Archive of Our Own ^beta

Will Byers is born with a shield over his heart. His soulmark is incredibly fitting, right from the beginning—a yellow-lined triangle with a heart and crown in the middle, bold and unapologetic. In the sunlight, it turns almost golden, reflecting and glinting like a jewel atop his chest.

When Will is too little to know any better, he likes his mark. He likes the comfort and familiarity of it. He likes the crisp lines and bright colors and easy shapes, likes the way he can draw it over and over again, then hang the papers up in his room with small pieces of sticky tape. He likes the way he can gaze across his bedroom at those drawings, then place a hand on his heart. Feel his mark. Feel his heartbeat, steady and thumping, under his palm. 

He especially likes the way he can whisper: Goodnight, my heart, and imagine his soulmate doing the same, wherever they might be.

But the best part is the reminder that there’s someone out there for him. Someone who will love him and want to hang out with him for the rest of their lives, even though that seems almost impossible. Even though Will is the shortest kid in preschool, and he still cries sometimes after Mom drops him off, and Jonathan’s hand-me-down shoes are too big, which means he sometimes trips over his own feet and skins his elbow and cries even more. 

Even if Dad says mean things sometimes. Will can always just snuggle under the covers, block out the sound of Mom and Dad yelling in the kitchen and smashing plates, and talk quietly to himself. To his heart. He doesn’t say anything too special—just stuff like how was your day and I learned how to fingerpaint in art class. And then he’ll go silent, listening to the rise and fall of his own sleepy breathing, and then the sharpness of a slap will ring out through the hallway; a big hand against a small, fragile face, and Will will sit there, vibrating with the need to get up and help his mom. But then… then he’ll remember what she always tells him: If you hear Mommy and Daddy fighting, honey, stay in your room. I don’t want you to get hurt.

And Will doesn’t care much if he gets hurt—he’s a big boy, he’s almost five, he’s not a baby— but he doesn’t want to upset his mom. So he stays in bed, and he pulls the covers up over his head, and he pretends that his whispered one-way conversation can cover up all the shouting: That’s no son of mine and He’s a goddamn queer, Joyce, and What do you mean we can’t make rent, what do you even do, just sit on your ass all day?  

Will asks questions into the dark. What’s your favorite color? Do your parents yell, too?

There’s never any answer. Of course there’s not.

That’s just how it is. Life can be scary sometimes, and that’s a lesson Will knows very well by the tender age of five. But he also knows another one, one that makes everything a little better. One day, he’ll meet his soulmate. One day, he’ll have someone to help him with all of the scary stuff, whether it’s scraping his knee or sitting in the dark, alone, listening to the sound of his family falling apart.

He’s not always alone. He has Mom, of course, and his big brother Jonathan. Jonathan likes looking out for him. Will (secretly) likes being looked after. But he won’t admit it. He’s almost a kindergartener, and it’s not cool to hide behind your brother. It’s cool to stand up for yourself, to have a spine. To not cry when you fall down.

Will guesses, by those standards, that he’s not very cool.

But then he meets Mike, and none of that matters.

Suddenly, he’s not alone in the world—not ever. Suddenly, when he falls at recess, there’s a little hand to grab, there’s a smile and an arm around his shoulders and Come on, Will, let’s go get a bandaid. Suddenly, when Mom and Dad are busy fighting, Will can bike over to Mike’s house and curl up in his basement, safe and warm and cocooned in a fuzzy blanket. 

Will finds himself wondering, sometimes, if his mark matches Mike’s. He thinks it must, really—he can’t imagine wanting to spend the rest of his life with anyone else. Mike’s cool and strong and brave and funny. His hair flops down over his forehead and his eyes bore into Will’s soul, always so steadily intense. He doesn’t cry when he scrapes his knee. Instead, he just gets back up.

Will thinks that if Mike isn’t his soulmate, something is seriously wrong with the world.

But he never checks. He knows it’s not polite to ask, and then by the time he might have worked up the courage, he’s already learned why he shouldn’t. He’s finally learned the meaning of all those words people throw at him like daggers, finally learned that it’s not a good thing to want another boy to be your soulmate. Like those people on the news, sometimes. The ones that don’t make it home. The ones that people laugh at, even when terrible things happen to them.

Will learns, quickly and painfully, why it would be one of the worst things in the world if his mark actually does match Mike’s.

And still, he wants. The wanting fills him up, like his empty chest cavity is a black hole, sucking in all the remnants of life and love that he can get, like he’s licking brownie batter from the bottom of the bowl, even when there’s barely anything there. He wants. He wants all of Mike that he can get. His attention, his time, his friendship. His love.

Will has other people, now, to fill that hole. Dustin and Lucas are awesome. Dustin’s seriously one of the smartest kids he’s ever met, maybe even smarter than Mike, and that’s saying a lot. And Lucas is crazy brave—he stands up against bullies and sets the basketball hoop record in PE and teaches Will how to steady his breath when he runs laps. 

But they aren’t Mike. Mike, who sits next to Will every day on the swings and asks him what he’d done after school the day before, what he’d done in the few hours they weren’t together. Mike, who finds a frog outside Will’s house and chases after it with his dirty, open palms, trying to catch it so they can dress it up and name it after Frodo Baggins. Mike, who utterly fails in that task, but does it in such a ridiculously funny way, flailing and spluttering in the bushes, that Will can’t help but laugh.

Mike, whose soulmark Will desperately wants to be his. Even though he shouldn’t. 

Every day, the wanting gets a little worse. A little deeper. Mike finds out about this game called Dungeons & Dragons from an older kid at school, and suggests they learn how to play. The first night, he dresses up as a knight, homemade cardboard shield in hand, and narrates the game with a deep, overly dramatic voice. Will stares at him, at his shield, and thinks of the one over his own heart, tattooed into the ridges of his brain. He wants.

By that time, Will understands, in the most basic of terms, what’s wrong with him. And when Dad leaves, he doesn't ask why. He knows.

Then, one day, Will rolls a seven. He leaves Mike’s house, as he always does, still wanting just a little too much, as he always does. Still desperately trying to be normal and cool about it, which means he’s not crying and not lingering on any bad thoughts, not reaching out to touch Mike more than is strictly necessary. He still can’t lie to Mike, though, soulmate or not. So he tells him about the seven.

At twelve, Will’s still talking to his heart. Not as often, not as boldly. Sometimes, it’s just in the solitude of his mind. At least in there, if he slips up and addresses his soulmate by name, no one will hear.

That turns out to be a good habit to build. He’ll need it, in the coming week. He’ll need the company, imagined or not. It’s the only thing that keeps him alive: whispering into the dark red cold, one tiny hand pressed over the center of his chest, like he’s trying to hold himself together.

Are you out there? Are you okay? Are you lonely, too?

And then, when the only response is a violent silence, monstrous screeching and ominous growling, Will gives up. He huddles inside the only home he’s ever known, the one he and his brother built together after the man that had never loved them left. Even Castle Byers looks unfamiliar, draped with vines and surrounded by the lingering scent of death. Will wonders, distantly, if it’s coming from him.

He closes his eyes against all of it: the screeching and the rot and the death. He whispers into the dark, audible until his throat scrapes red and raw, until it hurts too much to keep repeating the words.

Goodnight, my heart.

Goodnight, Mike.

—

Against all the odds, Will is still alive. He’s not sure he wants to be. In the weeks after his big dramatic rescue, at least, things are good. Mike is calm and steady by his side, which is something he’ll never again take for granted, now that he knows what missing him feels like. Will had almost forgotten what it was like; a life without Mike in it. Turns out, it’s no sort of life at all.

But he comes to realize, day by day, that Mike is different now. Marked by trauma and grief and the bone-deep pain of missing someone. Someone that’s not Will.

For the first time in his life, Will comes close to hating someone. A girl he barely even knows. A girl he’s never even met, except for that one time, obscured by a fuzzy barely-conscious perspective, the red-hot edges of near-death. Hold on. Help is coming.

So, based on that single interaction, he shouldn’t hate Eleven. He should, actually, be extremely grateful for her, for this superhero who saved him and his friends, and he is. He is grateful. But at the same time, there’s the way Mike talks about her, the way he won’t stop talking about her, the way her absence feels like a physical thing, burning and sizzling away at Mike’s soul, sharpening all his edges and changing him into someone different. Someone bitter. Someone who’s met the other half of his heart, and lost her just as quickly.

Yeah. Did Will mention that Eleven is Mike’s soulmate?

They didn’t check, not really, but Mike is already convinced—won’t shut up about it, actually, about how he’s never felt that sort of connection with anyone, how their kiss (because yes, they kissed, and yes, it feels like a knife twisting between Will’s ribs) was super great and magical and everything kissing your soulmate is supposed to feel like.

And something inside of Will screams, every single time: What about us? What about our connection? Would you ever want to— Would you ever want to kiss—

Will pushes it down. He takes both hands, interlocks his fingers, and shoves. Like the kitchen trashcan’s full and Will’s arms are too weak to take out the bag, so he has to make room until Mom or Jonathan can take it out. That’s what he does with his feelings. Makes room.

Unluckily for him—because it’s always unlucky when it comes to Will, always everything going wrong, like some sort of curse that follows him everywhere he goes—that’s not the end of it. The extra space inside of him turns into a home for something else. Someone else. Someone who steals his memories and changes the landscape of his brain, until he has better things to worry about than what exactly Mike meant when he said they’d go crazy together.

It’s still on the list of concerns, though. It’ll just have to be dealt with at a later date. Or never. Whichever comes first.

The more pressing concern is the way he’s losing his mind, the way he’s always either too hot or too cold, the way even his own soulmark seems to be turned against him, laughing at him, even. A mockery, an illusion of protection. Will’s soulmate can’t save him. Not from this. The flimsy shield on his chest is nothing more than ink, pale and trembling with every shaky breath he takes. And what’s ink to a monster? To the devil?

What’s a mark that’s only half-complete? A mark that’s missing its other half?

And as the days linger on—as Lucas meets Max and they enter that tentative pre-soulmark-checking phase, dancing around each other and disguising their flirting as playful banter, Will can’t find it in himself to care anymore. The darkness wraps around his brain, clouding and fogging his thoughts, until he half-thinks that maybe this was his destiny all along. Maybe there is no one out there for Will, except Him.

Maybe he has been praying to the darkness all along. 

Then it is blurry. Hot. The hoursdaysseconds pass, the clock speeding and ticking incessantly through his veins, through the catacombs of his mind, and he can’t breathe, and it hurts—

And in the midst of it all, there is a single moment of clarity. Of calm. 

Mike.

Mike, crying in that beautiful way he does, a single pearling tear beading up by his thick lower lashes. Mike, telling him that asking Will to be his friend was the best thing he’s ever done.

For a second, Will feels whole. He feels like the strength of this thing between them—their connection, as Mike would call it—can overpower anything, even the Shadow Monster. Even the bad thoughts. Even Will’s loneliness. His emptiness.

Crazy together.

And then that second is over, and Will knows. He knows they have to close the gate, even if it means he’ll go down with it. Because in the end, he’s always been different, hasn’t he? Always been the weak link. The first to cry when he falls down. The last to catch up with the trends, with the parts of growing older that seem to come instinctively to everyone except him. The one that will be left alone in the end. The one who will never find the missing half of his soul, because it’s not Mike, and he can’t imagine it being anyone else. Selfishly, horribly, he doesn’t want it to be anyone else.

He taps his fingers.

CLOSE GATE.

After that, there’s only pain.

—

When Will comes to, the first thing he worries is that his soulmark has been burned off. Or… taken, somehow. He wakes in Mom and Jonathan’s arms, and his hand clutches the middle of his chest, and he’s gasping: “ Where—is it—is it still—”

Jonathan squeezes his hand. “It’s still there, buddy,” he whispers, voice broken with tears and snot. “I promise. I checked for you.”

It’s still there. His shield. It’s survived the Shadow Monster. Survived the burn. 

Will’s fingers trace the edges of the mark through his shirt, which is soaked through and sweaty. All this time, he never took it off. Never wanted anyone to see. It’s private. And he especially didn’t want Mike to see, because Will doesn’t want the confirmation that they don’t match. He doesn’t want Mike to come up to him sometime and say, super casually: Cool mark, man. What is it, a shield?

He wants to stay content in his stupid little fantasies: Mike confessing that their marks match. That he has a shield guarding his heart, too. Saying, I knew it was you. I wanted it to be you. You’re my heart, Will.

Like Will said, it’s stupid. Impossible. Dangerous, even.

But it’s still the thought that carries him through the cold hours after the burn. Still the thought that consoles him, helps him calm down and come back to himself. Helps chase the Shadow away. 

Thank you, my heart, he thinks, pressing a hand to his sternum. Thank you, Mike. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I love you.

—

A month later, Will has a shiny pink scar on his side, and it only hurts a little bit as he wrestles his way into a wrinkly black vest. His breath shakes on the way out. It’s just a dance, he reminds himself. Just school. I’m here, I’m safe, I’m okay.

His fingers twitch againsts his side, a code he knows by heart. Four taps. One tap. Tap, hold, tap. One tap.

H-E-R-E. 

“Baby, are you done? Do you need help?”

He fiddles uselessly with his tie, before deciding Jonathan can do it up for him. “I’m okay, Mom!” he calls back. “Just finishing up.”

“Okay!”

