Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

William Byers was only twelve years old when he first died. He'd been clinically dead before he was revived by Jim Hopper. No one told him this for a while after it happened. It was only at age fifteen when he finally asked his mother what exactly happened when he was found. She told him, of course, breaking down mid-explanation. Will now carried that cold understanding somewhere deep in the depths of his mind.

At sixteen he died a second time.

This time, he thought, there would be no revivals, no take-backs. He would die and that would be the end of the short and miserable life of William Byers. Which is really fucking sad because he feels like life would've finally been good for him. He'd defeated the Mind Flayer and Vecna. He'd finally gotten his love for Mike reciprocated. But now he was there, in his arms, quickly fading. The Mind Flayer’s connection was dragging him down with it into the depths of oblivion.

Mike screams and begs for Will to stay, to not go. He repeats that he loves him and that he just got him back. That he can't lose him again. But Will's life is slipping through his fingers like sand on a Californian beach. He's forgetting everything except the feeling of Mike's lips on his, desperately trying to breathe love and life into him. It's the last thing he knows. He's not sure who he is anymore, where they are or how they got here. The only thing that makes sense is that Mike is there and he's kissing him despite the blood in his mouth or the cold stiffness of his own lips.

He wishes it was enough to keep him here.

Soon the awareness drops away entirely, the last thing he hears is the wailing of what he thinks might be his name.

"WILL!"

"Will!" a voice calls distantly, his mind foggy and full of cotton, "Will, buddy, it's time to get up! Mom's made breakfast."

He wakes slowly, crawling out of a deep sleep. Will’s eyes feel glued together as he attempts to open them to see who’s calling him. When he eventually manages to succeed, he sees his brother Jonathan peeking through his bedroom door. He also looks vaguely disheveled.

“C’mon, it’s your favorite!”

“Ok, ok, I’m getting up…” Will sluggishly removes his blanket and yawns.

Jonathan has left him to his own devices now and Will stretches when he sits up. He looks around and feels slightly disoriented by his surroundings. The dream he had is already faded around the edges but it had felt so real. It’s not the first time or even rare that he wakes in the morning from a nightmare. And they are always very realistic but usually they contain memories from the past. This one had been different, it was an extrapolation of the future.

With every moment that passes, Will loses more and more of the dream, but the feeling doesn’t leave him for hours to come. He can still feel the oblivion seeping in, the warmth of being loved and the fear and pain he felt in his last moments. It’s the strangest thing.

Later in the day he meets up with his friends for the first day of summer. They’ve all been so excited this year because of the mall opening. It was all so new and they had an inside man in the form of Steve Harrington. And Will tried to keep his mood light throughout the day but the disorienting feeling of deja vu kept constantly hitting him.

He felt distracted and not very present the whole time. It just kept happening at every turn. The party would do something, someone would say something and Will would feel like he’s seen this all before. Not just in a vague way but in the freaky sense that he could literally predict what was going to happen next. And the craziest part? It then actually does happen in precisely that way. 

Will tried to ignore it, to let it roll off him and not freak out. He didn’t wanna ruin his friends’ summer with his weird shit once again. It felt like he was always at fault for these things, that he kept bringing trouble to their door. And he hated it. He didn’t want to be the one causing his friends distress. So he kept the feeling to himself, hoping to whoever was listening, that Mike wouldn’t catch on.

Because Mike was always the most perceptive to Will’s moods and shifts. He could see every minute change, read the meaning behind Will’s facial expressions. Mike knew what certain behaviours of Will’s usually meant. Will tried extra hard to appear normal, so that Mike wouldn’t notice.

Somewhat thankfully, Mike had been distracted by his relationship with El since they officially got together last winter. He’d disappear often to see her and spend all his time with her. It made Will jealous and a little sad. But now, in this situation, Will was actually glad for it because it gave him more opportunities to breathe between pretending everything was fine.

And it continued for a week, these strange future memories. He worried for a moment that he was getting possessed by the Mind Flayer again but soon realized that the memories were too mundane to be that. This was something else. At night he’d get these dreams, like the memories but longer and more detailed.

It had begun to worry him more and more. He needed to talk to someone about this, he needed help. Because if the memories were true, if they were visions of the future then they were all in danger. Will had to do something about this and he knows the perfect person to help him.

On the morning of the first day of the second week since his visions began, Will made a phone call. The line rang for a few moments but was then picked up by a hesitant voice.

“Hello?” it asked.

Will was relieved to hear that it was her, “Hi! El! Uh, this is Will…”

“Will?” she asks confused but not unkind, as Will had never tried to contact her before, “Is something wrong?”

“No, not quite, or maybe yes?” Will felt nervous about what he had to say, how to even start explaining, “Listen, I just need your help. Can I come over, so I can explain in person? You’re not with Mike today, right?”

“No. You can come over, but I have to ask Hopper first, hold on…” she set the receiver down and stepped away for a moment.

When Hopper heard her question, he was surprised that she wanted to have Will come over. Honestly he was mostly relieved it wasn’t Wheeler again. Plus he liked Joyce and by extension her children. He accepted it with ease.

“He says yes,” she informed Will.

Will sighed in relief, “Ok, good. Uh, he won’t be home though, right?”

“No,” she confirmed, smiling a little at Will’s relief.

“I’ll be over as soon as possible, ok? Do you need anything from town?” Will asked sweetly.

When El confirmed that no, they said their goodbyes and hung up. Will got ready, took his backpack and set off on his bike to the cabin El and Hopper lived in.

It didn’t take long for him to arrive and Jane was there to meet him, her eyes shining with curiosity. Will had never reached out to her like this before and part of her was really excited because she was often so lonely at the cabin, her only company being Mike and Hopper. They were great but sometimes she wanted to talk to other people too.

Will smiled when he greeted her, his usual kind nature shining through. They stepped inside the house and went to her room. With the door closed, it felt like they were conspiring about something.

“So, you said you needed my help with something. What is it?” El cut right to the chase in her direct way, prepared to help Will with whatever it was.

Will looked vaguely nervous before he began to speak, “Ok, this might be hard to explain and to understand…So I’ve been having these strange visions or memories? I’m not sure what they are but it’s like I have memories of the future, like I know what’s going to happen next. I’ve even begun to suspect that I might be from the future somehow or my mind is. Does that make sense?”

El seemed deep in thought, “Are they like your ‘now memories’ from last year?”

That was a fair question, he thought, “Uh, no, not quite…I think they might be real memories from a future me, I think they might help us. I guess I need your help to understand them. I was thinking maybe you could try going into my mind? Maybe we can find out what's going on.”

At Will’s suggestion El nods, understanding his concern. Will is so very grateful that El is so open and willing to accept whatever weird shit he has to throw at her. That even if she’s not fully sure what’s going on, she is still completely willing to help him out. She is so kind and so cool, Will thinks with a small smile.

“Ok, I will help you. We should begin,” she says as she goes to take her blindfold and tune the radio to an empty station for the static.

They settle down opposite each other and El tells him to also close his eyes. Will feels the sudden urge to apologize though he’s not sure for what exactly. It’s just an itch at the back of his mind, like he already senses that what they will see is not going to be entirely pleasant. He swallows it down and follows El’s lead. She must have sensed his slight unease because she reaches out to him and squeezes his hand in hers. Will appreciates the gesture and smiles gratefully at her.

Then she brings the blindfold up to her eyes and ties it around. The static plays in the background and with an inhale and then a sigh they both go under.

Chapter Text

When Will opens his eyes, he finds himself standing in a black void. There’s water under his feet, shallow like an infinite puddle he couldn’t see the edges to. El is there too, now that he looks. She seems mildly surprised as she steps closer to him.

“You did that very easily?” she tilts her head.

Will feels kind of sheepish as she looks at him inquisitively, “Did I? I- I just closed my eyes like you told me to…”

El hums and then Will asks his own question, “Where even are we? Are we inside your mind?”

“Yes and no. It is my void. This is where I can see people,” she explains and Will thinks he understands enough to get by.

“Oh, ok, that’s actually kinda cool… So where do we start?”

Just then a yellow door opens in front of them. El looks towards it but it’s Will who can already smell what’s beyond the door. The smell of popcorn and sugar reaches his nose. The movie theatre…

“Can you smell that?” he asks.

El shakes her head, surprised by the question, “No. You can smell something? What is it?”

“Uh, like popcorn, it smells like the movie theatre in the mall.”

She lets her eyes linger on Will for a moment, intrigued but knowing that this is not the time. Signalling that they should go, El motions to the door and Will braces himself before they start moving to it.

When they finally step through the door, it disappears behind them and they observe Will, Mike, Max and Lucas sitting watching a movie. All seems well until the lights cut out, the movie stops and the Will in the memory gets goosebumps on the back of his neck. He brings his hand up and Mike notices the action, asking if he’s ok. The feeling seems to pass for the time being and the movie resumes.

This strange feeling seems to plague Will frequently over the following days as they see. El and Will watch as the summer unfolds before them. Dustin’s return, Will’s apprehension at the weird feeling and how Mike and El often disappear.

They then see Mike make a mess of things and El subsequently dump Mike at the mall. Will had followed Lucas and Mike around all day, looking for an apology gift. Then they’re moping, Lucas attempting to give relationship advice while Will pathetically tries to be noticed in the background. Will watches now, his heart thrumming painfully while the memories flood his mind. It feels so vivid now, every emotion and event.

“Mike…” El breathes, frowning at his attitude, “He…is acting so rudely. Why is he saying all those things?”

Her genuine confusion and disbelief catch Will off guard, because he truly doesn’t understand either, “He’s being an idiot, El. I- I don’t know.”

The memory goes on and the next day Will tries to get them to play D&D again but Mike and Lucas act patronizing which pisses Will off. El frowns now as she watches memory Will rush up the stairs. Mike had followed him and now they’re standing there in the garage as rain pours heavily beyond.

They’re fighting. Mike says something unforgivable. It’s so mean and personal that it takes them both aback but Will especially feels it tear into his chest.

“Will…” El gasps, her face concerned and pained, understanding that what Mike said was completely out of line.

“I’m sorry, El…I- I didn’t mean to call you stupid, you’re not, I’m sorry,” Will turns to her, wide-eyed and genuinely apologetic, realizing that he’d called El stupid and she saw.

El seems taken aback by his apology, not having expected for Will to apologise to her of all things, as she hadn’t really taken offence, “No, Will, it’s ok…I know.”

Will smiles a little sadly and they watch him rush away in the rain as Mike calls for him. When Will is destroying Castle Byers, El reaches out and holds his hand, a small comfort. Then Mike and Lucas find Will there in the rain, in the ruins. They start up their apologies but Will turns around with a horrified look and they realize that the Mind Flayer is back again.

So begins a whole mess of memories for Will, of running around Hawkins, watching Mike being unable to apologize and fix things with El, realizing that Billy is possessed and then deciding to trap him in the sauna. And then the attacks, the discoveries, the mall, the fireworks, the fight, El nearly dying, Billy saving her before he died and El losing her powers.

As they both stand there watching the memories, El can’t believe the future laid out for them like that. She’s shocked that she loses her powers and downright distraught at losing Hopper. Trying to take in and process the information is hard, even if they only got Will’s point of view.

For Will it feels like he’s had the memories the whole time, like they were never lost in the first place. Like taking books that had been littered everywhere and putting them back on the shelf. Now he remembers the pain of that summer, the isolation and the abandonment at the hand of his friends.

When El is spiraling about losing her powers and losing Hopper, Will tries to comfort her while also reminding that they need to keep going, that he knows there’s more, a lot more. And so they continue on, watching the summer end and El join the Byers family as Joyce decides to move them away to California

“I live with you now?” El says with shiny eyes, happy to seemingly gain a family.

Will nods with a small smile, “Yeah, you’re my sister.”

“Sister?” El asks in a small, hopeful voice, “I have a brother?”

“Well, two actually, Jonathan too.”

And it makes El tear up a bit and Will goes to hug her. He holds her and she buries her face in his shirt, happy at how nice it feels to have a family, how right it feels to be close to Will. Like a previously unseen connection now coming to light.

Then their memory selves are packing and saying their goodbyes. When Will is putting away his D&D manual in the donations, he is stopped by Mike who points it out like a mistake. He and Will share a small, tender moment when Will admits that he wouldn’t join another party, implying that he wouldn’t forget the party or Mike. It seems that El and Mike also have a moment after El exits the house later, looking giddy. Mike follows after some time, looking lost in thought and somewhat confused.

And then the cars pull away and they’re gone, off to California, to Lenora, their new home. There in Cali they start to settle in, El is now Will’s sister, she will be going to school and both memory El and the one beside Will are excited at the prospect. It seems both Wills are unable to grasp how school could be exciting. But they’re happy for El nonetheless.

To El as she watches how the Byers treat her, including her easily into their chaotic family, makes her heart sing in happiness. She sees the various memories of her and Will spending time together, truly becoming siblings, learning to love each other. It makes her so incredibly happy. And Will seems to treat her so sweetly too, always supportive, always kind and patient. He teaches her how to do art, how to draw things, how to make art projects. He lets her read the letters Mike sends her and her own responses, never once getting outwardly jealous or mad when he himself gets barely anything. She sees how hurt Will is though, how lonely he feels out here in Lenora.

She also sees how she gets bullied, Will trying to help her the only way he knows how to, by being there for her, at least emotionally. He is a good brother, El realizes, and she really wants to be his sister now, wants this to be true quicker.

Will on the other hand is more sad at the memories, seeing how Mike seems to be neglecting him again. How much he hated Lenora and California. Even when people at school seemed either neutral towards him or actually liked him. Noting how some girls at school pay him attention, liking that he’s sweet and artistic, plus he’s only become cuter. El teases him a little from beside him, making Will chuckle and shake his head.

Then Mike is coming to visit for spring break and he shows up in a godawful outfit, making both El and Will exchange a horrified look. It actually brings some levity as they laugh. They watch as El frowns at the tag on the flowers and how Mike snubs Will for seemingly no reason. Later they’re at Rink-o-Mania and see Mike not notice that El is being bullied. How Mike sits there oblivious and sipping his drink while Will tries to knock some sense into him. Then El gets the milkshake thrown at her and she runs off.

They witness Mike and Will’s fight where Mike mostly just complains that Will was moping, getting defensive in the end, saying he also should have reached out more. Will feels uncomfortable at these memories, remembering his feelings from then and he’s so embarrassed. But El is fascinated, unhappy that something like that apparently happens to her, but undeniably entranced. Because what the hell is Mike doing? It thoroughly confuses her.

And then memory El is storming back out with a shout towards the girl that bullied her as she brings a skate down on her face. Mike and Will rush up after her, the former of them calling out an unhelpful ‘what did you do?’ It makes the current El wince, reminding her of a certain someone from her past.

“OH!” El exclaims as Will winces next to her, “I- I didn’t I…”

“Hey, El, it’s ok, it’s just a memory, it’s not real right now…she’s been bullying you for months…Not that I support violence but I get it, you're ok…” Will trails off, squeezing her hand in comfort and solidarity.

El appreciates the gesture and nods, a signal that they should move on. Next they see the tense evening after the fact. Both of them groan at Mike’s stupid, mean, little ‘she didn’t look fine…’ It actually makes El scowl angrily, satisfied that memory El storms away too. Will also rolls his eyes at the behaviour as they shift into the next morning when El and Mike are having a talk, which Will wasn’t privy to, but doesn’t seem to go well. Because El then willingly goes away with the police.

Then there’s agents, explaining that El is with Owens and everyone’s on lockdown and it's grating. Eventually they decide to run away, to go help El. Mike then makes his way into Will’s room when they’re packing and actually apologizes and owns up to his mistakes which El is noticing he is unable to do for anyone else. It’s starting to make her realize something but she isn’t sure what it is. But clearly Mike hates it when Will is mad at him or when he’s upset him.

Before they’re able to escape there is a shootout and they manage to drive away in a pizza van with one dying agent who hands them a pen as he expires. They're travelling across the state, they bury a body, Mike keeps talking about how he and El aren’t working and Will keeps encouraging him to fix things. Then Will is giving him a painting that seems to mean something deeper than El can understand. And she knows for a fact that Will is lying when he says it’s from her which thoroughly confuses her. Why would he lie? On top of that she noticed that when Mike learned that the painting was from El instead of Will, his smile had dimmed somewhat

Will hides his face in the palms of his hands as they watch him embarrass himself, use his own feelings to fix their relationship and then silently cry for hours. It’s depressing and Will hates this now. He is recalling everything, every emotion and every feeling from then and it hurts, so, so much.

“Will, why did you lie?” she asks tentatively, voice soft and careful.

Will looks for the words, unable to voice the true reasons, so he settles for a half-truth, “I don’t know…I guess I thought he’d like it more if it came from you. That it would mean more, the words too. I was scared he’d think it was weird coming from me.”

“I don’t think that would have happened, Will…” El soothes and she wants to say more when the memory moves on and they eventually find El in the desert.

There is El, head shaved again, wearing a collar and she seems to have regained her powers. But there is also papa which shocks El as she’d thought he was dead. They escape with El and learn that Max and Hawkins are in trouble so they need to get El to the fight. In a pizza dough freezer she battles the new big bad called Vecna. When the memory El explains who he is, she suddenly starts having her own vague recollections of the man she knew in the lab. But it’s painful to remember, so El doesn’t push it for now, letting Will’s memory wash over them.

She seems to have failed in the fight and Mike’s speech grates on her and Will, for slightly different reasons. The ride back to Hawkins is spent in silence and she avoids Mike. What El gathers from watching herself is that memory El hadn’t believed a word of Mike’s speech. She is upset that it took Will rubbing Mike’s back and encouraging him to actually say ‘I love you’ to El.

Will is upset that Mike used his own confession to fix his relationship with El. He took Will’s words and gave the response to El. Most of all he hated that Mike said his life started the day he met El in the woods. Because that is also the day Will went missing. It's the day his life began its swan song.

In Hawkins, as they attempt to put the cabin somewhat back together, Mike promises Will that they will stick together. They will kill Vecna and all will be well. This already feels more sincere and true than what Mike said before.

The following months in Will’s memories are mostly of the town recovering after the Upside Down opened its giant gaping maw across Hawkins. Will begins living with the Wheelers while El hides with Hopper who’d survived after all. She trains to fight Vecna and evade the military who have set up shop in the town.

While Will lives with the Wheelers Mike is becoming more and more strange. He’d insisted Will should stay with him in his room and acted all upset when Will lived in the basement instead. One day when Will had joined Joyce to visit El and Hopper at the cabin, El had let it slip that she and Mike broke up for good. Memory Will had been shocked and concerned but memory El had steadfastly reassured him that it was mutual, amicable and absolutely the right call. That they weren’t working and probably never were all that in love. Their feelings had been more platonic. Plus El didn’t need a distraction, she was becoming stronger, becoming her own young woman.

And it seems that after that Mike got even weirder towards Will. Constantly in his space, spending every spare minute of the day with him. It seems it was making memory Will feel a certain way, making him hopeful. That’s when El realizes what the painting had been about. It had been a botched confession from Will. Mike was being an idiot.

“Will…you and Mike…you’re…you” El can’t find the words.

It has Will scrambling for apologies and explanations, hating having himself so exposed in front of El, “I’m sorry, El, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to, I swear! I understand if you think it’s weird and gross of me.”

El’s face contorts into a somewhat confused grimace, “No, Will, it’s ok, I would never think that about you.”

They’re once again cut short by the events that follow. After 18 months of pure nothing, everything suddenly kicks into high gear. Hopper gets stuck in the Upside Down, Holly gets attacked and taken by Vecna, El joins Hopper. They’re all trying to figure out what’s going on and then Will and Robin sneak out and come to understand a few things about each other. Like how Will is tapping into the hivemind, into Vecna

Then they’re setting up the trap for the Demo. They see Will’s visions, then the kids being taken to the Mac-Z and them coming up with a plan to keep them safe. At the edge of the field, El sees it, the way Mike talks to Will, how he looks at him and it all finally clicks into place.

He calls Will a sorcerer as an encouragement before they head into the tunnels. At the base Derek goes in and all seems relatively well until a leak springs up and Will and Mike go to fix it. They’re unsuccessful and the military captures them.

While some of them escape, the rest are being escorted away when they get attacked by a horde of Demogorgons. Will is in pain when they get shot at, screaming and kicking at the fire. His memory here is spotty, jumbled from all the Demos all over the place and it slightly disorients Will and El to see. But then they see him clearly – Vecna. He taunts Will, calling him weak, and when he leaves, the Demos take the kids and attack everyone.

They see through Will’s eyes, through the several Demos, that their friends are being attacked. Will’s memories play in his mind, of his childhood, of his family and Mike, those who he loves. Like an epiphany, Will reaches into the Demos and is able to kill them in the same vein as Vecna, channeling his powers.

“Will!” El exclaims from where she stands next to him, watching him snap their bones like it’s nothing, “You have powers!”

Her tone is so excited and happy to know that Will is like her, that he is truly her brother in this way too. She smiles so big and it makes the smile grow on Will’s face as well. He loves to see her so enthusiastic.

But both of their eyes snap back to the scene when Mike calls out Will’s name, this breathless, passionate thing. He runs up to Will exclaiming how he is a sorcerer, hugging him closely when he reaches him. It knocks the breath out of both Wills’ lungs, a small ‘Mike’, rushing past the memory’s lips. The scene makes El smile.

