Chapter Text
It's a funny thing coming home.
Nothing changes. Everything looks the same, feels the same, even smells the same.
You realize what's changed is you.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
DUSTIN HENDERSON was not planning on going home for Christmas, but even his best-laid plans had a way of running away from him.
His Plan A had been to stay at MIT and continue research into the project he had been asked to do by the government task force dealing with the Upside Down. It was all very hush-hush and phrased as a ‘favour to our great nation’- but Dustin knew their bullshit, and if he said no they’d certainly make it so that he changed his mind. Besides, he was getting a sizeable grant and his college scholarship from these guys, and the thought of fucking up not only his chance at a college diploma but the rest of his friends as well was enough to get him to reply with a hasty ‘yes’.
It was all very technical, but the aim (as Dustin had to discover himself because nobody told him, not like he was doing all of it, but anyway) was to learn how Will and El’s powers worked and functioned. It was fascinating if time-consuming work- studying brains, studying videos of their powers in action, and studying radio waves and signals- his speciality. Dustin spent hundreds of combined hours in the lab across the semester, and returned, frankly, incredible findings- findings he would have told Will and El had he not been sworn to utmost secrecy on the bible and all that shit. He had, however, not sworn to secrecy on the rest of the party on pain of death. So.
They would certainly be the first to know about Project Byers-Hopper (of all the boring names? But Dustin wasn’t in charge of naming the project, unfortunately- he was just the brain behind it) when it was finished. He wasn’t permitted contact with anyone directly linked for the whole Upside Down fiasco except by letter, and all those had to be screened- and Dustin was not going to respond to letters about Steve’s romantic endeavours knowing they had probably been read by four FBI agents and the attorney general.
So he hadn’t spoken to the Party since summer, and he was lonely, and however unhealthy that would have been, he would spend all of winter break hiding from the East Coast winter in the lab at MIT.
Fate had other plans. Two days before the semester finished, he got a call from the task force leader.
“Listen, kid,” the man had begun, and it took everything in Dustin not to snap back in annoyance about how he was running this whole thing, and he had been called kid 500 times in the last semester and it was starting to piss him off.
“Project hasn’t disbanded or anything, but we’re gonna need to cool it for winter break because most of the task force is going home, and the government is suspending the research grant for this time because they don’t have the internal resources to monitor the operation.” Dustin groaned, loud enough that the guy over the phone chuckled. Dustin wanted to punch him.
“Me too. But hey? On the first day of next semester, at 6 am, I’ll have it open. Mark my words. Now, enjoy the break! The task force says you can talk to your friends now since the investigation is technically suspended.”
That was part of the problem. Dustin slammed the phone down, slumped against the wall and took a rallying breath before picking the phone back up and dialling his mother.
Plan B was praying that she could come to him for vacation, but no, Dusty- it’s too far for me and the cat and Granny is visiting from Texas in the next town over. But I can book you a ticket!
Plan C (His mother's) was set in motion too fast, his bags packed, his ticket booked, his taxi skirting up to the front of the airport. He was clattering onto the Indianapolis tarmac before he had even realised he left.
His mother picked him up, squeezed him, and gave a running commentary of the new happenings around town all 80 miles back to Hawkins.
“Oh, Joyce had me over for a coffee the other week and we talked about you boys- apparently Will wasn’t planning on coming home either!”
“Will isn’t coming home?” As far as Dustin knew, Will never skipped Christmas. It was a sacred occasion in his house (apparently nothing to do with religion and all to do with tacky Christmas lights and inflatable snowmen) and Will looked fondly upon it every year. Dustin had assumed everyone was coming home, but especially Will.
“I asked around.” Dustin’s mother hummed thoughtfully. “No one is coming back. Mike isn’t, Max isn’t, Lucas and El aren’t- nobody. Mike was very adamant about staying in Chicago.”
No one?
“No one?” Dustin asked, his stomach sinking like a stone. The prospect of Christmas at home had been bearable with the party there- now, it sounded like torture.
