Chapter Text
The wire fences stretched on for miles. Will propped his head on the window, sighing softly to himself as he studied them. He could see where they hadn’t set up the entire perimeter yet, including the ungated checkpoint ahead where his mom had to show at least four different types of identification to the military grunt waiting.
This past year, all he’d wanted was to come back to Hawkins. He wanted to be back home, the only place that had ever felt truly familiar and comfortable for him, surrounded by the people he loved. Lenora had been… a very lonely place to be.
But then spring break started and he had wondered if he had been deluded to think people would miss him too. And by the end of spring break, it didn’t matter. They had much more important things to worry about.
The metal plate rumbled loudly beneath the car as they passed over it, like a giant steel bandaid coating the town. As if mere metal would do anything to stop the real threat.
Will wanted to be excited to be back. To be moving into Mike’s house with Jonathan and their mom, to be back surrounded by his friends, back where he could maybe distract himself from all the stress with nostalgia. But the threats were too close, and anyway, he and Mike were barely on speaking terms. Never mind what he had promised about being a team again.
After the “road trip” and a week and a half spent in Hawkins before Will had to go back to California, if only for the purposes of packing, Mike had started shutting down. Not just to him (Will felt incredibly selfish and disgusted with himself for how much relief he got from the fact that Mike didn’t just hate him) but to every single member of their crew. In his phone calls with Lucas the past two months, amidst updates on Max’s condition and the general state of town, Lucas quietly informed him of how he hadn’t heard Mike speak a word out loud in almost two weeks. Neither had Nancy, or Steve, or Dustin, or anyone. Nancy reported back that Mike barely even left his room for meals, and when he did decide his body needed food, he silently served himself and ate in his room. No one ever saw him bring the dishes down, they just found them back in the cabinets, clean.
Will, of course, was already worried about him. It really didn’t help that Mike refused to speak to him, too.
Best friends, my ass.
Mike wasn’t even at the door when the Byers showed up. El had been dropped off at Hopper’s cabin first, so Mike even had extra time to get ready from whatever it was he was doing, if even just to be silently present at the welcome. But his door was shut, and no light shone from under it, and Will heard the rustle of bedsheets and the quiet creak of a floorboard as he dragged his duffel bag down the hall to the basement doorway.
He hoped the noise meant Mike had heard the ruckus in the house, and was finally going to come out and say hi.
He tried to ignore the sick twisting in his gut when instead, he heard the lock on Mike’s bedroom door click shut so loudly he flinched.
So much for having someone to hang out with. He swallowed past the knot forming in the base of his throat, huffing out a short breath and turning back to dump his luggage down the basement stairs. The familiarity of the room sent a pang through Will’s chest. If he closed his eyes, he could almost hear the quiet, gleeful laughter of their childish voices when they would spend entire weekends huddled in this room, blasting through Mike’s campaigns.
He heard a grunt at the top of the stairs, followed by a soft scuffing, and glanced up to see Jonathan also heaving his bags down the stairs. The couch had been made up with scratchy, worn blue sheets, and an extra mattress was set up in the corner with a similar set, a few quilts and blankets tossed haphazardly on the surface.
Will recognized with no small twinge in his gut that one of the blankets, balled up next to the pillow, was his favorite one to steal from Mike whenever they had sleepovers as little kids.
He’d snag it from where it was tucked under the pillows, Mike always trying to pout at the theft but too happy at Will’s childish grin to mind. They’d huddle under the quilt, individual blankets curled around their shoulders and the bedspread tented over their heads, reading comics by flashlight at 10 PM and giggling mischievously as if it were a sin. And maybe it was a sin how Will would hug the blanket to his chest after the lights were switched off, trying to stay as quiet as possible while getting high off the scent of Mike’s shampoo where it clung to the fluffy polyester. Maybe it was a sin how he’d wrap it so tightly around himself, imagining how Mike would do the same, and in Will’s mind it was almost as if Mike himself were wrapped around him so softly instead of the worn scrap of blue.
Will visibly shuddered as he shoved the thoughts away, his mouth tasting faintly of metal where he had gnawed too hard on his lower lip, splitting skin. Jonathan had already escaped back upstairs, more than likely conspiring with Nancy about how he’d sneak up to her room in the night. And Will would have the basement all to himself.
The cold, lonely basement, that felt so empty without the childish laughter and clattering of dice. That felt like a tomb when missing the scent of greasy pepperoni pizza and burnt dust from the heater, which Mike would always turn on after handing his thickly knit sweaters to Will who always ran a bit cold.