Before he goes out into the living room, he stops by Jonathan’s room. He’s readying his camera, because of course he is. Will holds out the pale blue tie in silent explanation, and his brother’s expression softens. He sets his camera down on the bed and strides over to Will, taking the loose fabric in his hands.

“Turn around?”

Will obeys, still and compliant as Jonathan fixes the tie around his neck. “Now, I’m not that good at this,” he warns, fiddling with Will’s collar. “So it might not be that great.”

“That’s okay,” Will tells him. “I’m sure it’s better than whatever I would’ve done.”

Jonathan snorts, low and amused, and they stand in a comfortable silence. Will catches his own eye in a nearby mirror, and straightens a little, suddenly self-conscious. His reflection looks very young. A little nervous, pinched lips and fidgety feet.

“Are you excited?” Jonathan asks, and Will can tell he’s not asking just to make conversation—he genuinely wants to know. 

Will shrugs, his gaze skittering away from the mirror, fixing on a random spot on the wall. “I dunno.”

“Come on,” Jonathan prods, a smile in his voice. “What if you meet your soulmate?”

Will doesn’t turn around, but he can tell that his brother’s wiggling his eyebrows, trying to play around. Too bad that Will’s not in much of an eyebrow-wiggling mood.

“I don’t think so,” he says quietly. His shield feels hot on his skin, like it can sense that he’s talking about it. About his heart.

Unbidden, his eyes return to the mirror, and this time he can see Jonathan’s frown. “What? Why not?”

Because, Will thinks. I’ve already met him. Because if it’s not Mike, it’s no one. 

He shrugs again. “Mm.”

“Will,” Jonathan says, and uses his grip on his shoulders to spin around. “You look great, okay? You’ll knock ‘em dead.”

Will’s cheeks heat up, and he shuffles uncomfortably. “Jonathan.”

“What? You will!” Jonathan laughs, and gives his tie a little final tug. “Look, anyone would be lucky to have you, alright? Anyone.”

There’s something about the way he says it. Another layer to his words, a deeper meaning that Will’s not quite catching. A meaning that he’s not sure he wants to catch.

“Thanks,” Will mumbles, staring down at his too-big shoes. He doesn’t believe Jonathan. That’s the kind of stuff older brothers have to say. You’re too good for them. They’d be lucky to have you.

Would they? Will thinks that anyone that does get saddled with him is in for a pretty rough deal. He’s had a whole host of problems, even before the Upside Down came roaring into his life. He’s too small, too skinny, too weak, too girly. Too emotional, too quick to cry, too reliant on other people, too much of a hopeless romantic. Emphasis on the hopeless part. 

Then there’s the stuff from after November sixth, 1983. A non-inclusive list that goes something like: trauma, trauma, and more trauma. And now, as if last year wasn’t bad enough already, Will can add possession to the docket. Cool.

Yeah, Jonathan. He’s a real catch.

“Of course,” Jonathan says, ruffling his hair. Will squacks, ducking down and away from the offending hand. He worked hard on that hair. And by that, he means he brushed it, and then smoothed it down with his hand. There’s still a little piece that won’t lay flat, but whatever. Mike’s hair doesn’t lay flat, so it’s probably okay.

He really needs to stop thinking about Mike.

“C’mon,” Jonathan says, reaching for his camera again. “Let’s go show Mom how good you look.”

And they do. In the coming hours, Will thinks a lot of things. He thinks that his mom doesn’t know how kids his age really dance, and he’s not prepared at all, but that’s okay, because it’s not like anyone is gonna want to dance with him. Then he gets to the dance, and thinks that this is much lamer than he thought it would be. The gym still looks like a gym, and it still smells kind of like sweaty gym socks and used basketballs, and everyone’s all awkward and nervous, which makes Will feel even more awkward and nervous.

The only consolation is that Mike’s with him. Eleven couldn’t come—and god, hasn’t that been depressing, her coming back. Will feels horrible for even thinking it, but already, it’s like she’s the whole center of Mike’s world. Which… makes sense, Will guesses. If they’re soulmates.

Not that Mike’s asked to see her mark yet. They’re not really at that stage. And, as selfish as it is, that brings Will a small measure of comfort. Maybe this is just a temporary thing. A surface-level crush. Hero worship, even. That seems like it’s right up Mike’s alley. 

“Hey, Zombie Boy!”

Will whips around, muscles tensed in anticipation. Expecting… he doesn’t know. A laugh. A punch. A mean word.

But what follows is none of those things. It’s a girl. She looks nice, as far as girls go. Her hair’s straight with bangs, kind of like his, and she’s wearing big blue earrings and a neatly-pressed dress. 

“Wanna dance?”

And Will can’t help it—he looks at Mike. His first instinct will always be to look at Mike. For comfort, for reassurance, for an answer. Help me, he thinks, as loudly as he can. Help me. Tell me I shouldn’t. 

People say that soulmates are able to read each other’s minds, sometimes. Feel each other’s feelings. Yeah, that’s usually for couples that are already together, ones that have seen and touched each other’s marks, but… maybe. Maybe, just this once, Mike will hear him. Know what he’s thinking. Maybe it would be a sign. Maybe it would mean something.

Tell me you wanna get out of here, too. With me. Let’s just leave, let’s just go somewhere, please—

Mike’s eyebrows twist in confusion, like he’s thinking back, What’s wrong with you, dude? He nudges Will towards the girl. Dance with her.

Right. 

Of course.

Will swallows down the hot humiliation in his throat, the familiar disappointment, the guilt and annoyance with himself for being selfish and stupid enough to hope.

He dances with her. With the girl. The girl that’s perfectly nice and perfectly acceptable, keeping her hands on his shoulders and smiling sweetly at him, making eye contact the whole time.

Will wonders if she wants him to kiss her. If she’s expecting it. No, right? Surely not. But then he looks over, and crap, Lucas and Max are kissing, that’s a thing that’s happening. It looks… sweet. They look happy.

His whole body is very stiff. Rigid. He tries to smile back at his dancing partner, and not step on her toes. That will have to be enough. It has to, because he can’t muster up the emotion to do anything else, not when he’s so tired, and upset, and his side still hurts, and he just wants to go home at this point. 

And then he makes the mistake of looking away. His eyes wander off of the girl, whose name he still doesn’t know, and feels vaguely awful for not knowing, and they search the room, roving and scanning for…

Mike.

Mike, who’s dancing with Eleven.

Mike, who’s kissing Eleven.

Will didn’t even notice her coming in. They haven’t really met yet, because Hopper keeps her holed up in his cabin.

She looks pretty.

They look good together. Right. Like their pieces fit. Like their marks match. And they can slow dance and kiss in the middle of the Hawkins Middle School gym, and no one’s gonna say a single thing about it. Because that’s normal. It’s expected. Kids being kids. Young love. Young soulmates.

Mike and Eleven. Lucas and Max.

Will and… no one. Will by himself. Will alone. His useless shield, doing absolutely nothing to protect him. It feels more like it’s stabbing his heart than guarding it.

That’s probably a little dramatic. A little self-centered. Selfish. Like he always is, so focused on himself and his problems. It’s a dance. His friends are happy. They love each other.

That’s enough. It has to be.

Will looks back to his dancing partner, and blinks away the sting of tears.

In the center of his chest, his mark burns.

—

It only gets worse. Will was stupid to think anything else. Stupid to think that things would stay the same, or even better, go back to the way they used to be. They’re not kids anymore. No one wants to hang out with Zombie Boy, with Will the Weirdo, Will the… the…

Those other words. The meaner ones. The ones that Will doesn’t want to say, because they’re true.

These days, he thinks everyone knows. He thinks it gets more and more obvious with every day that passes, every day that Will stays single, with not a single prospect on the horizon. It’s normal to date around. To have silly crushes, relationships that don’t go anywhere. Trying things out, with people that aren’t necessarily your soulmate.

Lucas and Max are soulmates. They checked. And Mike and El… they probably are. No one really knows. Turns out, El’s mark got removed at birth, which is yet another reason that Will wants to punch Doctor Martin Brenner right in his stupid face. But Mike, predictably, was very sweet about it, choosing to believe that their marks matched anyway. That they were meant for each other, even if there was no real way to check.

So they’re still together, being generally in Will’s space all the time, holding hands and kissing and smiling at each other, and it’s so horrible, the way it makes Will feel. He shouldn’t feel like this. El is so sweet, so genuinely kind despite the horrible circumstances she’s lived through, and she’s just trying to exist. Just trying to enjoy what’s left of her childhood.

Or their young adulthood, Will guesses, because as everyone keeps reminding him, they’re not kids anymore.

He just wants one day. One day where everything is like before. Will doesn’t usually DM, that’s all Mike, and it’s way more up his alley, with the dramatic gestures and storytelling, but… maybe not anymore. Maybe not right now, with Mike pouting because Eleven broke up with him. And selfishly, that’s given Will a bit of an extra boost. A spring in his step.

It re-introduces a possibility that he’s been trying not to think about. Maybe Mike and El aren’t soulmates. Maybe the mark that El was born with belongs to someone else. Someone that’s not Mike. And that could mean that Mike is still soulmate-less. Pre-soulmate. Open for options.

Will curses himself, adjusting his purple hat on his head. He doesn’t even know why he’s wearing this thing. He dug it out of the garage, and it barely fits him anymore. Like he’s an adult trying on kids’ clothes. A crappy costume. He stares at himself in the mirror, and fixes his posture. Tries to brush the feeling off. 

He’s doing this for Mike. For Mike and Lucas. If they could just remember how good things used to be, when it was just them… And Will’s been working insanely hard on this campaign. It’s a little rushed, out of necessity, but he’s still proud of it. It’s got lots of hidden details, and twists and turns, and opportunities for Mike to play the hero. Ya know, just in case he needs a boost.

God, Will’s an idiot.

And that statement only gets more true with every minute, sinking cold and heavy into the pit of his stomach. Mike and Lucas don’t care about this anymore. About him. Jesus, where’s Dustin? Off talking to possibly-existent Suzie?

“Oh look, Lucas!” Mike grabs his shoulder dramatically, clearly making fun of his in-game injury. “My arm!”

Lucas laughs along, and somehow, that makes it hurt even worse. What had Will been thinking? That they’d want to play, and not be jerks, and… And…

He’s had enough of this.

He tries. He really does. But that cold feeling worsens, spreads, until it’s all over. 

Mike doesn’t care about him anymore.

It’s obvious. He’s made it clear, with every sarcastic side comment, with every laugh and sneer and eye roll. Mike’s too old for this, too mature, too girl-crazy.

Once upon a time, Will thought they’d go crazy together.

While the phone rings, and the boys jump to answer it, jump at the chance to stop playing Will’s stupid campaign, Will tries to brainstorm how he’ll get out of this. How he’ll save himself the heartache. Should he pretend to be sick? Should he just give up and let the guys leave?

Of course, Will’s never known how to spare himself from pain. He just keeps making it worse for himself, always, piling on more and more hurt until he’s about ready to burst. To crumple into the floor and sob, like a baby. 

So he keeps going. He keeps trying, when he knows he shouldn’t. When he knows it’s useless, and there’s no way it’s gonna end well.

“The Khuisar tribe still needs your help!” Will attempts, and it’s pathetic. He’s begging. I need your help, he’s saying, underneath the words. Not the tribe. Me. Please stay. Please play along.

Mike’s face flattens with annoyance, and Will knows immediately that he’s messed up. It’s the kind of look Mike gives other people, like a teacher he dislikes, maybe, when they’ve tried his nerves one too many times. But Will’s never seen that look directed towards him. This is the first time.

“Alright, then. I’ll use my torch to set fire to the chambers, sacrificing ourselves, killing the Jujus, and saving the Khuisar. We live on as heroes.”

He high-fives Lucas, and god, their faces… It makes Will feel like a scared kindergartener all over again. Like he’s walking around the playground, trying to find someone nice to play with, but everyone’s big and mean and scary. Looking at him like he’s some sort of freak. Like he doesn’t belong. Like they want him to leave, because he’s bringing down everyone’s mood by just existing.

Then he met Mike. And he didn’t feel like that as often.

But now, it’s coming from Mike. The boy he once thought was his soulmate. The boy that, deep down, he still wants to be his soulmate. Even if he’s mean. Even if he’s scaring Will a little bit right now. That’s not… This isn’t who Mike is. Will doesn’t know why he’s acting like this.

Whatever the reason, it hurts.

And at this point, Will just wants to go home. He can’t be here anymore.

“Fine,” he spits, yanking off his stupid polyester cap, shrugging off his stupid scratchy robe. “You guys win.” He turns off the boombox, the dumb cheery music that’s been grating on his nerves for the last thirty minutes, and gathers his backpack. His heart’s pounding a familiar staccato beat against his ribcage, the flight of fight-or-flight. Run. Run. Run.

“Will, I was just messing around.”

Yeah. Yeah, he knows.

Mike darts a panicked glance at Lucas. “Come on, let’s finish this for real,” he suggests, and Lucas quickly nods along.

That’s almost worse— the fact that Mike is pitying him now. He used to be the one person who never talked down to Will, always respected him, always listened to him and treated him as an equal. As a friend. 

