Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

It's the looming threat of returning to school that has three of them cornered in the upstairs bathroom of the Wheeler house. With quarantine blocking off Hawkins from the rest of the world and the town barber being one of many to have left, the only way Nancy could get Mike to agree to a haircut was to get Will to agree to one and the only way to get Will was through Jonathan and so naturally, Jonathan was sat on the closed lid of the toilet as Nancy trimmed with pursed lipped focus. 

She had to be better than the usual Byers special after all. So Jonathan had nothing to lose when he agreed to it, strands of lighter brown than Will's own fluttering to the floor. 

Mikes knee continued to bounce at a frequency Will recognised as closer to nerves than impatience. He wanted this over so he could go back to planning. Back to maps and code discussions. Things they'd spent the remainder of spring doing. That, along with routine questioning on the streets, medicals that felt entirely unnecessary and wholly invasive. 

It didn't take long for them to work out that this wasn't the military in the same capacity as Dr. Owens had been. It was more like the ones that came and shot up their quiet home in Lenora. Now they lined the streets of Hawkins. They surrounded the school, monitored the woods and enforced a curfew. 

A curfew that Will had no problems abiding by since his mother refused to let him help. His use was maps. He mapped the tunnels, helped Dustin build his transmitter and that was all he was allowed to do. The second the sun got to a certain point in the sky or the air felt wrong or the military presence was too heavy, Will was back in the basement of the Wheelers house. 

And he loved the basement. 

Of course he did. 

It was probably one of the few places that felt innately safe...yet he was there more often than he wasn't. 

Things also had been a little tense with Mike. 

After the road trip, Will had hoped things would have returned to normal. They had, for the most part. There was an edge there though. Something beneath the surface that Will didn't understand and Mike never spoke about. Maybe he'd realised the painting wasn't from El and it caused more issues? Which was the furthest thing from Will's intention of course but—

"Come on Will, your turn" 

Will blinked, looking up and nodding before moving from the spot on the edge of the tub to switch with Jonathan. 

"You're not serious about keeping the bowl cut right?" Nancy muttered, lifting heavy strands and letting them fall back into the shape they were all accustomed to seeing. 

"I don't know, maybe?" He mumbled. He didn't know what else there was and what would suit him. The bowl-cut was safe. He didn't have to think about it.

"How about we just take some of the weight off it? You're cute so you'll thank me for it when the girls won't leave you alone" she said, already trimming away and cutting into the harsh bulk of it and giving him some shorter layers. Still the bowl but certainly much easier on the eye. 

Will didn't comment that girls flocking to him was decidedly not what he wanted. He had no trouble with girls. Which was somewhat the issue. 

Jonathan shifted, commenting that it "already looks good" which thankfully moved the conversation on. 

Mike was staring at his feet at first. Then a fixed point on the wall, focused solely on one particular tile for far too long. Long enough that Will couldn't help but see it as Mike struggling to be in the same space as him.

When Nancy declared he was done, he moved quickly, muttering a soft thanks before even looking in the mirror. 

Mike made his haircut an ordeal. He complained, bickered and scrunched up his face all the way through it. Will couldn't help but mourn the loss as black strands that had nearly brushed broadening shoulders fluttered down to the floor. 

By the time she was done there was volume back in his curls, no longer weighed down by length. He was just as handsome Will decided quickly, realising after a moment that he was more invested in Mikes hair than his own. 

Luckily he didn't have to hide that fact for too long. Not with the fact that Mike had quickly rushed out to get ready with a warning of "fifteen minutes, I mean it" from Nancy.

They were going to check out the new base of operations Robin and Steve had managed to find. Jonathan gave Will a sympathetic look. Brown eyes seeking hazel through the mirrors reflection. Will didn't speak. Couldn't find the words to. 

Not when it felt like an open wound. 

"You should go, I'll tidy this up" he said, already trying to make himself useful in the only way he was able. 

"Thanks, Will. I really appreciate it!" Then Nancy was gone, pulling Jonathan along with a swift "I'll see you later, bud" being the only thing he got out before being ushered down the stairs. He looked like he wanted to say more. Wanted to apologise and say he'd try. Trying never amounted to much though. Their mom was pretty firm on him not being involved once she realised he could feel the presence prickling along the back of his neck.

What he didn't expect was for everyone to just go along with it. No one really fought for him to be there but then, what could he offer that wasn't already covered? Dustin was the smart one, Mike was the one with the plan and Lucas had the athleticism. 

Will had never minded being the artistic one. The sensitive one. 

Until he was watching from the outside. 

With the bathroom tidied and the house quiet, Will slipped out of the front door quietly. Not that he needed to. Ted was asleep in the La-Z-Boy and Karen was in the backyard with Holly and her little friend Mary. 

The streets were quiet as he cycled through them. The sun wasn't quite ready to set just yet but it was nearing and it painted the sky with hues of gold. It was enough to distract from the grey spores that still fluttered around the atmosphere like dandelion seeds in the wind. If he squinted he could almost pretend that was exactly what they were. At least until he cycled towards the town centre. 

Will slowed as he approached one of the military check points. Pedals creaking slightly as he eased to a stop before one of the camo clad men stalked over to him. The guy had a dark expression, evidently his patience had worn thin after going back and forth all day asking the same questions. He like most MPs seemed to rely on their status and overwhelming presence. Along with the fact they were all armed quite obviously. It seemed excessive really. 

"Name" It was barked out in a rough voice and Will answered with his full name. Something that always made them pause. Always had them frown, turn a page, turn it back over and then look at him. Really look. It was hard not to feel scrutinized under the weight of it. Every. Single. Time. 

Will always broke eye contact first. Always tried to keep himself calm, his shoulders relaxed. If they thought something was wrong, if they sensed his nerves or his apprehension then it only dragged this on further. Made for more questions. Made for other men being called over Comms and being dragged into awkward medicals. 

Will answered the questions when they came. That he was staying on Maple Street with the Wheeler family. That his purpose for being out so close to curfew was to go to Family Video. That no he didn't have a cough or feel feverish, have any recent seizures or any new aversions to heat. 

Will wished he didn't know why that was asked. He also wished he didn't know that it wasn't asked to everyone else in the town.

It seemed to be enough this time as the guy dropped his clipboard and waved Will through to continue on his way. 

He cycled past the church just as people stepped out of Mass. The numbers had dwindled significantly from what they had been, yet there were still enough of them. Enough to line the steps in clusters, enough to spill onto the pavement, enough that he had to lower his gaze and pretend not to notice.

Still, he felt it.

Plenty of familiar faces. Mrs Hargrove’s sister with her pinched mouth. Old Mr Latham gripping his rosary a little too tight. A woman Will recognised from the bake sales making the sign of the cross — not absent-mindedly, but deliberately — as he rode by.

Will would have had to have been blind not to see the way some of them looked at him.

He wasn’t sure what they saw when they looked though. Was it Zombie Boy? Lonnie Byers’ kid? One of the DnD freaks? Or was it something worse now?

Their gazes didn’t just slide over him. They lingered. Followed. Narrowed.

He caught a whisper carried on the breeze. Not words exactly, just the shape of them. Devil. Omen. Wrong.

He hadn’t exactly been in Hellfire, after all. Hadn’t stood on cafeteria tables or rolled dice in front of half the school. But that hadn’t seemed to matter. People had decided things about him long before they had proof of anything.

That was another thing Will was still struggling with but never spoke about. He had met Eddie once and had been told about the club, so he knew of its existence. What he hadn’t expected was that, after begging to play DnD all summer before moving away, the three other members of the party would join that club.

He couldn’t help the way his mind immediately latched onto the information and twisted it. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to play; it was that they didn’t want to play with him.

Which immediately sent Will down the same spiral it always did. Why? Was it because he was too quiet? Was he not fun? Were they worried he was too much of a baby? Did they know that he really was what the town said he was?

He swallowed as someone across the street stared at him too long. A man muttered something under his breath and didn’t look away when Will’s eyes flicked up by accident. There was something almost expectant in the look. Accusing.

Like they were waiting for the ground to split open beneath his tyres.

It was easier — safer — to assume it was about that. About the way he carried himself. The way his voice remained soft. The things he didn’t say out loud. It was easier to believe they saw it on him, that he carried an invisible sign that told them what he was, and they took that as reason enough to hurl names like fairy or queer or fag at him.

Easier than believing they thought he was something else.

Something wrong.

It turned his stomach. Made that long standing wound in his chest throb. Made the static tension at the base of his skull fizz and ache in a way that set his teeth on edge.

Will pushed the feeling down and pedalled a little quicker. The church bells began to toll behind him — slow, heavy, echoing — for a split second it felt less like a call to prayer and more like a warning.

It was awkwardly close to the MAC-Z. They had laid down the massive steel plates in the town centre quickly enough, but the further out the gates stretched, the more it became a work in progress — one that was heavily guarded. Simply passing by them, covered up, was enough to make his stomach drop like he was on a roller coaster. Being near one unsealed? He didn’t want to think about it.