“El, this is it. This is what we need,” Will draws their attention away from the oddly tender moment.

El nods, understanding, “We need to unlock your powers.”

The memory has reached the base and Will is using the connection to jack into a dead Demo, finding Henry and Max and Holly. He is able to control him with a lot of difficulty. Will warns Max and Holly to run and snaps Vecna’s leg. But the connection knocks Will out and Vecna uses it as a two-way street.

He traps Will in a place that makes Will gag, as Vecna strokes the side of his face, taunting him again. El is horrified at what she sees. Vecna makes Will spy and shows him every horrible thing that could ever happen to him. It all hits too close to home. She cries silently as her hand holds Will’s in a tight grip. Vecna reveals every last layer of Will, peeling it all back and exposing him. Shows him how he will never be accepted or loved. How they will hate him and Mike will be disgusted by him.

Current Will breaks down crying at the visions and El goes down with him, hugging him and holding him as he cries. She is so angry and so sad that Will has to go through this. And she registers distantly that eventually her memory self comes and takes Will out of it, bringing him back to the real world.

Memory Will is devastated, crushed and trying to not fall apart at the seams. When they have a plan on what to do, how to try stopping Vecna, Will is talking to Joyce. He is nervous, scared even, his eyes red and wet. Will starts explaining what’s going on before Mike barges in, interrupting them. He’s about to leave when Will calls him back.

And then to their utter horror, Will is sitting in front of a whole crowd and admitting one of his two biggest secrets. He comes out just to take ammo away from Vecna. When he indirectly refers to Mike as just his crush, El frowns, both of them knowing that it’s a lie and an understatement from what they’ve seen in all of Will’s past memories.

Will is still crying heavily and El holds him through it all, already feeling a sisterly affection towards him. She hates how the world is treating him, how it makes him suffer. 

Their plan unfolds from then on and Will takes the time to settle down. The group are all on the tower soon, climbing higher and higher, when Mike and Will both pause at the same time. They pass a bottle of water and Mike apologizes again for being an oblivious idiot and a bad friend. And when Will expresses his relief it seems like Mike has something more to say but hesitates and soon they’re finishing the climb. At the top they all begin to enter the abyss.

There Will feels incredibly nauseous and sways as he walks, completely out of it, his head filling with noise. They are overwhelmed by Demos on all sides and begin to fight. Mike tries to stay close to Will, to shield him and protect him from the creatures. Will is able to jack into the hive again, managing to take control and stop the Demos. Everyone else fights them off and rushes away to Vecna’s lair to free the kids.

It leaves Mike and Will all alone for a moment as Mike refuses to leave his side. He’s determined to protect Will. And then the Mind Flayer comes to life and they have a giant creature attacking everyone along with a new wave of Demos. The situation feels doomed but they aren’t giving up.

In a moment of clarity, Will had reached in and used every last ounce of his strength to take control of the hive. He wrestled with the Mind Flayer for control until he won and stopped it in its tracks. El had also appeared at that point, nodding an acknowledgement to Will before entering the heart of the lair to kill Vecna.

Will had raised both arms, straining hard at the effort. It hurts to use his powers like this all at once when he’d had them for maybe a day. But he is able to rip the Mind Flayer apart, tearing off its legs and crushing its very body, while carefully avoiding hurting the people inside. El also uses the opportunity to kill Vecna, tearing a painful scream out of memory Will, who feels it like it’s being done to him. El gasps beside him now, hands covering her mouth as tears start to gather. Will watches like in a trance, his memories show him he knows exactly where this is going, what’s about to happen.

When Mike realizes that the Mind Flayer is dead, he cheers and shouts words of admiration for what a great feat Will has achieved. But Will realizes the truth. He has killed the hivemind and thus himself.

With a choked sound, memory Will collapses to the ground and Mike is with him in an instant. His cheering is replaced by worried exclamations. Memory Will explains in a few words that he killed it, the hivemind, and that because of the connection it’s taking him with it. He sorta figured this might happen.

Mike cannot accept it, he’s becoming hysterical. He cannot accept it and begs and panics. He chants that Will is going to be ok, that they will get him out and he will live. But Will knows it’s no use. This is where the story ends.

“Will…” El sobs beside him while Will watches on, a distant yet pained look on his face.

And now Mike is also crying, wet sobs wracking his body. He is begging Will to not go, to not leave him.

Memory Will admits that he wishes he could stay but that he had already been on borrowed time. Saying that when he’d died the first time, he should have stayed dead. He should’ve stayed in the Upside Down where he belonged. Maybe then he wouldn’t have brought all this pain and misery to their doorstep.

And it makes Mike angry, tears leaking from his eyes in a frantic way. He tells him resolutely how it’s not true, completely broken that Will could even breathe that thought into existence. Mike bawls beside him, holding his head in his lap as Will gets weaker and weaker. He tells Will how they were supposed to spend their lives together. That after all this was done they were supposed to move on, go to school, go to new places and always stay together. They were going to write and illustrate comics and paint forever.

Will had simply smiled, pained, and responded that it sounded like a nice lie.

But Mike couldn’t take it, Will didn’t seem to understand. He braces himself and explains to Will that he means it, seriously. That he’d wanted to tell Will all this when they made it out safely but he’ll say it now. Mike loves Will. He is in love with him. And he’s pretty sure he has been since all the way back in kindergarten when he first asked to be his friend. That he was made to love Will, unable to love anyone else, even if he tried. He'd been hoping for a future where he could love Will each and every day.

Both Wills are also heavily sobbing, the memory version somewhat choking on his own blood as it pools in his mouth. He tells Mike that he loves him too, has done so for many, many years. El and Will hold each other for comfort as they watch the last memory of Will’s unfolding.

Mike then leans forwards and kisses Will, uncaring of the blood and tears or anything so trivial. But Will’s already losing it, his lips becoming colder and stiffer with each moment. Mike keeps pouring everything into the kiss, desperately hoping it will revive Will like a princess in a fairytale.

When Will stops kissing back, Mike begins to freak out again. He pulls away and tries to coax Will into holding on a little longer. But Will only smiles a weak grin and thanks Mike for loving him in his last moments. Mike hopelessly chants ‘no, no, no’ as Will goes limp. Feeling for his pulse and finding none, he wails loudly across the wasteland of the abyss. Screams Will’s name as he falls apart on the most fundamental level. He screams and screams and it’s the last thing El and Will hear when El rips off her blindfold, tearing them out of the void.

Chapter Text

As their eyes readjust to the light, Will can still hear Mike’s voice ringing in his ears. His eyelashes are wet, he realizes he must’ve been crying. The air is heavy in the room as Will’s eyes lock with El’s across from him. She is also wide-eyed and teary, looking at Will with new information and revelations swirling through her mind.  Will feels like he’s known all of it the whole time. Either way, it’s all too much.

They scoot closer and wrap their arms around each other in a hug. Will grips tightly as he begins to cry again, all the pain and every sensation he’d ever felt in that future life piercing through him all at once. The pain of being connected to the hivemind, the awful things Vecna had shown him and then the agony of dying. Will wasn’t even letting himself touch the parts that were about him and Mike. That was somehow even more painful.

El holds him as he sobs, her own tears falling at the things she’d learned. Every downright horrible thing she’d gone through, or would go through. And seeing Will die, seeing Mike hurt like that, was incomprehensible. She wanted so badly to fix this future, to help Will and Mike and herself. Because she also saw the parts she liked so much.

Like having a family. It was something she’d always longed for. To belong somewhere, to feel accepted and loved. Now that she’d seen that it was possible with the Byers’, El wanted that future so desperately.

They held on for what must’ve been a long while before they finally settled down. With the tears now mostly dry and the memories settling in better, El decided to ask her question.

“So, what do we do now? What is next?”

“Next we need to unlock my powers, so that I can help as much as possible,” Will speaks resolutely, “Maybe we could help end this quicker and cleaner…”

El nods, wanting the same thing. They were very optimistic because they now had valuable intel that the bad guys lacked.

“I will help you, Will. And then we can train together, like in your memory of me,” she squeezes Will’s hand like a promise and Will accepts with a glad smile.

They then decide to begin as soon as possible. El will shuffle around the times Mike was supposed to come over and Will would also move around any party hangouts. The decision was that they needed to focus on this as much as possible. El is resolute and serious when she speaks about their plans.

Later when Will is leaving, his conscience is gnawing at him and he turns to El, “Hey, um, El? I’m sorry for dragging you into this all again. I know you wanted to just be a normal teenager but I didn’t know who else to ask for help with things like this…”

El shakes her head, “No, Will, it is ok. I am glad you came to me. I want to help you.”

“Really?”

El nods and then speaks up with a somewhat shy smile, “Also, I, um, I really liked that people called me Jane in your memories…”

“Oh! Uh, do you want me to call you Jane now too? It is a very pretty name,” Will tilts his head and grins kindly.

“Yes... Is that bad?” she asks in a whisper.

“No, no, not all, Jane. If you like it more than El, then that’s what I’ll call you.”

Jane lights up and is thankful for Will’s everpresent kindness, “I…I also liked being your sister…I know Joyce has not adopted me yet…”

Will understands what she’s getting at and, honestly, because of his memories, he already sees her as the sister she had become, “Jane, I also really liked being your brother. If you like, we can be siblings now too.”

“Really?” it’s Jane’s turn to ask with a hopeful lilt to her voice.

“Of course.”

She hugs him again and Will embraces her in return. He’d always really liked her, even when he’d felt jealous of her relationship with Mike. Will could never dislike Jane. She was really sweet, funny and strong. He admired her, especially when they grew closer as siblings. Which now made him feel so bad and so conflicted over the whole Mike thing.

On the one hand Jane had seen everything and how it played out. But that had been then and this is now. She is still with Mike and maybe it isn’t too late for them to fix things. Will wasn’t about to get in the middle of all that, even if future Mike had admitted to loving him. Because of the situation they had been in, they never got to talk about any of it. Will had no idea when Mike developed feelings for him or realized them. He didn’t want to ruin this for Jane or for Mike, nor did he want to overwhelm or confuse the other boy with complicated things such as his sexuality and possible feelings for his best friend.

No, Will needed to focus on saving the world. What he needs right now is to not think about any of that and just try to unlock his powers, train and save the world, hopefully not dying in the process. If the universe had love in store for him after all, then so be it.

When they manage to meet again tomorrow, Jane and Will agree to not tell the party about what’s going on for now. They know that, objectively, maybe they shouldn’t keep this from them but the truth is so heavy and so hard. Neither wants another trip down memory lane so quickly after the last one. For now they choose to focus on Will’s powers and getting them to work.

Will and Jane discuss how he had unlocked them the first time and then try to somehow replicate the emotions. Jane's suggestion is to focus on the anger because that is the source of her power. Whenever she has to use them, especially when she does the most extraordinary things, it’s usually because she has a deep, deep well of anger to draw on.

Will tries this approach, to use his anger at what happened and the memory of the day to fuel his powers but it doesn’t really work. Plus they quickly also realize that for Will to jack into the hivemind and take control of a demogorgon, they actually need the demogorgon or a potent enough hivemind nearby. Which is a problem since the gate is seemingly closed right now and the Mind Flayer hasn’t gotten strong enough for Will to get his goosies.

So they take a different approach and try to see what else Will can do. In the week following their look through Will’s memories, they finally find their first success.

On a random Thursday in June Will Byers moves a can of coke by a single inch to the right using only his mind. The cheering and excitement they both exhibit is inadequately enthusiastic for the size of the achievement. But Jane reminds him that progress is still progress and that hopefully it should get easier over time.

After trying for a while longer, Will is able to move it by three more inches and he feels drained already, so they sit and take a break. 

“Maybe you are just not angry enough? Maybe a different memory could serve you better?” El thinks out loud.

Will hums, “I don’t know, I- I’ve never really been an angry person. I never liked that feeling.”

He trails off, thinking about his dad, his legendary bursts of anger. How he would rage and hurt and destroy. Will had never liked that, he always promised to never be like him. He would never let anger or hatred take over or guide him.

“Maybe we just need a different emotion…”

Jane nods silently beside him, taking a sip of water. She has never known another way of using her powers. All she remembers is a distant, vague memory in which she had been advised to tap into the anger she had in her heart, to think of times when she’d been hurt or felt powerless and scared and to use that. She doesn’t understand why Will doesn’t work the same way.

“Oh! I brought some of your favourites!” Will exclaimed as he dug through his backpack.

Jane tilted her head, “My favourites? My favourite what?”

“Candy. Now that I remember everything, I know you liked all these the most when we lived in California,” Will pulled out a bunch that he’d purchased with his saved up pocket money.

Jane stares at the colourful array and feels somewhat overwhelmed. This is so nice of Will, she thinks. Will had wanted to make her happy, to bring her some joy.

But her face falls, “Will, I- I’ve never tried these before… What if I don’t like them? What if I’m different?”

“Well, then you’ll have a new favorite! It’s ok, Jane, here, you used to really like skittles,” Will passes her the small red packet with a rainbow on it.

Jane takes them carefully and opens it up, pouring out a few pieces and putting them in her mouth. The somewhat sweet and sour flavour shocks her. But after a moment of chewing she hums appreciatively and smiles so big at Will that it makes him chuckle.

“Here, try some of these. They’re my favorite,” Will passes her the Reese’s Pieces.

As they go through several more of the sweets he’d brought they begin to rank them. Jane tasted most for the first time. She’d told Will all the ones she’d had before, which was a very narrow range. It made Will very glad that this is what he chose to spend his very little money on.

“I still can’t believe Hopper hasn’t brought you any of this candy to taste! It should be like a crime against kids everywhere!” Will exclaims passionately as he chews on some Reese's Pieces.

Jane had ranked them somewhere between skittles and Twizzlers, “He only brings home the ones he likes. I think my favorite so far is the M&M’s, actually.”

Will smiled at that, amused that their favorite candies complemented each other well, like siblings. They ate in silence for a bit and Will pondered his abilities. He could barely move a can of coke, this would get them nowhere.

“Hey, Jane, do you think there’s anything else we can practice?”

She was thoughtful for a moment, wracking her mind until one of Will’s memories struck her, “I think you need to learn how to keep your mind closed.”

Will looked a little confused, “What do you mean by that?”

“You are connected to the hive mind and Vecna. It is a two-way connection. Which means he can hurt you and get in your mind, like in your memory,” Jane explained carefully, “You should learn to close it off from him, or at least some parts.”

“Oh! I get it! If he returns then he could look into my mind and use what I know for his benefit!” Will caught on.

Jane nodded as she popped more of the skittles into her mouth. So that was their next focus, Will’s inner mind abilities.

They practiced by having Jane try to invade his mind to learn something. Will was supposed to keep it away from her, to fight her off. So far Will had been unsuccessful and Jane had learned the information he was supposed to be hiding every time. This would not do in the least.

“Maybe imagine something physical in your mind to keep me out,” she suggested after the fourth failed attempt.

“Like a door?” Will panted a little, the effort of using his mind, beginning to show.

Jane shrugged, “Sure.”

Will tried again, deciding on a small memory or thought he didn’t want Jane to see at that moment and imagined a door in front of it. He closed the door and locked it. Then he could feel Jane trying to open it and he fought to keep it closed tightly. Eventually, after a good struggle, she gave in and opened her eyes with a proud grin.

“That was really good, Will!” she praised him, but Will frowned.

He wanted to share her enthusiasm but a certain aspect wouldn’t let him go.

“Thanks, but if Vecna tries to do this, he might be able to break down the door anyway. I- I think I need a way to make the door invisible, make it so that he doesn’t even know there’s something being hidden from him,” Will speculates, rubbing at his head as it begins to throb from the effort of today.

Jane nods in agreement, thinking that he has a point. Vecna is stronger than Jane is, the way he can invade people’s minds is unprecedented. It’s something they need to think about and work on. 

But they’re both clearly quite drained already. She suggests they drop it for now, they’d been at this for several days. Will agrees and says that he probably needed to head home anyway or his family might end up sending a search party for him. They worry when he stays out too late and Will understands it all too well.

As Will bikes away, Jane thinks back on their progress. Will, even though only able to move a can of coke a little bit, was in Jane’s not so humble opinion already doing leaps and bounds. His progress was actually amazing considering that they only started trying a week ago. Sure, it was small, only a few inches, but the fact that he could do it at all was impressive.

Plus the fact that he was able to keep her from seeing through the door was extremely good. Jane had had her powers for way longer, she’d been practicing for a long, long time to get in people’s heads specifically. So the fact that Will was able to keep her out was remarkable.

To Jane it indicated his great potential. Will was a natural in her eyes. She’d also seen from his memories what he’d been able to achieve in the future when he unlocked his powers. Jane thinks Mike had been right then, Will’s powers were innate, he was a sorcerer.

And speaking of Mike, she has been so confused lately. Ever since their excursion through Will’s memories, Jane has begun to see her and Mike’s relationship in a new light. She’d seen how he treated her, how he made her feel and how, ultimately, Mike had perhaps always loved someone else.

Now when he visits all she can see is how some of the things he does can be so hollow and performative, like he’s playing out a role. He seems to say all the right things, but to Jane they now sound like things straight out of one of the romantic TV shows she’d watch. She used to like that. Jane thought that was what romance and relationships were supposed to be like. But now she has her doubts.

Jane has also noticed how they spend most of their time kissing, they never actually just sit there and talk. It starts feeling to her like he’s avoiding something. And when she tried talking to him about it, to see if this could be fixed. Because maybe the things she’d seen didn’t need to come to fruition, maybe if she applied what she learned she could actually save them.

But, no, Mike was unwilling to talk about anything. He just gets defensive and confused and wants to go back to the easy part, to kissing and not talking about what’s wrong in their relationship.

Jane is coming to a lot of conclusions too. She recalls all the things she’d seen from the future. How the older version of her had chosen to focus on herself, to find who she is as a person and get stronger on her own. That Jane had viewed Mike as a distraction, not the strength that he was to Will.

And she thinks of how Max had been there a lot to help her find who Jane is, not who everyone wanted her to be. She considers doing that now too because she’s getting so tired of Mike all the time. So she starts to subtly avoid him, even when she’s not meeting Will to train or hang out. Even when they do still hang out, she tries to keep the kissing to a minimum and to actually talk and have fun, to be friends with Mike.

Which he eventually noticed. It confused him greatly, why Jane is being so weird and so distant with him. He can’t think of anything he’d done to upset her but she’s still pulling away from him.

Mike had of course gone and complained to Lucas who he thought would know what to do as he had a girlfriend himself, “Do you think El hates me or something? She’s being so weird!”

“Did you make her mad? What did you say to her?” Lucas questions as Will’s pencil skids across his sketchbook.

Mike groans, “Why do you immediately think I did something!?”

“You do kind of tend to stick your foot in your mouth, Wheeler,” Lucas shrugs.

“I do not!” Mike exclaims then turns to Will who is sitting on the floor, “Will, do I really stick my foot in my mouth?”

Will looks like a deer caught in headlights, the topic and its implications skittering unpleasantly across his brain, “Uhhhhh…”

“See! Will doesn’t think so!”

“Ok, fine, whatever, but El’s still avoiding you so something must be wrong,” Lucas acquiesces.

Mike simply groans and throws himself dramatically down onto the couch in his basement. The topic returns to something safer but Will can’t get it out of his head. He cannot stop thinking about the implications of what Jane’s doing. Part of him really feels like it’s all his fault. He's ruined this for her and Mike after all, done exactly what he’d promised to not do.

When they meet again for their next training session, Will is unfocused and Jane takes notice. She calls him out on it, making clear her frustration. Will brings up the conversation Mike and Lucas had, expressing his worry that Jane is avoiding Mike because of Will.

“Will, stop it. No. It has nothing to do with you. I just- after what we saw in your memories…it gave me… perspective. I liked who I was in the future,” Jane explains carefully, looking for the right words, “I thought maybe I could fix things with Mike but he’s so stubborn and stupid. And I think what he said in the future to you was true.”

“Jane…I- I’m so sorry. If I had known we would see that, I wouldn’t have-”

“Will,” Jane’s voice is serious and stern when she cuts him off, “It was unavoidable. It is the truth. Perhaps it is better that we saw it now. I was also right, in the future, I think maybe me and Mike are better as friends. We can stop living a lie.”

Will is speechless, still not fully convinced but he’d dropped it then. He is not sure if the feeling of being a bad friend will go away. Because he still feels like he ruined it for the both of them, for Mike and for Jane, this first foray into romance and relationships.

The end of week three of June is when everyone truly began to notice how Will’s been different. For a while now he’s been acting less like the Will they’ve always known. He’s been somewhat less bubbly and no longer carries the same nervous energy he used to, well, he does but it’s lessened now. His usual demeanour of someone who is constantly apologising for their existence is also dulled.

Now Will looks like he’s carrying something. To be fair, he always has – his father’s abuse, the Upside Down, the possession, the Mind Flayer. But this feels different. New. Like he’s carrying a whole lifetime, something heavier than before.

It makes everyone, especially Mike, take notice and worry. For Mike it’s another point of confusion where he feels lost because he doesn’t know what’s going on, not with his girlfriend and not with his best friend. He used to know everything about Will, used to read him so well. But now it feels like a language he’s forgetting and it scares him.

There’s been moments when one thing or another would happen and the party expected Will to react a certain way, perhaps freak out, complain or something. But, no, instead they get the complete opposite. A non-reaction. His actual reaction would be something entirely non-plussed and honestly, a little depressing.

