Archive of Our Own ^beta

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Time is a funny thing. 

The truth of it is that it is consistent, unchanging in the way that it passes. Seconds and minutes and hours always stay the same, steady and reliable, no matter where you live or what language you speak. The truth of it is also that it is inconsistent, and how we measure time can change depending on how those seconds and minutes and hours are characterized by feeling. Time can snag on some moments and race through others, and time can also snag on the moments it races through. Sometimes you can pick which moments you get stuck in, and others, time chooses for you. 

There is a moment, just before they pull Will out of the water and force a conclusion to a days-long game of hide and seek, where Mike thinks, desperately: remember this. This whisper belongs to him.

In retrospect, it’s not something he really wants to remember at all. He is a flame facing an exhale, and there is no comfort to be found in knowing he’s about to be extinguished. But he wants to stay trapped in it anyway, because to be a dying ember is better than to be a living pile of ashes. This moment, as terrible and awful as it may be, still seems like a better place to make a home in than the one he knows is to follow – this is a place where Will is alive, just lost. A place where missing Will is a fleeting feeling, and not a way of life. 

Time is a funny thing. It loves to work and it loves to play and it loves to make things easy and it loves to make things hard. It is also its own master, and it does not bend to the whims of twelve year old boys and their games of pretend. It soldiers on, with purpose, and it catches again, with purpose.

The moment that the state troopers pull Will’s body up from the water stretches far longer than the one that came before it. Mike thinks, as recognition seizes his heart and his bones and every synapse and nerve ending in between, remember this. This whisper belongs to time. 

Many things happen after that: there is a bike ride home with white knuckles and leaking eyes and there is a bone-crushing hug from his mother and there is a silence between himself and Eleven that he resolutely does not break. There is a body shaped like his best friend on its way to the town morgue and there is air filled with radio static and there is a binder full of drawings on old notebook papers, collected and cherished over the years and all he has left of Will Byers. 

Remember this, remember this, remember him. They each carry on, time with ease and Mike with heartache. This whisper belongs to them both.

Time is a funny thing. It cuts swiftly and sutures slowly and it cuts slowly and sutures swiftly. It likes to hide the truth in mysterious ways, and then reveal it in mischievous ones. It loves to give and it loves to take and it loves most to give back what it took away.

The radio lets out an ugly crackle, grating and grueling, before abruptly snapping into the right frequency. A beat of silence, and then a dead boy’s voice croons out over the airwaves, haunting in its familiarity. Mike’s head snaps to where Eleven sits in her makeshift fort, radio in hand. Her eyes meet his in that trademark steady gaze. Her nose is bleeding. Dead boys cannot sing. Mike scrambles off the couch and falls to his knees in front of her. 

As it turns out, Will is alive, and it’s easy to unravel a tangle of lies once you know which thread to pull at. At its center, to the surprise of no one — the bad men who have stopped at nothing to strip a girl of her mother and her childhood and her name are the same bad men who are foolish enough to try and use a boy as small as Will to cover something bigger than them all. 

Mike does not dwell on the details, old enough to understand but young enough to care about nothing beyond the fact that Will is alive and okay and alive. When he is set free from the cage of the hospital waiting room and let loose at Will’s bedside, he gets as much of his arms around Will as he can and presses his ear to Will’s chest and thinks, in time with Will’s heartbeat, re-mem-ber this. 

Time is a funny thing. It is an excellent teacher and a marvelous storyteller and it always leaves a lesson in the tales that it tells. It lingers and it listens and it learns secrets and it only lets them slip when time decides it’s right. Mike Wheeler doesn’t need to know yet that love is a funny thing, too, so time doesn’t show him. 

But it will.

⏮⏸

Time is a funny thing. Fall bleeds into winter bleeds into spring bleeds into summer bleeds into fall again. In the days leading up to Halloween, Will bleeds into other; in the days following, other bleeds into him. It’s a different kind of evil this time, but it’s drawn to Will and his inherent goodness all the same. Mike doesn’t know how to fix it, so he plasters himself to Will’s side and does a lot of deliberating on which kind of loss is worse: not knowing where Will is at all, or knowing exactly where he is and being made a spectator as Will loses himself. 

He does his best to be an anchor and a lifeline all at once, whichever the situation calls for. He steadies Will’s hand when it shakes and he shakes when he has to drag Will back after he’s strayed too far. He keeps their promise of going crazy together and matches Will’s insanity when it is demanded and dragged out of him. He may be fighting a battle he is destined to lose, but if he goes down, he’ll go down swinging and clinging. 

As they are stripping the Byers’ shed of everything that makes it the Byers’ shed, it occurs to Mike he should maybe be afraid of Will — but the thought sees itself out just as soon as it shows its face. It does not matter that Will orchestrated the deaths of a dozen men, or that he’ll orchestrate the deaths of all of them, too, if given the chance. This thing may look like Will and may sound like Will and may act like Will when it needs to, but the bottom line is that it’s not Will. It never could be. He doesn’t have to be afraid. 

He could never be afraid, because he knows Will better than the monster that’s living in him, and he won’t let Will forget it. 

Remember this, he thinks desperately, tears streaming down his face. Remember, remember, remember. But these words aren’t a plea for himself — they’re for Will. And if he’s still there, all he has to do is look at Mike to hear them loud and clear. 

Will’s hand twitches against the chair, strained but with intent: HERE. It’s a victory that has no room to be sweet when defeat’s bitter taste lingers so soon after: CLOSEGATE. 

Close the gate, kill the Mind Flayer. Close the gate, kill the hive mind. Close the gate, kill Will. 

Time gently nudges his memory with flashes of a body rising from the water, of a teary bike ride home, of notebook drawings leaving paper cuts on his fingers and thousands more of them on his heart. Mike pushes them all away, and figures out how to fix it.

He’s still in the tunnels with the others when they scorch the evil right out of Will, and he is selfishly glad for it — he doesn’t think he could handle another image of Will, overtaken by the elements, to brand itself to the inside of his eyelids. He is there, though, when they bring Will back to the Byers’ house, wrapped up in a blanket and shaking, and he holds Will tight and vows never to lose him again. 

Time is a funny thing. It has other plans.

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Time is a funny thing. Growing up bears down on Mike as heavily as the downpour of the rain outside. Growing up means less time for games, more time for idyllic, fated romances. Growing up means he knows better, maybe even best. Growing up means realizing that losing Will doesn’t have to be the work of the supernatural – this is something he can do himself, too, if he tries hard enough.

Growing up should be learning to control his tongue, but it turns out that takes more growing up than Mike has had so far. The look on Will’s face says it all. 

Remember this. Somehow, the words manage to stay afloat despite the rising water inside of him, a combination of the rain and his own feelings working to drown him from the inside out. Remember this, as Will bikes away, rainwater helping to hide the tears that Mike put there. Don’t you dare forget it. 

In the face of everything else, they both pretend to forget it. 

(Mike remembers, and never forgives himself.) 

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Time is a funny thing. Autumn is both blooming and dying in earnest when the Byers make their final trip back to Hawkins, streaks of gold and rust and blood painting the trees and spilling over onto the earth. It used to be Mike’s favorite time of year, the promise of Halloween right around the corner, but now it just reminds him of the parts of his childhood he’s lost, and the ones he keeps losing.

The Byers and El – they’ve been gone for two months already, plucked from the burning wreckage of Starcourt Mall and dropped down into the burning heat of California. Mike’s never been, but he’s heard stories of mountains everywhere you look and canyons that could fit their whole hometown and an ocean that hugs the coast like an old friend. Will has spent two whole months there already — two months of building a new life and meeting new people and making new memories without Mike, without Mike, without Mike. 

What’s California like? he wants to ask. They are packing up the last of Will’s things in a silence that bounces off the empty walls and echoes and swallows them whole. Do you like it more there than you do here? Have you made any friends? Do you like them more than you like me? 

He doesn’t ask any of those things, but they are all answered later in just two words: not possible. Mike tucks them away in his shirt pocket for later, when he needs something to soothe the pain of Will being gone. 

He finds El back in Will’s room, wearing one of Will’s flannels and reaching into Will’s closet for something she can’t quite reach. Mike steps behind her and grabs it for her, and they hover around half-baked plans and awkward silences and each other until El brings it all to a shuddering halt with four words and the press of their lips together. 

Mike spent the entire summer kissing El. The sun afforded him long days filled with the way her hair tangled in his fingers and the way her scent would linger on his clothes long after they separated and the way her mouth would meet his mouth, over and over and over. 

Mike spends a single moment in autumn being kissed by El. He does not touch her and he does not move and his eyes do not close, even as she gently tries to coax him into doing any one of those things. When they part, it’s with a smile tugging at the corner of her lips. Mike’s not quite sure how he managed to put it there. 

The air is crisp and the sky is clear and the sun shines cheerily on the lot of them as they loiter in the Byers’ front yard, drawing goodbye out longer than the two syllables of the word usually afford. They pass the Byers family around, clutching tight at one another and wiping at tears that no one tries to hide or stop. 

When Will steps into his arms, they do not linger. It’s a quick thing, but Mike traps himself in the moment anyway, thinking, fiercely, remember this. This whisper belongs to his heart. He catalogs the press of Will's torso against his through their sweat-damp shirts and the way that they fit together like pieces of a puzzle and how easy it is to rest his chin on Will’s shoulder and how Will lets him do it. It shouldn’t be just as easy, Mike thinks, for Will to step away from him, and take most of Mike with him.  

When the Byers finally drive away, the dust of Hawkins kicking up behind them, Mike sits back on his bike and casts one last look at the empty house over his shoulder. He thinks of the game of tug-of-war his heart played this past summer, and why he was the only player on either side. He thinks of all the energy he put into being El’s boyfriend, and wonders why he had enough to spare for Lucas and for Dustin and for Max, but never for Will. He thinks of his last moment with each of them, the moment he endured with El and the moment he savored with Will.

Love is a funny thing. He thinks he doesn’t know very much about it at all. 

⏮⏸

El says that Mrs. Byers says that time is a funny thing — something about emotions and how they can make it speed up or slow down. It’s hard to believe that it’s only been six months since the Byers left when it feels like it’s been much longer than that, like he should already be walking across the stage, diploma in hand, instead of struggling to make it through his second semester of freshman year.

El has been counting the days that they’ve been apart, carefully keeping track with messy little tally marks drawn along the bottom of her letters under her name and another word that Mike likes to ignore. Mike lets her keep track of that. Instead, Mike keeps count of the phone calls that have gone unanswered, messy little tally marks of his own drawn across his heart with each time he hears the long tone of a busy signal, and a lingering feeling that Mike also likes to ignore. 