Everything was still fresh. There were still plenty of volunteers handing out aid, and missing posters being put up and ripped down. It had been a few weeks — four, maybe five — and yet it was as if time didn’t work the same anymore. Almost as though Hawkins had simply taken on too much damage to function as it should.

And people needed something to blame.

It made Will wonder if it was the fault of the Upside Down. Finding out the place had been stuck on the day he went missing had been… uncomfortable. Maybe it bleeding through the gates and tearing buildings apart had messed with how time in the Right Side Up ran.

Or maybe they thought it had started with him.

He shook the thought away before it could take root. That was stupid. Dramatic. The town had always needed a freak to point at. That was all this was. It had to be.

It was a theory for Dustin, maybe. Not him.

There was still too much debris littering the streets, and he found himself biting his lip as he weaved around larger pieces of it. It wasn’t helped by the sheer volume of posters and signs warning about Satan and the devil, claiming it was in Hawkins and that Eddie and his cult had summoned it.

Which was silly, because Mike couldn’t summon the will to clean his room, let alone raise Lucifer.

Some of them had new additions scrawled in thick marker. Not just Hellfire.

Returned.

Will put his head down, pushed onward. 

The bell above the door of Family Video chimed as Will stepped inside, the sound sharp against the low hum of fluorescent lights.

It smelled like plastic cases and stale carpet cleaner. Familiar. Neutral. A place where things were organised into neat categories and shadows didn't curl up the walls.

He drifted past New Releases without really looking, hands half-tucked into the sleeves of his jacket. His reflection warped faintly in the glossy covers as he passed — pale, dark-haired, easy to overlook even with the new haircut.

His feet carried him, inevitably, to Horror.

Rows of lurid covers stared back at him. Screams caught mid-silence. Clawed hands bursting through doors. Taglines in dripping red. There was comfort in it. Predictable fear. Monsters that followed rules. Ninety minutes and then credits rolled and the lights came back on.

He traced his fingers along the spines before sliding one free. The artwork was dramatic and ridiculous — shadows, teeth, a girl running through the woods. Exactly his thing.

A snort broke the quiet.

Will’s shoulders stiffened before he could stop himself.

Two of the basketball players were leaning at the end of the aisle, pretending to browse the action section. Varsity jackets. Loud sneakers. One of them clocked the tape in Will’s hands and nudged the other.

“Called it,” he muttered.

The other craned his neck slightly. “Jesus. Of course.”

Will felt their eyes on him, heavy and deliberate. He kept his gaze on the VHS, willing his hands not to shake visibly.

“Guess he needs ideas,” one said under his breath.

A low laugh. “Yeah. Figures.”

The words weren’t loud, but they didn’t need to be when they landed exactly as intended.

Heat crept up Will’s neck. His stomach dipped in that familiar, nauseating way. He became hyper-aware of himself — the way he was standing, how his jeans fit and if his shirt was loose enough, whether his voice would sound wrong if he spoke. Whether he already did.

He knew that tone. Had heard it in locker rooms and hallways and muttered behind cupped hands. Not about demons. Not about cults.

About boys like him.

Or boys they thought were like him.

He slid the tape back into place with careful precision, as if any sudden movement might confirm something. He reached for another, slower this time, pretending to read the blurb.

“Man, that’s messed up,” one of them whispered, mock-disgusted. “Who even likes that stuff?”

Freaks.

The word hung there without being said.

Will swallowed. It was easier to let them think it was about horror films. About fake blood and rubber masks. Easier than letting his mind spiral into what else they might think they saw when they looked at him.

He could practically hear it anyway. Fairy was their favourite. Fag if they were being extra cruel.

His grip tightened around the second tape. He forced himself to breathe evenly, to move normally, to not rush as he stepped out of the aisle and towards the counter.

One of them brushed his shoulder as they passed, not quite hard enough to call it a shove.

“Careful,” the boy muttered, smirking.

Will kept his eyes forward.

The bell chimed as they left, their laughter trailing behind them.

For a second, the shop felt too bright. Too exposed. Like everyone could see straight through him if they tried hard enough.

He adjusted the VHS against his chest and told himself it didn’t matter.

It was just a film.

Just a stupid horror film.

And if they thought that said something about him, that was their problem.

Not his.

He missed when Robin and Steve had worked there. They had both left maybe a week ago, and that left Keith — and Keith did not care one bit about who said what to whom, so long as it didn’t interfere with him trying (and failing) to get a date with whatever girl walked in.

About the only conversation Will got was the usual question about whether Nancy was still dating his brother.

Heading back through town, the gold faded into pink and purple. Dark grey plumes occasionally bled across the clouds from the MAC-Z, stretching over the rooftops and smudging the sky. They should have ruined it, but instead they only sharpened the colours.

It was pretty.

Pretty enough to distract Will from the tension knotted in every muscle as he followed the same route back, ducked his head when passing the church again, and answered the same questions from a different man with another clipboard.

Name. Address. Household members. Any unusual activity.

Routine. Easy, predictable Hawkins. At least for now.

And for now worked for Will.

For now meant he cycled back, slipped unnoticed into the Wheeler basement, and watched his film. Predictable left little room to think about why he was watching a horror movie alone in his best friend’s basement the night before school started again — even though it was nearly summer.

Predictable meant he could focus on the grainy flicker of the screen. On the swell of the soundtrack before something jumped out. On the way tension built in neat, controlled increments.

Predictable meant he didn’t have to think about the dark when the television clicked off.
It also meant he would wake at around three in the morning.

He always did.

The digital clock would glow red in the corner. The house would be silent. His skin would be damp, his heart racing like he had been running. Maybe he had been, given the blankets tangled around his legs.

And he would pretend he hadn’t dreamed.
Would pretend the blue gloom hadn’t seeped into the edges of it. Would pretend he hadn’t felt that cold again — the kind that didn’t sit on the surface of his skin but settled deep in his muscle and bones. The kind that came with distant, echoing sounds and the faint impression of something moving just out of sight.
Sometimes it was just the sky, cracked and wrong.

Sometimes it was the vines.

He never let himself linger long enough in the memory to see what they were attached to.
When it happened exactly as he thought it would, Will didn’t even have it in him to be disappointed at the broken sleep. It was expected. Almost comforting in its consistency.

What bothered him was the rest.

The way exhaustion tugged at his eyes. The way shadows seemed to cling to him even in daylight. If he looked how he felt, they would notice.

Not just the jocks.

His friends. His brother. His mom.

They would ask questions. They would watch him more closely. They would see the cracks.
The less they saw, the less they could use against him.

Not that Will wanted to face more death and teeth and vines. He didn’t want to prove anything in that way.

He just wanted to prove that he could be of use. He was the one who had survived a week there on his own.

A fact Will thought everyone seemed to forget at strangely convenient times. 

Will was awake before the house was.

Getting back to sleep after waking in the middle of the night was always a chore. Sometimes it wasn’t impossible, yet more often than not he lay there long enough to pretend he was still asleep when Jonathan crept down the stairs, crashing onto the empty couch for another hour or two before the alarm went off. Being caught in Nancy’s room after her parents woke would certainly have been enough to get them all chased out of the house.

Will waited until the pipes started to creak, rattling to life in confirmation that Karen was awake and getting ready for the day.

He eased himself off the small mattress he had been sleeping on for weeks, his back aching in protest at the sudden stretch. He gathered a change of clothes and headed for the bathroom at the back of the basement.

It was small — a toilet, a sink, and a narrow tub with a shower head and curtain — which Will was quietly thankful for, since it wasn’t one they had to share frequently. They avoided the daily routine of fists knocking on doors and demanding that whoever was inside hurry up.

Usually there was little to no hot water left by the time Will dragged himself from the comfort of the heavy blankets to face the day. That was the one perk of being awake while the sun was still trying to rise.

He turned the temperature up as hot as he could stand it and braced his hands against the tiles. He let the water run over his skin, embracing the rush of heat as it reddened and steam filled the air.

Heat was a reminder.

He was still here. Still himself. Still just Will.

He scrubbed his hair roughly, eyes squeezed shut against the sting of shampoo before rinsing it away. The bottle was branded, some exotic berry scent he didn’t bother to place but enjoyed nonetheless. It made his hair softer than the one his mom usually bought in bulk. The same went for the soap — a neutral, sweet scent that lingered long after he had rinsed it off.

It was oddly nice. Almost comforting. It was the same as Mike's which made sense.

He stayed longer than he needed to, standing under the spray until the bathroom was thick with steam, until the warmth sank deep enough into his bones to chase away the ghost of cold from his dreams. Sometimes he pressed his palm flat against his own shoulder just to feel something solid there. Grounding. Proof.

By the time he stepped out, his skin had taken on a pink tinge, his cheeks flushed enough to make the darkness beneath his eyes seem less obvious.

Most of his wardrobe was back in Lenora. His current clothes were a combination of what they had been able to buy in the quarantined town and a few of Mike’s old things.

Which didn’t fit great.

