will nudges back. His arm is really sweaty, and Mike’s jacket is now a little damp, but he doesn’t mind. It’s not that important.

“Huh,” Bob says eventually, still holding the stack of puzzles. “Hmm.” He looks back at Will curiously. “You drew all of these? Yourself?”

Ms. Byers answers for him. “Mhm,” she says, nodding. She’s biting her nails nervously, in that way that Mike’s learned means she actually just wants to smoke. He wonders what the appeal of that is. If it actually calms nerves, or if it just makes them worse.

Will nods, too. He’s silent. Worried.

“…Why, exactly?” Bob ventures, gazing back up at the drawings.

“I—I told you the rules,” Ms. Byers jumps in. “No questions, okay?”

“Okay,” Bob answers, still seeming lost. 

Ms. Byers starts off towards the kitchen, but she’s the only one. “We just need you to help us figure out what…” When she realizes no one’s following her, she turns around, waving an aggravated hand. “Bob! Over here!”

Bob turns. Surprisingly, he looks at Mike, then, and hands off the puzzles into his arms. Mike shoots a glance at Will, who shrugs. 

As Bob ambles off, Mike and Will follow him. Mike takes a second to peruse the stack of games, and he brightens a bit. Bob’s actually brought some really cool stuff—a handheld Battleship game, a 5x5 Rubik’s cube, and a Yahtzee board, to name a few. Mike raises an eyebrow at Will, gesturing to the games. “Battleship!” he whispers excitedly.

The corner of Will’s mouth lifts in a small smile. Yes! Mike’s brain does a silly little fist-pump. Success.

Then they walk into the kitchen, and the mood grows serious again. Mike sets the stack of games down on the dining table, then goes to stand near Ms. Byers as she uses a dull red crayon to draw a big X on Will’s new drawing. “We need to find out where this is,” she says urgently.

“That’s the objective,” Mike pipes up, trying to be helpful. “Find the X.”

Bob’s obviously not getting how important this is. He laughs, crouching down to see the picture better. “Yeah?” he asks Mike. “What’s at the X—pirate treasure?”

He thinks it’s a game.

Mike’s stomach drops. His jaw clenches. Bob seems like a nice guy, but right now, he’s toeing the line, dangerously close to making fun of Will. Will, who’s spent the last day nearly killing himself to get these drawings done. Mike steps in front of his friend a little, shielding him from the suddenly-tense air of the kitchen.

“Bob,” Ms. Byers says sternly. “No questions.”

His face falls a little. “Okay,” he replies. He looks around the room—at the drawings, at the cranked-up AC, at Mike and Will. After he’s taken all of that in, he clicks his tongue and pulls Ms. Byers in by the shoulder. “Lemme talk to you for a second.” He glances back. “Hang on, guys.”

They disappear down the hallway, off to have an adult conversation, and Mike tries not to seethe in his own anger. It’s not Bob’s fault, he reminds himself. He doesn’t know what’s going on.

There’s a small sniffle next to him. Then another. Mike looks over, surprised, and—

Will’s crying. It’s obvious that he’s trying to hold it back, pressing a hand over his mouth, but his face is wet and shiny, and his eyes are all red and scrunched-up.

“Hey,” Mike says, moving closer. “Hey, hey, hey. What’s wrong?”

As soon as he says it, he feels like an idiot. He imagines Will’s reply, if he were a little more blunt: Look around, Mike. What’s not wrong?

But because Will is Will, he just sniffles again, rubbing at his eyes. “Sorry.”

“What—don’t be sorry,” Mike says incredulously. He slings an arm around Will’s back, rubs circles into his shoulder. Gratifyingly, Will moves a little closer, leaning the side of his head against Mike. It feels nice. Comfortable. “Come on, talk to me,” he murmurs. “What’s up? Is it the Shadow Monster?”

“No,” Will answers, in a small voice. “No, not right now. It’s just—Bob wasn’t supposed to know about any of this, you know?” He looks up, desperately, at Mike. “He wasn’t supposed to see me like this. Like—he knows I have my episodes, right, but this is…” He huffs out a humorless laugh, pulling slightly away from Mike. “This is just plain crazy. I’m going crazy, Mike.”

“No,” Mike says, so fiercely it almost scares him. Will flinches, and he immediately lowers his tone, guilt seeping into his every pore. Clearly, Mike needs to step up his best-friend duties, if Will is feeling like this. “No, Will,” he repeats. “You’re not crazy. And—well, if you are, then…” He hesitates, but still says it. “Crazy together, right?”

Will laughs again, but this one is more of a giggle, teary and grateful. “Yeah,” he says, eyes shining. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“I know so,” Mike replies, smiling. Will tucks a small, shy smile into his own shoulder, and the sight of it makes Mike grin even wider.

They’re okay. Well—they’re not, not really, but Mike and Will, their friendship, is more solid than ever. Mike’s certain of it. After all, what are Lucas and Dustin doing right now? 

He guesses they could be looking for Dart. Like he told them to.

But still, Mike is here. Making the big moves. Right in the thick of it, helping and protecting and solving puzzles. Making Will smile. Somehow, that last thing feels like the most important one.

They sit down at the kitchen table, waiting for Ms. Byers and Bob to come back out. Mike has a silent war with himself, trying to decide if it’s an appropriate time to open Battleship. 

Luckily—or unluckily, he’s not sure—Bob’s voice floats down the hallway. He’s getting closer, naming off random places: “And if that’s Lake Jordan, then you can probably find… Yeah!”

Bob appears around the corner, snapping in realization, pointing at a random patch of drawings. “Yeah, that’s Sattler’s Quarry. And if you just follow it naturally, it moves to…” 

Mike and Will watch, wide-eyed, as Bob pivots in place and marches into the living room. “There it is! The Eno River. That’s the Eno, do you see it?”

Ms. Byers cocks her head to the side, squinting at the wall. 

Bob doesn’t wait for an answer. He walks back towards the dining room, moving with purpose. “Okay, so the lines aren’t roads,” he says firmly. “But they act like roads. Because when you follow them, you’ll see—they don’t go over water. And that’s the giveaway. That’s the giveaway.”

He claps his hands excitedly. “Ha!” Then, still off in his own head, he moves around the dining table. “Don’t you get it? It’s not a puzzle. It’s a map.” 

Mike cranes his neck to follow him, twisting all the way around in his chair. He’s hanging onto Bob’s every word.

This guy is a genius.

Bob spreads his arms out triumphantly. “It’s a map of Hawkins!”

Immediately, Mike and Will look at each other, amazed. Mike feels the thrill of excitement, of a solved puzzle, all the way down to his toes. Or maybe that’s just his feet going numb, actually, because it is really cold in here, jeez.

The whole room is stunned silent. Ms. Byers’ mouth is actually hanging open, which is a look Mike rarely ever sees on her. And in the middle of it all is Bob, grinning like he’s just solved the world’s most important brain teaser.

Which—yeah. He did.

“Right, Will?” Bob checks, still smiling.

Mike watches Will’s face, which is just as surprised as the rest of them. Will clearly had no more idea than he did. 

But Bob— that dude needs a medal or something. Holy shit.

…Holy shit. They did it.

They’re gonna save Hopper.

Chapter Text

Will watches, wide-eyed, as everyone figures it out. Two emotions are duking it out in his head: panic and pride. The panic is on His part, not Will’s. Will is the proud one—proud of himself, of Mom, of Bob, of Mike. Especially of Mike, though he tries to force that thought away and keep his friend on the same level as his family. They’re all contributing. All working together. Will wants to give each and every one of them a high five, or a hug.

He wants to give Mike the longest hug, though. He wants the contact to linger, wants to tuck his sweaty face into the curve of Mike’s neck and just breathe, wants Mike’s hands to curl gently around his back, pulling him closer, holding him in that delicate, soft way he does sometimes—

Anyway.

Will’s face is very red, and he’s not sure it’s just from the heat.

“Alright,” Bob calls loudly, frowning down at the Hawkins map on the dining table. “I’m at three-point-six inches. What do you got?”

“I’m not sure,” Mike calls back, from his position over by… Oh. Lover’s Lake. Will stares across the room at him, silhouetted by a little heart-shape consisting entirely of Will’s own drawings, and tries not to melt.

It feels a little on the nose, though. Like the universe is making a cruel joke at Will’s expense. He wouldn’t be surprised—the universe doesn’t seem to be very fond of him, based on just about everything that’s ever happened.

“Ms. Byers?” Mike checks. Grateful for the distraction, Will whips his head around to look at his mom. She’s got the other end of the tape measurer, walking it backwards over to the Tippecanoe sign. Will made the location markers himself, because he wanted to be helpful, and he’s actually pretty proud of his handwriting. It’s neat and steady, which is a total contrast to how shakily violent all his insides feel right now, like he’s just ridden a rollercoaster with dozens of loop-de-loops.

“Twenty-one feet, four inches!” Mom yells over.

Bob makes a small hum of affirmation, marking that down on the map. “What about Tippecanoe to Danford Creek?”

Mom sighs in agitation, throwing her free hand out to the side. “Danford? Where’s Danford?”

Ooh! A mission. Will perks up, going on high alert. It’s like a big game of I-spy, walking around the house to find his own signs, his own fevered scribblings. It feels almost like last year again, when he was wandering around the Upside Down, trying to imagine it as a D&D campaign. Now, if Will zones out and doesn’t think about it too hard, he can almost see this as a cool puzzle. Family game night. 

He can almost forget that Hopper’s life is on the line. That the oxygen is being squeezed out of him as they speak.

Scratch that. He can’t forget. But the memory makes him even more determined, searching the walls with renewed fervor. And, sure enough, he sees it. “Dining room!” Will blurts, doing an excited little hop on his toes. He does a half-walk, half-jog over to the Danford sign, pointing it out for Mom to see.

She follows him, and Will peeks over her arm to try and see the tape measurer. “Sixteen feet, ten inches,” Mom declares, and they both look at Bob expectantly.

He nods, and marks it down. “What about Danford to Jordan?”

Mom deflates, wrapping the yellow ribbon up in her arms and heading over to the dining table. Will follows close behind, eager to see the results of their hard work.

“Come on, this has gotta be enough,” Mom says tiredly.

Bob taps his pencil hard on the map. “It’s not. It’s really not.”

Will braces his hands against the edge of the table, taking in all the precisely-marked measurements on the map. He’d known, in some vague sense, that Bob was smart. But this is… wow. It’s really cool.

A second later, Mike’s walking up behind him, mirroring his position by the table. This new stance means that Mike’s hand is really close to Will’s now, and Will is dangerously close to passing out. He’s hyperaware of the small space between their thumbs. He imagines Bob calling it out, the next distance to be obtained: Will to Mike!

It’s gotta be barely anything. Inches, at most.

A bead of sweat rolls down from the nape of Will’s neck, dissolving somewhere on the collar of his shirt. 

“Well, can’t you figure it out?” Mom presses, and Will snaps back to reality, gazing up and around at the complex map of drawings. He can’t believe he made all that. He barely even remembers it anymore—just feels it, the crazed dedication, the flashes of sound and light and color, the bruising grip of his fingers on the crayons. His skin is still stained; rough smudges of dark rainbow.

“Well, it’s really hard,” Bob stammers, growing more frustrated. The ratio isn’t exactly one-to-one. I mean, if you’re twisting my arm, and you are twisting my arm, I would say that the X is…”

Mike’s hand shifts closer, sliding across the wooden frame of the table. His thumb darts out to touch Will’s, the barest hint of connection. The easiest reassurance. I’m here. I’ve got you.

The touch ingrains itself into Will’s fingerprints, sending sparks up his fingers, his arm, his shoulder, like he’s just shocked himself on a playground slide. For a second, he’s nearly frozen. Mike’s not looking at him, because they’ve never needed to lock eyes to communicate—they just do it. They just know, from one touch, that everything’s alright. 

Will, though, is very sure that things are not alright. Not if he’s falling apart like this, mental lock-box busting at the seams, from a simple brush of fingers. A simple message, one that they exchange all the time. This is nothing new.

But if he’s honest, neither are the feelings.

It’s silly to be this worked up over it, though. Mike touches him a lot. They’ve hugged, like, five times just this week. Last night, they practically held hands. (And if Will internally freaked out each and every time, that’s nobody’s business but his own.)

He swallows over the lump in his throat, taps his thumb back against Mike’s in a quick answer— I’m okay. He keeps his eyes trained on Bob.

It’s really, really hot in here.

Bob painstakingly etches an X onto the map, lining it up with his ruler. “Maybe… half a mile southeast of Danford?” He looks questioningly up at Mom.

Mom absolutely lights up, all the tension leaking out of her body. “Thank you! Thank you,” she enthuses, leaning close to kiss Bob on the cheek. Bob lights up, too, cheeks puffing with the force of his smile.

Very quickly, Will glances at Mike’s cheek. He would have to stand on his tiptoes to kiss it.

Not that… not that he would be doing that. Ew! Gross!

He thinks that very, very loudly, in case Mike’s inexplicably gained the ability to read minds in the last day. But he’s not really fooling himself, if he’s being honest.

Maybe kissing would be… nice. If it’s with the right person.

But Mom’s grabbing the map and sprinting for the door, and this is definitely not the time to be thinking about kissing. Mike and Will exchange a quick glance, then, by unspoken agreement, follow her through the living room. 

Bob’s voice trails behind them: “What, are we really—are we really going?”

“Yep!” Mom calls back, grabbing her keys from the door hook. Will and Mike scramble through the door, heading for the backseat of Mom’s now-unlocked car. Once they’re in there, and Mom and Bob are having a quick, frustrating-looking conversation on the porch, Will lets out a long, shaky exhale.

“Hey,” Mike says, and Will looks over at him. He’s fastening his seatbelt, eyes soft and smile even softer. “It’s all gonna be okay.”

Will doesn’t think about his boiling insides. Doesn’t think about his pounding head. His racing heart. Instead, he smiles. Instead, he says, “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.”

Because Mike is always right. And he never, ever lies.

***

Their puzzle-solving, along with the drive to Danford, has taken up almost the entire day. The sky’s gone dark, navy-blue and cloudy, and the cicadas are starting to scream. Mike doesn’t think about how long Hopper’s been in trouble. How likely it is that he’s… gone.

And yes, Mike’s never been the guy’s biggest fan. But Jesus, he doesn’t want him to fucking die.

It’s been a long drive. Mike’s split his time between looking out the window, helping comb the area for Hopper’s car, and looking at Will. Will, who’s sweating and trembling and seems very much not okay.

Will’s fighting something in his head. Mike can tell, because he’s staring intensely at the back of Bob’s seat, eyebrows furrowed, expression pained. It hurts to see. It really, really hurts.

Bob’s been asking questions. Ms. Byers has been avoiding them. Which is kind of impressive, given the fact that they’re trapped in a ‘76 Pinto together. 

“Will,” Mike says quietly. “Could you help me with something?”

Will startles, then glances over. “Yeah, of course.”

Mike shoots him a sideways grin, trying to keep the mood light. It’s hard, given the general gloom of the backseat, but Will needs a distraction. And Mike is all he’s got.

“You wanna help plan a campaign?”

Will’s eyes, droopy and scarlet, brighten. “Yeah,” he breathes out, scooting a little closer. “Yeah, I’d love to.”

Mike’s grin widens, transforming into something solid and real. “Cool,” he says. “Okay, so I’ve been thinking about starting in the mountains, right? And we’ll have these half-elf, half-orc guys meet the Party, and they’ll say…”

The introduction turns into a whole ramble, Mike word-vomiting whatever idea had been in his head before this whole mess started. He’s mostly on autopilot, to be honest, because he’s more focused on Will’s reactions. Slowly but surely, the haunted darkness is leaving his face, replaced by eager innocence, genuine excitement. 

Hell yeah. Mike’s got this in the bag.

Ten minutes later, they’re really getting into it, bouncing ideas off each other at the speed of light.

“So then the dragon can come after the hoard—”

“No, Mike, you know Lucas will do something dumb like split off on his own—”

“Well, that sounds like his problem, doesn’t it?”

“Mike.”

“Ugh, fine. The dragon will hide in the woods, and the whole Party can go after it. Better?”

“Loads.”

“Okay, but for the troll part, what if we—”

“Boys,” Ms. Byers says sharply, and they both shut up. “Start looking. We need extra eyes.”

Mike and Will exchange a significant glance, and both turn to stare out their respective windows. The car goes incredibly silent, and incredibly tense. Even Bob knows not to speak up. For a long time, they just… look. Wait.

At least Mike cheered Will up for a little bit. He can tell he’s worried again—they all are—but for those ten minutes, Mike had been a good friend. He thinks. 

Eventually, after staring at the moonlight-stricken cornfields for so long that his eyes start to water, Mike gets antsy. “There’s nothing,” he says nervously. “There’s nothing here.”

Ms. Byers tightens her grip around the steering wheel, looking desperately at Bob. “Are we close?”

He checks the map again. “We’re in the vicinity.”

“The vicinity?” she repeats, volume increasing. “What’s that mean, the vicinity?”

“It means we’re close,” Bob snaps, which on its own is surprising. He’s not a snapping kind of guy, so he must be really stressed. “I don’t know. It’s not precise.”

“But we—we did all that work,” Ms. Byers says, sounding on the verge of tears.

“I told you, the scale ratio isn’t exactly one-to-one. We needed to take—”

Will closes his eyes, and at first, Mike thinks he’s just overwhelmed. But this is different—he doesn’t look hurt, or in pain. He looks like he’s listening. Like he’s meditating, almost.

Just when he’s about to snap in front of Will’s face, or shake him on the shoulder, his eyes pop open, so quickly it’s freaky. “Turn right!” he says, leaning forward towards his mom.

Ms. Byers cranes her neck around to see him, which probably isn’t a very safe driving practice. “What?”

“I saw him,” Will says urgently.

Immediately, Ms. Byers looks back out the windshield, frantically scanning the Indiana farmland. “Where?”

“Not here,” Will corrects. “In my now-memories.”

“In your what?” Bob asks, which… yeah. Mike can see how that’s confusing. 

“Turn right!” Will repeats, almost yelling now. Ms. Byers listens, jerking the wheel in a sharp turn. Mike’s thrown sideways into Will, and uses his shoulder to steady himself. They barrel through hay and road signs and more hay and Jesus fucking Christ, if this is how they go out, after everything—

Mike’s hand is practically clenched onto Will’s shoulder at this point, their sides pressed all up against each other. Will clutches him right back, fingers knotting in the fabric of his jacket.

Nausea rises in his stomach as the car speeds over several bumps, and Mike squeezes his eyes shut, trying to not throw up. Please stop, please stop, please—

The car stops, and Will and Mike both jolt forwards. Mike bangs his head sharply on the back of Ms. Byers’ seat, and only his seatbelt stops him from flying all the way past it. He sucks in a breath through his teeth, rubbing at the tender spot. 

As soon as the car settles, he checks on Will. Luckily, he looks alright, just a little shook up.

“Are you okay?” Ms. Byers pants, twisting around to look at Will. He nods, eyes wide and hair ruffled. 

In front of them is Hopper’s truck. Same wheels, same trunk, same license plate.

“Superspy,” Mike whispers, breathless awe catching up to him. Will totally just saved their asses. Well, Hopper’s ass. 

Will stares forward at the car, jaw slack with disbelief. “I did it,” he says quietly, more to himself than anyone else. “He’s here.”

“What’s Jim doing here?” Bob asks, because somehow, he’s still completely oblivious. “Joyce?”

She doesn’t answer, and one foot’s already out the door. “Boys, I need you to stay here,” she stresses. 

Will reaches out a hand for her, like he’s trying to stop her from leaving. “No—Mom, it’s not safe,” he whimpers, voice cracking. 

“That’s why I need you to stay here!” she insists, pointing a stern finger at him. Bob, apparently along for the ride, starts to climb out of the passenger seat. Ms. Byers casts one final look at the boys. “Stay here,” she repeats, and slams the door behind her. They both flinch from the force of it.

Ms. Byers’ screams echo around the car’s interior. “Hopper!”

As she gets further away, a little cardigan-wearing speck in the distance, her voice fades into the night. Will stares after her, eyes glassy and hurt. He’s still shaking. Mike’s not sure he ever stopped.

He doesn’t know what to do. To be honest, though, he’s glad they’re stuck in the car. He knows Will’s upset about it, but at least in here, he’s safe. Protected. Mike can watch him.

But watching is about all he can do. “Will,” he tries, helplessness sinking in his stomach. “She’ll be okay.”

Will’s still peering over the windowsill, even though Ms. Byers and Bob are far out of eyesight. “You don’t get it,” he chokes, shaking his head. “I can feel him, and he’s down there, Mike. Down where she’s going.”

Mike thinks about Ms. Byers. About all the shit she’s been through in the last year. “Your mom’s a strong lady,” he says gently. “And you’re strong too, Will. Just like her.”

Will shakes his head again, avoiding Mike’s gaze. “I’m not.”

“Will,” Mike says fiercely. “You are. Can you—can you look at me, please?”

Just like he wanted, Will looks. His eyes are always so expressive—deep brown shot with hazel. They’re so nice to look at, and Mike’s honestly a little jealous. His eyes are pretty much just black. All pupil, as his mom likes to say. 

And Will’s hair looks messy and wild, in a way Mike hardly ever sees it. It’s pushed back a bit, exposing some of Will’s forehead, and Mike feels… he doesn’t know. It’s kind of weird, and he thinks his stomach is still flipping from Ms. Byers’ rough driving.

Mike forces himself back on track. He looks into Will’s super-cool eyes. “Will, you’re the strongest person I know,” he says, every word chosen with intent. “You’ve been through hell and back, and you’re still here. You’re still here.” He pauses, unsure whether to say the next part. Mike’s always had a tough time with mushy stuff… but he knows Will needs to hear it. He knows it’ll help him. 

“You’re not alone, Will,” Mike promises, voice soft. “You don’t have to do it by yourself. I’m right here. And I’m not going anywhere, I swear.”

A tear spills over onto Will’s cheek, startlingly bright in the low light of the car. Mike stares at it, transfixed.

“Thank you, Mike,” Will whispers, voice shot through with emotion. “You’re my best friend.”

Mike crumples, like a gum wrapper after it’s been used. His insides go all warm and fond. “And you’re mine,” he says. He doesn’t even have to think about it. It’s the truest part of him, and it always has been. Will is his person. That’s just how it is. It’s how they were built.

There’s a few heartbeats of silence. The cicadas chirp. It feels, somehow, like something is missing. Like there’s some specific thing they should have done, or said, to end that conversation, and it never happened. The tension of it crackles between them, thick and confusing.

“Do you want to work on the campaign?” Mike ventures hesitantly, because this rescue mission is taking a long time, and he thinks they could both use a distraction at this point.

“Actually,” Will says, biting his lip. “Can we get out of the car? We won’t go down to the tunnels, or anything. I just want to make sure she’s okay.”

Mike’s heart sinks. Here, in these walls, they’re safe. But he can’t deny Will, not when he’s hurting, not when he’s looking at him like that.

They’ll have to finish the campaign another time. “Yeah,” Mike says, unbuckling his seatbelt. “‘Course.”

He almost thinks about saying stay behind me, or something, but then he realizes how dumb that sounds. Better not.

They walk out into the field with soft, careful footsteps. It’s freezing, but Mike can see Will’s sweat in the dim light, beading along the back of his neck and soaking through his shirt. 

Mike stays close, their arms brushing companionably as they walk. He reasons that if they’re gonna be outside, Mike can be Will’s bodyguard, kinda. He can make sure nothing gets him.

“Do you see anything?” he checks. “I mean, in your now-memories?”

Will shakes his head, swallowing hard. 

Behind them, a car engine revs, and bright-white headlights swing into the clearing. Mike and Will whip around to face the intruder, and Mike takes a step closer to his best friend. Nobody’s gonna mess with him. Not on Mike’s watch. 

But then he freezes.

Because he’s seen these vans before.

They’re the same white electrical vans from last year, the same vans that chased them down the street, the same vans that El blew up just by looking at them.

The Bad Men are here.

And Mike knows it’s different now, knows all those original guys are dead (blood, so much blood, staining the white linoleum, sinking into suits and ties and socks), but that doesn’t mean he trusts these new bozos. Will hates lab days, so Mike hates the lab men. It’s as simple as that.

They look at each other, panic written across their faces. Mike hopes his expression is somewhat calmer, at least. Hopes that Will can read it and see: I’m gonna protect you. I’m gonna keep you safe.

Probably not, though. Mike thinks he might have just pissed his pants with terror. His Star Wars briefs feel a little damp.

He’ll take that to the fucking grave.

The men hustle out in hazmat suits and regular suits, largely ignoring Mike and Will. The hazmat guys go down into the ground, some sort of weapons in hand, and the regular suit guys stand by the vans, looking vaguely annoyed. Mike shoves his hands in his pockets and steps closer to Will, just in case anyone wants to mess with them.

It happens in the blink of an eye.

One second, Will’s fine, standing by Mike’s side, fingers lightly brushing his own. The next, those fingers are clutching his stomach, and he’s calling out Mike’s name in a garbled, pained voice. Mike looks over, and blinks, and Will’s on the ground, twitching.

“Will,” he yelps, crouching down by his side. His hands flutter uselessly over Will’s body, trying to shake him out of it. “Will, are you okay?”

Is this a seizure? What are you supposed to do for a seizure? Do you turn them over? Sit them up? Or does touching them make it worse? Mike can’t remember, he can’t remember—

“Mike,” Will cries again, reaching for his hand. “It hurts, it hurts—”

Mike tangles their fingers together, holding on tight. “Will, what hurts, what’s wrong?” he asks desperately, voice straining.

But Will doesn’t answer. Instead, he flips onto his back, opens his mouth, and screams. He screams, and screams, and screams, voice blending in with the cicadas. His whole body convulses, too skinny and too sweaty and too small. Too fragile. He looks like he’s gonna break apart.

Mike knows, right then, that this memory will haunt him for the rest of his life.

His lips part—in horror, in terror, in a desperate prayer, who knows? “Will,” he whispers soundlessly. “Will.”

It’s all he can say. All he can think. All he can feel.

His whole world, in the shape of his best friend, dying on the grass.

Mike, just as he always is, fucking useless.

***

Burning. He’s roasting alive, boiling from the inside out, intestines on fire, skin on fire, eyes and nose and lips and ears on fire. 

He’s back in hell. Back in That Place.

He must have done something to deserve it. He must not have tried hard enough.

Flames lick over his body, cloud his vision, fill him up until it’s all over, everywhere, inside and out.

Through it all, there’s Mike.

Will closes his eyes, thinks of him, and burns even hotter.

Chapter Text

It’s dark. Dark and light, flashes and snippets of overlapping images. Nothing makes sense, everything hurts, and it’s the worst pain he’s ever felt, so much worse than dying in the Upside Down, so much worse than Dad giving him that black eye, so much worse than scraping his knee on the road when he fell off his bike. It hurts. 