“Since when has Will been so jaded?” Lucas had turned to Mike during a rare sleepover when Will had been absent from the room, curious if Mike had also noticed.

“What?” Mike asked, a little taken aback.

“Yeah, I mean, have you noticed how he’s been acting lately? Like he’s been mostly the same and fine for the past year, but now suddenly he’s acting like he’s seen the world die.”

“Lucas,” Mike begins, voice low and somewhat steely, “Will has been through more than just about anyone. He has the right to be weird.”

Lucas nods, waving a hand dismissively at Mike, “Yeah, yeah, I know! What I’m getting at is that he’s being extra that. Do you remember what he said yesterday? That was really dark and depressing, man. He’s been different. Don’t tell me you of all people haven’t noticed? You’re the resident Will whisperer!”

Mike scowled but considered the thought because he knew he was right. He had also noticed it. And it really bothered him because both El and Will were acting strange. Why was Will suddenly so much more jaded?

Lucas was right, Will had lived through the worst two years of his life, and yeah, clearly he’d been impacted by it but overall he’d been relatively the same Will. Now it suddenly felt like Will had lived through several more such crises or the literal end of the world. And it worried him, confused him and bothered Mike. He almost wanted to ask Will about it.

But he didn’t.

Everything suddenly felt so unapproachable. Will was pulling away from him, it seemed, because he’d often cancel hangouts for mysterious reasons, leaving Mike alone with Lucas and Max which was kinda gross. And besides, Mike was supposed to focus on El, he had to be a good boyfriend so that she’d stop also being weird around him.

Mike had let it go for the time being.

Chapter Text

It’s the last day of June, one day before Dustin returns from his summer camp. Max Mayfield is on a mission. Her heading is the cabin out in the woods where El lives with Hopper. She had decided to reach out to the girl when she began to notice the strange tension between her and Mike (and Will?). Usually, she was great at reading people and understanding what’s going on. But with these dorks? Max had no clue. She was thoroughly confused.

It almost seemed to her like a love triangle, made all the more strange when Max couldn’t even tell from what point. Like, ok, clearly Will and El had gotten closer, plus he now exclusively referred to her as Jane. Which could indicate something being afoot.

What strikes Max as weird is that she’s always had a suspicion that Will wasn’t all that into girls. Honestly, when she first moved here and met the party, Will had reminded her of her childhood friend Nate, who she knew to be gay. And on top of that Max knew that Will was Mike’s best friend and also simply too kind-hearted to ever betray him like that.

So maybe a ‘no’ for the love triangle in that direction.

Then there was El who Max had noticed was pulling away from Mike for most of June. Which, again, was super confusing and weird, because a little while ago you physically couldn’t pry them apart. So, what gives?

And Mike! God, Mike… For as long as Max has known him, he has been an infuriating, rude and unfathomable idiot. But even he could clearly tell that something was going on here. Sometimes Max thought that Mike felt jealous. The extra confounding part being that neither she nor Mike, it seems, could tell who he was jealous over – El or Will.

So, yeah, Max figured El could use a friend to talk about whatever situation she’s gotten herself into. Maybe all she needed was a girl to help her figure all these boy problems out. She knows that she and El aren’t all that close as El seemed to have something against her when they met and she’d stayed glued to Wheeler every time after that. But Max wants to reach out.

And so here she is, coming up the almost hidden path to the cabin.

What she hadn’t expected to see once she got there was El and Will together. Even less so, to see El levitating a little ways up off the ground, giggling while Will tells her to not squirm so much. And Will standing there, arm outstretched as if it was him who was doing the levitation.

“Holy shit…” Max exhaled breathlessly, “What the actual hell is going on?!”

The pair in front of her looked decently mortified and surprised. Will nearly dropped El before he was able to refocus and levitate her down safely. Now that she had both feet on the ground once again, they both began to exclaim their excuses and explanations, an overlapping, overwhelming duet.

“Ok, ok, jeez! One at a time!” Max sighed.

Will and Jane shared a look, “I think we better go inside…”

They were in Jane’s room, sitting on the floor in a triangle as Will began to explain from the beginning, “On the first day of June I woke from this extremely vivid nightmare, or what I thought was just a nightmare. I tried to ignore it and forget about it for days. And I kept getting these, like, memories, visions, of things that were yet to happen. And then it started to seem like I knew the future.”

Max interrupts, not comprehending where this is going, “Ok, so you’re like a psychic, a fortune teller or something?”

“No, it was more like real memories. And I knew I needed help to figure it out, so I reached out to Jane, hoping she would be able to go into my mind and find what’s going on.”

Then Jane added her two cents, “I helped Will go into his mind and we really did find something. We saw all of Will’s memories.”

“Ok?” Max still didn’t understand.

Will gave her a meaningful look, “Max, we saw my memories from the future. Everything, how it happened when I first lived through it. This summer, the following year… Everything up until November 1987.”

Max had begun to understand what Will was saying, “Do you mean… Are you from the future or something?”

When Jane and Will both nod, she knows they’re not kidding, but something gnaws at her, “Why only until 1987?”

The question sucks the air out of the room. Jane and Will are quiet, avoiding her eyes.

“Will?”

He lifts his gaze and there’s something so painfully raw in it, “Max… Because- because that’s when my memory ended…permanently.”

Oh.

“But… But you’re here now? How is that possible?” Max asks, voice a little tight.

“I don’t know. All I know is that everything ended and then I was waking up back here. Fourteen again. And I had all these horrible memories attacking me randomly.”

Jane then spoke up again, “Me and Will have been trying to use what we learned to fix things this time. One of the things we found out was that Will has powers too.”

Will nodded, “Yeah, so once we unlocked them again, we both began to practice.”

“That’s where you two disappear? That’s why you’ve been weird?”

“We haven’t been weird!” Will defends.

“Oh, yes you have!” Max counters, “Especially El, who’s been ditching Mike constantly, which I support wholeheartedly, by the way. That’s why I came here – to see what was up and maybe help a girl out. But turns out there’s some crazy shit going on. Again! What even happens in the future anyway!?”

“Uhhh…” Jane trails off.

“Well…” so does Will.

They give Max an abridged version of the events that they saw in Will’s memories. Ending with the defeat of Vecna and the Mind Flayer and the subsequent death of Will Byers. They left out most of the personal drama between them and Mike and whatnot, not feeling it their place to say.

“That’s so lame! I nearly died too!?” Max exclaims, disbelief written across her face.

Will and Jane nod sadly, “Yeah… But maybe this time things won’t turn out like that? We have the information now. Maybe we can help…”

“Have you tried changing anything big or important yet?” she asks a valid question.

“Well, no, I guess…”

Jane adds, “We have been focusing on training and getting stronger.”

“Yeah, we’ve been partially successful at unlocking my powers,” Will rubs the back of his neck.

“Partially? You seemed pretty advanced to me!” Max raises a sceptical eyebrow.

“Yes,” Jane nods, “In his memory, Will was able to ‘jack into’ the demogorgons or the hivemind and control them.”

“The problem is that we don’t really have a hivemind strong enough yet or close enough for me to tap into,” Will clarifies, “We’ve been left with whatever else I just apparently had.”

“It’s still sick as hell, dude!” Max leans over to shove his knee, making Will chuckle, “Ok. I’m in!”

“In?” Jane asks.

“Yeah, I’m totally gonna be helping you guys from now on,” Max smirks, “Plus I love knowing something Lucas and Wheeler don’t…”

Jane and Will snicker at Max’s boasting. As the day wears on, Max keeps asking silly little questions about the future, these inconsequential little things. Jane also ends up telling her how she’d like to be called ‘Jane’ instead of ‘El’ and Max takes it in stride immediately and switches over to her preferred name.

The following day they’re all gathered at Dustin’s home to give him a surprise now that he’s finally back from Camp Knowhere. They’re all hiding behind a wall as Jane (and secretly Will too) controls the toys to lead Dustin to them. Apparently it hadn’t been all that good of an idea as Dustin had thought the worst was happening and accidentally attacked Lucas with hairspray. Really, they should have known better, especially after two years of dealing with Upside Down related nightmares.

As Max takes Lucas to rinse his poor eyes, Dustin takes the rest to his room to show them his gadgets and inventions. Mike stands sulking as Jane and Will look on enthusiastically starry-eyed at each object. They take them in their hands and play around together, exchanging laughs and giggles. It’s literally driving Mike up the wall and Dustin wonders when those two became so close.

Nonetheless he’s happy that they’re interested. All that’s left is his greatest invention – Cerebro. Will lights up, asking if it’s a ham radio and Jane mirrors his excitement. She’s also genuinely fascinated by Dustin’s creations, marveling at how he is able to make these complicated little things. Jane thinks Dustin must truly be super smart.

“This is so cool, Dustin! I can’t wait to see Cerebro!” Will exclaims enthusiastically.

“Ugh, yeah, yeah, whatever!” Mike huffs, annoyed, “Can we just go?”

Will shoots him a look, a displeased scrunch of his eyebrows and Mike locks onto his expression. He makes a face as well, eyebrows raised before he mutters a soft ‘sorry’.

Everything is then thrown off its axis when Dustin mentions having a girlfriend. Will and Jane pretend like they’re also in disbelief but only Mike’s is genuine. They know Suzie is actually real.

A little while later, as they’re walking across the grass, Will feels it, the goosebumps raise across his skin. His hand flies to the back of his neck and his eyes find Jane and Max, a silent understanding passing between the three. It has begun. Will felt the hivemind again. The sensation makes his mouth feel dry and his throat close up with nerves. He fights to push it down for now.

When the entire party eventually has made it to the top of the hill where they’ll set up Cerebro, Mike takes Jane’s hand and wants to pull her away to leave early and go kiss or something. But she refuses and says she wants to stay with everyone else. It makes Mike frown, his face scrunching in that confused/disgusted way it usually does. But he doesn’t say anything and remains silently grumbly, as he helps attach the metal parts to one another.

Jane stands with Will, who’d carried parts of the antenna, as they help to assemble it. She is inquisitive about every detail, which Dustin explains when Will begins to feel out of his depth. It’s truly fascinating stuff to Jane and she loves that someone is actually explaining things to her and not treating her like she’s dumb.

When it begins to get dark and Suzie still hasn’t responded, the party suggests they regroup tomorrow and try again. Dustin says he wants to stay longer, in case she does answer after all. They feel conflicted about leaving but eventually decide to do it anyway.

Mike takes Jane’s hand again, “I’m taking El home.”

She gives Will a look before she is promptly pulled away by Mike to where his bike is. Lucas and Max promise to go with Will. Even though he might be perfectly fine on his own, Lucas didn’t want to take any chances, not with Will. Bad things usually end up happening when no one’s looking. And he was so traumatised by Will’s original disappearance, he never wanted to live through that again.

What pisses him off the most is that Mike of all people didn’t seem to share this sentiment anymore. Mike from just last year would’ve insisted he be the one to take Will home and now he’s leaving without a care. All he’s cared about for the past six months is El.

Which Lucas can totally understand! He also has a girlfriend. But why is he able to divide his time between his relationship with Max and his friends? Why can’t Mike? In any case Lucas takes it upon himself to make sure his best friend, Will, and his girlfriend, Max, both make it home safe and sound.

When Mike and Jane reach the cabin he basically strongarms his way into staying longer with her in her room. He once again tries to start kissing but Jane avoids it and tries to talk about Dustin’s creations. Mike gets somewhat annoyed and then Hopper returns home for the evening.

He’s clearly had a few drinks and isn’t in the best mood because he comes to them somewhat angrily. Mike knows Hopper doesn’t like him and like any horrible teenager, he plays into being a little shit.

While there seemed to have been something Hopper wanted to say, he abandons it and tells instead that Mike’s grandma is sick and that his mom wants him home immediately. They go to leave in his car but once they’re there, Hopper essentially threatens Mike into staying away from El for some time. To set some boundaries, have some space. It makes Mike so unbearably angry and he argues with Hopper but eventually the older man’s intimidation tactics work and Mike agrees to do as he says.

The next day Will is over at the cabin again to train with Jane. This Hopper was happy about, because even if he was kind of mad at Joyce for standing him up yesterday, he still had a soft spot for her kids, especially Will. Beyond that, in Hopper’s opinion, Will was generally much better than Wheeler, so he was welcome whenever.

During a small break in Jane and Will’s training she’d mentioned how she tried calling Mike this morning but it seems it’s happening as it did originally and he is avoiding her and lying about Nana or whatever. So she knows Hopper threatened him last night.

“Does it bother you?” Will asked.

Jane shook her head, loose strands of hair flying in her face with the wind, “No. Not really. Besides, I'm having way more fun with you!”

Will is stunned and chokes on his water a little bit, “Really?! Are you sure? Wouldn't you rather spend time with your boyfriend? Aren’t you mad that he’s avoiding you and lying to you?”

“Will…” she whines at him, “We already talked about this! But no, I mean, I am a little mad that he’s lying but… Is it bad that I’m also kind of glad he is staying away?”

“Jane?”

“It’s just that- ever since I saw what the future holds… I saw the truth and now I cannot unsee it. I would rather spend my time training with you, hanging out with you or Max, than believing the lie he wants to convince himself of,” Jane finishes thoughtfully.

Will nods, accepting her feelings, even if he isn’t sure if he will ever shake the guilt.

“I do not think we are romantically compatible. When I saw us in the future, being friends, I wanted that. I wanted to be just his friend. I feel like we liked each other more then than we do now,” Jane rests her chin on her folded arms, “He was my first friend outside the lab, my first boyfriend. I didn’t know anything about the world when he first kissed me. I didn’t know what romance and being in love is supposed to feel like. I thought that what we had was it. But it isn’t. I still don’t know so many things. But I’m sure of this – I do not think I love Mike like a boyfriend. I love him the way I love all my friends.”

Will listens intently, trying to understand where she stands, what she’s going through. But all it reminds him of are his own feelings. He knows for sure that what he feels for Mike is nothing like what he feels for anyone else in his life, not his friends or family. Will knows that to him, Mike Wheeler is his best friend, his first love and very possibly the love of his life. There isn’t any doubt.

And for a long time, Will hadn’t let himself think of it. He’d felt so wrong and so filthy for the way he felt. But then there was the other thing. The thing Will still isn’t allowing himself to think about – how it had seemed that Mike felt the same way about Will, that he also was in love with him.

Because it’s so scary. It terrifies Will that if he lets that thought in, it will break his heart in the end. That Mike had been different. That Mike had been through more. He had grown and changed and simply lived more life. Hell, he’d lived with Will. And a part of Will, the one he doesn’t want to admit to, kind of misses him. Misses the Mike he’d gotten used to. The one who acted like the Mike he had always known. 

Mike at fourteen is different. It had all been so different than where they are now that Will wouldn’t want to presume anything about his feelings. It would be a one way ticket to heartbreak.

Will chances and asks Jane the question that’s burning away in his mind, “Do- do you think you will break up with him?”

There’s a beat of silence where Jane seems to think about it, “Yes. Eventually. I liked who I was without a boyfriend.”

He drops his head, feeling once again so miserably at fault. Realistically, Will knows they might’ve broken up anyway, but he’s always been like this. His whole life he’s felt like he needs to apologise for simply existing.

“Will, you really need to stop beating yourself up. Be kinder to yourself,” Jane takes his hand, “This might actually be for the better. You probably saved us from more heartache. And we didn’t know what we would see when we entered your mind. So. Stop. Blaming. Yourself. Be kind!”

Will chuckles, his voice a little wet and scratchy. He nods at her and pulls her in for a hug.

“Thank you, Jane, you’re the best sister in the world!”

At the affirmation Jane tugs him closer and squeezes him. She really, really loved that she had a brother like Will. He thought she was a good sister! The best sister even!

Across Hawkins Mike Wheeler is spiralling about how his conversation with El went this morning. He’d messed up, he knows and he’d even called to ask for help from Lucas who agreed, of course, and told him to call Will and Dustin too.

When Mike tries to call Will, he gets no response at all. He tries over and over and still nothing. Mike frowns in confusion at the walkie. Will usually always answers immediately. I mean, he should be at home right now, where else would he be?

Lucas arrives fairly quickly as he lives near Mike and when he is told that Dustin said he was busy and Will hasn’t been answering, begins to worry. Because it is weird of Will to not answer for so long.

“Will has been really weird lately, right?” Lucas begins.

Mike pulls a face at the wording, disliking anyone calling Will weird, but agreeing to the sentiment nonetheless. He tries the walkie again and again. They even try from Lucas’ walkie, thinking that maybe something is wrong with Mike’s. But, no, still no response.

Until suddenly they get something on Mike’s walkie, “Yeah?”

It’s Will but he sounds breathless and he’d giggled there at the end before he got cut off. Lucas and Mike exchange a look.

“Why weren’t you answering?” Lucas asks.

“I was busy…” Will says simply, without further elaboration.

Mike frowns, “With what?”

There’s that half-laugh again, “Uh, nothing. Does it matter? What did you guys need?”

“I wanted you to come to my house. We have a situation,” Mike begins before he is cut off by Lucas.

“He upset El and now he needs help with fixing it.”

There’s a long pause after that where Lucas and Mike think they might’ve lost Will again. But then it clicks back to life and Will’s voice floats over the radiowaves, again sounding a little winded and it catches against something jagged in Mike’s chest.

“Uh, sorry, I can’t, I’m, uh, busy today.”

“What’s got you so busy, Byers? Your friend is having girl problems!” Lucas argues.

“I have to go. Over and out,” Will hangs up on them, leaving Lucas and Mike flabbergasted.

What the hell had that been? What in the world was Will busy with that he didn’t have time for his best friends?

Even when they’ve resigned themselves and Lucas begins to try and help Mike with his problems with El, the thoughts of Will won’t leave Mike alone. He can’t focus on El because his mind is entirely overridden by Will. Where is he? What is he doing? Why can’t he hang out? He’d been laughing… Was he with someone? Who the hell was he with? Why were they making Will laugh? Who did they think they were making his Will laugh like that?

Mike’s train of thought is completely derailed at this point. Because how in the hell does he know nothing about his best friend right now? Mike doesn’t know his whereabouts, his company or anything, for that matter. For the last two years Mike had noticed immediately when he didn’t have Will around and he moved heaven and earth to find him, to reach him.

He used to know everything and was able to read Will like an open book. But now it seems like he’s illiterate. What the hell happened? Mike wasn’t even aware of Will insofar to know who he could possibly be with right now. He had no idea. Because it certainly wasn’t Dustin. He was at Scoops Ahoy with Steve or something. Where was Will?

It scared Mike. This not knowing. It made a pit of anxiety pool in his gut. He could feel his hands shaking and his knee bouncing. When he noticed, he had to physically restrain himself to stop.

He needed to know where Will was, who he was with and what he was doing. What made him laugh like that? Mike now realizes he hasn’t heard that sound for months as a result of something he did or said. The shaking returns in double time.

Chapter Text

After sulking for way too long, Mike had finally let Lucas drag him off to the mall. He had suggested that Mike needed to get El a present so that she’d forgive him. Lucas had used the infallible logic that he had a girlfriend and Max got mad at him so often that he was now the expert in apologies. Plus El was also a girl so it should work the same. Mike nodded along but didn’t mention that his mind was still on Will instead of his girlfriend.

He was so absentminded the whole time as they smelled perfume, got spooked by lingerie and looked at expensive jewelry that was way out of his price range. Mike’s pocket money was so measly at this point that he half expected a moth to fly out cartoonishly. So, honestly, it was kind of miserable and they weren’t finding anything. Mike just missed Will.

Meanwhile, Max, Will and Jane had decided to meet up and hang out at the mall too, to show Jane the sights. Will and Max had agreed that Jane needed to see everything there was to do at the mall, let her experience all the fun she’d usually miss out on.

Will just genuinely liked spending time with the girls. They made him feel included and seen. He also liked that they just let him be and exist in exactly the way he was. It was so freeing and liberating.

Jane had been so excited at getting to find herself, like she saw in Will’s memories, that when Max also suggested it, she had been immediately on board. Max had gone on about Jane needing to spend time away from those stupid boys and see what else life had to offer. Will had playfully complained at the ‘stupid boy’ thing, saying how he was a boy too. Max and Jane had waved him off, saying he didn’t count because he was actually cool. 

Apparently the mall was the best place for discoveries. Will wanted to take the bikes there but Max suggested they go on the bus instead. Upon Jane’s bright excitement at getting to go on the bus, it had been decided. The bus it was.

At the mall they perused many stores in the hopes of finding what struck Jane’s fancy. She’d been slightly concerned by how exactly one is supposed to pick out clothes that fit their innermost self. But then after Max and Will reassured her that it was as simple as Jane choosing the things she felt like she liked, it came easy.

She really liked colours and interesting combinations and lots of cute accessories. Jane felt so happy and excited by all the different choices. It was so fun to be in charge of her own style, of her own identity, for once.

Max and Will were simply content to be along for the ride, proud of Jane for trying to find herself. They were also honoured that they could be a part of it.

When they passed the hairdresser, Max had taken one look at Will’s overgrown bowlcut and dragged him inside. She handed him off to the hairdresser, telling Will how he could also use a fresh look. Will had been taken aback but ultimately agreed. His suggestion to the hair-stylist had been something akin to what he had in the future. Still keeping the vestiges of the bowlcut – it was his signature after all – but making it look less dorky with a few layers and a messier style over all.