The legs were a little long, the shoulders cut broader than he was, the chest tighter. The fabric still faintly smelled of a detergent that wasn’t his. Something floral. Warmer.

It was awkward.

Especially given that sometimes Mike would look — would clearly recognise that he was wearing his clothes. Will never knew what that look meant. Annoyance? Discomfort? Nothing at all?

He wondered if Mike hated it. If it made him uncomfortable and he was just too polite to say. Or pressured into not saying anything by his mother. Karen Wheeler was a force to be reckoned with at the best of times.

Will pulled his yellow flannel shirt on over the top, sleeves rolled neatly to his elbows. The familiar weight of it settled around him like armour.

Predictable was good.

Routine was good.

The last week had meant seeing his friends considerably less than he had expected. It hadn’t felt all that different from being in California in that regard — only he didn’t have his sister now either. Jane was back to being Eleven, back to having powers, back to training with Hopper and their mom. Back to having Mike.

As strange as it was to return to school just to finish out his freshman year, it at least meant he wasn’t sat around waiting.

Waiting for what, Will couldn’t say for certain.

The end of the world — again, maybe. Vecna to show up. More gates to tear through the ground.

To be included.

To be needed.

His stomach tightened at the thought of walking into Hawkins High. Of hallways that had never quite seemed safe even before everything else. Of lockers slamming and laughter that might — or might not — be about him.

It was just school.

Just a building.

He had survived worse.

He told himself that twice while drying his hair with a towel that wasn’t his.

Maybe he would visit Max after school.

Not that he ever stayed for long. It was hard to be there without feeling like he was intruding. Her mother certainly looked sceptical at his presence. Lucas just looked… empty.

Not the angry empty Dustin had become.

No, Lucas’s was quiet, hollowed out, and it made Will’s chest ache because he wanted so badly to make it right. To say something. To fix it. This wasn’t the kind of problem he could simply iron out, though. No amount of careful hands smoothing over the wound would help.

Max would get her casts off in the next week or two. That was something.

“Will, I didn’t expect you up so early. Should I start breakfast? It won’t take long.” Karen was already moving from where she had been leaning against the counter, coffee clutched in her hand like a lifeline.

“Morning, Mrs Wheeler. I’m good, thank you. Just… heading out early. Got to get my schedule and find where everything is,” he offered in polite explanation, forcing his voice to sound lighter than he felt.

Like it didn’t matter.

Like he wasn’t counting exits in his head already.

She looked as though she wanted to argue, perhaps point out that the leftovers from the dinner he hadn’t joined them for were also untouched. She opened her mouth to do just that but seemed to remember that Will hadn’t attended Hawkins High before. He hadn’t been there with Mike like every other grade.

“Well, I’m sure Mike will help you—”

She was cut off by a shout from upstairs that sounded suspiciously like Nancy and Mike arguing over the bathroom. Again.

Will used the moment to slip away. He heard Karen’s footsteps retreat up the stairs as he pulled on his worn sneakers and grabbed his bike from the porch.

The morning air was cool against his still-warm skin.

He told himself it was just another day.

Just school.

And pedalled before he could think too hard about turning back.

The roads were busier than they had any right to be that early.

Parents reversing out of driveways. Engines idling. Military trucks still stationed too close to otherwise mundane streets. Hawkins looked patched together in the daylight — scaffolding, boarded windows, plastic sheeting snapping faintly in the breeze — like the town was patched together.

Will kept his head down as he cycled, the steady rhythm of the pedals a small comfort beneath his trainers.

A few people looked.

Not everyone. Not even most.

But enough.

A woman sweeping her front step paused mid-motion, her gaze following him a beat too long. A man loading boxes into the back of a truck straightened slightly, eyes narrowing in that assessing way Will had grown used to. Two younger kids on the pavement went quiet as he passed, whispering once he was a safe distance away.

He told himself it was normal. Small town. Everyone looked at everyone.

It didn’t stop the tension from winding tighter in his shoulders.

He resisted the urge to hunch further over the handlebars, resisted checking his reflection in shop windows to see what they saw. Whether he looked strange. Whether there was something in the way he moved that gave him away.

The church spire loomed in his peripheral vision as he turned onto the final stretch towards the school. He didn’t look at it this time.

Hawkins High came into view soon after — brick, broad, painfully ordinary.

His stomach dipped anyway.

Clusters of students gathered near the entrance. Laughter burst out in uneven waves. Someone shouted across the parking lot. Lockers would be slamming soon. Trainers squeaking on polished floors.

Will slowed slightly as he approached, not enough to be obvious, just enough to give himself time to breathe.

It was just school.

He had survived worse than whispers and stares.

Still, as he chained his bike to the rack and felt a couple of glances snag on him from across the lot, he couldn’t quite shake the sense that he was riding straight back into something waiting.

The halls of Hawkins High were not all that different from his last school, nor from Hawkins Middle. Every school seemed to share the same squeaky, over-polished floors and the same dulled paint on the walls, no matter the colour.

The lockers were another reminder that he and Jane had never emptied theirs.

A small, stupid ache settled in his chest at the thought. There had been a couple of photos he’d liked stuck inside his old one. A drawing, too. He wondered if they were still there. If someone else had peeled them down. If they had simply been thrown away.

He adjusted the strap of his bag and headed for reception, stepping around forming crowds of friend groups. Laughter clustered in tight circles. Hands brushed shoulders casually. Someone slung an arm around someone else’s neck without thinking about it.

Will curled his shoulders in a little more, instinctive, ducking beneath the gaze of a few football players lingering near the lockers. Their conversation faltered for half a second as he passed.

He kept walking.

At reception he gave his name, accepted the thin slip of paper with his schedule and locker number printed in black ink, and murmured a quiet thank you before retracing his steps back into the current of the corridor.

It was nearing the end of April. The weather was warming; sunlight poured through the high windows and pooled in bright rectangles across the floor. Students gravitated towards it without realising, like plants straining for light.

There were still discussions drifting through the halls about the lost time. Whether they would get summer vacation as planned or have to make up the missing weeks between spring break and now. The Military were certainly keen to keep them off the streets.

Will didn’t entirely mind the idea of a shorter summer.

Not because he had suddenly become that much of a nerd.

It was just the thought of that many empty weeks stretching ahead — no plans, no Starcourt, no guarantee that everyone would actually want to hang out — that made something tighten uncomfortably in his chest. It reminded him too much of the summer before. Of Dustin being MIA. Of Lucas and Mike both preoccupied. Of feeling like he was hovering at the edge of his own friend group.

Maybe he should look at getting a part-time job. Something to fill the space. Something that meant he wouldn’t have to wait around for an invitation that might not come.

The thought was still circling in his mind as he stopped in front of a row of lockers, checking the number against the scrap of paper in his hand. He found the one he’d been assigned and stared at the combination for a second before dialling it in.

Trying being the key word.

His fingers slipped once. Twice. The metal felt colder than it should have.

When the lock finally popped open, relief barely had time to settle before he felt the shove.

His guard had slipped for a fraction of a second and it was enough.

His shoulder and temple collided with the metal door, the clang sharp and echoing in the steadily filling hallway. White flashed at the edge of his vision. He hissed involuntarily, blinking hard as he straightened — only to be shoved again, harder, as if to make sure the message landed.

He stumbled sideways, catching himself against the neighbouring locker.

A blur of taller, broader bodies moved past him, their laughter loud — too loud. It rang in the corridor, bouncing off tile and steel, but there was something else threaded beneath it.

Not just amusement.

Something tight. Resentful.

This wasn’t casual jostling. Not a knock in a crowded hallway because it was entertaining.

Will felt it in the way his pulse kicked up, in the way the air seemed to thin.

He looked up just in time to see the back of a varsity jacket and the turn of a smirk over a shoulder.

“Welcome back, Zombie Boy.”

The words landed heavier than the shove.

A few nearby students glanced over, then quickly away. Conversations resumed a little too brightly.

Will swallowed, forcing his fingers to unclench from the locker door. His temple throbbed where it had hit metal. He could feel heat blooming there, sharp and insistent.

It was just school.

Just idiots being idiots.

Still, as he bent to retrieve the slip of paper he’d dropped, he couldn’t shake the sense that something had shifted.

That whatever had been waiting had just made itself known.

“Will!”

His name cut clean through the fog in his head.

He blinked, turning toward the sound as Mike and Lucas appeared at the far end of the corridor, weaving through students with a familiarity he envied. The tightness in his chest eased a fraction at the sight of them.

“Where were you?” Mike demanded the second he reached him. He slouched automatically, bringing himself closer to Will’s eyeline like he always did. “Jonathan was freaking out when he woke up and you were gone. My mom said you left early to get here?”

Mike’s sepia eyes swept over him in quick, assessing passes. Not casual. Searching.

Will recognised it now — that subtle checklist. Looking for anything off. Pale skin. Dilated pupils. A twitch. Something that didn’t belong.

Flayed.

Vecna’d.

He still wasn’t entirely sure what the second one really meant, only that it was bad and it had nearly taken Max.

