Chapter Text
They go back to the Wheelers’ house in the aftermath.
He thought it before, but it’s weird being back in Hawkins, in the Wheeler house. When Will felt lonely and alone in Lenora, he would write out the names of the party in the back of his notebooks, sketch the shapes of their faces sitting around a table playing DnD, anything to prove to himself that the memories were real, to solidify the friendships he felt were slipping through his fingers with the distance and time. After longing for it for so long, actually being here is throwing him off.
Almost everything is the same, except for the things that aren’t. Holly is big now, taller than Will’s ever seen her, and the artwork over the mantle has been replaced. Karen’s hugs still feel the same even though Will is taller now. Ted still ignores him. And here Will is: on the living room couch that’s still the same amount of stiff and uncomfortable that it always has been, his mom and Jonathan flitting around him, Argyle on the phone in the other room, and Karen pouring him a glass of water in the kitchen.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Mom is asking, petting his hair like he’s twelve again and having nightmares.
Will just feels exhausted. “Yes, I’m fine.” He doesn’t brush her off, though. If she wants to comfort herself by comforting him, that’s fine.
“Okay, sweetie, here you go,” Karen says, setting down his water in front of him. “I’m so sorry to hear that you got sick out there. Let me know if you need anything else, and Joyce, you and the boys are free to stay here for as long as you need.”
Will picks up the glass and takes a sip as his mom and Karen continue to talk. He could listen, but he doesn’t. It’s easier to just let the cool liquid run down his throat and let his mind float away for a bit so that Will doesn’t have to think about what all of this means.
Because… well. He knew that he had a connection with the Upside Down. He knew that Vecna probably was interested in trying to get to him. But now that it’s been confirmed, Will feels like an outsider in his own body, similar to the way he had when he’d been possessed and when he’d died in the Upside Down the first time and been resuscitated.
He doesn’t like to think about it, but Will had been violated, in body and mind. He’d wanted to hide so fucking badly, to retreat into himself, and he’d found a way to do it that left him foggy and distant from the world, but it made things bearable.
Will hadn’t had to do it since he left Hawkins. He hadn’t felt the prickle on his neck, the shadow in the back of his brain, the whispering, curling voice that didn’t sound like his own. In Lenora, he’d been normal.
But as soon as they’d crossed the Welcome to Hawkins sign, Will had felt it come back. And now, unprepared for the destruction and the immediate contact with Vecna, Will needs this space.
So he retreats, floating while the adults around him make decisions. He’s only fifteen, after all. He’s had the weight of the world on his shoulders for so many years. Is it really such a big ask to let him have peace for a few minutes?
The information washes at his mind as it comes: they’re staying at the Wheeler house. Argyle is staying for now, too, though who knows how long that will be, whereas El and Hopper had parted ways with them back at the hill to return to the cabin. Jonathan brings in their stuff from Argyle’s van. Mom continues to manage details with Karen. Nancy talks quietly to Holly. Ted has disappeared.
Will sits. He’s quiet. His mind drifts away, and he lets it go, idly wondering if meditation is supposed to feel anything like this before all thinking ceases.
His eyes slide shut, and Will can feel sleep pulling on him. He would be worried about a nightmare, but his mom is still pressed up against him, and he knows nothing will bother him with her right there. His head falls onto her shoulder. Will lets himself doze, halfway between sleep and waking.
It’s only when Will jolts, snapping back to himself as his mom sneezes, that he realizes Mike has gone.
Maybe it’s stupid, but Will needs to know. “Where’s Mike?” He asks as he blinks back to awareness, feeling slightly more prepared for it now than before.
His mom smiles at him. “He’s upstairs getting his room ready for you two, sweetie.”
Will sits up, his head spinning. “What?” He croaks. He cannot room with Mike. He doesn’t think he’ll survive if he does, getting to lay in the darkness hearing him breathe, not allowing himself to fall into REM sleep so his nightmares stay away, waking to Mike’s tousled bedhead and squinting, sleepy eyes every day. Will’s chest is already aching with the thought of it.
“I’m glad you’re finally going to be able to spend some time with him, I know how much you’ve missed each other,” his mom continues, giving Will a smile that is probably supposed to be comforting, but only makes his heart sink low in his chest.
Quickly, Will pastes on a smile too. No need to worry her more than she already is. “Yeah. It’ll be a blast.”
Will’s in the midst of trudging towards the stairs as slowly as he possibly can, waiting to avoid being along with Mike but not quite sure how to do so, when Jonathan pulls his sleeve towards the stairs to the basement.
“Come talk with me for a sec,” he says, and despite the ominous phrasing, Will would rather be anywhere than upstairs right now, so he lets his brother pull him where he wants.
Entering the Wheelers’ basement almost feels like coming home. Instantly, Will is more at ease than he’e been in a long time, surrounded by the familiar wood-panneled walls, comfy couch, and armchairs. He even sees an old art piece of his from an old campaign the Party did years ago, and smiles at the reminder.
Jonathan sits down on the couch and pats the space next to him, and Will follows the unspoked instruction, taking a seat next to his brother. He clasps his hands in his lap, keeping his gaze focused downward, and hopes that Jonathan isn’t gearing up to have some big discussion with him.
“Are you really okay, Will?” He asks, tone gentle.
A part of Will bristles at the question, but mostly Will just wants to laugh. Of course he’s not okay right now. He can feel the layer of fuzziness on the back of his brain that’s his connection to Vecna, buzzing, the skin on the back of his neck more sensitive than it has been in months, and he just walked through his worst memories.
But Will bites his tongue. Even if that’s how he feels, it’s not like he can say it. Jonathan wouldn’t judge him, but he also has more important things to be worrying about than Will. He knows that his brother and Nancy are still kind of on the rocks, first of all. And maybe he should address his always being high problem before he tries and comes to solve any of Will’s issues. It hasn’t exactly made him easy to talk to when they were in Lenora, after all. This return to form of Jonathan shouldering everything their mom couldn’t take is just typical Hawkins behavior.