The girls had been looking through the several catalogues of hairstyles for women, commenting on the weirder or uglier ones. Then, suddenly, Will stepped out and they squealed when they saw him, commenting how amazing he looked. As Will got a little flustered from the attention, the girls were pretending to swoon at his good looks. Because Will really was very cute, that much was obvious to anyone. That paired with the new haircut and he was a knockout.

“Woah, looking good, Byers!” Max exclaimed, “You look so much more grown up too.”

Jane nodded in agreement, “Yes, you look more like the version from your memories. It looks very nice!”

Will blushed a little bashfully at all the attention and compliments, “Guys, it’s not that crazy but, uh, thanks… I also really like it like this.”

“Pictures!” Max exclaimed suddenly, “We need pictures! Lets go!”

She interlocked their elbows and pulled the trio off to where she knew they could get a photoshoot. The photographer excitedly handed them all kinds of props as they posed in silly ways for each shot. They giggled a lot at each other’s tacky looks, falling over themselves until their time was done. There weren’t many pictures in the end but they divided them up between themselves, smiling and savouring the unbridled joy.

They discussed each one all the way to Scoops Ahoy where they got three cones of ice cream, having coordinated who wanted which flavours for maximum efficiency in trying them all. Steve had raised an eyebrow and called them out on the fact that Jane was in public. But they’d giggled and Jane stuck out her tongue playfully before they all sprinted away from him.

They were still catching their breath when they made it outside. Their enjoyment of ice cream was cut short when they noticed Mike and Lucas across the lot, standing by their bikes. Spotting them in turn, Mike’s eyes bugged out and his mouth fell agape.

He rushed up to them and asked El what she was doing here. She wasn’t allowed outside in such a public space, as Hopper worried that the government would find her and want to take her back. Mike pointed out how dangerous it was, much to everyone’s chagrin.

On top of all that was the absolute shock and betrayal of seeing Will here with them. There was also a lot of confusion for Mike. Why the hell was Will with Max and El? Were they hanging out now? Was that who was making Will laugh earlier? He was being so secretive and Mike didn’t understand anything.

“And why are you hanging out with them, Will? Have you been with them the whole time?” it’s a simple question but it almost sounds like Mike’s accusing Will of something.

Max then butts in, not liking his tone, “They have lives outside of you and your bullshit, Wheeler. Will and Jane can discover new things and have fun on their own too. They’re allowed to hang out with whoever they want.”

“Wh- That’s not- Ugh!” Mike is sputtering because he doesn’t know what to say to that.

It’s made worse when he notices Will’s new haircut. He has mixed feelings about it because on the one hand it’s another change that Mike wasn’t there for apparently, that he doesn’t have access to. Like a reminder that Will keeps changing and they’re both changing and it’s all so scary.

What’s even scarier is the other feelings he has about it. That being the simple fact that it looks good, really good. And Mike likes it a whole lot, like, to a concerning degree. And it feels so wrong to think that way because it’s Will.

“That’s not what I’m saying! El shouldn’t be out anyway!” Mike tries to focus on something he feels safer in, “She should be at home!”

Max scowls, “What, like she’s your dog?”

“No!”

“Is Will your dog too? Are they only allowed to hang out with you?” Max pokes his chest.

Mike’s eyes widen further, “What!? NO!”

And Jane is also boiling over at this point, her patience for Mike running low now that she sees him with more context, “Yeah, Mike, are we your dogs?

“Will…” Mike pleads, turning his big, brown eyes on him and Will, truthfully, doesn’t understand what he wants him to do in this situation.

Jane sees it, the final confirmation for her that this is the right choice. Mike is always reaching out for Will, even when he doesn’t realize it and Jane won’t stand here like a fool any longer. She sees the opportunity now, the one she saw in Will’s memories.

“I dump your ass!” Jane drops it like a bomb, punctuating the confrontation.

The face Mike makes is something she and Max will make fun of for hours to come. He doesn’t even look sad or panicked but rather kind of confused and even a little disgusted. Max and Jane begin to take their leave, pulling Will along as well.

“Will!” Mike calls out and the sound of his voice strikes directly in Will’s heart, hearing an entirely different version of Mike wailing at the back of his mind.

So he really can’t help it when he turns back around immediately and locks eyes with him. The look in Mike’s eyes is so intense, so pleading. Max and Lucas are both stunned by Mike’s first instinct being to call out to Will instead of his girlfriend who literally just dumped him. It’s so out of the norm, so strange because why didn’t Mike call out to Jane? Why Will?

And Will almost wants to cave and stay with Mike, give into the feelings bubbling under his skin for the other boy. But then Max pulls him away and onto the bus. The door closes and cuts off the moment like a loose thread.

Mike was a messy torrent of emotions. He was so angry at Max for saying all of what she’d said and for taking Will away from him just now. Partly, he was also confused at the sequence of events that had just taken place, having gotten dumped unexpectedly. But heaviest of all was the looming, terrifying hurt of feeling like he’s losing Will. Not to monsters or parallel dimensions this time but to growing up and growing apart.

For Will the day had been too full of excitement. All the emotions he’d been avoiding since he was unceremoniously dumped here in 1985 were ramming into him from all sides at once. He felt exhausted and told the girls to go on and have the sleepover without him tonight.

Jane had worried and asked Will if he was ok, to which he replied with an honest, tired shrug and left anyway. Max had also noticed the tension and the frankly strange way everything had gone today. They didn’t want to push Will and so told him goodnight, to call if he wanted to talk, and watched him bike off into the evening.

When Will made it home to his room, he laid in his bed and contemplated what to do with the whole Mike situation. Because he still didn’t really understand it. He knows he’s been distant since the beginning of June. Most of the time it hurt to not be near Mike in the ways he’d gotten used to after living in the same house for 18 months.

And things were so different here, in 1985, reminding him just how little he actually knew about what had been going on in Mike’s mind the whole time. Will knows he still loves Mike the same way he had the whole time. Part of him thinks that maybe they could get back to that place where they were, to that relationship.

But Will also realizes that now when he has the opportunity to change a lot of events, he needs to take it. If he doesn’t he’d never forgive himself. And it probably means losing the future he knew before. Perhaps it means losing Mike too.

Is that something he can let go? Is he willing to give up his own chance at love and happiness just to save the world? He’d done it before, hadn’t he?

Will had sort of known, or expected, that his connection to the hivemind could kill him. He didn’t tell anyone, because they wouldn’t be willing to sacrifice someone’s life to save the world. So Will had taken that choice away from them. What was one miserable life in exchange for the whole world?

After coming out in that dreadful way and laying himself bare, he felt some semblance of peace. He could do it.

But then Mike happened. Always Mike. He’d told Will that he loved him. Mike loved Will. And Will wanted to live so badly. He wanted to exist in this new world that had opened up for him.

It was too little, too late.

Now he was here, where he wasn’t sure if Mike felt or would ever feel that way about him. His future was uncertain and terrifying.

As they say, ‘speak of the devil and he shall appear’, Will thought as his walkie began buzzing with the distorted yet unmistakable voice of Mike Wheeler. Will didn’t want to answer, his heart hurting where it beat a frantic rhythm against his ribcage.

But then there was suddenly a series of quick knocks on the front door. When Will went to check it, he saw said boy standing there, hair disheveled like he’d been shoving his hands through it in every direction.

“Will! I’m sorry! I’m sorry if I’ve made you feel left out and like you couldn’t talk to me,” Mike begins his series of increasingly desperate apologies, “I miss you, I miss my best friend… Will, I really wanna spend time with you again, ok? Please?”

Will is completely taken aback and bewildered. This… This hadn’t happened before, not at all. Last time there had been no desperate Mike at his door in the evening, begging for his forgiveness. Last time Will had already been with him and Lucas, pathetically relegated to ‘background character’, fighting to even be noticed.

What the hell?

“Will? I’m sorry, ok?” Mike keeps going when Will’s face remains impassive, “Please, come over tonight! Let's have a sleepover, ok? We’ll all hang out again, you, me and Lucas!”

God, Will wants to keep his composure, to not lose his backbone. But, to be fair, he’s always been unfairly weak for Mike. Will gives in. He acquiesces.

They make their way to Mike’s house on their bikes, Mike chatting excitedly the whole way about one of the most recent movies they’d seen. Will lets him babble as he curses out his own weak resolve. Knowing their connection, Will thinks Mike knows he’s still upset. He knows he’s still in the danger zone because he only talks about the safest, most neutral topics. Mike approaches him like a wild beast, ready to retreat at any sign of danger.

It actually irks Will a little because Mike never used to treat him differently. Not when they’d been kids and Will didn’t talk most of the time. Not when his family life was the opposite of ideal. Certainly not when Will came back from the Upside Down and everyone else was walking on eggshells around him. Mike had remained stubbornly the same as always. So why the hell was he different now?

In the basement they find Lucas who looks a little sheepish. Will figures Mike had said something to him too. A tiny part of him, the one that lived through this the first time, is a little vindicated and happy, especially because of Mike’s apology. Will starts becoming more hopeful about this whole thing.

And it feels like a real sleepover too. They put in a movie and talk nonsense. Later on Will sits at the table, happily sketching a scene from one of the D&D campaigns he’d found lying around down here. He redraws something he did when he was 9 that Mike still has pinned to the wall in the basement.

That was how things were at first. Mike laid on the couch, snacking on some chips, and Lucas perched on the arm of it. The layout of the scene was already sending a small pit of dread to Will’s stomach. Inevitably the topic had strayed from something pleasant to being all about the girls again.

Ok, don’t get Will wrong, he usually wouldn’t mind talking about their friends but this is not what this was. Lucas and Mike are going on and on again about getting them back. Mike laments how Jane broke up with him, not understanding the decision in the least. Will flinches when Lucas calls them a different species, especially when a not-completely-unpleasant tingle on the back of his neck tells him that Jane is watching this as well. He has learned to recognize her presence.

Will is starting to regret coming over after all. Everything is unfolding the way it had last time. Mike is just being gross and so stupid about this whole thing. It’s like every time Will thinks he’s changed the timeline, that he’s done something worthwhile, his progress is reset. The events just snap back into place like an elastic band.

It worries him a lot actually because what if it means the future can’t actually be changed? What if Will’s life truly is supposed to end at just sixteen years old? Having barely gotten anything real out of it. Having barely gotten the love he’d always longed for. Mike’s confession had been the swan song of his life. It was all torn away from him. And it would happen again.

What if this will never end? What if this is a cycle he’s resigned to relive for the rest of eternity. A kind of hell. Or maybe a literal one. A punishment for the love he carried for Mike that others called sinful and wrong. What if they’d been right and this was his eternal damnation?

The thought makes dread pool low in his belly. His eyes have gone out of focus, landing somewhere far off in the distance upon the shelves of cleaning supplies. Will doesn’t understand what he’s even still doing here.

His two best friends continue to be noxious, their voices bleeding into a loose background of inconsequential babble. Will is having an existential crisis and he feels so small and so very alone.

When the darkness finally falls fully upon the sky, Mike and Lucas decide to call it a night. Will lays down in the sleeping bag and pretends.

Pretends that he’s not terrified.

Pretends like he can actually sleep.

Pretends to not be awake when he hears Mike softly call his name over Lucas’ snoring.

Will stays on his side, eyes closed tightly. He thinks Mike probably knows he’s still awake and avoiding him. Will keeps pretending anyway.

That night his sleep doesn’t last past a measly three hours as he stares off into the darkness.

He’s fourteen now.

He will die at sixteen.

Will Byers has a little over two years left to live.

Chapter Text

Will wakes before Lucas and Mike, feeling like he’s been through the wringer with the pitiful three hours of sleep he’d managed. His friends, meanwhile, snooze away peacefully, unaware of the existential dread Will has been feeling for hours.

He chooses to try and remember what was supposed to happen today, as a sort of way to ground himself, and realizes with a soft groan that it was probably the worst day of this summer, at least for Will on an emotional level. It’s the day he finally got fed up with the neglect from his friends and snapped.

It was the day of the fight in the rain with Mike that he’d replayed for years to come.

The resignation weighs heavy in his bones. Will wonders how elastic time truly is. Because so far a lot of things seemed ferociously stubborn to happen anyway, no matter if he attempts to change it. Maybe… Maybe he should test it today. See what happens. See what Mike says to him.

Will steels himself and decides that he’ll set up the doomed campaign as he had last time and make Lucas and Mike play and see what happens. He needs to see if time truly will snap back into place like a stretched rubber band or not. Will they act like jerks again, will Mike follow him up and say that-... say what he did last time.

Part of him isn’t sure if he wants to know, if he’s ready to hear it a second time. But he needs to know. Will has to know.

When he’s done setting up, dressed in his wizards robes, feeling slightly nostalgic for it, Will wakes up his two friends. He smiles as the loud music startles them and they shout at him to turn it down. They moan and complain about how it’s early, already acting just like Will remembers.

Eventually he does get them to play and just like last time it’s half-hearted and steadily grating on Will’s nerves. He’s especially mad at Mike who had begged him yesterday to come over, saying he wanted to spend time with Will. Well, what a big, fat, fucking lie, Will thinks.

And he’s so irritated, remembering how he’d felt the first time. All he had wanted was to just return to the familiar. This boy whose childhood and innocence had been ripped away from him, who’d felt left out and behind everyone else. Will just wanted to feel, for once, for a little bit, that everything was as it had been, that nothing had changed. But no, he couldn’t even have that, he got ignored anyway.

When the phone rings and the boys run to it immediately, Will is just over it. He can’t take this. Honestly, he’s not sure why he even still tries to get them to come back. Perhaps Will is also just letting the timeline pull him along to where it resolutely wants to go.

At Mike and Lucas’ rushed ending he lets himself explode as he did last time. Will throws off his robes and takes his things, not listening to Mike.

“Will, we were just messing around. Let’s finish it for real this time, ok? Right, Lucas?” he nudges him.

“Forget it.” Will bites out.

“Will! C’mon, man!”

“I said forget it, Mike!” Will exclaims, feeling even angrier than last time, “I’m going home.”

He goes to the stairs, telling Lucas to move, as he shoves past him. They know Will is mad, he’s really, truly upset, because he usually never lashes out like this. Will is the calmest person they know. And they’re worried.

Mike recognizes that he’s really fucked up. Will is mad at him. He can’t have that. When Will leaves through the door, Mike also shoves past Lucas and follows him up.

And here they are, Will thinks, back in Mike’s garage, back in the rain. He’s so tired, he’s done with this. He just wants this to be over.

“Will! You can’t leave, it’s raining!” Mike exclaims, “I’m sorry ok! It’s a cool campaign, it’s really cool! We’re just not in the mood right now…”

Those words, those goddamn words, the exact same as from his memory. It makes bile rise in Will’s throat. He wants to go back. Will wants to go back to where he had been, to the time where they were long past this stupid fight. To the Mike that loved him.

“Yeah, Mike, that’s the problem. You’re never in the mood anymore!” Will exclaims, fed up, “You’re ruining the party!”

“I’m not!” Mike exclaims.

“Really? This past year you’ve been completely single-minded. It’s always just El this, El that! You’ve been a bad friend, not just to me but to everyone! Like, where’s Dustin right now?”

At Mike’s stunned silence, Will speaks up again, “See! You don’t know and you don’t care!”

“That’s not- that’s not true!” Mike tries to defend, his eyes big and scared.

“No? Isn’t it, Michael?” Will hisses, maybe a little meanly, “Because you’ve also forgotten about me! You don’t know anything! How hard it’s been, how everything’s been so different! And all I’ve wanted was a measly shred of familiarity while everyone else has been moving on without me. You couldn’t even play D&D for a little bit without being a jerk!”

Will is heaving for breath, his throat pained and tight. His mind is a mess. He’d said way more than last time, but it just all bubbled up. Things he’d never said to Mike but felt all the same, weighty and sensitive in his chest. He’s said too much and he’s so very tired. Will can’t do this.

He steels himself, “Whatever, forget it, Mike… We’re not having this fight again.”

And that makes Mike falter. Again? What does Will mean by ‘again’? As far as he’s aware this is their first time having such a fight. They’ve never even really fought at all. At least seriously, like this.

“What do you mean ‘again’?” he asks, voice tight with hurt and fear.

Will freezes, realizing his mistake. He cannot let Mike know. Not now. Not like this.

“Just forget it. It’s nothing,” he turns away, hand coming to rub his arm.

But Mike can’t. It’s just another thing Mike has no clue about. Another secret Will is keeping. Another thing getting in the way of them.

“No.” Mike digs his heels in, “What does that mean, Will?”

Will grits his teeth, “I said forget it.”

“No!” Mike reacts, his voice coming louder, more desperate, but not mean, never mean, “You’ve been doing this exact thing for a month now. You’ve been pulling away, keeping secrets… You were right, I don’t know a single thing that’s going on with you, Will, because you won’t tell me!”

Will blanches, not having realized that Mike noticed. He noticed that Will had been different.

“You’ve been acting so weird! You’re all jaded now and you’ve apparently been spending time with the girls more. What’s that even about!? Since when are you close with Max and El?”

Will can’t take it and now he gets defensive, “Is that what this is about? That I’ve been spending time with Jane? You’re upset because we’re close now?”

That’s not the point and it’s unfair, Will knows. God, he knows! But he is so done with everything. He just wants to bite, to divert Mike away from the truth that Will is so close to spewing.

“No! Will, what?! This has nothing to do with El!”

Truly, Will doesn’t know why he keeps going like this, like a masochist. Like he’s leading Mike to the very words he doesn’t want to hear, the words that will surgically slice up his insides. Like he wants Mike to say it, to hurt him.

“What? You’re upset because you don’t get to swap spit with her all the time anymore, is that it?!”

He knows what’s coming next. Knew it when he said it. Knew it when he saw the twist in Mike’s face. And he still didn’t stop. Will knew the next line like he was reading a script.

“It’s not my fault you don’t like girls!” Mike exclaims back at him.

And though Will had been expecting it, had already heard it and gotten over it a while ago, it doesn't hurt any less now. Mike’s making this face, shocked by his own words, and all the air rushes out of him. Will even knows his next words too.

“Listen, I’m not trying to be a jerk,” he begins, Will braces himself, “But what did you think, really? That we would never get girlfriends? That we’re just gonna sit in my basement all day and play games for the rest of our lives?”

Will knows his next lines but he doesn’t even have the heart to play his part. Especially because the words that just came out of Mike’s mouth parallel what he’d told him as he was dying in the abyss. He remembers the lovely lies that Mike told him. How he did want to spend the rest of their lives together. To live together, to work together, do every stupid, little thing they wanted. Always the two of them, together. And he cannot stomach it.

Will just stares at Mike, defeated, drained and unbearably sad, “I’m going home.”

He throws his leg over his bike and pedals off, not wanting to hear any more. If the universe wants him to play his part, then he will. He will run away and he will be miserable until his last breath, the moment when Mike finally pulls his head out of his ass.

“Will!” he hears Mike shout but he won’t listen.

Mike is panicking, realizing that Will really is leaving, uncaring of the rain or the cold or anything really. Because he wants to get away from him, from Mike. His heart seizes up, this excruciating feeling like being torn apart. Mike has only felt like this a few times before. This awful stab. Most prominently when he first thought he’d truly lost Will when he watched that foul corpse, that thing, being pulled from the quarry.

He needs to go after him. Things can’t stay like this. They can’t be broken. Mike cannot handle feeling this lost and torn open. He needs to find Will and apologise. Say anything and everything for him to forgive him.

He rushes back inside to grab his raincoat, telling Lucas on the way that he’s going after Will. Lucas had suggested that he go with him but Mike firmly tells him no, he needs to go alone. Then he quickly runs off and hops on his bike. His legs move at an incredible speed, pushing his scrawny body to its limits just to reach Will.

Because he’s never been able to stomach the thought of Will being upset with him. It leaves a giant gaping chasm where his heart and lungs should be. This giant, painful, empty cavity that screams and tears at him.

When Mike reaches the Byers’ house he bangs desperately on the door, hoping and praying that Will is here.

“Will! I’m sorry, alright?! I was being a total asshole and a jerk! Please, just open the door so we can talk!” Mike screams, voice hoarse and breathless.

Unlike last time, Will is at home to hear him. He’d chosen to not go to Castle Byers this time, not wanting to destroy it a second time. It had hurt so much the first time and even more so when he revisited it after returning to Hawkins and finding the pathetic ruins.

He hears Mike’s screaming, pained and desperate. Will is so weak, so very weak for Mike. And he goes to the door and pulls it open, faced with his best friend looking soaked to the bone, hair plastered to his forehead, even as he wore a raincoat. Will can’t remember the last time he’s seen Mike this desperate and messy.

Mike looks at Will in turn, this rumpled, waterlogged boy, with shiny red-rimmed eyes. It breaks Mike’s heart clean in half. And it’s all his fault. He’d made Will cry, he’d caused him pain. What was wrong with him? He was supposed to protect Will, to never make him sad or hurt.

“Will! I’m so sorry! God, I’m so sorry, ok!” Mike begins his flurry of apologies, “It’s my fault, ok, all my fault! You’re right! I have been an asshole and I’ve been a bad friend! I’m sorry!”

Will is in disbelief, he thinks Mike might be crying now too, his voice shaking and choked up. Is this what would’ve happened if he’d been home last time?