This isn’t how friends act. It’s not. The absolute last thing Will wants is Mike feeling sorry for him. Like he’s an invalid, like he’s some sad excuse for a teenager who doesn’t know how to grow up, doesn’t know how to act now that everyone’s getting bigger and meaner and more indifferent. Now that friends are just people to complain to every once in a while, instead of people that support each other and have fun together.

“Just forget it, Mike,” Will says, and he means every word. Forget it. Forget Will’s stupid costume, his stupid music, his stupid eagerness to have a good day with his friends. Forget how dumb he is. How embarrassing. That way, Will can show up to the next Party hangout, and he’ll be prepared. He’ll slouch and sigh and roll his eyes, just like Mike. He’ll make sarcastic comments and not try to have any fun, since apparently, that’s not cool anymore. He’ll fit in. He’ll get it right.

But today was just… a mess. A big, humiliating mess that everyone would be better off forgetting.

“We’ll just call the girls afterwards.”

Right. Because even now, the girls are more important than Will. Than their friend that they’ve known since elementary school. 

“I said forget it!” he yells, and his voice comes out louder than he wanted it to be, tellingly strained with emotion and encroaching tears. He clears his throat. Softens his tone, because he doesn’t want to shout. “I’m going home.”

Lucas frowns. “Come on, Will.”

Even in Will’s attempt to make everything better, he’s still sticking out like a sore thumb. Too emotional, too upset over something so trivial, too childish and stunted and lame. His jaw clenches as he makes a break for the stairs, shoving Lucas out of the way as he goes. He hopes he’s adequately masking his hurt, taping over it with a thick layer of anger. He hopes they can’t see right through him.

They probably can. Mike probably can. He always knew Will too well.

But maybe not anymore. Maybe that era is over.

Maybe they’re hardly even friends anymore.

It’s raining outside. Really hard, actually, but it’s too late now to turn back. There’s no way that Will can go back in that basement after everything that just went down. After he made a complete fool of himself.

“You can’t leave. It’s raining.”

Mike’s followed him. Somehow, Will’s surprised.

There’s something stubborn and bitter rising up in him, though, so he grips his handlebars tight and steps outside the garage, immediately getting pelted with hard bullets of rain. His hair plasters to his forehead, wet and sticky, and his eyelashes weigh down over his eyes. He blinks away a mix of rainwater and tears, and he doesn’t care anymore. He really doesn’t.

He cares too much.

“It’s fine,” Will says petulantly. “See? Not even that bad.”

Mike heaves out a heavy sigh, staring at Will like he has no idea what to do with him. A beat passes, them just looking at each other, before Mike steps out into the pouring rain, right across from Will. “Are we really doing this?” he says, mouth slick and shiny with water. Even now, even though he hates himself for it, Will’s gaze gets caught there. On his lips. On the ends of his hair, morphing from curly to straight, jet black and sleek. On the wet drops sliding down his cheek. Will wants to—he wants to—

Lucas, look! My arm!

Nevermind. He doesn’t want to do anything. He doesn’t. He’s mad.

“Will, this is stupid,” Mike tries, when Will doesn’t respond. And that just makes him even more mad, because doesn’t Mike know that that’s the whole problem? Will’s stupidity?

He rests his bike against his hip, crossing his arms over his chest. Still, he says nothing. 

He’s really wet. And cold.

“It’s a cool campaign!” Mike continues, desperation leaking into his voice. “It’s really cool. We’re just not in the mood right now.”

Will snorts, throat tight with emotion. “Yeah, Mike. You guys are never in the mood anymore. You’re ruining our party.”

“That’s not true!”

Will raises a sopping-wet eyebrow. “Really? Where’s Dustin right now?”

Mike stops short, expression shuttering with surprise. With confusion. And then, finally, guilt.

“See? You don’t know, and you don’t even care,” Will accuses. “And obviously he doesn’t either, and you know what? I don’t blame him! You’re destroying everything, and for what? So you can swap spit with some stupid girl?”

He knows that’s mean. And it’s not even true. El’s not stupid. Not at all. It’s all Will. Will’s the stupid one.

As the rain pours down, throwing a cold shower on the both of them, Mike’s appearance changes, a little bit. His hair gets flatter. His skin gets shinier. His eyes get sadder, then angrier. More upset.

And his t-shirt soaks all the way through, until it’s nothing more than a thin film clinging to his scrawny, pale chest.

In the middle of Mike’s sternum, there’s a shape. A mark.

It’s one that Will would recognize anywhere, even in his sleep. Even through the blurry haze of rain. Because it’s the same shape, the same mark, that he sees in the mirror every single day.

Mike is his soulmate.

Will’s still staring at the mark, shocked silent, when Mike speaks again, words full of venom.

“El’s not stupid! It’s not my fault that you don’t like girls!”

All the breath leaves Will’s lungs in one punched-out exhale.

For a split second, he thinks: It is. It is your fault.

He can’t say a damn thing. Not a single word. His mind’s blank, but it’s full, it’s too full. He knows. He’s my soulmate. He knows about me. He knows that I’m—that I like—

But in the midst of it all, there’s one thing Will is absolutely sure of.

Mike can never find out. Not after this. 

Not after everything. 

Will crosses his arms a little firmer over his chest. He ignores Mike’s puppy-dog expression, his pleading not-apology: “I’m not trying to be a jerk, okay? But we’re not kids anymore. I mean, what did you think? That we were never gonna get girlfriends? That we were just gonna sit in my basement all day and play games for the rest of our lives?”

Mike’s right. They’re not kids anymore. Will remembers sitting alone in the dark, in Hawkins, in his bedroom, in the Upside Down, hiding from monsters, shivering in the cold. Pressing a small hand to his heart. Whispering: Are you there? Are you like me? I can’t wait to meet you. I wonder if I’ve already met you. 

Goodnight, my heart. Goodnight, Mike.

So hopeful. So naive. So stupid.

“Yeah,” Will chokes, and he can barely see through his tears, but he can still make out the top line of Mike’s shield, shaded blue and slanted towards his ribs. It feels like a slap in the face. “I did. I guess I really did.”

In the dark shade of the afternoon, Mike looks like a stranger. Will doesn’t recognize him, just as much as he does. He knows him like the back of his hand. Like the shield on his chest.

He doesn’t know him at all.

And with that, he hops on his bike, shattered and bruised and alone, just like he always is. 

He runs away.

He goes home.

—

Castle Byers wasn’t built for the rain. Everything inside is wet—his comic books, drawings, snacks, blankets. Will is wet. 

Mike is his soulmate.

His soulmate.

His hands are shaking as he flips the pages of X-Men 134, unseeing eyes gazing somewhere just past the pages. He’s not reading a single word. His brain isn’t working anymore.

More rain seeps in through the stick walls, covering everything in a windy mist, seeping through the pages of the book until they’re waterlogged and soggy, and almost impossible to turn without tearing the paper. Will huffs out a sharp, annoyed breath and throws the book down, uncaring of where it lands, or how hard it hits the ground.

It’s not—

It’s not my fault you—

His eyes wander around Castle Byers, catching on all the knickknacks inside: his Rubik’s cube, his toy dragon, his D&D book. Kids’ stuff. Child’s play.

Stupid.

Will doesn’t understand.

Maybe past Mike and past Will were soulmates. The people they were before everything went wrong. Before everything got complicated. Mike protected Will, and Will… did something for Mike, presumably. Gave him entertainment. Company that didn’t totally suck. Loyalty.

Like a freaking dog.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Has it been all in Will’s head this whole time? Did Mike ever even care about him? He must have, right? Some version of Mike, deep down, belongs to Will. And it’s a selfish thought, it’s always been a selfish thought, but now, it’s also a fact. It’s the truth, in the loosest sense of the word.

It’s also not.

Because Will has no sort of hold on Mike. Mike doesn’t like boys. Not… not like Will does. After today, that’s clearer than it’s ever been.

It’s not my fault you don’t like girls.

Mike knows. And he hates him for it. He hates who Will is. Is disgusted by it, even. Will could see it in his eyes. He could feel it.

Will doesn’t blame him. He feels the same way.

So where does that leave the two of them, then? They’re still soulmates. That won’t ever change. It just… it feels like a cruel joke, because Will knows.

He knows Mike won’t ever choose him.

Will looks around at the walls of Castle Byers. At his drawings. The Party. Magical creatures. Will the Wise.

Jesus Christ. It’s—this is all kid stuff. No wonder Mike was making fun of him. Will feels like he’s stuck in a time capsule. Like he’s trying on shoes that don’t fit. A jacket that’s too tight. A wizard costume that’s a garish shade of purple and three sizes too small.

By the table lamp, there’s a picture of the Party on Halloween. One that Mrs. Wheeler took, one where they were all happy. Where Will was happy. Because even though he was having nightmares and waking terrors and throwing up slugs every once in a while, he still had Mike. He still had the comfort of his soulmark. He still had his friends.

Now, he has nothing. 

“Stupid,” he whispers, lips wet and salty with tears. He’s so… How could he ever think…

“So stupid.” His voice is strangled. Choked. And that’s stupid too, because the situation wasn’t even that bad, objectively, and Will shouldn’t be getting this emotional about it. He should be a man, be tough and strong and solid. Unshakable. He shouldn’t care about this sort of stuff.

But he does. God, he cares so much. It’s all he cares about, even after everything he’s been through.

He just wanted one day. One.

He wanted to feel normal.

Stupid.

Thunder cracks outside, and his mark aches, it stings, and it’s never felt more painful than it does right now. Will has no idea why the universe granted him with a shield, when all he ever seems to do is take blow after blow. Hit after hit. He doesn’t know if he can get up this time, and at the same time, he knows he has to. 

For now, though, he’ll let himself have this.

Just this once, Will allows the anger, the hurt, to boil up inside of him. The impact of every slur that’s been hurled at him, every kick and slap and punch, every terrifying night spent in the Upside Down, and every horrible day afterwards. Every time he lay awake at night, trying to imagine a future with his soulmate. Every time that faceless vision morphed into someone all-too familiar, someone with messy black hair and piercing dark eyes.

Will’s always been a fool. He can see it so clearly now.

In the photograph, frozen in time, Will and Mike smile at each other. It’s a lie. Mike doesn’t care about him. Maybe he never did. Maybe Will was just there. Just convenient.

Maybe he’s just felt bad for him this whole time. The sad, pathetic little gay kid, with a deadbeat dad and no friends.

So much for crazy together. So much for it was the best thing I ever did.

The first Party rule is that friends don’t lie. But Mike’s been lying all along.

Will rips the picture clean in half. Right between him and Mike. 

Soulmates aren’t supposed to hurt each other this much. Even Will, with his extreme lack of romantic experience, knows that. Everyone knows that. It’s in the movies. Romance novels. Everything is perfect between soulmates. Rose-tinted. Bubbly and happy and light.

Stupid. 

Will was an idiot for believing that. For believing that any of that stuff applied to people like him.

It’s not my fault you don’t like girls!

Mike’s right. It’s not his fault.

It’s all Will’s.

He’s crying even now, even as he rips down all the evidence of his foolishness, of his childishness. Crying, sobbing, stupid, stupid, stupid.

If Lonnie were here, he’d beat him senseless.

Just the thought of Lonnie sends a shiver down Will’s spine, sends his eyes drifting over to the corner of the fort, where an untouched baseball bat lies. The one gift his dad ever got for him. Something he never even used.

Well, he’ll use it now. This one’s for you, Dad, he thinks, spits out into the cold darkness of his mind. His knuckles wrap around the bat’s handle, and the hold is familiar even after all these years out of practice. The stance, the weight of it in his hands, brings fuzzy, fear-tinted memories to the forefront of Will’s mind: the stink of Lonnie’s beer breath as he barked out commands. The pinching, bruising grip he had on Will’s shoulder as he corrected his batting posture.

Jonathan, a million years ago: Do you even like baseball?

Will’s never liked the things he’s supposed to. The people he’s supposed to.

He pushes out of the tarp, into the biting rain, weapon of choice in hand. The sight of Castle Byers from the outside makes him even angrier, because it looks—it looks like something a little kid would build. Small. Rickety. Old.

All friends welcome.

All friends welcome, and Will’s still the only one here. Funny how that works out.

Before he’s even made a conscious decision, he’s swinging. The thump of wood on wood is sickening. It’s muted, and the sound is lost to the thunder and Will’s own screams, but Will still feels the devastation all the same, zipping from the point of impact all the way up his arm, into his shoulder joint, along his clavicle, all the way to his heart.

He wonders if Mike can feel it.

Probably not. With any luck, their bond will always be one-sided. Mike won’t ever know. He won’t ever find out.

On some twisted level, Will wants him to know. He needs him to feel this hurt, too. He needs Mike to know how much he’s ruined him. 

It’s not like he’d even—

It’s not like he’d even care, shit, why is Will so goddamn stupid?

“Fuck!” he screams, a useless curse into the wind, and he knows he’s being too dramatic, too upset, too reckless, and in a way, that makes it even worse. He keeps swinging, tearing it all down, knocking the sign right off its nailed-down hinges. 

Will was born to play the defense. To guard his heart. To stay on the sidelines, shield in hand, bolting at the first sign of trouble.

He’s so sick of it. He wants to scream. He wants to hit something, to explode and cry and be all the things he’s not supposed to. And now, when he’s finally alone, when everyone’s finally forgotten about him and grown tired of him and left him in the dirt, he can. He can rage as much as he wants.