Mike never gave special treatment like that to anyone but Will. He was a wonderful friend to everyone he met, yes. Fiercely loyal and gently kind and just the most wonderful person Will had ever met in his whole damn life. But Will had always gotten something extra. Something softer, quieter, something a little shy and warm.
There wasn’t anything special now.
There was a stack of unsent letters in the bottom of Will’s duffel bag. There was a sketchbook wrapped in a sweatshirt, its pages full of scraps and doodles; a single black curl, a constellation of freckles across a straight nose, long nimble fingers wrapped loosely around the pages of a comic, the full cupid’s bow of an upper lip, a pair of eyes such a deep brown they appeared black, framed in the darkest and longest eyelashes Will had ever seen. There was a sweater tucked in a separate pocket, still bearing the faintest scent of ivory soap from where Will had borrowed it a few months earlier.
There was a box of paintbrushes that had remained untouched since he painted the final stroke of a heart onto a shield.
There was nothing special anymore. There was only a buzzing silence, occasionally broken by the echoes of the click of a lock.
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She misses her dad.
Two months feels like an insufferable amount of time, when for a year he had been dead. Truly dead. She mourned him, she grieved him, she convinced everyone (including herself) that she had moved on. Of course, even with her violent lack of understanding about most people and most relationships, which she is fully aware of, she thinks it is a very normal thing for that to be something you never recover from.
She had Papa before. She had a father.
But a father is very different from a dad.
He looks very different now. His hair is all gone and she got entirely too smiley when he cracked a joke about “father-daughter matching”. He is not fat anymore, but he looks a bit sick and even with his shirt on she can see the ridges through the fabric of the scars littering his back.
She misses his mustache probably the most.
It took every ounce of willpower in her body not to cling to him and refuse to leave when Joyce said they had to go back to Lenora to pack. Hop had said he needed to work on the cabin and get it cleaned up and fixed (mainly the giant hole in the roof) so he couldn’t come, and it took more effort than she would ever admit to let herself hug him goodbye and get back in the car.
And it has been two months and Will seems to be very preoccupied and Joyce is an emotional wreck and Jonathan is very snappy but he does not smell so strongly anymore. Will has barely spoken, and always seems to be tangled in his mind and his mouth is permanently in a half-frown, but she understands. She buys him a set of watercolor paints and sneaks in side hugs whenever she can and the tension in his shoulders like a wire is yanking him upwards by the top of his head is now finally releasing.
When they pull up to the “security checkpoint” outside Hawkins, Joyce makes Will stack luggage on her and throw a blanket over her head so she just looks like a pile of bags. “Just in case,” Joyce says.
The buckle of a suitcase is digging into her arm and it feels similar to the constant twinging in her chest, like a string tied around a rib tugging harder and harder, whispering “come faster, come home”.
He is waiting on the porch when they arrive. The cabin looks beautiful and her heart cracks and her face crumples as she sprints across the grass and dives into his arms like a teary-eyed torpedo. He smells like cigarettes and something sharp and artificial, his old aftershave she kept a bottle of in her room in California, and his arms are tight around her shoulders and he is putting weight back on and she is here, she is here, he is here, she is home.
It is another miracle of willpower that draws her away from him for long enough for Joyce to hug him, and though two seconds out of his arms feels like two seconds too long, another crack echoes in her chest and lets loose a rush of warmth that tingles its way to the tips of her fingers and toes as she watches her parents wrap up in each other and the coiled up fear in their bodies runs away for a moment.
“Hey, kid,” he murmurs as Will passes, carrying a duffel bag inside. Hop ruffles his hair and Will blushes, a smile fighting to cross his face. “The haircut looks good.”
Will does look good. Different. Since the first time she saw him, small and gangly and fearful, he seems to have grown up. His eyes are not so hollow. He carries strength in every step he takes. He smiles and laughs and does not seem to be so afraid of taking up space in a room. He lets his words make sound.
He is her brother now and every time the word fills her head, it feels like her chest is swelling.
Joyce and Jonathan and Will carry the bags inside and Hopper helps set up her old room, fresh wood panels and new shiny nails replacing the shattered walls and the gaping hole in the roof. “We can do a Miami Vice marathon tonight, just like old times,” Hop says quietly where he stands beside her in the doorway, waving Joyce goodbye as she and Jonathan and Will head to Mike’s house.
She leans her head against his shoulder and her eyes are burning again. “Did you watch any new episodes without me?”
He lets out a soft laugh, more of a huff. “Absolutely not. Now that you’re all superhero again, I wouldn’t dare watch ahead. Don’t want you melting my brain or somethin’.”
