Chapter Text
Three months later
Will wasn’t surprised when Mom told him about the move. Truth be told, he didn’t even fight it too much. A fresh start, she’d said, eyes big and pleading and heartbroken, and, well. It was the least Will could do to agree. This town has too many bad memories for all of them, now.
Besides, there was something about the way she pulled him aside afterwards. The way she told him that she’d researched all fifty states, and California wasn’t just a random choice, and the weather there would be nice, but the people would be, too. No more bullying, she’d promised him, in that way that always makes Will wonder just how much she knows. They’re very open-minded there. And she’d left it at that.
Owens has been helping them out. It was the least he could do, after everything. He forked over a huge wad of cash, state documents for El, and a new property lease in Mom’s name. Everything’s set.
Will sighs, gathering up his old D&D manuals from under his bed. They never did play another game, despite Mike’s offer. Everyone’s been too down, or too busy. Dustin’s been out calling Suzie almost every day. Sometimes, Will comes with. She’s pretty nice. Smart, too.
But the rest of the time, he’s been packing. It’s strange, how all fourteen years of his life fit so neatly into just a few boxes. To be fair, most of it’s been donated already. A fresh start, Mom had said, and Will’s taking it as seriously as he can.
It’ll be nice, he thinks, to get out of this town.
He just wishes he could bring his friends with him.
Currently, Max and Lucas are teasing Dustin in the living room, belting their hearts out along to “Never-Ending Story.” They’re not half bad, either. The story of Dustin’s radio call spread around the Party like wildfire, and anyone who wasn’t there to hear it now knows the conversation word for word. Max was particularly delighted. But Dustin hasn’t faulted her much for it—they all know that Max needs cheering up wherever she can get it.
Mike’s working alone in the living room, sorting silverware with a pensive look on his face. Will steels himself, marches up to the donation bin, and dumps the books. In and out. Easy.
He turns on his heel, fully planning on walking away without further acknowledgement. It’s not that he’s mad at Mike, or anything—he never really was—but it’ll be easier to say goodbye this way, he thinks. If they’re already a little distanced. And then… Then maybe they can write letters, and talk on the phone, and they’ll build their way back to being best friends. Maybe it’ll be easier, if they can’t see each other. If they’re not close enough to touch. Close enough to hurt.
That’s what Will’s hoping, anyway.
But Mike catches him, holding out a hand to stop him from leaving. “Woah, dude,” he blurts, eyes flickering down to the table. “That’s the donation box.”
Will shoots him a tentative smile. “I know,” he says. “I’ll just use yours when I come back.” He hesitates, shifting from one foot to the other. Maybe he shouldn’t have assumed… “I mean,” he backtracks, glancing at the floor. “If we still wanna play.”
He’s giving Mike an out, and they both know it. Here’s your chance, he’s saying, in as many words, to take back what you said at Hopper’s funeral. It was a stressful situation, after all, and if Mike was just trying to placate him, just making a last-ditch effort to restore their friendship and bring the Party back together… If D&D is too little-kiddish now, if they’re too adult for that, then Will will understand. He’ll get it.
Mike frowns at him. “Yeah, of course,” he replies, like it’s not even a thought in his mind to say otherwise. “But…” He pauses, worrying his lip with his teeth. “What if you wanna join another Party?”
What if you want to replace us, he’s saying. There’s a look of nerves splashed across his features, clear from his bitten lip to his furrowed brows. Clear as day, because Will knows Mike, and he knows how to read him, and right now, he’s scared. Guilty, even. Wondering if he fucked things up too badly, wondering if Will’s going to go out and find new friends once he leaves. A new best friend, even.
But the thing is—the thing is, Mike should know Will well enough to know the answer. There’s only one thing he can think of to say, one possible reply. Any universe, any version of Will Byers, would always give the same answer.
“Not possible,” he says, a little shyly, cheeks flushing pink.
Mike flushes too, dimples popping into full view with his answering smile. He looks sweet. Happy, just for a moment.
Will smiles back, ducking his head, then gets the hell out of dodge. He can’t let himself linger too long.
Still, it’s all he can do to not skip down the hallway.
He might be moving out of Hawkins. He might be leaving everyone and everything he’s ever known.
But at the end of the day, he still has Mike’s friendship. And that’s always been more than enough.