“I needed to find my locker,” Will said, gesturing vaguely as he pulled the door open properly.

The hollow clang seemed louder than it should have.

Inside: nothing.

No photos taped to the metal. No books wedged into the corner. No folded notes or half-finished doodles crammed into the hinge. Just bare, grey steel reflecting back at him in warped shapes.

“Oh, shit. Yeah,” Lucas said, nodding slowly. “You’re like the new kid. But not.”

Will huffed something that wasn’t quite a laugh. He’d gone to school with most of these people his whole life. He knew their faces if not their names. Even with the town half-emptied after everything — after it became a national headline — the survivors were familiar.

Yet, familiar didn’t mean comfortable. It meant they knew him, too.

He could feel it again, that awareness prickling at the back of his neck. A couple of students down the hall looked over. One whispered something behind her hand. Another boy’s gaze lingered a beat too long before he nudged his friend and looked away.

They know.

The thought came uninvited, quick and poisonous.

They can tell.

Not about monsters. Not about the Upside Down tearing through Hawkins like rot beneath floorboards.

About him.

The way he stood too stiff. The way he avoided eye contact too long and then held it for too short. The way his voice went thin when he was nervous. The way he never talked about girls despite how they showed interest. 

He swallowed and focused on spinning the locker dial again even though it was already open.

“I hope they don’t make me introduce myself,” he muttered, brows knitting. The idea of standing at the front of a classroom — in front of people who had watched search parties comb the woods for his body — made his stomach knot. “Like I’m some transfer or something.”

Like they didn’t already know exactly who he was.

Zombie Boy.

The name still echoed faintly in his ears. He could almost hear the laughter still.

Mike nearly rolled his eyes but his voice took that softer edge. “They won’t. Everyone knows you.”

Yeah, Will thought, fingers tightening briefly on the edge of the locker door.

That’s kind of the problem.

Classes passed in a blur of dry erase markers and the scrape of chairs against tile.

Teachers spoke in steady, practiced rhythms — about reconstruction, about quadratic equations, about the symbolism within Romeo and Juliet. Words drifted toward him and dissolved before they could settle. Will kept his head down, pen moving just enough to look engaged.

Every so often he felt it again — that prickle between his shoulder blades. A glance held half a second too long. A whisper that started quiet and ended quieter when he shifted in his seat. Not everyone. Most people were busy with their own lives, their own gossip, their own boredom.

But some weren’t.

In English, a girl two rows over turned fully in her chair to look at him when the teacher mentioned “resurrection” in passing. She didn’t say anything. Just looked.

Will stared harder at his notebook until the words on the page blurred.

By the time lunch rolled around, his appetite had hollowed out into something small and distant. He went through the motions in the cafeteria line, tray sliding along metal rails, accepting a carton of milk and something that claimed to be pizza.

The cafeteria roared around him — laughter, shouting, the clatter of trays. It should have been comforting. Normal.

He sat with Mike and Lucas, nodded at the right moments, even managed a faint smile when Dustin launched into an animated complaint about science homework from across the table. Not the fun complaining Will remembered. This was angry. Dustin never used to be angry and Will wasn't sure how to help.

So he mostly just picked.

He peeled the crust from the pizza in thin strips. Broke it apart. Moved food around like he intended to eat it. When Mike glanced at him, he took a bite and forced himself to chew.

It tasted like salted cardboard.

A group of boys at a nearby table laughed sharply at something. One of them looked over mid-laugh. The sound didn’t fully fade when their eyes met.

Will dropped his gaze first.

They can tell.

The thought had become a quiet refrain under everything else. Not about monsters. Not about cracks in the earth or things with too many teeth.

About him.

The way he didn’t talk about who he liked. The way he never joined in when the conversation turned to girls in short skirts or who was “asking who” to dances. The way he folded inward instead of outward.

By the time the bell rang, most of his food was untouched.

“I’ll see you in gym,” Lucas said, already standing.

“Yeah,” Will replied, though his voice came out thinner than he intended.

He gathered his tray, dumped what little he’d eaten, and carried his bag with him down the hall. Instead of heading straight to the gym, he made a detour back to his locker.

The hallway was quieter now — emptied out, echoes stretching longer between footsteps.

Will opened the locker and slid a few books inside with the milk carton for a second before reconsidering. The milk wouldn’t last.

He shut the door with a soft clang and stood there, his forehead hovering just shy of the cool metal.

The air smelled faintly of cleaner and old paper — something sharp, acrid, trying to disguise something older beneath it.

He told himself he was just tired. First-day nerves. Anyone would feel off.

He cracked the milk carton open and drank it too quickly, swallowing past the thickness in his throat. It settled heavy in his empty stomach, sloshing unpleasantly. For a brief, irrational second, he wondered if it would curdle against the few thin strips of pizza crust he’d forced down.

Anyone would feel weird coming back after—

After dying.

His jaw tightened hard enough to ache.

A door banged somewhere down the corridor and he flinched before he could stop himself, shoulders jerking, pulse kicking up as if something worse might follow.

It was just school.

Just another class.

Just another hour.

Will pushed away from the locker and squared his shoulders as best he could, heading toward the locker room. The low hum of voices grew louder with each step — laughter layered over the slap of sneakers against tile, the metallic snap of lockers opening and closing.

Something uneasy coiled tighter in his chest as he reached for the door.

The smell hit first. Body spray — too much of it — sharp and artificial, barely masking sweat and damp cotton. Heat clung to the air.

Lucas was already there, leaning back against a bench while tugging his shirt over his head. He was still near enough the same height as Will, but broader now. Shoulders filling out. Arms thicker. Mike had started to change the same way.

Will hadn’t, not really.

His own shoulders sloped into leaner arms, his frame thinner. The growth everyone else seemed to step into so easily had stalled somewhere along the way. He always did end up behind the others.

He kept his head down as he moved through the noise, weaving past bodies and open lockers to stand beside Lucas. He focused on the dent in the metal door in front of him, on the tiny scratch near the combination dial.

Don’t look around.

Don’t give them a reason.

Still, his heart rate ticked up.

There were eyes on him. He didn’t have to look to know it. He could feel it — the weight of attention that wasn’t curious so much as assessing. Measuring.

A snort of laughter from somewhere to his left.

A voice pitched just low enough to be almost private.

The words didn’t need to be shouted to land.

“Are you visiting after school?” Will asked quickly, voice pitchy with the question slipping out sharper than he meant it to. He needed something to cling to. Something normal.

Lucas glanced at him. “Yeah, probably. Why?”

“Just—” Will shrugged, pulling his T-shirt up over his head.

The air felt cooler against his skin. Exposed.

He was aware of it immediately — the subtle shift in volume behind him. Not silence. Just a slight dip, like a radio station losing signal for half a second.

He didn’t have muscle. Any faint definition he’d had the previous year had faded with his appetite. His skin had lost the glow California had given him, dulled back down to that pale Hawkins shade that made the dark under his eyes stand out more starkly. Faint freckles still dusted his shoulders, scattered among moles like a constellation that didn’t quite map to anything recognisable.

“We gotta get you working out more over summer, man,” Lucas said lightly, nudging him. “Can’t have you getting lower gym grades than Dustin.”

It was meant as a joke. It landed soft.

But the nudge shifted him just enough.

Just enough for someone behind him to suck in a breath.

“Dude, is that—”

He felt it before he processed it — the air changing, attention sharpening.

Whispers.

Scar.

His throat went dry.

He fumbled for his gym shirt, dragging it down quickly over his torso, fabric catching for a second against the raised pink and white skin on his waist. The burn scar curved there, an uneven starburst that remained stubbornly visible — a souvenir from being tied down and seared back into himself.

From Nancy.

From the Mind Flayer.

He didn’t look back to see who had noticed. He didn’t want to see the curiosity. Or worse — the disgust.

To them it was probably just another story to tell. Another weird detail about the kid who disappeared. The kid who died. He'd done well to hide it last year. He'd slipped up.

Will shoved his arms through the sleeves and adjusted the hem, hands trembling just slightly. The uniform was a donation from Steve. He didn't need it after graduating but it did mean the shirt was thankfully loose from muscle Will lacked.

They don’t think you’re cursed.

They think you’re obvious.

The thought crawled up his spine and settled there, gnawing at Will unrelentingly.

Lucas kept talking — something about summer, about Dustin tripping over his own feet — but Will only caught every other word. He unbuttoned his jeans and held his breath, working his way out of the denim and making quick work of getting the green shorts on. The room felt too loud and too close all at once.

He bent to tie his sneakers, keeping his face angled down, willing the heat in his skin to fade.

It was just gym.

Just another period to survive.

Still, when someone behind him muttered “freak” under their breath — quiet but deliberate — the word followed him all the way out to the field.

The April sun hung bright overhead, not quite hot enough to bleach the grass— not yet at least. It was rich green and stray yellow dandelions while the afternoon warmed the metal bleachers that lined one side of the track. A few students from other classes lingered there, half-watching, half-gossiping while they waited their turn.