His skin is pulled tight, stretched and dry-sweating, reddened and cracked at the joints. Every part of him is screaming: his fingers and toes, his stomach, his ribs, his heart. 

They hurt Him. They made Him mad.

And now Will is paying the price.

Distantly, he feels movement, sees shaky pictures of the world around him. He’s in a car, or a van or something. Mom’s crying. He wishes he could wipe her tears away, but his arms are shaking too bad.

Now-memories burn behind his eyes: pulsating tunnels of flesh. Flames licking along dirty bones, charring them to soot-covered crisps. Dart and his brothers, moving silently in the forest. Tracking prey.

Join us, Will.

The car stops. He opens his eyes briefly, sees the telltale silhouette of the lab, brick and mortar with tall, spiky fences. Someone’s screaming. It takes him a second to realize it’s him.

God, it burns. He feels like he’s one of those Salem witches or something, tied up and set on fire in the middle of the city. It must have felt just like this. Everyone watching. All the eyes. An audience for torture.

His chest compresses; someone’s strapping him down— no, no, wait, that hurts, he can’t breathe—

Will struggles on the gurney, twisting so hard that the restraints nearly cut into his skin, but he needs to get out, needs to be free, needs to join them, needs to… needs to…

“Go, go, go!”

“Hold on, sweetie—oh, god, hold on, please—”

“His vitals are dropping.”

“I know his vitals are dropping, get me more epinephrine—”

“No, not epinephrine, we should try—”

Where is Mike? Mike’s voice? Did he leave? Did something happen to him?

”Mom! Mom, Mom—Mike—”

Will opens his eyes, panicked, only for a heavy oxygen mask to be suctioned onto his face. He coughs around it, feeling even more like he can’t breathe, now, and his vision’s going dark and fuzzy around the edges, he’s so scared.

“Mike!” he screams again, desperate, terrified, hurting, and—

Mike’s here. Running along the hallway, hair sticking up all over the place, looking numb and overwhelmed, which is how he gets when he’s feeling too many emotions and has to shut down because of it. 

But he’s here.

Will closes his eyes again, and he’s in the tunnels. Tears drip down his cheeks, past the barrier of the oxygen mask, and into his nose—and he thinks he’s still screaming, but it’s hard to tell with all the ringing in his ears.

A voice breaks through the chaos. “I’m right here, sweetie. I’m right here, just hold on—”

Will singles out Mom’s voice. Uses it as a lifeline. Something to focus on, so he doesn’t get lost in the dark.

They lift him again, strange men and their strange hands, and he’s still burning, why hasn’t it stopped, what did he do wrong?

His back hits the bed, and he arches off it, too sensitive and sore, too rubbed raw to feel any comfort. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he’s absolutely mortified that Mike’s seeing him like this. But the fact that he’s here at all, and the overwhelming safety Will feels because of that, cancels out the embarrassment.

And the pain cancels out everything. So it doesn’t even matter.

“Vitals?”

“Heart rate’s two-twenty. Temperature’s one-oh-six.”

Fingers grab his face, and he just wants them to get off, to leave him alone, he hates this lab, hates these people, hates this night and everything that came before it, god, why is this happening to him—

“Will? Where does it hurt?”

“All over,” he screams, voice muffled by the mask. “Everywhere.”

Someone starts to cut his shirt open, ripping the fabric away—and Jesus, he really doesn’t want Mike to see him like this; he’s still at the foot of the bed, seeming scared and worried and checked-out and in complete disbelief that this is even happening at all. In that, at least, they’re on the same page. Or maybe not. Maybe Will can very easily believe that this is happening to him. Maybe Will is wondering how it hasn’t happened sooner.

“He says he’s burning,” Doctor Owens translates, which—Will didn’t even know he was saying that out loud. “Check for burns.”

His shirt’s taken off, and he struggles out of it, the fabric immediately sweaty and roughly abrasive against his skin. But his clothes aren’t the problem, and removing them doesn’t help. The problem is inside of him. 

You see, Will? You see what happens?

Go away, Will yells, and he doesn’t know if it’s out loud or not anymore. Go away, go away, go away!

Unfamiliar hands grab his shoulders, his belly, his wrists. It’s like Lab Day but a million times worse, a million times more intense.

Through it all, the screaming and the sweating and the insistent beeping of machines, there’s this horrible, horrible feeling. Like pure evil, sinking deep into his bones. He’s thought it was bad before, but this—

This will kill him.

“I don’t see anything,” the doctor says. “Where does it hurt the most, Will?”

“Everywhere!” he screams, voice raw, and then he’s sobbing again. “Everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.”

Something pokes his arm, blending into all the burning-hot pain. He barely even feels it.

And then, he doesn’t feel anything.

He sleeps. He dreams. He watches. He listens.

You wanted to forget, Will?

Fine. You’ll forget.

***

When everything’s calmed down, Mike’s directed to Will’s new room. Or, he thinks he is, at least, because his brain has been nothing but white noise for the past three hours. The shock blanket’s still draped around his shoulders, thick and comforting.

He kind of wishes his mom were here. Or Nancy. Hell, even Holly would be nice. He just… it’s stupid, and childish, but he’s scared. He’s scared of everything that just happened, everything he just saw.

He’s scared that Will’s not gonna get better.

And this is even stupider, but Mike kind of wants a hug. He wants to be held, like a little kid. He wants someone to pull him close and reassure him, tell him everything will be alright.

But Ms. Byers is in a conference with the doctors, and Mike’s certainly not gonna ask for a hug from Bob, so he says nothing at all. The only sound in the room is steady beeping, and the slight whoosh of Will’s breath.

“You’re a good friend.”

“Huh?” Mike says, startled. He blinks at Bob, trying to clear the tiredness from his eyes. It’s been so long since he’s gotten any sleep.

Bob gestures to Will. “You’ve really been there for him, you know? When I was a kid, I got kicked around. Not as bad as Will, but still. I didn’t have any good friends, any real friends, to help me through it.” His voice is hoarse from disuse and stress, and the whole thing takes Mike entirely off-guard.

“…I’m sorry,” Mike offers hesitantly, unsure what else to say, and Bob waves him off.

“It’s all in the past,” he says. “But Will’s lucky to have you.” They both watch him for a minute, looking small and pale on the hospital bed. Bob smiles wearily, then glances back at Mike. “He talks about you all the time.”

“He does?” Mike says, growing a little warm. He shifts in his seat. “I mean, we’re best friends,” he amends. “I talk about him a lot, too.” Then he pauses, desperately curious. “What does he say?”

Bob lets out a little laugh, looking back at Will. “That you’re smart. A good Dungeon Master. A good writer.”

“I’m not that good,” Mike mumbles. His cheeks feel crazy hot. Will said all that stuff about him? Really?

“I don’t know about that,” Bob says gently. “But you know what the most important thing is?”

“What?” Mike says softly.

The silence feels almost profound. Mike’s seeing a new side of Bob, a different side than the one he knew before all this, when he was just a vague shadow; a cheerful one-word greeting as Mike rushed past the Byers’ living room to Will’s bedroom. Different, even, than the focused, level-headed Bob that tracked distances on a map based only on Will’s drawings. 

This Bob is kind. Fatherly. The kind of father that Mike thinks he would like to have, the kind he imagines sometimes, in his head, when it’s late at night and he can’t sleep.

“You’ve stuck with him,” Bob answers. “You’ve been here, with us, this whole time. And you’re still here. That’s the most important thing you can do.”

A cog shifts in Mike’s brain. Some fundamental re-shaping of truths. For the entirety of the past year, he’s been vibrating out of his skin with need, wanting to feel needed, wanting to feel anything other than useless. Wanting to do something, to be part of the team, to fix problems and save the world. Save Will.

And now he’s doing it. He’s making a difference, just by being here. Just by sticking by his best friend, which is obviously something he would have done no matter what.

It feels good.

Of course, Mike’s never been the best at communicating, especially to a full-grown adult man that he hardly knows, so all that comes out of his mouth is a strangled: “Oh.”

There’s no way that that one sound, that one syllable, encompasses all the feelings crowding in Mike’s chest. That it gets across his appreciation for Bob, for Will. For the fact that Bob’s chosen to talk to him at all, when he’s probably busy processing all the bizarreness of the last twenty-four hours. Mike’s just some random kid that he ended up getting stuck with.

Huh. Will was right. Bob is a good guy.

Anyway, there’s no way that Mike’s dumb oh communicated all of that, but Bob smiles at him anyway. When the silence returns, it’s comfortable.

Mike goes back to his former activity: alternating watching Will and the door. Will and the door. Will and the—

“You should get some rest, kiddo.”

Mike makes a small noise of dissent, though that does sound really nice. He tugs his blanket tighter around his shoulders. “I’m fi—”

“I’ll keep watch,” Bob says, looking pointedly at the door. “I’ve got it, okay? Get some shut-eye.”

Slowly, Mike relaxes. He watches Will, sleeping peacefully on the bed, like nothing had ever happened. Like he hadn’t been convulsing on a gurney two hours ago, providing solid nightmare-fuel for the rest of Mike’s fucking life.

“Okay,” he whispers. “I’ll—just for a second. Wake me up in, like, thirty minutes.”

“Mm,” Bob says noncommittally, which isn’t much as far as promises go. There’s a smile tugging at his lips, and Mike is pretty sure he’s not gonna wake him up.

Still, his eyes are so heavy, and tingly, and just watching Will’s slow breathing is making his breathing slow down, too, until they match. Until Mike’s closing his eyelids, just for a moment, just for…

Until he’s slumping in the chair, mind calm and blissfully empty, blanket slipping from his loose hold onto the ground below.

The last thing he feels, before he drifts away, is the blanket’s return. It’s fitted snugly around his shoulders, and in his mind, he’s half in the lab, half in his bed at home, getting tucked in by Mom. 

“Goodnight, Mike.”

Well, that’s weird. Mom always calls him Michael.

He doesn’t have much time to think on that, though, before his thoughts melt away into the cosmos, like they were never there at all.

***

When Will wakes up, he doesn’t know where he is. Or… okay, he’s figuring it out. Context clues. Like the IV in his wrist, the hospital gown covering his body. All the noisy, clunky machines. Mike sleeping next to him, and—is it just him, or does Mike look older? When did his hair grow like that?

Everything’s too confusing, muddying and melding together in his brain. “Mom?” he croaks out, throat unbearably dry. She’s across the room, talking to some random guy. A hospital worker, he thinks.

At the sound of his voice, Mike jolts awake. The action is immediate, like he’d barely let himself sleep at all, like the slightest disturbance would have roused him. “Will,” he breathes out, smiling sleepily. “How are you feeling?”

“I don’t know,” Will answers, furrowing his brow. He’s not fully awake yet, hasn’t taken stock of his body. And his mind, at least, feels weird. Like… really weird.

Mom rushes over, eyes lighting up as they track over Will’s conscious state. “Hey, baby,” she says, reaching for his hand. He takes it gratefully, and her thumb strokes over his palm. “I’m glad you’re awake,” she murmurs.

The guy she was talking to leaves for a second, urgently shouting something down the hallway. Maybe getting his coworkers, or something, to come poke at Will now that he’s awake. Yippee.

“How you feeling?” she asks, an unintentional echo of Mike. “You okay?”

He frowns instead of answering. He’s not so sure he is okay.

The hallway man jogs back over to Will’s bedside, a friendly smile on his round face. “Hey!” he says, tone way too cheerful, and way too familiar. It sets off alarm bells in Will’s brain, because no stranger should be talking to him like that. Like they know him.

Will glances nervously at Mom. “Who is that?” he whispers, eyes darting over to the man.

Strangely, her face falls, expression skyrocketing past disappointment and confusion, straight to fear. Worry. Next to her, Mike straightens attentively in his chair, blanket slipping off one shoulder.

Instantly, Will knows he’s said something wrong.

“What?” Mom says, trying hesitantly for a smile. Will doesn’t return it, too busy staring at the stranger. His face has fallen, too.

“It’s me, big guy,” he says, which Will does not like. “It’s Bob.”

Will doesn’t know any Bobs. Especially not any that call him big guy. In fact, this is probably the first time Will’s been named as either of those things. He’s definitely not very big. And nobody even refers to him as a guy— it’s always kid, or boy, or even some different choice words that he hears mostly from Dad and the mean kids at school.

No, this is new. This is scary.

Then Bob reaches for his hand, which is even scarier. Stranger-danger, and all that. And Mom and Mike are right there to protect him, and this guy probably isn’t dangerous, but Will still yanks his hand away, on instinct more than anything else.

“Are you a…” Will frantically tracks his eyes over Bob, looking for clues. He’s wearing scrubs, but so is Mom, so that doesn’t mean much. But it’s all he’s got. “Doctor?” he finishes weakly, not entirely convinced.

Bob’s mouth flattens into a thin smile, almost a grimace, as he shares a concerned look with Mom. And they’re close, actually, now that Will’s waking up enough to think about it. Close in a way that he hasn’t seen Mom get with anyone, not even when she was together with Dad. Their shoulders are pressed together, cheeks nearly touching. And, even more weirdly, she seems comfortable with him. Like this is nothing out of the ordinary.

…How long was Will asleep?

“No,” Bob says sadly. “No, it’s just… Just me. Just Bob.”

Will still doesn’t know what that means. That doesn’t help him at all.

“Okay,” Will says quietly, and leaves it at that. He would say nice to meet you, because Mom always tells him to be polite, but really, it wasn’t that nice, and he doesn’t want to lie. He’s mostly just confused. And everyone else seems pretty confused, too, even Mike. Which is a bad sign, because Mike knows everything.

The machines beep. They all stare at each other, all equally bewildered. A heavy, undefinable weight hangs in the air as they wait for the doctors.

Will thinks there’s no possible way for this to get any more awkward than it already is.

Honestly, he just wants to sleep. He wants to sleep, and ignore the creepy voice in his head, and ignore Bob.

But Will Byers has never had a good track record for getting what he wants. So he waits for the doctors with everyone else. Waits to hear what’s wrong with him this time.

He hopes it’s nothing too bad.

***

Will’s eyes burn as the doctor shines the flashlight at him, but he keeps them open, because if he blinks, he’ll probably mess everything up and then they’ll have to start all over again. And this is already bad enough.

“Do you know your name?” the doctor asks.

Duh.

“Will,” he says steadily. Of course he knows his name. What kind of question is that?

“Your full name?”

“William Byers,” he says quickly. If this is a test, he’s acing it.

“Do you know… Do you know who I am?”

Ooh. A trick question. The man squints at Will quizzically, studying his face. Will studies him right back. Lab coat, fancy badge, medical equipment. Obviously, the answer is—

“A doctor.”

For a brief second, the man looks disappointed. He schools his expression, then asks, “Have we met before?”

Will tries to search his memories, but comes up blank. “I don’t remember,” he says apologetically. Is this like before? Is he supposed to know who this guy is? Is he offended that Will doesn’t remember him?

“Hmm,” the doctor says. Will thinks that’s a pretty weird answer. He just wants to know what’s going on.

“You don’t remember me?”

Will shrinks back into the pillows, shaking his head. Cold shame washes over him. Why doesn’t he remember? What’s wrong with him?

“Okay,” the doctor allows. He points at Mike. “How about this guy right here? You know who that is?”

Mike shuffles his feet, giving Will a hesitant little wave. For a long moment, all Will can do is look at him.

Of course he knows who Mike is. Mike is endless D&D campaigns in the basement, a dramatic narration of adventures. He’s the sound of a crisp high-five, the warmth of a lingering hug. He’s a bandaid on a skinned knee, an ice pack on a black eye. He’s affection and friendship and love, the first person outside of Will’s family that he could claim as his own. His person. Mike.

But Will doesn’t know how to say any of that. So instead, he keeps looking. In fact, he’s been looking for so long that Mike seems a little nervous, a little disappointed, like somehow the answer will be no. Like the answer could ever be no. 

“It’s alright,” the doctor says, placing a friendly hand on his shoulder. “Take your time.”

Will doesn’t need to take his time. “That’s my friend,” he says, very clearly and very firmly. “Mike.”

Mike’s cheeks go rosy with happiness, and he shares a soft, relieved smile with Mom. Will feels that happiness down to his toes. He did that. He made Mike smile.

But then a bearded man, off to the side, speaks up, and Will’s on trial again. “What about me, kid? You remember me?”

He’s smiling, too, like he’s already won. Like Will has any idea who he is. 

Slowly, he shakes his head, and the man’s smile drops right off his face. “They tell me you helped save me last night,” he says quietly. “You remember that?”

Will saved someone? What, like a superhero? That doesn’t sound like him. He’s too skinny and weak to do that.

That’s right, Will. You can’t save anyone. You can’t even save yourself.

He flinches. Then, when he remembers the man’s asked him a question, he shakes his head. No, he definitely doesn’t remember saving anyone.

The doctor speaks again. “You remember anything about last night? About… what happened?”

And just like that, the memory slots sharply into place. Pain. Burning.

“I remember… they hurt me,” Will says carefully, trying not to wince at the lingering hurt. Across the room, Mom’s face crumples up, and she turns into Bob’s shoulder. It’s still weird, to see her that close with someone. Will’s not used to it.

“You mean the doctors?”

But—no, that’s not right. These men weren’t doctors. They had big torches, lots of fire. They wore protective uniforms. Their heads were covered in shiny metal helmets. 

“No,” Will answers. “The soldiers.”

The doctor’s forehead wrinkles in confusion. “The soldiers hurt you?” he clarifies.

Will’s mouth opens without his permission. And when he talks, it’s not his words that come out. 

“They shouldn’t have done that. It upset him.”

Him. The Evil. That’s right. Will remembers now.

Mild shock ripples over the man’s face, before he smooths it out. A real professional. He pulls a glossy photo out of his pocket—one of Will’s own drawings. The shadow monster. But no, wait, not a monster at all. Just Him. Nothing to fear.

“You say, upset him,” the doctor echoes carefully. “Is this Him?”

Will doesn’t need to look at the photo for more than a second. He knows. Slowly, he nods. Yes.

The man thinks for a moment. He frowns thoughtfully, then turns to face the whole room. Will’s little ragtag audience. “Okay, I wanna try something,” he says, holding up a finger as he puts the photo away. “It’s gonna seem a little odd at first, but I think it’s really gonna help us understand what’s going on here.”

He swivels around in his chair, facing Will again. His hand is still on his shoulder, which makes Will uncomfortable. But it would be rude to ask him to take his hand off, so Will doesn’t. 

“Is that okay?” the doctor asks.

Will nods, because he’s guessing he doesn’t have much of a choice either way. “Okay,” he whispers, throat still hurting.

With that, a pair of workers wheel in a big glass tank on wheels. There’s something gross and slimy in there—Will can just barely see it through the walls. It’s alive. And he doesn’t have to look at it to know that, because he feels it. Feels its energy, pulsing away in the back of his mind. Feels something that’s not like a heartbeat, exactly, but life. A common thread of existence.

His heart races uneasily in his chest. 

“Now, Will,” the doctor says, holding out a hand towards him. “Let us know if you feel anything. Okay?”

Well, that’s simple enough. Will shoots him a thumbs up. Although, thinking about it, he’s already feeling something, so he’s not sure if he should say anything yet.

But he gets the sense that the doctor’s talking about a different type of feeling. So he waits.

One of the lab men turns on a big torch, and blue-hot gas comes out of it. Involuntarily, Will’s eyes widen. His mind prickles.

Danger.

The man holds the fire above the tank, close but not too close. Still, the part of Will that’s connected to the creature, the part with that pulsing life-force, screams in protest. And outside of his mind, the tank comes alive, screeching and chirping in pain.

“Feel anything?” the doctor prods.

Will concentrates, trying to breathe through the feeling. “Little sting,” he grits out, shifting uncomfortably.

“It stings? Where?”

The soldier holds the flame closer, and the burning sensation gets worse. Will sits up, clutching his ribs. “My—my chest,” he gasps.

Mom shifts closer. Everyone in the room looks extra concerned now, even Mike. His eyes are all big and sad, which makes Will sad, as a result.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” Mom murmurs, reaching out for him. “I’m here.” Her hand settles somewhere on his leg, and Will tries to focus on her touch, through the blankets, instead of the cracking, crunching pain in his sternum. 

“Alright, son,” the doctor says, squeezing his shoulder again. As the flame gets closer, and the hurt gets worse, he squints at Will. “How about now.”

“It burns,” he says urgently. How much longer do they want him to do this? Is it almost over? He can barely even feel his legs anymore, can barely feel anything, and he’s getting so hot that he can feel sweat dripping down his back.

The heat doesn’t let up. Instead, it gets stronger, more painful, until Will feels like he’s standing on the surface of the sun, getting charred to a crisp. “It burns!” he repeats, voice blending in with the creature’s agonized screams. 

“That’s enough, that’s enough!” Mom’s yelling, waving her arms angrily at the soldier.

The doctor ignores her. “Where?” he asks, voice low and intense.

“Everywhere!” Will whines, arching off the bed. He can’t breathe, can’t think, he’s dying and it hurts so bad, it’s too much—

Everything’s beeping and screaming and it’s loud, but the bearded man from before comes to Will’s rescue, putting one big hand on his shoulder and the other on the doctor’s coat. “Alright, you heard her!” he shouts, loud and authoritative. “That’s enough!”

At the foot of the bed, Mike’s shaking. To someone who doesn’t know him, it would be almost impossible to tell—but Will can see it, the slight trembling in his fingers, the twitch of his lower lip. He’s scared. 

He shouldn’t be here for this. He shouldn’t have to see this. Will wishes someone would lead him out, go sit with him in the hallway. 

At the bearded man’s words, the fire is put out. Slowly, Will’s internal temperature goes down to something that’s warm, but still manageable, and the stinging in his chest dissipates. “That’s it, honey,” Mom soothes, rubbing his shin. “Breathe. I’ve got you.”

Will breathes. In and out. In and out. 

Once everything’s calmed down, and the creature’s all shriveled up, life-force beating weakly in Will’s brain, and the machines he’s hooked up to are beeping at their normal, annoying pace, the doctor sighs. “Alright,” he says, to the room at large. “Everyone out. Joyce, Jim, can I speak to you outside?”

The soldiers file out, and Mom and the bearded man—Jim?—get up to follow the doctor. “I’ll be right back, honey,” she says softly, squeezing his leg once and letting go. “You just rest, okay?”

“Okay,” he says, voice tired and weak. His body’s still twitching with the aftershocks of pain, and his mind’s still throbbing with headache and fear and confusion. He just wants to know what’s going on.

But Mike’s here. So one thing, at least, is okay.

Everyone leaves except for Mike and Bob, who fixes himself in a chair in the corner of the room. “I’m not gonna bother you,” he says, holding his hands up. “I’ll just be right here.”

Will appreciates that. He feels bad for how rude he’s been to Bob, but it’s just—he doesn’t know him.

Mike takes a seat at his side, where Mom just was. They sit in silence for a little bit. In the quiet, Mike leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees and breathing harshly into his cupped palms, like he’s trying to calm himself down. Will watches him, too exhausted and hurt to do anything else.

When Mike pulls his hands away from his face, Will’s shocked to realize that his eyes are glossy with tears. Mike hardly ever cries. It’s one of the many things that Will admires about him, because Will’s always getting yelled at for not being manly enough. Because he cries all the time, over stupid stuff, like losing his good crayons or falling out of the tree in his backyard. And boys don’t do that. Crying is a girl thing.

But here Mike is, on the verge of tears.

Will frowns at him. “Are you okay?” he whispers.

Mike’s teary eyes go wide. “Am I okay?” he repeats. “I’m… I mean. Are you okay?”

Will shrugs. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“Neither did you,” Mike says stubbornly. The corner of Will’s mouth tugs up.

“I don’t know,” he says, because he doesn’t like lying to Mike. “I’m… It hurts. And nothing makes sense.”

Mike huffs out an exhaled breath. “Yeah, you can say that again,” he mutters.

“Nothing makes sense,” Will repeats dutifully, and Mike grins at him, like he can’t help it. 

A few seconds of silence pass, and Mike goes quiet. “I’m so sorry you’re hurting,” he says softly. “I wish I could make it better.”

Oh, Mike. Doesn’t he know? Can he really not tell?

“You are making it better,” Will says, then breaks into a rough, hacking cough. Immediately, Mike springs into action, leaning forward to rub large circles over his back.

“Will, are you okay? Do you need water? Do you want me to call for a doctor?” Mike worries, still smoothing over his back.

After a few long moments, the coughs subside. Will leans back against the bed, and Mike tentatively moves his hands back to his lap, fidgeting with them restlessly. Will watches him, and he seems almost haloed in the harsh hospital lighting. Like he’s Will’s guardian angel, or something equally as cheesy. 

“No, I’m okay,” he says eventually, a delayed response to Mike’s question. “You know why?”

A sweaty strand of hair flops into his face, then, and he tries to blow it away. His arms are too sore to move. The hair doesn’t budge, and he frowns, blowing harder.

“Can I—” Mike’s moving closer, and then, slow and dream-like, he brushes the hair off of Will’s forehead. His hands are so gentle. So careful, and soft. “There,” he whispers, sitting back in his seat. It feels like they’re engaged in the most intense staring contest ever, and Will’s burning all over again—but in a good way, this time.

“Why are you okay, Will?” he asks, as if he’s just now remembered Will’s words.

With all the might he can muster, Will beams at him, and tries not to let all his feelings leak out onto his face. He’s not so sure it works.

“Because you’re here,” he says.

In his corner of the room, Bob smiles.

Mike does, too.

And for that one, perfect second, all the Bad Feelings fade away.

Everything’s okay.

Chapter Text

In the following hours, Will’s too exhausted to do anything but lay in bed, eyes glazed over, distantly listening to the conversations around him. It’s like he has View-Master vision (…Where did that phrase come from, again?), and he’s seeing double. He blinks, and he’s in the hospital, in the sterile white room with Mike and Mom and Mystery Bob. He blinks again, and he’s in the tunnels. In the dark. In the fire.

Next to him, Mom sighs. Will doesn’t look over. He can barely even move his head.

“Hey,” Bob soothes. “It’s okay. Doctors take forever, always, so just… Try and relax, okay? Just be patient.”

Mom sighs again, a heavy gust of breath. There’s a tense silence, broken only by intermittent beeps from all the random machines.

When she sighs for the third time, Will knows she’s done with all of this. He doesn’t blame her—so is he. He wishes he could go home. He wishes he could sleep. 

“You know, I…” she mutters tersely. “I just—”

Will watches out of the corner of his eye as she stands, shrugging off her thick greeny-brown blanket, and leaves the room. Bob stares helplessly after her for a second, then gets up to follow.

It’s like Will’s seeing her through a kaleidoscope as she marches down the hall. Through a pair of blurry binoculars. She’s so far away, all the way out the door and by the soldiers, but Will can see her like she’s right in front of him. He doesn’t know how.

And He’s seeing her, too.

“Let me through. Let me through!”