Dustin groaned (he was doing much of that lately- life was vexing him) and sunk further into the passenger seat, resigning himself to three weeks of bone-deep boredom.
-----------------
Plan D was grabbing the steering wheel and swerving into an unmarked road Dustin spied along the way, ending his misery prematurely. Unfortunately, that road was not taken- although walking into a cold, empty house, it looked like a really good option. At MIT, he has been alone, but he has been busy.
God. Fuck. How could he stand here, in this house unchanged by time, knowing what he knows now? He is utterly alone in this knowledge too- a short stint into his research the day of the phone call had revealed things to him unknown by anyone else. And they were completely, unbelievably crazy. He was going crazy and had only been smelling the familiar musk of cat food and paisley pillow covers for 2 minutes.
Slumped on his bed, Christmas seemed even more bleak. When he was younger, it was nice- but every memory he had from childhood was rosy and golden, including Christmas. When he moved to Hawkins in fourth grade, that glow dimmed considerably. Christmas became the time of a Party divided, forced into itchy shirts and endless conversations about school with older relatives. After Will went missing and everything that happened…happened, Christmas meant the anniversary of disappearances and deaths and the shred of happiness left in it was devoured by the snarling beast of grief, which demanded attention.
The Upside Down had taken everything from them, including Christmas.
Sue me. Dustin thought miserably, face still squashed into his pillow. Sue me for not being happy about the holidays anymore . He knew waking up on Christmas meant bowls of lucky charms under the tree, opening gifts that he probably didn’t need and gritting his teeth through a visit from his grandmother. He also knew it meant the sole grace period for Will when it came to trauma.
So why wasn’t Will back in Hawkins for Christmas? Surely languishing in some dorm on Rhode Island was worse by any comparison to Christmas in Hawkins with his family, except that Rhode Island wasn’t full of memories everywhere you turned. Mirkwood, where Will went missing. The quarry, where they found his body. His old house was now occupied by a young family with children who sometimes sat on the steps (Dustin saw them on the way to Mike’s every day during summer. They were cute. Not cute enough to justify that they stole his best friend's house, but cute enough). Hawkins oozed latent trauma, even for him- the cemetery where he got beat up, the patched-up cracks in the sidewalk in the town centre, the corner where a horde of demo bats had attacked him, and he thought he was going to die like Eddie.
Dustin let one hand go to his shoulder, feeling the divet where a demo bat had gouged out some flesh and sighed. Despite all these reminders of the past, Will had spent the summer in Hawkins with hardly any issues. So what now?
Something was keeping him away. Someone .
It couldn’t be Joyce or Hopper, because- well, it wouldn’t be. Even if he hadn’t talked to Will in months, Dustin knew him, and he knew it wouldn’t be.
It couldn’t be El or Jonathan, because Jonathan was at college and would have stayed there in a heartbeat if he thought his presence would harm Will. The same went for El, and a postcard left for him on the dining table stamped from somewhere in France, dated two months ago, outlined El’s plan for the holidays which included hiking the Alps and not coming home.
So it wasn’t his family. It wasn’t Lonnie, because he was dead- the death certificate in the Byers letterbox two summers ago had preceded the official police confirmation in October of that same year, so the family had gotten it all out of their systems before the holidays rolled around (all out of their systems, in Wills case, started as a five-minute violent cry followed by an even shorter, more violent four minutes of smashing stuff up in Mike’s driveway. Despite his quiet demeanour for a few weeks after, Will ended up fine).
So who was it keeping him away? And why did Dustin care so much? Of course, he loved Will, but it was more than that. After learning what he learnt through the project, he knew much more about his best friend. He had to see him, to give him a once over and a hug and check that he was ok.
Dustin was startled out of this train of thought by aggressive banging on the front door of house, incessant and annoying and fully warding off his stupor with a wave of anger.
“Fuck off! I’m not buying Girl Scout cookies,” Dustin rolled over further, pushing his nose deep into the pillow. That wasn’t an entirely coherent sentence, because the Hawkins girls scouts had been disbanded in 1981, but he was definitely not in the mood for any shit.