When Castle Byers falls, it doesn’t feel like a victory.

It doesn’t feel like much of anything at all.

—

It’s almost a relief when Mom breaks the news.

Don’t get Will wrong—he’s upset. Of course he’s upset, and scared of the unknown, and pissed that he’s leaving the only friends he’s ever had. His favorite people in the world. He’s shed more than a few tears, and he’s not ashamed to admit it. This sucks. It really does.

But.

But at the same time, maybe it’s a small mercy. Maybe the Party was already growing apart, and now Will doesn’t have to be here to watch the implosion. Maybe California really is like people say it is—more accepting, and open, and kind. It sounds like a fantasy, like a daydream that would have lived inside Will for the first several years of his life, but he guesses anything’s possible, really. He knows that better than anyone.

Maybe he needs some space from Mike. Maybe it’ll be easier.

Easier for the both of them, honestly. A win-win scenario. Will doesn’t have to watch Mike and El making out every second of the day, doesn’t have to hear him moping or raving about her in equal measure, doesn’t have to suppress the traitorous flutter in his heart whenever Mike wanders too close. Not that he does that much, these days. Not that he seems too keen to spend any time with Will at all.

On days like today, though, when the whole Party’s out and about, running into Mike is kind of a given. It’s Will and El’s last hoorah before moving, because she’s got no one except for them now, and Mom’s determined to be the mother that El never got to have.

Hopper was a good man. He really was.

Anyway, Will’s hoping that a nice swim will cheer El up a bit. She’s been staying with them recently, him and Mom and Jonathan, and so far, she’s been super quiet. Which is completely understandable. Even if the only thing going on in her life was her weird relationship-limbo with Mike, Will would still get it. But of course, that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

For people like El and Will, boy problems are the least of their worries. There’s always so much more that’s after them. Haunting them. Living inside of their heads, guest-starring in their nightmares. In that way, at least, they’re the same.

Maybe that’s why Mike chose her. Because she’s so much like Will.

But that’s a horrible thought, one that makes Will sick to his stomach with guilt, makes him think, What the hell is wrong with you? over and over and over again, until the words don’t even sound like words anymore. For the foreseeable future, Eleven is basically his sister. He can’t be thinking that sort of stuff about her. It’s… it’s awful, and mean, and not even true. El is way better than him. She’s got actual superpowers, for one. And that’s not even the best thing about her, not by a long shot. She’s always kind, never saying the wrong thing or making anyone uncomfortable. She’s funny, and curious, and a quick learner. She fits right into the Party, like she’s known them their whole lives.

So in that way, she’s not like Will at all.

“Do boys usually swim with their shirts on?”

It’s an innocent question. Like Will said, El is curious. And it’s a fair observation, too—Mike and Lucas and Dustin, halfway across Lover’s Lake, all have their shirts off. Mike’s mark is on proud, horrifying display. It’s a perfect mirror to Will’s own, just lined in blue instead of yellow. Triangular, with a heart and crown in the middle. There’s absolutely no mistaking it.

Will’s taken to covering his own mark up, even underneath his clothes. His sternum is taped over with plain beige bandaids, just in case his shirt soaks through and tries to expose all his secrets. This is too important to risk. Even if Will’s playing it safe, only going waist deep in the water, he doesn’t put it above the guys to dunk him at random, or splash him when his back is turned. And the memory of That Day, fresh and raw in his mind, is enough to instill him with a healthy fear of water, and the freaky revelatory powers it possesses. 

Everything is clearer in the rain.

“I’ve got—” Will hesitates, running a gentle hand over his side. He can’t feel the scar anymore, but he knows it’s there. Ugly and puckered and pink, as immovable as the shield over his heart. Part of him. A reminder. “I’ve got a scar,” he tells El. “Right here. I don’t really want people to see it.”

El takes this news in stride, nodding like she understands. “I have scars, too,” she confesses, lowering her voice. Across the lake, the boys and Max have started playing chicken, Max on Lucas’s shoulders and Mike on Dustin’s. The Mike-Dustin combo is failing horribly, because Mike might weigh less but he’s a lot taller, and more awkward, all gangly elbows and knees. Unbidden, the corner of Will’s lip twitches, before he tugs it back down and turns his focus to El. 

El, who’s pointing out all the thin white lines along her body, presumably the results of various lab experiments. Will’s eyes catch on her tattoo, 011, and his stomach churns.

It’s the only mark she’ll ever have. Her other one is a mystery, hidden beyond one of those countless scars. Nobody even knows which one it was. She’ll never know the location, the color, the shape.

She’ll never know that Mike wasn’t meant for her.

They’ve both been through so much, Will and El, and they haven’t even started high school yet. Matching scars, matching nightmares, matching experiences. Siblings by circumstance. 

By choice.

Will reaches out unthinkingly, his hand covering a small burn mark on her shoulder. “Eleven,” he says, as seriously as he can. “You’re the bravest person I know.”

Her fingers freeze in the midst of tracing a long pink line on her forearm, and her eyes deepen with something sad and unknowable. After a second, she brings her hand up to encircle Will’s wrist, holding him gently. “That’s strange,” she says, voice soft. “Because I always thought that was you.”

Lover’s Lake is peaceful. Frozen in time, in that moment, Will’s hand on El’s shoulder and hers on his wrist. Bandaids over his heart. Birdsong in the trees. The laughter of their friends, giggly and unabashed, across the clearing.

Brother and sister, souls laid bare.

Just then, Mike finally topples off Dustin’s shoulders and into the water, landing with a dramatic splash and flailing of limbs. He surfaces with a splutter, hair soaked and jet-black, plastered across his forehead and sticking flat to his neck. El’s expression goes soft as she watches him, and the corner of her mouth curls up.

Light reflects off of Mike’s shield. It’s an open secret, clearly visible to the whole world—or at least, anyone at Lover’s Lake that happens to be looking. Also known as Will Byers.

El’s wrong. He’s not brave. 

He’s the biggest fucking coward in Indiana.

—

The days that follow are too fast. Will wants to hold onto every moment in Hawkins, wants the minutes to be syrupy-sweet and molasses-slow, but they slip through his fingers like dry sand. Before he knows it, he’s packing the contents of his life into a shockingly low number of boxes, and hauling them into the trunk of Mom’s Pinto, alongside El’s newly-bought pink suitcase and Jonathan’s black camera case.

Eventually, there’s only one thing left to do.

“Woah, dude. That’s the donation box.”

Will looks up, surprised that Mike’s chosen to say anything at all. A million thoughts run through his head, secluded in the privacy of his brain: I thought this is what you wanted. You didn’t seem like you’d care. Aren’t you happy that I’m growing up?

But he doesn’t want to argue, and he’s all too familiar with Mike’s quick temper, and it’s his last day in Hawkins. So instead, what comes out of his mouth is: “I know. I figure I’ll just use yours when I come back. You know, if we still want to play.”

Mike swallows thickly, eyes still caught on the D&D manual. “Yeah, but… what if you want to join another Party?”

The question’s almost laughable. Doesn’t Mike know? 

Will smiles, even though smiling’s about the last thing he feels like doing right now. Mike just has that effect on him. “Not possible,” he says, and it’s not. Will doesn’t want new friends. He doesn’t ever want to replace the Party, even if he could. 

There’s a churning sea of meaning behind the words. Will wonders if Mike understands. He knows he probably doesn’t.

I can’t forget you. I can’t replace you. You’re it for me.

I won’t ever stop loving you.

It’s a good thing Mike can’t read his mind. Feel his feelings. Will doesn’t want to scare him off any more than he already has. At least in California, there’s less chances for him to mess up. You can’t ruin a relationship with someone you hardly ever see.

The dry-sand minutes slip away, and before Will knows it, he’s hugging his friends goodbye, hugging Mike goodbye, thinking, as he always does: Don’t linger for too long, don’t be weird, don’t let him know, he can’t find out. And then he’s in the car.

He’s in the car, El by his side and Jonathan in the passenger seat and Mom up front, fingers nervously twitching in that way they do when she’s dying for a smoke. Some old, beachy music is on the radio, and Mike’s nothing more than a speck in the rearview mirror. 

And then he’s nothing at all.

They say distance makes the heart grow fonder, but Will’s is already hurting. He doesn’t mean that in a metaphorical sense, either—the skin on his chest is burning, like his mark is screaming at him for leaving his soulmate behind. He can’t do anything about it, can’t change the increasing miles between him and Mike, can’t change the way the world is, can’t turn back the clock and hide in Mike’s basement, like he did when he was little and hopeful and so stupidly innocent. So naive.

He’s grown up. 

Will ignores the stinging pain behind his ribs. He starts up a game of I-Spy with El.

He doesn’t think about Mike.

(He thinks about him far too much.)

—

California is different. It’s not, like, a super dramatic change or anything, but it’s louder. Brighter. The air is sun-warmed and smells like tanning lotion. Their house is bigger, and Will has an easel in his room.

Mike hasn’t called yet.

Dustin and Lucas have both checked in, even making a little competition out of who could call faster. (Lucas won.) They talked about the first few weeks of school, how some of the seniors have beards and tattoos, how math is way harder now, how Lucas might try out for basketball and Dustin’s looking at the chess club.

Will told them some things in return. He talked about art class and his teacher Ms. White, who’s teaching them how to work with oil pastels and acrylic paint. He talked about how hot it always is, how he’s ditched half of his fall wardrobe and taken to just wearing t-shirts and shorts, which feels weird and wrong when it’s almost October. 

There’s also an extensive list of things he didn’t talk about. They include, in no particular order: the time he saw two men holding hands at the beach and cried in the bathroom later that night. The way that their poetry module in English made him think about Mike. Jonathan’s new smoking habit. How hard of a time El’s been having at school.

That last one’s pretty rough, and a hot topic of conversation in the Byers household recently. Mom wants to pull El from school and teach her at home, but El’s so determined to live a normal life, to meet people and have new experiences and catch up on all the things she’s missed over the years. Besides, though nobody’s said it, they all know that Mom doesn’t have time to homeschool her, with her telemarketing job and everything. It would only stress her out about a million times more, and none of the Byers siblings want that.

So all of them, for better or worse, stay at Lenora High.

El’s first letter arrives right before Halloween.

When Will checks the post, he thinks there’s been a mistake. Because that’s clearly Mike’s handwriting, and it’s clearly a letter for El, which makes total sense, right—but why is there nothing for him?

They’re good now, aren’t they? Mike hadn’t seemed mad, that last day in Hawkins. He’d smiled. They’d hugged.

But there’s nothing else in the mailbox, even after Will thrusts half his arm in and feels all the way towards the back. And Mike, as of now, is still the only one that hasn’t called. Even Max called the other day, though she did demand to speak to El about ten minutes into their conversation. Will understood that, because he’s never been that close with Max, especially not as much as El.

And still, she called.

It’s fine. It’s fine. Will’s not bitter about it. His chest doesn’t hurt at all. His hands aren’t shaking where they hold the letter.

He’s always been such a bad liar.

“El,” he calls on his way in the house, toeing his shoes off at the door. “Letter for you.”

She bounds down the stairs, hair half-braided in her hand, eyes bright and excited. She’s always been so pretty. So kind and energetic and wonderful. She’s always been everything Will isn’t.

He clenches his jaw, trying to shake the jealousy. It’s not fair. Neither of them deserve it. He’s happy for her. He is.

“Who’s it from?” she asks, already holding out her hand.

“Mm,” Will says distractedly, watching the letter’s distressing journey from his grasp to hers. It’s only then that he realizes she’s probably expecting an answer. “Um. Mike, I think. It looks like his handwriting.”

For a second, her face falls. It’s so strange that Will picks up on it, even through his upset, selfish daze. It’s just a fleeting thing: the creasing of her brows, the downward pull of her lips. Which is weird, because she talks about Mike all the time, and Will’s heard them talking on the phone before, using up all their long-distance minutes, and he’s seen the little shrine she’s building in her bedroom, with all Mike’s pictures and trinkets and notes.

What does she have to be disappointed about? She’s got it good. She has everything Will wants. Those are Mike’s words on that page, and even though they’re not for him, Will still wants to know the contents of the letter, just because Mike wrote it. He wants to soak in every syllable. He wants to memorize them and then try to write shitty, vaguely depressing poems for English class in lieu of an answer. Better yet, he could paint something.

He could paint something.

The weirdness passes. El beams happily, holds the letter close to her chest, and bounds back up to her room to read it. Will stands there at the bottom of the stairs, watching her go, and tries not to let it hurt too much. Business as usual.

Eventually, when his legs decide to work again, he goes back to his own room and lays in bed. Stares at the ceiling. Thinks too much. 

There’s no one here to judge him. It’s just him and his half-finished painting for class, some kind of landscape that hasn’t really taken form yet. Oil paintings are hard. But the canvas is a captive, unmoving audience, so that’s okay.

Will presses a hand to his mark, trying to feel it through the layers of bandaids that he still applies every morning, just as a precaution. A comfort that’s not a comfort at all, but a muzzle. An extra degree of separation. A shield on top of a shield.

I miss you, my heart, he thinks, and his eyes sting with tears. He closes them, squinting his eyelids shut until it’s almost painful. He feels so stupid, this is ridiculous, but he just—it hurts. It hurts every single day, and Mike doesn’t even care. 

Why is he not affected by this? Can’t he feel it? Is Mike’s shield just numb? Painless?