God. Will hates this place.
“I mean, I’m obviously a bit shaken up,” Will starts, and then shrugs. He knows he can’t just say he’s fine, or Jonathan will never believe him. So, it’s time to play at reticence for a while but then act like he’s already halfway to getting over it by the time their conversation is over. Easy.
“I know,” Jonathan says, placing a hand on Will’s knee. “And I know that telling everyone about your vision in the van,” he squeezes for a moment. “That was probably really hard. I just wanted to make sure— was there anything you might have… left out? That you didn’t want to tell everybody? I’ll listen, if you need. I’m here for you.”
Wouldn’t that be nice? If Will could tell Jonathan everything. If telling Jonthan everything would fix his dismal existence.
But unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way— Will knows.
So he’s not going to say anything. He’s not going to make his brother learn a huge secret he’ll have to keep for forever. And there’s no way he’s ever going to talk about Vecna holding Mike Wheeler over his head.
Will shakes his head. “No,” he confirms. “I— I appreciate it, and maybe I’ll want to talk more about… about the stuff with Dad later, but. That was all. And yeah, it was scary, but it could have been worse.”
Jonathan lets out a light laugh, the sound so shocking to Will that he looks at his brother’s face.
“I hate that you can say shit like that,” Jonathan says, a little bitterly. “It could have been worse. Yeah, Will, it could have, and you would know firsthand. God, I’m glad that El got to him first. Of course the bastard would be grasping at straws for any kind of power he can get, but I’m glad El fighting him first made it easier for you to slip away.”
Yeah. Will’s grateful for that too. But— ”He’ll be back,” Will reminds both of them, tonelessly.
This time, Jonathan doesn’t have an easy quip or reassurance. After a moment of solemn silence, he just squeezes Will’s knee again. “We’ll be ready.”
Will’s not so sure about that, but he’s not going to be the one to say it. For one, Jonathan would never let him leave after making a defeatist comment like that. Instead, Will shoots him a small smile, letting tacit agreement shine through.
“So you’re sure you’re good?” Jonathan asks him one more time.
Will groans and swipes Jonathan’s hand off of his knee. “Yes, I’m fine. It’s just that being back here is weird, and the old memories sucked. I’ll adjust and be okay, Jonathan. You don’t have to hover.”
“Alight, alright,” he agrees, finally backing off. “But you’ll tell me if that changes, right?”
“Right,” Will lies. He doesn’t even feel bad as the word rolls off his tongue.
Will feels like he’s living the saying out of the frying pan and into the fire as he finally walks up both flights of stairs in the Wheeler house to get to Mike’s room. Getting through the conversation with his brother is one big hurdle, but being alone with Mike after everything that’s happened isn’t something Will is looking forward to in the least.
In the hallway, Will lingers for as long as he can until he feels stupid for it. The stupid feeling drives enough momentum into his bones to force his hand, his knuckles rapping on the closed door to Mike’s room.
Will waits one beat. Two. Three.
He’s just about wondering if Mike is even in there when the door swings open and Will audibly gasps. Because Mike has, inexplicably, short hair now. And, upon closer inspection, his cheeks look ruddy and damp, his eyes red-rimmed. He’s been crying. And truly, when the hell did he have time to get a haircut?
“Mike, what happened to you?” Will asks, blurting out the words before he can stop himself.
Mike turns away instead of answering, lifting up one shoulder in a shrug and walking farther into his room— which is still extremely messy, as if he hasn’t cleaned it at all despite telling his mom that’s what he was doing— and kicking some shit underneath his bed instead of picking it up to organize it.
Okay. Guess Will didn’t really want to talk to him either, but he’s not really sure what to do next. So he does nothing, electing to stand there and watch as Mike shoves dirty clothes into his hamper and mostly just kicks and heaps the shit on his floor into piles or underneath the nearest surfaces, like his bed or his desk. Not that it’s any of Will’s business, but his mom would kill him if he tried to clean his room this way.
Whatever. Once the floor looks like it’s clear enough, Will grabs his bag from where it was outside of Mike’s bedroom door from Jonathan bringing in their stuff and pulls it inside along with the sleeping bag he’s been provided. It’s the same one that he used to use before he moved away— the ones they'd bought to last a few years that Will’d been swimming in before he left but now should just barely hold all of him inside it— and moves to spread it out on Mike’s floor.
“Wait,” Mike protests.
A part of Will almost hopes that he’s changed his mind about them rooming together, but the rest of him kind of wants it, as much as it’s going to be a horrible idea. The warring adrenaline and horror battle inside him. “What?” He asks.
Mike moves over to his closet and brings down a stack of old blankets. “Put these down first,” he mumbles, sticking the bedding out to WIll but avoiding looking at him.
Mike practically snatches his arms back, too, when Will takes the blankets. It’s weird. This whole interaction is weird, and WIll doesn't like it. But he’s not about to refuse the blankets, since it’ll be a million times more comfortable with them than without them.
So Will spreads out the blankets. Mike doesn’t help him; doesn’t even look at him. He goes to look out of one of the windows, his back to Will. The only sounds in the room are the rustling of fabric. Will’s never felt this awkward around Mike before. He doesn’t like how uneasy it makes him feel.
He rushes through making his bed up, needing to get away from this awful tension, but he’s only a little past halfway done— spreading out blanket three of five— when Mike snaps first.
Mike turns around. “Are you okay?” His voice, just like Jonathan’s, is low and soft and quiet. Like they think Will is fragile. Like they think he’s a thing that will break.