The banging, far off and echoing through the house, stopped and then abruptly started again on Dustin’s own window.
Click . The window began to open, slowly, wind blowing the curtains upwards to reveal Mike Wheeler, pink-cheeked and red-eyed, trying to hook one leg over the windowsill to climb into Dustin’s room.
“Son of a bitch!” Dustin scrambled up, pulling Mike in, where he took a tumble onto the carpet, sat up, righted himself, and shrugged sheepishly.
“Uh. Hi.”
“What the fuck? You,” he pointed at Mike, “are supposed to be in Chicago.”
“About that.” Mike crossed his legs. “I’m not in Chicago…anymore. Obviously.” He laughed forcefully.
“No shit.” Dustin sat down and hugged him, feeling the light flecks of snow on his jacket melt into Dustin’s jumper, along with Mike's lean frame. “I missed you, you idiot. Why are you climbing through my window?”
“I heard you were home, and I had to come see you, because I need to ask,” Mike took a bolstering breath, “Something. I need to ask you something. About Will. Have you talked to him? At all?”
That was…not what Dustin expected.
It hits him suddenly, how Mike is zipping and unzipping his jacket, how his cheeks are hot and his head is bowed. Mike. Mike is the reason Will isn’t coming home.
“You’re the reason he isn’t coming home.” Mike’s head snaps up. “Tell me why.” Maybe it’s the forceful edge to Dustin’s voice, but Mike doesn’t argue. He lets his shoulders fold further into himself and sucks in a breath.
“I did something…summer. I fucked everything up and now he won’t talk to me- he hasn’t said a word to me since the day he left. And so I told everyone I wasn’t coming back for break, I convinced El to come home, and he decided last minute to come for Christmas. But now, he’s on a plane here and- I can’t. I did all this to get him to talk to me and he won’t.” Mike sat back and didn’t say anything or even breathe.
“Ok, shit.” Dustin’s mind is running with the implications of all that. Facts begin to emerge.
- Mike and Will haven’t talked since August 29th (the day Will went back to college. Dustin remembers because that was the day the project started).
- This is Mike's fault. Will won’t talk to him. Mike has tried.
- Mike orchestrated an elaborate plan to get Will home for Christmas. It’s desperate.
- Mike is very, very nervous. Nervous enough for Dustin to know something is seriously wrong.
And that’s only the things Mike has told him. Mike is like an iceberg- he leaves everything that is surface level about him for all to see and then lets the rest of him sink underwater out of view. Dustin has only dipped a toe in. “Did he say he wasn’t going to talk to you? I mean, what you did- was it that bad?”
“I’m in love with him,” Mike says, and he could be written off as sarcastic except for the fact that Dustin knows him, and he’s not being sarcastic. “And I couldn’t say it to him then, and I could say worse things. I always say worse things.”
“You don’t, Mike.” Dustin puts a comforting hand on his best friend's shoulder. “You don’t. Besides, you’re an English major and you won’t get a degree thinking like that.” Mike manages a bark of a laugh before the rest of his words register with Dustin and he realises he should be more surprised about the revelation that Mike is in love with Will. “Oh.”
Mike knows he’s worked it out. They’ve always been able to tell, feeding off of each other's ideas, catapulting them at each other and letting them fly back and forth until something is worked out. His face crumples like El’s coke can.
This…should be bigger news than it feels like. Of course, Dustin knows that Will is gay- he doesn’t know if everyone in the Party knows, but he was the first person Will chose to come out to. It was a hurried, whispered confession late at night in the middle of the war after Vecna had tried to use it against him.
“Tell me,” Dustin prodded Will, shutting the door behind him. “We’re alone. Whatever it is, you can tell me.”
“I’m gay,” Will had said, under his breath and barely-there. “I’m a freak. Judge me how you want.”