They shove her off. “You know we can’t do that, ma’am—”

“I need to talk to him!”

“He’ll be with you shortly.”

“You said that an hour ago!”

The words, the pictures, swim together in his mind, leaving hazy streaks of color across his vision. His head hurts so bad, and he can barely even remember why, can barely even focus. It feels like he’s getting shoved further and further away, forced to watch his surroundings from a little back corner of his brain.

The beeping gets louder. Faster.

He blinks, and the pictures change, a little stop-motion horror film. Gun. Fire. Burning. Soldier. Danger. 

They hurt Him. They hurt Him. 

They shouldn’t have done that. 

Through the trance, through the sounds and colors and shapes, there’s a voice.

“Will.”

Will blinks. Fire. Burning. Soldier.

“Will!”

Tunnels. Darkness. The Evil, the monster, the devil. Him. 

“Will!”

Just like that, Will startles, back in his body for the first time in hours. He can move his head again, his arms, his legs. There’s a hand on his shoulder, fingers hesitantly curling into the fabric of his hospital gown. Grounding him. Bringing him back to himself. 

Mike.

Will’s chest heaves, breathing heavily, and suddenly he feels like he hadn’t been breathing at all, during those memories. It’s scary. How is he alive, if he wasn’t breathing? How is he moving, if he wasn’t before?

“What’s wrong?” Mike asks, voice careful and soft.

Will doesn’t know the answer. There’s too much to say. There’s nothing at all.

“Are you hurting again?” Mike presses, without sounding pushy. He’s always so good. Such a perfect friend. So nice, and cool, and… And…

And Will still doesn’t know how to answer. He props himself up on his elbows, because he can do that now, and tries to choke out a response. “Uh—I—”

Abruptly, he can’t speak. The Evil’s taken over his mouth. Too late, Will. Should have moved faster.

“I saw something,” The Evil says. Its tone is shaky. Fearful. A good imitation— too good. Mike doesn’t know; he can’t tell the difference. 

Why can’t he tell the difference?

“In your now-memories?” he says gently, trying to understand. 

Will’s head nods jerkily, up and back down. His shoulder turns to Mike, secretive and conspiratorial. (An act, it’s all an act, why can’t he stop—) “The Shadow Monster,” his mouth says. 

Mike’s eyes widen, but he stays quiet. Waiting. All the way on the edge of his seat.

“I think I know how to stop him.”

***

Twenty minutes later, the doctors have been called, and Will’s rushed into the conference room with his little entourage. They let Mike sit down next to him, while everyone else stands.

There’s a map on the table. Will’s map, laid out entirely in polaroid photos and scotch tape. The system burns behind his eyes, a mirror-image, and he knows that this map is correct. Knows the twists and turns of the tunnels, the winding path of the vines. It’s growing. Spreading.

Killing.

“Sam, this is ludicrous.”

The head doctor (Sam?) holds his arm out, a stern rebuke in his expression. “Just give him a moment, okay?”

“We don’t have time—”

“Hey, jackass,” the bearded, lumberjack-looking man shouts. “Why don’t you do us all a favor and shut up, okay?”

Will tunes them all out. He can hardly hear them, anyway, over the Voice. He doesn’t know these people, doesn’t know anyone other than Mike, next to him; his mom, beside him; and The Evil, inside of his head.

It feels like they’re in a fight, but Will’s losing really bad. Every time he tries to get his muscles to work, they’re overridden. Every time he tries to speak, The Evil shuts him up. Changes his words. It’s so bad, it’s so scary, and Jesus, Will’s about to lead them all into a trap, all because he’s not strong enough to overpower this thing. All because he’s too weak. Not man enough. Not strong enough. Not enough of anything.

Will is nothing, anymore. He’s a voice in his head. A ghost in his subconscious.

Someone new has taken over.

He tries so hard to move his arm that he feels breathless, feels like he’s trembling all over with the force of it. Outwardly, his body is completely still. Watching. Analyzing. Lying.

A choice is made. His legs straighten, and his body stands. It walks around to the side of the table, pointing at a big, lumpy mass. “That’s it,” The Evil says.

Doctor Sam leans over his shoulder, voice kind and patient. “That’s what?” he asks. “What’s there, Will?”

“I don’t know.” There’s a pause. Speak, Will begs internally, in the silence. Come on, move your mouth, Byers. DO something. Fight back, fight back, FIGHT BACK—

His mouth opens again. “I just know… He doesn’t want me to see there. I think… it’s important.”

No. 

No, no, no, they’re all gonna die, it’s a trap—

Let me out, he thinks. Let GO of me.

The quiet that follows feels almost mocking. Cruel.

Now that he’s enacted his plan, The Evil is done speaking.

And Will’s doomed them all.

***

Will’s been weird today. Ever since his second seizure, the one right after he started forgetting people. And—Jesus, just the fact that he’s forgetting people is enough to make Mike’s blood run cold. He thinks nothing will ever compare to the heady rush of relief he felt when Will said his name. When he revealed that Mike was one of the few. One of the chosen, spared from the unforgiving wave of amnesia.

But what happens if he keeps forgetting? If it gets worse?

What happens when he can’t remember Mike at all?

Everything is happening so fast, and Mike can hardly keep up. All he can do is watch, and be here, like Bob said, and look out for danger.

So, that brings him back to his original point. Will’s been weird today.

And, listen. Mike knows he sounds like a jackass. He’s fully aware. Like, of course Will’s acting weird, he just had two seizures in less than 24 hours, and there’s an evil monster taking up residence in his brain, and he’s been through more pain and suffering than Mike can even imagine. It’s fucking terrifying. He still hasn’t really processed it, because he’s pretty sure that the second he starts thinking about Will in pain, he’ll have a mental breakdown and never recover.

He can’t do that. Will needs him to be strong. 

But this type of weird—the type that Will’s been—is different. It doesn’t seem like a hurting type of weird, or a tired type of weird, or a scared type of weird. And Mike would know, because he knows Will, and he has a little index of signs and symptoms in his brain for all of his best friend’s moods, along with helpful suggestions to cheer him up. It’s been revised and perfected over the last year or so, and he’s actually really proud of it, if he does say so himself. 

This is new. 

This is, like… He doesn’t know. It’s almost like Will’s not even here. Like he’s zoned out so far that he’s broken away from his body. Like he’s dissociated. And Mike doesn’t know why. He doesn’t know how to fix it. He doesn’t even know if that’s actually what’s happening, or if he’s just going crazy and making it all up in his head. And given all the horrible stuff that’s happened in the last week or so, that’s a distinct possibility.

The other thing, though, the next piece of the puzzle, is that Will’s been quiet. And on one hand, that makes total sense. He’s hooked up to all these machines, and he’s going through all this shit, so Mike thinks he’s earned a little quiet time. A little rest.

But—like, take right now, for example. They’re waiting in the hospital room as the lab guys go off to investigate the tunnels. And Will’s silence is almost palpable, almost dangerous. His eyes are wide, staring aimlessly off at nothing, and his mouth keeps moving, lips parting imperceptibly like he’s trying to start a sentence.

That’s not normal, right? It’s not. That’s not, like, a resting kind of quiet. That’s more like an I’m-being-tortured-in-my-own-head kind of quiet.

Is no one else seeing this? Is Mike really the only one paying attention?

Shit. Something’s wrong here, really wrong, and Mike can’t crack it. Can’t figure out the specifics, the how, the why. 

It’s on the tip of his tongue. He knows it. He has all the pieces. He just has to put them together.

Will’s lips part again, shaped desperately around a silent vowel, and Mike opens his mouth to speak. He doesn’t know what’s about to come out—something stupid, probably. Something dumb, and not helpful, like are you okay or do you need some water?

But Will beats him to it, finally breathing words into the tense air.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” he whispers, a dry, painful-sounding croak. It sounds like the words alone took everything out of him.

Mike freezes.

Finally, Ms. Byers looks up, brow furrowed. “What? What do you mean, sweetie?”

Will’s face turns towards her, away from Mike, and in the movement, Mike can just glimpse the early shine of tears. When Will speaks again, his voice is cracking and thick. “He made me do it,” he chokes.

He made me do it.

Made him do what? What is Will talking about?

“Who?” Ms. Byers presses, shifting closer to Will. “Who made you do what?”

Will’s eyes are wide. Upset. Panicked. “I told you,” he says. “They upset Him.”

They upset Him.

He made me do it.

He made me—

“They shouldn’t have done that.”

Fuck.

Will’s words hitch on a sob. “They shouldn’t have upset him.”

Shit, fuck, goddamn—

“The spy,” Mike blurts.

What if He spies back?

We won’t let him.

Mike’s broken his promise. He watched the door, and held Will’s hand, and was here, but it wasn’t enough. He wasn’t enough. The Shadow Monster slipped right past him, right past his fingers and into Will’s brain. Into his mouth, his body, his limbs.

His words. His actions.

Will seemed weird today. He seemed like… Not Will.

Because he fucking wasn’t.

On the bed, Will’s shaking. Crying. God, that must have been so hard, he must have fought like hell to force those words out, and…

And people are in trouble. If they’re lucky, if Mike reaches them in time, they can be saved.

“The spy!” he repeats, frenzied now, and jumps up from his chair. He wants to check on Will, to comfort him, to make sure he’s okay after all that, but there’s no time. Without waiting for Ms. Byers or Bob, he sprints out of the room, nearly banging his shoulder on the doorframe, and races down the hall.

“Woah, woah, woah!” the guards shout, blocking him with strong, rigid muscles as he tries to push inside the tech room. And even though he’s been doing his push-ups, they’ve got the advantage. They’re not letting him through, like a solid, mean brick wall.

“I need to get through, it’s a trap!” he shouts, struggling against their hold. Arms grab him from behind, gentle but firm, and yank him out of the soldiers’ grasp. He turns around to look at Bob, desperate and worried and scared. “I need to warn them! It’s a trap!”

Bob’s only expression is one of bewildered confusion, the beginnings of concern. No one’s getting it, no one understands, and…

And Mike’s helpless to stop it. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how adult he feels. How smart. How capable. Because these guys have the power, these stupid gun-toting lab guys, and as long as they see Mike as a whiny little kid, they won’t take him seriously.

He’s trying to save them. Save their co-workers. Save everyone.  

But it’s no use. Like always, it’s no fucking use.

***

The tears won’t stop. Will’s finally got his body back, and Mike’s gone, and people are dying, and all he can do is cry. 

The fiery tunnels blaze in his mind. The soldiers. The dogs.

They’re killing them. And in a way, it feels like Will’s a part of it. Like he’s doing the killing, too. If he closes his eyes, if he concentrates, he can feel the fresh blood under his claws. Taste the copper on his teeth. Hear the sharp victory pounding restlessly in his heart.

Kill. Kill. Kill.

NO, Will thinks, and more tears spill onto his cheeks. No, no, no—

“Will, sweetie, talk to me,” Mom begs, shaking him by the arms. “You gotta help me understand, you gotta—”

His whole body trembles. His voice does, too. “It’s too late,” he tells her. Too late, he couldn’t stop it, couldn’t save anyone, couldn’t remember, couldn’t—Couldn’t—

But maybe there’s still a chance. Maybe he can still save one person. 

(One’s not enough, where did Mike go, is he okay, is he okay? Will needs to warn him, but he can’t move.)

He stares up at his mom, and for a single, terrifying second, he doesn’t recognize her. Doesn’t remember.

Focus. Laughing in Castle Byers. Big, cheesy pans of lasagna. A lit lamp, a voice in the dark. 

Remember. 

“They’re almost here,” he tells her, as her features solidify in his mind. He fights to keep his voice steady, because this is important. This is the only thing left that he can do. He needs to fight through the fog. 

He needs to focus on the light. 

Without Mike, though, he doesn’t know how much longer he can. He can already feel himself slipping away, rubber tennis shoes sliding on a wet floor, The Evil dragging him back, back, back… Back…

Until he’s not there at all. Until Will is no more.

Mom will have to save herself.

***

The first thing Mike hears is the banging. Bodies against glass, hard and relentless. Thud. Thud. Thud.

The second thing he hears is the snarling. Wet and violent. Bloodthirsty.

Bob’s hands are still on his chest, holding him by the wall, but all the sensations surrounding Mike fade away. Gone, gone, gone.

He blinks, and for a breathless, horrifying moment, he’s back. Back in the halls of Hawkins Middle, blood staining the linoleum, fear racing through his veins, a real-live monster bursting out of the wall.

The sirens sound.

Shit. Fuck, the sirens are sounding. 

Bob’s hands slacken on Mike’s shirt. “What the hell?” he mutters, staring up at the flashing alarms.

Mike’s fingers clutch at Bob’s wrist. “We’re too late.”

Somehow, Bob’s still not getting it. “What?” he asks, brows furrowed in confusion.

With the hand that’s holding Bob’s wrist, Mike pushes him away. Will. He needs to get back to Will. “We’re too late!” he yells, breaking off and starting down the hallway. He hears footsteps behind him, so at least Bob’s following. That’s good.

In the hospital room, Ms. Byers looks like she’s on the verge of pulling out her hair. Her eyes widen as she sees Mike. “What’s going on?” she asks helplessly, arms spread wide. 

“We’re under attack,” Mike pants out. His eyes dart behind her, to Will. Will, who looks ragged and zoned-out. Will, who’s not Will. Not anymore.

He’s gotta be somewhere in there, deep down. He’s a fighter. Mike knows he is.

But in the meantime…

He looks around the room for a solution. They can’t just knock him out, not with a punch or something, that would be horrible, and it would hurt. There’s gotta be something that they can use, though. Something to put Will out of his misery. Something to block off the painful, evil connection in his brain.

On the desk behind him, there’s a box of Propofol. Mike racks his brain quickly, thinking back to Mr. Clarke’s science class. They’ve just gone over medical drugs and their uses, and Mike thinks… No, he knows that Propofol can knock you out. This is too important for guessing. For self-doubt. If this is the wrong drug, it could hurt Will. 

But Mike knows he’s right. He knows it.

He rips open the box, taking out the syringe inside. “We need to make Will sleep,” he says firmly. He doesn’t look at Will, because he can’t. If he gets one glimpse of his terrified, betrayed expression… Well, he might cave. He might take it back. And this, like he said, is too important.

He couldn’t save the scientists. The soldiers. But he can still protect his best friend.

Protect him. Protect Will.

The mantra thrums through his veins, like a shot of adrenaline. This is his purpose. This is why he’s here. Will needs him.

“What?” Ms. Byers exclaims, eyeing the needle wildly. 

“He’s a spy,” Mike tells her, pushing down the guilt in his head. “If he knows where we are, then so does the Shadow Monster.”

“He’s lying,” Will snarls, jackknifing off the bed. And… Fuck, that doesn’t even sound like him. He’s really not in there, is he? The Shadow Monster’s the only one home, and it shows.

“He killed those soldiers!” Mike says desperately, glancing out the door. They don’t have time for this. “He’ll kill us, too.”

Mike hopes that if Will’s in there, he knows Mike’s not talking about him. It’s not Will’s fault. It’s the Shadow Monster’s, capital-H His. 

Will wouldn’t hurt a fucking fly. Even in D&D, he always picks defensive spells over offensive ones. He always tries to reason with the monsters, to convert them to the Light side, to help them. 

It makes all of this even less fair. Will’s the one person in Mike’s life, the one person in the world, that’s the least deserving of this situation. 

Mike wants to fucking scream.

Will, though, has that covered.

“He’s lying! He’s lying, he’s lying, he’s lying—” Will yells violently, voice straining with rage. Too much rage for his small body. Too many voices in one mouth. Ms. Byers tries to hold him down, hands fluttering all over his chest. Bob rubs uselessly at his shoulder.

Outside, something sharp and loud cracks through the air. Then again.

“Those are gunshots!” Bob yelps, twisting around to look. 

The monsters are here. They’re coming faster and faster, and they’re completely defenseless, they need to move.

“He’s lying,” Will sobs, eyes frantic and huge. “He’s lying, he’s lying!”

I’m not, Will, Mike thinks, close to tears himself. Friends don’t lie. 

“Okay, okay, listen,” Ms. Byers says sharply, cutting off Will’s diatribe. “Do you know who I am?”

Mike narrows in on Will’s face. He goes through a series of quickened expressions. The first, though, is total unrecognition. Blank confusion.

It’s terrifying.

Then, like a flip-book, Will makes a series of micro-expressions, like he’s searching his memory for something. No—like He’s searching his memory. 

“Do you know who I am?” Ms. Byers repeats, voice cracking with emotion.

“You’re… you’re…” Will searches her face. Mike watches, needle in hand, anxiety building in his chest.

“Mom,” he blurts, like he’s answering a question on a test. “You’re Mom.”

Ms. Byers’ face falls. Her entire body slumps—with disappointment, with resigned acceptance.

They both know, now. That’s not Will.

Ms. Byers swallows over the lump in her throat, then turns to Bob. “Hold him down,” she says quietly.

“Mike?” she asks, holding a hand out. Wordlessly, Mike passes the syringe. Tears burn behind his eyes, hot and pressing. They don’t fall.

“No,” Will says, in horrified realization. His entire expression morphs, into one of genuine terror. For a second, he and Mike lock eyes.

That’s when Mike starts crying.

His friend isn’t behind those eyes. He’s somewhere far, far back. Locked away. Hidden. 

Mike hopes he’s not hurting too bad.

“No, no, no,” Will pleads, voice breaking with tears. “No, let me go!”

Mike can’t take it anymore, can’t hear the tortured agony in Will’s voice, so he claps his hands hard over his ears.

It doesn’t work. He can still hear him, just fainter.

“Let me go, let me go—”

“I’m sorry,” Ms. Byers cries. “I’m so sorry, baby.”

She plunges the needle into his arm.

Will’s screams die off, and his eyelids flutter. His head slumps, then his neck, then his shoulders. A puppet with its strings cut.

Finally, everything’s still.

Finally, it’s quiet.

Chapter Text

Will looks so peaceful when he sleeps. He looks calm, like the past few days never happened, like the hallway outside isn’t full of screaming and gunshots and red-alert noises. 

Hopper and Doctor Owens burst into the room within seconds, taking in the scene with frantic eyes. Will, passed out on the bed. Ms. Byers, holding a needle to his arm. Bob, forehead scrunched in distress, a hand resting lightly on Will’s forehead.

Mike, shaking in the corner and trying his hardest not to dissociate. 

Hopper looks at them all. He looks back into the screeching, flashing hallway. “We gotta go,” he says faintly. Then, louder and more urgent, “We gotta go!”

He moves to Will’s bedside and scoops him up, Ms. Byers helping situate his arms and legs. Mike gravitates closer, nervous and scared, not liking the way Will’s head flops back, not liking how rough Hopper’s grip is, not liking how small his best friend looks like that, scooped up in the police chief’s big arms.

They rush through the hallway in a little haphazard group, Mike’s heart beating out his chest, his eyes trained on Will, his hands reaching out, fluttering uselessly, overcome with the urge to take and hold and carry his friend to safety. His arms burn with the strength of his nine, almost ten, push-ups record. His ribs ache with the feeling of helplessness, the words protect him and be there for him tattooing across his sternum in a panicked daze.

He wants to carry Will. He wants to tuck him to his chest, to cradle his gangly, freckled legs, to press his forehead to—

God. That’s… that’s a little weird, isn’t it? Yeah, he’s hearing himself now. It’s just, like, a side-effect of the adrenaline. Some sort of crazy urge, traveling up through the blood-stained floor, through Mike’s sneakers, and straight up to his brain.

He keeps running.

There’s a lady screaming somewhere, high-pitched and terrified, and all Mike can think is he hopes to god he’s not next. It’s selfish, but if the monsters are distracted, they won’t be coming their way. They won’t be coming for Mike and Will and Ms. Byers and Bob and Hopper. And Doctor Owens, Mike guesses, though he’s admittedly last on his list of priorities.

In front of him, a door slams off its hinges. A lab-coated woman falls to the ground, a small demogorgon attacking from the front. Within seconds, her coat goes from stark white to a deep, wet burgundy. 

The screaming stops.

That’s—horrifying, yeah, but Mike has no time to process it. All it means, for now, is that they can’t go that way, that it’s not safe. He whips around, along with the group, only to see one of the soldiers shooting down the side hallway at an unseeable target, shoulder locked and eyes narrowed.

“This way,” Doctor Owens urges, crowding them through an open door. Gratefully, Mike follows. The room inside is small, sparsely-decorated, and bland. But most importantly, it’s free of monsters. It’s safe.

“Oh my god,” Bob whispers, staring at something on the wall. Mike follows his gaze, and—shit. Jesus Christ, shit, fuck, mother fucker. 

This is bad. This is really, really bad.

The far wall’s lined with TV monitors, and each monitor displays a small window of horror, of unimaginable carnage. Mini-demogorgons, like Dart but bigger, ripping apart the lab, and all the people in it.

The whole place is going down. Which, ordinarily, Mike wouldn’t care much about, other than the abstract sympathy of people he doesn’t know being brutally murdered—these aren’t just any strangers, though, they’re lab men, Bad Men, and the habit of blind hatred is hard to kick—but right now, he cares. He cares about this stupid lab, because he’s in this stupid lab, and people he cares about are in this stupid lab, and… Fuck. Fuck, they’re in so much trouble.

As if to put a fine point on it, the lights flicker, which automatically makes Mike’s stomach drop, anticipating the violence and danger that usually results from electrical malfunctions. The TV monitors go dark. The room is plunged into an uneasy, inky black, only lit by the faint yellow glow of the hallway outside.

“Flashlight,” Hopper grunts, setting Will down on a nearby chair. He rushes to the back of the room, rummaging around in the storage bins, while Mike stares at Will’s floppy head, his dangling arms. Mike’s fingers flex with the urge to reach out, but he stays stubbornly rooted to the spot. He needs to leave Will alone. To stay level-headed. That’s what’s best for everyone, right now.

A beam of light slices through the air, and Doctor Owens spreads out a paper map on the table, peering at it critically. He pulls a pen out of his pocket, clicks it, and points the tip at the center of the map. “Look, this is us,” he says, then moves the pen across the page. “And this is the nearest exit.”

Mike listens attentively, even though at least half his mind is still on Will. Focus, he tells himself sharply. Focus. He needs you. 

Owens slams a fist against the table, tone turning frustrated. “But even if we make it there, there’s no way out.”

Hopper’s fingers tighten on his flashlight. “What do you mean?”

“The locks are fail secure,” Owens explains, turning to face him. 

“Fail secure?” Ms. Byers repeats, fingers trembling.

“If there’s a power outage, the building goes on full lockdown.”

Bob’s brow furrows thoughtfully. “Can it be unlocked remotely?”

Owens waves a dismissive hand. “With a computer, sure, but someone’s gotta reset the breakers.”

As soon as he says that, Mike knows what’s gonna happen. He knows, because Bob’s expression goes all determined in the low light, dramatically half-shadowed like some kind of comic book hero. He knows, because Bob told him earlier, while they were sitting in the hospital room, that he was a bit of a computer nerd growing up, that he was the original founder of AV club, that he was friends with Mr. Clarke, that he taught him everything he knows about technology. Which—aside from that being the coolest thing ever, it also makes Bob extremely valuable, in this moment. Extremely useful.

And Mike knows what a rare, powerful feeling that is. To be needed. It doesn’t happen all that often, for guys like him and Bob. 

When you get the chance, you leap on it, just as eagerly as one of those mini-demogorgons in the hallway devouring their prey. Or at least, Mike would. And, not to assume, but he thinks he and Bob are kinda wired the same way. So that means Bob would, too.

“Where are the breakers?” Hopper asks, jaw clenched. Now, there’s a guy who’s used to feeling needed. Just like Mike can tell what Bob’s thinking, he can tell what’s going on in Hopper’s head, too. He can tell that Hopper’s planning to go and save the day, be the big heroic Chief of Police.

But does he know how to reset a breaker? Somehow, Mike seriously doubts it. The other week, when he talked to Mike at the library (for whatever reason), he asked if he was still playing his game thingy. Which, like, how hard is it to remember the word Atari? It’s five freakin’ letters!

Owens returns to his map. “They’re in the basement. Three floors down.”

And just like Mike knew he would, Hopper starts marching off. Bob, as predicted, races after him. “Hey! Where are you going?”

“To reset the breakers,” Hopper bites out, eyes hard.

“Okay, then what?” Bob asks. 

“Then we get the hell out of here.”

Bob’s already shaking his head before the sentence is fully out. “No, then the power comes back on,” he corrects. “If you wanna unlock the doors, you have to completely reboot the computer system, and then override the security codes with a manual input.”

Hopper’s face turns uncertain, then a little annoyed, hand still lingering on the door handle. “Fine. How do I do that?” he says impatiently.

“You can’t!” Bob protests. “Not unless you know BASIC.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Hopper says, voice straining.

Yeah, no shit.

“It’s a computer programming language,” Mike says, partly to be helpful, and partly to be a little shit. Hopper’s obliviousness about technology will never not be funny, even when they’re all in life-threatening danger.

Hopper stares Bob down. “Okay, teach it to me.”

Mike has to bite down on his tongue to stop from laughing, because that would be wildly inappropriate right now, but also—holy shit. Hopper really is clueless.

Bob seems to share Mike’s train of thought. He scoffs in disbelief. “Should I teach you French while I’m at it, Jim? How ‘bout a little German?” With that, he turns around to face Owens. “How about you, Doc? You know BASIC?”

“Ah—no,” Owens admits, shaking his head. Bob doesn’t ask Mike, which honestly stings a little, because hey, he totally could know BASIC. But he doesn’t, so he shakes his head too. He’s been planning on learning it, honestly—but the Party had chosen to spend last summer learning morse code together, instead, because that way they could tap out secret messages to each other in class and totally get away with it. 

They all picked up on it pretty well, except for Lucas, who didn’t really care. Mike’s not as good as Will and Dustin, though—they’re the best, able to tap out fully complex messages that have them both giggling all throughout American History. Mike had started studying up after that, because he wanted to have those kinds of conversations with Will. He wanted to know what Will was saying, through those little twitches of his fingers, that made Dustin snort so hard that Mrs. Hiro whipped around and glared him into silence. 

Bob breathes out a disbelieving laugh, then starts nodding, eyes a little wild in the dark. “Okay. I got this,” he says, almost to himself. He looks up at everybody, resolute and resolved. “I got this,” he repeats, more steadily. 

“No,” Ms. Byers whispers, already tearing up. “Bob.”

She moves forward, as if pulled by an invisible string, and they hug. “It’s okay,” Bob whispers, and she tucks his face into his shoulder as he rubs over her back. “It’s okay. I’ll be alright.”

Mike watches them, and something pangs low in his ribcage, a solid ache. A hole where someone else should be. He wants to hug someone like that. To comfort them. For them to comfort him, though he’d never admit that out loud.

Maybe… maybe El would do that for him, if she were here. Since they kissed that one time, and they were basically boyfriend-girlfriend before everything went to shit. 