Maybe it’s broken. Just like their connection.

Into the dark of his mind, Will says: I miss you. I hate this, why can’t everything be like it was, why can’t you feel the same way, why can’t I stop feeling like this, why, why, WHY? 

He says: I think about you every day. I’ll never stop.

He says: I love you, Mike. I love you with everything I have.

The darkness is silent. 

It always is.

—

The months pass quickly. Will and El stick close together, forming a sort of bond that only comes from shared trauma and a shared fear of public school. They sit at the same lunch table, walk the same route home, and hang out almost every afternoon and weekend. It’s nice. El’s still not being treated very well, but she tries to keep a positive attitude about it, and Will tries to encourage her as much as he can.

He wouldn’t say he has friends, exactly. He has… acquaintances. He has people he sees in class every day, people that he’s comfortable enough making small talk with and pairing up with for group projects. Will knows that if he makes an effort, he could be friends with them. It’s not like before, when the stigma of Zombie Boy and freak followed him wherever he went. People in California seem to like Will. They like his clothes, and his art, and his jokes, whenever he’s brave enough to make them. 

But some small part of him doesn’t want to make the effort. He doesn’t want new friends. He wants to continue pretending this is just an extended vacation, that Hawkins is still home and the Party is still together. He wants the phone calls from Lucas and Dustin and Max to be enough. He does. 

He wants to cling. To hang on.

Maybe that’s screwed up. Maybe he should be focusing on moving forward, on carving out a space for himself and making his own way in the world. Figuring out who he is, independently of any friends or one-sided soulmates. 

That’s a little hard to do, though, when Mike is coming for spring break. 

It’s not like they haven’t talked at all. Mike did call, exactly twice. Both times, the conversation was a little awkward, like they didn’t know what to say to each other now that they weren’t in the same state. There was a heavy knowledge between them, a million unspoken questions: Why haven’t you called? Why aren’t we close anymore? What happened to us?

Will wishes he knew the answers. Then again, maybe the truth would only make him feel worse.

He’s been working on a new painting. One that’s not for class this time. It’s… well, it’s for Mike, as stupid as that is. Maybe it’s not for Mike, actually, because the thought of giving it to him is a little mortifying, and makes Will feel hot in the face and weak in the knees. 

After Ms. White’s oil paint lessons, she moved on to watercolors, and then swung back around to acrylics. So Will decided to get some extra practice in, because Mom bought him an acrylic paint set for Christmas, and some really nice brushes, and it would be a crime to let them go to waste. At first, he didn’t really know what he was painting. It was just a landscape. He’s done lots of landscapes. They’re comforting. Easy. 

Then he decided to get some figures in there, because he really needed to work more on his subject rendering. And as he painted, he thought about the last campaign they’d done before Will left for California—not the horrible one that went all sideways and wrong, but the one afterwards. The one that Mike DM’d, as an unspoken sort of apology. It had been pretty short, but still filled with a lot of passion. A lot of heart. Everything Mike does is full of heart, always. Will had expected nothing less.

Anyway, Will thought about the campaign, and he thought about Mike, and before he knew it, there was an entire scene on his canvas, and he was going to the library for fantasy painting tips, because he had to draw the dragon, duh, it just wouldn’t be complete without it, and—

And then he’d taken off his bandaids in the bathroom. And he looked at his mark for a very, very long time. 

He had it memorized already. The simple lines of it, the blunt shapes. It was probably the easiest thing in the world to paint.

So he did.

He painted Mike’s paladin leading the charge, soulmate-mark shield in hand.

And… okay, here’s the thing. Will’s been getting hopeful, lately. God, he has no clue why. He guesses it’s a side-effect of living in California, where there’s whispers in the halls of Bryce Keen and Oliver Gray, and the whispers aren’t bad. Where people talk, sometimes, about women being more than just “roommates,” or men going out to the movies together and coming home unscathed.

Where Elliot Sanders had pulled him aside, after art class, and asked if he ever heard of Alan Turing. He’d said in this hopeful sort of way, like it was a secret code or something, and Will would have felt bad saying no, so he lied. Afterwards, he went to the library and looked up Alan Turing, just in case Elliot brought him up again in the near future and expected Will to have any sort of idea who he was.

He definitely knows who he is now. In fact, Will had been so dumbstruck at the idea of an openly gay mathmatician, someone so important and valuable, that he’d fallen down a rabbit hole. He’d stayed on the library computer for hours, trying to absorb all the information that he could. Not just about Turing, either—about Dickinson and Whitman and even Michelangelo, which was a revelation so powerful that Will had to leave the library and go home to cry. He’d sketched something dark and whirling in his notebook, something somehow hopeless and hopeful all at once. He still wants to transfer it over into a painting, but he’s not exactly sure how to do it justice, so for now, it just lives on paper, tucked away into the front pocket of his backpack.

All that to say that Will did his history project on Turing. All that to say that he’s becoming more comfortable with who he is. With the idea that there’s other people out there like him, people with same-sex soulmates, and not all of them had tragic endings. Some of them made it out okay.

So… Maybe this thing with Mike isn’t all bad. Maybe he can learn to live with it. He’s been reading up a lot on one-sided bonds, and rejected bonds, though the term ‘rejected’ still makes something ache low in his stomach. But Will thinks he’s done enough research to know that there’s hope. He can stay Mike’s friend, as long as he doesn’t mess it up. He can sit quietly by Mike’s side for as long as he’ll have him. He can shower him in appreciation and support, and learn to not expect anything in return. It’ll be okay. He’ll get better at it. He has his whole life to practice it. Acceptance. Peace.

Then Mike shows up at the Lenora airport, and everything goes to shit.

Will’s not entirely sure why he brought the painting, except that his Christmas gift for Mike had been kind of lame, just a card and a drawing of the beach, because Mike hadn’t really made much of an effort to reach out and Will felt uncomfortable, worried about being too forward. Too revealing. Mike’s own gift for Will had been a twenty dollar bill and a note to ‘buy himself something cool.’ Honestly, it had stung. Especially after seeing the expensive jewelry that came in the mail for El.

(Will bought some canvases and called it a day. Thanks, Mike.)

The painting is a gift, then. A delayed Christmas present. A show of friendship. An effort to fix the burned bridge between them.

But when Mike arrives, in his stupid bright outfit that Will wants to light on fire and throw in the Lenora High dumpster, and gives Will that stupid side-hug-shoulder-punch, he reconsiders. Maybe they’re not ready for the painting. Maybe Mike wouldn’t appreciate that right now. Maybe it’s not a thoughtful gift, it’s just another example of Will being too stupid and hopeful and eager, when really he should just be quiet. Invisible.

And he certainly feels like it, for the rest of the day. He feels invisible at the Rink-O-Mania table, playing with his empty cotton candy wrapper while Mike and El swap sodas and giggle into each other’s shoulders. He feels invisible while they’re skating, while Mike and El are holding hands and Will’s sticking out like a sore thumb behind them. 

Not like it’s his birthday or anything.

He guesses he should be grateful that everyone’s wished him a happy birthday at least once, that Mom and Jonathan and El all gave him presents this morning, though Mike’s own gift has been suspiciously absent. Will probably shouldn’t expect anything, though. He doesn’t know why he would.

He’s blinking, and breathing, and moping, and feeling vaguely sorry for himself, and before he knows it, he’s yelling at Mike across the Rink-O-Mania floor. 

“You called maybe a couple times,” Will accuses, like he doesn’t know exactly how many times Mike has called. (Two. Two times.) “Meanwhile, El has, like, a book of letters from you—”

“Yeah, that’s because she’s my girlfriend, Will.”

Distantly, Will is glad that Mike said girlfriend and not soulmate. He doesn’t know if his fragile heart could handle that right now. 

But still, the ugly part of him rises up, and maybe he’s not that good at quiet acceptance yet, because what comes out of his mouth is: “And us?”

The shield on his chest feels like a neon sign. There’s a pounding mantra in his brain, so loud that he’s sure Mike must be able to hear it. Soulmates. Soulmates. Soul—

“We’re friends. We’re friends.”

Rejection.

That’s what that second part feels like.

He didn’t even hesitate.

Will doesn’t shake the hurt this time. It grows, and grows, and grows. “We used to be best friends,” he says, and it feels pathetic, and he’s second-guessing everything now. Did they used to be best friends? Is Mike about to shoot him down again? Maybe Lucas was Mike’s best friend. Maybe Will doesn’t know anything at all.

Mike stammers in frustration, cheeks growing red. “Yeah, well—you could’ve reached out more, you know. I mean, why is this all on me? Why am I the bad guy?”

And Will—he can’t answer. Mike’s not the bad guy. He never has been. Sure, it sucks that he didn’t reach out. But it happens. Friends grow apart. It’s not Mike’s fault that Will cares too much. That he didn’t want to call because he was scared to seem needy or clingy; scared to show his hand. Scared that Mike would know, or even if he didn’t, he’d just think Will was being annoying. He’d grow sicker of him than he already was.

So Will says nothing.

Mike’s expression softens, unreadable and conflicted, before glancing away, a silent end to the fight. “Let’s… Let’s just find her, okay?”

Right. El. This is about El.

Jesus Christ. Will’s always been so selfish.

Happy fucking birthday to him.

—

It all goes downhill from there, and quick. Will’s left trying to catch up, staring at the blood running down Angela’s face, staring at Argyle’s bloodshot eyes, staring at the officers at their house as they clip handcuffs onto El’s wrists. His sister, in chains. His sister, going to jail for aggravated assault.

This is a nightmare.

It’s a nightmare.

But somewhere amidst the horror, in between El getting taken away and everybody freaking out, Will and Mike thaw out a little bit. Will tries to give some relationship counseling, which is probably the last thing he should be doing, given… well, everything, but if he’s going to be a supportive soulmate, it’s a start. He needs to get used to it.

And things are good. Mike’s smiling at him more, which is already a vast improvement from the shittiness of the past year. They’re working together. Existing in the same space. 

It’s fine. Besides, this is only temporary; Mike’s only visiting, and Will can’t waste these precious few days being mad at him. He needs to soak in all their time together, like a pathetic little flower that never gets watered, or something. 

He really should have paid more attention in English. His poems were… not great, to say the least.

He can feel an apology brewing when Mike sits on his bed, duffel in hand, and starts fumbling over his words. “Hey, I—about the last few days—”

Will waves him off before he can even begin. “You don’t have to say anything. I was being a total jerk to El. I deserved it.” He turns away, unable to meet Mike’s eyes, shame crawling down his throat and into his stomach. Forget being a good soulmate. He hasn’t even been a good brother.

But Mike’s voice, when it comes, is surprised. Disbelieving. “No! No, no, you didn’t deserve anything.”

It might just be the nicest thing Mike’s said to him in over a year. The shock of it, pleasant and warm, makes Will whip around, eyes wide. Mike shrinks a little under the attention, fidgeting nervously with his hands. “Listen,” he says, after a long pause. “Truth is—the last year has been weird, you know?”

Will definitely knows. It’s not my fault you don’t like girls. Weird. Destroying Castle Byers. Weird. Crying as Mom’s car drove away. Weird. The eternally awkward radio silence between them. Really weird.

He nods, settling down a little bit against the ground, trying to brace himself through the preemptive surge of emotion. Jesus, his eyes are already burning, and nothing’s even happened yet. This is a completely normal conversation.

“And… And, you know, Max and Lucas and Dustin, they’re… they’re great,” Mike rushes out, and Will nods again, because they are. He’s not exactly sure where Mike’s going with this.

“They’re great,” Mike says again, tone softening. “It’s just—it’s Hawkins. It’s not the same without you.”

Oh. Oh, fuck.

Will’s heart does a pleased little leap in his chest, the words playing on repeat in his head. It’s not the same without you. It’s not the same without YOU.

Get a hold of yourself, he thinks sternly, even as he feels the tears intensify in his waterline. He gives Mike his entire, undivided attention. He doesn’t want to miss a single word.

“And I feel like maybe I was worrying too much about El,” Mike admits. “And, I—I don’t know, maybe I feel like I… lost you, or something.”

Will knows that tone of voice. Forcedly casual, covering up the true meaning. I lost you, Mike’s saying, and for the first time in a long time, Will hears him. I lost you, and I want you back.

He doesn’t mean it the same way Will does. That’s a given. 

But, god— it’s more than Will ever thought he’d get. He can’t fuck this up. His palms are sweaty, and his heart is hammering in his chest, and his shield is burning. He has to play it cool.

Mike shifts on the bed, breath speeding up. “Um. Does that make sense?”

It makes all the sense in the world. Will doesn’t trust himself to speak, so he just nods again, like a lame bobblehead. 

“I have no idea what’s coming next,” Mike says. “But whatever it is, I—I think it’ll be easier if we work together. If we’re a team.”

It’s so similar to what Will was thinking earlier that his breath catches a little, holding that sentence up to the light and turning it every which way, trying to figure out what exactly Mike means. Collecting the words and tucking them away with the rest of this speech, right alongside crazy together and it was the best thing I’ve ever done. 

This memory will light him up for a long time. He already knows.

“Friends,” Mike clarifies, but it’s not mean this time. It’s a little shy, actually, like he’s confessing something close to his chest. He meets Will’s eye, cheeks a bit pink, then looks away. “Best friends.”