That was…not the news Dustin had been expecting, and he froze, his body slowing down to allow his mind to speed up. Ok, this was a revelation- but it wasn’t headline news. Now was not the time to get cold feet about gay people when Vecna was mid-way through tearing the world apart.
One slow tear rolled down Will’s cheek, and Dustin stuttered back to life, enveloping his arms around him.
“I’m sorry,” Will whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s ok.” Dustin squeezed a little tighter. “It’s ok.”
In a little storage closet in Hawkins Lab, Dustin told Will it was ok, because it was. Some things are worse than your best friend being gay- like your best friend dying.
And even after the war, it was easy not to care. Who gives a shit if the person who saved the world is gay? So they went off to college, and sometimes, during freshman year, Will would talk to Dustin on the phone about the guy he was seeing at the time, Gus, even if that relationship blew up before spring break. And Dustin could talk right back about the hot science girls in his Robotics class. So no, Dustin doesn’t care that Will is gay. He’s always sort of known, as well- just a clue, a slight itch under his skin.
But Mike. Mike is different. Mike has talked to him about girls since before El was in the picture, and certainly afterwards. He remembers the summer before high school and Mike's constant sneaking away to make out with Eleven. Girls have always been it for Mike.
Maybe. Again, the same itch he felt with Will. Mike, flustered during Freshman chemistry, knocking over test tubes whilst smiling at his handsome lab partner. Mike, grinning at Eddie, leaning into his encompassing gaze. Mike, pulling Will home with him, stood before him in the war, screaming his name into the Upside Down. So even if it is big news, Dustin doesn’t feel that way. It feels like confirmation of something he’s known for a long time.
“Fucking finally!” It slips out of Dustin’s mouth before he has time to censor it, and a shocked smile spreads on Mike's face. “Jesus. I don’t care, Mike. What I do care about is that you’ve hurt Will. And believe me, he’s hurting enough now as it is.” Mike's relieved expression slips.
“What?”
“He’s…uh, I can’t tell you! Fuck, I forgot about this.” Dustin sat down, placed his head in his hands and repressed the urge to beat the floor with his fist.
“What do you mean you can’t tell me?!” Mike pulled Dustin’s shoulder back, bringing them face to face. “Is something wrong- if somethings wrong, you have to tell me. Is it the Upside Down?”
“Yes!” Dustin shouted, and Mike’s face paled instantly, one word knocking all the wind out of his lungs. “Wait- no, no. It’s not back or anything. I’m doing a research project at MIT- ok wait. Fuck it.” What was the worst that could happen, besides prison for life? “You can’t tell anybody what I’m about to tell you- not even Will. Especially not Will.”
“Ok.” Mike swallowed, sinking back to the floor. “Tell me.”
“I have been doing research, as a government favour, and- Mike, the findings are crazy. Will and El- I mean, El’s powers came from a combination of her blood, drugs and genetics, but Will- they wanted to know, how the fuck did he end up with those powers?”
Hours of research had gone into it. Dimension X, how 001 got his powers, how his blood gave them to El. Ruling out the possibility of the same happening with Will, trying to figure out how he could also enter the void using different methods. Looking at the Upside Down, the nature of it, how Will built Hawkins brick by brick using his mind, how he morphed the dimension by himself.
“So we ruled out option after option, and we took blood samples from the clothes of Will the government collected after the war, and analysed the Upside Down.” Mike’s eyes were wide open as Dustin paced around. “He’s- he’s a genetic anomaly. He shouldn’t be possible, but he is.”
“Don’t say that, not about Will.” Mike stood up to his level. “He isn’t an anomaly.”
“Of course, he fucking isn’t, Mike, but his DNA is. He already had the mutated gene, combined with the week spent in the Upside Down, literally absorbing it. Then the possession by the Mind Flayer, followed by Vecna- his DNA is like nothing anyone has ever seen. It’s…like his genomes were pulled apart and reassembled.” Mike doesn’t say anything. He is entirely still, maybe for the first time since Dustin has known him. “That’s how he got his powers- 001 helped when he formed Hawkins in the Upside Down, but the rest of it was him- the invisibility, deconstructing and rearranging the Upside Down, that one fucking time when he built some DnD figurine for El out of another one.”