***
Mike’s rapidly reaching his breaking point. It’s just—today has been a lot, and he still doesn’t think the full impact of it has hit him yet, doesn’t think it’ll hit him until the Byers’ U-haul is trundling down their driveway, or maybe even after that. He just needs a second to breathe.
So he’s heading down the hallway, intending to do exactly that, when he sees El in Will’s room. Well—his old room now, which is weird to think about. She’s alone, Will having wandered off to go sit with Lucas and Max, and she’s glaring at the top shelf of his closet. Her arm is outstretched, trembling, but nothing budges.
She’s trying to use her powers.
And—okay, to be honest, Mike hasn’t talked to El much, these last three months. She’s been holed up in the house a lot, recovering. He doesn’t blame her. But he really hopes they can be friends again. He wants her to stay in his life, with or without her powers. With or without the Upside Down.
With or without the L-word.
“They’ll come back,” Mike says, after another second of her straining for her mystery item, a downcast look on her face. “I know they will.” At the sound of Mike’s voice, El turns to him, eyes widening in surprise.
He smiles at her, trying to send off as many non-threatening, I-come-in-peace signals as he can, then moves forward to grab her item for her. He’s shot up like a weed this summer, as his mom likes to say, and it makes him feel like an alien in his own body sometimes, but in this specific situation it’s pretty useful.
El’s mystery item turns out to be an old teddy bear, which she must have stashed up there sometime in the last three months. Mike plucks it down, takes a step away from her so he’s not crowding into her personal space, and delivers it into her waiting hands.
“Thanks,” El says quietly, shooting him a small smile.
Mike smiles back. “No problem,” he says. He’s about to walk away, but then he hesitates. This is the first chance he’s had in forever to be alone with El. He doesn’t wanna fuck it up. Instead, he keeps his feet planted, forcing his mind onto the conversation at hand. “You packed your walkie, right?” he asks.
El’s smile turns a little more genuine. Fond. “Yes,” she confirms, adjusting her teddy bear in her arms.
“Good,” Mike replies, leaning against the doorframe. “‘Cause you know that I’m gonna steal Cerebro from Dustin and call you so much, you’re gonna have to turn it off, right?”
El huffs out a quiet laugh, nose scrunching with amusement. But she doesn’t reply, not right away, and their shared laughter dies out, leaving an awkward silence between them. Mike starts to panic, just a little bit. Is this how it’s always gonna be now? Are they doomed to be awkward forever, just because they’re exes? They can get over it, right? God, he hopes so.
Before he can send himself into a full-blown anxiety spiral, El lets out a long breath, eyes darting back up to his face. “Did you talk to your mom?” she asks. “About Thanksgiving?”
Oh yeah. Last time the Party had all gotten together, they’d been trying to figure out the school break schedule—who could visit, and when, and how they were gonna get there. It was a lot more planning than Mike expected, which is stupid. He hates that this is how it’s gonna be from now on; a whole shit-ton of work just to see two of his closest friends.
But he did talk to his mom. And luckily, she didn’t really care. Probably because Thanksgiving at the Wheeler house is a bit of a shit-show to begin with, and one less person to add to the strained chaos is probably a good thing. Also, one less mouth to feed.
“Yeah, yeah,” Mike says quickly, nodding. “I got the okay. I’ll be there.” He pauses, deciding to push his luck. Plan a little extra, just to be super safe. “And then I was thinking maybe you could come up here for Christmas,” he adds. “And Will, too.” Just because—well, gifts-wise, he still has that mixtape, the one he made ages ago, and he can’t really picture Christmas without the Byers, it wouldn’t be Christmas, really, and—anyway.
“You can come before or after Christmas, or whatever Mrs. Byers wants, but—” He shrugs, increasingly aware that he’s rambling, and increasingly unsure of how to stop. “I was thinking Christmas Day could be super fun, because we’d all have cool new presents to play with, and, uh—” Mike flushes, embarrassed. He laughs at himself a little, shoulders inching up to his ears. “Sorry, that made me sound like a seven-year-old.”
El shrugs, not looking too concerned. “I like presents, too,” she tells him, her eyes huge and dark and trained directly on his face. It’s been a while since they talked like this, since Mike had the full force of El’s attention on him, and to be honest, now that he has it, he’s not quite sure what to do with it. He feels out of his element, all of a sudden, like he’s trying on one of his dad’s fancy suits, the sleeves hanging down past his fingertips.