“And I should’ve spent more time with you, instead of running off to make out with El! I was so stupid, Will! And it was so shitty of me, what I said. I shouldn’t have said it because it’s mean and it’s not true and I’m sorry, ok!” Mike is rambling and falling apart, “And I lied! Because I do want to play D&D with you! I do! I will always wanna spend time with you, Will! I swear!”

Will is absolutely stunned into silence. His brain cannot keep up with what’s going on. All the things Mike is saying. All the apologies and admissions. This is different. Did Will-... did he just change something after all?

And, oh God, Mike is looking at him, tears brimming in his eyes, his lip trembling and Will hasn’t said a word. He should probably say something. Anything.

“I- Mike… Shit,” Will swears when his hand catches on the tears that had apparently been tracking down his own cheeks.

“I’m sorry too,” he lands on, “I’m sorry, Mike. It wasn’t fair of me either… I- you’re right. I have been pulling away. But, Mike, I-”

Will had begun to think that maybe he should tell Mike the truth. He’s his best friend in the world, someone who’s always understood him like no other. Mike would get it, he’d accept the truth, accept him, he might even be ok with everything else too. Perhaps he could even help save everything?

But then Will felt it, cutting off his sentence, cleaving between the words and syllables. That prickle of fear and unease on the back of his neck. He brings his hand up to the spot where goosebumps have formed.

“Will?” Mike asks, worried, seeing what Will is doing, “What is it? What’s wrong?”

He locks his eyes with Mike, wide and fearful, “It- it’s him. He’s back. The Mind Flayer is back, Mike.”

A choked sound breaks past his lips and his heart is beating so fast and hard he fears it will burst from his chest. Because it’s so much and it’s triggering Will’s memories of dying. That sticky feeling, like sinking into a bog. And then memories from when he’d been just thirteen and stared up at a giant creature made from shadows and smoke. Felt it looking at him like the ant he was.

But then the torment is suddenly torn through and dissipated. Will feels arms around him, holding him and pushing him into the fabric of a yellow shirt. It’s Mike. He’s… He’s hugging Will.

Mike is hugging Will.

“Mike…” Will speaks breathlessly.

“It’s ok, Will. It’ll be ok, we’ll figure it out!” Mike soothes him.

As much as Will wants to savor this, the contact, the affection he’d been missing for so very long, he knows they have to get a move on. The Mind Flayer is officially back. The horrors have begun and Will feels nauseous.

He pulls away from Mike, reluctantly, and tells him that they should go and tell everyone else about the crisis. Mike had nodded but his mind was still half on the few moments of peace he’d felt by holding Will. The feeling of absolute rightness. He hadn’t wanted to part, if he’s being honest. A large part of Mike wanted to just stay there, holding Will, and ignore the headache and the horrors that he knew awaited them beyond the door.

On their way to rush back to the Wheeler house to tell Lucas about the developments and call everyone else, Will and Mike had bumped into Jane and Max on her bike. Jane had jumped off and ran towards them and for a split second Mike thought she was barrelling at him. Instead she crashed into Will, arms around him.

“Will! Are you ok!? Did you feel him?” she exclaimed as she searched his face.

Will nodded, “Yeah, I got that feeling on the back of my neck. Jane, he’s back. It’s starting…”

“I know, me and Max found something wrong with Billy,” she explained.

Max also joined them, “We saw him. There’s something very, very wrong.”

Mike felt like he had whiplash from the events. He couldn’t understand why Jane had known that Will felt the Mind Flayer, nor the intense worry for him she showed. Really, when had those two gotten so close? Last thing Mike knew was that Will and El were friendly but they never really talked to each other. Now suddenly they were acting like this?

And again he felt like something was flying over his head. Mike hated how out of the loop he was. He stepped back into the conversation just then.

“We need to get to my house, Lucas is there. If we’re gonna do something, we’ll need all of us together,” Mike said matter-of-fact.

So they agreed and sped away to the Wheeler house where they all met in the basement. Jane and Max were helping each other dry off in the basement bathroom while Mike had led Will upstairs to his room. He rifled through his closet, finding something dry for the both of them.

“Uh, here, Will. These shouldn’t be too big on you,” Mike handed him a pile of his own clothes, feeling strangely shy.

“Thanks, Mike. I’ll go change,” Will sighed and left for the upstairs bathroom.

Mike stayed to change too and tried to brush aside whatever strange feeling had invaded his chest. When he was done he thundered down the steps to the basement and found everyone already there, waiting. His eyes landed on Will automatically, appreciating the way he looked wearing his clothes. Mike had to physically tear himself away to stop staring. Instead he sat down with everyone else as they began to discuss what’s going on.

“So, El, what did you see when you were spying on Billy?” Lucas asked.

“He was doing something strange. He was doing something to Heather. He saw me, in my mind-place,” Jane explained shortly.

Then Max jumped in, “Then me and Jane went to her house to check on her. And we found her and Billy having dinner with her family. He was acting super weird… The whole situation felt off.”

“And it happened at the same time as when Will felt the Mind Flayer,” Mike added, pursing his lips, “This doesn’t make sense.”

While Lucas and Mike feel unsure about what exactly is happening, the other three know exactly what’s happening. Max, Jane and Will know that Billy is possessed. The only thing they can’t figure out right now is how to explain everything to the others without giving away too much.

“What was I like last year, when I was possessed?” Will decided to ask as a means of leading them to the conclusion.

The question made Mike’s eyes bug out, as he whipped his head around to look at him. Why would Will bring that up? Mike hated thinking about that time, remembering how terrified he’d been the whole time. How much he worried for him, scared out of his mind that he’d never get his Will back. He didn’t want to recollect it but it seems he has to.

So it was Mike who answered, as he’d been the only one there to really experience it, “You were really out of it. Hated light and heat. And it seemed like you were struggling to remember things. Like you were operating on a barely understood checklist of who people were and what was going on. Plus you could feel anything that happened to any part of the hivemind.”

Will nodded, detesting his connection to the it, even now, “Exactly. And you guys said Billy was acting weird too, that you found ice in the bathtub and blood everywhere…”

“Woah! Are you suggesting that Billy’s being possessed by the Mind Flayer?” Lucas began, “That’s not possible! El closed the gate!”

Will and Jane shared a look before Will spoke up again, “She did. But what if the part of it that was in me got stuck out here and has been only growing stronger the whole time…”

Max tilted her head in agreement, “It could be possible.”

“Heather was also being weird and Billy did something to her,” Jane mentioned.

Will then jumped in, “So it looks like it’s spreading.”

“You mean the Mind Flayer can possess more than one person now?!” Lucas exclaims.

Jane and Will nod.

“Shit.” Lucas deadpans, “So it could possess everyone in town…”

“Well, then, if Billy really is possessed, we need a way to check if it’s true and maybe get it out of him,” Mike looked uncomfortable but knew that if Will had a feeling about the possession theory, he would listen to him.

“Right. We need to burn it out of him, with heat, like we did last time,” Will spoke, remembering vividly the sensation of being burned alive when they were trying to get the Mind Flayer out.

The party all agreed unanimously and decided to think up some ideas overnight, as they couldn’t really do much right now. And today had taken such a toll on everyone, they really needed a break. Deciding to get some sleep, they settled down all over the basement.

Will struggles to sleep once again as he lays in the sleeping bag that Mike always kept here as a spare for him. He hasn’t been able to stop thinking about everything that’s going on, that’s happened. On the one hand, he’s preoccupied by thoughts of the Mind Flayer and what that whole situation entails. And on the other hand he just cannot fathom what the hell that whole thing with Mike had been.

For the longest time he’d convinced himself that nothing could be changed, that Will was supposed to suffer for several more years. But now… Well, now Mike had torn it all down with everything he’d said and done after their fight. Because it hadn’t happened that way before. Will had actually caused a change to happen. A minor one, in the grand scheme of things, but a change nonetheless.

He figures his mind must be incredibly loud right now, because Jane pokes him from her spot nearby, where she’s curled up with Max. It had startled him out of his spiral and he’d nearly yelped and woken everyone else up too.

“Jane!” he hissed at her, “You scared me!”

He saw her face then, a small smirk playing on her lips. It soon eases into a slightly worried frown.

“Are you ok?” she asks.

Will wants to say yes, that he’s fine. But he knows better, knows she’d be able to read him like an open book. And so he waves her over and motions that they should get up and go talk somewhere else.

They tip toe away and up the stairs into the Wheeler kitchen. Will grabs himself and Jane a glass of water. Settling down by the counter, they at first listen to the tap drip, drip, drip into the sink. The silence is wonderfully calming, yet tense and foreboding.

“Will, how are you feeling?” she had asked, breaking the silence.

He sighs deeply, “I- I don’t know… I guess I’m nervous about everything that’s to come…”

Jane sees that there’s something more, “You had the fight with Mike, didn’t you? Was he… was he still mean?”

Will feels the constricting feeling close around his throat, unable to speak out loud, so he simply nods yes. Jane grumbles, upset at Mike for what he’d done. She remembers what she saw in Will’s memories, how much it impacted him, how it hurt him. She was so mad at him then and, somehow, even more now.

“Don’t worry, Will, he’ll get better. You already know. Mike will learn.”

He smiles weakly, appreciating the comfort, “That’s just the thing, Jane, by then it will be too late anyway…”

“But you know now! You know how he feels! You can do something, help him along quicker!” she exclaims.

Will shakes his head, “No. No, I can’t do that. I can’t rush something like that Jane, I could hurt him.”

Her brow is furrowed but Will then adds, softer, “Besides, that was then. Mike might not even feel that way right now. Everything could be different and he might never feel that way for me.”

“Will, you are being ridiculous. You’re just scared,” Jane calls him out, feeling frustrated by his attitude.

“It doesn’t even matter right now!” Will adds, wanting to close the conversation, lest he get too hopeful for something as wonderful as love, “We should be focusing on what’s going on.”

“Fine,” she lets him drop it, switching gears, “Ok, so what do we know?”

“Billy is definitely possessed.”

“Right. And we need to heat him up to make the Mind Flayer activate…” Jane remembers from Will’s memories.

They’d decided that they’d currently follow the events as they were, not seeing what they could change outright without causing a horrible mess. Even a minor change could make the whole situation spiral out of control and make everything worse than it would’ve been. Right now they have the advantage of foresight (or hindsight? it’s really confusing Will).

Jane hums thoughtfully, “I think you should try to use your powers tomorrow, when we have Billy trapped.”

“What, like jack into the hivemind through him?”

“Yes. It’s the closest you will have been to the hivemind since you arrived here. Maybe you can find something out, or maybe just practice,” Jane suggests thoughtfully.

Will considers it. She’s right, of course, so far they haven’t been able to do anything regarding Will’s powers in that specific area, with the parts of him that are connected to the hive. Now that everything had begun and they knew for certain that Billy was part of the hivemind, Will should at least try.

“But we’ve gotta be careful. Billy hurt you last time. Badly. Plus we have no idea what could happen, what I could get into. And I don’t want anyone else to find out that I have powers too,” Will worried out loud to Jane.

She laid a hand on his arm, soothing him, “I know. We will be careful. Do not push too much if it feels wrong. I do not want you to be hurt.”

Will draws her into a hug, this sister he’d missed so dearly, “Please don’t get hurt either, ok? I care a lot about you, Jane.”

She hugged him back, happy and content, knowing she indeed has a brother in Will. Jane nods into his shoulder, promising to also stay safe. They would take care of each other no matter what.

When morning breaks, Mike is up and at it with a grand idea. The pool! They will use the pool’s sauna on Billy. He’d been so excited about his plan, that Jane and Will didn’t have it in them to complain about the early hour. After all, they had barely slept the night before and Will only had three hours the night before that.

And so, after whatever breakfast they could scrounge up, the party set off on their bikes to the Hawkins Community Pool. There they at first spied on Billy for most of the day, seeing how he was acting relatively normally, except, as Lucas pointed out, he was wearing a shirt and not showing off the whole time. So, obviously, he was super weird.

“We need to wait until the pool closes, get his attention and trap him,” Mike laid out the plan.

They all nodded in acknowledgement and went inside to begin setting up. Everyone is doing their own thing, gathering supplies and whatever they might need for their plan. Jane is alone in the storage room, taking the CPR dummy down from the shelf, when Mike rushes over and helps her. He holds it in his arms and tries to make a joke, like it’s a puppet.

Jane is having none of it, staring blankly at Mike. She’s mad at what he’s trying to do – pretending like nothing is wrong, like he hasn’t been acting like a huge idiot the whole time. Mike is trying to ignore the problem and just skip over the hard parts, going back to joking around. But she won’t let him because she is mad at him, not so much for the lying to her thing, but for how he’s been acting towards her and Will in general this whole time.

She lets him take the dummy and goes to turn around and leave, “You need to focus on the plan, Mike. Go talk to Will instead.”

Mike stares as she leaves him alone in the space. He’s stricken by her blunt dismissal and the fact that it hadn’t even seemed like she was just being petty. El genuinely didn’t want to be around him. And the weirdest part of all, Mike felt no urge to chase her. Instead he quite liked the idea she’d suggested. So he went to find Will.

“Hey, Will,” he greets the boy who holds the chains for the door.

Will’s head pops up in mild surprise, “Oh! Hey, Mike.”

“Could you help me set up the dummy?”

“Sure, not that it’s a two man job,” Will mutters off-handedly.

As they work together, Will stays silent. He knows they sorta made up, but the apology had been interrupted and last night Will realized what he’d been about to tell Mike. Will doesn’t like keeping things from Mike, but he can’t bear having to explain everything, knowing that once he started, he wouldn’t stop.

Mike has no such inhibitions and begins to chatter immediately, “Listen, Will, I just wanted to say I’m sorry, again, for what happened yesterday. I swear I didn’t mean all those shitty things I said.”

It’s ironic how Mike doesn’t even fully notice how it’s always been easier to apologise and own up to his mistakes with Will. He couldn’t do it when he knew El was mad. He still hadn’t tried to apologize for lying to her. But with Will it was like a violent need to fix things.

And he keeps going, rambling on and on about how he’s sorry and he’s been a major asshole. It’s driving Will crazy because he really feels this close to spewing his guts. Both metaphorically by telling him the truth and literally judging by the nausea that’s been building in his throat.

“Mike,” he calls, “It’s ok, all right? Just- just stop, please… We need to focus on setting everything up. This is important.”

“Right, yeah, I know,” he shrugs in that almost carefree Mike Wheeler way, completely single-minded, “But I feel like this is important too.”

“Ok, and we can talk about it after everything’s over, ok, Mike? Just- Just not now,” Will says sort of exasperated.

Mike frowns, looking down at the dummy he’s still holding onto, “Sure, ok, um, yeah… Later. We can talk later.”

When Will sighs in relief and goes back to work silently, Mike feels a little smile grow on his lips. Later. Will said they’d talk more later. Maybe he’d finally understand what’s been going on…

Evening draws in a few nerve-wracking hours and they all stand in their positions, waiting for Billy to arrive. He’s approaching the men’s changing rooms, when Mike speaks into a walkie, taunting him and urging him to come find him. Billy follows his voice around, telling him to get out and responding to the childish taunting. He’s becoming increasingly irritated at them, following the path of their trap perfectly. It’s like trapping an animal.

He seems to think he’s won when he spots ‘Mike’ in the sauna and corners him. Billy attacks, ready to hurt him but instead finds the CPR dummy in place of a person. He’s confused and looks around wildly until the door slams shut on him thanks to Jane’s powers.

They all rush in to lock him in. Will attaches the chains, Max shoving in the metal rod. It seems like it’s holding him in and they turn up the heat. He goes on about how it isn’t funny and they need to let him out.

Billy thrashes around angrily, slamming against the door. It seems to hold and they wait for the heat to take effect. But three of them know what’s going to happen. They know that Billy can’t be held for long and they just prepare for the worst.

Billy shouts at them, screams at them for trapping him. It’s horrible and Max begins to lose her cool too. The sympathetic part of her tries to soothe Billy, telling him it will be ok, he will be ok soon. She hopes it works quickly because right now it feels like they’re killing him. 

Will and Jane lock eyes, a silent question passing between them. He subtly shakes his head, saying that he can’t feel it yet. Billy slides down the door, the heat is getting to him, agonizing and painful. He sobs on the ground.

“I didn’t mean to do it, Max, I swear,” Billy cries and it tugs at Max’s heartstrings, “He made me do it.”

Mike’s breath catches in his lungs at the familiar sentence. Max can’t stand hearing this but knows for a fact that Billy is possessed, she trusts what Jane and Will had told her. So she tells them to crank it further.

There’s a silent moment where they think something might be happening. But then Will feels it. The horrible, disgusting feeling down his spine, the goosebumps on the back of his neck. He raises his palm to the spot and looks to his side, locking eyes with Mike. They stare at each other and Mike seems to understand exactly what’s going on, though Will feels almost flustered by the look he’s giving him.

He still doesn’t tear his eyes away when he calmly and forebodingly says, “Max… Get away from the door.”

“What?” Max is so lost in the moment that she doesn’t understand.

“Max! Get away from the door!” Mike exclaims, finally tearing his eyes away from Will.

Max gasps in surprise as Billy jumps up and breaks the glass on the door. His hand came out and felt around for the restraints. They all back away in fear, Jane coming to stand protectively at the front. Will had tried to as well, but she shot him a warning look, to stay back and do as they agreed.

And then Billy broke out through the door and ran straight to Jane. She was trying to use her powers and everyone was trying to defend themselves as well. But in the chaos of it all Billy got the better of them and caught her.

He now holds Jane in his grasp, choking her and raising her off the ground. They’re all terrified, not knowing what to do to help. Jane is struggling against him, making gasping sounds, hands fumbling to release her. But then she looks straight at Will from the corner of her eye, reminding him of what they’d talked about last night.

Will feels nervous about it all but knows that this is their opportunity, that Jane is giving him this window. He can’t let her down now. So Will reaches out and tries to make contact with the hivemind.

There!

He feels it. That familiar, disgusting feeling from the future, and he sees from the point of view of Billy. Will sees Jane through his eyes. He attempts to take control now, to find the strings to the marionette and free Jane.

But he can’t. It almost feels like there’s a block on it, preventing Will from taking over. Like he’s locked out.

And it seems like Billy has felt Will’s presence in his mind. Will watches through Billy’s eyes as he turns his sight away from Jane and over to where he stands by the wall next to Mike. He’s staring straight at Will and the vision overlaps with his own. One moment he’s seeing Billy standing in front of him, still choking Jane, and the next he’s watching himself through the eyes of another.

Will feels so very disoriented, he might throw up.

Suddenly he’s forced out of the connection. Now he sees solely through his own eyes as Billy stares at Will with this intense, burning look. Something about it is so horribly familiar to Will. A look that isn’t just Billy staring at him. It doesn’t even feel exactly like the Mind Flayer either.

Oh.

Oh, no.

Billy lets go of Jane then, dropping her to the ground like a sack of nothing. He turns fully to Will now, eyes locked together. Will cannot look away, he’s shaking and he’s frozen, startled to the very core.

Then Billy takes a step towards him, just the one, and says in that sickeningly familiar low growl, “William…”

Will cannot move. His limbs are locked up and his mind empty besides the spine-chilling realization over whose attention he’s caught.

It can’t be. Not now. Not this early. This… this was never supposed to happen. They’ve made a horrible mistake.

Is it really him? Is it really Vecna? Has he really seen Will?

He’s shaking like a leaf where he stands next to Mike. Everyone is also frozen in place and confused at the turn of events.

But then Jane sits up, having heard how Billy called out to Will. She’d been reminded of the times she’d heard the same exact call in Will’s memories. That disgusting, growly thing.

She won’t let Will get hurt. She won’t let this happen. Not to her brother.

Jane uses whatever strength she has left and with her powers sends Billy flying through the nearest wall. He goes through it, through the brick, and into the night air. It had been enough to end the tense moment and Billy quickly decides to run and lick his wounds.

He disappears into the night. But the memory and shock of what exactly just took place remains.

Chapter Text

Will stares off through the broken wall into the night where Billy had run off, shaking as he stands by the opposite wall. The adrenaline from locking eyes with something he shouldn't have quickly drains out of Will, leaving behind only an empty chill in his bones. He can’t stand any longer, his legs giving way beneath him and Will collapses to the floor, hitting his knees.

Jane, tired and terrified as well, shuffles across the floor to where Will is, Mike hovering above him and also looking rattled. Her hand reaches out as soon as she ‘s close enough and rests on Will’s arm, moving until they’re wrapped in each other’s embrace. She can feel Will quivering like a leaf.

“It’s ok, Will, it’s ok, he’s gone now. You’re safe now,” she soothes her brother as he clings to her.

Trying desperately to calm him down, Jane can’t shake the sound of that growl calling out ‘William’. Hideous, horrible visions of a long, sinuous claw reaching out to graze Will’s cheek, flickering between a small boy and an older Will. She barely realizes she’s also shaking with fear that they could have gotten the attention of something so dangerous. Someone who once promised Will that they’d do wonderful, beautiful things together, promised to use him for his own ambitions.

Jane clutches Will tighter to prove to him and herself that Will would never be used like that, they’d never let him get taken again. Will holds on to her as well, gasping for breath.

The others watch the scene unfolding, confused, but realizing that something improbably wrong had just happened. They found it truly bizarre how Billy lost interest in Jane when his eyes locked onto Will in that particular way. It hadn’t felt like it had even been Billy at all in that moment, not a single shred of him. That had been something else entirely. Something that recognized Will, saw something that they didn’t understand.