“So what’s wrong with him? You said something’s wrong-”
“His genes got split apart, Mike. His powers are tenuous as hell, and I don’t know what kind of shit time he’s been having- if he’s upset, it’ll show. Things around him will start changing- he’ll go invisible for periods of time and won’t even realise it, objects will morph into other things, and grass might start growing out of the fucking walls. We don’t know. So whatever you did, whatever you said to him, you need to fucking fix it. Because if it reaches a certain point, he will start splitting apart. This is what I’m trying to tell you. First the world around him, and then Will himself.”
“What. The fuck.” Mike took a single rattling breath, that echoed in his throat like a lone coin in a bowl. “What. The fuck.”
“Yeah, buddy, I know. I felt the same way when I found out, but now is not the time to freak the fuck out. Now is the time to figure out how to fix this .” Dustin whipped out a sheet of paper from his desk and scribbled out a messy ‘Will’ in the middle, with branches extending away from it. “Ok. Tell me what we’re gonna do.”
“Put on that dumb hat and knock a couple of teeth out, and this would be exactly like high school,” Mike said sarcastically, rolling his eyes a little at the familiarity of the big sheet of paper and hurried plans.
“Don’t even joke about that, asshole,” Dustin added a heading to the first branch: BE NICE.
“I’m plenty nice,” was all Mike said, seemed to realise it was untrue, and huffed out a resigned ‘ok’. The next heading, however, raised more alarms: TELL MAX AND LUCAS.
“No, no, no. I am not telling Max- she’ll never let me live it down, and Lucas- you can’t make me do this, Dustin. Telling you was bad enough.”
“Ok, dingbat, don’t tell them about your crush, tell them to be nice to Will until we fix this so he doesn’t fucking die.”
“Why don’t we just tell Will himself?”
“Because then the government will literally hang me. I’m taking enough liberties telling you, loud-mouthed whiner that you are. And don’t even think about telling El,” Dustin muffled Mike’s response with his hand. “She can’t know either, because we had to analyse her powers as well in the investigation.”
“So El is going to die too?!” Mike demands, grabbing Dustin’s wrist, and Dustin shrugs him off to write a third point: DO NOT TELL EL OR WILL.
“NO, she’s fine. The nature of her powers is different from Will’s, probably because they came from one clear source, whereas his were absorbed from multiple different things. That’s why parts of them are the same, and they can do similar things, but in different ways.” Mike snatched the pen out of his hands and wrote his first heading: APOLOGISE FOR WHAT HAPPENED AT SUMMER. “Nice, that’s the first sensible thing that’s come from you all afternoon, Mike.” Another two headings, GIVE WILL A GOOD CHRISTMAS and GET THE PARTY BACK TOGETHER.
Get the party back together. In Dustin’s absence, he had no idea of how they had collapsed since summer.
“What…happened? While I was away.”
Mike looked unsure of how to answer that.
“Um. Well, I mean- me and Will. And Max had a bad fall around Halloween, and had to go back to rehab for her balance, so she broke up with Lucas. I think- I think it hurt her more, knowing every time she got hurt, it hurt him as well. That sort of just made it worse- and it was such a nothing breakup. If they were still talking, they’d be just as in love as they were the day before Max ended things. Neither of them is coming home, Max is still in rehab and Lucas is staying at the dorms. So it’s been kind of icy between the four of us, and we thought you just fucked off and went MIA, and El can’t call from Europe.”
“So in the Venn diagram of who is talking to who…?”
“I’m talking to Lucas and Max, and now you. El is talking to no one, and nor are you because you couldn’t. Will is talking to Max and Lucas. Max and Lucas are talking to Will and me separately but not to each other and not to us together.”
Dustin says nothing, but aggressively underlines the last dot point. “I think that’s all.”