“Yeah,” Mike stammers. “Yeah, cool, yeah.” He’s starting to regret his decision to have this conversation, and not run out of the room to go hyperventilate while he had the chance. But, he tells himself, that’s stupid. This is one of the last chances he’ll have to talk with El in person, all the way until Thanksgiving. That’s, like, in a whole two months. He can suck it up for five more seconds and talk to her like a normal human being.
He gestures to himself. “I—I like presents, too.”
Or maybe not.
She literally just said that, he chides himself. Get a grip.
El’s gaze drifts down to her shoes, clearly uncomfortable. “Cool,” she murmurs. Mike wonders if it would be too rude to run away.
Luckily, though, El does the running for him. Not literally, because she’s too polite for that, but she shoots him one last smile, this time more strained, before shouldering past him and starting for the door.
Nice going, idiot, Mike thinks. He decides he’ll wait until after she leaves to slap himself in the face. He doesn’t need to be more embarrassed than he already is.
But El’s footsteps trail away for just a second, then stop. “Mike?”
He turns around, already dreading whatever’s about to come next. “Yeah?”
El sighs, long and loud, looking a little uncertain. She looks everywhere but at Mike. “Remember that day,” she starts, “at the cabin? You were talking to Max.”
Oh. Oh, shit.
I love her, Mike had said. I love her, and I can’t lose her again.
And it was true, of course, but—well, first of all, Mike didn’t realize she heard. Second of all, why is she bringing it up now?
Maybe he’s just jumping to conclusions, though. Maybe she’s talking about something else entirely.
Hopefully.
“Um…” he hedges. “I don’t think I follow.”
El fidgets with the hairtie on her wrist, but attempts to meet his eye. “You talked about your—your feelings,” she tries. “Your heart.”
Fuck.
“Oh,” Mike blurts loudly, looking down at the floor. “Oh! Yeah, that. Man, that was… so long ago. Um—” He breaks off, scratching the back of his neck uncomfortably. Maybe he really should have run out of the room. Anything to get him out of this conversation. “You know,” he says eventually. “It was just—really heat of the moment stuff, and we were arguing, and…” He trails off. He has no idea what else to say.
What is he supposed to tell her? I was trying to figure out if I loved you in a friend way or a girlfriend way? I was trying to figure out why I want to hold my best friend’s hand all the time? I was trying to figure out what’s wrong with me, something’s wrong with me, I’m sorry I couldn’t love you the right way—
He doesn’t say any of that, because he’s a fucking coward, and he can’t articulate a real emotion to save his life. Instead, he mumbles: “Um, I don’t really remember… What did I say, exactly?”
El looks… He can’t really read her expression, actually. She looks uncertain. Wrong-footed. Still, she takes a step forward, clutching her teddy bear like a lifeline. “Mike,” she murmurs.
Mike thinks she’ll stop there, but instead, she keeps walking, until she’s right in front of his face. It’s the closest they’ve been in months. He doesn’t… He doesn’t know how to feel about it.
El reaches a hand up to his neck, ghosting against his jaw, and Mike’s just—he’s confused. What’s going on? What’s happening right now? What is she doing?
“I love you, too,” El says, eyes softening, and that’s all the warning he gets before she leans in, pulling his head towards hers and kissing him right on the lips.
Mike doesn’t even close his eyes. There’s not much in his brain right now other than white noise; a never-ending stream of wait, what? and hey, what the fuck???
This is just—this is not what he was expecting. Not even close.
El doesn’t seem to notice that he’s not kissing back. She presses a kiss to his bottom lip, lingering and passionate, eyes firmly shut.
Mike doesn’t feel anything. Nothing at all. He just—he just wants it to be over, honestly.
A second later, his wish is granted; El pulls away and smiles sweetly at him, grip loosening on his neck, before she walks away without another word, leaving Mike to stare after her in bewildered, dazed confusion.
As she leaves the room, there’s only two thoughts in Mike’s brain.
First: He definitely doesn’t want to be with El anymore, if it feels like that.
And second: El’s about to leave. Her dad just died, and she’s about to move across the entire fucking country, and—Mike can’t do anything about this, can he? There’s no time. He’s not ready to give her an explanation, doesn’t even know what he’d say.
What does this mean for them? What does it mean for Mike?