But, as always, she’s not fucking here, and Will’s passed out in the corner, possessed and traumatized and completely spent, and Mike’s alone. He’s alone, and he’s being stupid right now. He’s being… This is so fucking dumb. It’s not even important.

Bob pulls away, but keeps his hands firmly gripped on Ms. Byers’ biceps. “I’ll be okay,” he repeats. “Remember? Bob Newby, superhero.” He wiggles his eyebrows playfully on that last word, looking off into the distance with a little exaggerated pose. Ms. Byers gives a wet-sounding giggle in response, and the corner of Mike’s mouth twitches up.

And with that, Bob’s gone, Hopper trailing after him. Off to save the day. Off to be heroes.

Mike commits the moment to memory, just in case he never sees them again.

***

After Hopper comes back, it feels like they wait in a tense silence for hours, the only sound in the room being the soft puffs of Will’s unconscious breathing. Mike stands in the middle, anxiously swaying and tapping his feet and fingers and toes, feeling like he’s about to explode with all these nerves, all this stress. 

This is his fault. 

It’s his fault. He knew Will was acting weird, knew that something was wrong, and he should have figured it out sooner. Should have been smarter, faster, stronger. Better.

And now they’re all in trouble, including Will. God, at least he’s asleep, so he’s not being put through all this shit. Mike hopes, at least, that he’s safe in his own head. That the Shadow Monster can’t get to him while he’s knocked out. Mike doesn’t exactly know how all that works, though.

Above his head, the lights flicker to life. The TV monitors turn on one by one, each displaying an incomplete puzzle piece of the bloody labyrinth of Hawkins Lab. Mike steps closer to the wall automatically, heart pounding in his chest as he searches the screens. And—

There he is. Bob. He’s crouching by the breakers, gun in hand, unmarred by the gore and guts of the room around him. There’s two dead agents laying at the bottom of the screen, ripped nearly to shreds in dull shades of blue and gray pixels. 

But Bob’s alive. And the lights are on.

“He made it,” Mike breathes, pride flooding through his entire body. The relief is overwhelming, but still tempered. Bob still has to make it back. To make it out. They all do.

Just the fact that he’s made it this far, though, is a cause for celebration.

Owens rushes to the front of the room, pressing a big red button on the radio system. “Okay, Bob, can you hear us?” he says loudly.

The room seems to hold its breath, swelling and contracting with anticipation.

The speaker crackles. “Loud and clear, Doc. Can you hear me back?”

Mike lets out a whoosh of air, shoulders slumping. This is going… shit, this is actually going well. He shifts closer to the side of the room and knocks lightly on the wall, just in case he jinxed it.

“We hear you,” Owens confirms. 

“Alright, gimme a minute,” Bob pants. Mike can tell he’s had a hard journey, that the pressure’s already getting to him. On the screen, tiny, blue-and-gray Bob fiddles with some random wires, with the computer in the tech room.

“Open sesame.”

At Bob’s words, Owens nods. “It’s open,” he says quietly, almost in disbelief. 

Mike can hear Bob’s grin, over the radio, more than he can see it. “Easy peasy.”

For the first time that night, Hopper’s face breaks into a wide grin. “Son of a bitch did it,” he says, words tinged with pride.

Mike stays quiet, but tucks a small smile into the collar of his jacket. He wishes Will were awake to see this, to share in the triumph, to witness Bob’s heroics. He’d never call him lame or embarrassing again. Shit, nobody will, after this.

“Right, I’ll meet you outside,” Bob says determinedly. On the monitor, he stands, moving to the other side of the small room.

“Nice job,” Owens praises. No sooner than the words leave his mouth, though, there’s a deep roar over the speaker. His head whips to the side monitor, eyes searching for the source. “Hold on a second, Chief.”

From where he’s been moving back, preparing to grab Will from his slump, Hopper freezes. “What’s wrong?”

Owens points a finger at a left-side monitor. “West stairwell’s not clear anymore,” he says tersely. Mike follows his gaze, and sure enough, there it is—a mini-demogorgon, pacing up and down the hall with its sharp claws.

Bob’s voice pops into the room. “What’s going on?”

“We’ve got some company,” Owens replies, leaning in over the microphone.

“Where?”

“West stairwell.”

Barely a second passes before Bob talks again. “I’ve got an idea.”

After that, there’s only silence. Mike’s foot starts tapping again.

They watch as Bob moves back to the computer, typing away furiously on the keyboard. “What the hell’s he doing?” Owens mutters.

“Okay,” Bob says, after a few more moments. “And… splash.”

On a top-row monitor, the sprinkler system sputters to life. Down below, the demogorgon’s distracted, head snapping towards the source of the sound. A second later, it’s hurtling up the stairs.

“Okay,” Owens echoes, seemingly impressed. He glances over his shoulder, sharing a small smile with Hopper. “Okay! That worked. Now get outta there. Go, go, go!”

Bob, as directed, books it out of the control room. And back in their hiding spots, the lab crew gets ready to go, too. Hopper resumes his previous action, picking Will up and tossing him over his shoulder like a potato sack. 

“Wait a second, Chief!”

Hopper pivots to face Owens, and Will’s head sways dangerously with the motion. Mike bites his tongue so hard he tastes blood.

“What?” Hopper pants, adjusting Will over his shoulder.

Owens holds out a radio. “Take this.”

He takes it, brow furrowed. “What are you doing?”

“Any more surprises, I’ll let you know,” Owens explains, gesturing to the security system. “Go. Go,” he adds firmly, when Hopper doesn’t respond. 

“Fine,” Hopper bites out. He grabs his gun from where it’s propped against the wall, then turns back to Mike and Ms. Byers. “Stay behind me.”

Gladly.

So they follow Hopper out into the hallway as he balances Will on one arm, and a rifle and flashlight on the other. It’s an impressive maneuver, honestly—he looks like he could shoot a demogorgon dead center and not bat an eye. 

Mike crouches automatically, doing a sort of hunched-over half-walk, half-run down the hallway. Like she knows he needs it, Ms. Byers places a comforting hand on his back, grounding him in place. A tether. A lifeline.

The walk down the hall seems endless. Excruciating. Mike flinches at every sound, every flash of light. It’s… It’s almost been too easy. 

He waits for the other shoe to drop.

But nothing comes for them. The hallway is silent, marked only by evidence that the monsters had already been here, already feasted and took and ravaged and left. Mike steps over a dead man’s mauled shin, and tries not to hurl. The smell is almost worse than the sight—rotten and festering, the copper tang of blood mixed with the oozing flesh of the demogorgon. Underneath it all, there’s still the clean sterility of the lab, rubbing alcohol and floor polish.

Once they get to the front door, freedom’s so close Mike can almost taste it. He breaks into a run, separating from Ms. Byers and pulling ahead of the group in the process. They’ve made it. They’re safe, or close to it, so, so close—

Bob’s still not here. But he’s coming, right? He has to be.

Mike pushes the door open, hands solid against the metal handle, and Hopper follows close behind, right on his heels. 

“Take him,” Hopper grunts, and Mike barely has a second to process the words, to gulp in the cool, fresh night air, before Will’s being handed off to him.

Instinctively, Mike bends his knees and holds out his arms in anticipation of the extra weight. It feels like every point of contact lights up at once—first the scratchy thinness of Will’s hospital blanket, resting against Mike’s palms. Then the drop: the transfer of precious cargo, Will’s body nestled safely in Mike’s arms. Hopper lets go, and then it’s all Mike.

He knows right away that he can’t carry Will fireman-style, like Hopper did. His friend is tiny, but he’s still at least seventy pounds, and that’s a lot of pounds for Mike. His arms burn, the memory of every single girl-style push-up coursing through his muscles, as he carefully shifts Will in his hold, lowering his relaxed feet to the ground. 

Mike turns Will around, until they’re almost in a hugging sort of position, Will’s face snuffling softly against Mike’s shoulder, their hearts sidling right up against one another. Mike’s heart, he knows, is beating right out of his chest. He wonders if Will can feel it. If he can register the sensation, deep within the hazy confines of sleep.

Slowly, Mike moves his arms so that they’re around Will’s sides, hands clasped behind his back, head resting on his shoulder. A proper hug, if you ignore the fact that Will’s not hugging back. He knows Will can’t hear him, but still, Mike whispers, into the cheap fabric of Will’s hospital gown: “It’s okay. I’ve got you, you’re safe. We’re okay.”

He repeats the words over and over, swaying back and forth on his heels, eyes scrunched tight. If he doesn’t look around him, he can pretend that Will’s awake. That nothing’s wrong. He can pretend that what he’s saying is true.

When Will starts to get a little too heavy, Mike turns him back around, grip as gentle and as respectful as he can make it, and readjusts his hands. His elbows hook under his friend’s armpits, struggling to keep him off the ground. Will’s body bends in an L-shape, as if in an invisible chair, and his head lolls to the side, hair flopping softly over his eyes.

Mike likes this position a lot less. He can’t feel Will’s heartbeat anymore.

Hopper’s visibly anxious, gun at the ready, weight distributed entirely on his toes so he can leap into action at any moment. Ms. Byers is still waiting inside for Bob, and though Mike can just barely see her from his position in the entryway, he can tell she’s biting her nails, craning her neck for a glimpse.

Hopper glances back at Mike and Will, at Will’s dangling legs. He raises an eyebrow. “You got him, kid?”

It hits Mike, then, that Hopper witnessed the whole not-hug thing, heard Mike whispering platitudes to Will’s unconscious body. 

Offended and a little embarrassed, Mike tightens his grip, hoisting Will higher in his arms. “I’ve got him,” he replies snippily, nose scrunching.

There’s no time for Hopper to respond, though—because one minute it’s quiet, and the next, Ms. Byers’ scream is breaking through the night air.

Hopper tenses, eyes going wide. “Joyce,” he breathes out, panic clear in every syllable, and darts inside.

“Shit,” Mike whispers. Unthinkingly, his hand strokes over Will’s arm, fingers brushing against the papery sleeve of his gown. “It’s okay, Will. She’s okay, you’re okay, we’re safe.”

He wants to add: I promise, but… he can’t. Not when he doesn’t know if it’s true. He’s broken enough promises today.

A second later, there’s another scream cracking through the atmosphere.

Bob.

Mike’s blood runs cold, because—that’s not a scared scream. That’s a scream of brutal pain, of intense torture. That’s how Will had sounded last night, before the doctors sedated him.

Bob’s in trouble.

Mike closes his eyes against the amalgamation of sounds: screaming and gunshots, snarling and sirens and the tearing of flesh. 

He wants to clap his hands over his ears, to curl up in a little ball on the ground and block out the entire world, but he can’t. He can’t, because he’s been trusted with one job, and that’s to hold his best friend. To protect him. To keep him safe.

Mike won’t let him down.

He opens his eyes again and starts scanning the skyline, the spiraling driveway, assessing the best paths of escape. He pictures how he would have to hold Will, how he would have to adjust his grip, how far he could make it before exhaustion hit. 

What if nobody comes back out? What if it’s just Mike and Will, up against an army of otherworldly monsters? It’s like that one D&D campaign, back in March, where the whole Party died off, and Will’s character got sick with swamp fever, and Mike had to drag him through the enchanted forest to reach the healing spring, battling off troglodytes and thessalhydras as he went. 

It had been a long and perilous journey. But he did it. He did it for Will, for his soft smile and flushed cheeks, for the goodbye hug he’d given Mike at the end of the campaign that lasted about ten seconds longer than usual.

And he’ll do it again. He will. But… Mike doesn’t know if he’s up to it, because this isn’t a game, it’s real life, and he doesn’t know if he’s capable of saving anyone. Of dragging Will’s seventy-pound body through the forest until they reach civilization.

And what then? What happens when Will wakes up? He’ll still be possessed. Would Mike be able to help him? Would he have to knock him out again? Does he have the guts?

He’ll have to. If it comes down to that.

Tension zips through his body, culminating in his feet, pooling in the soles of his sneakers. He’s ready to get the hell out of here. He’s ready to save Will.

The logistics will have to come later.

Luckily, though—or unluckily, Mike’s not sure—he’s saved from having to take off into the night. Hopper drags Ms. Byers out the door, kicking and hitting and screaming, wholly devastated in a way that Mike’s never seen her before. “Bob!” she screams, sobs cutting through her voice. “Bob, Bob— no—”

“What happened?” Mike yells, throat raw and straining. “What happened?!”

Nobody answers him. But that’s okay, because he knows.

He just doesn’t want it to be true.

Demogorgons slam the other side of the glass doors, splintering the material at the point of impact. Mike flinches, tears building hot behind his eyes, and holds Will tighter.

Ms. Byers thrashes wildly in Hopper’s arms, crying in earnest now, and he grips her firmly by the elbows, bending down to look into her watery eyes. “He’s gone! He’s gone,” Hopper says.

He’s gone.

Gone.

And there it is—the other shoe.

It feels like a kick in the ribs. It feels like jumping off the quarry without intervention, this time. Like if Mike had actually hit the bottom, shattering all his bones on impact.

He closes his eyes, letting the sorrow wash over him in waves. Brings back his memories of Bob, from the short time he knew him, the few things they shared together. Bob’s kindness. His creativity. His intelligence. His large, gentle hands, pointing at crayon-scribble drawings in the kitchen, fixing a blanket over Mike’s slumped shoulders. His bright, comforting smile. The sound of his laugh, always so loud and unashamed.

You’re a good friend. 

What’s at the X? Pirate treasure?

He talks about you all the time.

Then those moments are over, and Will is growing heavier in Mike’s arms, and his biceps are trembling, and Ms. Byers is still screaming like she’s the one that’s—that’s—

Yeah. Mike needs to get a hold of himself. There’s no time to mourn. He has to focus on the people that are here, the people he can still help.

In his peripheral vision, a light blares. A horn honks, sudden and sustained. Mike’s head whips around, every muscle lined with tension.

Ms. Byers’ car, familiar and rickety, pulls around the entryway, Jonathan at the wheel. “Come on! Get in!” he shouts, white-knuckling the wheel.

Well. He doesn’t need to tell them twice.

Without exchanging any words, Mike hands off Will to Hopper, who slings him over his shoulder with an ease that Mike’s honestly jealous of, and they all start towards the car.

Hopper sets Will next to Mike in the backseat, and Mike makes quick work of buckling them both in. After that, Hopper helps Ms. Byers into the front seat, gives her a comforting squeeze on the shoulder, and then ducks back out, jogging across the parking lot to get his own car.

“Where’s Bob?” Jonathan asks, looking around. “Was he not with you guys? And why is Will asleep?”

There’s a long, horrible silence. The demogorgons growl outside, bodies thudding heavily against the doors and windows of the lab.

Ms. Byers breaks into a wailing sob, covering her face with her hands. Her back heaves with the force of her sorrow, and Mike just stares, chest ice-cold and heavy.

“Oh,” Jonathan says, in immediate understanding. “Oh, Mom. I’m… I’m so sorry.”

For a few moments, she lets him run a hand over her back, through her hair, before straightening up and rubbing harshly at her face, fingers dragging over her eyes. “Just drive, Jonathan,” she croaks out. “Just—get us out of here. Please.”

Will’s hand flops over into the center seat, and his ribs rise and fall with the steady rhythm of his breathing. Just for a second, Mike nudges their pinkies together, and his head falls back against the headrest. His eyes sting with unshed tears. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. Keep it together. Be strong. Be a fucking man.

He doesn’t cry. He separates his hand from Will’s, folding his fingers together in his lap. His hands are flushed and red, his biceps and forearms sore with the ghostly echo of Will’s weight.

Jonathan starts up the car.

The drive back is dead silent. None of them are exactly in the mood to talk.

***

Will’s floating. Disembodied; thoughts without a tether. 

It’s quiet here. But he’s not alone.

“Will Byers.”

“Who are you?” he asks, and he finds that the words make no sound. Still, though, he can hear them. And He can, too.

“All in due time, Will.”

“Where am I?” he tries, starting to look around. It’s pitch-black, and bodiless footsteps echo on a watery ground. A clock ticks steadily in the distance. Tick, tick, tick. Tick, tick, tick.

Splash.

“You are home.”

“No,” he says immediately, shaking his head. “Where—where am I? Where’s my mom? Where’s Mike?”

The voice cackles, crackly and cruel-sounding. “Oh, William. What a mess you’ve gotten yourself into.”

“I—I didn’t do anything,” Will whimpers, scrabbling at the formless air where his body should be. “I didn’t do anything, let me out, let me OUT!”

He tries twisting around, making a break for freedom, but he has no limbs. He can’t breathe, can’t move, can’t do anything. The space around him is thick and claustrophobic, pressing in on all sides.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” He whispers, the words curling like smoke in the darkness. “You’ve done plenty. You’ve been a great help to me, Will. And for that, I thank you.”

“I didn’t—I—”

Will’s head hurts, which is weird, because it doesn’t really feel like he has a head right now. But it hurts anyway. The more he thinks about it, the worse the pain becomes, sore and spreading like an open wound. 

“You don’t remember, Will?”

He remembers. He remembers, and he feels. The thrill of the hunt, the taste of iron and raw meat, the ringing echo of a thousand screams.

Bob.

“You killed him,” He says. “He’s dead, Will. Because of you.”

“No, I—I didn’t mean to,” Will sobs. “I didn’t—why are you doing this? Who are you?”

“You will learn.”

Will’s questions peter out into mindless cries, gut-wrenching and raw. Blood pools behind his teeth, filling the cavity of his mouth. He feels it, tastes it, even though he knows it can’t be real.

He wants to go home. He wants—he wants—

“I can give you what you want, Will.”

“What?” he whispers, voice breaking down the middle.

“Eventually. But you are not ready,” He says thoughtfully. “Not yet.”

Will sniffles. “I don’t… I don’t understand.”

There’s a silky pause. Water ripples below him. A clock ticks up above.

A laugh rings out into the darkness, and the sound slides over Will’s shapeless body, curling up in his lungs like a sated cat.

“You will.”

And with that, everything goes black.

Once again, Will sleeps.

Chapter Text

Once they reach the Byers’, everyone is back together. Mike doesn’t know the details, and he doesn’t care to ask. The Party’s here, including Max, because apparently she’s not going away any time soon, and Nancy’s in the living room with Jonathan, and Will’s passed out on the couch. Everyone’s here except Bob.

And El, his brain supplies helpfully, a well-worn thought, but he pushes the words away before they can take hold.

Mike sits at the dining table, watching out of the corner of his eye as a teary-eyed Jonathan murmurs to Will and pushes his hair off his sweaty forehead. Then he shifts his gaze slightly to the side, watching the way Nancy looks at Will’s brother. The tenderness in her eyes. The soft curl of her mouth. Her hand on his shoulder, her thumb stroking gently back and forth.

It’s nice. They look good together. Right.

“Doctor Sam Owens,” Hopper stresses, to whoever’s on the other side of the phone. His boots make sharp thudding noises as he paces across the wooden floor. “I don’t know how many people are there! I don’t know how many people are left alive!”

Steve Harrington crosses from the living room into the dining room, lifting a finger in acknowledgment as he passes Mike. He’s biting his lip and furrowing his brow, face painted in clear shades of distress. Dustin was rambling earlier, something about fighting off those mini-Demogorgons, but Mike hadn’t been listening. His head is crowded with competing thoughts and memories—about Will, about Bob, about the Shadow Monster, about everything.

It feels like his brain is full. Like he’s reached his peak of traumatic memories, and he can’t possibly fit any more. He knows, though, that it’s not over. So, like he’s done time and time again, he’ll have to shove it all down. Make room.

“I am the police!”

So Hopper’s not making much progress, then. Great.

The man in question starts stepping back towards the living room, phone cradled to his ear. “Yes, the number that I gave you. Yep. Six-seven, six-seven… Uh-huh. I will be here.” With an aggressive slam, he hangs up the phone. Mike stares blankly at him, at his clenched fists and gritted jaw.

Next to him, Dustin sighs. “They didn’t believe you, did they?”

Slowly, Hopper turns around. His eyes are hard. “We’ll see.”

And this, finally, is Mike’s last straw. His frustration bubbles to the surface, coming out through angry word-vomit. “We’ll see?” he repeats mockingly. “We can’t just sit here while those—those things are loose!”

It’s true. They’re like sitting ducks, here at the Byers’, and the only person that could actually help them isn’t here. And the only other person who could help them—you know, the one with a gun and actual police training— seems to be intent on sitting on his ass and doing absolutely nothing. It’s bullshit. It’s bullshit! Bob just—he just—

And Hopper wants to wait? He doesn’t want to do anything? He doesn’t want to make a plan, or jump into action, or build a barrier around Will so that nothing can reach him? Literally, Mike would take anything at this point. He’s itching with it, with all this nothing-ness that’s going on, all this horrible anticipation. The constant fear: What’s next? How far out are they? How much longer do we have?

Hopper doesn’t budge. “We stay here,” he commands, “and we wait for help.”

With that, he’s gone. Mike stares after him, and a muscle jumps in his jaw. Fuck. That’s… Mike hates this. He hates everything about this.

After Hopper leaves, silence pervades the room. Around the table, everyone sits with dull eyes and flattened mouths, cheerless and deadened. Through the archway, Will’s still asleep. Mike, for as much as he cares about him, hopes he stays that way.

Mike’s gaze drifts from Will’s prone body to his taped-up map of drawings, sprawling from the floor to the ceiling, to the pile of games and toys and movies that sits on the coffee table, entirely untouched. Will’s new Rubik’s cube is perched delicately atop the stack, pre-solved by Bob.

In the end, Mike’s not entirely sure why he gets to his feet. He’s just… moved. By restlessness, by grief, by memories. Heads turn in his direction, semi-interested, as he makes his way over to the coffee table, shuffling and slow.

Once he reaches his destination, he reaches out for the Rubik’s cube, turning it carefully in his hands. Bob was the last person to touch it. If Mike concentrates, he can imagine the impression of Bob’s fingerprints, his clever legacy left on the world’s most colorful puzzle. 

Will would have been so excited to use this. He will be, when he wakes up. When he’s better. Mike still has the last one he solved, saved from the rummage box and displayed proudly on his nightstand. Now Will can have a new one. All because of Bob.

Nancy and Jonathan watch him, eyes tired and non-judgemental. Will’s pupils twitch restlessly behind his eyelids. Dreaming, maybe. Mike hopes it’s not a nightmare.

He’s opening his mouth before he even realizes he wants to talk. “Did you guys know,” he starts quietly. “That Bob was the original founder of Hawkins AV?”

And suddenly, in this moment, it seems almost criminal that they didn’t know. That Mike didn’t know, before Bob told him about it. The entirety of the AV club is sitting in this room, and the only one who knew anything about their predecessor, about the man who made it all possible—the laughter and comfort and fiddling of dials, the sense of safety and community and home— is Mike. And he just found out. No one ever gave Bob any credit. He never asked for it. That’s just who he was.

“Really?” Lucas asks hesitantly, and Mike turns to face him.

“He petitioned the school to start it and everything,” Mike remembers, a small smile working its way onto his face. “Then he had a fundraiser for equipment.”

He turns the Rubik’s cube in his hands a few more times, grounding himself, then starts walking back towards the Party. “Mr. Clarke learned everything from him,” he says softly. “Pretty awesome, right?”

Dustin and Lucas mumble their agreement, while Max stays quiet, just looking at him with mild curiosity. Mike takes it all in stride. He can feel the righteous anger burning up behind his sternum, transforming into the familiar desire to get out there and do something, to make a difference, to help in some sort of way, no matter how small. He lets the feeling travel through his body, spreading from his chest to his shoulder, down his arm, tingling at his fingertips. He sets the Rubik’s cube down on the table. 

“We can’t let him die in vain.”

Dustin puffs his cheeks out, letting out a frustrated breath. “What do you want us to do, Mike? The Chief’s right—we can’t stop those Demodogs on our own.”

Max raises an eyebrow at that, speaking for the first time in hours. “Demodogs?”

Dustin’s hands spread out, one for each word. “Demogorgon. Dogs.” He smashes them together. “Demodogs.”

At the silence, he devolves into nervous babbling. “It’s like a compound. Like… a play on words—”

“Okay,” Max says, effectively cutting him off. Mike watches as Dustin’s expression falls, disappointment and embarrassment sinking through his features.

Jeez. Max is making it so hard for Mike to like her. Like—he’s not trying to be a jerk, really. It’s been a rough couple of days, to say the least, and he honestly has bigger things on his plate now. But how is he supposed to be happy about this girl joining their Party when she keeps acting like this? When she keeps scaring his friends and making them upset? When she doesn’t even seem to notice the way Dustin and Lucas are tripping over themselves to get her attention, even now?

“Anyway,” Dustin mumbles, then clears his throat. “When it was just Dart, maybe we stood a chance.”

Lucas nods in agreement. “But there’s an army now.”

Something about the phrase sparks an idea in Mike’s brain, sending recognition through his neural pathways and leaving him almost breathless with realization. His eyes, for the millionth time that night, flicker over to Will. “His army,” he says.

Over by the counter, Steve straightens up, looking straight at Mike. “What do you mean?”

“His army,” Mike repeats, more frantic now. He searches around the table, waiting for them to catch up. “Maybe if we stop Him, we can stop His army, too.”

It’s only once Dustin, Lucas, and Max shoot blank, confused glances at each other that Mike remembers. Of course. They haven’t been here. Only Mike has. Only Mike is entirely caught up.

And just like that, he has a purpose again. A mission.

Without further ado, Mike jogs over to Will’s room, busting the door open. He falters at the sight of Ms. Byers and Hopper, sitting silently on the bed. Ms. Byers’ face, understandably, is shiny with tears. 

“Sorry,” Mike blurts, cheeks going red with guilt. “Sorry, I’m so sorry. I just need…” He gravitates over to Will’s desk, plucking the drawing off of it. Ms. Byers had brought it back from the hospital, and it’s creased firmly from where it was folded in her pocket, a neat four-way division. Horizontal and vertical, straight in half both ways. Like a cross.

In the middle of it all is Him. Mike boils with hatred. With rage. His fingers tremble where they touch the paper.

“Mm,” Ms. Byers acknowledges, voice strained. Hopper rubs soothingly at her back, and a long breath shudders out of her. “Go ahead, honey.”

“Thanks,” Mike breathes out. He clutches his hand around the drawing, still careful despite everything, because he doesn’t want to destroy something Will made—and he hot-foots it back to the living room. The Party, plus Max, Nancy, Jonathan, and Steve, are assembled in an odd little group, waiting in the living room for him to get back.

Once Mike reaches them, he holds out the drawing. “Him,” he repeats insistently, begging them to understand.

“The Shadow Monster,” Dustin says. 

“It got Will that day at the field,” Mike reminds him. “The doctor said it was like a virus—it infected him.”

“And this virus,” Max says, eyes narrowed. “It’s… connecting him to the tunnels?” She peers around the room, tracking over the drawings.