Mike still hovered by the duo clutching each other on the floor, looking like they would mold into one any moment. He was frightened. So very distraught that Will was once again being dragged into all of this. That this was another year where he couldn’t catch a break from Upside Down related misery. There is always a target on Will’s back, Mike realizes, and it makes him so scared that he could lose Will again.

And it irks him that after whatever just happened Will sought comfort in El while Mike had been closer, already hovering over him. All he’d have to do was reach out. Instead he was now wrapped in El’s arms as she effectively calmed him down. And what was that about? How did she do that? Only Mike used to be able to do that so easily for Will.

Wait? Was he… jealous of El? The possessiveness and protectiveness surely indicated so. But it was so ridiculous! He should be jealous of Will, right?! That he’s getting the attention of Mike’s girl-.... ex-girlfriend. But he’s not. Mike is distinctly jealous that El gets to comfort Will instead of him.

His ill-timed train of thought is interrupted when Will begins to detangle from Jane and they get up from the floor. Lucas is immediately upon Will to interrogate him on what that had been. Why had Billy acted that way? Mike joins in, just as freaked out and curious about what Will knew about it.

But Will is so out of it still, he can’t even speak. Instead he holds onto Jane and gives her a small look which she understands and begins to mutely lead him away from the scene, both leaning on each other for support. The others follow and keep throwing questions and theories at them. Max then intervenes and tells them to shut up.

“Can’t you see now’s not the time, you idiots?!” she exclaims, moving to help support a weak Jane.

They take a better look at Will and Jane and how absolutely exhausted and shaken they are and ease off, with Lucas muttering, “Sorry…”

Outside they quickly decide to go and regroup in the Wheelers’ basement, their usual base of operations. Max takes Jane on her bike, telling her to hold on tight, hoping the other girl won’t fall off from how drained she felt. Will was about to get on his own bike too but the shakiness in his hands and legs was so obvious, that the whole thing wobbled and he fought to pull himself together.

“Will,” Mike called out, walking up to him, “C’mon, I’ll take you.”

“It’s fine, Mike,” Will muttered under his nose.

“No, seriously, you look like you’ll fall off your bike. I don’t want you to get hurt…” Mike reiterates adamantly but softly, using his ‘Will voice’.

Will considers his options – struggle on the bike or accept Mike’s awfully kind offer. He was right, of course, Will felt quite faint and disoriented still. But the thought of being so close to him, of Mike taking care of him in this way, it made his heart burst in his chest and a part of him wanted to cry.

In the end Will acquiesced and joined Mike on his bike, barely holding on by his shoulders until Mike spoke up, “Will, you’ll fall off like this. C’mon, hold on tighter.”

Will heaved a long-suffering sigh, convinced that the universe truly had a personal vendetta against him and wound his arms around Mike’s middle. He felt his best friend tense up momentarily but soon relax as they all set off to Mike’s house.

At the house, Will sat on the couch, eyes staring off into space, worrying over the recent events. He could barely hear or perceive what was going on around him. Vaguely, he thinks Mike and Lucas are going on and on again about what had happened.

“Clearly Billy really is possessed!” Mike exclaimed, “That must mean that it was the Mind Flayer right?”

Lucas nodded, “Right. It would make sense… Maybe it recognized Will from last year. And maybe it wants to use Will again.”

“Yes! That makes sense… Will, what do you think?” Mike turned to him, eyes searching Will’s face for anything.

He figures Mike and Lucas have a point, they’re probably close to the truth. But Will can’t even string together a full thought or explain what he thinks without dropping the entire lore. So he stays silent, hoping Mike will for once be unable to read him.

Thankfully, Max interrupts again, “Would you get off his case, Wheeler!? Look at him! He’s not even in this plane of reality right now and you’re trying to drop even more on him?”

That gets on Mike’s nerves and he scowls at the redhead, “What do you even know!? You barely even know Will!”

“I know him better than you if even I can notice that he’s not feeling well enough right now to relive all his traumas for your theories!” Max gestures to Will on the couch, making Mike recoil and scoff.

Who did Max think she was? She doesn’t even know Will like Mike knows him! They barely talked all year and only just started actually hanging out. Mike’s known him the longest. He’s known Will since they were five, for God’s sake! If there’s anyone here who is a Will-expert it would be him, not Max fucking Mayfield!

“Oh come on! That’s not- That’s not what I’m trying to do! I just want to help!”

“Help? By doing what exactly, Wheeler? Stressing him out further?!”

They continued to argue as Jane felt better after grabbing a sugary snack and went over to where Will sat. She stood before him and placed her hand on his shoulder, a grounding gesture. It made Will exhale a small breath and finally move his eyes to her face, his mind present again.

“Jane?” his voice was small and weary, “What is it?”

“You need to sleep,” Jane stated simply, recognizing that his sleep deprivation wasn’t helping him to not spiral.

“I-” Will began and promptly cut himself off when he was met with the serious look in Jane’s eyes, “...ok.”

She squeezed his shoulder and gave him a small smile. Will moved to stand up from the couch finally, drawing the attention of the other three, two of whom were still engaged in an argument.

“I’m going to go to sleep,” Will stated quietly yet resolutely, leaving no room for argument, “You guys better stop arguing and let me rest.”

Mike’s eyes softened as he took in the tiredness weighing Will down, bags under his eyes. He made his way over, standing close to Will.

“Of course, Will,” Mike began, “Hey, why don’t you go upstairs to my room, ok? It’ll be more comfortable and quiet there.”

Will almost wanted to say no but then the thought of sleeping in an actual bed and not on the floor in a sleeping bag or on the lumpy couch sounded far too good. He smiled privately at Mike and took him up on the offer. Except…

“Jane, you should come too. You need a good rest as well, you used so much of your powers,” Will mentioned and then looked back at Mike, “Is that ok, Mike? Do you mind if we both sleep upstairs tonight?”

Jane was surprised by Will’s offer and it seems so was Mike, neither having expected it. But Jane nodded, recognizing the exhaustion in her own bones as well. She would need all the energy she could get if things were about to escalate. Mike on the other hand desperately wanted to say no, because, what? He was supposed to be ok with his ex-girlfriend and best friend sleeping in his bed together? That’s… that sounded crazy!

But then again, he saw how genuinely tired they were and the part of him that cared deeply for them took the foreground and he nodded. Of course they could…

Will and El grinned thankfully at him and Mike smiled as well, beginning to lead them upstairs. Mike dug through his closet again and found them some pajamas to wear for the night. Then, when they were settling in, he said goodnight and went back downstairs to the basement.

Lucas was immediately on his case about not asking El to stay with him instead. Did he not want to get back together with her? This would have been a golden opportunity! Mike only now realized that neither the thought, nor the need to get El back had crossed his mind for nearly the whole day. Instead, he realizes, his mind has been entirely focused on Will and his well-being.

There was something deeply wrong with him, Mike thought, as he settled into Will’s abandoned sleeping bag on the floor.

Hours later, in the deep hours of night where time bleeds together like an impressionist painting, Will had woken a little abruptly. He could feel the warmth of Jane sleeping next to him, hopefully getting a good rest before they have their next eventful day.

The sheets and pillow under his head still smelled like Mike and Will felt comforted by it, his mind reminiscing on the year and some change he’d spent living with the Wheelers. Will didn’t stay with Mike in his room but sometimes when the nightmares became too much, Mike would invite Will upstairs and they’d lay right here, talking into the early morning.

That was a different life, Will had to remind himself. It wasn’t true anymore, not for anyone besides Will. It was only a memory and, sorrowfully, Will thought, that may as well have been a dream he made up.

Will’s eyes flicked over to the faint glow of the digital alarm clock on Mike’s nightstand and saw that it was 4AM at this point. He was thankful, realizing he’d at least slept for five hours tonight which was a vast improvement upon the three or less hours he’d gotten in days prior. Now that he tried to go back to sleep again, Will found himself unable. Not wanting to wake Jane with his tossing and turning, Will carefully shuffled out of the bed and tip-toed the familiar route to the Wheeler’s upstairs bathroom.

In the mirror he was struck by how he looked. Part of him still clung to the image of his older self, taller and less awkward looking. The one thing that he felt still matched that version of him was his hairstyle and tired hazel-green eyes. Will sighed and splashed water in his face, rubbing his eyes, before returning to Mike’s bedroom.

When he entered he heard the soft voice of Jane, calling out groggily, “Will?”

“Oh, Jane, I’m sorry, I woke you,” Will apologised as he made his way back to the bed, sitting on the edge.

“No, it’s ok,” Jane sat up as well.

Will grinned wryly at her, “God, look at our horrible sleep schedules…”

Jane giggled lowly, titling her head in acknowledgement but then, “What is wrong?”

“I just couldn’t fall back asleep…” Will began, shifting his hand through his sleep-mussed hair, “I guess I’ve been busy thinking about everything that happened. I’m worried.”

Jane nodded, “I am too. It was so scary when I saw Billy turn to you and speak to you. I remembered everything we saw. Do you think it really could have been Vecna?”

“It- it seemed like him, it felt like him,” Will replied, voice shaky with the lump building in his throat, “I- I don’t know. When I was in Billy’s mind it felt like someone wasn’t letting me take control. It can’t have just been the Mind Flayer…”

She hummed in thought, “Perhaps it was just a quick glimpse? When I threw Billy out it looked like it was him again. Maybe Vecna is still too weak to come through fully?”

She was being hopeful by considering that since Vecna hadn’t attacked them all until later, it meant that at this point he hadn’t had the power to reach them. So maybe he’d just seen a glimpse of Will reaching out and it caught his attention enough for a small acknowledgement through the hivemind. Like when a shark can sense a single drop of blood from miles away. Maybe they would still be in the clear for now if they were careful, if they didn’t drop any more of Will’s metaphorical blood in the water.

Jane voiced all this to Will who listened thoughtfully. He hoped it was true.

“I hope so…” Will sighed, “I just hope that he won’t be after me now. I’m worried that maybe he is already in my mind again…”

Contemplative, Jane decided to offer Will something, “What if I took a look in your mind to see if he is there?”

Will nodded a ‘yes’ and they shuffled to sit facing each other. Jane and Will looked around for something to cover her eyes. He dared to look into Mike’s closet and found a rumpled tie that Karen made him wear to formal events that the boy detested. They turn on the radio Mike had to an empty station on low volume.

She digs around in Will’s mind then, turning over every metaphysical rock and searching every corner for a sign of Vecna. Eventually she pulls off the blindfold and Will hands her a tissue for her nose.

“Nothing,” she shakes her head.

Will exhales in relief, letting his shoulders sag into a horrid but much more relaxed posture. Jane then tilted her head again and said thoughtfully how they perhaps should take this opportunity at privacy to train a little. They clearly saw that Vecna and the Mind Flayer could reach out as well and if he were to actually show up early, Will would need to be able to protect himself, or his mind at the very least.

He agreed, of course. Will and Jane then concentrated and disappeared into their minds, the former protecting and hiding information while she tried to invade and find it anyway. They tried and tried, over and over, until Will could successfully keep her out for several attempts and until they finally felt too exhausted to continue.

When they realized they were done for now, Will and Jane collapsed into the pillows and sheets. She took a moment to seek out her brother, putting her head on his chest for comfort. Will accepted it easily, also seeking comfort for the worries and fears that threatened to consume him.

“Will?” Jane called, wondering if he’s still awake.

“Yeah?”

“I think that you should stay hidden from the hivemind… I think you shouldn’t use your powers too, if you can help it, because it could alert the hivemind…”

Will listened to her explain and it made sense to him too, “Ok, if you think so, Jane. I trust you.”

Eventually they fell into sleep for another few hours until morning light had fully broken in through the window.

In the morning when the party regrouped downstairs, having eaten some breakfast and changed clothes again, they got to planning what to do next. For now they chose to look for the others. Jane sat on the couch, everyone gathered around her, as she searched for Hopper. They found him to be with Joyce and a random man heading for Illinois.

After that news, Will pretended to be surprised and confused while Max elected to help Jane clean off the blood in the bathroom. She dabbed at her upper lip with a towel as they listened to the boys outside.

Lucas had sidled up to Mike again, wanting to be the good, encouraging friend and asked Mike if he had a talk with El yet, if they finally made up. While Mike spluttered Will simply rolled his eyes. This didn’t go unnoticed by the other two, Lucas raising an eyebrow and calling him out softly.

“What is it, Will?”

“Nothing!” Will responded, tone curt and slightly annoyed, “I just can’t believe that this is what you’re concerned about right now.”

“Well yeah!” Mike exclaimed, choosing to go on the defensive and blame someone else again, “It’s Max! She’s been corrupting El! They’re conspiring against me!”

Will groaned, having to hear this again was truly grating on his nerves, “Whatever…”

Mike frowned at Will’s reaction, watching him retreat to the couch, sitting there, arms crossed as he waited for the girls to return. Lucas meanwhile tried to once again talk to Mike about his girl problems, discussing what Mike needed to do, how he needed to find a moment to reach a truce and bridge the gap. That would be his way back in. And Mike heard him but his attention was entirely focused on Will sitting on the couch.

Then suddenly there was a sound from the basement door as Nancy and Jonathan broke through and descended the stairs in a mad dash. Will was so happy to see his brother again, he got up and went to him. Jonathan, sensing Will’s slight distress, hugged his brother, making sure he’s ok, before they went on with what they had to say.

When Max and Jane also exited the bathroom, they all discussed what happened last night. Around nine-something Nancy witnessed Mrs. Driscoll acting weird and around that same time they had been steaming Billy. Thus they realize that she must also be flayed.

The decision is made to go to the hospital to check on her and see what they can do. Following the older teens up to the car, Will and Mike end up facing each other in the backseat in the very back of the car. Mike had sighed and looked annoyed by being relegated to this seat. The feeling only eased up when he saw Will sliding in as well and welcoming Mike to his world.

At the hospital they all pile out and go inside, being stopped at once by the receptionist. She explains how only family are allowed to go see Mrs. Driscoll and no more than two at a time. This ends up being Jonathan and Nancy, while the rest of them wait in the chairs by the vending machine.

Jane sits with Max, flipping through a magazine they’d found on the table while Lucas sits next to them, looking bored with a magazine as well. That is, until Jane turns to him and asks him one of the questions from the quiz she and Max were doing. He perks up and subtly ends up joining them for the silly quiz about which season of the year you are.

Will meanwhile hovers near the vending machine, eyeing the coke in hopes of getting his energy back up. The nerves tied in a knot inside his stomach make him feel vaguely nauseous. Suddenly he is startled out of his mind by the sound of a coin clinking and then a button clicking, followed by something falling into the bottom of the vending machine.

“Shit!” Will whispers harshly.

“Oh, sorry for scaring you, Will,” Mike awkwardly chuckles.

He had made his way over to Will at the vending machine so quietly that he’d startled him.

Will breathes out and speaks up, “No, I’m sorry, I was in the way. Here, I’ll get it for you.”

Will reaches down and takes out whatever Mike had decided to purchase. In his hand he now finds a small orange packet of Will’s absolute favorite candy – Reese’s Pieces. He frowns at it and goes to hand it over to Mike.

“Uh, no, I, uhm, I got them for you, Will,” Mike pushes his hand back with a somewhat nervous expression.

“Oh!” Will becomes flustered by the gesture, “Thanks, Mike, you didn’t have to.”

“I know, but I, uh, I wanted to,” Mike is also becoming strangely flustered by the moment.

And it makes him so confused because what is going on with him? It’s just Will! He’s gotten him candy before.  They’re acting like they haven’t been best friends for nearly an entire decade. It’s ridiculous! Oh! And Will has walked away…

Mike follows him back to the seats and plops down next to Will who proceeds to open the pack of candy. He pours out a few and pops them into his mouth, holding the packet out to Mike who takes some for himself as well, a small smile stretching on his lips. Maybe he hasn’t broken them after all?

“I- Will, I just…” Mike begins and momentarily loses his train of thought when Will turns those big, shiny doe eyes at him, “Uh…”

“Yeah, Mike?”

Mike shakes himself out of it, “Oh! Yeah I just wanted to make sure you’re doing ok… That- What happened with Billy yesterday was really weird and kinda scary. You- you were also so out of it, I just worry, that’s all…”

Will’s heart softens at the admission, a smile overtaking his lips for a moment, “Thanks, Mike… I guess I’m ok today…”

Will trails off, looking for what he can say and what to keep to himself. But then Mike beats him to it.

“I- Do you think it was the Mind Flayer? Do you think it recognized you?”

“Maybe,” Will squirms in his seat, nerves tying into more and more knots, “I just- I just felt so cornered, so afraid. It’s like I was frozen. I-... I recognized that voice, the way it said my name… I’ve heard it before and it- it always calls me just like that, always referred to me as ‘William’”

He’d told Mike the bare minimum of what terrified him, hiding the truth of Vecna behind the Mind Flayer. Just thinking about Vecna was enough for Will to have the uninvited memories resurface. Every horrible thing he’d done to Will, what he showed him. Everything he would do to those close to Will. The memories alone are enough to make Will tremble where he sits.

Then his spiral and his tremors are interrupted by the sudden heat on his right hand. Will’s eyes snap to it and widen when he sees Mike’s hand resting on his own, an imitation of the same gesture from Halloween last year. It strikes him to his very core. Mike is reaching out, comforting him, touching him. And he’s leaning so close too, those dark eyes intense with determination.

“I- We won’t let him hurt you again, Will. I swear, he won’t get near you. I won’t let him.”

The resolute certainty with which Mike says it knocks the air clean out of his lungs. This… This is new. Again. Will sits there wide-eyed, still feeling the heat of Mike’s hand on his.

And then Mike’s intense look is replaced by a small, shy smile, “After all, it’s, uh, it’s my duty… as your paladin, to protect you.”

Now Will is blushing because, oh my God! Where had that come from?!

Mike notices it too, the red dusting Will’s cheeks, the surprised but not displeased look on his face. It makes a strange swooping feeling erupt in his stomach, knocking loose everything he’s ever known. And he likes the way Will is looking at him. Mike likes the colour of his cheeks, likes that it’s there because of him.

Will is smiling too now, a big, beautiful grin. He realizes that Mike really is trying to reach out to him, using D&D, their own special language. The affection that blooms so deeply in Will’s heart must shine through as he sees Mike’s own smile widen as well.

The tender moment is suddenly cut through by the dread that drops into Will’s gut like a punch. Goosebumps rise across the back of his neck and his hand flies up in instinct to hold it. Now he remembers and, God, he’d been so stupid. Sitting here enjoying this moment with Mike like a useless love-struck teenager and forgetting that they are literally in the middle of something.

Mike notices the shift in Will, the way he holds his neck and he knows something is wrong. Before he can ask, Will is shooting out of his seat and rushing to Jane where she sits with the other two. It seems like she understands immediately and they run off into the hospital as the lights begin to flicker.

They make their way past the receptionist even as she shouts at them and speed through the halls of the hospital in search of Nancy and Jonathan. Eventually they find them in the wing that is being renovated, cornered by a hulking mess of disgusting looking biomass in the vague shape of the Mind Flayer that Will had drawn last year. It makes gross noises as it moves and realizes they are there too now.

Jane reaches out and uses her powers on it. Will wants to help her, to take away some of the burden that always falls on her shoulders alone. But he can’t, reminded as Jane shoots him a warning look, that they’d agreed he wouldn’t use his powers unless absolutely necessary. Because they’re worried that it would expose Will to the hivemind, worried that it would invite Vecna in.

Though it looks like she has it under control and the use of her powers seemed to have intimidated the creature enough to make it flee. It was too small and slightly too weak to confidently take on Jane. So it chose to run and regroup, get stronger and come back for her.

They all followed it out and watched in horror as it flushed down into the sewers through a grate at the front of the hospital. The sight was repugnant and when it was gone it only left behind mucus and a few bones that were too big to fit through the grate.

Will stood there, face etched with worry, knowing that the Mind Flayer amalgam would soon return and cause only more problems. He wasn’t so sure anymore if his and Jane’s plan of not using his powers was going to work out after all.

Chapter Text

The party plus Jonathan and Nancy were regrouping at the Hopper cabin in the woods, hoping to wrangle everyone together and form a plan. Which was a bit tough as they couldn’t find or contact just about anyone. They were left to their own devices for now. And right now they had Jane searching for Billy, to find where the source of the possessions was, where the Mind Flayer could be hiding. So far they’ve had no luck, they couldn’t locate him. 

Max and Will sat with Jane on the floor by the TV that played static, handing her tissues for her nose. Will feels slightly absentminded, thinking about how things went last time. He remembers where Billy was supposed to be, as does Jane, and they could’ve just told everyone anyway, but they figured they needed to check if everything was still the same. Plus going to Brimborn Steelworks would be kind of useless and only endanger them all.

When Jane takes the blindfold off, shaking her head, Will gets up and heads towards Jonathan to see how their search through the maps and phone books is going. He feels as wired as Mike is acting, his gut doing leaps and flops with anticipation and dread for what will happen next. Remembering that they will probably get attacked soon, he worries for Jane’s safety. Last time she’d been in the direct line of fire for this whole thing. But she’d been adamant that they needed to stick to the plan and Will didn’t want to undermine her choices no matter how apprehensive he was about it all.