Coach Harmon stood near the equipment shed, whistle already between his teeth, clipboard tucked under one arm. “Alright! Break into groups. We’re doing laps first. Don’t make me regret giving you fresh air.”

They clustered automatically. Familiar collections of popularity and proximity.

Will’s gaze drifted across the different sets without meaning to.

Andy stood with a couple of the basketball team, their voices loud and easy, carrying across the field like they owned the space. Chance was beside him, taller, tanner, sunlight catching on the gold crucifix at his neck — more detailed than the simple silver cross hanging from Andy’s.

It wasn’t unusual. Half the town wore one.

What was unusual was the way Chance’s fingers curled around it, thumb rubbing along the metal before his eyes lifted and settled on Will.

Not curious.

Not casual.

Intent.

Will looked away quickly, heat creeping up the back of his neck again. He bent to stretch beside Lucas, focusing on the pull in his hamstrings, the steady rhythm of breath in and out.

They’re just staring.

They’re just looking because you’re—

Different.

Too thin. Too quiet. Too obvious.

“Alright, line up!” Coach Harmon barked. “Four laps to start. If I see anyone walking, you’re adding two more.”

A collective groan rippled through the group.

Track was easy.

It was one of the few units Will didn’t actually mind. Though Lonnie had told him more than once that running in circles “didn’t count” as a real sport. That it wasn’t tough enough. That it wouldn’t make him tough enough.

Will was good at running.

He’d had practice.

He ran from his parents’ arguments, from slammed doors and sharp words that cut deeper than they meant to. He ran from bullies in hallways. He ran from the Demogorgon through the woods, lungs burning, branches tearing at his skin. He ran through the Upside Down with something monstrous breathing down his neck.

So when Coach’s whistle shrieked and sneakers hit track, Will did what was familiar.

The sound of feet striking asphalt filled his ears, a steady percussion. Arms pumped at his sides, breath settling into a rhythm that drowned out everything else. The breeze tugged at chestnut strands of hair, cooling the sweat threatening to build at his temples.

“Pick it up, Byers!” Coach called after the first curve. Not unkind. But not gentle either. “You’re not sightseeing.”

A couple of snickers followed.

“I think he’s used to running,” someone muttered just loud enough as Will passed the bleachers.

“Yeah. From ghosts,” another replied.

He didn’t look. Didn’t break stride.

Lucas kept pace near the front of their cluster, strong and steady. Will wasn’t built like that — not broad-shouldered or solid. He wasn’t strong like Lucas. Not brilliant like Dustin. Not bold like Mike, who could stand in front of the impossible and still form a plan.

He was soft. Quiet. Sensitive in ways that felt more like liabilities than strengths.

But he was also fast.

Light-footed.

Each lap thinned the pack a little more. The louder boys’ breathing grew heavier, their jokes fading into grunts. Will focused on the mechanics — heel to toe, inhale for three steps, exhale for two. The stitch in his side tried to form and failed.

“C’mon, Chance!” Coach shouted as Will edged ahead of him. “Don’t let Byers smoke you.”

There it was again — that subtle shift in tone. Like it meant something more than just speed. Like Will being good at something like this would some how negate what others did. That wasn't how the world worked. Chance wasn't miraculously not going to be good at football and basketball anymore.

Will’s chest tightened, but his legs kept moving.

He was used to running from himself — from the parts he folded up small and tried to hide. From the way his gaze lingered too long across the dining table. From the fear that someone would see it written on him like a label.

Everything else felt simple compared to that.

So he ran.

For a few, all too brief minutes, with the wind in his ears and the track unspooling ahead of him, it almost felt like freedom instead of escape.

By the third lap, the rhythm settled deeper into his bones. There was an ache sharp in his shins.

Will lengthened his stride.

He didn’t do it consciously at first — just a slight extension, a sharper push off the balls of his feet — but the distance between him and the others began to widen. Lucas stayed steady behind him, but the heavier footfalls, the uneven breaths, the muttered complaints faded further into the background.

“Alright, Byers,” Coach called, a note of surprise threading through the command. “Didn’t know you had that in you. Keep it consistent.”

A few scattered claps came from the bleachers — half-mocking, half-impressed. Someone let out a low whistle.

Will didn’t look.

He fixed his gaze on the curve of the track ahead and leaned into it.

His lungs burned, but it was a familiar burn. Manageable. The ache in his stomach — hollow and sharp from barely eating — twisted with each step. The milk churned unpleasantly, threatening to climb back up his throat. A wave of dizziness licked at the edges of his vision when he pushed harder.

He pushed anyway.

Because running did something strange to his memory.

The field blurred into trees. The red of the track deepened into the greying rotted earth of the Upside Down. For a split second he could almost hear it again — that distant, inhuman chittering threading through the air behind him.

His heart pounded harder.

He ran faster.

Not from the boys behind him now.

From the echo of claws scraping bark. From the sound of his own ragged breathing at twelve years old, lungs too small, legs too slow. From the way the world had gone silent when he’d hidden, back pressed against cold bark, praying not to be found.

“Jesus, he’s booking it,” someone said as he overtook another runner from a different group.

“Freak’s trying out for cross country” another voice snorted.

The words skimmed over him, distant and warped.

His vision tunneled slightly, sunlight flashing too bright as he rounded the final bend. His legs felt almost detached from him now — mechanical, automatic. His body remembered how to do this even if his mind drifted elsewhere.

He ignored the warning signs.

Ignored the way black crept into the corners of his sight.

Ignored the hollow gnaw in his stomach and the faint tremor in his hands.

Running meant forward.

Forward meant survival.

And for a fleeting, reckless moment, as he widened the gap and the sound of everyone else fell behind him, Will let himself believe that if he just kept moving fast enough — if he never slowed — nothing would ever be able to catch him again.

When he completed the lap it took a full minute for him to ease back, to pull his mind back from the edge and for his legs to give in to the protest. He dropped down into the grass, back feeling the blades give beneath him as he lay, chest rising and falling and lips parted in raw gasps. 

The darkness at the edges of his vision eased but the shaking of his hands did not. He focused instead of the relentless beating in his chest, one hand feeling the thrumming beat beneath fingertips whilst the other grasped at the green turf around him. 

“Will, that was insane. What—” Lucas’ shadow fell across him. “Are you okay?”

There was no teasing in it. Just genuine confusion. Concern.

Not that Will could blame him.

Will did art. He hovered at the edge of the party. He didn’t play. Didn’t compete in anything that wasn’t a board game or DnD campaign around a basement table.

Running like that didn’t fit.

“Byers!” Coach Harmon’s voice cut across the field. “Thursdays. Three-thirty. And make sure you eat a goddamn meal first. You look like the wind’ll knock you over.”

A few scattered laughs followed — less sharp than before. More surprised.

Coach didn’t lower his voice. He rarely did. It wasn’t often something impressive came out of nowhere, and Will — quiet, narrow-shouldered Will — was easy to underestimate.

Will managed a breathy rasp of, “Okay,” though he wasn’t sure if it was meant for Lucas or the coach.

His focus drifted instead to the grass scratching against the exposed skin of his calves. To the way his T-shirt clung to his back and chest, damp with sweat, fabric pulling tight enough to show the faint shift of his ribcage with each breath.

Hazel gazed up at the sky, earthy tones reflecting endless blue and drifting white. For a second, he let himself just exist there — suspended between the grass beneath him and the open space above.

Then the blue was interrupted.

A face leaned into view, blocking the sun.

A gold crucifix glinted sharply in the light hanging above Will. Chance’s features came into focus beyond it— chiseled, too close, his shadow falling over Will’s face. Dark eyes studied him with something that wasn’t easy to name.

Will’s breath stuttered for a half-second, catching in surprise.

“Not bad, Byers.”

The words weren’t laced with the easy mockery Will had braced for. There was something else there in his tone. It was measured.

Will couldn’t quite decide if it was bitterness at being outpaced — though this hadn’t been a race — or if it was reluctant respect. Or something more complicated. The syllables seemed to cost Chance a little, like he’d debated whether to say them at all.

His fingers brushed unconsciously at the crucifix again, thumb pressing into the metal detailing of the tiny figure before dropping away.

Up close, Will could see the fine line between curiosity and apprehension in his expression. Not fear, exactly.

But wariness.

Like he was trying to reconcile the boy flat on the grass — pale, shaking, ribs too visible beneath thin cotton — with the one who had just outrun half the field.

Will swallowed, throat dry.

“Thanks,” he managed, the word soft and almost lost to the breeze.

Chance held his gaze for a second longer than necessary.

Not mocking.

Not friendly, either.

Searching.

As if he expected something else to surface. Something unnatural. Something wrong. Then he straightened abruptly, stepping back into the sunlight.

“Don’t pass out,” he added, tone shifting back toward something more familiar, easier to perform. “Coach’ll make us run again.”

A couple of the basketball players snorted behind him, though not as sharp as before.

Will watched the crucifix swing slightly as Chance walked away.

His pulse hadn’t settled yet.