For a second, Mike’s almost impressed. That’s a really good guess, for someone as uninformed as Max. She must be crazy smart.

He nods. “To the tunnels, to the monsters, to the Upside Down— everything.”

“Woah, woah, woah,” Steve blurts, holding up his hands. “Slow down.”

Well. Max is, at least, smarter than Steve Harrington. Though that’s probably not the highest bar.

Obligingly, Mike doubles back, trying to explain to the best of his ability. “Okay, so the Shadow Monster’s inside of everything. Everything that comes from the Upside Down. And right now, that includes Will.”

Slowly, Steve dips his chin in understanding, gesturing for him to go on.

Mike lets out a steady breath. “So, when the vines feel something—like pain— so does Will.”

An image flashes behind his eyes when he blinks, Will screaming on a hospital stretcher, and he flinches. Push it down. Stay calm. Keep going.

“And so does Dart,” Lucas realizes. 

“Yeah,” Mike affirms. “It’s like what Mr. Clarke taught us about, remember? The hive mind. Neural connections.”

Not for the first time, he sends a quick thought out into the universe: Thanks, Mr. Clarke.

“Hive mind?” Steve repeats, still looking lost.

Dustin jumps in to explain. “A collective consciousness. It’s a super-organism.”

That’s not very likely to help, not for a guy like Steve, so Mike takes the reins, thrusting the drawing across the group. “This guy’s controlling everything,” he tells Steve. “He’s the brain.”

At his words, Dustin’s eyes light up. “Like the Mind Flayer,” he says.

Yes.

Shit, yes! Dustin’s still holding ground as the smartest kid Mike knows. He should have been here earlier. Lucas’s eyes go wide, too, and he snaps in understanding.

Max and Steve wrinkle their noses, identical looks of confusion crossing their faces. “The what?”

Mike ignores them, still staring at Dustin. He can practically see the cogs turning in his friend’s head. “Mike,” he says, after a second. “Where’s Will’s D&D manual?”

“Under his bed,” Mike answers, already moving in that direction. He’s bouncing on his toes in excitement, trying to stop himself from running as they make their way to Will’s room. “Shit, dude, you’re so smart.”

As they walk, Mike folds Will’s drawing back along the creases and tucks it into his pocket for safekeeping. He really doesn’t want to lose it.

Dustin flushes, smiling wide. “On occasion,” he says cheekily, moving his hand in a so-so position.

“Nah, all the time,” Mike argues.

Lucas scoffs. “Not when he was hiding a baby Demogorgon—”

“Demodog!” Dustin interrupts, and Lucas rolls his eyes.

“A baby Demodog from us,” he finishes.

Mike nods, the words not really sinking in until he reaches Will’s closed bedroom door. There, though, he stops short, whirling around to look at Dustin. “Wait. What?!”

He holds his hands up placatingly, taking a few nervous steps back. “Okay, I didn’t know Dart was—”

“You had Dart this whole time?” Mike yells, fingers spasming at his sides. All his previous fondness for Dustin flies right out the window, splattering on the ground below. “Are you serious?”

“Guys,” Steve says sharply, like he has any kind of authority here. “Not the time.”

They both ignore him. “Mike,” Dustin says, tone full of apologetic regret. “He ate my cat, okay? Trust me, I know it was a mistake.”

Mike blinks, processing that. He chooses to gloss over it, for his own sanity. Poor Mews, though. “A mistake,” he repeats incredulously. “A mistake— Will threw that thing up, out of his stomach, and you wanted to keep it as a pet—”

“Mike!” Nancy snaps, and he immediately shuts up. She sighs, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I get it, okay? But we need to stay focused. We need to help Will.”

She takes a deep, exaggerated breath, and Mike reluctantly copies it. “Okay,” he mumbles. “I… Okay. You’re right.”

A shocked look crosses her face, before it turns into one of smug satisfaction. She raises an eyebrow. “What was that?”

He bumps her hip with his own, pouting. “I’m not saying it again, Nance.”

“Mhm,” she hums, teasing, before knocking politely on Will’s door. Not even a second later, Hopper answers, looking severely pissed off.

“What.”

“Sorry to bother you guys,” Nancy says, sounding sincere. “But we need to borrow Will’s… What was it?” she asks Mike, in a low undertone.

“His D&D guide,” Mike says, pushing past Hopper. “It’s under the bed.”

Ms. Byers blinks at him with reddened eyes as he enters, then, without speaking, reaches underneath her and holds out the manual. It’s well-loved, thick and dog-eared in several spots. Mike flips through it, and sees a random, recent-looking annotation next to the Elder Brain entry— Ask Mike about putting this in a campaign! There’s a little smiley face next to the note. For a second, his hands freeze around the edges of the book, and something aches behind his ribs.

Focus. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and turns the page. He keeps flipping until he gets to the Mind Flayer entry, then hands it off to Dustin. “Here,” he says bluntly, then turns on his heel and stomps towards the dining room. Everyone follows, except for Ms. Byers.

“Oh, come on,” Dustin gripes from over his shoulder. “Are you really gonna stay pissed at me?”

“Yep,” Mike says, and arranges himself as far away from Dustin as he can. 

“Fine,” Dustin says, mouth tugging down. “Be like that.” The group gathers around the table, and he sets the book down, pointing at the picture at the bottom of the page.

“The Mind Flayer,” Dustin starts, loud and confident. “A monster from an unknown dimension. It’s so ancient that it doesn’t even know its true home.” His eyes dart down to the manual, reading from the thick paragraph. As he reads, he nods, like everything is finally clicking in his brain. “Okay, it enslaves races from other dimensions by taking over their brains using its highly-developed psionic powers.”

“Oh my god,” Hopper grumbles, scrubbing a hand over his face. “None of this is real. This is a kid’s game.”

Dustin frowns at him. “No, it’s a manual,” he corrects. “And it’s not for kids. And—and unless you know something that we don’t, this is the best metaphor—”

“Analogy,” Lucas corrects.

Dustin stares at him. “Analogy? That’s what you’re worried about?” He throws his hands up, endlessly annoyed. “Okay, fine. Analogy— for understanding whatever the hell this is.”

Nancy leans over the table, bracing her palms on the edge. “Okay, so this Mind Flamer thing—”

“Flayer. Mind Flayer,” Dustin says.

She looks at the ceiling for strength, then sighs, turning back to Dustin. “The Mind Flayer. What does it want?”

He purses his lips in thought. “To conquer us, basically. It believes it’s the master race.”

“Oh!” Steve says, straightening up. “Like the Germans.” He seems proud of himself, practically preening, and Mike fights the urge to groan in annoyance. 

“The Nazis?” Dustin asks, eyebrows shooting up. 

For a moment, Steve looks confused. “Um… Yeah, yeah, the Nazis,” he agrees, waving a hand.

Dustin considers this. “I mean… Yeah, if the Nazis were from another dimension, then totally.”

Mike watches as Hopper pinches the bridge of his nose, like he’s fighting off a migraine. Honestly, he kind of gets it.

Why is Steve here, again? 

“It views other races, like us, as inferior to itself,” Dustin continues. 

Mike remembers a phrase from the manual, and jumps in to elaborate. “It wants to spread. To take over other dimensions.”

Lucas looks around the table, eyes wide. “We’re talking about the destruction of our world as we know it.”

“That’s great,” Steve mutters, running a hand through his hair. “That’s great. Really great. Jesus.” He stalks away from the table, tension lining his body. 

Nancy watches him for a second, then looks back down at the manual, expression intent. “If this thing is like a brain,” she says. “It’s controlling everything.” She picks up the manual, walking around the table to stand next to Mike. “So if we kill it—”

“We kill everything it controls,” Mike finishes, picking up on her train of thought.

“And we win,” Dustin says.

“Theoretically,” Lucas adds.

“Okay, great,” Hopper says gruffly, striding over and snatching the book from Nancy’s hands. His grip is way too rough, and Mike sucks in a sharp breath, fingers twitching at his sides. Don’t rip the pages, he thinks desperately. Be careful with it, be CAREFUL, that’s Will’s—

“So how do we kill this thing? Shoot it with Fireballs or something?”

Dustin snorts out a laugh. “No—no Fireballs,” he corrects. Hopper’s head snaps up, and he keeps going. “Uh, you summon an undead army, uh… Because…” Dustin falters, eyes skittering away from Hopper’s glare. “Um, zombies, they don’t have brains. And the Mind Flayer, it likes brains.” He takes the manual carefully from Hopper’s hands, looking down at the pages. “It’s just a game,” he finishes sheepishly.

Hopper scoffs, slapping his thighs before pacing away. “What the hell are we doing here?”

“I thought we were waiting for your military backup!” Dustin calls after him, the words pointed.

“We are!”

Mike clicks his tongue, frustrated. “But even if they come, how are they gonna stop this?” he demands. “You can’t just shoot it with guns!”

Hopper stares at him, and for the first time, Mike sees the panic on his face. It hits him, then, that Hopper’s out of his depth. He’s the adult, but he’s just as clueless as the rest of them. More, maybe. “You don’t know that!” he says, voice straining. “We don’t know anything!”

Mike stands his ground. “We know that it’s already killed everyone in that lab,” he protests, and a quick image of Bob flashes through his mind. He pushes it away. 

“And we know the monsters are gonna molt again,” Lucas adds.

“And we know that it’s only a matter of time before those tunnels reach this town,” Dustin says, face determined. 

“They’re right.”

Ms. Byers’ voice is nothing more than a croak. Mike and the others whip around to face her, blindsided by her appearance. She stands in the hallway, still in hospital scrubs, dark smudges of eye makeup on her cheeks. “We have to kill it,” she tells them. 

Slowly, Hopper starts towards her, and she looks him in the eye as he moves. “I want to kill it,” she says, voice furious and grief-stricken.

“Me too,” Hopper says placatingly, holding his hands out towards her. “Me too, Joyce, okay? But how do we do that? We don’t exactly know what we’re dealing with here.”

And—it clicks. The missing piece.

“No,” Mike realizes. “But he does.”

Hesitantly, he starts walking towards Will’s sleeping body, eyes trained on the delicate rise and fall of his chest. That’s why this isn’t working. Because Will’s not with them. Because he’s not awake to help. “If anyone knows how to destroy this thing, it’s Will,” Mike says, gaining confidence in his plan. “He’s connected to it. He’ll know its weaknesses.”

Max’s voice floats from the dining room. “I thought we couldn’t trust him anymore. That he’s a spy for the Mind Flayer now.”

As much as it pains Mike to admit it, she has a point. But Mike has an answer for that, too. And… he thinks it’ll work. He’s almost certain of it, actually.

“Yeah, but… He can’t spy if he doesn’t know where he is.”

***

“Alright, so you know a place?” Hopper says, staring at Mike. 

Mike refuses to let himself be intimidated. Hopper’s clueless, Ms. Byers is grieving, and the Party’s… semi-useful, but still. It’s all up to him now. His plan is solidified in his mind, and it’s going to be different from last year. He’s going to take charge. Make a difference. Help Will.

Bob’s voice echoes in his mind. Just be there for him.

You got it, Bob.

“I know a place,” Mike confirms, and without further prompting, starts the familiar path to the Byers’ shed. He and Will don’t go back here that often—really only when they need some random tools to patch up Castle Byers, or parts for a science fair project or something. Castle Byers would be a good option, too—but it’s a little small, and farther from the house, and Will’s too likely to recognize it.

Mike shoulders his way into the shed, and clicks on the light. Hopper steps in after him, taking a look around. “Yeah,” he says, after a long moment. “Yeah, this’ll work.”

They both move into the middle of the room, and with little fanfare, Hopper grabs a desk. “Everything out,” he tells Mike, hauling the furniture to the door. “Get to it.”

Mike nods, then begins to take the smaller objects—half-empty cans of oil, expired painting supplies, Christmas decorations—and throws them out the door. He and Hopper work in a comfortable silence, and Mike begins to work up a sweat beneath the collar of his jacket. 

Well. This is his workout for… the month, probably. He can feel his biceps getting bigger already.

Once all the smaller stuff is out, Hopper takes one look at him, and snorts in amusement. “Get to the kitchen, kid,” he says, reaching over to ruffle Mike’s hair. Mike squirms away from his hand, face scrunching up. “Go help that red-headed girl.”

“Max,” Mike mumbles, already heading out the door. “Her name is Max.”

But he’s been banished, apparently, so Mike rubs his sore arms and takes the back entrance into the kitchen. Max is sitting on the tiled floor, making a little pile of necessities: duct tape and bleach, for starters.

She looks up as he walks in. “Hey.”

He grunts in response, not feeling especially talkative, and gets to his knees by the sink, going straight for the cleaning supplies. He tries to consult his mental list of what they need—gloves, ammonia, washcloths—

“I get why El was your mage now,” Max says quietly.

“What?” Mike looks over his shoulder, hands stilling. The mention of El knocks all the coherent thoughts out of his brain, and all at once, he feels off-center. Unbalanced.

She looks down at her roll of duct tape, smiling a little. “Lucas. He told me all about her.”

Mike’s mouth flattens into a thin line. Oh. Of course. 

“Yeah, well, he shouldn’t have,” he mutters darkly, turning back to the sink. Now Lucas and Dustin have broken the Rule of Law. Is he the only one that takes this Party seriously? Is he the only one that remembers how things used to be, before all of this bullshit?

Will would understand. But he’s not himself anymore. He’s been taken away.

“Just because you know the truth,” Mike tells her, “it doesn’t mean you’re in our Party.”

It’s true. There was no vote, no meeting, no consensus. Will’s not even awake to get a say in it. El was never an official Party member, for that exact same reason. So even if Max is shaping up to be someone’s girlfriend—Lucas’s or Dustin’s, he doesn’t care—she doesn’t get special treatment. She has to be initiated, just like the rest of them.

And right now, Mike’s vote is leaning towards no.

“You do know that, right?” he presses, glancing back at her.

Her face falls, and she swallows thickly. “Yeah,” she mumbles. “Yeah, I know.”

Good. Mike returns to his washcloth-gathering, ready to push all thoughts of El and Lucas and Dustin out of his head, but she’s not done.

“I mean, why would you want a stupid Zoomer in your Party anyway?”

Mike doesn’t dignify that with a response—even if he feels a little guilty at the clear self-deprecation in her voice, at the drooping tone around the words stupid Zoomer.

“I’m just saying,” Max continues, at his non-answer. “El? She sounds like she was really awesome.”

Again, Mike stills. He huffs out a breath. “Yeah,” he whispers. “She was.”

He’s gotten everything he needs, so he closes the cabinet doors, standing to his feet. “But she’s not here anymore,” he tells Max—and himself. It never hurts to have a reminder. “She’s gone.” He gazes back at Max, but he’s not really seeing her—he’s seeing El. Hand outstretched towards the Demogorgon, mouth held open in a pained scream. And just like that, the scream transforms into Bob’s, into his whimpers and yelps, into the deafening whine of Demodogs.

“And so is Bob,” Mike says, voice hard. The time for emotion is over. They’re gone. They’re gone, and he can’t change that. Even if El is still out there somewhere, what is he supposed to do? How is he supposed to find her?

It’s pointless. He can’t think about the people who aren’t here anymore. He needs to think about Will. Will, who’s asleep in the Byers’ living room, fighting monsters in his own head. Will, who needs him. 

Mike goes to him. It’s the only thing to do.

A few minutes later, everyone’s in the shed, helping each other out. Dustin walks straight up to Mike when he enters, face solemn, and sticks out his hand. 

Mike considers it for a few minutes, thinks it over, then shakes. “I’m sorry about Mews,” he says.

Dustin nods. “I’m sorry about Dart.”

“Truce,” Mike allows, and lets go. He makes brief eye contact with Lucas, but walks away. He’s not really ready to address that yet, and he’s still pissed that Lucas told Max without asking permission. Granted, Mike was a little busy at the time. But still.

“Mike,” Nancy calls, waving a hand. “Come help me out.”

He nods eagerly, jogging over to join her in the corner of the shed. They tape in silence for a little bit, listening to the sounds of the forest around them: the chirping of cicadas, the hooting of owls, the rustling wind through the trees.

“Where’s Jonathan?” he asks curiously, taping a raw edge of the tarp. 

“With Will,” she replies, something soft in her voice.

Mike pauses. “So you two are…”

“I don’t know,” she mumbles, shoulders shrugging. “Maybe.”

He notices, then, that her cheeks are a little pink. It’s weird—he can’t remember the last time he saw his sister get embarrassed.

There’s another long moment of silence, backlit by aimless chatter across the shed as the others work. 

“Mike, I’m sorry I said you couldn’t help,” Nancy says, hands halting in their movement. She turns to look at him, crouching a little to meet his eye. “I just wanted to protect you, you know? But you’re not a little kid anymore. You’re doing a really good job.”

Mike blinks in surprise, feeling his chest go all warm and squirmy with the praise. “Oh,” he blurts. “I—thanks, Nancy.”

She smiles, pats his shoulder, and gets back to work. “Anytime, Mike.”

When Will’s carried in, limp and small in his brother’s arms, the entire room goes quiet. Mike freezes, head to toe, watching as Jonathan places his best friend in a duct-taped chair. Carefully, he kneels in front of him, tying a wired cord around his body.

Mike has to look away. He can’t watch. Nancy reaches out silently and squeezes his hand, a quick reassurance. I’m here. It’s okay. 

He squeezes back, then lets go. There’s work to do.

Keeping his gaze away from the middle of the shed, Mike goes to set up the light, securing it with a healthy wad of tape. Lucas plugs it in, and just like that, Will’s illuminated; the only important thing in the room. Despite his best wishes, Mike’s eyes gravitate towards his friend, extra-pale and extra-helpless. He looks like—like some sort of victim, like a kidnapped little kid. Bile rises in Mike’s throat, but he forces it down.

This is for Will. You’re helping him. Saving him. He NEEDS you.

“Everyone out,” Jonathan croaks, and they all comply, almost reverent in their silence. Mike stays right where he is. Jonathan doesn’t tell him to leave.

Eventually, it’s just a few of them. Jonathan, Ms. Byers, Mike, Hopper, and Will. The inner circle. 

Hopper stares at Will, gaze blank and haunted, then turns to look at Ms. Byers. “Alright, you ready?”

She nods, eyes trained on her son. “Yeah.”

Hopper swirls the jug of ammonia in his hand, then walks to the middle of the shed, instantly lit by the bright lamps as he crosses over. He crouches by Will, takes a washcloth to the lid, and holds it under his nose.

Anticipation runs through Mike, and he thinks—he thinks he’s never been more nervous in his life. He still feels queasy, like he might throw up.

God. He really fucking hopes this works.

Chapter Text

Will wakes to the sharp scent of bleach. He can see, he can feel, he can think. But he can’t talk. He can’t move, he can’t—

Distantly, he begins to register sensations. There’s a light in his eyes, like someone’s turned their brights on in the middle of the night and it’s pinging off Mom’s rearview mirror as they idle along the road, windows down and music blaring. Pure white, stinging his pupils and leaving little starbursts of color behind when he blinks.

Then he takes stock of his body. He really can’t move—his wrists and ankles are hot and itchy, bound by a thin white wire. It’s tight, tight, tight. He can’t breathe.

His chest heaves as he looks around, transmitting every single image to Him. Tarp-covered walls. Dirty wooden floor. Bare feet. Torn gown. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mike.

Strangers. Unrecognizable faces. Will blinks again, and his vision blurs, and he’s so confused, so scared.

“What? Wh—what is this?” he mumbles, throat raw and scraping with the words. He doesn’t even know who’s in control anymore, who’s speaking. It might not make a difference. 

We are the same.

Yes. Yes… No. No, Will’s not…

His head swims with pain, and he sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth. He tests his restraints, feeling claustrophobic and bound, feeling terrified, what’s going on?

See what they’ve done to us? See how they’re treating us, Will?

They’re scared of you. They HATE you. 

And they call ME evil? Look around. Look at where you are. LOOK.

Will looks. Obedient. He can’t see anything, though, doesn’t know where he is, doesn’t know who all these people are, he just wants to go back to sleep, back to the void, back to his childhood, before he rolled a seven and his entire life ended, let him OUT, LET HIM OUT!

His body jerks against the wire. It digs into his skin, and he can feel the corded marks it’s leaving behind, like red-hot brands, tattooing the pain, tattooing his imprisonment. Where is he, what’s—what’s happening, he doesn’t—it hurts so much—

“What is this?” he begs, voice straining. “What—why am I tied up?”

A lady—Mom—emerges from the bright-white-blinding spot, kneeling in front of him. Her eyes are so big and brown. Helpless, his mind supplies. Like a deer. Prey. Prey. Prey.

“Will,” she says, and for a second, he doesn’t know who that is. Doesn’t recognize the word. “We just want to talk to you. We’re not gonna hurt you.”

LIE.

Where are we, He whispers, dark and insistent, and Will repeats it dutifully. “Where am I?”

A bearded man (police) talks to Mike, whispering and holding out his hand, and in the darkness behind the light, an exchange is made. Mike rummages in his pockets, unfolds a paper, passes it over, and Will catches snatches of words— be careful with that— before the policeman is approaching the body. Approaching… Will. Him. Them.

“Do you recognize this?” the man is saying, holding out a child’s drawing. A pathetic rendering of great power, of smoke and ash and blood. An ender of worlds, confined to paper and wax.

The body shakes its head. No. No, no, no, no, no.

“Hey,” the woman says, eyes still big and sad. “We wanna help you.”

Inside, He laughs. Cackles. Look at them. Look at this. What do they think this is? What do they think they’re doing?

“But to do that, we have to understand how to kill it,” she whispers.

He doesn’t like that.

“Why am I tied up?” He demands, mouth nothing more than a speaker. Body nothing more than a vessel. “Why am I tied up? WHY AM I TIED UP?”

The words repeat on a mindless loop, body jerking and spasming against the policeman’s hold, against his fleshy human hands, and Will…

He drifts. 

Let me handle this, He croons. Sleep, Will. You’ve done so well.

There was some reason he should stay awake, wasn’t there? In the dark void of his mind, Will floats, untethered, unbound. He barely feels the pain anymore. But something about the woman, about her eyes, keeps him from going away entirely. There’s something intriguing about them. Something familiar.

Prey, his mind says again, and Will’s entire being thrums with disapproval. No, that’s not it. That’s not… It’s something else.

PREY.

Okay, okay. He’s… Okay. Prey. Sure.

Outside, the body is thrashing. The mouth is screaming. The lights are flickering—on and off, on and off, on and off. Too much power in such a small space. Too much power for such a small world.

“LET ME GO!”

The words come back to him a little—bring him back, until he’s floating up from his mind into his head, into his throat, into his skin. “Let me go,” he pants. “Let me—let me go… Let me…”

His eyes drift over to the corner of the room. Mike. Mike. Mike. He remembers him. He will always remember. That can’t be destroyed, can’t be taken away. And He has tried.

Why does Mike look so sad? So upset?

He’s scared of you.

No, that’s not… Mike would never. He would never—

It’s true. He’s SCARED of you, Will.

He knows.

No. Will writhes in the policeman’s tight grasp, almost a hug at this point—or a straightjacket—but it’s not. The words aren’t true. The voice is lying. Mike doesn’t… He’s not…

NO.

Will is so tired. The words die out, and he stops struggling. His eyes, he knows, are dark and bloodshot. He can feel the strain of them, the dilated veins that are close to bursting. His brain was never meant to be shared.

Mom stays silent. Slowly, she raises herself to sit across from him, meeting his eye with ease. They size each other up. The clock ticks. Will doesn’t know if it’s real or imaginary.

“Do you know what March 22nd is?”

Nothing. Will draws a blank. The Evil begins to scour his memories, slithering through columns of information. But before he can locate the date, Mom continues. “It’s your birthday,” she says softly. So, so soft. Will didn’t know words could sound like that—so full of love. He’d almost forgotten. 

“Your birthday,” she continues, emphasizing each word. “When you turned eight, I gave you that huge box of crayons. Do you remember that?”

Will doesn’t. It wasn’t one of the ones He deemed important, or useful. And it had been discarded. Thrown out like garbage. Where’s my memory, he asks the void. I want it back. I want to remember.

The void is silent.

The light halos Mom’s hair, turning her edges golden. She looks like an angel. Like she’s come to save him.

“It was a hundred and twenty colors,” she murmurs. “And all your friends, they got you… Star Wars toys,” she says, with a watery laugh. “But all you wanted to do was draw, with… With all your new colors.”

Something strange happens, as she speaks. With every word, Will feels more grounded. More himself. He can feel his fingers, his toes, the cool night air. The voice in his head gets quieter, until the only person he can hear is himself. Himself, and Mom.

“And you drew this big spaceship,” she says, eyes shining with tears. “But it wasn’t from a movie. It was your spaceship. A rainbow ship, you called it. And you… You must have used every color in the box.”

Mom shrugs helplessly, shaking her head with the memory. “I—I took that with me to Melvald’s, and I put it up. And I told everyone who came in: My son drew this.”

Deep inside, Will warms with the memory. With the new, illicit knowledge. Rainbow ship. Melvald’s. My son drew this.

He wonders if he’s dreaming. It’s almost too good—too strange— to be true.

A breathy laugh works its way out of Mom’s lungs, and she’s nearly crying now. “You were so embarrassed,” she chokes, eyes bright. “But I was so proud.”

Her eyes pierce straight through him, dark and sweet and home. Mom. The black, thick space of his head gets a little smaller. A little less scary. 

“I was so, so proud.”

Will’s body tingles, head to toe. Proud. Proud. Proud.

She was proud of him. Of his silly little scribbles. Of his art, the drawings that mean so much to him, but he’s scared mean nothing to anyone else. The hobby that got him teased and ridiculed his entire life, the scraps of paper that Dad would rip into shreds and grind into the dirt with his boot, calling him pathetic and queer and—

And she was proud.

Every second, another memory comes back. Will feels himself, feels his body, his mind, his quickly-beating heart. For the first time, he sees the light at the end of the tunnel. He sees a way out. 

Will registers another presence, then: familiar brown eyes, shaggy hair, hunched posture, baggy clothes. Jonathan.

His brother breathes unsteadily, then takes a step closer. “Do you remember the day Dad left?”

Will flinches, and he doesn’t know if his body obeys the action or not. But he does. He does remember. He remembers the screaming. The pain. The shattering glass. The roar of Dad’s car engine as he sped away, the way Will, with his little legs and grabby hands, had tried to dash into the street to follow him and almost got run over. The way Jonathan had yanked him back, pulled him close to his chest and sobbed, the way their hearts had both been beating so fast that for a second, Will thought they’d explode. Just like that, kneeling on the dead grass in front of the house. And Dad wouldn’t even know, because he was gone.

Because Will drove him away.

Yeah, he remembers.

But Jonathan doesn’t say any of that. He doesn’t talk about the bad parts. Instead, he gets to his knees, right next to Will. “We stayed up all night building Castle Byers,” he says quietly. “Just the way you drew it.”