Ignoring it only gets him just past California state lines, and the reality of the situation greets him at the airport along with El’s disappointed smile and WIll’s crushed face as he completely botches the reunion he’s been imagining in his head for weeks now. They leave the airport crumbling, each of them carrying something well on its way to ruin, and everything only continues to disintegrate from there. 

Remember this, he thinks, when he’s the reason Will’s face falls at the roller rink. Remember this, he thinks, when he’s the reason for El’s tears as she tosses his own letters back at him, a broken record skipping on from, from, from. Remember this, he thinks, when Will gives him a painting he has spent hours on (in El’s name, he reminds himself) and then turns to the window, more lost to him than he has ever been before. 

Fuck, he thinks, when he says I love you to El, and wishes he had said it to Will instead. 

⏮⏸

Love is a funny thing. It is as blind as it is all-knowing and sometimes it turns a blind eye to all that it knows. The myth of it is that it is fate and destiny and the truth of it is that it is sheer luck and hard work. It can come at you hard and fast and it can come at you slow and agonizing, either way making sure you feel it with every fiber of your being. 

The apocalypse is kind of like that, too. Everyone always says the end of the world happens with a bang, but no one talks about the way that it withers away. Maybe it happened with a bang at first, when a clock struck four times and split the earth and his friend open with its chimes. Mike wouldn’t know, because he wasn't there. 

But he’s here now, and it’s with a fizzle, the way that this town he’s known his whole life dies. People abandon their homes one by one and the sky grows darker and angrier by the day and the flowers he’d handpicked just a week before turn to ash with the gentlest of breezes.  With them all, another dying thing whose death is slow and excruciating — his relationship with El. 

He supposes it started in Lenora — or maybe before then, with every time he picked the wrong four letter word every time he signed his name. But it’s been dying, as slow and sure as the sun disappearing below the horizon, and there are  only so many times it’s acceptable to ignore a do not resuscitate bracelet until you realize that you are holding onto a corpse.

Remember this, he thinks, as El hammers that final nail into the coffin and lowers them into the ground the way he watched them do with Will’s casket, all those years ago. 

It doesn’t hurt nearly as bad as it did then.

⏭️

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▶️

“That’s not how you hold a bat, man.”

Steve Harrington regards him with his hands on his hips and his upper lip curled in judgment, hair still perfectly tousled even six months into the apocalypse. Mike looks down to his hands, wrapped around the handle of a wooden baseball bat in a way that he thinks is just fine, and then back up to Steve. 

“There’s no wrong way to hold a bat,” Mike says.

(There is. He’s doing it.)

“There is,” says Steve. “You’re doing it.” 

Time is a funny thing. One minute, you are boarding a plane to spend spring break with your girlfriend and your estranged best friend amongst the rolling hills of sunny California; the next, Steve Harrington is accosting you in the front yard of your ex-girlfriend’s dad’s cabin, lecturing you on how you’re holding a bat that you only want to use so that you can finally be useful against the interdimensional horrors that threaten to swallow your hometown. It does not matter that six months have passed between the two, because not even the end of the world as they know it can put a halt to time’s steady march. 

“Whatever,” huffs Mike. He hauls the bat up over his shoulder, bouncing it a couple of times like he’s seen the players do on TV when his dad has a game on, and swings it hard. He stumbles as the movement finishes, the momentum propelling him forward a few steps. 

“I’m not trying to be an asshole,” Steve says, and Mike rolls his eyes — of course Steve is trying to be an asshole. Just because he’s is a different kind of asshole than he was three years ago doesn’t make him any less of an asshole. “If you keep swinging like that, you’re going to hurt yourself, dingus. Let me help.” 

Mike scowls. He doesn’t want Steve’s help. He wants to be good at something the first time he tries it, for once. He wants to stop feeling like a dead weight. He wants to–

He stops his own train of thought, pushing those feelings back into the locked box they’ve been sitting in for the past six months. Frustrated, he spins the head of the bat into the ground at his feet and lets his gaze wander past Steve, to where Nancy stands over Will’s shoulder as he stares down a soda can over the barrel of a gun. His stance is confident, powerful, unafraid — he knows exactly how to use the weapon in his hands, and every monster that’s ever tormented him the past three years is going to suffer for it. 

He pulls the trigger. Mike flinches at the sound of the shot ringing out as the bullet flies through the air and meets it home in the aluminum of the can. The impact sends it flying off its tree stump pedestal, hurtling towards the base of another tree a few feet away. 

Mike, who has never done anything with such certainty in his life, feels both intensely jealous and properly chastised. If Will can pick up a rifle and stare his demons in the eye, Mike can let Steve Harrington teach him how to use a bat so that he can stand beside Will while he does it. 

He turns his attention back to Steve and says, “Fine.” If Steve noticed where his attention diverted to, he keeps his stupid mouth shut about it.

“Alright,” Steve says, rubbing his hands together. He nudges at the bat with the toe of his shoe until Mike lifts it from the ground again, holding it out in front of him. “First of all, your hands should be lower. Near the base.”

Mike is very good and does not make any sort of face at taking instruction from Steve, and instead makes the necessary adjustments. “Like this?”

“Yeah. Your dominant hand is on top?” Mike nods. “Good. Don’t wrap so much of your hands around it. You want it more so in your fingers, right here.” He gestures to his own hand, thumbing over where his fingers meet the top of his palm. “There you go. You want to keep your grip tight enough so the bat doesn’t go flying, but loose enough so that it has room to move.” 

“Okay,” Mike says, though it doesn’t make much sense to him. 

“Now get in your stance,” Steve says with a jerk of his chin at the bat. Mike complies, spreading his feet apart and bringing the bat up to hover over his shoulder. Steve steps behind him, raising the barrel gently. “Make sure this is pointed up.” 

Another shot sounds, and Mike’s head naturally turns back to the source of it — Nancy, this time, lowering the gun from her face and saying something to Will. Will stands with his back to Mike, now, and all Mike can focus on is the line of his shoulders, broad and pulling taut at the flannel he’s wearing. His clothes always used to be so big on him, baggy and making him look smaller than he really was, but that’s certainly not the case anymore. California was certainly kind to him in their time apart, but it was Hawkins who had finished the job, polishing that sharp jaw and sun-kissed skin with something just the right side of rugged. 

Oh no, Mike thinks, not for the first time, he’s handsome. 

He shakes his head and looks back to Steve, who has definitely caught him staring now. 

“Uh, what now?” he asks hastily. 

Steve holds his gaze for another moment, but thankfully, still doesn’t comment. “Your stance,” he says, looking Mike up and down. He looks at Mike like he’s an idiot who forgot to put pants on this morning.

“What’s wrong with it?” he asks, when Steve doesn’t elaborate, and he verifies that he is absolutely wearing pants. 

Steve just sighs and drops to a crouch before Mike, which he definitely wouldn’t do if Mike wasn’t wearing any pants, but serves to make him squirm uncomfortably anyway.  “Your legs are too far apart,” Steve says, and tugs one of Mike’s legs in the direction he wants it. “You want your feet to line up with your shoulders.” 

“Okay,” Mike says, distantly, back to being distracted over Will. Don’t look up, he tells himself, trying to focus on the way the strands of Steve’s stupid hair fall over themselves artfully. Don’t look up, don’t look up, don’t look up. 

He looks up. 

Jonathan’s come up to join them now, a hand at Nancy’s waist, and Will is nodding at something his brother is saying, his arms crossed over his chest. His hair has started to grow out a little, fluffy and curling over his ears and flicking out at the ends. It suits him, Mike thinks. He looks so relaxed and soft, and not for a lack of toughness — it’s more of the kind of soft that Mike wants to wrap himself up in, the kind of soft that is still strong and secure and brave, minus the rough edges. 

As if he can sense Mike’s eyes on him – and he probably can, because Mike is ashamed, but can’t stop – Will glances over at the two of them. His eyes find the bat, still awkwardly hanging over Mike’s shoulder. They drop to where Steve is kneeling in front of him, fiddling with Mike’s legs, and then back up to Mike. Even from a distance, the glimmer that sparks in his eye is noticeable. An amused smile, badly suppressed, tugs at the corner of his mouth.

Mike gives a sheepish smile of his own in return, looking down to where Steve is pulling at the back of his knees and saying something about his legs being too stiff, and then rolls his eyes, as if to say, this guy. 

Will laughs, covering half of his mouth with his fist, and Mike feels pride well and fill his chest like a balloon. 

“Wheeler,” Steve says, the word taking the shape of a needle. Pop. Mike’s gaze snaps back down to where Steve is looking far less amused. “Do you want me to come back when you’re done flirting?”

Mike immediately flushes, knowing Will can’t hear Steve from this distance, but nervously glancing back up anyway. Will has clearly picked up on the fact that Mike has been scolded, but is seemingly unaware of what was actually said, still giggling into his fist. 

Relieved, his attention turns back to Steve. “I have a bat in my hands,” he says helpfully. 

Steve presses his lips together, nodding. “Noted,” he says, clambering back up to his feet quickly. “Right, okay — line your knuckles up — good.” Mike spares another fleeting glance at Will out of the corner of his eye, both mildly horrified and deeply pleased to see that he’s still watching. “Now, when you go to swing, keep this foot planted on the ground,” Steve instructs, tapping Mike’s right foot with his own. Mike tears his gaze away from Will and nods, actually listening. “It needs to be steady, but it’s going to rotate with your swing. And this foot” — he nudges Mike’s left — “you use to step into your swing. Only a little bit, thought, and both feet should be on the ground when you hit the ball — bat — whatever you’re trying to hit. Okay?”

“Okay,” Mike says, shifting his weight between the balls of his feet. 

“Use your hips to start your swing,” Steve says, “and then follow through with your shoulders. Keep everything loose — you only brace yourself when you’re about to make contact. And keep your eyes on the fucker the whole time. Got it?” 

Mike nods. “Got it,” he says. 

“Good.” Steve lightly punches him in the shoulder, then takes a few steps back. He gives Mike a once over, checking to see if anything’s out of place, but it must all look good, because he nods, crossing his arms over his chest. “Alright, knock yourself out.”

Mike takes a deep breath, letting the bat bounce in his fingers as he shifts his hands around, making sure to line them up the way Steve said to. He knows Will is still watching, but he shoves the knowledge away, focusing with a single-minded effort into remembering what Steve said. 