And if Will was thinking these things, then Mike was speaking them out loud. He kept going on and on about how they shouldn’t push El, that they were endangering her. Will knew he was probably right, but another part of him knew to trust Jane. And again, if Mike spoke Will’s worries out loud, then Max spoke his reassurances.

There they go arguing again, Will thinks with a sigh, watching Max and Mike get into it. Mike admits loudly to everyone that he cares a lot about El, that he can’t see her get hurt.

On the inside Mike knows it’s true no matter what is going on between them right now. Even if they’re broken up, Mike still cares deeply for El. It doesn’t matter that he’s confused about how he fully feels about the breakup, confused about the weird feelings and thoughts he keeps getting about Will. Despite all that, El is still important to him.

Jane appreciates his concern for her, she does. She’s glad to know that the parts she saw in the future could still be true. After all this, after they’re done dealing with the Mind Flayer, they could have a proper talk and hopefully just be friends. Because as she’d seen, that was ultimately a more sustainable bond between them.

“I think I need a break,” Jane mentions and then adds, “And a snack.”

Max nods, “C’mon, Jane, let’s go to your room?”

Jane grins at Max, tired yet thankful, “Yeah.”

Max grabs some of the snacks Jane liked most and they shuffled off to talk while she recharges her battery. That left everyone else in the main room. Mike scowled that Max was once again stealing El away to probably talk shit about him.

Will noticed the look and part of him found it funny while the other was annoyed by Mike’s attitude. He didn’t know if he should join the girls to talk about what to do next or to help Nancy and Jonathan. Instead he chose secret option number three – revert to his old ways and reassure Mike about Jane.

“Hey, Mike,” Will speaks softly as he drops down on the couch next to him.

“Oh, hey, Will…” Mike turns to him but continues to sulk.

Will gives him a meaningful look that ends up holding Mike’s attention, “It’ll be all right… I know you’re worried about Jane and that you care a lot about her. I do too. I’m so scared that she will get hurt in all of this… But I also know she’s strong. And I think we need to trust her to know her own limits. We just need to be here for her. She needs our support.”

Mike doesn’t know why but he didn’t expect Will to say all of that, worse yet, he was slightly disappointed that this is what Will wanted to talk about. He’d sort of been hoping Will would instead want to finally talk about whatever was going on between them. Will had said in the sauna that he and Mike would talk later and Mike was still waiting for the ‘later’ to arrive. And it seems he’d have to wait longer yet.

Mike looks at him, eyes big and almost unreadable, “I know… I know you’re right, Will. It’s just… I’m just still scared to lose her.”

Will nods in agreement, “We’ll keep her safe, we won’t lose her, Mike.”

And, God, Mike wishes that were enough. He wishes part of him didn’t feel guilty for why he felt like he couldn’t lose her. Because, yeah, a huge part was that he simply cared about her but the other part – he was barely able to admit to it… That part of him knew that he was scared to lose her, to the supernatural forces, to the government, hell, to the breakup, because he needed her. Mike needed El and he wanted to be needed in return by her, by anyone. He needed their relationship.

Their relationship had been a security net for him. It was something he could fall back and rely on when he wanted to avoid all the things that scared him. When he’s with her, Mike is able to ignore everything that’s too hard and scary to think about. He’s able to prove to himself and to others that this part of him is entirely normal, that he has a girlfriend and he’s at least as normal as Lucas. That he doesn’t have weird thoughts about people he shouldn’t.

So he’s been so adamant in fixing his and El’s relationship, to go back to that feeling of safe and normal. It didn’t matter if it hollowed him out on the inside, if it made him feel empty and fake and like a liar. And he knew it wasn’t fair in a sense to El, to be using her as a shield against things Mike was scared of. But she liked him, right? She wanted them to be together, didn’t she? And Mike could provide that. He could play the part.

It’s a little later when Jane feels she has more energy to try finding Billy again. She sits in front of the TV again and goes under, digging and digging until finally, finally she finds him. Jane tells them what she sees, Jonathan and Nancy scrambling to find the place she was describing.

They tell her to get out, that they have what they needed but Jane doesn’t, saying she’s in a memory. She’s in Billy’s memory, recognizing it by the way it felt similar to being in Will’s memories. Telling them that she’s on a beach and there’s a woman and a little boy running around. Jane walks forward on the beach, watching the scene unfold, following it into the storm at the edge of the scene.

Suddenly, through the haze and whipping sand, among the terrible memories Billy hated, Jane sees it, the source, the Mind Flayer’s control. Apologizing to Will in her mind, Jane ditches their plan of not doing anything crazy and reaches out, hoping to sever the connection. She does this and hopes this can be practice for what awaits them in the future. That she could sever the connection Will still had to this thing as well and save him.

Jane takes the cord connecting him and the Mind Flayer in Billy’s mind and tries to tear it apart. She rips and strains, her nose bleeding profusely in the real world. Distantly she hears Will calling to her to stop, to get out, but she doesn’t heed his calls. Instead she keeps at it, feeling like she might succeed.

Then Jane feels the dread pool low and heavy in her stomach.

Oh no.

Jane realizes how reckless she’d been, rushing headlong into this. She’d attracted the attention of the Mind Flayer and it reached back at her. Her eyes snap open and she seems to be in the cabin again. Except it’s empty and she screams for her friends.

“Will!?”

Nothing.

“Mike!?”

Still nothing.

“MAX?!”

She’s all alone.

But then she spots movement as Billy emerges from the shadows on the wall, menacing and angry. The look in his eyes is so cold and sharp, Jane knows this isn’t Billy.

She’s really messed up.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Will realized something had gone wrong. Jane is in trouble, that much he remembers from last time. And he can’t stand to see her hurt, especially not when he can do something about it. But he hesitates – they’d agreed Will wouldn’t use his powers unless absolutely necessary. Even less so doing something as dangerous as reaching in where the Mind Flayer and even Vecna could see him.

Will threw all caution aside and reached in anyway, discreetly signalling to Max to make sure no one else noticed what he was doing. Max nodded in solidarity and Will went under. When he opened his eyes he found himself in the cabin again with Jane and Billy, empty of the others. He finds him taunting Jane, telling her horrible things as she shakes with fear.

“Jane!” Will exclaimed, gaining her attention as well as Billy’s.

He quickly ran to her, taking her hand in his but Jane shook her head, “Will, what are you doing!? You shouldn’t be here!”

“I couldn’t let you get hurt! I had to help, Jane!”

They’re about to argue further when it seems Billy, or the Mind Flayer rather, has truly taken note of Will’s presence here and what it means. He growls low in his chest, a sound completely inhuman. Will wants to be scared but he is done feeling weak so he glares at him and turns back to Jane.

“Jane, you need to fight back! Whatever he’s been telling you, it’s not true! We can and we will fight him and we will win!” Will encourages resolutely.

Jane looks at Will with big, wide eyes, terrified out of her mind but emboldened by her brother’s faith in her, in their victory. So she fights, she pushes back against Billy and the Mind Flayer and tosses him out of her own mind successfully. With one last look at Will, they also leave the mindscape and tumble into the real world.

She comes to with a sharp gasp and everyone descends on her in an instant, worrying about what took place. Max rubs her back in comfort as everyone else hovers nearby. Will uses the moment of chaos to turn his head away, feeling the warm drip of blood from his nose, and wipes away the evidence of what he’d just done.

They cannot see.

They cannot know.

Will won’t allow it.

Jane begins to explain what she’d seen, what Billy told her. And then they hear the screeching coming from a distance, yet close enough to worry about. They quickly realize what is about to happen. Will and Jane share a look of almost resignation but join everyone in barricading the cabin’s doors and windows shut.

A loud bang echoes in the tense silence of the room. In a quick moment the thick appendages of the Mind Flayer’s body have reached inside anyway and they’re all on the defensive. Nancy stands at the forefront, her gun cocked and ready to shoot at a moment's notice.

The room is in utter chaos, everyone scrambling and trying to fight any way they can. Nancy shoots her gun at it, landing most of the shots but it only recoils momentarily and goes right back to attacking. Everyone else uses random objects to hit and beat away the Mind Flayer. But it is everywhere at once and they’re quickly becoming overwhelmed.

Jane steps forward and uses her powers to keep it away, Will’s trying to join her but his powers stutter and fall flat. Shit, Will realizes he’s left nearly defenseless as he stands behind everyone else. Then he spots one of Nancy’s spare guns and nearly trips over his own feet in his haste to reach it. He takes it in his hands and the others take notice.

“Can you even use that, Byers!?” Max exclaims, turning the attention of Lucas and Mike.

Will doesn’t respond and instead loads it quickly with nimble fingers and points it at the Mind Flayer. He takes his shot and lands it with incredible accuracy. The appendage recoils and Will reloads. His memory flickers painfully to his week in the Upside Down, running with his family’s shotgun and shooting the Demogorgon in the face.

“Shit. Nevermind…” Max shouts over the commotion.

Her and Lucas go back to defending but Mike still stares at Will, mouth agape and eyes bugging out of his skull. Will feels the look and his eyes find Mike too. He raises an eyebrow and then spots another vine reaching out from behind Mike. Quickly, Will raises the gun and shoots it, forcing it back and away from Mike.

“WOAH!” Mike shouts in shock from the shot rushing past his ears and whirls around, “Uh, thanks…”

Will exhales an exasperated breath and tells Mike, “Focus, Michael!”

His entire face goes bright red and he turns away quickly and goes back to fighting the Mind Flayer. Will, for the life of him, would love to read into that exchange but knows they have more pressing matters and goes back to fighting as well.

Just then the Mind Flayer had wrapped a vine around Jane’s leg and lifted her into the air, it was clearly targeting her. Will dropped the gun and ran over to her, taking hold of her arms with the help of Mike and Max on both sides. They all held on, trying to pull her back. But the Mind Flayer was strong and it had bitten and sunk its claws into her calf, tearing and squeezing as she cried in pain.

They won’t win at this rate, Lucas realizes, and quickly takes a fairly sharp object and jumps on the table. He brings it down on the appendage that holds El, trying to break its hold on her. Lucas swings and swings until it splits apart and away from the rest of the body. Jane drops to the floor and cries out.

The part of the Mind Flayer they cut off is still biting into her and writhes around. Mike takes hold of it and tears it out with difficulty, tossing it away to some corner. Jane screams in pain and desperately tries to breathe. This won’t end and she remembers Will’s memory of what she did last time.

The Mind Flayer isn’t done yet and neither is Jane. She manages to stand up and use her powers to hurt the Mind Flayer as well, an eye for an eye, tearing it slowly in two as she screams from the exertion. Then, when she can no longer sustain the concentration, she collapses and Will and Mike are at her side immediately.

While it’s down for the moment, Nancy rushes them all out to leave for safety. Will and Mike work together to carry Jane out and into the car as they all pile in and run. Jane leans into Will’s side, exhausted and in incredible pain. She’s trembling and her brother’s arm comes around to hold her close and soothe her.

As they drive, they decide to hide out in an empty grocery store, spotting Melvald’s on the side of the road. Once inside the group split up, with Max and Will electing to stay with Jane and take care of her wound as they’re the best equipped to deal with such things. Max takes the lead in cleaning and bandaging her leg the best she can under these circumstances.

Meanwhile Will is busy apologizing for not helping more, voice coming in a harsh whisper,  “I don’t know what happened, I was trying to follow your lead and I just couldn’t do anything!”

Jane may be hopped up on a lot of painkillers that they were able to find in the pharmacy section, but even she knows Will’s being unreasonable again, “Will, stop it. You did enough.”

He frowns but doesn’t fight and instead shuffles to her side when he sees how lightheaded she is and brings her head to rest on his shoulder. Will wraps her in an embrace, as Jane rests up, gathering her strength for what she knows they’ll need to do next.

On the other side of the shop, Mike and Lucas discuss using the fireworks to hurt the Mind Flayer as they’re both explosive and provide heat which it clearly hates. Mike agrees readily, wanting to feel somewhat useful because he feels like he’s been so lame the whole day. Honestly he doesn’t get why he’s not there with El right now. I mean, ok, he and Lucas were basically forced out by Max and Will, but still! And, like, sure, him and El were broken up but he should be there, right?!

He hates how excluded and unneeded he’d felt when Max and Will waved him away when he said he was gonna stay by El’s side as well. Even El didn’t want him there! Which was totally weird and made Mike jealous and mad.

That trio had bonded so quickly and out of nowhere, it drove him mad. He felt so left out. By the trio? Yes. But also by El. And most of all by Will. Because Will never used to leave him out before, nor did El. Mike used to be the centre of their worlds, didn’t he?

Also! He thought that he and Will had made up. They were supposed to be good now. But Will was still being distant when it came to moments like this. Mike still felt like there was some kind of wall, some thing, between them that kept Will from Mike.

Will felt so far away, so unreachable these past few days especially. And he tried to reach out to him at the hospital. Will had even seemed responsive until the Mind Flayer activated again and Will was gone from the conversation and from Mike’s orbit. His first choice in the situation had been El and even Max.

He hates how little he recognizes his best friend lately. Honestly, Mike is terrified because he thought he’d always have Will, that they’d stick together no matter what, through whatever bullshit the world liked to throw at them. But somehow in the chaos of the past months, Mike had unknowingly been losing him.

His train of thought was interrupted by Will, El and Max walking up to him and Lucas and saying they’d found Dustin at the movie theatre. Jane was originally supposed to reach in and look for him for real but Will had suggested that it was unnecessary. They already knew where he was and she shouldn’t strain herself. So they pretend like she’d already done the searching while everyone was busy.

Having gathered the supplies, their little group came to a decision and set off again to the mall. They had to save Dustin and his companions.

When they find Dustin at the mall he is indeed with Steve, Robin and Erica, running and hiding from the Russians. Distantly they wonder how their storylines had turned out so different. In any case, Jane launches the car at them and takes them out like she’d done in Will’s memory. The Scoops Ahoy group had been surprised by the events and when they looked and found their friends standing above, everyone felt relieved. They ran down and reunited all together.

While everyone is busy comparing notes, Will recalls what’s about to happen to Jane. So he reaches out, wrapping an arm around her, keeping her steady. She ends up very thankful for this when her mind quickly starts to become overwhelmed, noisy, busy and painful. Jane collapses into Will’s side just as predicted and he lowers her carefully down to the ground.

It catches everyone’s attention as well and they crowd around them, exclaiming in worry. Jane feels overwhelmed and Will notices.

“Guys! Shut up and step back!” Will says with surprising authority.

Jane looks thankfully at him and he nods before carefully unwrapping the bandage around her calf. That’s when they see it, the bump in her leg where a part of the Mind Flayer had embedded itself. She’s hyperventilating at this point from the pain of it moving inside, against muscle and flesh.

Jonathan runs off to the food court and returns with a wooden spoon and a knife, telling them he’s gonna cut it out. But then Will asks for the knife instead, saying he’s probably the least queasy and can do it. It’s a stupid excuse but Jonathan acquiesces anyway and hands Will the knife.

“Turn away!” Will commands everyone and because of the sheer shock at Will using such a resolute tone, they agree.

He’s surprised it worked, that no one tried to fight him on it, but he’s not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. This gives Will and Jane some privacy for what he’s about to do. Will quietly sets the knife down and tells Jane to hold on for a moment.

“It’s ok, Jane, it’s ok. Don’t worry, I’ll get it out,” Will reassures her as well as himself.

He takes a steadying breath and uses his powers to draw it out. Jane whimpers at the pain it causes as it moves against the inside of her leg but tries to hold it together. There’s no one she trusts more with this, with her well-being, than Will right now.

And then in a quick moment it’s out and Jane gasps as she feels the pressure relieved from her. Will crushes the fleshy bit in the air with his powers and then chucks it far away from them, somewhere in the mall. In a quick moment he takes the knife back in his hand and pretends to wipe it off.

“It’s ok now, you can turn back around,” Will assures.

It’s honestly ridiculous that he’s trying to hide his powers right now but at this point they don’t have the time nor does he have the mindpower to explain everything. He really, really doesn’t want to talk about powers and the future when he knows they’re about to get attacked again.

Next thing they know they’re reunited with the grown-ups as well when Hopper and Joyce show up with Murray in tow. Joyce clings to her two sons in relief that they’re ok, squeezing the life out of Will.

“Mom, I can’t breathe!” Will wheezes in her hold, happy above all else to have the opportunity to be held by his mom.

Hopper also is relieved to see that Jane is still relatively safe. Though he does scold her for going out of the cabin and getting involved in all this danger yet again. Jane just hugs him, terrified of what will happen tonight. It catches Hopper slightly off guard but he melts into it too, holding Jane close. Jane sort of wants to cry and tell Hopper to not sacrifice himself but she also recognizes that things need to go the way they’re supposed to so they have a better control over the timeline.

Everyone gathers and they discuss what their next course of action should be. Murray gets annoyed by the kids but when he realizes they know their shit he eases off and agrees to follow their plan.

They divide and split off into three groups, each having a role to play in taking down the Mind Flayer. Will and Jane stay in the mall, sitting huddled together, prepared to fight the Mind Flayer.

It arrives shortly at the mall, breaking glass and tracking them through the stores. Eventually they manage to trap it and begin to throw the fireworks at it, hurting it with the explosions and the heat they produce. As the Mind Flayer’s weakened Jane steps forward to use her powers on it as she did at the cabin.

But something’s wrong and unfortunately they stutter and she feels strangely weak all of a sudden. Then Jane remembers, in Will’s memory after this fight, Jane loses her powers for most of a year.

She stands there now, feeling small and slightly terrified. There’s this big hulking thing and she’s powerless. Her only way of fighting, the thing she’d relied on the whole time has betrayed her in her moment of need.

Will sees her standing there and runs across the debris and wants to protect her, as do the rest of their friends. They all scream and run to hurt the Mind Flayer. But once again it is stronger and bigger and it uses its large limbs to throw them all aside, flinging them brutally into the pillars and walls of the mall.

It knocks most of them out for the moment as they hit their heads on the concrete. Jane is left all alone now, facing down the Mind Flayer and Billy who’d shown up as well. He taunts her as Jane sobs, backing up across the floor that’s littered with glass from the shattered ceiling.

She tries to remind him of those he loved, talking about his mom. How pretty she was and how lovely and sweet she was. That his mom had loved Billy. Jane pleads with Billy to find himself and to fight the Mind Flayer’s control now. She can see him struggling.

Will has woken up from being knocked out and looks around himself at his friends, noting that they’re still passed out. Then he spots Jane all the way across the floor, Billy towering over her and the Mind Flayer rearing to attack them, ready to hurt Jane. He cannot let this happen. He won’t allow his sister to be hurt, not when he is able to do something about it. If any situation calls for Will to throw aside caution, this is it.

So Will stands up and reaches out to the hivemind, to the Mind Flayer, and tries to take control. He searches and feels around inside until he finds the strings to the marionette. Will struggles until he is able to take control of the Mind Flayer, holding it back from moving, from hurting them.

Jane had noticed and marvelled at his control before going back to talking Billy out of the possession. Will fights to keep control all the while, his mind screaming with the weight and the clawing pain of the Mind Flayer fighting back. It kicks up memories of his death like dust in the desert. He is terrified because what if this ends the same way? What if this connection today brings him down as well?

He’s quickly becoming overwhelmed by it all, he can feel the Mind Flayer and possibly even Vecna ripping apart his psyche. Every door and wall Will had built up in his mind, they are tearing down with unprecedented accuracy and power. Will isn’t sure how long he can keep doing this, how long he can hold on.

It feels like he’s being torn asunder, every particle, every thought he’s ever had is being clawed at. But he has to hold on, to protect his friends, protect his family, protect the truth of what he knows about the future. Will doesn’t care what else Vecna or whoever sees, he will not allow him to know about him being from the future and knowing what he knows about his plans.

Will is in so much pain from the strain of holding off the Mind Flayer, of keeping a grip on the connection, of keeping his mind closed like Jane taught him. Blood flows steadily from his nose, tears streaking down his cheeks with the effort. He wants to scream but keeps his mouth shut, not wanting to alert a passed out Mike or Lucas to what’s going on.

Thankfully, though, his effort had given Jane enough time to get through to Billy and she really thought that she’d been able to sever the connection enough for him to get free. It’s enough time for the others to enact the plan down in the Russian labs beneath the mall.

Suddenly all the pain Will felt is exponentially heightened and a scream tears its way past his throat and he falls to his knees, clutching his head and hair. The pain is reflected from where they’re hurting the Mind Flayer, all of it felt equally in Will. His hold on the Mind Flayer has also slipped and in its last moments here, it manages to prove their theory of time’s elasticity by shooting a sharp limb straight for Jane. Just like in Will’s memory Billy had jumped in front of Jane and protected her, mortally wounding himself in the process.

Jane watches in horror as the events take place, hearing Max’s screams of grief from somewhere nearby. Will can’t even focus himself on anything, feeling like a million needles are being stuck in his brain, ripping it apart. He can’t help but to scream and sob in agony. It hurts so fucking much.

He’s still connected to hivemind, Jane realizes. The Mind Flayer is trying to drag Will with it.

It’s going to kill him.

“WILL!” she yells desperately, “You need to let go! Let go!”

His powers are failing him, he can’t do it. It has sunk its claws so deeply into him that Will struggles to get free. He tries anyway, no matter how much it hurts, fighting to sever the connection, the hold the Mind Flayer has on him.