It’s not soulmates, but it’s still good. Still warm, and affectionate, and personal. Something that’s just Will and Mike, no one else.

It’s enough.

Will’s been silent for so long that it’s probably a little weird, and Mike’s probably freaking out internally, because Will knows he tends to overthink and second-guess himself when he rambles. 

“Cool,” he says, and immediately wants to die. Cool? Mike pours his heart out, and all Will can say in return is cool?

But he can’t say any of the other things in his head, not the shitty amateur poetry lines or the long rambly paragraphs or any of the wildly flustered, romantic thoughts flying around in the lawless abyss of his mind.

“Cool,” Mike replies, a smile pulling at his lips. Suddenly, it’s okay. Suddenly, cool is the best word in the world, and maybe Will’s a poet, after all. 

Real life catches up to them in the form of screeching brakes, and it’s like the minutes speed up, uprooting them out of their little frozen heartbeat in time. 

It’s a spur-of-the-moment decision, but Will grabs the painting.

After all, what’s a gift or two between best friends?

—

About twelve hours into their cross-country road trip, Will’s sick of just about everything. Mike’s rambling again, more self-deprecating and harsh this time, saying entirely untrue things about him being an idiot and a nerd, when he’s absolutely never been either of those things, not once in their entire lives.

“And I—I’ll never know, right?” Mike’s saying, looking like he wants to bash his head against the window out of frustration. “I’ll never know if we’re really soulmates.”

Will’s blood goes cold. The S-word. It’s such a taboo topic, even in his own head, that the mention of it is sobering. It almost doesn’t feel real. 

If the change in atmosphere is a physical, palpable thing, Mike doesn’t seem to notice it. He fumbles on, full-speed ahead. “And sometimes it feels like… Like, it’s not fate. It’s not destiny. It’s just simple dumb luck, and one day she’s gonna realize that I’m just some random nerd that got lucky that Superman landed on his doorstep. I mean, at least Lois Lane was, like, an ace reporter for the Daily Planet, right?”

He looks over at Will, searching, and Will can’t muster up an answer. He doesn’t know what to say without it being the full truth. Without it being too much.

At his non-response, Mike curls in on himself, scoffing nervously and looking away. “Sorry.”

Will blinks back into the moment, trying to stay focused. He fidgets with his shirt sleeve in an attempt to keep himself sane. “No, no,” he assures Mike, voice as comforting as he can make it.

“It’s stupid,” Mike mutters. “I mean, with everything that’s going on—I don’t know, I just—”

He seems so lost. So desperate. And Will’s never wanted to understand him more than he does right now, so he tries to put himself in Mike’s shoes. Tries to trace back the times when he felt lost and desperate and useless, sitting in Castle Byers, in Lenora, tracing over the edges of his mark and failing to keep the tears from falling.

What happened to us?

I don’t know. I feel like I lost you or something.

“You’re scared of losing her,” Will concludes, the answer slotting neatly into place. It’s the only thing that makes sense. It’s how Will had felt about Mike. It’s how Mike had felt about Will. 

It’s also how he feels about El. And that’s okay. Really, it is.

Mike nods, throat bobbing, and suddenly, Will knows how he can help. He knows what he has to do.

The walls of the van seem to close in, and his heart races uneasily. He takes a deep, calming breath. It’s now or never.

He’s gonna be a supportive soulmate if it fucking kills him.

“Can I show you something?” he asks, and it’s soft. Consent is important, he thinks absently. Mike should probably agree, even if he doesn’t know what he’s getting into.

Mike goes quiet, eyes widening a little. He nods again.

Will takes another deep breath, longer this time. He sends up a silent prayer for the loss of his dignity.

He pulls out the painting.

Mike unrolls it, hands gentle around the paper, and Will watches every microscopic twitch of his expression, thrilled and nervous and terrified all at once.

Mike’s breath catches.

That’s—okay. That’s good, right? Right?

“This is amazing,” Mike breathes out, and it’s almost instinctual. Unthinking. It’s an honest reaction, one that reminds Will of childhood innocence, of doodling little stick figures for Mike and handing them over eagerly, of the huge grin that would take over Mike’s face every single time, of the tight hugs that he would wrap him in afterwards, saying thank you, thank you, you’re the best!

Will hopes he’s not blushing. It’s too bright in the van for that. Too obvious.

“Did you paint this?” Mike asks, glancing over. His whole face is open and soft, pupils big in the afternoon sunlight. His eyes are always so dark. Will wants to stare at them forever.

And it’s not really a question, because who else would have painted it? So Will nods, before he can remember why he shouldn’t.

Mike’s eyes flutter back down, tracking over the painting. He traces a reverent hand over the shield. “This is my soulmark,” he says quietly, though clearly they both know that.

Reality slams back into Will like a ton of bricks.

Shit. Shit, what is he doing? This is his sister’s boyfriend. This never could have been a gift between friends. He’s so selfish, so greedy, so horrible and needy and gross, and he has to fix this right now. He has to.

“Yeah,” he stammers, sharp fear leaking into his heart. “Yeah, yeah, I mean—El asked me to. She commissioned it, basically.”

“Oh.” Mike blinks back down at the paper, tilting his head as he examines it. In a renewed wave of nervousness, Will adjusts in his seat, turning to look out the window.

“Mhm. She, um, told me what to draw. Like, your mark and stuff. The shield.”

Almost by accident, he glances at the rearview mirror.

Jonathan’s already looking back.

Oh, god. Oh, fuck. He definitely knows. Why the hell did Will choose to do this in the car with his brother, one of the only people in the world that’s seen Will’s soulmark? This was such a bad idea.

But he’s started now, and he can’t stop. It bubbles out of him like word vomit, all the secrets that he’s wanted to tell Mike for years on end. All the things that he’s wanted to confess.

“Anyways,” he says, ignoring Jonathan entirely. “My point is… See how you’re leading us here? You’re guiding the whole Party. Inspiring us. That’s what you do.”

He and Mike both look at the shield. At their mark.

Slowly, Will reaches out a careful finger, tapping the center of the heart. “You’re the heart, Mike,” he murmurs. “You’re the heart of our Party.” 

You’re my heart, he thinks.

The van is silent. A pin could drop, and it would sound like an explosion. Like a scream.

“And—and without heart, we’d all fall apart,” Will continues, blushing a little. It’s one of those crappy lines he’d brainstormed in English, trying and failing to make something poetic and appropriate of all the huge feelings bursting in his chest. He’d scribbled it down, scratched it out, then crumpled the paper and threw it away. He has no idea why he’s repeating it now, out loud, to Mike. Insanity, probably. It was bound to happen eventually.

“Even El,” he tacks on, because that’s who this conversation is supposed to be about. El, not Will. He needs to refocus. “Especially El,” he stresses, doubling down on it. If that’s what it takes for Mike to believe in himself, the way Will believes in him, he’ll talk about El all day long. Hell, he’d do that for free.

Will sighs, looking off into nothingness. “These past few months, she’s been so… lost without you,” he says, and it feels like a confession. “It’s just—she’s so different from other people. And when you’re different…”

Will thinks of countless cold nights, crying and alone and scared, labeled as queer before he even knew what it meant, hated for it before he even knew who he was. Hated for something entirely out of his control. Something he could never change. Something he’d never want to change, not really. Even if all it’s done is bring him pain.

“Sometimes, you feel… you feel like a mistake,” Will chokes out, eyes stinging with heat. His view of the desert is blurred, both from his own tears and from the dirty, smudged glass of Argyle’s window. 

But even if this life has brought him pain, it’s also brought him joy. Love. Mike.

Mike, Mike, Mike. His heart. His soulmate. His shield, his best friend, his protector. Someone Will would do anything for, no hesitation. Even if it means bearing his soul in a weed-soaked pizza van, using his sister’s name as a flimsy excuse. 

“But you make her feel like she’s not a mistake at all,” Will says. Begging Mike, as he always does, to understand. To hear the deeper meaning. You make me feel better. You make me feel brave. Like I’m not a mistake.

Or at least, he used to. And maybe, now that things are getting better, he will again. Will believes that. He really does.

“You make her feel like she’s better for being different,” Will continues, voice cracking in the middle. It’s embarrassing, but he’s long passed the point of no return, so there’s not much he can do about that. “And that gives her the courage to fight on.”

Will thinks of the Rink-O-Mania fight. Of Castle Byers, and everything that came before it. 

“And if she was mean to you, or she seemed like she was pushing you away, that’s probably because she’s scared of losing you, just like you’re scared of losing her.”

Somehow, it feels like the truest thing he’s ever said. Like the deepest, most real part of him. I’m scared to lose you. Please don’t leave. Please stop pulling away, I’m sorry, I miss you, I love you. I love you. Please stay.

He thinks of his mark. Of his shield, covered by a thick layer of bandaids.

Maybe it’s time to let go. To move on.

“And if she was going to lose you,” he says, heart in his throat, voice thick and mucus-lined, “I think she’d rather just get it over quick. Like ripping off a bandaid.”

Although it could be a trick of the light, Will swears that Mike glances down. Just for a second, but his line of vision is clear. Will could trace it with a pen. Mike’s eyes to Will’s chest. To his mark. To the bandaids that cover it. 

But that’s crazy. He doesn’t… he doesn’t know. He can’t. If he did, he would have run far, far away by now. Some days, that’s the only thought that gives Will any semblance of peace. Mike doesn’t have any clue. He hasn’t screwed things up beyond the point of no return.

God, this is… This is getting to be a lot, actually. It’s veering heavily into that area that Will has formally deemed too much. He needs to wrap this up, before he collapses into the seat and drowns in his own tears, like some tragic romance movie heroine.

“So yeah,” he says lamely. “El needs you, Mike. And she always will.”

I need you. I need you, I need you, I need you. 

He thinks it as loudly as he wants. He knows by now that Mike will never hear him.

And, to prove his theory, the corner of Mike’s mouth ticks up. He looks pleased, glancing from Will’s face to the painting, then back again. “Yeah?”

Will nods. “Yeah.”

With that, the conversation is over, finally, and Will can feel the tears coming like a flood, threatening to explode violently out of his mouth in the familiar form of sobs, and he’s turning fully to the window so Mike can’t see him cry.

Soulmates aren’t supposed to hurt each other this much. But it makes sense, because Will hasn’t hurt Mike, and Mike hasn’t hurt Will.

He’s done this to himself.

His chest stings, like he’s just ripped off a million bandaids at once, and it’s such a common feeling that Will barely even registers it. The ache in his heart is far more pressing.

He claps a hand over his mouth to stifle his sobs.

Everything hurts, but he’s done it. He was supportive. He made Mike feel better. He reassured him.

If it’s this hard every time, Will’s in for a lifetime of pain.

Really, though, that’s nothing new.

—

Mike and El reunite, because of course they do. Will can’t even find it in himself to be jealous, not when he’s bowled over with relief that his sister is alive and safe and happy, even, trading jokes and smiles with Mike in the abandoned dining room of Surfer Bros Pizza.

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t still feel like an open wound.

That should be me, he thinks distantly, then immediately pushes the thought to the back of his brain, because that’s exactly the kind of thing he needs to not be thinking anymore. 

Jonathan stills.

Will keeps his gaze resolutely on the floor, hoping he’s giving off I don’t want to talk about this energy, like a pufferfish that’s all spiked-up and defensive. 

His brother’s always been good at reading his signals.

And he doesn’t push, just like Will knew he wouldn’t. He comes in from a side angle, telling a story about Legos, which is one of the most ridiculous and bizarre things he could have said, and Will’s left wondering how he’s gonna tie this in to the whole soulmate thing, because he knows it’s coming up.

“I don’t know, I just—I feel like you used to come to me more for help,” Jonathan says, eyes big and sad. “Or to just… talk, you know?”

Will swallows over the lump in his throat. He shrugs, a barely-there movement of his shoulders, and looks away.

Jonathan presses on. “‘Cause, like… you don’t do that anymore. Not like before.”

A memory bubbles to the front of Will’s brain: Zombie Boy. Will clutching his colored pencils in his fist, on the verge of tears, and Jonathan placing a hand on his shoulder. Being a freak is the best. I’d rather be friends with Zombie Boy than with a boring nobody.

Will wonders just how long his brother’s known. Forever, probably. That seems to be the general consensus around Will, like he’s walking around with a kick me sign on his back, except it’s just proclaiming his sexuality for the whole world to see. At this point, he wouldn’t even be fazed.

“And a lot of that is probably my fault,” Jonathan admits, chewing guiltily on the inside of his cheek. His skin puckers and releases as he lets it go to talk. “This last year… I know I’ve been distant.”

Despite himself, Will snorts. “Or stoned,” he points out, unmerciful.

Fondly exasperated, Jonathan shrugs, huffing out a flat laugh. “Or stoned. Yeah. But that has nothing to do with you. It’s me dealing with my own shit.” He shrugs again, this time looking a little annoyed, but more with himself than anyone else. “Dealing with my own problems. The truth is—I miss talking to you. I, like, really miss it.”

For a second, Jonathan’s eyes flicker down to his chest. To his mark. Will knew it was coming, but he still flinches, eyes welling up with hot tears.

“And I think right now,” Jonathan says carefully. “We need to talk more than ever.” He glances over in the direction of the dining room, sympathy written all over his face. “Because things are getting complicated. A lot more complicated than Legos up the nose, you know?”