He shifts his weight to his right foot and takes a half step out with his left, quickly bringing it back down and letting the impact drive his hips and shoulders turning with it. He’s got nothing to hit, but follows through on the swing anyway, his back foot pivoting in place and the barrel of the bat coming up to tap his opposite shoulder. It feels both more powerful and more natural than the way he was recklessly swinging with abandon before. 

“How was that?” he asks, lowering the bat and swiveling back so that he’s looking at Steve again.

“Hmm,” Steve says. “I don’t know.” Mike’s brows knit in confusion, and he opens his mouth to ask what the hell Steve means he doesn’t know, but then Steve turns towards where Will is still standing and observing with Nancy and Jonathan and shouts, “Hey, Byers! No, Jonathan, not you — Will! What do you think?” He throws a smug look back at Mike over his shoulder before turning to Will again. “He look good?” 

Mike thinks he wouldn’t mind very much if a gate to the Upside Down opened beneath his feet, right here, right now. 

“Yeah!” Will calls back, hands cupped over his mouth. He raises one of them into a thumbs up, grinning wickedly. “Lookin’ good, Mike!” 

Mike lifts his own thumbs up back, smiling weakly. Steve turns back to him. 

“Well, there you have it,” he grins. “Lookin’ good, Wheeler.”

“I have a bat in my hands,” Mike says again through his teeth. 

Steve just shrugs. “Big deal,” he says. “Talk to me once you hammer some nails into it.” 

“I’d rather just never talk to you again,” Mike bites back. 

“That works for me, too,” Steve says, punching Mike in the shoulder again. “Good luck with, ah” — he makes a pointed glance between Mike and Will — “ everything, lover boy.” 

He’s walking away before Mike can respond, retreating to where Robin and Dustin are sitting against the foundation of the cabin and making molotov cocktails. Mike watches him go, embarrassed and furious and so… so. He feels seen, by Steve Harrington of all people, and he’s not sure that he likes it. 

Mike kicks the bat once, sending several clumps of dirt flying in the process. Taking a deep breath and throwing it over his shoulder, he starts to stalk over to where Will is still watching him, grinning like an idiot. 

“Having fun over there, Byers?” he calls out, all casual. 

Will departs from the rest of the group and meets him in the middle. He schools his expression into something more neutral, but his eyes are still bright when he replies, all casual, “Not as much fun as you’re having, seems like.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Mike rolls his eyes and nudges Will’s toe with his own. “Hey, wanna help me hammer some nails into this thing?” 

“Don’t ask him,” Jonathan interrupts. Mike and Will both turn to look at him, Will startled and Mike annoyed. He’d forgotten Jonathan had even been standing nearby, a foolish oversight considering how often Jonathan loves to interrupt any time he and Will find any pocket of alone time. “He’s awful at hammering nails. He can barely hold the hammer.” 

Will bristles, a delicious pink rushing to his cheeks and what Mike can see of his ears. “I was six,” he huffs out. 

“And what experience have you had with a hammer since then?” Jonathan asks, to which Will remains quiet. Mike tries to stifle his laugh, not wanting to give Jonathan the satisfaction, but a giggle spills out anyway. Will shoots him a betrayed look, then wheels back to Jonathan. 

“Don’t worry, Will,” Nancy interrupts, before Will can say anything else. Should they invite El and Holly, too? Make it a Byers-Wheelers siblings family affair? “Mike can’t use a hammer, either.” 

“Nance,” Mike whines. He grabs Will by the elbow, glaring at the both of them. “Come on, Will,” he sniffs, turning his nose up in their direction.“We don’t need this.” 

Mike turns on his heel and stalks away, dragging Will with him, and decidedly ignoring the way Nancy and Jonathan laugh after him. 

▶️

Two weeks of learning how to use a hammer and the older teens banding together to make living in hell more of a living hell later, Mike finds himself back with Will, trailing together in the woods near the Byers’ old house. They’re taking turns kicking a small stone across the forest floor, counting how many times it bounces before it rolls to a stop. Now that Mike falls under the category of anyone who knows how to at least hold a bat, they’ve been paired to patrol together, scanning their designated area for anything out of the ordinary – or as ordinary as things get in Hawkins, now, what with the end of the world and all.

“So,” Mike says after a long lull in conversation, letting his bat clink against some of the trees as they pass by. “Do you think we’re actually going to find anything out here?”

Will’s mouth hardens into a thin line. “I’m not sure,” he says, scanning the tree line. He nudges at the stone with his foot, watching it bounce and roll over the leaves. “I mean, we should expect anything, right? The monster attacks have been getting more frequent.”

“I guess,” Mike shrugs, but Will is right. Demo-creatures — bats and dogs, mostly — have been cropping up all over Hawkins recently, never in large numbers, never bad enough that they haven’t been able to handle it, but enough to be a problem. Enough to have them doing patrols, in pairs, all over the town. 

“I hope we don’t find anything,” Will says. He grips the strap of his rifle holster, holding it close to his chest. “But if we do, at least we’re together.” 

“Right,” Mike says, trying to silence the way his heart sings at the word. “Right. Together.” 

Will shoots him a small smile, cheeks tinged pink in the moonlight, and looks away. Mike feels his own cheeks grow warm and looks away too, kicking at the rock on the ground and sending it flying. They walk in silence for a few more minutes, a million questions and things to say rising up in Mike and then being aggressively pushed back down again, a waterboarding of his own design. 

Eventually, though, one of them breaks free, bursting out of him before Mike has the chance to stop it.

“Do you hate being back in Hawkins?”

Will’s head snaps towards him. “Hm?”

“Hawkins,” Mike repeats. The word feels like cotton in his mouth. “Do you hate being back here? Do you miss Lenora at all?”

Will sighs, shrugging and looking up at the sky, no signs of the storm at the center of town visible from this far out. “I don’t know,” he answers thoughtfully, voice clear. “I did at first, for sure. I think it would have been better if I’d never left in the first place, you know? I think that getting a break from it all and then having to come back to it made it worse.”

Mike hums. “That makes sense,” he says. 

“Especially because I still have that connection to him,” Will continues, “and knowing who it is now, and still being able to feel him…”

He trails off, and Mike reaches out and grips Will’s shoulder, a physical, unspoken reminder he keeps giving to remind Will that he’s here. Will sends a small smile his way, acknowledging the contact, and Mike only lets go once Will’s eyes are a little clearer again.

“Lenora was nice,” Will says quietly, after a few more minutes of silence. “El had it so rough, and I felt awful, but for me…” he shrugs again. “It was quiet. I didn’t have everything that happened to me following me around, and no one really noticed me enough to think of new names to call me… I didn’t have you guys, so that sucked, but I, uh. I made a couple of friends.” Mike suppresses a twitch at that, the idea of Will with friends that aren’t him. “Learned how to paint, so that was cool.” And it was – Mike still has that painting, rolled up and tucked under his bed. It makes him feel guilty to look at, knowing that Will’s hand was guided by El’s feelings, but sometimes he pulls it out anyway and just stares and stares and stares at it. He runs his fingers over the texture of the paint on canvas and lets himself think, for little moments at a time, that Will made those brushstrokes for him, from him.

“And,” Will says, pulling him back into the conversation, “I joined the tennis team — can you believe that?”

“Uh,” Mike stutters out, the idea of Will playing tennis crossing every single wire in his brain, setting off mini explosions at every corner. “No offense, but, um. No, I can’t.” 

Will laughs. “Yeah, me either.” That blush is still coloring his cheeks, a pretty pink. Mike, suddenly very present again, can’t look away. “It was kind of unexpected. My teacher asked me to try out after we did a unit in gym class, so I did, and the rest is history, I guess.” 

Mike nods slowly, digesting the information.“Did you like it?” he asks quietly. He can’t quite wrap his mind around it, the idea of Will playing a sport, but seeing him talk about it… he looks happy. Excited. Mike already knows the answer to his own question. 

“I did,” he answers, a bit shyly. “A lot. I had a letterman jacket and everything. I felt — not quite cool, per say, but like I wasn’t a total loser for the first time in my life. It felt nice to be good at something and have other people notice I was good at it, too.” 

Mike nods again, and then a wave of sudden and overwhelming guilt washes over him — this is exactly what Lucas had been trying to tell him, all those months ago, in what feels like a different lifetime. Mike had been so jaded and bitter and stubborn while Lucas begged for his support, and he’d gone out of his way to not be there. It shouldn’t have taken six months and the words coming from Will’s mouth for it to make sense to him, but it does. It does, and tomorrow, Mike is going to get on his bike and ride out to the hospital and give Lucas the biggest hug and best apology this world has ever seen. 

“That’s good, Will,” he says now, trying to force the dry feeling from his mouth. “I’m glad you had that.” 

“Me too,” Will says. “I miss it, sometimes. But I mean, at the end of the day — Hawkins is home, right?” He laughs, shaking his head at the sky, like he is sharing some sort of private joke with the stars. “It’s — it’s fucked up, and I have more trauma here than I know what to do with, but it’s home.”

Mike nods for a third time, his mouth screwing up to the side in an attempt to stop a smile from blooming, feeling that same sense of selfish joy that had found him when Will reminded them both of just exactly who had saved him two years ago. 

“Well,” he says, licking his lips. “I’m glad. It’s like I said — it’s not really been home here without you, either.”

This is a little different from what he said — a little more honest, with a little more of his heart showing. 

“Yeah?” Will asks, disbelieving. 

“Yeah,” Mike answers, soft.

They each look away, their smiles identical but private to each of them. Mike’s heart pounds so hard in his chest that he feels sick from it, stomach churning in a way that’s oddly delightful. 

It is another one of those moments that he wants to make himself a home in. The way Will is looking at him, the words that give warmth to the chill of the evening — Mike wants to stay trapped here, where it's safe and secure. He wants to forget about the bad that chased them here and the bad that’s waiting for them if they keep going. He wants one moment with Will, uninterrupted, unchallenged. He just wants Will.  

Time, as if to mock him for having such wants, sends a single spore fluttering down between them.

They spot it at the same time and immediately tense, looking up to find several others where that came from. The sky, just clear and full of stars, has begun to grow dark with thick, red clouds. 

“Shit,” Mike hisses, stepping back. He reaches down and unties the bandanna he keeps around his ankle, leaving his bat on the ground as he shakes out the fabric so that it unrolls quicker. “Do you have—“

“On it,” Will replies, retrieving his own bandanna from the pocket of his jeans. As he reaches up behind his ears to tie it on, hands fumbling with either end, his eyes are scanning all around them, flitting over the bushes and trees. “Do you see anything?”