His heart jackrabbits in his chest, eyes wide as he watches El turn the corner. She disappears, like she’d never been there at all, like she didn’t just confuse the hell out of him and turn his entire world upside-down, and Mike is…
He’s not in love with her.
For all his wondering about it over the past few months, his anxious worrying into the night, his wringing hands and pacing feet, he’s finally found his answer. And, truth be told, he’s known it for a while.
Mike knows what love feels like. And it’s not this.
***
Will manages to keep it together, right up until he falls apart. They’re all standing outside Mom’s Pinto and the U-Haul, gathered loosely into pairs, staring at each other like they can’t quite believe this is happening, even now.
Heat builds behind Will’s eyes. On the lightpost by the mailbox, a lost dog poster flutters to the ground.
They’d all looked for Chester. Mom and Jonathan, Mike and Lucas and Max and Dustin. Even El had helped Will one night, quietly knocking on his door with a flashlight in hand. They’d shuffled through the forest together in a strange sort of silence, not entirely peaceful, but not uncomfortable, either. Something in-between.
He never turned up.
Secretly, Will thinks Mom might be a little relieved. It’s hard enough to move across the entire country, and harder still to do it with a frail, elderly dog. Makes things easier in the long run, Will guesses. Maybe he’d done them all a favor.
He sniffles, trying to hold back tears. It’s just—it’s not fair. None of this is. And he thought he’d made his peace with it, he thought it was for the best—but standing here, looking at his best friends in the entire world, at their splotchy faces and glossy eyes, Will might be having a change of heart.
Fuck. He’ll miss them so much. Whatever happened this summer, no matter how angry and annoyed and jealous and frustrated Will got, that fact still remains. This is his Party. His family.
“Kids,” Mom says softly, leaning against the hood of her car. “It’s time.”
She’s the first one to initiate a hug, opening her arms to Nancy, who smiles fondly back at her, and before Will knows it, he’s getting swept up, too.
Max’s arms wrap around his shoulders, more tightly than he would have expected, and she presses her forehead to his shoulder, squeezing him for a second. “I’ll miss you, Byers,” she says, and her voice is more choked than he’s ever heard it.
Will squeezes back. “I’ll miss you too,” he says, and the first tears start to fall.
He just—he can’t help it. He’s always been a crier, even at the best of times, and despite being older now, despite trying his best to be a grown-up, he’s still just a kid leaving home. He feels younger now than he ever has.
Max separates with a watery smile, and by some instinctual pull, Will’s already turning to Mike.
Mike’s expression is—it’s indescribable, really. For the first time all summer—maybe the first time in over a year— his emotions are entirely visible, cracked open across his face with no effort to disguise them.
Will recognizes each of them—heartbreak, longing, regret, sorrow—as a mirror of his own heart. A piece of his own soul.
Mike, Will thinks. My person. My best friend.
He’s not sure who moves first, but all he knows is that one second they’re apart, and the next they’re colliding, Will’s hands wrapping around Mike’s waist and settling on his back, and Mike’s hands pulling Will towards him, like he’s trying to hold the both of them together. Will almost expects Mike to be awkward, or uncertain, given how long it’s been since they’ve hugged like this, but the thought vanishes as soon as it appears. Mike presses his nose to Will’s shoulder, screwing his eyes shut, and they just— breathe.
They just breathe.
Will doesn’t know how long they’ve been standing like that, tears streaming hot down his face, emotions so thick in the air that Will imagines they can feel each others feelings, read each other’s minds, feet rocking back and forth in the slick grass, when Mike starts to tap his finger against Will’s back.
Tap, hold. Tap tap. L.
Hold, hold, hold. O.
Tap, tap, tap. Hold. V.
Will holds his breath, waiting for the next tap, already feeling the ghost of a fingertip against his shoulder blade, but then they’re jostling apart, Dustin barreling in for a hug that nearly knocks Will off his feet.
Over his shoulder, he can see Mike’s crestfallen expression. I love you too, he thinks, desperately, though he means it in a different way than Mike does, certainly, but—it doesn’t even matter right now. Will loves him, down to his core; he loves every part of him, and leaving behind Mike Wheeler feels like cutting off one of his own limbs. Honestly, he thinks it hurts even worse.