Will remembers Castle Byers, too. Remembers shivering in the cold, Mike’s stolen blanket tucked against his side, expired Nilla Wafers and broken shards of glass scattered across the ground. Remembers slicing his palms open trying to carve his love into the floorboards. Remembers hearing the screams outside, remembers the dark red light seeping through the walls, remembers waiting to die. 

Jonathan smiles, eyes sweet and kind and sad. “And it took so long,” he whispers. “Because you were so bad at hammering.” He and Mom laugh, and the sound lights inside of Will’s belly. “You missed the nail every time,” Jonathan admits, but he doesn’t sound mad. He just sounds fond. Loving.

One by one, the Bad Thoughts are replaced. 

Instead of Will soaked to the bone and dying of hypothermia, he sees himself dappled by sunlight, holding a grown-up hammer in his little fist. Jonathan had wrapped his fingers around the handle with him, gentle and patient, and helped him with each nail. It had taken a long time.

Instead of Will bleeding onto the wood, he remembers the day he lost his tooth, because Mike had brought him Reese’s Pieces for his birthday, and he was too eager in chewing them. Mike had panicked, just for a second, before taking off his jacket and holding it to Will’s mouth, tamping down on the blood. He always knew what to do. How to fix things, how to make them better. He’d held the tooth for safekeeping, tightly wrapped between his fingers, until they went back to Will’s house and found his mom.

Instead of Will’s carvings, misshapen and delirious, he sees his drawings. More detailed and colorful with practice, each one either pinned up to the wall or given away as a gift. Because Will didn’t have much else to offer, other than himself. Other than his mind, his effort, his time.

Jonathan’s still talking, face close and familiar, tickling the edges of Will’s locked memories. “And then it started raining,” he recalls. “But we stayed out there anyway. We were both sick for, like—a week after that. But we just had to finish it, didn’t we? We just had to.”

They did. They did. They had to finish it. 

Finish it.

Mom’s plea floats back to the forefront of his mind, fuzzy and desperate: We have to understand how to kill it.

And Will—he gathers his courage. His determination. He uses the strength of his Good Memories, the ones that are coming back to him, to pull himself together.

He spies back.

The tunnels whoosh through his mind. Spiraling, hollow, pulsing with a venomous ooze. They weave winding lines underneath Hawkins, all the way to—

That’s it.

Will’s pushed out, the image quickly cut off, but it’s too late. He’s already seen.

His lip trembles with the force of his voice, trying its hardest to escape out of his throat. Close it. Close the—

NO.

He won’t let Will speak. He’s paying more attention now, momentarily distracted but still present, still holding tight dominion over Will’s vocal cords.

But not over his fingers.

Will sneaks another glance at Mike, unbidden, and another memory bubbles to the surface, light and airy and tinged with hues of gold. Will, staying up into the late hours of the night, huge flashlight propped up under his covers as he poured over a morse code manual. He had thought… He thought maybe Mike would be impressed. Well, that, and it was just really cool, and the whole Party was doing it. Will had needed some extra practice, but he thought it would be worth it.

Turns out, he’s better at morse code than Mike is. But that was okay, because he could still talk to Dustin, who told him funny stories about his old-lady babysitter and his mom’s cat all throughout class.

Will concentrates. Remembers.

H. Dot-dot-dot-dot. Four taps.

Terror thrums through his veins, because—he’s doing it. And He hasn’t noticed yet. It’s working.

LOOK, he thinks desperately. LOOK, please—please notice, please look—

Will’s fingers are shaking, which might mess up the code. But it’s all he’s got.

And then… Then Mike steps up. And Will knows, like never before, that he has to try. He has to save them. He has to save his family, his friends, the beautiful boy that’s falling apart under these harsh studio lights.

A tear glints in Mike’s eye, and Will feels an answering one burn behind his own waterline.

Here. I’m here, Mike.

E. Dot. One tap.

“Do you remember the first day that we met?”

Of course he does. He’ll never forget. He couldn’t ever forget.

Will thought Mom was the angel. And she is, but Mike… He looks like a Renaissance painting, or a handsome Greek statue. He looks like the portrait of David that Will had dog-eared in his favorite art book, the one Jonathan got him for Christmas. The one that he looks at way too often, that he hides under the bed for some unknown reason—except the reason is actually slightly known, and possibly related to the pink flush on Will’s cheeks and the trip of his heartbeat whenever he looks at that page.

Mike looks like that. His face is half-lit, half-shadowed, glistening with artful tears as he speaks. His voice is incredibly soft, in that way it always has been when he talks to Will, ever since Will confessed, early on in their friendship, that his dad got a little loud sometimes, and it scared him. 

Will’s fingers want to itch for a pencil, even if he knows he couldn’t do this moment justice. Instead, he keeps tapping. He has a mission. There’s not a second to waste.

R. Dot-dash-dot. Tap, hold, tap. 

“It was… It was the first day of kindergarten,” Mike says quietly, like there’s no one in the room except them. Like there’s no one in Will’s body except Will.

The memory returns to him in bits and pieces: the earthy smell of mulch. Worn plastic against the seat of his hand-me-down jeans. Tears in his eyes, because Dad had yelled at him that morning and Will didn’t know anyone and he just wanted to go home.

Mike, as always, echoes his thoughts. Like a mind-reader. Like a Jedi. “I knew nobody,” he confesses, and Will burns. 

Neither did I, he thinks. Neither did I, Mike. But I met you, and it was all okay. It was all alright.

E. Dot. One tap.

Silence. No one notices. He starts over.

Will’s body is frozen, but his mind is here. With every word Mike speaks, he grows stronger, more firm in his tapping, more sure of his decision.

They have to close the gate. It’s the only way. The Evil has to go.

And if Will goes with it?

Well. Maybe…

Maybe that’s for the best. Maybe he’s just been living on borrowed time, anyway.

Maybe he was never meant to make it back. 

***

Mike’s always hated public speaking. He hates going to confession at church, hates reciting essays in front of his class, hates introducing himself to strangers.

This, right now, is a million times worse.

The lamps shine bright and hot on Mike’s body, with the force of a thousand spotlights. There’s a reason he’s never signed up for the talent show, and this is it. He feels like he’s front and center on the stage, watched by a million curious eyes. Like everyone’s waiting to see what he’ll do next. Waiting to see if he’s gonna fuck it up or embarrass himself or do something stupid.

But then he looks at Will, at his huge dark eyes, and everything else fades away. It’s just them in this room. Just Mike and Will. The way it’s always been. The way it’s always supposed to be.

The words rise from somewhere deep within him, somewhere primal and innate near his core. The whole time Ms. Byers and Jonathan were talking, Mike was worrying about his own part. Wondering what he would say, which out of the thousand memories would be good enough to bring Will back to himself.

But when the time came, he didn’t even need to think about it. He closed his eyes, and saw a swingset. Saw Will’s smile. Saw the way he needed help, needed a friend, even back then.

Then Mike opened his eyes, and there he was. Will. Needing help. Needing a friend.

Just be there for him.

Mike swallows. “I knew nobody,” he confesses, the memory knocking sharply into him. “I had no friends.”

At five years old, not a lot of people liked Mike. He was already too loud, too much, too attention-seeking because his perfect older sister was always the star at home, with her fridge-worthy report cards and her beautifully framed yearbook pictures. Mike was the kid that played in the dirt and pretended to fight dragons. He was the kid that wasn’t really sure how to be nice, because he was always a little too honest and he didn’t know how to spare people’s feelings.

So… Yeah. Five-year-old Mike had no friends. Not until Will.

Mike sniffles, and he can feel tears sliding down his cheeks. “I just felt so alone and—and so scared, but…” He swallows thickly, then looks up. Will looks terrified. Just like he did on that day, all those years ago.

“I saw you on the swings,” he remembers. Little Will, with his messy bowl cut and too-big jacket. His jeans that were almost falling off, pooling around his old, crummy shoes. His stubby legs that dangled back and forth as he sat, not really swinging but not really sitting still, either. His big brown eyes that stared off into the distance, already too haunted and too sad for someone so young. 

Mike knew a little bit of what that felt like. So he took a leap of faith. 

“You were alone, too,” Mike says. “You were just swinging by yourself. And I just… I just walked up to you and—” He takes a deep, shaky breath. The world narrows down, until it’s just them. Just the words. “And I asked.”

Mike blinks, and another tear escapes. “I asked if you wanted to be my friend. And you said yes.”

Sometimes, Mike still can’t believe his luck. Can’t believe that Will Byers— sweet, creative, talented Will Byers—wanted to be friends with someone like Mike, who was annoying and dirty and loud and mean, who didn’t know how to tie his shoes until second grade because his mom always did it for him. But at school, when Mom wasn’t there, Will tied Mike’s shoes. He did it without prompting, even, just noticing and dropping to one knee in the hallway, at recess, in class. Bunny-ears and loop-de-loop and pull. When Mike confessed, like a secret, that he wanted to learn, Will had taught him, patiently and gently, until he got it.

Sometimes, Mike thinks that Will didn’t know what he was getting into. Sometimes he thinks that Will would have been better off saying no. 

Sometimes he thinks that… that if Will hadn’t left Mike’s house that night, or if he had never been at his house in the first place, maybe none of this would have happened. Maybe Mike doomed him, just by knowing him. By spreading the Wheeler family curse; Murphy’s law—anything that can go wrong, will.

But none of that matters, so Mike pushes it down. It happened, and Will said yes, and they’re here, in this shed, and his best friend needs him. It’s all up to Mike. The final push.

“You said yes,” he repeats, hardly believing it. He closes his eyes for a long moment, weighing his words, and his breath hitches on a sob. “It was the best thing I’ve ever done.”

That’s the kicker, isn’t it? That just shows how selfish Mike is, how at heart, he’s still just that mean little kid, squishing ants in the dirt. The decision that ruined Will’s life is still the best one Mike’s ever made. The fact that he knows Will, even, is enough. The memory of his smile, his laugh, his art that Mike keeps meticulously in his waterproof binder—it’s all worth it, to him. Even if that’s awful. Even if Will deserves better, so much better.

Mike wouldn’t change a thing. And that, maybe, is the worst part.

Finally, everything’s wrung out of him. All the memories, all the emotion. There’s more in there, sure, but he doesn’t have the capacity to express it. Can’t put it into words, how much he feels for Will. And shit, maybe that’s weird, but he doesn’t care. They’ve always been weird, the two of them. They don’t fit in, but they do it together.

Mike waits anxiously for Will’s response, whole body trembling, stomach tight with fear, but—nothing happens. Will’s jaw works, like he wants to say something, but the room is still silent, save for the stifled sound of Ms. Byers’ sobs. 

There’s no answer. Mike’s failed.

His pulse flutters in his throat. Failure. Failure. You couldn’t do it. You couldn’t save him.

He feels numb. He feels too much. He… He…

He can’t do this. But his feet remain rooted to the spot, petrified, as he watches the ghost of his best friend tremble in front of him, bound and scared and hurting.

Ms. Byers reaches forward, hand skating lightly over Will’s thigh. “Will, baby… If you’re in there, just— please. Please talk to us,” she begs, voice barely audible. “Please, honey, please. Can you do that for me?”

Maybe that’ll do it. Maybe Ms. Byers will succeed where Mike couldn’t. Anxious, Mike waits, eyes glued to Will’s shaking form.

“Please,” she cries. “I love you so much.”

That’s it. That’s what Mike was missing.

The words rise like bile in his throat, clawing and scraping at the meat of his cheeks, his tongue, his lips. I love you. I love you so much.

But he can’t open his mouth. He can’t do it. The one thing that has a chance of getting through to Will—it’s true, of course it’s true—and Mike can’t say it. He’s a fucking coward. 

The confession vibrates against his ribs. I love you. I love you. I love you.

Will’s face contorts in a silent sob, the most emotion he’s shown all night. Mike’s breath shudders out of him, chest rising and falling rapidly, heart pounding and squeezing like a stress ball. He opens his mouth.

And Will’s face falls flat. His eyes deaden. “Let me go.”

Mike chokes on his words, air catching in his throat to produce a horrible, strangled noise. Jonathan shoots him a look, and it’s full of pain. Full of compassion. I get it, the look says. I’m hurting, too.

Well. Jonathan would probably have no problem saying I love you. Jonathan could totally do that, because he’s so nice and thoughtful. Such a good brother.

Mike doesn’t even know how to be a good friend. Clearly he’s doing something wrong.

The room swells with a disappointed silence. Mike thinks the words in his head. Rehearses them. In there, it’s easy. It’s just the out loud part that’s hard.

Across the shed, Hopper’s eyes widen. Mike wouldn’t have noticed if he wasn’t busy staring into space, imagining those three little words floating in the air like iridescent bubbles, but he is, and he does. Notice, that is.

“What,” he murmurs, voice croaking. He clears his throat and tries again. “Hopper?”

Hopper nods, eyes a little wild, and gestures for them to get out of the shed. “Come on,” he says. When no one moves, he yanks the door open, gesturing again. “Now.”

After shooting each other overwhelmed, bewildered glances, the three of them scramble after Hopper, all the way back to the Byers’ kitchen, where the rest of the group is standing guard. Hopper wastes no time, bursting in and grabbing an old envelope from the side table, then sitting down in the dining room. “I think he’s talking,” he rushes out, scribbling frantically on the paper. “Just not with words.” 

When Mike finally gets a peek at the paper, standing on his tiptoes to see over Max’s head, his entire brain lights up with understanding. The memory of Will’s fingers, twitching against his sides, slams to the forefront of his head, clear as day. Clear as the dots and dashes that Hopper’s drawing.

Mike wants to kick himself for not realizing. Of course. Of course. Of course Will was in there, of course he was trying to talk to them, of course he was smart enough to find a workaround for his possession.

Steve squints at the paper. “Hey, what is that?”

The reply is unanimous. “Morse code.”

Steve’s eyes widen, and he holds his hands up in mock offense. “Okay, okay,” he mutters, stepping forward to see better.

Hopper finishes transcribing the code, speaking as he writes. “H-E-R-E.”

“Here,” the group choruses. 

Hopper fiddles with the cigarette in his hand, tapping it against his mouth, before looking up. His expression is more hopeful than Mike’s ever seen it, and that’s saying something. “Will’s still in there,” he says. “He’s talking to us.”

The whole room seems to lighten, tension soaking into the walls and out the windows, floating away on the cool November breeze. Mike’s shoulders slump with relief. Will’s here. He’s still here. The monster hasn’t gotten him. 

Jonathan bounces on his toes, perking up. “I know what we need,” he says quickly, and without explaining, dashes off in the direction of Will’s room.

Hopper nods, like this makes total sense. He turns back to the group. “Alright,” he says, effortlessly authoritative. “Here’s the plan.”

***

When the group of them—Mike, Ms. Byers, and Jonathan—return to the shed, there’s music. Light. The atmosphere is completely different: less tense, less solemn, less life-or-death. They have a plan. They have Will. They have morse code.

Mike keeps practicing the words in his head. The best chance he has at getting through to Will. I love you. I love you. I love you.

While he waits for his turn, he listens. He watches.

Should I Stay or Should I Go blares through the radio speakers, upbeat and determined. Mike remembers the day almost a year ago when he heard Will singing this exact song, broken and pitiful, but alive. That song is one of Mike’s favorites now. It brought his best friend back to him.

And it’s doing the same now.

“Do you remember the first time I played you this?” Jonathan asks.

Will answers in code, fingers tapping steadily against the side of his chair. They know what to look for now. They know how to hear him. 

“Mom and Dad were both arguing in the next room,” Jonathan continues, and Ms. Byers flinches. But he keeps going. “So I played you the mixtape I made you. And it was the first time you got into music. Real music.”

Mike thinks of his own mixtape, the one he started when Will was stuck in the hospital. He’d meant to give it to him then, but he never ended up getting around to it. It’s still unfinished, because Mike wants it to be perfect, and it’s not. He knows that there are more songs out there. More things that Will would like. And he’s just kept adding, and adding, and re-taping, and at this point, he’s not sure it’ll ever be done.

But that’s besides the point. 

Mike watches the movement of Will’s fingers, more sure and steady with every word his brother speaks. He consults his (admittedly limited) range of morse code knowledge.

Hold, tap, hold, tap. Dash-dot-dash-dot. C.

When it’s Mike’s turn, he says a lot of things. The words spill out of him uncontrollably, unconsciously. Nothing emotional—that’s all been drained out of him.

He says a lot of things. But he doesn’t say those three words. They burn inside of him, the truest part of him, but he can’t give them a voice. He doesn’t know why. Could be lots of things—the fact that Will’s family and Hopper are in the room, for one. That’s kind of weird. And maybe Mike’s fear of public speaking isn’t really helping, either. He feels like when he says something like that—something gushy and emotional—he and Will should be alone. Even if they weren’t before. This is different, somehow.

He keeps it light. Friendly. Just… being there. Helping.

“And then the Party escaped into the sewers,” he remembers. “And there were those… big insect things, and you guys were still on level one.”

He eyes Will’s fingers. 

Tap, hold, tap, tap. Dot-dash-dot-dot. L.

Hold, hold, hold. Dash-dash-dash. O.

CLO.

Mike swallows over the lump in his throat. Keeps going. “But then you cast Fog Cloud and saved us,” he says gently. That’s Will all over, isn’t it? Always saving them. Always having their backs. “You saved the whole Party.”

Tap, tap, tap. Dash-dash-dash. S.

Mike has dozens more stories, all along the same vein. Will being the hero. Will saving the day. But his part, for now, is over.

He steps back into the shadows. Lets Ms. Byers take over, as much as he wants to sit there and talk to Will all day long. That would be selfish, and weird, so he can’t.

He goes back to practicing the words. Even if he doesn’t say them today, he probably should say them, at some point. When this is all over. Will deserves it.

“You saw that little girl,” Ms. Byers says softly. “And she was in the sandbox, and she was crying.”

Tap. Dot. E.

CLOSE.

Close what? Close… Close what?

Mike shakes the nerves out of his hands. Tries to be patient. There’s obviously more. Will’s not done. And he’s never had a problem listening to Will. That’s the easy part. That’s always been the easy part. 

“You gave her your Tonka truck,” Ms. Byers continues, smiling sadly. “And I told you we couldn’t afford to buy another one.”

Will’s face is pale, contorted with pain. But his hands are on a mission. Saving them. Just like he always does.

Hold, hold, tap. Dash-dash-dot. G.

“You said she should have it because she’s sad,” Ms. Byers whispers, voice straining. “She’s sad, Mommy.”

Tap, hold. Dot-dash. A.

And then, like it’s easy, she says it again. “I love you so much.”

Mike’s ribs ache. Say it, he tells himself. Say it. Say it.

He stays silent.

Hold. Dash. T.

“So, so much.”

Tap. Dot. E.

The tape clicks off, plunging them all into an uneasy quiet.

CLOSE GATE.

Shit. 

…

Shit. No.

No, that’s—but Will—

And then the phone rings from across the yard, clear and loud. A sound Mike would recognize anywhere. A sound Will would definitely recognize anywhere.

Fuck.

So much for that.

Chapter Text

The phone rings for several more seconds, then abruptly stops. Mike watches, rooted to the spot, as Will sways forward in his chair, eyes fluttering and rolling back towards his skull. His pupils twitch restlessly behind his eyelids, like he’s searching for something. Spying for something.

Ms. Byers reaches a hand out, placing it delicately on Will’s knee. “Hey,” she says. “Hey, can you hear me?”

Instead of answering, Will’s breath picks up in his chest, ribs heaving and lips parted. He starts sucking in harsh gusts of air, then letting them out through his teeth, again and again and again, until he’s nearly hyperventilating. His body jerks against the weak wire-rimmed restraints, like whatever’s inside is begging to be let out.

Hopper crouches at Will’s side, eyes tracking over his pale face. “It knows,” he says gravely, the words offset by Will’s increasingly frantic pants. “It knows where we are.”

Ms. Byers ducks her head, cursing under her breath, before rushing over to their emergency stash of Propofol that Hopper had filched from the hospital room at the lab. With shaking hands, she fills a syringe, then darts back over and plunges it into Will’s skinny bicep. The effect is quicker than before—his breathing quiets, and his head lolls to the side. Within seconds, his twitching stops entirely. He looks… Jesus, he looks…

It doesn’t matter. Mike can’t think about that. Will’s alive, and that’s what counts. That’s what he has to focus on— keeping him alive. Keeping them all alive.

Mike, Hopper, and Jonathan rush outside, gaze roving over the quiet outdoors. Crickets chirp steadily in the distance. Mike sees the fuzzy wings of an owl as it soars out of a nearby tree, off to embark on a nighttime hunt. 

In the hills, something howls. Low, raspy, vicious. It’s a bone-chillingly familiar sound.

In unspoken agreement, they hustle back inside the shed, and Mike heads straight for Will. For his restraints. His fingers tremble as he tugs uselessly at the binding, trying to do what he’s been dying to since Will was carried into this stupid shed.

Mike’s not sure he’ll ever be able to step foot in here again.

Finally, his hands get with the program, slipping under the thin wire and pulling it loose. Unearthing the body of his best friend, piece by piece. Jonathan and Hopper help, pulling out pocket knives to do the grunt work. Mike knows they’ll be careful, but the sight of it—sharp, gleaming metal held up to Will’s pale blue veins—still makes his heart flutter anxiously in his chest. 

Ms. Byers watches them with wide eyes, and at her confusion, Jonathan says, “They’re coming!” heightened and urgent.

“Come on, we gotta go,” Hopper adds, sawing a huge knot off the back of Will’s chair. And with that, he’s free. Unbound.

As much as Mike wants to carry him again, he knows his limits, knows that they have to haul ass, and Mike’s skinny noodle arms won’t make the cut. He lets Jonathan scoop Will up, all brotherly and protective, then makes his way to the door, counting everyone up as they leave. Ms. Byers. Jonathan and Will. Hopper. 

Mike slams the door shut behind them, wooden planks shuddering with the force, and hopes he never has to come back. If they ever need tools in the future, Mike will bring his own. Hell, he’ll even raid Dad’s toolkit if it means avoiding the inside of this shed.

Hopper waves him along. “Go, go. I’m right behind you.” He hangs back after that, hopefully to grab some kind of weapon—but he told Mike to go, so he goes. Hopper can handle himself, as he’s proved time and time again. 

Mike keeps running, all the way past the threshold of the Byers house, sneakers hitting the cracked linoleum of the kitchen floor. Dustin, Lucas, and Max are all already at the front, peeking out the windows with fearful expressions. 

Mike wastes no time in joining them. “Do you see anything?” he says breathlessly, scanning the darkened horizon. Nothing yet, but that doesn’t mean they’re safe.

Lucas shakes his head, eyes not moving from the glass. “Nothing.”

“Hey, get away from the windows!” Hopper shouts, and when Mike turns to face him, he’s got not one, but two shotguns in hand. Damn.

The Party obeys, backing up into the living room, and Hopper casts his gaze around the room’s occupants, hefting his second gun thoughtfully. After a second, he addresses Jonathan, who’s just come back from hiding Will in his bedroom. “You know how to use this?”

Jonathan blinks at him, then at the gun. “What?”

Hopper’s expression twists in annoyance, in distress, and he shakes the shotgun insistently in his hand. “Can you use this?”

Then, Mike watches as his big sister—Nancy Wheeler, who likes to stay in on Saturdays and paint her nails bubblegum pink—squares her shoulders and juts out her chin, staring Hopper dead in the eyes. “I can.”

Hopper doesn’t question her for a single second. Instead, he accepts the claim immediately, probably realizing, like Mike is, that they’re out of time, and if Nancy says she can do it, she’s not lying. He tosses her the gun, and it soars in a high, effortless arc before landing solidly in her hands. With practiced ease, she clicks the safety off and puts her eye to the viewfinder, aiming the barrel protectively out at the window. It’s clear in an instant that she wasn’t exaggerating—she does know how to use it.

Mike wonders why there’s so many things about his older sister that exist outside the borders of his knowledge. Why doesn’t he know these things? Why is she such a mystery to him? She used to be so much easier to read, back when she was dressing up for the Party’s campaigns and biking with them to school. 

Now, she’s almost a stranger. A stranger that looks very badass wielding that shotgun, legs braced and arm steady.

Silently, everyone prepares for battle. Hopper readies his gun at the front of the pack, and Nancy stands alongside him, his right hand woman. Lucas shifts, very subtly, in front of Max, which… Okay, Mike sees what he’s doing there. He sees what’s going on. Jeez, poor Dustin. Anyway, Lucas has his slingshot, his stupid fucking wrist rocket, like he hasn’t learned anything from the shitshow that was November thirteenth, 1983. Steve’s in some kind of wrestling stance, low and bouncy in the knees, nail bat held out like a sword. Dustin is… just standing there.

Mike needs a weapon.

He looks around frantically, because shit, there’s no time for this, and why didn’t he think of this earlier? Why didn’t he get a bat, or a gun, or literally anything? There was plenty of stuff in the shed.

Shit.

After restlessly whipping his head back and forth, hands clenching and unclenching from fists, Mike has to settle for the first useful-looking thing he can find. That turns out to be one of Ms. Byers’ candle holders, sans candle, golden and goblet-shaped. Mike rolls it between his palms—it’s a decent weight. He swings it experimentally, trying to imagine a Demodog in front of its path, hot and slimy and snarling.

It’ll have to do.

Mike glances back at Nancy and moves to her side, back just a few paces, and tries to copy her stance to the best of his ability. Legs apart. Shoulders tensed. Eyes set on the door.

In his peripheral vision, he sees Jonathan and Ms. Byers, weaponless and grasping each other’s forearms.

They’re gonna die, aren’t they? They’re all… Fuck. They’re goners. They’re fucking dead.

Mike waits. His mind is blank. It’s racing. It’s. He’s.

There’s a low chitter from outside, reminiscent of Dart in the AV room, and the whole Party whips around to face the noise. Someone screams, and Mike’s not even sure who. It might have been him.

Nancy peers over the barrel of her gun, trying to get a glimpse out the window. “What are they doing?” she asks nervously.

No one answers, and in the silence, all Mike can hear is uneven gasps of breath. The deadly, roaring movement of otherworldly beings.

Just past the glass, the bushes sway. With a sudden flash of sound, the noises pick up, interweaving together and locking into place. They’re right outside. Right next to the door. Mike knows it.

His sweaty fingers tighten around the candle holder. He tries to imagine hitting something with it. Putting all his weight into it.

Is he heavier than a Demodog?

Lucas doesn’t look scared; arm steady and slingshot pulled back. His eyes are set and hardened, like he’s ready to go to war. Mike straightens his posture a little. Plants his feet. Tries not to focus on anything else except the pounding of his own heart.

The screeching picks up, a cacophony of pained whines, and then abruptly stops.

It’s silent. Still.