Mike knots his own bandanna and then quickly retrieves his bat, gripping the handle tight. “Not yet,” he says. He stays silent for a moment, listening for the crunch of leaves or the telltale snap of a twig, anything to alert them of danger, but hears nothing other than he and Will’s ragged breathing. “I don’t think—“

He swallows the rest of his sentence, because there is suddenly a sound where there was none before, moving surely and quickly across the forest floor. He brings his other hand up to the bat and stands ready to strike, just the way Steve taught him, eyes wildly searching for the source of the noise. Will abandons his knot-tying efforts and lets his bandanna flutter to the ground, hands scrambling for his rifle.

He’s not quite fast enough.

The vine reveals itself in the same moment that it coils around one of Will’s ankles, tight and unforgiving. Will’s efforts at grabbing his rifle all go to waste as it tugs, hard, swiping Will’s feet out from under him and sending him crashing into the leaves. Mike barely has any time to react before it starts to dart back the way it came, Will in tow. 

Time is racing now, but it still snags, just for a moment, just long enough for a single word to echo through his mind: 

No. 

It’s one word, over and over again, but it’s many things, all contained to a single syllable — it’s no, this is not how this ends. It’s no, this is not what they’ve been fighting for, so hard and for so long. It’s no, this is not going to be his last memory of Will Byers. It’s no, he is not going to play this game of getting Will back, because he’s not going to lose him in the first place. 

Will cries out his name, the sound of it crashing into the metaphorical play button on the tape deck of Mike’s life, and he breaks into a run.

It’s not graceful, the way he bounds through the forest after Will, nearly slipping on fallen leaves and tripping over tree roots. He’s always been clumsy, his limbs longer and lankier than he has ever known what to do with. But adrenaline has taken control and put them on autopilot, and all he can feel are his legs pumping as he weaves through the trees, mimicking the route the vine is taking Will through. The muscles in his legs are already straining, being pushed far past their normal limits, but he ignores it, caring only about not letting Will out of his sight. 

“Mike!” Will screams, desperately clawing at the ground as he’s dragged across it, scrambling to find purchase on something, anything. But it’s no use; the vine is stronger, faster, and it continues to drag him back to where it came from. "Mike!” 

Two years ago, as Will was being burned alive from the inside out, he called for Mike the same way. Mike stood by helplessly then, hands in his hair and completely powerless to do something, anything. 

Today, just as Will gets pulled down into a gate splitting at the base of an old tree, Mike shoves his way in after after him, no hesitation.

He claws his way out of the gate into a sinister unknown he has only ever heard stories about, pushing at the fleshy walls and forcing himself out on the other side. Will’s journey through must have been equally rough, because Mike he scrambles to his feet and starts to run again, Will hasn’t gotten that much farther ahead. He’s turned over on his back now, fingers grappling against the tendril secured around his ankle, but it’s no use – a distressed, panicked cry escapes him, and he looks back over his shoulder to where Mike is still trying to catch up. 

“Mike,” he calls out again, so scared and small and thirteen years old again, calling for Mike over and over on Halloween night. “Mike, help!” 

Mike pushes himself impossibly harder, adrenaline coursing through him, cold air biting at his face and tearing through his jacket like it’s nothing, just as Will finally finds purchase in a tree root sticking out of the ground. The vines jerk at the sudden halt, tugging roughly and trying to pull him away, but Will clings to the root with both hands, wildly kicking his foot in an effort to get it free. It’s not much, but it’s just enough to give Mike an opening to catch up. 

It all happens very quickly, then: he reaches up to grab the nail bat hanging on his back, and in the same breath, brings it down hard onto the vine secured to Will’s leg. It twitches violently at the impact, quivering wildly, but it doesn’t let go. Will makes a strangled noise next to him, and that’s the only catalyst needed for Mike to completely lose it.

“Let him go,” he seethes, bringing the bat down again and again and again, pieces of dirt flying where the bat is hitting the earth as well as the vine. It spasms viciously, still trying to hold on as best as it can, but eventually, it’s no match for Mike’s frenzied blows – it finally uncurls from Will’s ankle, and Will immediately scrambles back, far out of the range from where Mike is still bringing the bat down. 

It’s off of him, he recognizes distantly as he swings the bat down, landing another hit to the vine and watching it curl in on itself. It’s off, Will’s okay, you can stop. But the realization doesn’t soothe him the way that it should, doesn’t clear his vision of the blinding rage that spreads to every nerve in his body and moves his arms without his input. He can’t stop bringing the bat down, a steady, staccato beat played out on this evil without a face, not even when it gives one shuddering, final lurch and stops moving. He still swings, grunts ripping out from the back of his throat every time the bat makes contact with its target.

“Mike,” Will says, barely audible over the sound of the thud, thud, thud and Mike’s roaring thoughts. The bat comes down; this is for Will. It meets the vine, the impact the only thing causing any movement in it at all anymore; for everything you’ve taken from him. He hauls it out of the earth, swinging it back over his shoulder, ready for another strike; for everything you’ve taken from me. “Mike,” Will says again, louder. His voice is gravely, raw from screaming, and that only forces Mike’s bat down again. Fuck you, punctuated by wood and nails meeting earthy flesh. Fuck you, again. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, a hit with each one.

“Mike!” Will repeats a third time, forcefully, and Mike finally pauses, turning to him with his chest heaving. Will is looking up at him wearily, eyes darting back and forth between Mike’s face and the nail bat slung over his shoulder. 

“What?” Mike breathes out, chest heaving. 

Will swallows. “It’s dead,” he says softly, glancing at the still vine once before looking back at Mike. “You got it, Mike. It’s dead.”

It’s not a revelation – Mike had already come to the same conclusion on his own, twenty swings ago. But Will’s words, soft spoken and true, anchor Mike in a way that he’s not able to do on his own, and reality comes flooding back in all at once. There’s an ache in his arms and his pulse is in his hands and he and Will are here, together, in the Upside Down. 

“Will,” Mike breathes out. The nail bat slides through his fingers, hitting the ground next to the vine’s husk with a dull thud. He takes one step towards Will, two, staggering across the forest floor. He makes it within a foot of Will before his legs give out and he falls forward, twigs snapping under his weight as his knees crash into the ground. 

“Mike,” Will says again, scrambling across the leaves to where Mike is kneeling in the dirt, his jeans steadily growing damp from where they are pressed into the dewey earth. Will brings his shaky hands up to Mike’s face, his neck, his shoulders, moving back and forth and up and down as he frantically checks for injuries. “Are you okay?”

Mike laughs, because it’s all so ridiculous, this situation they’ve found themselves in. The Upside Down and Will getting dragged here by the ankle and Mike chasing after him and Will asking Mike if he’s okay, at the tail end of it all. Will looking nervous for Mike, as if he wasn’t just literally dragged back into a hell he’s already faced before. 

What a marvelous creature, Will Byers is. 

“I’m okay,” he says through another laugh. He gently grabs Will’s wrists, stilling his frenzied, shaking hands, where his nails are torn and bleeding from clawing at the ground. Mike wants to press them to his mouth, but pushes the curious idea aside, ducking his head to meet Will’s eyes. “I’m okay. Are you? How’s your ankle?”  

Will lets out a trembling breath and looks over his shoulder at his leg, flexing his foot a few times carefully. “It definitely doesn’t feel great,” he says. His hands fiddle with the collar of Mike’s jacket. “But I don’t think it’s broken.”

“Let me see,” Mike hums. He lets go of Will’s wrists and waits patiently as Will reorients himself, sitting with one knee pulled to his chest and the other outstretched towards Mike. Mike carefully rolls up the hem of his jeans and immediately winces at the sight of inflamed skin, red and raw, but thankfully not bleeding. He pulls back Will’s sock, gentle in his touch, revealing a mark that perfectly mimics the coil of the vine. He shifts Will’s foot this way and that, watching for anything strange and checking his face for any sign of discomfort, but other than a small wince, there is none. “Looks fine to me,” he comments, and then another laugh bubbles out of him. “Not that I have any more medical expertise than you do, though.”

Will laughs with him, a weak, quiet thing, but a laugh all the same. The sound of it, ringing out in this desolate wasteland that is the setting of every nightmare — sleeping and waking — that Will has ever had, is a treasure.  Mike intends to keep it for a long, long time. 

“So,” he says, tugging Will’s pant leg back to where it’s supposed to be, “What now?” 

It’s the question of the year, maybe their lifetimes. Will pulls his leg back, hugging both close to his chest, and looks around — the trees around them are almost familiar, a darker mimicry of the forest they’re used to, but different enough that they bring no comfort. 

“I don’t know,” Will says honestly. He glances back over his shoulder, back towards the direction they came, and Mike follows his gaze. “Did we come through a gate?” 

Mike shakes his head, pushing to his feet. “Kind of,” he murmurs. He reaches his hand out for Will to take, and for a moment, the contact — palm to freezing palm, thumbs hooked around each other — is all he can focus on. It’s over as quickly as it began, Will back up on his feet beside him, but the ghost of the touch is branded onto Mike’s brain, joining that last hug in the Byers’ driveway. He shakes his head, clearing both from his mind, and grits out, “Let’s go see.”

He reaches down to retrieve his nail bat from the forest floor and tips it in Will’s direction, gesturing him ahead. Will tucks his arms against his chest and nods, turning toward the direction from which they came and setting off. Mike trails behind him, surveying their surroundings fleetingly, but mostly keeping his eyes trained on Will — the hard set of his shoulders, the long line of the rifle he’s carrying on his back, the way he’s hunched in on himself, tense. He tells himself the attention is only because he’s feeling protective, and almost believes it. 

“I don’t see anything,” Will says, after minutes of silent walking, surveying the ground and surrounding foliage intently. “I don’t — how far did it drag me? Where did we even come in?”

“There was a tree,” Mike provides. But the entire ordeal happened in an adrenaline-filled, hazy blur, irrelevant in the face of everything that happened after it, and he’s not sure that he can distinguish which tree they came from. He tells Will as much, and Will snorts besides him.

“Great,” he says, voice tight with barely suppressed panic. “We’re fucked.” 

“No, we’re not,” Mike says firmly, braver than he feels. “We can figure this out. Nancy and Jonathan said that gates to the Upside Down can open and close on their own, right? That it would happen when the demogorgon attacked, back when you were missing. That’s probably what happened now – the gate just closed.” 

Will glances around again, eyes still searching for a fissure, a gate, something in the tree trunks, but looking less panicked. “Okay,” he says stiffly. “Then how do we get back out?”

“Well,” says Mike. He brings a hand up to his face, still covered in cloth. “We find a gate.” 

“Right,” Will says. “Where, Mike?”