He closes his eyes, burrowing into Dustin’s shoulder. He tries to reach Mike via telepathy, thinking: I love you, I love you, I love you, until the words don’t even sound like English anymore.
By the time he reaches Lucas, he’s sobbing.
“It’ll be alright,” Lucas murmurs, though he’s speaking through tears himself. He holds onto Will—steadfast, uncompromising, standing tall to the last minute. “I’ll see you soon,” he promises. “And we’ll write and call all the time, okay?”
Will sniffles. “Mhm,” he agrees, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. He settles against the car, next to Mike, as Lucas gives him one last smile, then moves on to El.
Mike’s holding back tears, eyes rimmed red, and he taps his pinkie against Will’s own. Will doesn’t hesitate to tap back.
E.
There’s a single, shining moment, one where Mike ducks his head to hide a watery smile, and Will’s entire chest feels light and fuzzy and warm, before El moves in for a hug of her own. Mike wraps his arm around her, and El—she presses a kiss to his cheek, forehead resting against his temple, eyes closed. They look sweet together.
Will looks away, in an effort to give them some privacy. He hasn’t heard anything about them getting back together—not from Mike, not from El, not from anyone— but with the way they’re acting now… Well, he wouldn’t be surprised. And he’s not, really. He knows better by now.
“Hey,” Dustin says quietly, nudging a shoulder against his. “You heard Lucas, right? We’re gonna call you every day, man. Between you and Suzie, I’ll practically be living at Cerebro.”
Will smiles weakly back at him. “Better get a mini-fridge up there,” he jokes half-heartedly, and Dustin huffs out a short laugh.
There’s a quiet pause. In his peripheral vision, Will sees Mike and El brush noses.
“We’re really gonna miss you, Will,” Dustin says.
Will turns to look at him, and for a second, he sees the Party’s bard: heroic, inspiring, loyal to a fault. The guy who took care of a baby Demodog because he thought it looked lonely. The guy who gave Will his favorite X-Men comic, who sang songs and told jokes to cheer him up in the hospital.
“I’m gonna miss you, too,” Will tells him, and pulls him in for another hug.
It’s all over too quickly, the minutes slipping away like sand, the sun shining hot onto Will’s cheeks, Mom tapping her foot and checking her watch, a sympathetic frown tugging at her lips. Eventually, when she’s already given them more time than she said she would, she clears her throat. “Alright,” she says, apologetic. “We’ve gotta go, guys.”
Final hugs are exchanged, every combination and pairing imaginable, Will losing himself in a blur of whispered goodbyes and choked-back tears. And then, before he knows it, he’s piling into the Pinto’s passenger seat, Mom and El taking their place in the U-Haul and Jonathan buckling himself in next to Will. The car engine rumbles against his skin.
Will keeps his eyes on Mike as they drive away. Mike stares right back, eyes seeming to meet Will’s in the rearview mirror, until he grows more and more distant, a blue speck in the driveway of Will’s childhood home, and then Jonathan turns a corner, and he’s—
He’s gone.
Mike’s gone. Will’s home is gone. The clearing where he built and destroyed Castle Byers, the house that became his prison when he was twelve, the walls that bent and changed and flickered with lights—it’s all gone. Like it never even happened. Like it never even existed.
Will’s crying is silent now, dampened by time and heartache, but no less devastating. He stares blankly out the window, at the rolling hills and flat plains, at the closed-down Mom and Pop stores, at the Leaving Hawkins sign. He can feel Jonathan’s eyes on him, but he doesn’t turn around. Not yet.
He needs this moment for himself. Will is fourteen years old, and he’s leaving behind everything he’s ever known. He’s leaving behind the only friends he’s ever had. The only boy he’s ever loved.
Maybe, in California, he’ll become someone else entirely. Maybe he’ll forget. Maybe he’ll grow up, finally, becoming more confident and mature and adult. Maybe he’ll heal.
He doesn’t know what comes next. He doesn’t have any idea what to expect. All he has is hope—hope that things will be better. Hope that California will be kinder to him than Hawkins ever was.
Even as he thinks it, it sounds impossible. But he wants to believe, more than he’s ever wanted anything. He has to believe. He has to hold onto his hope.
Without it, he has nothing left.
***
Mike watches Will until he disappears. On the back of the U-Haul, the words Adventure in Moving, bright and cheery, seem to mock him.
Nancy, next to him, is the very picture of stoicism. She hasn’t even batted an eyelash.