“Jonathan,” Will chokes out. “I—I—”

His brother watches him intently, expression softening. “I know,” he says gently, and he does. He’s about the only person in the world that does know. “I just… I don’t want you to forget that I’m here. Okay? And I’ll always be here. No matter what.”

Will sniffles, scrubbing at his eyes with the back of his hand as he nods. “Mhm,” he manages.

Jonathan doesn’t let up. “Because you’re my brother,” he says. “And I love you. And there is nothing in this world, absolutely nothing, that will ever change that. You got that?”

Oh. Oh, god, Will has to actually respond. When he does, his voice is raw and strangled. He can barely manage the words. “Ye—yeah,” he forces out. “And I’m always—I’m always here for you, too.”

Jonathan’s whole expression crumples. He sets down his stirring rod, coming straight in for a hug. Will goes easily, because he needs it. Jesus, he’s never needed anything more.

“I know,” Jonathan murmurs into his hair, stroking along his shoulder blades. “I know you are.”

Will sniffles again. “I love you,” he mumbles, though it comes out more like Iluhyu, all squished-up and sad. 

“I love you so much,” Jonathan replies immediately, squeezing him tight. “And you’re too good for him, you know?”

His voice is unbelievably quiet. Something that Will could pretend not to hear, if he wanted to.

He’s so sick of pretending.

“M’not,” he denies. “It’s just… it’s so,” he sobs again, breath hitching in full force now. “It’s so hard, Jonathan, it hurts so much—”

There’s a sniffle somewhere above his head, and then one of the hands on his back is lifting up so Jonathan can rub at his reddened eyes. “I’m so sorry,” he says, pulling back a little to look at Will. “I know that doesn’t help, but you don’t deserve this, Will. You deserve to be happy.”

Of course Jonathan thinks that. He doesn’t know about all of Will’s horrible thoughts. All the mean things he’s said about his own sister, in the cowardly privacy of his brain. All of his selfishness. 

He knows, though, that if he tells Jonathan that, they’ll be here all day while his brother sits him down and tries to comfort him for hours on end. Or maybe, in an even worse turn of events, he’d be disgusted. Disappointed. After all, El’s Jonathan’s sister, too, and he’s just as protective of her, if not more.

So he just shrugs, and Jonathan pulls him in for another hug, whispering quiet platitudes into his hair, and they cry together in the pizza kitchen, over a freezer full of saltwater. 

It’s the beginning of the end.

—

El’s losing. She’s losing, she’s in pain, and the only thing that Will can think is that she needs Mike. Because that’s what he would need, if he were in her shoes. His soulmate.

Not his, he reminds himself. Not now. Not ever.

“Mike,” Will says, clasping a hand over his shoulder. “Don’t stop, okay? Don’t stop. You’re the heart.”

You’re my heart.

You’re her heart.

Will steps back. He lets Mike go.

And Mike, true to form, steels his face in resolve. It’s like with Will’s words, he’s been brought to life. Given a mission.

“El? I don’t know if you can hear this. But—but if you can—”

Mike hesitates, chest heaving with emotion. “Just know that I’m here, okay? I’m right here. And—” His breath hitches in a little hiccupy sob, like it’s hurting him just to say this, but he perseveres, like he always does. “And I love you.”

All at once, Will’s nearly crippled with a rush of emotion—sorrow, guilt, fear. It’s so heady, so powerful, that he’s almost brought to his knees.

He’s ripped the bandaid off.

He didn’t realize it would feel like this.

“I love you,” Mike repeats, easier this time. “I don’t care if we’re soulmates or not, okay? That doesn’t change how I feel. I love you on your good days, on your bad days—with your powers, without your powers—”

Will doesn’t hear the rest. He’s too busy replaying the words in his head, echoing and taunting: I don’t care if we’re soulmates or not.

Because that’s the whole thing, isn’t it? 

It wouldn’t make a difference if Mike knew the truth. Nothing would change.

He’d still choose El.

He’d still bring her flowers and notes and hug her at the airport, spinning her around while they both laugh at nothing. He’d still kiss her on the cheek and hold her hand and tell him that he loves her.

Because he does. Because that’s what he wants to do, and Will could be the best goddamn person in the world, the best soulmate, and it wouldn’t matter. Mike still wouldn’t see him.

When Will tunes back in, Mike’s saying: “The truth is, I don’t know how to live without you. I feel like my life started that day we found you in the woods.”

Oh. Oh, that’s…

That’s funny, isn’t it? Because Will’s life started when he met Mike. And then it ended on that same day Mike’s talking about. The same day that, apparently, Mike started living.

They’ve completely missed each other, then. They’ve lived entirely separate lives.

Okay.

Will kind of feels like he’s been run over by a semi-truck.

“I love you for exactly who you are,” Mike says passionately, tightening his fingers around El’s. “You’re my superhero, okay? I don’t need anyone else.”

Ouch. Fucking… ouch, Christ, this is probably the worst day of Will’s life. Blow after blow. Hit after hit. He doesn’t even have a chance to get up, to recover, because it just keeps getting worse.

Mike doesn’t need him. El doesn’t need him. They’re complete together, their own tight-knit unit, and he’s her heart, soulmate or not, because he’s chosen her. And that’s more important than fate. Than destiny. Than simple dumb luck.

This is stronger than anything Will and Mike will ever have.

And it’s proven right there, in the back room of Surfer Bros Pizza, as Mike urges El to fight, and she does.

She fights, and she fights, and she wakes up.

She wakes up, and they go home.

Will doesn’t feel much of anything at all. Not anymore.

—

The world is ending, and Will barely even cares. He cares about his friends. About Mike. About Mom and Jonathan and Hopper and El.

He doesn’t care about himself.

So when it becomes increasingly obvious, day by day, who the weak link is, who the odd one out is, Will’s not even surprised.

He doesn’t know why Vecna wants him. He seems to be the only one that does, though. 

Everyone’s hell-bent on finding a “different way.” Will’s gonna make it through this. We’ll figure it out. We’ll protect him.

No one seems to care what he wants. No one seems to want his input. 

After all that happened, Mike and El broke up. Even after all Mike said, apparently it wasn’t enough to save their relationship. Apparently, El didn’t believe a word he said. Will couldn’t find it in himself to care about that, either, because the outcome is still unchanged. They’ll get back together, eventually. And even if they don’t, Mike will choose someone else. Someone new. Someone who’s not Will.

One night, he decides that enough is enough.

He waits until everyone’s asleep. They’re staying at the Wheeler’s, puppy-piled in the basement and all of the bedrooms, taking advantage of Karen’s neverending hospitality and annoying Ted Wheeler to no end. (Dustin’s mostly responsible for that last part.)

There’s a gun in his backpack. Back when the ground started splitting apart, they all were encouraged to carry weapons, given the state of the outside world. So far, Will’s only used it to shoot a stray Demodog here and there, but it’ll keep in handy where he’s going.

He’s going back.

It’s where he belongs. He never should have been rescued, because everything since then has just hurt. He’s made things harder for everyone. Hell, he’s responsible for most, if not all, of the shitty stuff that’s happened since the night he got taken. Bob. The hospital. The gate.

It all started with him. And now, he needs to be the one to end it. Everyone knows that, even if they’re not cruel enough to say it out loud. There is no other way. If Will gives himself up, this will all stop. It’ll all end.

He feels for the safety of his gun, clicking it off, and the sound is too loud in the dark quiet of Mike’s bedroom. He winces, sleeping bag shifting awkwardly on the floor. It’s just another sound, just another giveaway, and Will waits, heart pounding hard against his ribs. But nothing comes. No sleepy, questioning noise from Mike. No shadows moving by his bed. 

Will’s safe. 

He quietly gets to his feet, slinging his backpack over his shoulder and palming his gun. Earlier, he stocked up with supplies: first aid kit, extra clothes and protective gear, plenty of food and water bottles. He felt bad taking it, so he left some money in the kitchen cabinet, so Ms. Wheeler can go out and replace what he took. It was all the money he had, actually, but that’s okay. He won’t need it anymore.

The door’s already cracked open, light shining dimly from the hallway, so Will wedges himself out of the room, trying not to make any more noise than he already has.

He makes it all the way down the hallway, past the living room, where Ted’s asleep on the La-Z Boy, and out the front door, creaking it closed behind him and letting out a relieved huff of breath. He turns around, ready to face the night.

“Where are you going?”

Mike’s in front of him. What the—

“What the fuck?” Will blurts, blinking in surprise. His hands go slack around his gun, and he almost drops it.

Mike doesn’t bat an eye. “I said, where are you going?” he repeats flatly, looking Will up and down. “Because it looks like you’re about to do something stupid. And you’re not stupid, so that can’t be right.”

“I— Mike,” Will says helplessly. “How did you—did you leave through your window?”

There’s a leaf in Mike’s hair. He doesn’t seem to notice it. “You didn’t answer my question.”

But they both clearly already know what’s going on, so Will sighs in exasperation, not trying to beat around the bush. “Mike. I have to go.”

“You don’t,” he says immediately, taking an aborted step forward. “Will, we’ll figure something out. Please don’t do this.”

A red glow emanates from the forest, where the nearest fissure is. Will glances at it, trying to calculate how long it would take to run there. Mike clocks the movement too quickly, though, closing the distance between them and grasping Will’s forearm. “Will. Don’t.”

Will closes his eyes, breathing out heavily. “This is all my fault,” he whispers, already feeling the familiar sting of tears. “This all happened because of me. And I have a chance, Mike. A chance to stop this.”

“This isn’t all on you,” Mike whispers back, eyes shining in the moonlight. It almost looks—and sounds— like he’s about to cry. But that’s silly. Will’s not worth crying over.

“Will, none of this is your fault,” Mike continues, voice cracking. “You haven’t done anything wrong. Please don’t do this.” His fingers soften on Will’s wrist, thumb stroking along his pulse. “Please… please come inside. For me. Come on, we can figure this out. Together, right? As… as a team.”

His expression is so hopeful. So uncharacteristically bare, laid open just for Will. Just for the chance to keep him safe.

Will would do anything Mike asked of him. Anything, really. 

Except this.

“I’m sorry, Mike,” he says gently, before peeling Mike’s fingers off his wrist. Mike seems dumbstruck for a second, shocked still, just like Will knew he’d be. And that’s his opening.

He runs.

Like he always does. He runs, and runs, lungs burning, eyes stinging, mark burning under the thin film of his t-shirt. He doesn’t bandage it anymore. There’s no point.

It’s only at the last second, heels skittering along the crack in the ground, that he realizes he’s been followed.

And by then, it’s too late.

—

“Are you still not talking to me?”

“Shut up,” Will mutters, hoisting his gun higher on his shoulder.

“I mean, what did you expect me to do? You were being stupid, and I wasn’t just gonna let you go down here alone—”

“Yeah and now we’re both gonna die!” Will explodes, eyes already warming at the thought. He rounds on Mike, suddenly pent up and exhausted and angry, and Mike stiffens, eyes fixed on the barrel of the gun that’s now pointed at him. Will softens a little, lowering it to his side. “Sorry.”

“We’re not gonna die,” Mike says, blinking at him in surprise. “Will, you’ve shot everything that’s come, like, within a ten foot radius of us. You’re doing a great job.” He looks at his feet, scowling a little. “And I’m sorry that I’m so—useless, okay, I know I haven’t really been much help—”

“Woah,” Will blurts, heart hammering. “Woah, okay, Mike. That’s just… that’s not true at all.”

“Oh yeah?” Mike scoffs. “What have I done, then? Name one thing.”

You’ve kept me sane, Will thinks. Kept me motivated. Kept me alive.

You’re my heart.

Will opens his mouth to say just that, without the my part of it, but Mike cuts him off, waving an annoyed hand. “And don’t say I’m the heart, okay, because I’m not.”

“But—”

“I’m not,” Mike repeats, eyes welling over with frustrated tears. “I’m not, okay? That’s you. It’s always been you.”

For the first time, Will realizes that they’ve circled all the way back around to the Wheeler’s garage. Or the Upside Down version of it, anyway. It’s the last place Will saw Mike before he went missing. The same spot they fought, and Mike’s t-shirt soaked right through and ruined Will’s entire life. The same spot that Will had twin realizations: he was alone, just as much as he wasn’t. There was somebody out there for him.

He just didn’t want him.

Will shakes his head, because there’s no way Mike actually believes that. There’s no way that he doesn’t see how wrong those words are. “No,” he says. “No, I’m—are you serious?”

A trace of confusion enters Mike’s eyes as he nods. “What? Of course I’m serious.”

“Sure,” Will says, and now he’s fucking pissed. “Sure you’re serious. That’s why you never called, and you never wrote me letters, and you forgot my birthday, and you said it’s not your fault that I—”

Fuck.

Will stops short, breathing heavily, and Mike freezes, too. “Shit,” he murmurs. “Shit, Will, I—”

“No,” Will says, trying to recover. He shakes his head. “No, Mike, just… Just stop. It’s fine. I don’t care anymore, okay? I really don’t.”

“But I do,” Mike chokes out, eyes big and shiny. He takes another step forward, until the toes of their shoes are almost touching. “I care, Will. And I’m so, so sorry. You didn’t deserve any of that.”

Will’s lips press into a thin, bloodless line as he looks away, guilt creeping into the walls of his heart. “You don’t know that,” he says quietly. “You don’t know that I…”

Mike does the impossible, then.