And he couldn’t tell if it was from the running — or from the way Chance had looked at him like he was trying to decide what, exactly, he believed.

Will, thankfully, didn’t have to run again.

A small mercy.

He chose to believe it was surprise rather than pity. Surprise meant he’d earned something whilst pity? That just meant they were looking at him the same way they always did — like he might crack under too much pressure.

He lingered on the field long after the final whistle, dragging his heels as the others filtered back toward the locker room in loud, sweaty clusters. He sat on the bench, elbows braced on his knees, staring at the grass while the noise thinned out.

Lucas hovered for a minute.

“You coming?” he asked.

“In a sec.”

Will waited. Counted down the bodies. Listened to the distant slam of locker doors, laughter and the high-pitched squeal of the showers turning on inside.

Steam began to drift faintly from the open doorway. Voices carried from inside.

He stayed put.

He made small talk with Lucas — something about math homework, about Dustin’s inevitable complaint — until Lucas finally muttered that he’d be late to his next period if he didn’t move.

“Yeah. Go,” Will said quickly.

He only stood once he was sure most of the guys weren’t just out of the showers — but finishing up. Voices dulled by tile and steam. The slap of bare feet and locker doors.

He was quick.

Efficient.

He slipped inside when the locker room had thinned to only a couple of lingering shapes wrapped in towels, heads bent in conversation. He avoided eye contact, moved straight to the far end of the showers and turned the water on then the temperature higher.

The heat hit him immediately.

Water pounded against tile, steam wrapping around him in thick waves. It should have been suffocating.

Instead, it settled into his bones.

He kept his back angled toward where noise carried, shoulders hunched slightly forward out of instinct, even though no one was directly looking at him. It was becoming increasingly difficult to tell, feeling more often than not. He scrubbed at his skin harder than necessary, chasing away the sticky film of sweat and grass and the phantom sensation of eyes.

The water ran down his spine, over the sharp line of it.

It had been too long since someone had touched him gently.

Not in a rushed hug. Not in a panicked grab. Not in the way his mom clung too tightly sometimes, like she was afraid he’d vanish again.

Just… touched.

The heat pressed in from all sides, almost like an embrace. It seeped into tight muscles, eased the ache in his calves, traced over scars and moles and freckles without judgment.

For a brief, dangerous second, he let himself stand still beneath it. Let his eyes close. Let the steady drum of water drown out the noise in his head.

Then laughter burst somewhere near the sinks and he snapped back to himself.

He shut the water off quickly.

Dried off quicker.

Changed with his back mostly turned, movements methodical and precise. He tugged his shirt down fast, fingers brushing unconsciously over the raised burn along his waist ensuring it was covered completely.

By the time he stepped into the hallway, the bell had already rung, thinning the usual crowding.

He was late to his next class — only by a few minutes.

It wasn’t an issue.

It was art.

The classroom smelled faintly of acrylic and turpentine. Sunlight poured through the windows in long, warm strips that cut across the tables and canvases, highlighting the lingering dust motes. The noise level was lower here — murmured conversations instead of shouted ones.

Will slipped into his usual spot near the window, shoulders easing as the afternoon sun soaked into him. The warmth felt different from the shower. Softer. Golden if he was picking a palette for it.

A blank canvas waited in front of him.

They were focusing on feeling, the teacher had said. Pieces that would take a few weeks to complete. A way to process the last several weeks without having to say it out loud.

Some students whispered about it. Others snickered at the idea of “emotional expression.”

Will just stared at the white expanse, head tilting slightly, front teeth catching his lip in thought.

Then he reached for the blue.

Art was something he loved in a way that didn’t require explanation. He could fall into the quiet comfort of it without trying. He could lose hours studying the weight of a colour, the way shadow bent around shape.

It was easier than talking.

Easier than running.

His focus sharpened, the chatter and scrape of chairs dissolving into background noise. The brush moved almost on instinct, dragging steel across white. He layered it carefully, blending into Oxford grey, into Marine.

The blue deepened.

Darkened into charcoal at the edges.

It came alive under his hand — almost three-dimensional in the shading, in the careful depth he built without fully knowing what he was constructing. Something organic. Something pulsing.

He didn’t have the words for it.

But he understood the feeling.

 As the minutes ticked on the eyes on him — real or imagined — faded into nothing at all.

“—Will.”

The sound of his name bled in from somewhere far away.

Like a spell breaking, Will paused mid-brushstroke. The bristles hovered above the canvas while his eyes lingered on the paint for a second longer before he turned.

“Mike,” he said softly, the name leaving him on a breath, like he’d just woken from a dream.

“We waited like twenty minutes. Are you coming?” Mike asked.

Only then did Will realise the room was empty.

Every other canvas had been abandoned. Chairs pushed in. The low hum of voices from earlier had long since faded.

Oh.

“Yeah... Yeah, I’ll be a couple minutes,” he mumbled, already moving.

He nodded as he spoke, hands automatically reaching for the sink to rinse the brushes. He wiped them carefully and covered the palette so the paint wouldn’t dry out. He’d be back tomorrow to keep working on it. Inevitably.

“Looks like the tunnels… without the vines,” Mike commented after a moment, mouth set into a firm line.

Will froze.

His gaze flicked back to the canvas.

The tunnels had been pushed to the far back of his mind. He’d almost managed to forget them for the day. The memory of them carried that familiar, crawling static along the back of his neck.

“It’s the Upside Down, I guess,” Will said, voice soft in the otherwise empty classroom. “If we’re being specific.”

His voice still felt too loud to his own ears.

He tilted his head, studying the canvas again before glancing around at what the others had started. Pinks and yellows. Some soft blues or fiery reds. Washes of grey and careful shapes built to different skill levels.

None of them felt cold.

None of them looked like the place he’d spent a week trying not to die in.

“You sure it’s okay to just… paint that?” Mike asked after a moment. “With the military around?”

Will blinked.

He’d expected something else. Maybe a question about what it meant. Maybe the familiar do you want to talk about it?

Maybe even a simple are you okay?

But of course Mike didn’t ask that.

Will couldn’t say he was surprised.

Living under the same roof lately had been about as good for their friendship as living on opposite sides of the country. Maybe worse. At least in California there had been distance to explain the silence.

Now there was just… space where something used to be.

A hollow ache settled behind his ribs.

He needed to stop putting all his faith in the hands of a boy who dropped it without even noticing.

“They already know who I am,” Will said quietly. “I’m not useful to them.”

Not to the military.

Not to the Party.

Not really to anyone.

Mike looked at him then, properly, and there was something there — a flicker deep in warm brown eyes.

Will felt his fingers itch instinctively for a pencil.

He’d drawn Mike so many times he’d memorised the curve of his curls, the scatter of freckles across his cheeks, the way his eyebrows pulled together when he was thinking too hard. And still it never felt right on paper.

It never came close to the real thing.

Whatever Mike had been about to say stalled somewhere in his throat. Instead he turned toward the door, gesturing with his head for Will to follow.

“You know we’re supposed to lay low,” he said as they stepped into the hallway. “No attention. Attention on you is attention on all of us, and that’s dangerous for El.”

Will didn’t point out that El had taken down an entire helicopter barely a month ago.

Even before the training Hopper had started putting her through again.

Will didn’t doubt her. 

“No one pays attention to me like that,” he said with a small shrug, adjusting his backpack as it slipped down his shoulder.

He fell into step beside Mike as they walked.

Will gets attention because they can see what he’s hiding.

Because beneath Zombie Boy is a sin worse than not dying.

“Besides,” he added lightly, “we all know El’s a badass.”

That seemed to do the trick.

Mike brightened immediately, launching into an explanation of the training El had been doing and how she’d been at WSQK the night before — their new base now that Robin and Steve were working there instead of Family Video.

Will listened.

Or tried to.

He still needed to return that tape. Which meant leaving the house again almost as soon as he got back.

The thought sat heavy in his chest.

There were still plenty of students lingering outside the school when they stepped out. Some had left town. Others had clearly sprinted to put distance between themselves and the building the second the bell rang.

A few of them looked over.

Not at Mike.

At Will.

Sometimes he wondered how they could tell. If they could somehow read the way his stomach flipped when Mike’s elbow bumped against his. The way he liked when Mike bent down a little to meet his eyes instead of talking down to him.

Like they could see everything he tried so hard to bury.

Will tightened his grip on the handlebars as he climbed onto his bike.

He was still half listening to Mike. The familiar voice helped. It softened the sharpest edges of the day, allowed his shoulders to ease just a little.

It wasn’t the same as when they were kids.

Not that fifteen felt anywhere close to being an adult.

It was just that now, instead of campaigns and comic books, Mike talked about surviving the end of the world.

While Will was just trying to survive the school day.

He made it to the end of Mike’s street before something finally cut through the haze of Mike’s voice.

“…so we’re going out later to help set up. Can you cover for me?”

Will blinked.

The words settled slowly.

Help set up.

Boxes. Equipment. The kind of small, stupid tasks anyone could do.