Just like it did before, the tone bristles against Will’s ears. He has to bite back the sarcastic Are you? before it can get out; smoothing down the corner of the blanket for a moment before answering with a much more neutral, “Yeah, I’m okay.”
Will’s a fucking liar. But somehow, Mike buys it.
“Okay. Good.” He goes to swipe a hand through his hair, and looks surprised when his hand falls away once it reaches his neck with its new, shortened length.
Will opens his mouth to tease him, but then closes it as Mike’s face shudders closed and he turns away again, walking out of the door without another word.
Will doesn’t ask him where he’s going. It doesn’t feel like his place to. He feels so far from Mike, even though they’re finally in the same place again, and he hates it more than he can put into words. If this had been two years ago, Mike would have known Will was lying when he said he was okay. Will would have pushed and asked him to explain the haircut and the crying. He would have helped Mike clean his room and Mike would help him set up the bed. Hell, Mike might have even tried to get Will to come and share his own bed instead of letting Will sleep on the floor. He’d always done shit like that and Will had always been too stupid to say no.
But now look at them. They can’t even exchange more than ten words without one of them leaving the room. Pathetic.
Will’s going to laugh or fucking sob, he’s not sure which— until he hears Karen Wheeler shouting about Mike’s hair downstairs and the decision is made for him.
He laughs, and it only feels a little bit bitter and ironic.
The next few days pass in a blurry sort of haze. Will knows that things are happening, but they kind of just happen around him while Will feels like he has no part in the proceedings. Normally, Will would be bothered by it— the kid gloves treatment, the exclusion, the cautious looks— but Will is trying to disconnect as much as possible when he’s awake, to feel as far away as he can from that buzzing in the back of his brain and the sensitivity of his own skin. When he is present in his own head and body, he feels gross and cold and like he’s thirteen again, standing in the middle of the field and seeing things that nobody else could see. Stuck between the slides.
But Will doesn’t want to worry anyone, so he checks out and tries to otherwise be as normal as possible, though doing so in these circumstances is almost impossible.
Hawkins is fucked. The military have already established more of a martial law than anyone is acknowledging, with parts of the city closed off and check-in gates around where they’ve set up. They have missing posters for El within two days. The rifts are still open and gleaming right down the center of town. Though it seems like the military is trying to guide people away from them as best they can, it’s too much ground to cover every square inch. Max is in the hospital still, not waking up. People are still spilling out of the city en masse, not that Will can blame them, and even more are staying in the high school gym, displaced and uncertain of what their next move should be.
And not only is Hawkins fucked, but Will’s life is too. Living with the Wheelers is upsettingly weird. Mike doesn't talk to him at night and avoids him during the day, presumably going off to spend time with El who Will hasn’t seen a single time since the hillside. Mrs. Wheeler is too nice, too bright and too talkative, wanting to know everything about Will and his time in California. Nancy, Will knows, is planning with the other adults, including Jonathan and somehow Argyle, in the meetings Will is not privy to, which makes sense but also means she’s gone too— so it’s mostly just Will and Holly alone in the house while Mr. Wheeler goes to work every day.
Holly Wheeler, Will learns, is not just a fan of art like she used to be when she was younger, but now she’s become an artist of her own in a limited fashion. So, she and Will spend time at the dining room table with her boxes of crayons, markers, and colored pencils, and they draw.
Will keeps his drawings silly and small, not too detailed, letting Holly yammer away in his ear and ask his opinion on what color she should use next. It’s not as good of a distraction as Will wishes it were.
Around him, the Party is starting to regroup, but Will feels isolated and shrouded in darkness. When he goes to sleep, exhausted even after days of doing nothing, sleep is reluctant to find him but nightmares are never far away, leaving Will jerking awake on Mike’s bedroom floor more nights than most, blood pounding in his ears and breath coming in pants. One night, he thinks he sees Mike looking over the side of his bed at him, concern flooding his face, but Will just turns over. When he wakes up in the morning, he’s not sure if that was part of the nightmare or real. He doesn’t ask.
There’s a meeting, three days in. One Will is invited to, suddenly, as if they haven’t been purposefully leaving him out of everything leading up to it.
At first, it’s a lot of catching up. There are so many facets to the story of everyone's Spring Break week, most of which have only been told in short bursts with the most important information served up first, but this time everyone can take their time walking through the events of the last week and change. God, it feels to Will like it’s been years. Thankfully, all he has to do is listen, but each story ends in a failure, other than Hopper’s retrieval from Russia. He’s glad that most everyone is still alive, not that he ever got to meet Eddie Munson, but Will’s heart aches as Steve has to cut in to finish Dustin’s story of what happened to him because Dustin starts to tear up.
How many people’s lives will be destroyed by Vecna? Will wants to do something, anything, but he has no idea what he can do besides be a hindrance.
When the stories are over, Nancy stands up at the front of the cabin with Hopper and El.
“I know this is awful and it’s hard,” Nancy says. “But we’ve got Vecna on his heels, and now is the time to prepare for when he comes back. We don’t know how long we’ve got, but we know we need to be ready.”
“We’re going to be doing training camps,” Hopper tells the group. “We don’t expect anybody to take down Vecna by themself, but with the gates open we need to make sure we’re on the lookout for any Upside Down creatures passing through. We don’t want anyone to become lunch.”
Will feels like that’s a fair enough statement. There are a few more logistics to share, then the meeting is over. Will hangs around for an extra minute, looking at the notes on the board until he gets pulled aside by Nancy.
“Jonathan tells me you know how to shoot a gun?” She asks, lips pinched in that Nancy way of hers.
He knows what she’s saying. Jonathan told her he can shoot, but also that he might not want to. Probably even that he won’t do it. Will snaps back into his body for a moment, fury arcing down his spine. He is capable of so much more than anyone gives him credit for and he’s sick and tired of feeling useless when he can actually do something helpful.