He reaches forward, putting a hand right over Will’s mark. Will stops breathing entirely, chest stilling under Mike’s palm.

“I know,” Mike admits, voice trembling. “I know, Will.”

He flattens his hand against Will’s sternum, closing his eyes. Feeling his emotions. Thinking his thoughts.

His eyes open again, and they’re full of tears. “You’re so scared,” he whispers.

“How—how did you—” Will stammers, the words barely audible. But Mike seems to hear them, anyway. He seems like he’s listening. Finally. 

“El and I talked,” he says sadly, rubbing a thumb over Will’s t-shirt. “We talked a lot, actually. And… She didn’t commission the painting, Will.”

“I’m not… I…” Will squeezes his eyes shut, and a few tears leak out onto his cheeks. Jesus. This is humiliating.

Mike’s other hand lifts, cradling his face and softly rubbing his tears away. “Hey, it’s okay,” he murmurs. “I’m not mad, Will. I promise. Not even a little bit.”

Will sniffles. “I’d… I’d understand. If you were.”

“I’m not,” Mike says fiercely. His fingers are hot on Will’s cheek, on his chest. Holding him together. “I just… Why didn’t you say anything? Sometimes I thought, maybe—but then I would just get so confused. And then you said all that stuff about El, and I… You could have told me, Will. I wish you’d told me.”

“You chose her,” Will answers, because it’s true. “I didn’t want to… I didn’t want to be selfish. You were happy together.”

Mike shakes his head. “We’re happier as friends,” he corrects. “We really are. And I’m sorry if I ever made you feel like—like anyone was more important than you, Will, because that’s not true. It’s never been true.”

“You’re just saying that to make me feel better,” Will mutters, eyes still closed. Greedily, he leans into Mike’s touch, into the gentle press of his fingers, because he doesn’t know how much longer they’ll be there. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Will,” Mike says. “Can you—can you look at me, please?”

Even though he doesn’t want to, Will can’t deny Mike. He opens his eyes.

Mike is close. He’s close, and his expression is so intense, so passionate. Will thought he’d seen Mike’s passion before, back at the pizza place, but this is entirely different. Mike’s not scared. He’s steady. He’s sure.

Mike’s eyes flicker downwards, to his own chest. “You can… You can feel it, if you want,” he says nervously. “My mark.”

Will’s head spins. Of course he wants. It’s everything he’s ever wanted. It’s too much. He wonders, for a second, if this is all just Vecna messing with him. 

But there’s no ticking clock, no prickle at the back of his neck. They’re in the Upside Down, but there’s no threat of danger. They’re at the Wheeler’s garage, and everything is still. Quiet. Intimate. Little particles float in the wind, like snowflakes. The world is tinted scarlet.

So Will reaches out.

Instantly, colors bloom in his mind, bright blues and yellows and greens. His mark burns, just like it always does, but this time it’s different. This time, it doesn’t hurt. It’s just warm, filling him up to his very bones, like a steaming mug of hot chocolate.

And just like that, he knows the truth. He knows what Mike’s been hiding this whole time.

Mike is in love.

He loves him.

And Will loves him right back.

“Oh,” he breathes, nearly bowled over with the sheer force of it. “Oh, shit, oh my god—”

“Will,” Mike says, sounding almost amused. And he feels it, too, like a bubbling stream in his heart. Twinkling laughter. Fondness that seeps through every inch of his body.

He feels that for Will. 

“Yeah?” Will answers, fingers curling over Mike’s chest. 

Mike’s eyes are soft. Dark. “You’re my heart,” he whispers, trailing his hand along the line of Will’s jaw. “You know that, right?”

Will blinks away tears. It’s impossible to be sad right now, but he’s just so overwhelmed. He feels like he needs to lie down and scream for about a million years.

“I know,” Will says, instead of doing that. He drops the gun at his side, and reaches for Mike’s face with shaky fingers. Part of him still thinks, even now, that Mike is going to pull away, like this is some horrible prank. 

But Mike stays exactly where he is. If anything, he moves even closer, leaning into Will’s palm, and his mark gives a short little buzz under his other hand. It feels like sparks. Like electricity.

“You’re mine, too,” Will murmurs, and the feeling gets even stronger. The corner of Mike’s lip pulls up, shy and pleased. “You’ve always been my heart.”

And, with one last nervous exhale, he leans in.

When their lips meet, it’s like magic. Will’s heard about first kisses between soulmates, about the connection that’s like nothing else, but it’s an entirely different thing to experience it. To feel it.

All of Mike’s emotions come flooding into the dark of Will’s brain, swathes of navy and cerulean and indigo mixing with shades of dandelion yellow. A shield and a shield. Protecting each other. Letting each other in, until nothing is left but a passionate shade of forest green. Love. 

Mike’s lips are plush and gentle against his own, pressing forward and testing the waters, testing the boundaries of their friendship, crossing a million lines at once. Will wants him to cross more. He wants to melt into Mike until nobody can tell them apart. He wants to crawl inside his heart and live there.

But he can’t do that, so he just opens his mouth. Lets Mike take more of him, lets him explore the ridges between his teeth and the hollows of his cheeks, all the places that have always belonged to Mike, anyway. Now he’s just taking advantage of it. 

Will runs his tongue over Mike’s bottom lip, hand slipping from his jaw to the nape of his neck, fingers tangling in the dark, soft strands of his hair.

Mike makes a little noise of surprise, a little muffled mmph of surprise, and Will pulls back, worried that he’s done something wrong. “Sorry, was that too much?” he murmurs, eyeing the brilliant pink flush on Mike’s face. 

Even though Mike’s clearly flustered, he still smiles. “Never,” he whispers, and pulls Will back in.

Above them, the garage light flickers.

—

All in all, Will’s glad he didn’t sacrifice himself to Vecna. First of all, it wasn’t the most well thought out plan in the world, as he came to realize. Second of all, if he’d done that, he never would have lived to see this.

This being Mike’s knobbly knees slung over his shoulders as they giggle at Lover’s Lake, scrapping up against El and Max for a game of chicken. This being the exuberant smile on Max’s sightless face, El’s hand held carefully over the curve of her thigh, keeping her steady. Lucas, watching fondly from the shore as he tans, his lightning-bolt mark proudly displayed on his shoulder. 

“Get her, Mike!” Will calls up, unable to keep the laughter out of his voice, because Max is clearly the winner of this match. But he’s gotta be a supportive soulmate, even if that means telling a little white lie every once in a while.

Max snorts. “Say it like you mean it, Byers,” she teases, timed with a forceful shove to Mike’s shoulder. They almost topple over, but Will clings on with all his might, staggering along the muddy surface of the lake.

Will can’t crane his neck that far, but he can hear Mike’s pout. And he can feel it, too, like a petulant flick to the chest. “You don’t believe in me, Will? I can get her! Totally!”

“Mhm,” Will answers, regaining his footing. He tries not to burst out laughing, but it’s a close call. “You’ve got this, sweetheart.”

Less than a minute later, they’re splashing into the lake, a painful, awkward tangle of arms and legs and knees.

“Good game!” El calls over, bright and cheerful, before letting Max down and kissing her on the cheek. 

“Uh huh,” Mike mutters mutinously, tilting his head to try and get the water out of his ears. “You guys suck!” he calls over, but they’re already wandering back up the shore, hand in hand, to get back to Lucas. 

Max, though, flips him off without turning around. “Wheeler, the only reason you made it that long is because of your boyfriend’s ridiculous arm muscles,” she yells, and it’s so loud that Will flushes bright red, instantly embarrassed. Luckily, it’s just the Party at the lake today. Hawkins isn’t much of a tourist destination after everything that’s gone down. But that’s okay. That’s just how Will likes it, because that means he can kiss his soulmate without worrying if anyone’s watching. Which he does, sinking a hand into Mike’s wet hair and pecking him firmly on the lips, which turns into another kiss, then another, and…

“I know you’re just distracting me from Max,” Mike mutters, kissing him on the nose.

Will blinks his eyes open innocently. “Is it working?”

“She still sucks,” he says, vaguely annoyed. His expression softens, and he rests a hand over Will’s heart, right where his shield is. “But I’d rather talk to you.”

Their marks are out to the world today, courtesy of the abandoned forest and the secluded privacy of Lover’s Lake. They’ve changed a little, just like all the stories say. When soulmates touch each other’s marks—when they have that first real connection—they gain something. And it shows.

For Mike and Will, it’s shown in the form of color. Their shields are painted in matching shades of jade green, deep and rich like the pine trees around them. It fits. They fit.

They can’t spend the whole day making out, though, because that would probably be a little rude to everyone else around them, so they join the rest of the Party on the shore, sunning and chatting and tossing chips at each other. Dustin’s got a whole aluminum-foil suntan contraption, but so far it just seems to be making him redder. He’ll probably have a wicked burn tomorrow, and Will’s already wincing in preemptive sympathy.

“Will.”

His head lolls over to meet his sister’s eyes, shaded by some purple heart-shaped sunglasses. “Hey, El,” he greets. His gaze drifts to her shoulder, where her penned-on lightning bolt mark is beginning to smudge. “Your mark’s getting all messed up,” he says with a little frown, and begins to dig around in his bag for a pen. “Hold still, I’ll fix it.”

“Thank you,” she says gratefully, perching on the end of Will’s beach towel. 

“‘Course,” he murmurs, already a little distracted. He drags the tip of the pen carefully across her shoulder, avoiding the edges of her scar the best he can. This is a practiced routine, one that they’ve perfected since El, Lucas, and Max had their big talk. Will knows the shape of her soulmark by heart, just as well as he knows his own. 

She wants to get it tattooed, when she’s old enough. Supposedly, she wants Will to do it for her, but he’s definitely not a good enough artist for that. Not yet, anyway. Maybe he’ll have to start practicing with a tattoo needle. 

“Will?”

Will finishes up a sharp corner of the mark, then lifts his pen. “Yeah?”

El smiles down at him. “I’m glad you are happy,” she says.

And—god, he really is, isn’t he?

Will looks around at the shore—at Mike, harassing Max over a bag of Reeses’ Pieces, at Lucas and Dustin, arm wrestling and falling into fits of giggles, and he thinks that really, this is the happiest he’s ever been. Everything’s alright. He has a soulmate who loves him, and he’s pretty proud of his life, and how things have turned out, and the world’s not ending. He has a family. Friends. His Party. Mike. He’s got a trunkful of birthday gifts and Christmas gifts and anniversary gifts, mixtapes and poems and lego bouquets that Mike spent way too long building.

Everything’s alright. He’s at peace.

“Yeah,” he agrees, smiling back up at El. “Me too.”

After he finishes up her mark, and they chat aimlessly for a little bit, Will makes his way back to Mike. “Hey, you,” he says fondly, settling down on his towel.

Mike wraps an arm around him, kissing the side of his head. “Hey,” he says, and somehow, that single word is impossibly bright. Impossibly loving.

“Get a room!” Max shouts.

“You first!” Mike hollers back. “I’m flipping you off right now, by the way.”

He’s not.

“You aren’t,” Max says confidently, even before Lucas leans over to whisper in her ear. “You love me too much.”

Mike rolls his eyes, his entire expression lit up and beaming. “Yeah, whatever,” he calls back.

Will snuggles further into Mike’s side, resting his head on his shoulder. “You’re so lucky she can’t see your stupid face,” he murmurs, closing his eyes contentedly.

“Your face is stupid,” Mike mutters back, hiding the words in Will’s hair.

“You just kissed the top of my head,” Will says flatly, eyes still closed.

“You can’t prove that.”

Will snorts, tucking his laughter into Mike’s shoulder. Soon enough, they’re both collapsing into giggles, kissing each other anywhere they can reach, Will splaying on top of Mike in a slightly-calculated fall.

“Oh my god,” Dustin groans, from somewhere behind them. “I’m moving to the other side of the lake.”

“Good!” Mike says, not looking in his direction. “It’s even sunnier over there. With any luck, you’ll turn into a tomato.”

“Okay, fuck you,” Dustin says, but there’s no heat to it. When Will glances over, he hasn’t even made an attempt to move from his spot, pink face turned towards the sun and eyes blissfully shut.

“He’s gonna burn so bad,” Will laughs, kissing the edge of Mike’s shield. A burst of happy feelings follow; a sated, lovesick flow of green. 

Love.

“I love you,” Will says into Mike’s skin, just because he can, and kisses right over the heart in the middle of his mark. The feeling intensifies, knocking all the coherent thoughts out of his brain and causing him to fully lose feeling in his arms and legs, plopping on top of Mike with a soft oof.

Will knows before Mike even replies. He knows, and it’s okay. He’s Will’s heart, and Will is his.

“I love you too,” Mike replies, brushing a gentle hand through Will’s hair. He smells like coconut sunscreen and pine needles. His skin is sunny and tan, and this is, quite possibly, the best day of Will’s life.

He wraps his arms around Mike’s ribs, enveloping him in a hug. Their shields rest together, skin against skin, a perfect match. Soulmates, in the truest sense of the word.

Will never has to guard his heart again. Not now that Mike’s here.

You’re my heart, he thinks, into the warm green forest of his mind.

And somewhere in the trees, there’s an answer. Gentle, sincere, calm. Honest.

And you’re mine.