And he hadn’t even been asked.

The realisation landed like a knife twisting in an old wound.

He wasn’t even useful for that.

“I’ll do what I can,” Will said automatically.

His voice stayed steady. Casual. Noncommittal.

Just enough that Mike nodded and kept talking, already moving on to something else.

Mike had stopped reading into the things Will said over a year ago.

A week passed in the same careful rhythm.
School. Home. The quiet corner of the Wheeler basement. The same bike rides through Hawkins where people sometimes looked a second too long before pretending they hadn’t.

Routine was good. Routine meant Will didn’t have to think too hard about the way whispers still followed him down the hallways, or how the church crowd had started gathering outside a little earlier each evening and lingering longer afterwards. It meant not thinking about the dreams that still dragged him awake some nights with the cold clinging stubbornly to his bones.

A week meant the bruises from the locker had faded to yellow along his shoulder and at his temple. It meant he’d added a layer of deep reds and bruised purples to the centre of his painting in art class — something that looked more and more like a gaping wound the longer he stared at it.

It also meant he’d gotten very good at staying out of the way.

Which was why Karen Wheeler catching him in the kitchen one afternoon felt almost like being spotted doing something wrong.

“Will, sweetheart.”

He paused halfway to the basement, fingers hovering over the handle before turning slightly.

Karen stood by the counter, a grocery list clutched in one hand and her car keys in the other. She looked apologetic before she’d even spoken. “I hate to ask, but could you do me a favour?” she said gently. “Ted’s working late again, I have no idea where Nancy and Mike have ran off to and I need to run out for a bit.”

Will straightened instinctively, already nodding.

“Yeah. Of course.”

“Would you mind taking Holly to the park for an hour or so?” Karen asked. “She’s been bouncing off the walls all afternoon.”

Almost on cue, a small blonde blur appeared in the doorway behind her.
“Will's more fun than Dad anyway!” Holly announced with absolute authority. Will blinked, then smiled faintly despite himself.

“Okay,” he answered softly, nodding, not thinking twice. 

Karen’s shoulders relaxed a fraction.
“Oh, thank you. It’s just the one down the street — you know the one. I won’t be long.”

Will nodded again, already moving to kick his sneakers on. “C’mon, Holly,” he said, reaching out his so she could take his hand. Her fingers wrapped around his immediately, warm and trusting in a way that made something in his chest tighten unexpectedly.

The late afternoon air outside was soft with late spring warmth. The sky stretched wide and pale blue above Hawkins, the kind of day that almost made it easy to pretend everything in town was normal.

Holly skipped beside him the whole way, her small sneakers scuffing the pavement as she chattered about swings and slides and a boy at school who broke not one but three of her crayons.

Will listened quietly, nodding along, letting the sound of her voice fill the spaces where his thoughts usually crept in. He'd known Holly her whole life. She was almost like his sister in some ways. 

They'd gotten closer since Will returned too. Where everyone was busy and the town was falling apart, Will tied the awkward knots on beaded bracelets and necklaces. He helped with drawings and what colours to use on rainy afternoons at the dining table. More recently Will got to watch Holly, Debbie and Mary dance to some pop song Will didn't quite know, in the backyard like they were a new girl group. He was a generous judge too of course. 

The park came into view at the end of the street — a handful of swings, a merry-go-round, a small jungle gym, a metal slide that always burned in the late summer sun, and a couple of tired benches under the trees

Normal.
Safe.
At least it looked that way.

“Push me!” Holly demanded the second she scrambled onto the swing.

Will stepped behind her, hands closing carefully around the chains before giving a gentle push.

She squealed as the swing lifted.
For a moment, watching her kick her legs happily toward the sky, the tightness in his shoulders eased.

It was simple.

He helped her get started, giving her a push when she demanded between excited shrieks about reaching for the moon. 

At some point Holly recognised a couple of other kids and ran off to join them, promising she’d stay where Will could see her. Will watched, waiting until she disappeared into the small cluster of children near the monkey bars before settling himself onto the far end of a bench. He pulled the small sketchbook from his bag, flipping it open to a blank page.

The pencil moved automatically at first — loose, wandering abstract lines that twisted and overlapped without much thought behind them.

Every minute or so his gaze lifted, tracking Holly’s bright overalls as she darted from the swings to the climbing frame. Her voice carried across the playground in bursts of laughter and half-shouted rules to whatever game she’d decided they were now playing.

It helped.

Something about the normal noise of childish fun made the tightness in his chest ease a little.

Will didn’t really notice when someone sat down beside him.

The bench dipped slightly under the added weight, but his focus stayed on the page. His pencil pressed harder, sketching thicker lines now — trunks of trees instead of abstract shapes, branches spreading wider across the paper.

A voice spoke beside him.

Low. Rough.

For a moment it was just another background sound, the way passing cars or distant conversation blurred together.

Will gave a vague hum in response without looking up. Something polite and noncommittal. The sort of noise people made when someone commented on the weather. Will wasn't great with small talk. 

His eyes flicked back to Holly.

She was hanging upside down from the monkey bars now, ponytails dangling toward the dirt while another kid tried to copy her.

The voice beside him spoke again.

Closer this time, a little quieter.

Will’s pencil slowed slightly but he still didn’t turn his head. His brain tried to piece together the words — something about the playground being busy, about the military checkpoints still slowing traffic through town.

Normal conversation.

Probably.

Holly dropped from the bars and landed in the grass with a triumphant shout.

Will didn’t notice the man shifting closer along the bench.

Didn’t notice the space between them disappearing.

Not until he felt the hand.

It landed on his thigh like a brand. Warm. Too heavy. Fingers squeezing through the denim.

For a split second Will’s brain simply… stopped. The world snapped silent except for the violent pounding of his own heartbeat.

Then he gasped — sharp and startled — and flung himself backward off the end of the bench.

He hit the gravel hard, palms scraping as he caught himself. The impact jarred up his arms but he barely felt it.

His eyes snapped up.

The man looked ordinary.

That was the worst part.

Late thirties if he was better generous. Thick moustache, thinning hair combed carefully across his scalp. The kind of face Will had probably passed a hundred times in grocery stores or on the street without ever remembering it.

For a moment neither of them moved.

Will’s lungs forgot how to work properly. Air came in short, shallow bursts while his chest hammered painfully against his ribs.

He couldn’t hear anything over the rush of blood in his ears.

Not the playground.

Not the traffic from the road.

Not even Holly calling his name.

He only realised she was there when she suddenly dropped to her knees beside him.

“Will!”

Her small hands grabbed his wrist, turning his palm over.

“You’re bleeding!”

Will blinked down at his hands as if they belonged to someone else.

Gravel was embedded in the skin. Thin lines of red welled across his palms and the heel of his hand where he’d caught himself.

His fingers trembled.

“It's okay,” he managed, though it came out thin and unsteady.

His eyes lifted again toward the bench.

The man was gone.

Just… gone.

Like he’d never been there at all.

Now a couple of other parents were looking over from across the playground, their attention caught by the fall. Someone’s dog barked nearby.

The normal sounds of the park rushed back in all at once.

Will swallowed hard.

“We should probably go,” he said quietly. Quieter than he meant to. Holly didn’t question it. She stood immediately, brushing dirt from her knees before turning toward the other kids still playing.

“Guys! I’m taking Will home!” she called, waving dramatically, like she was the one in charge.

Under any other circumstances, Will might’ve corrected her. Might’ve pointed out that he was supposed to be the responsible one keeping an eye on her.

Instead he just pushed himself slowly to his feet.

His hands still shook.

He grabbed his sketchbook from the bench without looking at the spot where the man had been sitting.

The walk back felt longer than before.

Will kept his eyes forward, one hand loosely holding Holly’s while his mind replayed the moment over and over.

Maybe he’d sat too close. Maybe he’d looked strange, hunched over the sketchbook like that. Maybe the way he’d been sitting had made it obvious somehow. Like the man had just… known.

His stomach twisted.

Maybe it was his fault for not moving sooner.

Will could hear Holly talking, telling him about how Debbie hadn’t followed the rules of the game. It sounded too distant, like he was hearing it from behind glass or underwater. The edges of her voice blurred as the beginnings of a headache settled behind his eyes.

He wasn’t entirely sure when they got back. Only that Holly had sat him down in the living room while Karen milled around the kitchen making dinner.

Will stayed put under Holly’s orders as she quickly ran upstairs, then returned a moment later with a sky blue stethoscope, a torch and a first-aid kit.

Something about looking the part.

She ordered him to stick out his tongue before shining the torch in his eyes.

“Oh! They’re like green and brown” she commented, delighted by the discovery as Will tried not to flinch back from the bright light. Her attention quickly moved to his hands.

Holly instructed him to hold them up so she could examine them properly, humming thoughtfully about diagnosis and treatment. Will started to play along, letting her study the scrapes before she rummaged through the plastic box and hastily tore open a sanitising wipe.

He hissed at the sting, whined dramatically as she rubbed the quickly drying tissue across both his palms to clean the cuts—probably copying exactly what her mother had done for her before.