Where, indeed. “We were by Castle Byers when you got taken, right?” Will nods. “Then we should be in the woods behind your old house, then. And if there are the five gates in town that stay open always, then the one we’d be closest to is the one at Lover’s Lake.” Will squints, as if he is challenging Mike in his own head, but Mike is right. He knows he is. “So, if we can just figure out the way back to your house, we can get back to the gate from there.” 

Will nods, not disagreeing, but not looking particularly pleased, either. “Isn’t that in the middle of the lake?” he asks. 

“Yes,” Mike answers, holding back his own grimace. “It’ll be fine. Faster than getting to one of the other gates from here, and better than staying down here longer than we need to.” 

Will stares at him. Mike can see the gears in his head turning, trying to come up with a better idea, and getting nothing. He’s uneasy, understandably on edge, and Mike selfishly, desperately hopes that his being here is bringing him some semblance of comfort. 

“Okay,” Will relents. He shivers, his crewneck clearly not enough to combat the cold, and grips the strap of his gun holster tighter. “Okay, fine. Lead the way.” 

Mike bites his cheek, considering. The two of them stand there for a moment, Will shaking and Mike staring, wicked thunder rolling in the distance. Spores flutter in the air around them, an acidic imitation of a snowfall. And then Mike lets his bat fall to the ground, hitting the forest floor with a dull thud, and Will seemingly forgets to be cold in favor of being confused, instead.  

“Mike,” Will starts, “What are you–” 

“Here,” Mike interrupts, already sliding his coat down his arms. Cool air already acquainting itself with his exposed skin, he crosses the distance between them and presses the denim into Will’s trembling hands.

“I’m not taking your jacket,” Will says indignantly. He tries to give it back, bunching the fabric and shoving it into Mike’s chest. But Mike shakes his head, placing his hands over Will’s and gently pushing it back. 

“Take it,” he says softly. 

“Mike–” 

“Take it,” Mike repeats more forcefully. Will opens his mouth to argue again, but Mike continues before he has the chance to speak. “Please, Will. It’ll make me feel better.” 

Maybe it’s mean, to twist the situation around and act like Will’s the one doing him a favor, but it’s for his own good, and it’s true, anyway. Mike will feel better knowing that Will is warmer. Will holds his gaze, clearly flustered and clearly annoyed but unable to argue, and more than that, clearly cold. His eyes harden into a glare as he takes the rifle strap off his back and slots his gun between his thighs, pressing them together and holding it there. There’s a note of aggression in his movements as pulls the jacket on, practically punching his arms through the sleeves and tugging the collar down around his neck. His eyes don’t leave Mike once.

“Happy?” Will asks. The sleeves are too long for him. 

“Very,” says Mike, no effort made at hiding the glee in his voice.

Will rolls his eyes, but Mike can tell he’s trying not to smile as he tries to roll the cuff of one of his sleeves, doing a bad job of it. Mike steps forward to help, their hands brushing. He doesn’t let the touch or the thought of it linger, and instead focuses all of his energy into rolling denim making quick work of each one as Will just stands there and lets him do it.  

Once again, Mike finds himself marveling at how Will’s grown during his time under the California sun, taller and leaner and filled out in places where he used to be just skin and bone – Mike remembers the shock of seeing it, back in the airport, and felt like he wasn’t allowed to touch. But what Mike lacks in muscle mass he makes up in inches, and he’s always had more of them than Will –so even though Will’s grown into himself, he still swims in the borrowed jacket, and the sight of it – Will in clothes too big for him, Mike’s clothes – does something funny to his chest. 

Mike promptly looks away, his face curiously warm despite the cold. 

“Thank you,” Will mutters finally. In his peripheral, Mike can see him pull the rifle back over his head, settling it back in its place against between his shoulder blades. He retrieves his own bat from the ground again, tapping it into the earth a few times to dislodge some of the dirt caked onto the nails. “For the jacket, for…for being here with me. For coming after me.”

“Any time,” he answers, and means it. Then, something occurs to him: “Shit, you don’t have anything to cover your face.”

Will lifts his fingers to his face, touching the bare skin like he hadn’t realized nothing was covering it until just now. “Right,” he says. “I was… I couldn’t tie it in time, and I dropped it so I could get my gun, instead.”

Mike nods, recalling the scene playing out himself. “It’s fine,” he says, already reaching back to untie the bandanna from his own face. “Just take mine.”

“No,” Will answers immediately, actually shoving Mike’s hand back when he reaches out to hand him the bandanna. “No, Mike. You already gave me your jacket — I’m not taking that, too. Keep it.” 

“Okay,” Mike says simply, then drops the fabric to the ground. “Then neither of us will use it.”

Will snatches the bandanna up, trying to shove it into Mike’s hands. “Don’t be an idiot,” he says wryly. 

Mike shrugs. “You were in here for a week with no protection and came out just fine, right?”

Will levels him with a look. “Define ‘fine’.” 

“Not dying from toxic spores,” Mike answers. 

Will looks at him, long and hard, and Mike looks back. 

“Fine,” Will says finally, after several moments of stretched silence. Mike lets the bandanna flutter back to the floor, triumphant. 

“I’ll be fine,” Mike reassures, hoping to ease the crease between Will’s furrowed brows. “We’ll be fine. Okay?” He waits until Will nods. “Let’s go. Nance said to avoid the vines.”

As they begin walking together, forging a path they have left footprints in so many times before, Mike wonders who, exactly, he’s trying to reassure – Will, or himself. 

▶️

Twenty minutes later, they finally emerge through the woods and into the Byers’ former backyard, trudging noisily through the fallen leaves covering the ground. Will stopped shaking around fifteen minutes ago, much to Mike’s relief, and he seems to have completely gathered his wits about him now as he strides ahead of Mike around the side of the house. 

“Is this weird for you?” Mike asks, breaking into a half-jog in order to catch up to Will, who has been striding five paces ahead of him this entire time.

“What?” Will asks, not looking back. “My old house, or seeing my old house in the Upside Down?”

Mike shrugs, though Will still isn’t looking. “Either, I guess.” 

Will tilts his head, considering. “I guess it is a little weird,” Will admits, holding a tree branch back and keeping it there for Mike to walk by as well. “Like, it’s not the way I left it, but it’s the way I remember it when I was stuck here.” 

Mike suppresses a shudder at the mention of Will’s time in the Upside Down. Of course it was more traumatic for Will, being the one to actually go through it – but that night and the week that followed still haunts Mike, both for what he went through himself and for the way that it haunts Will. He’ll never forget that image of Will being pulled from the water, or the sight of him, alive but small and gray, in the hospital bed after everything was over. He’ll never forget the bags under Will’s eyes that lingered for months afterwards, or the sound of Will crying above him, shaking in his bed after a particularly bad nightmare.

They both carry this burden. Together, just like they do everything else. 

The front of the house comes into view as they round the corner, and Mike means to keep walking, really – it’s a bad idea to stay here longer than necessary, and they’re already halfway to the gate that’ll bring them home. He should keep going.

But something brings his legs to a halt anyway, staring at that house. 

“Are you coming?” Will asks, already a few paces ahead when he realizes Mike has stopped.

“Yeah,” Mike answers, but makes no effort to move. Will doubles back and comes up beside him, sliding his hands into the borrowed pockets as he looks at the house too. “It really is weird.” 

And it is, Mike thinks, to see the Byers’s house like this: sitting eerily in the dark, not a single light to be seen, so cold and unwelcoming. He has so many memories here — not all of them good, some of them actively bad, even — but through them all, he has never once thought of using those words to describe this house. 

Not this house, which has never had the space Mike’s did, but always knew how to fill it better than Mike’s family does. Not this house, where Mike has spent countless summer afternoons and fall evenings and winter nights, wishing that he lived there too, that he never had to leave. Not this house, which taught Mike that there is more to feeling warm than the amount of layers it takes to get you there. Not this house, just as much Mike’s childhood home as it is Will’s, the only place in the world where he felt like he could be a child, and not be punished for it. 

This house shrouding them in its shadow feels wrong. Mike thinks of twelve-year-old Will, alone and afraid, and finding only darkness where there was supposed to be light. He thinks of the Will beside him, the Will who that little boy grew up into, and his heart breaks for him a little more.

“I came here almost every day while you were gone,” he says quietly, the words surprising even himself. It’s a confession unplanned, cowardly in the dark, but honest all the same. 

Will sucks in a breath beside him, so loud in the still of the night. “What?” 

“At first, I think I just…forgot,” Mike says, still quiet. The words are scary, but the dark and the scarier things looming make them easier to say. “Like, it was such a habit to get on my bike and go to your house that I didn’t even think about how you wouldn’t be there.” He shrugs. “But even when I remembered, I still came here. The family who moved in probably thinks I’m so creepy, but it just — it made me feel close to you even though you were gone.” His foot through the dirt, and his cheeks are warm again, no doubt colored with a deep flush that he hopes Will can’t see. “I don’t know. It’s stupid.” 

Will, who has been quiet this whole time, jumps in immediately. “I don’t think it’s stupid,” he says in a rush, a little breathless. 

Mike finally looks over at him. “You don’t?”

“No,” Will answers quickly. “I mean, I probably would have done the same, if our roles were reversed.” 

Mike’s lips quirk into a smile without his permission. “Yeah?” Will nods, his own smile breaking free. Emboldened, Mike confesses, “I sat in my basement for two months when you left Hawkins. All I did was play Nintendo and sulk.”

Will laughs. “I would have done that, too, except I didn’t have a basement or a Nintendo, but.” He tilts one shoulder in a half shrug. “You know. The sentiment is there.” 

And there it is: that feeling, the one Mike wants to bottle up and take with him everywhere he goes, the one that goes unsaid in every conversation and every glance he shares with Will. It has brought them here, to this nightmare dimension at the world’s edge, and it’s going to see them through to the other side, Mike is sure of it. 

But he has learned the hard way, as he so often does, that sometimes, just feeling something isn’t enough. He has spent so much time counting on the people in his life to just know what he means without having to say it, and not enough time actually saying it. Will’s the one who said it himself: it’s scary to open up, to tell people how you really feel. But Mike can try, for Will. 

He reaches into the space between them and finds Will’s hand, his fingers skating across his palm and then lacing together with Will’s. The contact is a gift, one he is both giving and receiving, and it grounds him.

“I missed you,” he says honestly. They are not the words he intended to come out, but they are just as true, and three steps in the right direction. 

Will looks at their linked hands and then back up at Mike, the expression on his face suddenly very complicated for a reason Mike can’t discern. His eyes shine, brimming with that something, and he says, pained, “Mike…”

Mike winces at the sound, but his lips quirk in amusement despite himself. “What,” he asks, lighthearted, “didn’t you miss me?” 