“Yeah, I can. I’m out of practice though. Could you help me with that?”
She smiles. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
Will finds himself getting into a car with Nancy the next day— “No time like the present,” she’d said— to drive out to an abandoned section of woods to practice his shot. His hands feel shaky, so he clasps them together in his lap and wills them to stop.
He hasn’t touched a gun since he was in the Upside Down. He hadn’t wanted to, not if he could get away with it. He’d hoped for stillness and calm and the smell of gunpowder only brought back the feelings of killing that fox, of being chased down by a demogorgon, of being terrified for his life. It’s not something that Will likes to think about, so he’d avoided it.
But that’s not important anymore, Will tries to tell himself as Nancy drives. He needs to step up, to do something useful, and this is it. Being able to defend everyone, being reliable and showing up strong instead of weak. Not to mention, it’s a great distraction from the utter absence of Mike.
Will looks up out of the window to distract himself. There are rows of houses with the lights off, some with shaken foundations and belongings strewn on their front lawns. The grass is starting to get longer enough to be noticeably not-groomed and manicured like this side of Hawkins’ suburbs usually are, and everything is covered with a very fine layer of white-gray dust.
Will shivers at the sight. Of course, it’s all due to the nearby gate, of which Will can see the nearby tendrils reaching out. As Nancy drives closer to it, Will follows the red glow of it with his eyes.
It’s interesting, how the light of the gates move, Will thinks. How the particles suspended in the Upside Down air float upwards when they fall through the cracks in the ground before arcing out and up, almost like snow as it falls onto a car’s windshield at speed.
If he focuses closely enough, it’s almost like the gates are pulsing. The energy and the light and the dust, there’s a slight wave to them, Will realizes. It’s subtle, but it’s there, like a heartbeat. Like— like his own breath.
Will snaps away his eyes, heart fluttering. It doesn’t mean anything, he’s sure.
It’s not long before Nancy turns off the main road, taking them away from the gate and into the woods, and Will lets out a breath of relief. Good. He refocuses on the task ahead: shooting. Something tactile and present. Perfect.
Only ten minutes and a short hike out into the woods later, Nancy’s handing him a sawed-off.
“It’s a little different than what you last shot,” she tells him, tone brisk and business-like, “but since it’s a sawed-off, the pellets will disperse more widely. That makes it more dangerous for you but also harder to miss your target from farther away.”
Will nods. That makes sense, sure.
“Show me what you remember, safety on.”
Will gets into position. It’s been three years since he last held a gun, but he remembers how to do it better than he would have thought, widening his stance and resting it against his shoulder, hands where they need to be, looking down the shortened barrel to aim.
“Good,” Nancy says, begrudging approval in her tone. “Now show me if you’ve still got it. Hit that tree over there.” She gestures to an oak tree a good 30 feet away with a wide trunk.
Will can do this. He can. He flicks the safety off, takes his aim and fires— only to miss wide left, the kickback against his shoulder much stronger than he’d expected.
“That’s okay. It’s been a while,” Nancy says. “Try again. And take into account the recoil.”
The air smells like gunpowder now. Will can feel his mind slipping, pulling up memories of the past, but he doesn’t have fucking time to deal with his old memories of guns. Will needs to be able to do this, to prove to even just himself that he has a purpose here, that he can fight.
So he takes a deep breath and does as Nancy says, positioning a bit differently and aiming to account for the recoil, before he clears his mind and takes the next shot.
This one lands.
“We can work with this,” Nancy says, and satisfaction blooms. Maybe he can’t take out Vecna, but he can surely do some damage if needed. But the realization quickly sours from satisfaction into shame. After years of not holding a gun, Will picks it back up like breathing?
He knows it’s stupid, but the vision from Vecna assaults his brain, the way that the fox had collapsed, the fact he’d learned about serial killers, the way that he’d been so focused on his goal that he’d taken his first life which hadn’t been the last. And here he was, taking pride once more in his ability to destroy.
But it’s different. This is for the good of the Party, of Hawkins. Killing demogorgons isn’t like killing defenseless foxes.
Right?
Right. It has to be. Will forces his hands to steady, and Nancy goes to make a ringed target on the tree with some spray pain she’d brought with her. This is fine. Will is being useful. He’s being a warrior, a protector. It’s different. It has to be.
When Will and Nancy return a few hours later, Will’s shoulder feels sore and his spirit is worn thin. The whole time he’d been shooting, he’d warred with himself over what it had meant, what his aptitude said about him, what his end goals were. Nancy, somehow, hadn’t noticed, taking his quietness for concentration. For all else, Will had been as good with the gun as he’d remembered, and Nancy had been thrilled.
He’s glad that somebody was happy with how the day went. As soon as she parks the car he leaves with a strained smile to go back up to Mike’s room for a little peace and quiet.
Thankfully, Mike is still gone, somewhere that Will doesn’t question that wasn’t his house, but that was Will’s preference. He goes to sit down on his pile of blankets, feeling like he wants to take a nap, but there’s something pointy underneath him.
Will reaches under himself and pulls out a small plastic square— a tape. Flipping it over, Will reads handwritten text on the front: WILL’S MUSIC MIX - BY MIKE. By Mike. By Mike.
What the actual fuck. Why has Mike left a mixtape on Will’s bed? And he isn’t even here? Sure, they’d talked about the importance of music in their big meeting, the way it had saved Max from Vecna’s trance, and of course the firsthand experience that Will had of it saving his own life, but he hasn’t expected Mike to do anything about it or even be paying enough attention to realize that Will might benefit from having something to listen to.
Will flushes. Maybe he didn’t dream of Mike looking over at him with concern a few nights ago. Maybe this is his way of telling Will he needs to get his shit together.