In his mind he hacks away at the tethers binding him, crying out as it feels like ripping off his own limb. Eventually he is successful and manages to wrench himself free of the connection. Will tumbles back out and collapses sideways to the ground, exhausted and hurt, physically and mentally.

Jane’s lips tremble and she sobs as she struggles across the glass and debris to his side just as his eyes flutter closed and he passes out again. She wipes his blood away from his nose, protecting his secret for now, drawing him into her lap. Tears leak out of her eyes at seeing Will like this. She worries about what will happen next. Jane can’t help being reminded of what she’d seen in Will’s memory, how he died.

She holds his head and rocks back and forth, “Will, wake up. Please! We can’t lose you, Will!”

By this point everyone had come to as well. Max was back by Billy’s body, sobbing and crying as well. Lucas noticed her and ran over to comfort her. She melted into his embrace and cried into his chest.

“Will, please, wake up!” Jane begs him, tears landing on his face.

Mike, who had also awoken now, immediately felt his heart sink into his stomach when he saw Will and Jane. Will is unresponsive, he’s pale and looks exhausted beyond belief, laying limply there in her arms. The cold panic in his veins nearly paralyzes him.

Will is hurt.

Will isn’t waking up.

Something unimaginable happened while he was out.

Will got hurt while Mike was passed out and he wasn’t there to protect him.

Jane looks up and locks eyes with Mike, her eyes tired and pained, looking like she’s seen the end of the world. Maybe, Mike thinks, she has, looking at Will like this. He trips over the debris and his own feet as he gets up and runs over to them. Mike falls to the ground beside them, uncaring of the glass on the floor, even if it slices up his skin.

“El! What- What happened!” Mike exclaims desperately, his hands hovering but not touching Will, “Is- is he-”

His voice chokes on the question. No, he can’t be. He cannot lose Will. Not again. Not when it’s real this time.

Jane shakes her head, “He’s alive. But he’s hurt. He was connected to the Mind Flayer when we defeated it. It wanted to drag him down with it. It hurt him too when we hurt it.”

Mike looks stricken, his chest feels like it’s being torn open.

“Will,” he speaks, somewhat softly, afraid, “Please wake up!”

His hand finally makes contact with Will’s skin, finding his left wrist and feeling for a pulse, for a reassurance. The relief that floods his system when he feels a soft, steady rhythm beneath his fingertips is unlike anything he’s felt in a long time. But the fact remains that Will is still out cold and God only knows what damage it could have left.

The mall is quickly crumbling apart around them and they need to get out if they don’t want to get crushed. Lucas had been successful at pulling Max away from Billy, leading her weak, sobbing form out to the hole in the wall. Mike and Jane work together to prop up Will between them and drag him out as well. Debris falls all around them and they narrowly avoid getting hit by a metal rod.

Eventually they are outside in the fresh night air. They make it a few steps away from the building when they fall to the ground and this time Mike pulls Will into himself, holding on for dear life. He pushes his face into his shoulder, clutching the back of his head as he shakes with fear.

Chapter Text

When Will was waking up everything came back to him slowly. It felt like he was crawling out of a vat of sticky molasses. As some of his senses start returning, Will realizes he’s being held, face pressed into someone’s shoulder. It’s kind of bony and the person is shaking. From what, Will doesn’t know.

Then there’s a hand threading through his hair, brushing it in a soothing manner as they babble nonsense from above him. With some of his mind capacity returning, Will realizes it’s Mike. That was clearly Mike’s voice, which means that the hand in his hair is also Mike’s, as is the shoulder his face is still resolutely being pressed into.

This is so weird, Will thinks. He has no idea what’s going on or where he is, it’s like the world outside Mike Wheeler’s circle of arms, enveloping Will, doesn’t exist. Though, the next second Will starts remembering things. He feels like he’s back in the abyss. He’s back to the day he’d died for the second time.

Had he been revived yet again? Is he back? Does Mike know? Does he realize that the future he’d described can now actually happen? He has to tell Mike he’s back!

Will groans and moves his wrung out muscles to shift away from Mike just incrementally. What he sees breaks his heart a little.

He is in fact not back in the abyss. Will is still in 1985.

Right.

Starcourt. The battle. Will got hurt holding back the Mind Flayer.

But then when he finally really looks at Mike, he can’t bring himself to keep being disappointed because Mike is looking at him like it’s the first time he’s seen the sun. Mike looks so relieved and so very happy to see Will awake again.

“Will!” he exclaims when he notices that Will’s back, “I was so worried! You weren’t waking up and I-”

He stops his own rambling by pulling Will closer again into an incredibly tight hug. It sort of catches him off guard but Will then hugs him back with just as much enthusiasm, his face coming to rest in the crook of Mike’s neck.

“I’m ok, Mike, it’s ok,” Will mutters in reassurance.

And all the weight and the tension that Mike had been holding balled up in his ribcage, preventing him from breathing properly, comes undone. He just sags and slumps over Will a little.

When it feels like a lifetime has passed and Mike seems sufficiently ok, they hear Jane speak up from beside them, “Hey, quit hogging Will!”

Mike pulls back, looking a little confused but also amused, “Uh, what?”

“I wanna hug him too, Mike!” Jane exclaims, a teasing smile on her lips.

Mike lets go of Will fully now, blushing and sputtering some nonsense. Jane takes hold of Will now and Will allows himself to fall into her waiting arms.

“You were amazing, Will!” Jane whispers into his ear as they hug.

“You too, Jane. You were so brave,” Will replies.

When they separate as well, Will takes notice of everything going on around them. There’s ambulances, police and even the military on the scene. He spots his other friends off to the side, Max looking shaken as Lucas holds her close. Then they see the rest, Will’s eyes light up at the sight of his mom safe and sound. Jane and Mike help him over to her, Jane having gotten her leg temporarily patched up by the paramedics shortly before Will awoke.

Joyce looks so rattled as well, her eyes filled with tears. Will finally makes it to his mom’s side and she is so relieved to see him safe as well. She clutches him close to her body. Then when she sees Jane standing there, being held up by Mike, Joyce goes to her too and hugs her. Joyce explains quietly what happened with Hopper.

Even though Jane already knew, it still thoroughly impacted her and she broke down crying as did Joyce and they clung to each other for comfort. Joyce stroked the girl’s hair, like she would do to her own children. It made her so sad that this impossible girl was once again left without her family.

“I’m so sorry, sweetie, I’m sorry I couldn’t stop him,” Joyce cries and Jane shakes her head where it’s pressed into Joyce, “It’ll be ok, I promise. We’re here for you.”

They stay like this for several minutes until an officer comes to take a statement from Joyce on what exactly went down. Jane stands there again, feeling small and weak. She hates that this is an elastic moment in time, that she’s lost her powers and she’s lost Hopper. Before she can start falling apart, Will is there by her side, holding her and suggesting they go talk to Max.

The whole Party are quickly reunited and they all huddle together, seeking comfort after everything that happened. It’s all too much and too scary to think about so they stick to deciding on a joint story of the events. In the end they go with what would end up being the official story – a fire broke out and the mall fell down.

In the weeks following the events at Starcourt, Will and Jane talk a lot amongst themselves about what’s next. She now lives with the Byers as Joyce took her in after Hopper’s ‘death’. It’s nice in many ways as she quite enjoys the atmosphere the family creates and how they really do make her feel welcome and included. Jonathan also took to her quickly, becoming protective of her and acting like an older brother.

Will and Jane now also spend a lot of time with Max, talking about what happened to Billy and trying to help her heal, to be there for her through the grief. Above all else they want to make sure that nothing bad happens to her this time, that Vecna isn’t able to use her pain and guilt and grief to target her.

They had explained in detail how Vecna targets people, how he gets inside their minds. Will had wanted her to be fully aware of the signs, to know what they’re looking for so that they can catch it early and have more time to help her. But the best way was obviously for Max to not be a target at all. Will hates that he’s pretty much telling Max what to do when he says she would take counseling and perhaps even therapy seriously.

She’d still scoffed at the suggestion, feeling like it’s ridiculous. Even now, she’s still Max Mayfield, the ultimate tough girl, she can do this on her own. Well, ok, with the help of her two friends. But she’d nodded anyway, promising to not outright shun it.

Max tries hard to listen to them and to do as they say. She knows that if there’s any two people who understand trauma and grief it’s Will and Jane. They’ve dealt with the absolute worst the world has had to throw at them. Objectively she knows that she can always go to them to talk, to ask for support and that bottling all of it up won’t solve anything and only make it worse.

And it’s easy now while they’re still here but Max shudders to think what will happen when they move away. Will it be the same? Reaching out when you’re separated by literally thousands of miles is so much more difficult than when you live a few blocks away from one another.

In the time after Starcourt Mike has become increasingly weird, Will finds, wanting to spend every spare minute with him. It’s not like he minded all that much, it’s just that Will didn’t really know what to do about it. Honestly, it started when Jane told Will that her and Mike were now well and truly over for good.

Apparently they’d had a long hard talk after Mike spent the week following Starcourt trying to get back into her good graces. He’d wanted to try getting back together apparently, to return to his easy safety. But Jane had been having none of it.

“Mike, no.” she’d told him unyieldingly, “I think we should be just friends. I do not think our relationship was working.”

“What?! El! That’s not true!” Mike raised to defend.

Jane frowns, “Really? All we did was kiss. We never talked or spent time doing normal things, Mike. We were just waiting for something real to happen, for our feelings to change. Like maybe at some point it would stop feeling empty and performative.”

“El…” Mike spoke low and cautious, voice quickly rising with each following sentence, “What? Where’s this coming from? I don’t get it! Listen, I’m sorry for lying, ok! There! We can fix this!”

“Mike, stop!” Jane was becoming angry and frustrated, “I don’t want to get back together, Mike! I want to be alone. I want to find who I am without someone else telling me what I should or shouldn’t be.”

Mike is left sputtering, unsure of what else he can say to fix this when clearly El doesn’t want anything to do with him. She sighs, a little resigned and turns away from him.

“To be honest, Mike, you also need to take a step back and figure yourself out,” she adds sagely, “There’s obviously something you’re pushing down, trying not to think about it.”

When she’d said that, Mike’s memory flickered to a scene from half a year ago – the Snowball. A scene he’d fought hard to bury ever since then. No. He won’t think about it now either. El doesn’t know what she’s talking about!

In the end he had acquiesced and agreed to Jane’s choice of breaking up and staying friends. He’d gone home, disappointed at his failure and deep in his thoughts.

Later on, in the dark cover of night in the privacy of his room as he laid in his bed, Mike let himself truly examine it without hiding behind a million walls. What he finds is that he’s not even truly all that upset. If anything, he’s actually strangely relieved, like a weight has been lifted.

Part of him isn’t all too sure what Jane meant when she said he needed to figure himself out. The other part knows all too well but still refuses to touch the topic with a ten foot pole. Mike thinks denial is rather comforting actually.

It makes it easier to spend all his time with Will when he doesn’t linger on any silly thoughts or feelings. He is persistent in making up for lost time by spending all his time with Will.

Every morning Will wakes to either the sound of his walkie or the phone ringing, whichever Mike happened to be closer to at the time. And every time he agrees to spend the whole day doing absolutely nothing and everything with the other boy. Will’s always had an inability to deny Mike his wishes and, truthfully, Will was also more than happy to essentially be around Mike 24/7.

Mike feels probably the happiest he’s felt all summer, hell, all year. Being around Will, spending time with him was the easiest thing in the world, it felt so natural to Mike. He just loves being with Will because no one in the whole world understands him anywhere near as well as Will does. With Will Mike doesn’t feel like he has to pretend because he has always liked him just the way he is.

Though, he is a little sad that they never talk about what happened at the beginning of summer, when Will was acting weird and distant. He still has no idea what was going on. But he also didn’t want to push it because he and Will seemed ok again. Mike was scared that if he brought it up, he’d ruin the peace they’ve found, that Will would shut down and freeze Mike out. He never wanted Will to be mad at him again if he could help it.

Besides, now he knew exactly where Will was and who he was with – with Mike and wherever Mike was. Or when they weren’t hanging out, Will was probably with El and Max. So it’s all fine!

Everything is normal on the surface and Mike’s gotten excellent at ignoring what lay beneath. In the end he was just happy to enjoy the peace and live in the knowledge that Mike and Will were good and there was nothing wrong between them. Mike hadn’t lost Will!

With all that, the most crushing blow for Mike comes when he’s sitting with Will in Castle Byers, reading comic books together just like they used to when they were smaller. Will had been acting a little skittish ever since Mike appeared on his doorstep before breakfast had even ended. Mrs. Byers hadn’t even been surprised to see him asking for Will this early anymore. It happened just about every day now and she’d been living with this version of Mike since Will met him in kindergarten all those years ago.

It seems this time Mike won’t even have to pry it out of Will when the boy speaks up, “Hey, uhm, Mike?”

“Yeah?” Mike asks as he puts a finger between the pages to remember their place.

“I don’t really know how to tell you this…” Will begins, looking vaguely uncomfortable.

Mike attempts to look encouraging and supportive, “Just rip it off like a bandaid!”

“Ok, ok. Mom- mom’s moving us out to California by the end of summer.”

Mike blanches. Nothing makes sense. What had Will just said?

“What?” Mike asks breathlessly.

Will frowns, pulling his knees to his chest, “Mom wants us all to have a new start. Away from Hawkins. Away from the constant danger.”

“So- so she’s what?! Moving across the entire country!?” Mike exclaims, becoming upset, “That- That’s not fair. That’s not fair!”

Will nods in agreement somewhat and Mike continues to bristle. This is unacceptable, he thinks. Joyce can’t do that! She can’t just take Will away from him like that! The two have never been apart for longer than a week and that had been because Will was missing.

It’s inconceivable that Mike won’t be able to see his best friend in the entire world all day every day anymore. Not even every other day. Mike won’t see him for at least months. He might not see Will for who even knows how long!

And what if California tears them apart? What if Will makes all these cool new Californian friends and doesn’t want to even hang out with Mike anymore? What if he forgets about Mike and one day when he comes back to visit Hawkins and someone asks him about Mike, Will responds ‘Mike who?’ Then what?!

He’s coming to the agonizing realization that he can’t have a single year where he isn’t losing Will in some way. First when Will went missing and Mike had watched that thing be pulled from Sattler’s quarry. Then, when Will was being possessed and Mike worried whether he’d ever get his best friend back. Now, when Will had been pulling away and Mike was an asshole. And most recently to Will moving far, far away from him.

“It’s not fair…” Mike murmurs when Will pulls him in for a hug, having noticed the wetness in Mike’s eyes.

That had driven his Will induced mania to even further lengths. He attempts to capitalize literally all of Will’s time in the days following the announcement. Will had teased him about it, asking if he was gonna follow him into the bathroom as well. Mike secretly wanted to say ‘yes’, but held back only in consideration of how Will would take such an admission.

Their other friends had all complained incessantly about Mike hogging Will, not leaving any of them time to spend with him. Mike didn’t care. He needed Will.

Except, El (or, sorry, Jane) didn’t have the same problem. No, Mike had noticed that since she now lived with the Byers she had a prime opportunity to request Will’s attention whenever she pleased. Oftentimes this resulted in Will having to decline Mike’s want for hangouts in favour of spending time with Jane.

Honestly, it made him indignant because what business did Jane have in taking up Mike’s precious Will-time?! She’d see him all the time once they were in California! They literally lived together!

A few times he’d tried to insert himself when the two were having their strange, exclusive hangouts. But Will had quickly shut him down. He had half the mind to go and simply spy on them and finally see what it is they do when they disappear like that. Honestly, Mike still didn’t really understand how those two became so close. Like, it just came out of nowhere!

There had been a small moment where Mike considered that perhaps Will and Jane had a thing for each other. Maybe they were secretly dating? The idea repulsed Mike so much. But as soon as he’d thought of it, he couldn’t shake it.

When Mike brought it up to Will, the response he received had been completely visceral as Will physically cringed.

“WHAT?! Mike! What are you talking about?! NO!” Will had exclaimed, making Mike throw up his hands in surrender, “Me and Jane are literally siblings! She’s my sister and I’m her brother. That’s it! I swear!”

Suddenly the sun had shone brighter and the air smelled sweeter and Mike felt like he could float off with how relieved he was, “Oh, thank God! I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I shouldn't have even suggested it!”

After that mortifying ordeal Mike hadn’t been nearly as obnoxious about Will and Jane spending time away from them or for hogging Mike’s so-called Will-time. The next time he’d seen Jane, he’d blushed bright red while she laughed at his face, cackling like she was insane. Max had questioned her on what was so freakishly funny.

“Mike thought me and Will were dating!” she couldn’t even hold it together and tears leaked from her eyes.

Lucas and Dustin also joined in with howls of pure entertainment while Will stifled an amused grin.

“Will!” Mike whined when he saw it, “You’re supposed to be on my side!”

That had only caused a further ruckus to ensue.

Mike’s clinginess never did subside though and he even managed to insert himself into Will’s packing. He’d invited himself and went about helping Will pack away fourteen years of his life. At first Will had appreciated the help as there truly were a lot of belongings. However, by the end of the first day he felt exhausted.

Mike had been adamant about what Will should and shouldn’t keep. Whenever Will would try to put an object into the ‘throw out’ box or the ‘donate’ box, it had been under intense scrutiny. God forbid Will tried to give away something Mike deemed to have intense sentimental value.

“No! Will! You can’t throw that out!” Mike complained and took the stack of loose, messy papers that had a few of Will’s doodles on them, “This is your art!”

“They’re just scribbles, Mike…” Will said, resigned.

“They’re important!” Mike corrected, “In the future when your art’s in huge, fancy galleries and everyone wants to see your artistic evolution, you’ll thank me for not letting you throw these out.”

“Whatever, Mike…” Will didn’t have it in him to argue anymore, “Then you keep them safe for me or something.”

Mike lit up at that, “Glad to!”

It had been more of this for days and days until Will finally had everything in boxes, sorted and ready to go. Mike ended up keeping a lot of Will’s old things that Will didn’t want and Mike saw as too sentimental. He rode home with a box precariously balanced on his bike. But it was worth it in his mind. He’d do anything to keep any little piece of Will.

The end of summer is already on their heels and the dreaded day of the Byers’ move to California is upon them. Mike hates this day with a passion. He marks it on his calendar so he can curse it every year after this.

The whole party had shown up to help them finish moving out, carrying boxes and furniture to the moving van. They’re also doing some finishing touches, gathering the last of their belongings. Will had held on to the D&D manuals until the last minute, remaining unsure if he actually wanted to donate them.

But then he remembers how much joy it ended up bringing Erica when she’d begun using them in the following year. He would never deny anyone the joy of discovering and playing D&D. So here he was just like last time, placing it in the donations box.

“Woah!” Mike had called out, noticing the action, “That’s the donation box!”

“I know,” Will responds evenly.

“You don’t wanna play anymore?” Mike asks in such a small, pitiful voice that Will nearly forgets it was Mike who’d been a hardass about playing for the past year.

“I’ll just use yours when I come back. If you still wanna play, that is,” Will adds sheepishly, not wanting to assume that they’d go back the way they were.

“Of course! But what if you wanna join another party?” Mike can’t help asking, voice tinged with a soft worry.

Will remembers this moment, smiling softly, “Not possible.”

The smile that blooms on his face is so beautiful. Mike looks so genuinely happy to hear that, reading into what it really means. That Will wouldn’t replace them. Will wouldn’t find someone else and forget his party. An embarrassingly large part of him feels so relieved and reassured that Will had said that.

There had been so many other things Mike wanted to say, so many hard truths and painful questions. But all Mike had been able to stomach asking had been whether Will would join another party. He was too much of a confused coward to say everything else.

Instead he hugs Will goodbye, hands splayed flat against his back, chin resting resolutely on Will’s shoulder. His posture is truly dreadful but the need to be on the same level as Will outweighs anything else. They hug for so long, they sort of sway in place and end up facing different directions from when they started.

Then as Will and Mike begin to separate, he feels the warm electric current zipping under his skin where he feels the distinct pads of Will’s fingers on his upper arm. Instinctively his hands also fall from Will’s back to rest on his waist. At this point Mike’s not sure he’s even all the way there mentally.

This is grief. Or at least some version of it. Because there is such a horrible ache in the space behind his 2nd and 6th ribs. Like a sharp hook has been pulled through and Will is driving away with the other end.

After the cars have left and the remaining party are alone in the Byers’ old driveway, Mike feels something settle like a stone in a river. Everyone else is getting on their bikes and beginning to peddle away. But Mike lingers, his leg thrown over the bike, and his head turns around to gaze longingly at the empty house that he’s known as Will’s home for the past nine years.

He manages to bike home anyway, following his friends, silent and forlorn. They know he is miserable and so they leave him be, not even teasing him for his pathetic attitude.

Tossing his bike down in the grass outside his front door, Mike feels completely wrecked. He thinks this feeling is only second to when he biked home after watching ‘Will’ be pulled from the quarry and feeling all the hope drain out of him.

And he’s getting closer to admitting what it was that made his heart feel like it’s breaking into millions of shards as he’d watched Will leave.

His mom spots him when he enters the house, immediately taking note of his horrible demeanour. She goes up to him, asking what’s wrong. But Mike doesn’t even have to say it when she feels her son, already taller than her, collapse into his mother’s arms. It feels like he’s twelve all over again and the world is ending.