“Of course I did,” Will answers quickly, as if the half second between Mike’s question finishing and Will’s answer would be too much for either of them to bear. He’s right about that. “No, I just—“

“Hey, it’s fine.” Mike squeezes his hand, and Will’s brow furrows. “We’re together now, right? I won’t let anything change that.” He’s saying the words for himself just as much as he is for Will, because there is nothing, will never be anything, that can shape the feelings he has for Will into something sour and rotten. 

And then Will says, “I lied to you.” 

A beat of silence, so big it encompasses both this dimension and the one it parallels, and then:

“Sorry?” Mike asks, feeling the ridiculous urge to clean out his ears. It is so far from what he expected Will to say that surely, he must have heard him wrong. Will was supposed to say I missed you, too or of course we’ll stay together or I lo— 

“About the painting,” Will clarifies, voice thick. “I lied, Mike.” 

The painting. The painting, the one that’s currently sitting still rolled up, shoved under Mike’s bed. The one that the thessalhydra has broken free of, chewing at Mike’s guilty heart every time he even dares to look at it. The one that shifted his entire world view, made him realize things about El and Will and himself that are still sore to the touch, to this day.

And here is Will, master of that painting, conductor of those feelings, telling Mike that it, too, is a lie.

Is it possible for the world to end twice? 

“What?” Mike chokes out. “You’re – you’re not making any sense.” He sounds like he’s begging. Maybe he is.

“It wasn’t from El,” Will says, and Mike just stares at him. “She didn’t ask me to paint it. She didn’t even know.”

And in a way, it’s exactly what Mike wanted to hear. It should alleviate months of that guilt for not matching El’s feelings and it should make him giddy that maybe, just maybe, Will is saying what Mike thinks he’s saying. But he can’t pick either of those things apart from the lie that tangles them together, knotted and ugly. 

“But I…” He feels numb. “You… what?” The words claw their way out of his throat, scraping like steel wool.

“I’m sorry,” Will rushes to say. Two tears appear on his cheeks like magic, already sliding down his chin before Mike can even begin to track them. “I’m sorry, you were just — you were so scared of losing her, and I was scared of losing you” —he squeezes Mike’s hand— “and I thought—“

Mike rips his hand from Will’s, shaking their fingers apart. “You thought what, Will?” he snarls. That numbness is gone, replaced so quickly with a searing rage that he doesn’t know how he ever didn’t feel it. Will takes a half step back, biting his lip as more tears trail down his cheeks, and Mike barrels on. “That I fucked up so bad you needed to step in? That it was your job to fix something you didn’t even break in the first place?” 

“No, Mike. No! I thought that it would help!” He makes a noise that is caught between frustration and distress, punching out of him with more tears. “You already felt all of those things, okay? I know El did, too. I was just — putting together pieces that were already there—“

“No,” Mike interrupts, holding up his hand as if to silence Will. It shakes in the space between them, growing larger by the minute. “You were forcing together pieces that didn’t fit, and you knew. You knew they didn’t, and I” —the bat in his other hand clatters to the ground, and he brings both up to clutch at his own head, grabbing frustrated fistfuls of hair and starting to pace — “I knew, too, and I just — I needed you to tell me that it was okay. All that shit, about El, about how she felt — that was the last thing I needed!” 

“And how was I supposed to know that?” Will exclaims, and oh, he’s angry now, too, fuse properly lit. Mike is almost glad for it; it’s so much worse, to be lonely with anger. “You don’t talk to me anymore! I’m not a mind reader!” 

Mike scoffs, stopping in place and crossing his arms over his chest. “We already went over this,” he says scornfully, completely dismissive. 

“No, you went over it,” Will says. He enunciates you with a jab to Mike’s chest, right over his heart. “You said you felt like you lost me and you said you came to my house every day to feel close to me.” Each you, punctuated with a point. “Well, maybe you wouldn’t have felt that way if you’d called, even once—“ 

“Don’t you dare say I didn’t call you,” Mike spits out, seething, voice rising to match Will’s, pointing right back at him. “I called all the time. Your mom was always on the damn line!” 

Will barks out a bitter laugh, “So what,” he yells, both arms flinging out, “you couldn’t write more than one letter at once? You were only allowed to talk to me over the phone? Is there some stupid rule about written communication that I don’t know about?” 

“You—“ Mike starts, then stops himself abruptly, turning on his heel and pacing once, twice, before stopping back in front of Will. “Whatever, man. Don’t change the subject. You lied to me.” 

“And I’m fucking sorry, okay?” His shoulders raise up to his ears. “I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have done it, but I did, and I can’t change it. I’m just sorry for it. What more do you want me to say? Use your words, Mike, for once in your life!” 

How fitting, that this is where they’ve found themselves again. It’s a different scene, less characters, but the story is the same, isn’t it? It’s Will, metaphorically rubbing his back and stroking his hair, and it’s Mike, trying desperately to dislodge the words that stick in his throat and threaten to choke him. It’s embarrassing, is what it is, and Will’s words, meant to bait him, do their job, hook, line, and sinker.

“I want you to say it was from you!” It tears out of him, raw and desperate, both hands flying forward to gesture to where Will is standing, chest heaving in time with Mike’s.

Will frowns, like this is not what he expected Mike to say. Join the fucking club. Mike watches as his anger bleeds into confusion, and he asks, without yelling, “What?”

Mike swallows past the sudden dryness in his throat, brought on by screaming or by nerves or maybe a combination of the two. “I want,” he says slowly, matching Will’s volume, “for you to say it was from you.” 

This is not just about the painting, and they both know it. It’s not even about the valediction, either, the love, comma part of this equation already factored in. No, it’s about the name on the signature line, the owner of the feelings that have kept Mike up at night, haunted and hoping. And here he stands: laid bare, still haunted, still hoping.

“Mike,” Will pleads. 

“Say it,” Mike repeats. His voice shakes. “If it’s the truth, then say it.” 

Will shakes his head, on the verge of tears for a different reason. “You don’t know what you’re asking for,” he says. “You think you do, but you don’t—“

Mike wants to scream, to grab Will by the shoulders and shake him and say I love you, you idiot, can’t you see? but the time still isn’t right. 

There is a rustle in the bushes from somewhere behind Mike, a horrifyingly familiar, clicking growl following shortly after, and Will freezes, looking right past him and focusing his attention intensely in the direction of the noise. Whatever he was about to say dies instantly on his tongue, and Mike whips around, wildly scanning the foliage with him. 

The growl sounds out again, startlingly loud in the sudden quiet. 

“Get in the house,” Will says under his breath, just as he swivels his rifle around to his front and lifts it to aim. 

“What?” Mike hisses back. He takes a step backwards, wincing at the sound of gravel crunching beneath his shoes, and nearly trips over his discarded bat. “Are you crazy? I’m not leaving you alone out here.” 

Will glances back and forth between Mike and the bush quickly, and repeats, voice still low, “Get in the house, Mike.”

“No,” Mike says. He grabs the bat from the ground and lets his roll between his fingers. “I’m not—“

“If this is what I think it is,” Will spits, “that’s not going to do us any good. Get in the damn house. Now.” 

Mike doesn’t have another chance to argue, because several things happen at once: 

1. A demodog tearing out of the bushes, snarling as it hurtles towards them,
2. Will’s gun going off — once, twice, threefourfive times, the sound of it slicing through the night air, 
3. Mike jumping completely out of his skin at both of these things, 
4. Begrudgingly but quickly accepting Will’s orders to get in the damn house, now and stumbling towards the direction of the Byers’ front door, shoes slipping in the gravel, 
5. A combination of this and his  clumsy feet working together to decide that the process of getting in the damn house, now is the perfect time to fail him, 
6. Tripping and crashing head-first into one of the poles on the Byers’ porch, every color he’s ever known combining into a white so bright it blinds him for a moment, sending him stumbling in what he hopes is the direction of the front door,
7. Will screaming, “Get in the fucking house!” while Mike scrambles for the key that he knows is in the plant pot by the door, giggling all the way, because somehow, this entire situation has turned just a little funny.

“What are you doing?” Will demands, hysterical in a different way. He’s suddenly right next to Mike, plucking the retrieved key from his fingers and shoving it into the lock on his first try. He throws the door open, hard enough to hit the wall behind it and recoil back, and hauls Mike, still caught in a giggle, up by the arm. “We have to go,” he says, tugging on Mike roughly. 

Mike, who is feeling particularly uncoordinated and now has something dripping into his eye, slurs, between little laughs, “I’m going, I’m going,” and drags himself across the threshold, shoving his bat to the side. Will slams the door behind him the moment he’s inside, rattling the entire house and Mike’s brain in his skull. 

“It’s dead,” Will says breathlessly, the answer to a question Mike didn’t ask. He locks the door and stalks over to the window; Mike spares a glance at him with the eye that isn’t being dripped into to see Will peering out into the yard. “There might be more where that one came from, though.” He runs a hand through his hair, leaving some of it sticking up and eliciting another soft giggle from Mike at the sight of it. “Fuck. Fuck.” 

“Fuck,” Mike agrees wholeheartedly. He reaches his hand up to touch at the wetness above his brow, and when he pulls his hand away, squints in confusion at the red that stains his fingers.

“We shouldn’t stay here,” Will says quickly. He still has not looked at where Mike sits crumpled on the floor, curiously bleeding. “We need to go.”

“Uh,” Mike says eloquently, trying to get his bearings back. “Will?”

Will hums in acknowledgement, but his eyes stay trained on the window. 

“Will,” Mike says again. 

“What?” Will asks tersely. He spares a quick look over to Mike, and then does a double take, pushing away from the window with a startled, “Shit!” He drops to his knees next to Mike, hands hovering around his head. “What the hell happened?” 

Mike presses his fingers back to the cut on his forehead, wincing at the tenderness. “Tripped,” he grunts out. It is very much not funny anymore. “Smacked my head into the pole.” 

Will mutters another string of curses under his breath, looking around wildly. Mike laser focuses on the way his teeth tug at his bottom lip. 

“Can you stand?” Will asks gently. Mike nods. “Okay, up. Come on.” 

Mike is pretty sure that he could get up by himself, but he’s not complaining at the way Will’s arm wraps around his bicep, gentle but firm. Will helps him to his feet, but his hand stays (unnecessarily) on Mike’s arm as he leads him down the hallway and yanks him into the bathroom. 