Well. Great. Time for Will to go and find a Walkman to use, he guesses. There’s one on Mike's desk, almost as if he’s left it out for Will to find, with a pair of headphones coiled up next to it.
He plugs them in, inserts the tape into the Walkman, and presses play before he can stop himself, curious as to what Mike has included on the mix. The first song is Boys Don’t Cry, and Will lays down on his pillow face first to muffle his scream. He doesn’t know if Mike was the one on the hill to suggest the song, but Will wants to believe that he was, that he’d noticed the poster Will had for the song up in his room in California. Maybe it’s delusional of Will to believe it, but with this inclusion yet again, he does.
When the song fades out only a few minutes later, the next one starts; something more lowkey that Will hasn’t heard before. He rolls over to look at the ceiling and shuts his eyes, listening to the lyrics, letting the guitar serve as his anchor as he drifts and drifts until he falls, slowly, into sleep.
He and Mike don’t talk about it that night— one of the few, blessedly, nightmare-free with the music tinny in his ears through the headphones. They don’t talk about it the next morning, either, before Will gets picked up by Mrs. Sinclair and Lucas to go visit Max in the hospital. Which is fine by Will, even if it’s obvious he’s using Mike’s mixtape. It can just sit in between them like everything else they aren’t saying, he supposes. What’s one more elephant in a room full of them?
Will’s glad to be out of the house, and makes sure to keep his eyes away from the cracks in the ground on the drive over to the hospital. Mrs. Sinclair chatters about what’s going on and asks the same five questions about California that Will’s been answering on rotation for the last week. Lucas is quiet, stiffly holding a book and a tape in the passenger’s seat. He doesn’t look at Will.
And like, it’s fine, Will gets it. He would be ignoring Lucas if Mike were the one in the coma and his mom were asking Lucas questions, but Will has missed Lucas; missed his friend that he hasn’t seen properly or hung out with one-on-one in almost a year. So it hurts, just a little bit.
Lucas’s mom lets them know she’ll be back in about two hours, when she finished doing her errands, and Lucas nods soullessly before she drives off.
“So,” Will tries as they begin to walk through the double doors. “How are you holding up?”
Lucas levels him with a look, and Will winces. Yeah, fair. Stupid fucking question, Byers.
Will ducks his head. “Sorry.”
Finally taking mercy on him, Lucas shrugs. “It’s okay.” He lies about as convincingly as Will does when he’s unprepared. “This all just fucking sucks.”
Will snorts. “Yeah,” he agrees, and they lapse into silence, Lucas giving their names at the desk and then trudging up a route he clearly knows well already, even though it’s only been a few days.
Max looks about the same as the last time Will saw her: covered in braces and machines, a steady beeping on the EKG, like she’s asleep but also hurt. Too still, like Max Mayfield should never be in a way that sends shivers up Will’s spine, lingering in the skin on the back of his neck.
Lucas pulls out the tape and shoves it into the cassette player already on a nearby cart before taking a heavy seat and gesturing to the other chair on the opposite side of Max’s bed. “Sit,” he tells Will.
Will does, cautiously. He wants to reach out and touch Max, but it still feels unreal to have her right in front of him and not about to wake up and make a silly face before telling them that she’s made them all look stupid. He hopes that somehow, she hears his thoughts and wakes up anyway, but she stays still.
“Usually,” Lucas says, “I just play the song until I can’t stand it anymore.”
He’s holding her hand. Something in Will’s chest aches at the tenderness, the unselfconscious nature of it, because who cares if Lucas holds Max’s hand in the hospital? He’s allowed. He can. He doesn’t have to think twice.
“But?” Will asks when Lucas doesn't continue, able to hear the word hovering in the air.
“I can’t stand it already,” he whispers, not looking at Will or Max, and instead staring into the crisp white bedsheets. “I don’t want to hear it. Not today.”
“Okay,” Will encourages, because someone has to. And he thinks Kate Bush is okay, but if he had to listen to Running Up That Hill on repeat he thinks he’d throw himself out of a window, so he gets it. “So…?”
Lucas holds up the book in the hand not tangled in Max’s. “I was thinking I could read. To her.”
He still looks like he needs encouragement, so Will nods again. “That works. And if you want, I can play the song while you go to the bathroom later. So you get a break.”
Relief washes over Lucas, his shoulders slumping. “Yeah. Yeah, that’d be great, Will. Thanks.”
With that, he opens the book and begins to read, and Will zones out. He knows Lucas is going to come back without him to continue this, so it’s not worth getting invested in a story he’ll never finish. Instead, Will turns his mind elsewhere: to Vecna and himself. To the Upside Down, to El. To the why of it all.
There’s one thing that’s been bothering Will for years. Something he doesn’t know the answer to. Something he’s afraid to ask out loud because he doesn’t know if he’ll like the answer.
Why did Vecna take him that first night? On November 6th, what really happened? Was it really that Will was in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or is there something within him that Vecna saw and made him say this one?
Will doesn’t really believe in coincidences, at this point. As much as it absolutely blows to consider, he believes there’s a reason that Vecna took him that night, chose him of all people to take to the Upside Down, and then on the hill, again, when he tried to get Will to join him a few nights ago.
So it begs the question. What is so special about Will that made him the target?
Will doesn’t know for certain, doesn’t have anything but vague theories spinning out into his head that go nowhere. Because sure, he and Vecna are connected now, but he doesn’t think they were connected before Will’s first trip to the Upside Down.
He was Vecna’s spy, but their connection, though active, doesn’t feel like it did back then. It’s just an awareness, a sense that Vecna’s still out there, alive, somewhere.
He’s sure that if Vecna checks, he’ll get the same information about Will. He just has to hope that Vecna doesn’t look any deeper or try any harder; hence trying his best to put his mind out of his body and live as detached as possible. If he keeps their connection quiet, maybe Vecna just… won’t notice.