“One more,” Mike whispers under his breath, and when he leans down to the page, cupping his hand around the words he’s writing, Dustin gets his first proper look at him. He kind of looks like shit, thinner and sharper, his jawbone painfully pronounced. Dark circles make bluish half-moons under his eyes, heavy-lidded with exhaustion. The freckles that line Mike’s cheekbones are dark as inkblots, and his skin is pale as the blotting paper they would sit on. A pang of something like regret strikes Dustin’s sternum.
TELL WILL I LOVE HIM. It’s written in small, cramped letters, but it’s there. Mike has written it in his hand on the paper, in black marker and shaking letters.
“Ok.” Dustin swallows down anything he could choose to say. “This is good. The second he gets here, Operation Stop Will Byers From Dying And Help Him Have A Good Christmas is a go.” Mike laughs pitifully, and before they both leave the room complaining of hunger, Dustin sees him scrawl a line through the final statement on the list.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, this is going to be a long fucking Christmas.
BE NICE.
TELL MAX AND LUCAS.
DO NOT TELL EL OR WILL.
APOLOGISE FOR WHAT HAPPENED AT SUMMER.
GIVE WILL A GOOD CHRISTMAS.
GET THE PARTY BACK TOGETHER.
TELL WILL I LOVE HIM.
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BE NICE turns out to be a lot harder than previously anticipated, but luckily, Will sends his bags and a note saying he’s delayed until the following day. Mike seemed to take the news extremely well and also terribly, swinging between ecstatic and slumped between the couch cushions in the Wheeler's basement, which seemed like a much warmer and more practical place to sleep.
“Mike, dude, you have to chill. We have a whole night to relax and chill before Will gets here,” Dustin tried to start, but loud banging on the front door silenced him.
“MIKE!” Karen screamed from upstairs. “CAN YOU GET THAT?!” Mike didn’t even protest, as he would have done immediately a few years ago. Ted’s untimely death in the middle of the war followed by Karen’s Demogorgon attack towards the end softened Mike’s feelings towards his mother, at least as far as Dustin could tell. He was still a little shit but in less of an angsty teenager way and more of a Mike Wheeler way.
Dustin followed Mike up the stairs, and they swung the front door open to reveal two shivering figures in the half-dark. Dustin’s mouth dropped open.
“El? Lucas?”
“Uh. Hi?” Lucas said, and the four just stood there, looking at each other, before there was a rush of arms and tight hugs and laughter that quickly turned to tears. Dustin and Mike bundled them both inside, hands around shoulders and bags and pulling soaked coats off.
The rush of movement ends with Mike slumped back on the couch, eyes wide and sparkling this time, El next to him, Lucas in an armchair and Dustin on the floor.
“I wasn’t going to come home,” Lucas is in the middle of explaining, “but they kicked us out of the dorms because someone got the flu.”
“And I was in Europe,” El adds, “until Mike told me to come home because something was happening.” She elbows Mike pointedly in the side, and he clears his throat a little and gives Dustin a clear HELP ME! look.
“Um. I’m…worried about Will.” Dustin nods encouragingly. “Have you heard from him?”
“Ye…s?” Lucas says, not very confidently. His brow is furrowed. “I mean, a lot less than usual, and mostly in letters. I think I only got a couple of phone calls this semester, and he sounded…tired. I mean, he sounded perfectly fine, he’s a good liar- but it was the little things, complaining about how cold the dorms were and how hard it was getting up for his 9.30 classes, when we all know he’s an early riser.”
“I have not heard from Will.” El shakes her head, and her curls bounce around with it. After growing, shaving, and regrowing her hair, it finally settled into subtle chocolate-brown curls that framed her round face. “But I have not felt anything either. No stirrings of the Upside Down. So it cannot be that. Maybe…maybe he is just tired?”
It takes everything in Dustin to smile and nod and not scream, and Mike seems to be gritting his teeth as well.