Glass shatters, and a Demodog flies through the window, limbs limp and motionless in the air. Hopper lets out a startled yell, and Mike squeezes his eyes shut. They’re gonna die, they’re gonna die, they’re gonna die—

The dog flops uselessly on the ground. Its limp body sparks a string of related images in Mike’s mind, and for the first time, Mike wonders where Chester is. If he’s okay. If he’s hiding. And it’s the last thing he should be thinking right now, but he’s scared, and emotionally checked out, and he’s gonna die in his home away from home, without ever getting to say goodbye to his best friend. Without ever saying he loves him. Mike thinks that Bob was wrong. He’s the shittiest friend in the history of the world.

But the Demodog is dead. So maybe they’re alright.

The room goes quiet, and confusion permeates the air. It’s wary. Cautious. The monster lays on the ground, among Will’s taped-down drawings, and its petals are shiny and slick around its gaping mouth. Even from Mike’s crappy vantage point at the back of the room, it looks so much smaller. Harmless, even. It’s almost insane, thinking that this is the animal that’s caused them so much fear and heartache.

It is, though, so Mike doesn’t relax. He stays tense, stays ready, stays on his toes. In front of him, Dustin’s eyes are wide, and Mike spares a second to wonder if he’s thinking of Dart. If he’s having regrets. If he misses his companion, if he misses the wide-eyed innocence and curiosity he felt before everything got complicated.

“Holy shit,” Dustin mutters. 

Max, by his side, takes a cautious step closer. “...Is it dead?”

Hopper, the bravest of them all, keeps his gun aimed straight at the Demodog. He walks forward until his boots are lined up with the monster’s face, then gives it a careful kick. Mike holds his breath, certain that something’s about to go wrong, like it always does, but—

Nothing. It’s really dead.

And that’s when Mike’s pulse ticks right back up, because… What sort of thing could do that? There has to be something bigger out there, right? Something that killed this thing? 

Mike can only think of two options. And one of them is impossible.

Is there a Demogorgon out there?

If they weren’t doomed before, now they really are. A pack of adolescent Demodogs is nothing compared to what El faced last year. Mike still remembers its teeth. Its claws. The horrible, predatory way it ran.

Hopper’s gun lowers, just a little bit, and it’s more out of confusion than anything else. Across the room, faces are painted in various shades of uncertainty, various colors of waning fear.

Behind them, the door creaks.

Mike whips around, hands still clasped lamely around the base of his candle holder. His mind is completely blank. For some reason, the only thought in there is of Chester, curled up and cowering in fear somewhere. Under Will’s bed, maybe. A memory flashes through Mike’s mind, an old one that’s fuzzy around the edges and sugar-sweet. A scrappy white puppy, butting up against Will’s leg and dozing in the sunlight while Mike and Will played in Castle Byers.

Will. Will, who’s still passed out on Jonathan’s bed. Will, who might never wake up again.

That, Mike thinks, is the worst part of it all.

For a second, the world is frozen.

Then the lock clicks open. And—the world may unfreeze, but Mike stops in his tracks. Because there’s only one time he’s seen that happen before, and only one person, that he knows of, with the power to move a door lock at will. But that’s not. She’s not—

Right? This is just Mike’s foolishness again. Just him being ridiculous and childish and scared and hopeful, all at once. Wishing his girlfriend back from the nebulous realm of missing people. Not dead, but gone. Gone.

The chain latch moves sideways, then falls off its axis. Slowly, the door creaks open, and Mike doesn’t think he’s taken a single breath in the last several minutes. Or however long it’s been since the shed, because it feels like hours and seconds all at once. It feels infinite. It feels like nothing at all.

He sees her in flashes. White, laced-up converse. Rolled denim jeans, a little baggy around the ankles. And she looks different— really different—but Mike would recognize that bloody nose anywhere. The dark soulfulness of her eyes. The steely resolve in her expression.

Darkness obscures his vision as he blinks, hard, trying to scrub the illusion out of his eyes. But she stays the same, slicked-back hair and black smudgy makeup and a tough leather jacket. 

Eleven.

Before Mike makes a conscious decision, he’s walking forward, heat stinging behind his eyes and throat spasming with emotion because she’s—she’s here. Three-hundred and fifty-three days, three-hundred and fifty-three unanswered radio calls, three-hundred and fifty-three nights of talking into the dark and kicking himself for expecting a response.

And she’s here.

It feels like her and Mike are the only people in the room, the way her eyes are fixed solely on him. Carefully, uncertainly, her mouth pulls into a smile, and Mike feels a trembling, answering response stretch across his own lips. 

Three-hundred and fifty-three days, and his friend has finally come home.

***

“Eleven,” Mike breathes, voice light and trembling.

Her entire expression crumples—with relief, with affection, with exhaustion. “Mike.”

They move together, magnetic, and before Mike knows it, they’re hugging, solid and familiar. As he tucks his face into the soft curve of her neck, smelling something outdoorsy and woodsy, all the bad feelings start to leak away. They’re okay now. Everything will be okay, because El’s here. She’s here. 

Her hands clutch at his shoulders, at his back, and he grips the sides of her jacket just as tightly. It feels like they’re trying to hold each other together, to stop each other from leaving ever again. El’s breaths shudder out of her uncontrollably, hitching on a series of small sobs. 

And suddenly, he needs her to know. He pulls back, just a little, grasping her by the roughened shoulders of her jacket. “I never gave up on you,” he says, voice strained. He searches her face, staring into her dark brown eyes, deep with a sorrowful joy. “I called you every night. Every night, for—”

El sniffles, then smiles a little. “Three hundred and fifty-three days,” she finishes. “I heard.”

The words break something in Mike. His smile drops, and ice creeps into his veins, because— “Why didn’t you tell me you were there? That you were okay?” he says shakily. He doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand. If she heard him, if she was listening, then why wouldn’t she say anything? Why would she let him sit there, night after night, crying and yelling and feeling like an absolute idiot?

“Because I wouldn’t let her.”

The icy feeling intensifies, calcifying and intensifying into cold fury. Moments ago, Mike was scared. He was confused. Then he was relieved, and overjoyed, and confused again—and now?

Now, hearing Hopper’s voice, he’s pissed.

He whips around, brain going a million miles a minute, trying to catch up, why is he always so behind? Why don’t people tell him things?

Hopper’s gun is lax in his hands, the ever-present threat of danger momentarily forgotten as he takes a few steps forward, eyes flicking over El in a cursory check-up. “What the hell is this?” he says gruffly, gesturing to her outfit, her hair, her makeup. “Huh? Where have you been?”

Mike’s pushed to the side as Hopper moves in, slinging an arm around El and kissing the top of her head even as she glares at him. “Where have you been?” she says grumpily, but leans into the embrace. It’s worlds apart from how they acted a year ago, when they barely knew each other. It’s how a father and daughter would act. A family. 

Mike’s jaw drops, then clenches, anger intensifying. “You’ve been hiding her,” he says. It’s not a question. It’s the only thing that makes sense. “You’ve been hiding her this whole time,” he spits, shoving Hopper roughly on the back. Look at me, he thinks. Turn around and face me, own up to this, come on, be a man—

Tears prick at the back of his eyes. He ignores them.

“Hey!” Hopper says, affronted, and pivots to face Mike, grabbing the collar of his shirt and yanking him forward. “Let’s talk. Alone.”

He pushes Mike down the hallway, marching him like he’s some kind of criminal at the station, and before they even get into Will’s bedroom, he’s trying to explain himself. Like anything could make this okay. Like he hasn’t just separated Mike from Eleven again, moments after they were reunited. “You have to understand, kid, I was protecting her—”

Mike stumbles through the door, and a scream builds in his throat. He’s so overwhelmed, so upset and scared and confused and happy, even, that Eleven is back, but all he can focus on is this argument. This fight. It’s the only thing he can control. 

“Protecting her,” he repeats incredulously, flinging his hands out at his side as Hopper shuts the door behind them. “Protecting her?”

That’s ridiculous. El can protect herself. She can protect a whole army of people. She’s a freaking superhero! What does she need protecting from?

Bad men, his brain whispers.

Shut up, he screams back. He’s trying to focus. He’s trying to get the upper hand, he needs Hopper to be wrong, needs someone to blame, someone to be mad at who’s only human, only flesh and blood, someone who Mike can yell at, even though he really only wants to yell at himself. At the world. At the Shadow Monster, at the Upside Down, for ruining him and his friends’ lives.

“Listen to me,” Hopper says, tone already placating. Stifling. “Listen to me. The more people know about her, the more danger she’s in.” He uncocks his gun, setting it against the wall by the door, and somehow, that’s what gets Mike the most—the sight of a gun in his best friend’s room. It’s so alien, so out of place, that it hits him all at once. How wrong this all is. How horrible. 

He wants his life back. He doesn’t want to be yelling at Hopper in Will’s bedroom, while a fully-loaded shotgun rests against the train-patterned wallpaper. 

“Oh, so I should be thanking you, then?” Mike says, instead of any of that. His words are thick and sarcastic, because they have to be. If they’re not, he thinks he might cry.

“I’m not asking you to thank me,” Hopper says, tone hard. He steps forward until he’s toe-to-toe with Mike, glowering down at him. Not intimidated in the least, because why would he be?

Mike is just a little kid. Useless. Pathetic.

“I’m asking you to try to understand,” Hopper finishes, and it’s so absurd that Mike wants to laugh. He wants to sob. He wants—he wants—

“I don’t!” he spits, hand flailing at his side. “I don’t understand!”

Hopper’s eyebrows twist down, face stormy. He waves Mike away, like an annoying gnat. “That’s fine, that’s fine.” His waving hand turns into a pointing finger, a direct line from Will’s wall to the living room, where El is waiting for them. “Just don’t blame her. She’s upset enough as it is.”

Mike’s voice is raw at this point, and it hurts to keep screaming, but he can’t stop. It’s bubbling out of him, the rage and terror and… Just, all these feelings, and it doesn’t make sense. Men aren’t supposed to be emotional. Dad says that all the time.

But here Mike is. Emotional.

(He’s not a man. He’s just a kid. Just a stupid, worthless, good-for-nothing—)

“I don’t blame her!” Mike shouts, horrified at the idea that Hopper would even think such a thing. He doesn’t know Mike at all. “I blame you!” He thrusts a fist at Hopper’s chest, close but not touching. He knows how dangerous it is to be doing this, to be verbally assaulting a police officer. It feels like he’s playing with fire, trembling in his skin and expecting the hard sting of a backhand or the leather slap of a belt any second now. 

Maybe he would deserve it.

But Hopper’s hands don’t reach for his belt, and his fingers don’t curl into fists. He rolls his eyes, looking done with the entire conversation. Looking like Mike is nothing to him, nothing more than a toddler throwing a tantrum. Let her cry it out, Dad used to say about Holly. She’ll stop eventually. 

“That’s okay, kid. That’s okay.”

It’s not.

“No,” Mike says harshly, voice picking up until he’s almost screaming. “Nothing about this is okay!”

And there’s still no response, still no sign of aggression, and Mike wants to fight. He wants to—he wants to get some sort of reaction. He wants Hopper to be mad, wants him to blame Mike, because this is all his fault, and—

“Nothing about this is okay!” he screams hoarsely, charging forward to punch Hopper right in the middle of his doughy stomach. “You stupid, lying, disgusting piece of shit—”

“Hey!” Hopper grunts, holding his hands up to avoid touching Mike. “Okay, hey, quit it—”

Mike doesn’t quit. Come on, he thinks desperately. Come on, just hit me already, just yell at me, just do something, please, anything—

“Liar! Liar! Liar!” Mike yells, timing each word with a punch. He knows he’s barely making a dent, knows that he’s not strong enough to hurt this brick wall of a man, and that only makes him even more angry. He needs this. He needs this. And his screams are turning into sobs, voice thick with tears, and his punches are getting weaker and more soft-willed by the second, and he’s not mad at Hopper, he’s mad at himself.

Fuck. He’s mad at himself. He’s so fucking angry.

And in that moment, Mike thinks, very clearly: I hate you. I hate you, you disgusting, worthless, pathetic piece of—

“Stop it! Hey, it’s okay—stop it! Stop it,” Hopper says firmly, and his hands finally close in around Mike’s shoulders, but—but they don’t hit. They don’t punch, they don’t grab, they don’t pull. Instead, they tug him closer, smoothing over the fabric of his jacket, until Mike realizes—they’re hugging.

Mike just spent a whole minute punching and berating the chief of police, and now he’s hugging him.

“It’s okay, kid,” Hopper murmurs, resting his chin on the top of Mike’s head. His hand gentles, fingers stroking comforting lines over Mike’s shoulder. “Hey, it’s alright. You’re okay. Shh.”

A horrible, strangled noise wrenches out of Mike’s throat, then another. He burrows his head into Hopper’s shirt, and he smells woodsy, just like El did. He can’t remember the last time an adult has hugged him like this. An adult man, no less. Because men aren’t supposed to hug, are they? That’s not… that’s not something guys do. Maybe for kids, it’s okay, but once you grow up, it’s just weird.

But Hopper didn’t seem to get the memo. He wraps his arms fully around Mike, whispering soft platitudes into the crown of his head, coarse beard hairs brushing against his temple. “Hey, buddy, it’s okay,” he says. “It’s okay, you’re alright. Come on, let it out.”

And Mike has no fight left in him, not anymore. So he does. Feeling small, feeling vaguely mortified and overwhelmed, he sobs in Hopper’s arms. Hopper, who he barely even likes on a good day. Hopper, who saved them all back at the lab.

Hopper, who’s shown Mike more compassion in these last ten seconds than his own dad has in thirteen years.

His hands gentle over Mike’s head, his shoulders. He tucks a stray piece of hair behind his ear: loving, fatherly, protective. “I’m sorry, kid,” he whispers, and Mike just—he just cries. There’s nothing else to do.

Hopper pulls him closer. Under the bed, Chester whines, and it’s almost like he’s crying, too.

***

In the coming strategy session, Mike sticks to Hopper like glue. It’s some by-product, he guesses, of having a super-gross emotional breakdown in the guy’s arms. That sort of thing changes a relationship. It crosses a line. 

Mike’s been silent, the last hour. His face is still red, even though Hopper had helped him into the bathroom to clean up, wiped his face with tissues and dabbed at his cheeks with a cold, wet washcloth. But, because neither of them are the most emotionally intelligent people in the world, there was no sort of conversation. Hopper had asked, kind of awkwardly, Do you want to talk about it?

And that wasn’t even a question. So Mike shook his head.

Anyway. Strategy. Closing the gate. Which, as Mike has realized, comes with a whole host of other problems. What’s new?

Hopper, being the only one that’s actually seen the gate, has been tasked with describing it. He sighs, exhausted and worn-down. “It’s not like it was before,” he says, to the table at large. “It’s grown. A lot. And, I mean, that’s considering we can even get in there. The place is crawling with those dogs.”

Dustin raises an eyebrow. “Demodogs,” he corrects.

Hopper stares blankly at him. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I said Demodogs,” Dustin repeats, not picking up on the passive aggressive tone. “Like, Demogorgon and dogs. You put them together, it sounds pretty badass—”

“How is this important right now?” Hopper asks incredulously, and Dustin shrinks in response.

“It’s not. I’m sorry,” he mumbles, staring down at the dining table.

From across the room, El looks up, eyes heavily shadowed with that dark makeup. Mike still can’t believe she’s here— he keeps expecting her to disappear when he blinks, a mere product of his overworked imagination. But she’s solid. Real. Different. “I can do it,” she says steadily, and that part is the same. Her determination. Her selflessness.

Superhero.

Hopper’s eye twitches. “You’re not hearing me.”

She doesn’t back down, not in the slightest. Her eyes bore into Hopper’s surly expression. “I’m hearing you. I can do it,” she says firmly.

But this is all pointless. Mike’s baffled that no one’s realized it yet—but they haven’t, so he guesses it’s up to him. He clears his throat, praying that his voice doesn’t crack or strain. “Even if El can do it,” he says, and thankfully, it sounds fine. A little tired, but that’s to be expected. No one would know that he’d just broken down in Will’s bedroom less than an hour ago. “There’s still another problem. If the brain dies, the body dies.”

He looks around, expecting everyone to immediately get it. The implication. Will, lying prone and helpless in Jonathan’s bedroom. The body. The spy. The hive mind.

Max furrows her eyebrows. “I thought that was the whole point.”

Apparently, Will’s not the first thought on everyone’s mind. Which doesn’t sound right, and Mike can’t really fathom that, but whatever. If he’s gotta explain, he will. Max needs things spelled out for her sometimes, he’s learned.

“It is,” he allows, thinking of vines and Demodogs. “But if we’re really right about this… I mean, if El closes the gate and kills the Mind Flayer’s army…”

Finally, Lucas’s eyes light with delayed understanding. With horror. “Will’s part of that army,” he finishes quietly. He, Max, and Dustin all share wide-eyed looks.

Mike nods. “Closing the gate will kill him,” he says, and the words leave a bitter taste on his tongue. Kill him. Kill Will. They have to think of a plan, and fast. Because Mike’s not involving himself in anything that would hurt a single hair on Will’s head. Nope. Not doing it. 

He doesn’t think about the quarry. About the body.

It’ll kill him.

A cool breeze gusts over his skin from the cracked-open window, leaving a trail of goosebumps in its wake. Mike shivers.

Ms. Byers looks like she’s been hit, and Mike imagines that her expression is pretty close to his own. But his, he hopes, is more stone-faced. More resolved. He’s a man. A leader. He’s had time to think about this, even if he’s no closer to coming up with a plan.

With no warning, Ms. Byers gets to her feet, pushes her chair back, and starts off down the hallway. Towards Will. 

The group shoots confused glances at each other before following, unsure of what else to do. As Mike nudges his way into Jonathan’s bedroom, trying to get a good view of Will from the back of the pack, his heart sinks. Will looks so… still. He looks almost like a corpse.

(Body in the quarry. Body in the—)

(Red jacket. Waterlogged hair. Pale skin.)

Mike looks away. Looks at the wall. At the window, which is cracked open, just like the rest. 

“He likes it cold,” Ms. Byers says quietly.

Hopper grunts inquisitively. “What?”

“It’s what Will kept saying to me,” she explains. “He likes it cold.”

Gathering confidence, Ms. Byers strides to the open window, sliding it closed with quick and firm movements. When she turns around to face them, there’s a determined fire in her eyes. And Mike knows, right then, that she’s got an idea. A plan. A little bit of the tension leaks from his shoulders.

“We keep giving it what it wants,” she tells them. 

Slowly, Nancy nods in understanding. “If this is a virus,” she says. “And Will’s the host, then—”

Next to her, Jonathan crouches down, placing a soft hand on his brother’s forearm. “Then we need to make the host uninhabitable.”

“So if he likes it cold…” Nancy starts, looking askance at Ms. Byers.

Her expression hardens. “We need to burn it out of him.”

Well, that sounds… painful. But it’s less painful than death. And Mike trusts Ms. Byers. He knows she wouldn’t hurt Will. 

It’s all they’ve got.

Mike thinks of the shed. Of the ringing phone. “We have to do it somewhere he doesn’t know this time,” he points out.

At his side, Dustin’s mouth flattens into a grim line. Brainstorming. Problem-solving. “Somewhere far away,” he says.

Across the room, Hopper straightens. He shares a quick glance with El—and that’s so weird that they can do that now, communicate without talking—and they both nod. “I’ve got it,” he says, and scoops Will off the bed. Mike watches his hands. They’re careful. Gentle. 

A little more of the tension leaves his body. 

“Who’s coming?” Hopper asks gruffly. Immediately, Jonathan stands, and Ms. Byers drifts over to them. Mike’s frozen to the spot, paralyzed with indecision. Stay or go? Stay or go?

On the one hand, he just got El back. He doesn’t want to leave her—but he’ll have to, anyway. She’s going to close the gate. So that’s a moot point.

Then again, Mike doesn’t know if he can stand to watch the burning. Burn it out of him. It sounds gruesome. Painful. And just being there at the hospital almost killed him.

On the other hand, it’s Will.

Mike steps forward.

Ms. Byers clocks him immediately, drifting over to put a gentle hand on each of his shoulders. She leans down to look him in the eye. “Mike, honey, not this time,” she murmurs. “Thank you for being there for him. I know he’d be so… so grateful, okay? But right now, I need you to stay here. Where it’s safe.”

Mike’s mouth clacks open in automatic protest. “But—” But I want to be there. But I can help.

Can he, though?

Over the top of Ms. Byers’ head, Hopper meets his eye. Gives a firm shake of his head. His eyes are sympathetic, but resolved.

Stay away, kid. Stay here.

Mike swallows down his pride. His indignation. “Okay,” he says quietly. “Okay, Ms. Byers, I’m sorry. Good luck.”

Her expression melts, like a softened pad of butter on a hot pan, and she wraps her arms around him, pulling him in for an embrace that smells like fall and vanilla. “Don’t apologize, honey,” she says, voice trembling a little bit. Mike tucks his face into the curve of her neck and breathes. He thinks he’s had more hugs in the last day than he’s had in the last year. And he’s vaguely embarrassed, that this is happening in front of everyone, but it’s been a long day, and he’s too tired to care.

“Thank you, Mike,” Ms. Byers whispers, low and private. “You’ve done so good. Thank you, baby.”

Mike blinks away tears. Hugs are fine. Crying is where he draws the line. He’s done enough of that already.

With a final squeeze, she pulls away, and all four of them—Ms. Byers, Jonathan, Hopper, and Will—leave the room. Off into the unknown.

God, Mike wants to be there. He really does.

He steps back, gravitating towards Nancy’s side, and they watch the Byers leave with matching forlorn expressions. Silently, she slings an arm around his shoulder, and he leans into the comfort, just for a moment.

Then that moment is over. Nancy removes her arm and clears her throat, clearly the leader of the room now that Hopper’s gone. “I’m going to go look for heaters,” she says. “Kids, you stay here. Get some rest.”

Steve’s head snaps up. “I’ll come with you,” he offers immediately, and Mike’s eyebrows shoot up towards the ceiling.

Interesting.

But Nancy never gets too happy with Mike poking around in her love life, and he doesn’t care anyway (really, he doesn’t), so he says nothing.

It’s clear enough, anyway. 

They’ve been benched.

***

Twenty minutes later, Mike’s given up. Apparently, he’s just gonna be crying like a baby all fucking night, because here he is, again, submitting to the goddamn waterworks.

He just got her back. He just got her back, and she’s already leaving.

Mike knows it’s selfish to think that way. El needs to go save the world again. That’s her whole thing. She can’t keep out of trouble just so Mike can wrap her in bubblewrap and keep her directly in his line of sight for the rest of their lives. That’s not how it works.

They stop at the last stair of the porch, hands brushing but fingers separated. After a year apart, Mike’s not really sure where the line is. He’s not really sure where he wants it to be.

El turns to face him, face full of earnest emotion. “Mike,” she says softly, and waits.

He takes a deep breath. Her eyes are always so dark, and they’re even darker in the moonlight. Even shinier. “Just be careful, okay? I can’t… I can’t lose you again.”

El shakes her head, hair jostling with the movement. There’s so much of it now. She’s changed so much. And Mike wasn’t even there to see it. “You won’t lose me,” she says, and Mike has no idea how she’s so certain. So self-assured.

Tears burn by his waterline. “Do you promise?”

Her eyes are red and watery, too, but she still holds his gaze, not once flinching away. “Promise,” she answers gravely.

And Mike believes her. He does. He has to.

Then, testing, she starts to lean in. Internally, Mike panics. His brain goes haywire. Every inch she moves forward, the more thoughts spring to his brain. Are we dating? Does she expect me to kiss her? I want to kiss her, right? This is what we’re supposed to do. Shit, it’s been so long, I don’t remember how to kiss, I’m not sure I ever even knew—

All of the competing questions, frantic and unanswered, culminate in an absolute refusal of his body to move. He’s frozen in place, unable to do anything but watch as El moves towards him.

Get it together, he thinks, upset with himself. Come on, dude, kiss her already.

Their noses brush, sending a cold wave of nerves down into Mike’s stomach. 

“El!”

El whips around, and Mike feels something oddly like… relief. 

He just wasn’t ready, he reasons. It’s been a long, stressful day. Next time El wants to kiss him, he’ll be ready. He will.

“Come on, let’s go,” Hopper calls to her. “It’s time.”

She nods once, then turns back to Mike. The moment’s broken, and they both know it. It’s okay. They don’t have to kiss right now. That’s not what this is about. 

El takes a deep, steadying breath. In and out. Mike can still feel the warm wetness of tears under his eyes. “Okay,” he says, a little uselessly. He nods, psyching himself up. El’s leaving. She’s gonna close the gate, and Will’s gonna be okay, and everything will be fine. It’ll work out. “Okay,” he says again, nodding with the word. “Good luck, El.”

She smiles at him, and it’s a little bittersweet. “Stay safe, Mike,” she whispers, then backs away.

Mike watches as she crowds into the passenger seat of Hopper’s car, and Nancy sneaks off to join Jonathan. Because of course she does. Of course she can go help, but Mike can’t. Because he’s younger. Because he’s spent the whole day falling apart and crying like a baby. He’s no better than his little sister.

Let her cry it out.

God, he’s disgusted with himself. He’s supposed to be better than this. He’s supposed to be helping Will. Defeating the Shadow Monster.

Instead he waits, alone, and watches as he gets left behind. Forgotten about.

Just like he always is.

Chapter Text

Step, two, three. Step, two, three. Breathe. Exhale. Shove hands deeper into pockets. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it, Jesus Christ, what did he just say? Okay, start over.

Step, two, three. Step, two, three. Breathe. Exha—

“Mike, would you just stop already?”

Mike twists around immediately, already raring to go. The sound of broken glass has been grating on his nerves for the last ten minutes, because Lucas sucks at sweeping and he’s really inefficient, and now, as a result, Mike has the worst headache. The intensity of his glare ramps up a bit as he eyes the broom. “You weren’t in there, okay, Lucas? That lab is swarming with hundreds of those dogs.”

(Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Don’t—)

“Demodogs!” Dustin trills from the kitchen, tone affronted. Mike’s jaw clenches.

“The chief will take care of her,” Lucas assures Mike, already zeroing in on his worry. It makes Mike feel stripped bare, like his skin is invisible. He doesn’t want to be such a worrier, but what else is he supposed to do?

“Like she needs protection,” Max grumbles, rolling her eyes. Mike’s jaw clenches harder. She doesn’t even know El. She wasn’t there last year, didn't have to watch as El fought the Demogorgon in Mr. Clarke’s science classroom, dripping blood and screaming herself hoarse. She didn’t have to wait, day by day, for a call that never came. A sign that never showed.

And then, like things weren’t bad enough already, Steve wanders over, blue dishtowel in hand. “Listen, dude, a coach calls a play in a game, bottom line, you execute it. Okay?”

It makes Mike think of his dad. Of strike three and you’re on the bench, son. His fingers tremble at his sides, and he shoves his hands into his jacket pockets again. “Okay, first of all, this isn’t some stupid sports game, alright?” he tells Steve. “And second of all, we’re not even in the game. We’re on the bench.”