She finished by tipping out a small box of plasters, clumsily peeling the wrappers away from them. Will tilted his head, recognising the characters from her early morning cartoons.

Holly was already explaining.

“That’s Potato Chip—the yellow fluffy one—on your left hand, and P.C. Popple, the blue one, on your right. I picked those because you like yellow. And P.C. is a boy, but his name means Pretty Cool, and you’re cool too.”

That did it.

Will smiled despite himself, thanking her softly as he looked down at the bright, childish designs and the careful way she’d pressed the band-aids onto his palms, wrapping around the curve under his thumb one one and his litter wrist on the other.

“Thanks, Doctor. I feel better already,” he assured her.

The front door opened.

Mike came in, shrugging off his jacket and making a beeline for the kitchen before stopping short at the sight of Will and his sister in the living room.

“What’s going on?” he asked, walking over and glancing down at the slightly bloodied wipe and the plasters.

“We were at the park,” Holly explained immediately. “I got super high on the swing and Will was talking to this man but he ended up falling off the bench.”

Will cringed at the wording, looking between the two a beat too quicky to appear casual.

“Who was it?” Mike asked.

“Just some guy. Never seen him before.” Will already hated where this was going, but there was no stopping it.

“You just… spoke to some random man you don’t know at the park?”

Will knew how it sounded. What it could look like. Anxiety was already twisting tight in his stomach.

He didn’t want to talk about it. Didn’t want to picture the guy again. Definitely didn’t want to explain it to Mike and see the disgust on his face—because Mike already looked halfway there, his mouth tightening into something that looked a lot like distaste.

It’s not like Will had wanted to talk to him.

Or be touched by him.

Will sat a little straighter. If he said the wrong thing, Mike would tell his mom—or Karen or Karen would overhear and misunderstand—and then he’d be out of a house too.

Will stood.

“He spoke to me. It was nothing,” he said, stepping around Mike and heading for the basement.

“It doesn’t sound like nothing if you fell over,” Mike said, following after him.

Pushing.

Because that’s what Mike did.

He didn’t have it in him to just let things be.

The basement light clicked on a second after Will reached the bottom of the stairs.

He didn’t look back.

The familiar space felt smaller somehow. The old couch that was Jonathan's rarely used bed, the scattered books, the faint smell of dust and lavender laundry detergent that never quite left the Wheeler basement. It used to feel like a headquarters. Safe. Like the world upstairs couldn’t reach them down here.

Now it just felt like somewhere to hide. Will's bed, the old pull out mattress lay near the table, blankets thrown over it in an attempt at neatness. More blankets than strictly necessary for the time of year.

Will moved towards the couch, dropping his backpack beside it and rubbing at the back of his neck. His palms stung faintly under the band-aids Holly had so carefully applied.

Mike’s footsteps followed him down the stairs.

“Will.”

The way he said it made Will’s shoulders tighten. “It was nothing,” Will repeated, quieter this time, eyes fixed somewhere on the carpet. At a stain, old and red and likely something tomato based that Karen hadn't noticed in time to remove.

Mike didn’t answer straight away. Will could feel him there, standing a few feet behind him, thinking too hard the way he always did when something didn’t add up.

“You said it was some guy,” Mike said slowly. “What kind of guy?”

Will shrugged.

“I don’t know. Just… a guy.” Older. Stray grey hairs already in his moustache.

“That’s not an answer.”

Will pressed his lips together. Trying not to picture it. The hand. The grip and squeeze.

He wished Mike would just drop it. Just once.

There was a pause, then Mike stepped closer.

“Was it the military?”

The question caught Will off guard.

He blinked, finally turning his head a little, hazel eyes lifting to look up at the taller boy.

“What?”

Mike was already pacing a little now, energy building in the tight space.

“Like—did he ask you anything?” Mike continued, voice lowering instinctively. “About us. About El. Because if they’re sending people to talk to you—”

“He didn’t ask about anything,” Will cut in quickly.

Mike stopped.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

The word came out sharper than Will meant it to. Because of course that would be the only reason anyone would want to talk to him.

Silence settled for a second.

Mike watched him, brows pulling together like he was trying to piece together a puzzle that didn’t fit.

“Then why did you fall off the bench?” he asked.

Will’s stomach twisted again.

Because a stranger’s hand had landed on his thigh like it belonged there.

Because Will had frozen instead of moving.

Because some part of him had been too shocked, too slow, too—

“It just startled me,” Will said. Not saying what it was.

Mike didn’t look convinced.

“You fell hard enough for Holly to bandage you up.”

Will glanced down at his hands.

The bright and childish designs of The Popples looked ridiculous against his scraped palms.

“I’m fine.”

Mike let out a quiet, frustrated breath.

“You’ve been saying that a lot lately.”

Will didn’t answer.

Mike ran a hand through his hair, agitation bleeding through now.

“You’ve been weird for weeks, Will,” he said. “You barely talk anymore, you zone out, and now you’re falling over in parks because some random guy talks to you? That’s not nothing.”

Will stared at the floor.

His chest felt too tight.

Mike had been gone most evenings anyway—helping with El’s training, going out on crawls with Dustin and Lucas, trying to map whatever the hell was still wrong with Hawkins. Things Will wasn't included in.

Will hadn’t said anything about that either.

“You’re overthinking it,” Will muttered.

Mike gave a short laugh that didn’t sound amused.

“Yeah? Because the last time we ignored weird stuff in this town it turned out to be a gate to another dimension.”

“It’s not the same thing.”

“Then explain it.”

Will’s throat tightened.

He could feel Mike’s dark eyes on him, waiting. Expecting an answer Will didn’t have the courage to say out loud. The words sat heavy in his chest.

He touched me.

The thought alone made heat crawl up the back of his neck, his teeth clenching hard. Will shook his head. Throat feeling too tight around the words.

“There’s nothing to explain.”

Mike stared at him for a long moment.

Then he exhaled slowly, like he was trying to force himself to back off.

“Fine,” he said, though it didn’t sound like he meant it.

Another quiet stretch of silence filled the basement. Upstairs, they could hear Karen moving around in the kitchen, cabinet doors opening and closing. Normal life continuing like nothing had happened.

Mike shifted his weight.

“If it was someone from the military,” he said more quietly, “you have to tell me.”

Will nodded automatically.

“Yeah.”

But his eyes stayed fixed on the carpet. Because the worst part of it wasn’t the fear. It was the awful, creeping thought still twisting in his stomach.

That the man at the park had looked at him and somehow seen exactly what Will was trying so hard to hide. 

Mike didn’t point out that most of the town knew exactly who Will was. That there were still faded, rain-blurred missing posters clinging to lamp posts and yellowed newspaper clippings pinned up on noticeboards about the boy who had come back.

Like he was Hawkins’ own version of the damn Moth Man.

Will didn’t want to think about how the man at the park might have recognised him. Maybe he knew the rumours. Maybe he’d heard the whispers.

Maybe he’d seen the truth behind them and that was why he—

“If I see anything like that, I’d tell you.”

Will finally spoke just to break the quiet. To put something—anything—between himself and the way Mike was still looking at him. Watching him like he was trying to spot some small and important detail Will was refusing to show.

Mike held his gaze for another second.

Then he nodded.

“Okay.”

The word came easy enough. Casual, almost.

Will felt some of the tension ease out of his shoulders.

Mike leaned back against the beam supporting the stairs, arms folding loosely across his chest. His expression shifted, not quite the sharp focus it had been a moment ago.

“Just… be careful, alright?” he said. “People in this town are weird enough already without random guys creeping around parks.”

Will gave a small shrug, the movement rigid.

“Yeah, I guess.”

Another pause passed, softer this time.

Upstairs a cupboard shut, followed by Karen calling something about dinner being ready soon.

The normal noise of the house filtered down through the floorboards.

Mike pushed off the beam.

“C’mon,” he said, jerking his head toward the stairs. “Before my dad eats everything.”

That earned the faintest huff of breath from Will. Not quite a laugh, but close enough before he stepped around Mike back toward the stairs.

Since he stepped into the house from the park, the knot in his chest had loosened just a barely.

Maybe Mike had let it go.

Maybe it really had just been nothing. An overreaction. Will had misread. Misunderstood. It was something else and not as awful as his mind painted it to be. He knew better than anything not to trust his own mind at times.

Behind him, Mike reached for the basement light.

He paused for a second before flicking it off.

His eyes lingered briefly on Will’s back as he climbed the stairs ahead of him.

Something about the whole thing still sat wrong.

A random man.

A fall bad enough to scrape both palms.

Will shutting down the second anyone asked questions.

Mike had seen that pattern before. He reached up, raking a hand through his dark hair as they headed upstairs, the wood creaking quietly with age and use.

Maybe it was nothing.

But after everything that had happened in Hawkins, Mike had learned one thing the hard way.

Nothing was ever just nothing.

And if someone—or something—had decided to start paying attention to Will again…

Mike wasn't going to let it go.