“It sounds stupid, but I also missed us.” Mike scratches his knuckles and doesn’t look up. “The Party. And I know there’s only four of us…but Will is coming tomorrow. And it’s been so different, and even summer wasn’t the same. I just want a week for us.”
“Not our families?” Lucas’s smile quirks up at the edges. “Mike, it’s Christmas.”
“Fuck Christmas.” Dustin sits up. “When have we ever enjoyed Christmas- I mean, especially since Will went missing? We should do something fun. Last Christmas was fucking miserable, we didn’t see each other all week. I’m done.” Lucas begins to nod along with what he’s saying, and when Dustin looks over, so are Mike and El.
“Visit the arcade?” Lucas asks, and Dustin bumps his leg in agreement. “Do everything we used to do? Yeah, I’m in.”
“I miss home,” El interjects. “I want to eat triple-decker eggo extravaganzas and watch movies. Travelling- Europe- it was not the same.”
“Sleep in half the day, just for old times sake.” Dustin adds, and they all grin at each other and god , Dustin missed this. His friends are home. He’s home. “Mike, I’m using your microwave to make popcorn. The rest of you set up a movie or something.”
Dustin leaves up the basement stairs, and when he turns to look back, he sees Mike and Lucas fighting over the remote, and El giggling as she levitates it above her head. The scene has a childlike abandon to it that Dustin has missed so much. College is supposed to be the best time of his life, but so far he’s knee-deep in coursework and a project that’s consuming his life.
He isn’t sure if it’s theoretical, anymore. It’s easy to ignore the fact that the project is about Will when he can’t see him- but Will is all over this house, in the drawings papered on the walls and the pictures framed on the stairs.
Dustin is good at deflecting and covering things up with humour, but there’s a bone-deep loneliness in him that hasn’t let up since Eddie died. Steve is away at college with Robin, Suzie and him haven’t talked since junior year. Everything he is is either sitting just below his feet or on a plane here right now or wherever the fuck Max is. He is half a person when he’s by himself- Dustin Henderson is less of a man than his counterpart, the person he is when he’s with the Party.
Fuck. It might be a case of the Christmas blues, but it might be a case of the blues all around. Ever since the Upside Down was neutralised and their lives went back to ‘normal’, there’s been an ever-widening chasm in the pit of Dustin’s stomach. He feels- hollow. Besides the task force, he can’t talk to anyone at college about this shit. They don’t understand.
I’m surprised you don’t know this, this is basic 11th-grade chemistry. He doesn’t know it because he was fighting an inter-dimensional war.
If you can swim, why can’t you come swimming with us? Because then the unsuspecting people at his college will see the scars, the unexplainable claw and bite marks pocket marking his back.
No one else missed the fundamentals of high school to be a child soldier. Hardly anyone at college understands scars bigger than scraped knees, not as the Party understands them. They’re all haunted and covered in maps of scars, leading to this unavoidable event Dustin can't fucking talk about.
Dustin feels trapped . He’s caged in every conversation, crossing his fingers behind his back as his mouth forces out lie after lie. The only people he can be honest with are the Party, and even then he feels suffocated. They’re all happy now, why can’t he be?
Dustin burns his fingers on the edge of the popcorn bag as he pulls it out of the microwave, but he can’t even feel it. Aimlessly, he pours it into a bowl and tries to stifle the lump in his throat. He’s happy. He’s happy because his friends are home. He’s happy .
“Not sure if you noticed, Dusty-Bun, but even a blind girl can tell that’s a saucepan.” He whips around to come face-to-face with Max Mayfield, grinning slightly with her arms crossed over her chest. Her red hair is cut short in a fluffy bob, and she’s leaning heavily on crutches, but she’s here . For the first time in months, she’s right in front of him.
“Partially blind,” he coughs out, and yep, he’s crying. Max isn’t much of a hugger but she drops her crutches without hesitation, bundling him to her chest. They stand like that for a moment before she loudly clears her throat and pushes him away. Her giggle is watery.
“Surprised?”