Steve’s eyes widen, and he stammers uneasily. “R—right, yeah, so. So my point is…”

They all wait. If Steve has a point, Mike would pay to hear it. Maybe, like, a quarter. But still.

Eventually, Steve tilts his head in agreement. “Right, yeah, we’re on the bench. So there’s nothing we can do.” He slings Ms. Byers’ dishtowel over his shoulder, lips pursed to the side, then crosses his arms over his chest.

Dustin clears his throat. “That’s not… entirely true.”

For the first time, Mike perks up. If anyone’s gonna fix this thing, it’s Dustin. 

“I mean, these Demodogs,” Dustin continues, looking searchingly around the room. “They have a hive mind. When they ran away from the bus, they were called away.”

Right. Okay. That’s…

“If we get their attention—” Lucas starts, and Max nods in understanding.

“Maybe we can draw them away from the lab,” she suggests. Finishing his sentence, like they’re an old married couple or something. Jeez.

But they have a point. And with the dogs out of the lab, it would be way easier for El to close the gate. Safer, too.

(Glinting teeth. Snarling echoes. Screams, screams, screams—)

Shit. Stop fucking thinking about it.

“We can clear a path to the gate,” Mike says, staring down at the floor. Focus. Be useful. Helpful. 

He’s supposed to be the leader, for fuck’s sake.

Steve scoffs, throwing his hands out incredulously. “Yeah, and then we all die!”

Dustin frowns. “That’s one point of view.”

“No that’s not a point of view, man, that’s a fact—”

Bob. Bob dying. Bob screaming and getting ripped to shreds, Bob walking around the Byers’ living room, eyes lighting up as he pointed at—

Holy shit. 

Mike inhales so quickly that he almost chokes on air, then races in the direction of the kitchen. “I’ve got it!”

He doesn’t look behind him to see if everyone’s following him. He hopes they are, though.

Once in the kitchen, he kneels by the fridge, right where they’d found Hopper. The field. The X.

“This is where the chief dug his hole,” Mike explains, once he registers all the people behind him, waiting to see what’s up. “This can be our way into the tunnels. And—” He stands abruptly from his crouch, half-jogging into the living room, where the big blue mass is on the floor. The heart of the tunnels. “Here, right here,” he says, pointing downwards. “This is like a hub. So you’ve got all the tunnels feeding into here.”

Mike gets on his hands and knees, palms pressed right over the thin sheets of paper, the waxy blue crayon residue. His mind’s going a mile a minute, wheels turning. The tunnels. The burn. He likes it cold.

“Maybe if we set this on fire—”

Steve whips around, jaw falling slack. “Um, yeah, that’s a no.”

Mike ignores him. As does everyone else.

“The Mind Flayer would call away his army,” Dustin concludes, gaze sharp with approval, and a little worryingly manic. Mike’s not sure Dustin should be in charge of the fire.

“They’d all come to stop us!” Lucas cheers, grinning widely. 

“Hey!”

Mike’s not listening. “Then we’d circle back to the exit. By the time they realize we’re gone—”

“Guys.”

“El would be at the gate,” Max finishes, smiling a little. “It’s a good plan.”

Loud clapping breaks Mike out of his daze, and he blinks over at Steve. “Hey, hey, hey!” he interrupts, shoving his way to the middle of the Party. “This is not happening.”

Mike’s hearing him. He is. It’s just a little hard to take him seriously, with his hands on his hips like that. He looks like a soccer mom. “But—”

Steve points at Mike. “Nonononono! No. No buts. I promised I’d keep you shitheads safe, and that’s exactly what I plan on doing. We’re staying here, on the bench, and we’re waiting for the starting team to do their job. Does everybody understand that?”

Fucking soccer mom. “This isn’t a stupid sports game—” Mike starts again, frustration boiling up in his stomach. Who the hell left Steve in charge, anyway? This guy’s got no authority here. Sure, maybe he’s whoppered a demodog or two. Big deal. What else has he done? Snuck in Nancy’s bedroom window? Set the world record for most cans of hairspray emptied? Contributed to about half the new polluted shit in the air?

Steve’s eye twitches. “I said, does everybody understand that?” When no one responds, he straightens up, expression hardening. “I need a yes.”

It’s only a play at authority—and not even a good one, because Mike can see right through it, see the nervous set to Steve’s eyes and the tapping of his feet—but they’ve got no other choice. Steve is in charge, if only because he’s the oldest one in the room. Fuck, that’s not fair at all. Just because Mike is younger doesn’t mean he’s not right. 

No one gives him a yes. Instead, they all glare at the walls, at the ceiling, at the floor. Anything except Steve.

Outside, an engine roars, saving them from this bullshit conversation. Thank god. But Max jumps, like she recognizes the sound, and rushes over to the window.

Come to think of it, Mike recognizes the sound, too. There’s only one person in Hawkins with a car that loud.

Mike stands to his feet, watching as Max and Lucas peer worriedly out the glass. “It’s my brother,” Max says, and Mike remembers riding home from school on Halloween, nearly getting ground into the asphalt. Suddenly, like a puzzle piece slotting neatly into place, a lot more things make sense.

“He can’t know I’m here,” she says, real fear creeping into her voice. “He’ll kill me. He’ll kill us.”

And… Jesus, it doesn’t even sound like she’s joking. Mike can’t imagine, like, the words sister and she’ll kill me existing in the same couple sentences. Not unless it’s a joke. Nancy would never hurt him.

The room goes all bright as Max’s brother pulls up to the house, headlights flaring obnoxiously. Next to Mike, Steve swallows, and the sound is audible in the quiet room. “Stay here,” he tells the Party, voice low and protective. “I’ll get rid of him.”

Shit. Well, apparently Steve’s good for something.

Mike and Dustin crowd up behind Lucas and Max as Steve makes his way out the front door, closing it securely behind him. They watch as Max’s brother (who looks nothing like her, by the way) steps out of his convertible, cigarette dangling from his lips. Steve walks up to meet him, and fuck, Mike wishes he had super-hearing right now, so he could make out what they’re saying.

Does El have super-hearing? He’ll have to ask her.

“Is he mad?” Dustin asks quietly, squinting off into the darkness.

Max shifts uncomfortably. “He’s always mad.”

Okay, it’s not like this makes up for everything Max has done. Mike still doesn’t like her, on principle. But in this moment, right now, he does feel bad for her. He does. Families can be shitty sometimes. Mike’s relatively lucky, as far as that goes, and even he has his moments.

They go back to their silent watch, competing for the limited viewing space against the windowsill. It looks like things are pretty tense out there.

Then, horrifyingly, Steve and Max’s brother both whip their heads around, staring straight at the Party. All four of them duck for cover, throwing themselves down against the sofa.

“Shit!” Dustin yelps. “Did he see us?”

“Probably,” Max breathes out, squeezing her eyes shut. Lucas nudges a little closer, until his shoulder is pressed comfortingly against hers. Mike watches them, filled with a feeling he doesn’t really understand. Missing El, probably. He wishes he was there with her.

He wonders how Will’s doing. If he’s okay. If he’s hurting.

Okay, focus. Focus. Breathe. Inhale, exhale. Count heartbeats. One, two, three. He’s fine. He’s fine.

“We should get away from the windows,” Mike says, and without complaint, the Party does. They back up until they’re edging on the border between the living room and kitchen, and Mike’s just starting to scan the room for hiding spots when the door bursts open, sudden and violent.

It’s too late.

Max’s brother is scarier up close. Not looks-wise—he’s actually a really good-looking guy, with his tan and that hair and those eyes—but just going off his aura. His vibrations, or whatever stupid shit people say in California. There’s this malice dripping off of him, soaking the room in a cold tension. His expression is flat, but almost amused. Like he’s enjoying scaring the shit out of his little sister. Out of all of them.

“Well, well, well.” He slams the door behind him, then takes a deliberate step forward, eyes fixed solely on Lucas and Max. “Lucas Sinclair. What a surprise.”

Mike’s mind struggles to keep up. Does Lucas know this guy? Have they met before? Shit, why is he so behind?

Max’s brother comes closer and closer, until he’s toe-to-toe with his sister. “I thought I told you to stay away from him, Max.”

“Billy. Go away.”

“You disobeyed me,” Billy murmurs, voice shockingly low. “And you know what happens when you disobey me.”

A chill runs down Mike’s spine.

“Billy—”

“I break things.”

And before the words are even fully out, before Mike’s even fully processed them, there’s a flurry of movement, Billy grabbing Lucas by his jacket collar and wrenching him up against the wall. Mike stumbles back in shock, heart pounding against his ribs. Fuck, fuck, fuck—

This guy’s crazy. He’s fucking crazy.

Billy drags Lucas across the room, and the Party’s shouts mix together, begging him to stop, to let Lucas go, but nothing works. Nothing reaches him. 

“Lucas!” Mike screams, voice hoarse. “Hey, get off of him!”

Billy doesn’t get off. Of course he doesn’t. Mike has no authority here, he’s helpless, useless—

Lucas is pushed up against the corner of the living room, right next to Ms. Byers’ oakwood china cabinet. The plates rattle behind the glass with the force of Billy’s shoves. “Maybe if Maxine won’t listen to me, you will,” he tells Lucas, inches away from his face. Lucas’s eyes are dark and wide and terrified, and shit, he didn’t do anything to deserve this. He didn’t do anything wrong, what’s happening?

“You stay away from her,” Billy threatens. Then, louder: “Stay away from her!”

The plates rattle again. Mike can’t help it—he flinches. There’s that familiar fear, the familiar dread pooling at his tailbone, dripping down into his shoes and gluing him to the floor. Run, his traitorous mind whispers. Run. Save yourself.

He stays exactly where he is.

Lucas’s mouth twists in frightened fury. “I said get off of me,” he forces out, and kicks Billy right in the balls. 

Hell yeah. 

Lucas has always been braver than Mike.

Billy hunches over in pain, cupping his denim-clad crotch, and Lucas makes a break for it. Mike watches, rooted to the spot, as another player enters the ring: Steve, bloodied and beaten from whatever happened outside. Nothing good, from the look of it, but hell, at least he’s still standing. 

“You’re dead, Sinclair,” Billy groans, straightening up from his crouch. 

“No,” Steve says coldly, approaching from the back. “You are.”

And with that, he backhands Billy in the face, fierce and immediate. Mike’s hand shoots up to cover his gaping mouth, his panting breaths hot against his palm. His mind is entirely blank, just a constant stream of whatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefuckkkk!

Somewhere in there, very deep down, is the realization that Steve is possibly a little cooler than Mike originally thought. This is really earning him some solid badass points. And okay, maybe Mike understands what Nancy saw in him now. Just a little.

Billy whips around, and Lucas reaches the Party, safe and relatively unharmed. Mike clasps him on the shoulder, Dustin and Max take the other, and they all back up to the wall. Safe. Safe. They’re safe, Steve’s got this, it’s okay.

Distantly, Mike realizes that he’s shaking. 

“Steve!” Max shouts, a fruitless warning, and Billy—he just laughs.

He cackles, loud and long, eyes lighting with some sort of crazed giddiness. “Looks like you got some fire in you after all, huh?” he tells Steve, throwing his head back in glee. He mock bows, like he’s approaching royalty, blood dripping heavily from his nose. “I’ve been waiting to meet this King Steve everyone’s been telling me so much about.”

Steve barely reacts. He places a firm hand on Billy’s exposed chest, pushing him back several inches. “Get out.”

Oh, fuck. Yeah, Mike’s seeing the appeal. Of—of Steve, that is. His coolness. His… manliness? What the fuck is he even thinking right now? Adrenaline’s coursing thickly through his veins, like little bolts of lightning, and Lucas almost just died, and Billy’s chest is very bare, and Steve’s got blood trailing from his cheekbone, and—what the fuck? What the fuck is going on?

There’s a long, still moment.

And then Billy swings. 

Mike doesn’t have any time to linger on his weird thoughts, because now he’s solely focused on the fight, and yeah, he’ll admit it, he’s rooting for Steve. He’s clearly the good guy in this scenario, no matter how many lame sports metaphors he’s tried to push on them in the last twenty-four hours. 

Steve ducks, then returns with a punch that sends Billy flying back into the kitchen counter, glassware clinking with the movement. Shit, Ms. Byers’ house is gonna be so messed up. Mike needs to come back here with a broom or something, since Lucas obviously sucks at sweeping.

“Yes! Kick his ass, Steve!” Dustin cheers, throwing a fist in the air. His enthusiasm fills the room, until Mike’s yelling, too, hardly even knowing what words are coming out of his mouth.

“Get him! Come on, you’ve got it—”

“Murder that sonofabitch—”

“Get that shithead!”

Billy’s laughing again, wild and deranged, and before Mike can clock the movement, he’s grabbing a ceramic plate from the dishrack and breaking it clean over Steve’s head.

“Holy shit!” Mike yelps.

Max takes an aborted step forward, Lucas’s hand pulling back at her sleeve. “Billy!”

Steve staggers towards the Party, hunched over in pain, hands clutching his head, and Billy follows. What follows after is a mess of punching and ducking and shouting and screaming, Mike’s vision blurring with it all, head spinning. They save Dustin from a near black eye, an unfortunate casualty of the fight, pulling and grabbing at each other’s clothes and arms and shoulders. It’s—it’s all so much. It’s so loud. 

Billy gets Steve by the neck, breathing harshly in his face. “No one tells me what to do,” he grinds out, jaw flexing with the words. And with that, he throws Steve bodily to the ground, so hard that Mike winces, thinking: oh, that’s gotta hurt. 

After scrambling after him, on top of him, Billy starts wailing on Steve, knuckles turning shiny red with blood. The sound of skin on bone fills the room, a horrible fleshy cracking noise that Mike knows he’ll never forget.

“You’re gonna kill him!” Dustin screams, and Mike doesn’t know why he bothers: it’s clear that that’s the goal. Billy’s not going to stop.

He’s not stopping.

Something pushes past Mike, and he hardly registers it amidst all the chaos, but when he turns his head to look, it’s—

It’s Max.

Syringe in hand, shoulders tense and determined, eyes narrowed furiously. She stomps towards her brother, a one-woman army, and—shit, she’s not gonna do it, is she?

She does. Of course she does. Still, Mike jumps at the harsh suddenness of the movement, of the sickening sight of the needle plunging into Billy’s neck, right above a thickly throbbing vein. 

Max just saved them all. She saved them.

Fuck. That’s…

Mike’s lips part, trembling with nerves, as he watches Billy stumble to his feet, turning around to face his sister.

Do something, the braver part of his mind shouts. Do something, get up, help her!

Again, he stays exactly where he is. Mike’s always been a coward.

You’re on the bench, son.

Billy’s bloodied fingers grasp the syringe, slowly pulling it out. He looks almost drunk. Dazed. Shit, Mike hopes this thing actually knocks him out—it was meant for Will, who weighs about seventy pounds soaking wet. When they used it on him, he was out like a light. Not like Billy, who’s still up and moving and somewhat functional.

A somewhat-functional guy can still do a shit-ton of damage.

He shuffles towards Max, faltering with every step. His cloudy gaze is trained directly on her, looking almost betrayed. “What the hell is this?”

Max steps back, every muscle set to bolt.

“You—” Billy trips over his own feet. “You little shit. What did you do?”

He stops. He sways—back, forth, back, forth. And finally, with a huge thud, he falls backwards, tumbling heavily to the ground. 

He’s—he’s laughing. Again. What kind of sicko— Jesus fucking Christ. Poor Max.

She doesn’t seem like poor Max right now, though. She actually seems like one hell of a badass, grabbing Steve’s nail bat from the corner and swinging it over her shoulder. Bat in tow, she stalks up to Billy, leaning over his smiling face. “From here on out, you leave me and my friends alone. Do you understand?”

It’s probably dumb that, after all of this, Mike gets stuck on the word friend. Shit, is he included in that? Does she really think of him as a friend, after… After everything? He’s been such an asshole to her.

He’s been such a fucking jerk. And here Max is, ready to smash in her brother’s face for him. For the Party.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Mike thinks about adding Zoomer to the D&D character list. She deserves it. 

Billy rolls his eyes up at the ceiling. “Screw you,” he mumbles.

There’s a hard clash, wood against wood, as Max swings the bat down, right by Billy’s recently-kicked crotch. Mike flinches, but Billy doesn’t even move, already too out of it. Max picks the bat back up, hefting it in the air. “Say you understand!” she yells. “Say it!”

Mike’s senses are heightened, every nerve in his body zinging and flayed open, but even he can’t hear Billy’s response. 

“What?” Max asks expectantly, leaning in closer. Her hands tighten around the bat’s handle.

“I understand,” Billy repeats, louder this time. His head lolls back against the wood, eyes unfocused and… almost bored, now. Like she’s sucked all the fight out of him. 

And after another second, another hard thrum of Mike’s heartbeat, it’s over. Billy’s eyes flutter shut, until he looks peaceful and innocent, splayed out across the hallway. Like he’s napping.

In, out. In, out. Breathe. Inhale, exhale, inhale, ex. Exh. Exha.

Mike thinks he might be hyperventilating.

Luckily for the Party, though, Max seems mostly unfazed, which… how. But she’s doing it anyway, breathing pretty normally, if not a little hard, and dropping the nail bat, and walking around her brother’s unconscious body to fish for something in his jean pocket.

Keys.

She holds them up, facing the Party with steely resolve. They jingle against her palm. “Let’s get outta here.”

Well, fuck.

Max Mayfield, Mike decides, is cool as shit.

Not that he’d ever tell her.

“Have you ever even driven before?” he says, after his lungs have decided to start working again. It comes out as a bit of a strangled wheeze, but that’s okay. He’s fine. He’s good.

He clears his throat.

Max shrugs evasively. “Once or twice.”

Mike narrows his eyes.

“Mom’s given me lessons,” she admits, gaze darting away. “In the parking lot.”

“Oh my god.”

“Hey, it’s fine,” she snaps, clutching the keys like a lifeline. Mike wonders if they’re digging into her palms. If it hurts. “It’s not like I need to have five-star qualifications, okay? We just need to make it to your stupid entrance spot. This is your idea, remember?”

Mike sighs, a huge and exaggerated movement, and, like he hadn’t been planning on saying yes this whole time, says: “Fine. Whatever.”

“Um,” Dustin says tentatively, raising a hand. “What about Steve?”

Shit.

Mike kinda forgot about Steve. Which is probably a little bad, but there’s been a lot going on, okay? His brain is crowded. Foggy. 

They all turn to look at Steve, who’s out cold and probably concussed, bruised and bloodied to hell and back. Poor guy. He really took a beating.

“We leave him,” Mike proposes. “He didn’t want us to go—when he wakes up, he’ll freak.” At Dustin’s affronted expression, he doubles down. “You know he will.”

Don’t get him wrong—Mike’s grateful. Steve went to bat for them, and he put up a good fight. But he’s out for the count now, and he’ll only be dead weight. And once he wakes, he’ll just be another person worrying about them, peering over their shoulders and nagging them the whole way through, distracting them from the main mission. They don’t need that.

Dustin’s frown deepens. And Mike doesn’t know when him and Steve got so close— yet another thing he’s not caught up on, apparently—but he doesn’t like it. It’s annoying, and a little weird, because in what universe are Dustin Henderson and Steve Harrington friends? It just doesn’t make sense. Forget running in different circles—they’re from different worlds.

“We can’t just leave him here,” Dustin argues. “What if a Demodog comes?”

No one mentions that they’d be leaving Billy, too. The Demodogs can have him, for all Mike cares.

(That’s—shit, that’s horrible of him, right? Is he a bad person for thinking that?)

Then he looks at Max’s eyes, distantly pained, and her white knuckles, squeezing the keys so tight they might be cutting into her skin. At Steve, who looks nearly dead.

No. Mike doesn’t think he is a bad person, actually. At least, not for this.

How is it fair that people, good people, like Bob and Barbara, died, while people like Billy are still alive? How does that make sense? Why has Will suffered so much, and this asshole gets off scot free?

“If you want to take him,” Mike says to Dustin, “feel free. I’m gonna go get supplies.”

As he storms in the direction of the kitchen, finally breathing easier, finally able to move and take action and do something, he hears Dustin’s retort: a sharp, offended, “Fine.”

For better or worse, they’re doing this thing.

At this point, if he’s completely honest, Mike just wants to set some shit on fire.

It’s been a long time coming.

***

Max isn’t actually that bad of a driver. Mike still makes sure to complain a lot, just to keep up appearances, grumbling and groaning with every bump and turn. Steve’s unconscious body is splayed out in the middle seat, right in between Mike and Dustin, which is just weird, and it makes Mike feel very uncomfortable. He tries to pretend that Steve’s just resting, but it doesn’t really help. The dude looks awful.

It took all four of them to get him from the house to the car. Mike’s really regretting this. His arms hurt.

Next to him, there’s a sleepy, mumbling sound. “Nancy?”

Mike looks over, eyebrows drawing down in offense. Jeez, he knows Steve’s out of it, but to mistake Mike for his sister? For a girl? Does he need a haircut or something?

Steve’s hands flutter around his face, feeling for his broken nose, and Dustin quickly wrenches his fingers away. “No, don’t touch it.” With his other hand, he increases the pressure of the ice bag on Steve’s forehead. “Hey, buddy,” he greets softly, as Steve grumbles further into wakefulness. “Hey, it’s okay! You put up a good fight.”

Mike glances over again. There’s colorful bandaids all over Steve’s face and neck, from where Dustin had done his best to patch him up. They’re Will’s bandaids. Mike recognizes them.

“He kicked your ass,” Dustin allows, speeding along with his ramble. “But you put up a good fight. You’re okay.”

Mike snorts, then turns back to the window. The night sky blurs past them, dark and quiet. Foreboding. God, he hopes they get there in time. He hopes all this is worth something.

“Okay,” Lucas says, peering down at the map. “You’re gonna keep straight for half a mile, then make a left on Mount Sinai.”

Max makes a small, distracted noise of affirmation. Behind her, Steve attempts to talk, and Mike can feel him shifting against his hip. “Wh—What’s going on? Oh… Oh my god.”

Dustin shushes him again. “Just relax, okay? She’s driven before.”

Mike glances back over. “Yeah, in a parking lot,” he reminds him, tone derisive. 

“That counts!” Lucas argues, though Mike’s not really sure it does.

“Oh my god,” Steve repeats, more alert. He jerks wildly against Mike’s shoulder, and Mike tries in vain to scoot further towards the window. There’s no space back here. It’s not fair that Lucas got shotgun just because Max likes him, or whatever. If that’s even what’s going on.

“They were gonna leave you behind!” Dustin tells Steve, hands held out placatingly. “I promised that you’d be cool, okay?”

“Oh my god, ohmygod, ohmygod,” Steve moans, blinking out at the windshield. “What’s going on?”

And shit, he has a good point, because Max is driving like a lunatic now, stepping on the gas so hard Mike can hear the acceleration. The car jolts dangerously, and he resists the urge to hang onto the handle by the window.

“What? No! Woah! Okay, stop the car. Slow down,” Steve begs, swaying side to side. He looks like he’s in a fuck-ton of pain. Mike knew they should’ve just left him.

“I told you he’d freak out,” he tells Dustin, heaving out an annoyed breath.

“Everybody shut up!” Max yells, glaring at them in the rearview mirror. “I’m trying to focus!”

Lucas looks at the map again, eyes widening. “That’s Mount Sinai!” he says urgently, pointing out the window. “Make a left!”

Shit. Shit, shit, shit—

“What?” Max says, turning to look at Lucas.

“Turn left!”

The car lurches violently, and Mike’s cheek smushes against the window as Max maneuvers into a sharp turn, so sharp it’s probably way past ninety degrees, and Mike’s skull is banging hard against the glass, ouch, and there’s so many people screaming that all the sounds are blending together—Mike, and Dustin, and Steve, and—is that a little girl? That sounds like Holly. Who the fuck is screaming like that? Max?

Oh. No, it’s just Lucas. That checks out.

Max straightens the wheel, and the Party makes it onto Mount Sinai unharmed.

Halle-fucking-lujiah.

***

The first thing Will feels is the heat. Sweltering, dizzying, boiling. His skin feels raw with it, pink and shiny with sweat. 

The second thing he feels are the restraints.

It’s worse than before—he’s tied to a bed, arms bound above his head with thick rope, ankles shackled down. He’s sweating through his hospital gown. His hair’s plastered to his forehead, the ends of it tickling his eyes.

It hurts.

He looks around, desperately trying to figure out where he is, but nothing helps. He’s surrounded by strange faces, strange colors, strange textures and objects and where is he, let him out, it hurts so bad—

Will tries to sit up, but he’s yanked firmly back down. “Wh—What’s happening?” he mumbles, voice thick with disuse. “It hurts.”

In the seconds after he blinks fully to wakefulness, it gets a million times worse. Heat saturates the top of his head, sinking into his scalp, into his pores, into his blood. He can’t get away, because the inside of him is hot, too, and it feels like he’s burning alive. “It hurts!” he screams. “It hurts, it hurts, it hurts!”

He casts his gaze around wildly, trying to lock onto a familiar face, and his vision swims, thick bands of warped movement distorting his view. He blinks again, and for a moment, he recognizes her. Mom.

“It hurts,” he tells her, voice breaking. “It hurts, please, it hurts.”

Why isn’t she helping him?

She knows, He tells him. She knows, Will. She knows what you are. She knows what’s wrong with you.

Will looks back at Mom, trying to search her face, because there’s no way the voice is right. It can’t be right. This is Mom, she loves him. Right? Why is it so hard to remember? She loves him, doesn’t she?

Her face hardens. She turns up the heat.

“Let me go!” he begs, even as she storms around the room, turning all the dials up to full blast. The feeling is excruciating, and he can’t—he can’t— “It hurts,” he sobs, nothing more than a whisper. “Please, Mom.”

Even the tears staining his cheeks are hot. They feel like drops of acid.

“No!” she screams back, the only sign that she’s heard him at all.

Maybe she’s trying to burn the Evil out of him. The Badness. The Wrongness. The feeling he gets when a stray strand of hair falls gently over Mike’s eye, the twitch of Will’s fingers when he wants to brush it away. The swoop in his stomach when Mike smiles.

Maybe she’s trying to kill him. Send him all the way to hell.

The heat takes over his skin, his body, his insides, his mind. It’s all he can feel. It’s all-consuming. Burning, burning, burning.

Will’s dying. 

And as he screams, raw and pained, pulled from the very deepest part of him, he thinks that maybe…

Maybe he deserves it.

The Evil screams, too. It screams, and it recoils, but it doesn’t leave. It can’t. It’s part of him.

It’s always been part of him. He can’t remember much, not anymore, but he does remember that.

Something dark and twisted lives inside of Will Byers. And as much as he tries, it will never, ever go away.

He blazes with it. Fire and flames, sweat and sickness. And still—still, he loves. Still, he feels.

Nothing will destroy the Evil. Not ever.