It’s probably futile, but Will’s going to try anyway— just like Lucas, reading away at Max’s bedside in the hope that maybe just maybe, he’ll reach her and bring her back.
The reprieve that the music provides only lasts one precious night before Will is thrust back into the depths of his night terrors.
He knows right away that it’s a dream. All of Will’s dreams have felt shockingly real and immediate since coming back to Hawkins; sharp in a way that feels like he’s really living more than when he’s actually awake.
Will in this dream might be himself, but he might not be either. It’s hard to tell, but Will feels present in the body he occupies, stalking through the forest, on a mission.
He’s hunting. The woods are quiet but active, and Will stalks with a purpose, following a trail or a scent. He can tell that he’s been tracking for a while. He’s getting close. Just over that ridge, something in him screams. That’s where he’ll find his target.
Will looks down and there’s a gun in his hands. There wasn’t one before, but now there is. He creeps closer to the ridge, hunters' quiet footsteps making his walk almost silent among the rustling leaves and bird calls.
He ducks behind a maple tree’s trunk, smiling wickedly, before he readies the gun and flips around the corner, finding his target and pulling the trigger in one fell swoop; a hunter in his element, knowing that the shot will ring true as soon as the trigger is pulled.
It’s only then that Will realizes: the target is a person. And that person is Mike.
The dream slows down to slow motion, zooming in away from Will’s body to focus on Mike as if Will’s standing right in front of him instead of on top of a ridge, 40 feet away. The bullet rips right through him, as true as Will had thought, in his heart.
Incorporeal as he is, Will feels like he’s gasping for air. A sick thought jumps out: what a callback to the moniker. The heart.
Blood splatters through the bullet hole in Mike’s chest onto the ground behind him. He collapses, gasping, face contorting in pain, short-lived as he’s dying within seconds. And Will has to watch. Has to watch. Has to watch Mike Wheeler cough up blood and gasp for air and bloody his hands on his own chest and—
Will wakes up screaming. He’s flailing, trapped in the sleeping bag he’s sleeping in and needing to get out, to get loose immediately.
Mike’s right there. He slaps around for the zipper, somehow knowing exactly what Will needs despite their distance and their silence, as if seeing Will in distress has somehow activated a sleeper agent inside of him of the Mike that Will loves best.
Will throws the sleeping bag off when it’s zipped down enough and stands up, still hyperventilating, and lifts a hand to his face only to realize that he’s crying.
Mike stands after him and reaches out a hand— so reminiscent of the dream where he reached out at Will’s ghostly spectre— and Will bolts.
He cannot touch Mike. Not when— not when he just dreamed of killing him, felt the satisfaction of a job well done with Mike’s blood on his hands before he’d been able to turn it around to horror. And with a gun. Of course it was a fucking gun.
In the Wheelers’ kitchen, Will gets himself a glass of water with way too much ice with shaky hands. He can’t shut the fuck up, so after unsuccessfully trying to even out his breathing, Will heads out onto the front porch. He should be a good guest and not wake people up.
It doesn’t feel far enough. Will puts the glass down and keeps walking, as if the distance will mitigate the tidal wave of shame and guilt and disgust willing up inside of him. As if he can walk away from his demons and his very own self.
It’s a cold night out, stars in the sky obscured by the red glow still in Will’s peripherals everywhere he goes. But Will doesn’t shiver. He just keeps walking down the street, turning at random, letting his feet take him as his mind races, breathing starting to slow only after he’s turned at least five corners.
The distance helps, for some reason. Getting away from Mike, who was making that same concerned face as he had the other night. It definitely wasn’t a dream that Mike had been looking at him. Will wonders why he didn't do anything before tonight, if he was so worried, then discards the train of thought. He’s not going to get anywhere psychoanalyzing Mike Wheeler.
When he finally zones back into his surroundings, Will’s in front of a wall of red light. As if in slow motion, Will’s gaze falls down. There’s rubble in front of him and—
A gate. One of the four cracks. Will wants to scramble away, but his feet are frozen in place. The breathing that had taken him so long to settle down ratchets back up, quick and shallow in panic.
The gate… well. There’s no other word for it. The gate responds.
When Will had driven by with Nancy the other day, he’d sworn the thing was pulsing, somehow timed to his breath. His theory was right. The pulsing gets faster the longer Will stands there, the more he panics, the faster he breathes. He doesn't know how he’s doing. He’s not even trying. But Will is, somehow, effecting the Upside Down. Just by being next to it. Just through living.
The thought is scary enough that it finally breaks through the panic. Will turns on his heel and runs.
Mike’s waiting for Will on the porch when he gets back, holding the glass of water in his hand with condensation dripping down his arm, eyes wide and arms waving.
“Will! What the fuck? Are you okay?”
Will’s feet hurt from all the walking and running he’s done, to be honest, but other than that he’s just tired. “I’m fine, Mike,” he says.
“You just— you just bolted after that nightmare, I had no idea what was going on. I was so worried, I mean—”
Will cuts him off. “Did anybody else wake up?”
Mike grimaces. “Just my mom, but I told her I had it handled, so she went back to sleep.”
Okay. Okay, that’s fine. Will can deal with that. “Thanks.”
Mike raises his eyebrows when Will tries to keep walking past him towards the front door. “Um, Will? Are you actually okay though?”
“Yes?” Will says. What else does Mike want him to say?
Mike chews on his lip, then thrusts the water out. “Here,” he tries.
Cautiously, Will takes it. “You didn't poison this or anything while I was gone, right?”
Mike lets out a thrown-off little laugh. “What? Of course not. I wouldn’t do that.”
Will takes a sip, and it reminds him how cold it really is. “Ugh, let’s go back to bed.”