“Are you kidding? This morning I thought I would be the only one in town for Christmas, and now everyone is coming back, even El.” She grins a little. “Wait. How did you even get in here?”
“I have my ways.” Max proffers an arm to Dustin and he takes it and the saucepan full of popcorn and guides her slowly down the basement steps to the source of the raucous laughter, that quickly turns to exclamations of delight when Max is revealed. El is the first to squeal and embrace her rapturously, the two of them talking a mile a minute, holding eachothers' faces. Mike smiles at her and nudges her with his shoulder, and Max laughs at something he says out of the corner of his mouth that is accompanied by an eye roll.
Dustin notices that Lucas hangs back, hesitant to reach in for a hug. Which- fair, but also, stupid. When El finally pulls back, it leaves Max and Lucas face-to-face, the four feet of space between them a wide, akward ocean rough with endless waves of shared history. There's a brief pause, before Max laughs (albeit a little forcedly), holds out her arms and says quietly, "come here, Stalker." In a second, Lucas is hugging her, and Dustin feels like he needs to turn away. There's something too...everything about them. Lucas holds Max like he's holding his future in his arms, some precious, delicate thing that needs to be held and secured at all costs.
No one has ever held Dustin like that. He tries to be ok with it.
After everyone has broken up to get ready for bed, agreeing that they'll all stay in Mike's basement for the night, Dustin seizes an opportunity to seclude Max and Lucas in a corner whilst Mike and El play an agressive game of spit. El is using her powers to rearrange the cards in Mike's draw pile without him noticing. Dustin figures it should keep them busy until Mike cracks the shits, which is an undetermined but regrettably short time frame.
"Lucas, Max," he begins with, pulling them backwards and seating them on the ground in front of him, "I have something to tell you. About Will."
"Will?" Lucas gives him a look. "What's up with him?"
"I've been doing a research project at MIT- shut the fuck up, Max, this is serious." Max stops laughing, seeming to sense that this is fucking serious, because yeah, it is.
Quickly, Dustin recounts what he told Mike, strategically leaving out the part about Mike being in love with Will. He doesn't even know if Lucas and Max know Will is gay yet- although it was a bit of an open secret amongst the party. Dustin had always secretly suspected Will had the hots for Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future, but could never prove his theorem because the copy of Back to the Future was constantly loaned out from Family Video by Steve (who having watched the movie high always promised to watch it sober, and never did. The tape was lost in the rubble of the Harrington house.)
When he finishes, both of them look shell-shocked and increasingly concerned.
"What can we do?" Lucas looks over at Max and then back at Dustin, who runs one hand through his hair.
"Give Will a really good Christmas." Max nods.
"Go figure. Give all of us a really good Christmas. I can't...I never liked Christmas. But I want to like it." That resonates with Dustin. He wants so badly to love Christmas the way the Byers family does, but he isn't sure he has it in him.
When they go to bed, arguing over sleeping bags and kicking each other in the dark, giggling, Dustin rolls over and stares at the wall above Mike's couch. Clearly, even in the half-dark lit solely by the lamp in the corner, he can see a drawing of Will the Wise framed on the wall. His purple robe billows behind him as he aims a spell at some far-off monster, his face exuding confidence as he aims the bluish orb of light. Will looks young in this drawing. He's still so young. It's hard to reconcile the kid getting bullied at Hawkins Middle to the person levitating above a battlefield, pulling the dimension around him apart with his mind, even if in age, they are little more than five years apart.
Five years is a lifetime in Hawkins. It's only been a day and Dustin feels like he never left, because everything is the same as when he left it. Maybe he's the one who has changed- the a cicada, he's outgrown his skin.
He's not sure if that's a good thing.
Dustin falls asleep to the gentle sounds of his friends breathing. In the back of his mind, there is still an inkling that he should have turned off the road when he had the chance.
He wakes up to the sound of Will's suitcase on the stairs and in the few moments before he opens his eyes an joins the chaos, he offers a silent prayer to the god he doesn't believe in.
Just one good Christmas. Please. Keep Will safe.
Please.