“Sit,” Will instructs, gesturing to the toilet lid. Mike follows the direction without protest, dropping down to the seat, grateful for the opportunity to finally stop moving around so much.Will, satisfied with seeing Mike in one place and in one piece, turns to the medicine cabinet, pulling out various first aid supplies and gathering them in the crook of his arm. 

“The Upside Down has all this stuff?” Mike asks. 

Will hums, closing the cabinet and dropping to his knees in front of Mike on the tile. “It has whatever the rightside up has,” he says with a shrug. He lets his haul tumble out of his arms into a pile on the floor, then reaches for the toilet paper roll and tears off a few pieces. “Alright, let me see.”

Mike lets his hand fall away from his face, holding it uselessly in his lap as not to stain his clothes with his own blood. Will reaches up in his absence, wadding the toilet paper up and pressing it to the cut, holding it in place. 

“You might have a concussion,” Will murmurs. His eyes are trained onto his own hand where it’s pressed against Mike’s head and refuse to meet Mike’s, whose eyes are trying to catch Will’s.

The atmosphere is tense, both from the circumstances of their location and the circumstances of their relationship. It never feels good to fight with Will, but he never remembers it until after they’ve already fought. In the moment, everything gets the best of him – all of these feelings he has for Will, ones he finally has a name for, all rush to spill out at once, and never in the way Mike wants them to. It’s always in a way that hurts him just as much as it hurts Will, and he’s tired of them both hurting. 

“I don’t have a concussion,” Mike says, extra careful to make sure his words are clear. 

Will fixes him with a look. “You don’t know that.”

“I do,” Mike insists. “Test me. Ask me anything. I’ll pass with flying colors.” 

“Fine,” Will agrees after a beat. He lifts to check the wound on Mike’s head. Satisfied, he tosses the toilet paper wad into the trash and gets back up to grab a hand towel and wet it under the tap. Mike watches him the whole way. “Where are you right now?” 

“With you,” Mike answers easily. 

Even in the dim light, Mike can see the way Will’s face flushes. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” he chastises, turning off the tap and wringing out the extra water from the towel.

“Be more specific, then,” Mike says. 

“Your location,” Will deadpans. He wipes his hands on the front of his jeans, then drops back to a crouch before Mike on the toilet again. “Where are you?”

“The bathroom of your old house,” Mike answers proudly. “In the Upside Down.” Will raises a brow at him, knowing he’s not done. Mike lets his smile run loose, and adds, “With you.” 

Will, predictably, rolls his eyes. “Correct,” he says, like the admission hurts him to say. He starts to gently dab at the cut at Mike’s brow, wiping the blood away. “And how did we get here?”

Mike knows the answer to this one too. “We were on patrol together in the woods,” he says. “A gate opened, and a vine dragged you through. I followed you in.” 

“Right again,” Will says. He still won’t look at Mike in the eyes, keeping busy with the task he’s assigned himself to – one that Mike could have done himself, in his un-concussed state, thank you very much. But he’s also privately, wickedly glad for it, the way Will is caring for him, tending to his wounds and patching him up. “This is going to sting a little,” Will says, as he uncaps the hydrogen peroxide and tilts the bottle into the same towel he was just using.

It stings a lot, actually, when Will presses the solution-soaked towel to his cut. His torn skin feels like it’s being tugged at from either end, even with how gentle Will is being, and Mike winces. 

“Sorry,” Will murmurs, finally meeting Mike’s eyes. There is more than one apology wrapped up into the word. 

Mike considers again the truth that’s been revealed to him just a few minutes ago, the facts he’s been presented with and the unspoken thread that ties them all together. Will’s painted him more than just a rendition of their fantasy selves coming together to face the big bad – he’s also painted them just as they are, coming together in a different way. Art is up to interpretation, which is maybe why it’s taken him so long to get here, why Will had to spell it out for him and hold his hand through it all.

There have been misunderstandings and miscommunication and a lot of just missing, on both ends, but all it’s done is taught Mike that he is always stronger when he and Will are together. A team, through and through. 

“It’s okay,” Mike says quietly, addressing both apologies. 

Will frowns. His eyes flit back and forth between Mike’s, studious, like he is frustrated that he really can’t read Mike’s mind, and is trying desperately to learn. Mike just lets him look, his cut fizzing uncomfortably, and looks right back. 

Finally, after an eternity spent in each other’s eyes, Will asks, “What are you thinking?”

There are a million and one things Mike is thinking, and a million and one ways to express them with tact, poise, and dignity. Unfortunately, the one that comes out of his mouth, zero tact, poise, dignity, or genuine human thought to be found, is, “I want to kiss you.” 

Will abruptly pulls the towel back from Mike’s face, lips pressing into a hard, thin line. “Alright,” he says curtly, tossing the towel to the side and grabbing for a box of bandages, tearing the packaging as he rips it open. “You’re concussed.” 

Mike’s eyebrows pull together in confusion, pulling at the still-open wound painfully. “What?” he asks. Will doesn’t respond – he spends a single second fishing through the different sized bandages before giving up, shaking the entire box out amongst the rest of his supplies and letting its contents splay all over the floor. 

“You’re concussed,” Will repeats. There is a finality to his tone, filling the room and not leaving much space left for any arguments. He’s back to resolutely not looking at Mike, sorting through the bandaids and taking his sweet time in selecting one, jaw tight and locked up. 

Oh, Mike realizes, he’s angry again. And it’s not the angry that Mike is used to, either – Will’s anger is usually just as explosive as his own, red-hot and scorching and uncaring of who is standing in the blast zone. No, this is Will turned to ice, furious in a way that is unforgiving and hard. 

“I’m not,” Mike says, as Will finally selects a bandage and starts to rip at the paper sealing it in place. “Will, I’m not. Do you think I want to kiss you because I hit my head?” 

“Yeah,” Will bites out. He presses his lips together again and breathes out audibly through his nose. “Yeah, I do.” 

“Maybe you should hit your head too, then,” Mike suggests. 

Will shakes his head and laughs something bitter and cruel. “That doesn’t make sense,” he mutters, dismissive. The bandage spills out of the paper and flutters to the floor, and Will mumbles another curse under his breath and scrapes at the tile to pick it up. 

“It makes sense to me,” Mike says petulantly. 

“No, it doesn’t,” Will says. He reaches up to apply the bandaid, his tongue barely poking out between his lips as he lines it up the way he wants it. “You were pissed at me ten minutes ago,” he continues, spreading his thumbs over the adhesive. “Do you remember that?” 

Mike huffs, breathing out into Will’s wrists. “I do,” he says, “and maybe I’m still a little mad. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, because what I said is still true.” 

“No,” Will argues, smoothing over the bandaid with more force than necessary, “it isn’t.” 

“Don’t tell me how I feel,” Mike says, gently pushing Will’s hands out of his face. 

Will glares at him. “Then don’t be mean, Mike.” 

“How am I being mean?” Mike demands, watching Will gather all of his supplies into his arms and then get up to dump them all in the sink. He doesn’t give Mike a response, ripping open the medicine cabinet again and shoving each product back to its place on the shelf aggressively. “Will, talk to me.” 

Will drops the box he’s holding and whirls towards him, hands gripping the edge of the sink so hard that his skin is stretched white over his knuckles. “You don’t — like me, like that. Okay?” He drops his head, speaking to the sink, his voice bouncing back out of it, loud and getting louder with every word: “You’re confused, and you feel bad, and you think you can fix it by just giving me what I want.” 

“Will–” Mike starts, getting to his feet, and only stumbling a little. 

“But you can’t,” Will continues, pushing himself from the bowl and gesturing with his arm, voice still rising. “That’s not how it works, and that’s not what I want, and it’s mean–” 

“It’s not mean,” Mike says. He grabs Will by the shoulders, holding him in place. “It’s not mean if I feel the same.” 

But Will just shakes his head, still angry, still not listening. “Mike, don’t.” 

“No, you don’t,” he interrupts. He’s surprised to find that he’s angry again, too – but then again, he has always followed Will’s lead, not the other way around. “You don’t get it, and you don’t listen, and I need you to do both.”

Will stares at him long and hard, his eyes like cold steel. He looks like he doesn’t want to even stay in the room with Mike, much less listen to what he has to say. If Will were anyone else, he just might do that. As it is, though, he is Will, and Will listens, even when he doesn’t want to. Mike only hopes that what he has to say is something Will wants to hear.

“I love you,” Mike says, and it’s still scary to say something he’s kept so close to his chest for so long out loud, but on the same token – it’s crazy how easy it is, to say those three words when they are something that he means. It’s even crazier that he can say them all by himself, without Will having to string them out of him. “I don’t have some fancy speech planned, and maybe this isn’t the time or place, but I don’t care. I love you, and I’m tired of not saying it. I’m tired of hiding it and I’m tired of hating myself for it.”

And that’s true, too – how long has he spent, beating himself up over loving Will? Being cruel to himself for something that comes as naturally to him as breathing? But when he thinks about it, really thinks about it – in this place full of things that are evil and dark and rotting, a boy loving another boy doesn’t seem so bad. In fact, a love like this may be the brightest thing the Upside Down has ever known. 

“Mike,” says Will, and it’s a protest, the way he says it. “Mike–” 

“Don’t,” Mike interrupts, bending his knees just enough so that he and Will are at eye-level. His hands skate up Will’s shoulders and come to rest on either side of Will’s neck, holding his face in place. “Don’t do that to yourself,” he says. Tears leak out of the corners of Will’s eyes, and Mike’s thumbs catch each of them, wiping them away. “Don’t do that to me, to us. I’m standing here and I’m telling you that I love you and I’m asking you to believe me. Can you do that?” 

Will just stares at him, working with time to create an eternity out of this agonizing moment where Mike is stripped bare, offering everything he has and not knowing if it’ll be accepted or tossed to the side. But Will is kinder than time ever has been, and he only lets the anticipation linger for a beat longer than necessary before that icy exterior melts completely, his entire expression softening with it. 

“Okay,” he says, and his voice squeaks a little with emotion, completely and utterly endearing. “Okay. I believe you.” 

Mike doesn’t even try to repress his smile, elation splitting his mouth wide open like a fool. “Yeah?” He’d thought he’d have to fight harder, to argue with Will until his voice ran hoarse and raw.

Will nods, a smile smaller than Mike’s tugging at his lips, but a smile all the same. “Yeah,” he says, bringing both hands up to circle Mike’s wrists. “Yeah, I do.” 

He knows how this ends: this is where they don’t need words anymore, where faces that are already close get impossibly closer until they’re forced to meet. He knows how this ends, has read it in every book and seen it in every movie and felt it in every time Will would catch his eye and linger, a little too long to be just friendly. He knows, he knows, he knows.