Mike jumps to the door, opening it for him. “Yeah! Yes. Let’s.”
Will almost has to laugh. Mike is acting so weird now, like he’s never seen Will before in his life. If he had any emotions left in his body besides tiredness he’d try to get some answers out of Mike while the other boy is so thrown off guard, but right now Will doesn’t care. Too much has happened. He just needs to lie down, even if he doesn’t end up sleeping.
He drains the rest of the water and places the cup in the kitchen sink before following Mike back up to his room and getting back in the sleeping bag, starting up the mixtape Mike made for him before Mike can try to talk to him. He closes his eyes and makes sure his breathing goes deep and even within two minutes, but his head won’t stop spinning.
Well. Will might have his answer to the question. If it was him doing that, innately, and not through his connection with Vecna, that is. But it was real. Will can control, at least in part, the Upside Down.
The Cure in his ears is not as comforting as it usually is. Will has to swallow to force down a more severe reaction that bursts in his belly instead of on his face, burning cold.
If he can control the Upside Down, then he really is like Vecna. The vision, the offer that Vecna had made, had been based in truth. And not just the truth of Will’s otherness in his sexuality, but also his otherness in this sense, too. Him and this twisted connection to the Upside Down.
Will’s stomach drops even colder, even deeper. What if, pre-Vecna, Henry had been just like Will when he was a kid? What if they really are the same? It’s possible. Perhaps even plausible.
Henry couldn’t hide it and he became Vecna.
Will… Will’s hiding it. He’s hiding everything, and successfully, too. He’s lying past everything that’s wrong with him so that people think that he’s a good person. But what if, under it all, he’s not?
There’s always been something broken in Will. He knows this. Vecna knows it too, showed it to him in a way that made it impossible for Will to ignore.
Maybe this is why.
Will clenches his fists in the sheets. He waits until the cassette tape finishes, then rewinds it, then listens to it again and again until the sun comes up.
The nightmare and the running away change things. For Will, certainly, but also for Mike. Like a switch being flipped, Mike goes from being gone at all hours to hovering almost as badly as his mom at her worst, and it pisses Will off almost as much as it makes his heart burst.
Because Mike at his most attentive is captivating. He’s sweet, thoughtful and nice. He brings Will snacks, old favorites from when they were kids, and joins him to color with Holly at the dining room table. He asks incessantly if Will’s doing okay, if he needs anything, and then runs interference with Will’s mom so that Will doesn't have to.
It’s nice. Will likes it a little bit too much and hates himself for it, aches for Mike to press closer when they’re sitting next to each other but scolding himself for not scooting farther away either. He knows it’s a bad idea to let Mike do any of it, but whenever he tries to tell Mike to stop it’s like his jaw is wired shut and he can’t get the words out.
Because Will is also sitting with the realization that, if Vecna is on his heels, resting and recuperating, then they need to act swiftly. And if Will can do something with this connection to the Upside Down, then he needs to figure it out quickly and use it. The sooner the better. And Will’s considering all options, okay? He knows what he wants to do is dangerous. He knows it’s risky. He could end up hurt or dead, of course he could. But that’s the price of fighting in a war. And if Will can do something, then he should. So, he’s made up his mind that he will.
Which means, ultimately, that Will could die. So no, he’s not going to tell Mike to go away, even if it’s torture, because he’d rather take the most awkward of silences with Mike Wheeler than being alone and without him. Any day of the week, hands down, no questions asked.
Perhaps the best-kept secret about himself is that Will is a liar. Nobody knows this about him— not his mom, not Jonathan, not Mike; not El nor Dustin nor Lucas nor Max— because Will is convincing. He’s practiced and careful and meticulous.
Everyone thinks that Will’s shy and he’s kind and he’s funny. They think he’s nice. That he’s good.
Will knows otherwise. He’s been chasing goodness since he was eight years old, but he’s only playacting. It’s a ruse, a costume, a mask that’s so familiar and that it’s almost a part of him, but it is ultimately a lie.
Will Byers is a liar. Most of the time, he’s a damn good one. With enough preparation, Will can keep a lie going for a decade.
But Will fucked up. He didn’t stop and think, didn’t consider his plans and threw logic out of the window of that damn pizza van, and now it’s only a matter of time before Will gets caught in his own web of lies right where he began spinning them.
He should have just left that stupid fucking painting to get shot up and burned in California.
Because here it is, right in front of him, tacked up on Mike’s bedroom wall right across from where they sleep like a neon sign that Will won’t be able to ignore even in the darkness.
“Mike, what—?” Will can’t get the words out of his mouth, jumbling in his throat and sticking there.
“Oh! Yeah, I thought it was about time to put it up,” Mike says with a smile. “I mean, you did such an awesome job on it that it felt wrong to leave it sitting in the corner gathering dust, y’know?”
Will would have greatly preferred for it to be sitting in a corner gathering dust, actually. “Yeah,” he says instead.
“So it gets to be put in a place of pride, right here.” Mike gestures to the wall excitedly, his eyebrows raising up.
Place of pride. Right.
Not like Will doesn’t want a reminder of what he lied about on the fucking wall of the room where he's sleeping or anything. But, of course, it’s not like he can tell Mike that, so Will just has to keep on doing what he’s been doing all this time and lie through his fucking teeth. Again.
“Thanks Mike,” he grits out. “That’s awesome.”
So, Will lied. Obviously. But in less than 24 hours of its hanging, Will realizes that having the painting on the wall of Mike’s room isn’t just a minor inconvenience. No, Will hates seeing it almost as much as he hates Vecna himself.