Mike tries to mimic her, tries to stand tall and still and silent, but his heart hurts too much. His emotions, messy and swirling and nearly violent in their intensity, threaten to boil over until he has a complete meltdown right here on the Byers’ driveway.
Their old driveway.
After the cars turn down the street and out of view, and Mike loses sight of Will’s hunched-over form in Ms. Byers’ Pinto, it almost doesn’t feel real. He can’t quite believe it. He blinks at the empty road, and the afterimage of the Byers’ family stares back at him, like a herd of ghosts.
They’re gone.
Ms. Byers, with her hugs and her homemade lasagnas and her kind words; Jonathan, with his watchful gaze and quiet poise and loud music. El, with her strawberry kisses and deep, soulful eyes.
Will. Will, Will, Will.
Mike doesn’t know what he’ll miss most about Will. There’s not one single thing he can boil it down to—it’s everything, all at once, everything Will has ever been, everything he ever will be. Kind. Brave. Thoughtful. Selfless.
At fourteen years old, this is what Mike Wheeler knows about love.
Love is a disappearing U-Haul on a street he knows like the back of his hand. It’s a shared look, a bright smile, a comforting hand. A tapping finger. It’s an old wrinkled wizard costume, bright purple and three sizes too small, pulled from the depths of Mike’s basement for no other reason than childlike fun. It’s the smell of wet pavement after a thunderstorm. Broken planks of wood scattered across a clearing. A body in the quarry. Blood in the water.
Love is Will Byers, and it always has been.
Mike loves Will as easy as breathing. He’s loved him so constantly, so unconditionally, that he never even recognized it as love. He loves Will the way he tried to love El. The way that boys are supposed to love girls.
Will is Mike’s heart, and he just disappeared down a dirt road. In a couple hours, he’ll be crossing state lines. Starting a new life, without Mike. Without any of them. He doesn’t need him anymore.
Mike doesn’t know where this leaves him.
He feels—empty, somehow. Hollowed out. Like Will carved out a piece of him and packed it into the U-haul.
The rest of the Party’s already moving on, straddling their bikes and taking off, even Nancy, but Mike doesn’t know how. He doesn’t know how they’re all not rooted to the spot, frozen in place, terrified that if they move out of the Byers’ driveway, they’ll lose them forever.
He takes one last look behind him, taking it all in: the little brown house, the patched wall from where Ms. Byers swung an axe through to the Upside Down, the hydrangea bushes where Mike and Will used to build castles out of sticks and walls out of rocks. A lifetime of memories, held in this one place.
Mike grips his handlebars. He takes a deep breath.
He heads home.
To be completely honest, he doesn’t remember the ride back. He doesn’t remember anything at all, up until he’s walking in through the front door, stiff and robotic, heart pounding against his ribs like it’s begging to be let free.
He still hasn’t cried. That much, at least, he can be proud of.
Mom’s cutting vegetables at the kitchen island, a cookbook propped open next to the cutting board. Sunlight’s streaming through the window, lighting her hair golden, and she looks more like a mother than she has all summer. More settled, somehow. At peace.
She looks up at the sound of Mike’s footsteps, knife pausing mid-way through a cucumber slice, and furrows her brow. He must look…
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t care. All he knows is that he’s shuffling forward, a zombie in the making, and Mom’s setting down her knife, walking forward to meet him, and they’re meeting in the middle somehow, arms wrapping hesitantly around each other, like they’d forgotten how.
Mike can’t remember the last time he hugged his mom. He’s taller than her, now.
That fact alone makes him press in tighter, inhaling the sweet scent of her vanilla perfume, fingers clenching in her soft flannel shirt.
This is love too, he thinks.
And maybe… Maybe if she knew everything, if she knew the whole truth, she wouldn’t be hugging him so tightly. She wouldn’t be kissing the top of his head and telling him everything’s going to be alright. Maybe she wouldn’t be saying anything at all.
Mike is fourteen, and he’s learned how to lie. He’s learned how to hold himself together so well that nothing spills over, that nothing shows through. He’s learned how to be an adult. He’s learned how to trick people into loving him.
It’s all he has now.
Hawkins isn’t the same without Will. Without the Byers. But Mike isn’t the same, either, and it’s high time for him to grow up.
He just never imagined he would be doing it alone.