But time is a funny thing, and it can be a real fucking asshole, if you ask Mike. 

He is allowed a single second to let his eyes flicker down to Will’s lips, and allowed one more to see Will do the same. In the next, there is a heavy crash into the window behind them, rattling the glass in its frame. 

“Jesus fucking Christ!” He whips around, accidentally taking Will with him and then having to shove him back behind him, arms out and using himself as a physical barrier between Will and the window. “What the fuck was—”

The rest of his sentence is swallowed by his own shriek as whatever it is slams into the window again, this time creating a crack in the glass that branches out like lightning. 

“Doesn’t matter,” Will says behind him. Suddenly there’s a fist grabbing the back of his flannel, tugging him backwards and away from the window. “We need to go.” 

Once they’re back in the hallway, Will makes a beeline straight for the window, carefully but quickly pulling apart the blinds to peer out into the yard. Mike’s nail bat is still where he left it, discarded just inside the entryway, and he rushes to retrieve it, hauling it over his shoulder and waiting for Will’s signal. 

“Okay,” Will says quietly, eyes still trained on the yard. The little light that enters the room from the blind stains red across his eyes and the bridge of his nose, almost like paint smeared across his face. “On the count of three, we run like hell.”

Mike nods. “Three,” he repeats, watching Will step back from the window and take up residence by his side. “Like hell. Got it.” 

“One,” says Will, and lifts a hand to the doorknob.

“Two,” says Mike, grabs Will’s free hand with his own, holding on tight.

“Three,” they say together. The door wrenches open, the hinges shuddering in protest, and they run like hell. 

▶️

Time blurs mercifully as they tear through the woods together, leaving Mike without a single idea of how long they’ve been running and how much farther they’ve got left to go. Adrenaline has taken hold of the ache in his legs and the burning in his lungs and is holding onto them for later, for when Mike doesn’t need them to push his way through a labyrinth of trees and vines with Will and half a dozen demobats in tow. He tries not to think about the friends they’ve lost to this hellscape and to these creatures in particular; there is no time to mourn. There is just his hand in Will’s, and the steady pounding of their feet along the forest floor. 

The Lover’s Lake of the Upside Down is different than the one he knows, namely because there is no lake to be found – it’s a pit, seemingly endless, its bed nothing more than a tangled web of vines all reaching towards the center. There, at its heart, is the gate they’re looking for. 

“Come on, come on,” Will huffs out, pulling ahead of Mike and tugging him along what should be the lake’s shore. They lose speed here, having to sidestep the jumbled tendrils as to not trip or call any more creatures after them, but they’ve been afforded the luxury of a head start, and somehow, the demobats still aren’t gaining on them enough to matter.

They skid to a halt in front of the glowing red of the gate, nearly catapulting themselves into it at the sudden change in momentum. Mike gently sets his bat to the ground, careful not to nudge any of the vines around them, and turns towards Will.

“Ready for a swim?” he asks, squeezing Will’s hand. Will nods, looking back over his shoulder briefly to see where the bats are and then turning back to Mike, squeezing his hand back. “Okay, you first.”

Will grips his hand impossibly tighter. “No,” he says firmly. “Don’t be stupid. Together, remember?” 

“Okay,” Mike agrees hastily, because they don’t have time to fight about it. “Okay, together.” 

There’s no need for a countdown, and there’s no time for one, either – instead, it’s just them, a mutual understanding, and a prayer to God that demobats can’t swim as they leap down into the gate. 

They’re torn apart from each other as they crash up into the water, the sudden shift in pressure expelling them both several feet from the lakebed and the glowing red of the opening from which they came. Mike spends no time reminiscing, though – he takes just a moment to make sure Will has started swimming up, towards the surface, before he follows suit. 

The water parts for him just after Will’s head bobs up, and they both gasp for air, spitting lakewater out of their mouths. 

“Shore,” Mike pants, swiveling around and trying to discern their quickest path to land. “We need to get to shore.” 

Will nods, but doesn’t waste time looking for their best way out – he picks a direction and starts swimming, only picking up speed when Mike follows suit. They tread water quickly, not knowing if they were followed and not wanting to find out, and when they finally reach the shore, Mike nearly cries from relief. 

Just clear of the water, Mike collapses to the ground and flops over onto his back with a gasp. The sky is a mix of orange and pink above them, no lightning storms in sight, and he digs his fingers into the earth, marveling in the feeling of the dirt caking itself under his fingernails. He lies there for a moment, chest heaving as he forces clean air into his aching lungs, letting all the little parts of Hawkins he never cared for until now embrace him in a sweet reunion. 

He lets his head fall to the side, where Will is in a similar state, belly-down and soaked to the bone, gasping for breath. 

“Hey,” Mike chokes out, and struggles to sit up, propping himself on his elbow with difficulty. “Hey, you alright?” 

Will turns his head and considers him for a moment, wet hair falling into his eyes. And then he’s pushing himself to his hands and knees, and Mike doesn’t have time to say a single thing before Will tackles him to the ground, involuntarily winding him, and wraps both arms around Mike’s neck. 

A small oof punches out of him once his back meets the ground again, but his arms come up to wrap around Will’s middle anyway, holding him close. Will is shaking, trembling with cold or adrenaline or maybe something else. Maybe the same something that makes Mike quiver in the same way.

Will buries his face in Mike’s neck, wet skin against wet skin, and Mike lets out a breathless laugh. “We’re okay,” he says, one of his hands coming up to cup the back of Will’s head, fingers tangling in wet hair. “We’re okay, we’re okay.” 

“Fuck,” Will sighs out, but it’s a joyous sound, tickling where it dances across Mike’s skin. 

They stay like that for what feels like hours, but can only be a few minutes, based on the slow pull of the sun rising up over the horizon. Finally, Will pushes himself up and back, just enough so that Mike can sit up, too — but Will stays half on top of him anyway, hands on Mike’s shoulders and knees bracketing his legs and keeping him from going anywhere.

Not that Mike would, anyway. 

“Fuck,” Will laughs again, and then a third time, in another relieved laugh, “Fuck. We made it.” 

Mike nods, not having much to offer by the way of words that either of them haven’t already said or repeated, over and over. And quite frankly, they’ve already shown their hands, given each other every card in the damn deck and then some. 

Love is a funny thing. It is meeting a boy on the swings on the first day of Kindergarten and asking him to be friends. It is losing him, to interdimensional horrors beyond his comprehension and to his own words and to another state, and stopping at nothing to bring him back every time. It is falling into the wrong arms time and time again but always finding his way back to the right ones. It is the two of them, sitting on the shore of a lake that nature made to look like a heart and then filled to the brim, and it is the boy on top of him, who shaped the muscle beating away in Mike’s chest and filled it up the same way.  

His hands come up to Will’s waist, sliding under the borrowed denim and settling just under his ribs. Will shudders at the contact, fingers digging into Mike’s shoulder blades, but Mike holds him steady and close and just looks. At the way the water makes his eyelashes cling together and at the mole above his lips and at his lips, unashamed and without restraint. He stares, full of love, and he says, low and rasping, the best word he knows to describe it: 

“Will.” 

The boy in question nods, once, the message loud and clear, because Will really has always understood Mike, with or without words. And then his tongue is darting out to wet his lips, and then his hands are moving from Mike’s shoulders to his neck, holding his jaw in place, and then he is crashing into the distance between them, mouth first. 

It’s not until they are kissing that Mike realizes he has imagined what their first kiss would be like, and it is not until he is caught in the moment of it that he realizes he had it all wrong. 

The thing is, Mike hadn’t known Will to be capable of a ferocity like this, and he is a fool for it. He is a fool for it, because of course Will would kiss like this, the same way that he loves. He is a fool for thinking that their first kiss would be something shy and sweet and exploratory — this is a path they have been walking together for a long time, and the destination of it has always been the same. Of course Will would run faster once the finish line was in sight; of course he would claim his prize with the same vigor and fight that got him there in the first place. Mike is a fool, but he is the fool in the winner’s circle with him, and that, and the heat of Will’s mouth on his, is all that matters. 

Will sucks Mike’s bottom lip between his own, teeth scraping and fingernails biting into the nape of Mike’s neck where his fingers are curled there, and Mike makes a desperate noise — right into Will’s open mouth — that he will absolutely deny later. Will breaks away from him with a gasp, the exhale of it fanning out hot over Mike’s face. 

The softness Mike had expected from the kiss finally arrives after it, in the way his eyes slowly blink open and the way Will is looking at him, a little reserved but very certain, cheeks tinged pink and mouth tinged pinker. Behind him, the rising sun, pushing out the last remnants of nightfall, passes behind his head just so, crowning him in a halo of sunlight, breathtaking and bright.  

“So,” Mike says. He reaches up and pushes Will’s wet hair out of his eyes, thumb lingering across his forehead along the way. “That means you love me too, right?”

A languid, delighted laugh spills out of Will. “Of course I love you,” he says, the way one might say of course the sky is blue or of course the grass is green or of course they get together in the end. A fact, so plain to see that it’s laughable anyone would ever dare question it. “I’ll paint you a thousand pictures to prove it, if that’s what you want.”

Mike hums, considering, while he continues to comb his fingers through Will’s hair. Will leans into the touch. “Nah,” he says, after drawing out the moment. “I’d rather you just say it.”

“I love you,” Will says immediately, paired with a kiss to Mike’s wet cheek. “I love you,” he says again, giving the same treatment to the other. “I love you.” On Mike’s nose, now, feather-light and sweet. “I love you.” And finally, his lips – chaste, but soft and loving in a way that makes Mike’s heart sprout wings and flutter around in his chest, ducking in and out between rows of ribs and sending an airy happiness throughout his veins. 

“Though,” Mike says against Will’s lips, his voice coming out wonderfully muffled, “If you’re offering…”

“Hmm?” Will hums as he presses another kiss to the corner of Mike’s mouth, the vibration of it leaving behind a tickle. 

Mike lets himself be kissed once, twice, three times more, the third of which breaks with the parting of his lips, no longer able to contain his smile. “I have an idea for a commission—” 

Will pulls back, just far enough to where Mike can clearly see his glare. 

“Shut the fuck up,” he says, but the words are fond, and sound a lot like I love you. 

“Gladly,” Mike murmurs, and tugs Will back to him, pressing their foreheads together and allowing himself a moment to just trade breaths, back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. Remember this, he thinks, carving it into his memory the way he would mirrored initials into the bark of a tree. And then Will’s lips are back on his, and Mike’s brain, too, shuts the fuck up.