Like, if Will had poster paper and markers, he wouldn’t draw a picture to escape in— especially since that painting was the last piece he finished and any kind of repetition is unwelcome. Instead, he’d write himself a reminder and then stick it up right over that stupid fucking painting to cover it up while also ensuring he’d see it every day. Sure, the painting itself serves as a reminder just as weighty, but Will’s felt like enough of a fuckup lately that the written message would be nicer. He can imagine it: bold black letters in all capitals that read CHOOSE GOODNESS. As if Will hasn’t been telling himself to do so for years. But whatever.
It’s not like Will is actually gonna do it, after all. First off, he doesn't have any poster paper, and secondly he knows Mike would ask way too many questions that Will would have no idea how to answer. And then there’s the whole painting thing. Covering it up would be suspicious beyond belief, so Will just has to deal with it.
It sucks though. That he has to be content with repeating the phrase like a mantra. But Will’s dedicated, even if he’s been lackluster in chasing this particular goal lately.
So instead, Will tries a tried and true method: he escapes to another place, ditching Mike in an attempt to keep himself from going insane.
Steve picks up Will with Dustin and Robin already in his car when Will comes out and takes them to the high school to help sort donations. Will thinks sardonically that at least he can check off choosing goodness for today as Steve and Robin talk about some radio guy up and leaving town while Dustin stares out the window, not having acknowledged Will beyond a gloomy greeting when he’d gotten in the car.
But that’s okay. Will knows there’s been a lot going on for Dustin, what with his Hellfire DM Eddie Munson dying in front of him in the Upside Down less than two weeks ago. Will would be fucked up about that too, and he doesn’t really want to talk either, so it’s fine.
Volunteering is easy. Will sorts clothes and smiles and moves boxes and sympathizes and hands out water and pamphlets and hope. It’s hard work, but it’s rewarding. It at least feels like he’s doing something, which is better than sitting around coloring with Holly.
But it’s not the best thing Will could be doing with his time. He itches to be able to slip away, to get in a session with the gate so he can try to manipulate it on purpose this time, but Mike’s been so close to him at all hours that it’s been impossible.
And, truthfully, since his nightmare about shooting Mike, Will hasn’t had the stomach to ask Nancy for another round of practice shooting. He’ll do it eventually, he resolves once he finishes folding a pile of sweaters, but only after he tries to mess with the gate. That, of course, is priority number one.
So how can he do it? Where can he find time to slip away?
He looks over to the cot section, letting his eyes wander as he thinks. There are a lot of people, even in the middle of the day, sleeping and dozing here. Will wishes he could sleep like them, but he’s worried about another nightmare; can’t get himself to relax practically at all these days, even with the mixtape Mike made for him playing.
Oh. Of course. Well, if he isn’t going to be sleeping anyway, the night's the perfect time. Hell, he already did it once after the nightmare. Who’s to say he can’t do it again.
Choosing goodness, Will decides, can have multiple benefits after all.
There’s no time to waste. The night calls to Will like a siren’s song, and Will is a sailor compelled to answer. He knows he probably won’t be able to make it downstairs without alerting at least one person that he’s awake, so he doesn’t even attempt it. Instead, Will has an alternate idea.
Once he’s sure Mike is asleep, Will slips out of his sleeping bag. He hadn’t zipped it in preparation for this very moment, and it comes in handy when Mike doesn’t move a muscle as Will stands.
He spares a moment to glare at the painting, then turns to Mike’s window and eases it open. Perfect. It’s not too tall, so Will swings one leg up, then the other, and from there it’s child’s play to lower himself onto Mike’s roof.
The Wheeler house is tall in the neighborhood, enough so that Will can see the nearest gate-line across Hawkins from where he sits. He’s farther away than he’s ever been when he’s messed with the gates before, but that’s fine. This should test his range, and just in case the Upside Down starts fucking with him back, he’s far enough away that nothing should be able to reach him physically for a few minutes at the very least.
Will tires for probably an hour to focus on the gate, trying to reach for it with his mind. He thinks there’s something there, but he can’t quite grasp it well enough to do anything before he gets a headache and has to stop.
But it’s not nothing. Will can feel that he is onto something and that this is a worthwhile project to explore. He’s just going to have to stay at it and try again tomorrow.
This is how he can make sure he doesn’t end up like Vecna. He can end this, he can try to close the gates. He can do something tangible in the fight and not leave all the heavy lifting up to El, who’s had enough on her plate since she was born and just deserves a break.
He wishes, fiercely, that she were here. He would tell her, Will thinks. He’d show her that he’s there for her, the way that the two of them had learned to be there for each other the early days in California when they didn’t know each other that well and they were both grieving their lives and family and friends in Hawkins three thousand miles away.
He hadn’t known it would happen, but El became his sister in California. Jonathan was too busy getting high and finally not acting like a second parent to Will, which was fine, but left Will at odd ends more than he was used to, and in those times, he and El turned to each other.
Not having her around, Will realizes, is part of the reason he feels more off-balance too. He can picture her here, next to him, pressing her shoulder into his and letting him talk about anything, offering back stories of her day and interesting things she’d learned in school.
If only the stupid government wasn’t chasing her down, she could be here. But instead she has to live with Hopper in the cabin, where Will hasn’t been invited a single time because he’s not an adult and obviously won’t be useful in any of the long term planning about the Upside Down he just knows they’re continuing to do over there.
Will grips onto his pants. He’s been so alone lately, even when he’s surrounded by people. They have other things to deal with, or he does. More pressing matters than talking about anything of substance and reconnection, instead mired in grief or next steps or tasks or or or.
Like Lucas, trying to be strong in the face of Max’s coma. Or Dustin, working through his grief about Eddie.
Will doesn’t envy them, but he wishes they’d look up and see him. Then again, if they did, he’d probably just push them away.
After all, he doesn’t want anyone to get hurt or die for him. This burden is all Will’s. It started with him and it will end with him too. No matter how long it takes for him to make his connection to the Upside Down useful, he’ll find a way.