The town feels like a wasteland. Houses are empty and “FOR SALE” signs appeared so frequently the words lost their meaning. The iron plates running the roads and covering the rift make a constant rattle as cars roll over them. The sky is still smoky and cold.
Things in Hawkins are very not good.
But he smells like cigarettes and aftershave and his arm is heavy around her shoulders and he is alive and she is home.
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Dinner is probably one of the most awkward experiences of Will’s life, and he’s been in plenty of life-or-death level embarrassing situations. His mom is engaged in a very lively conversation with Karen. Jonathan and Nancy are explaining to Holly why she doesn’t need to worry about college yet, seeing as she’s in elementary school. Ted is perfectly content to ignore everyone’s existence unless he needs food passed to him.
The awkward part is the fact that Karen threatened Mike into sitting at the table and eating dinner with them, and he won’t look up from his plate.
Will had almost had a heart attack when Mike had finally appeared at the top of the stairs. Somehow, two months had managed to give him another growth spurt, so he stands a few extra inches taller than Will. His hair had been cut into a fluffy little mess of curls that Will was still fighting off images of wrapping his hands in. He had emerged a raggedy black t-shirt, worn fabric so loose at his neck that when he moved, it slipped across his shoulders and Will would catch a glimpse of the sharp angles of his collarbones. His pajama pants hung just low enough on his hips that every now and then, when Mike would stretch his arms over his head, the tiniest slip of bare skin would peek out and Will would have to focus all of his energy on not choking to death on his water.
Will is having a gay crisis. And Mike won’t even look him in the face.
He stares at his plate, brows furrowed just enough to show how pissed he is that he’s stuck in that seat. Will is trying his absolute best to keep from staring at him too much, but every now and then, Mike shifts his legs under the table and brushes against Will’s shin.
Fuck these tall people and their long ass legs.
Fuck this table for being so tiny.
He won’t look up from his plate. He wouldn’t even look at Will when he came in, just offered a short little wave and slouched in the corner until Karen started fussing at him to bring food to the table. Will hasn’t heard his voice in over a month and a half. Mike doesn’t seem to be any kind of inclined to remedy that.
He shifts again in his seat, the side of his foot dragging slightly over Will’s calf. He glances up once, and Will almost drops his fork on the plate when they finally, almost, make eye contact. But Mike’s gaze doesn’t go up far enough, and he just flicks his eyes back down to where he’s pushing a piece of sausage around in a pool of gravy.
Will’s heart is thundering in his chest.
He’d long accepted his crush on Mike. He’d even finally admitted to himself just how pathetically not a crush anymore it was. Jonathan was the only one who knew, and even then, Will had never spoken the words out loud. Jonathan just gave him a little speech in a pizza kitchen, letting him know there was a door open somewhere should he need it.
But it was easier to keep the words tucked into his chest, resting under his tongue like a coiled spring that threatened to escape every time he opened his mouth. It was easier to wrap them in paper and cardboard and glass and trap them as deep as possible, locked in a safe within a vault in the back of his mind. It was so much easier to keep it silent, because it made it easier to ignore the twist low in his gut every time Mike reminded him of just how unrequited it would always be.
The loving looks he shared with El. The extended touches and grazes of knees and little smiles lobbed across rooms when everyone else was too loud. The affection he showed Will, equally distributed to the entire party as if a reminder that it wasn’t anything special.
And now, the way Mike flinches back from any form of contact like Will’s skin is burning him. The way he refuses to look up from the table, as if afraid of the chance of their eyes meeting across the plates and bowls. The way he hasn’t spoken a single word, even with Will now quite literally living in his house.
Will could excuse the lack of phone calls. The lack of letters. Things had been so hectic lately, so stressful and packed and Lucas had even hinted that the military was starting to cut off the phone lines. Will could accept that. Even though he had missed Mike’s voice so much, the comforting lilt and special softness he seemed incapable of reserving for anyone but Will. He could excuse the phone calls. But now, sitting across from him at the table and receiving nothing, not even a simple mumble of greeting?
He feels like he’s going to hurl on the table.
Silverware clatters across his plate as he shoves back from the table, the abruptness finally drawing Mike’s eyes upwards.
His mom shoots him a worried look, starting to lift slightly out of her chair.
“Will, sweetie, are you alright?” Karen asks kindly, eyebrows slightly furrowed in concern. He nods quickly, wiping his sweaty hands on his jeans. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. Just— bathroom.” It takes all the willpower in his body to only give Mike a small glance rather than the usual long, lingering stare, but the emptiness in Mike’s eyes sends him nearly sprinting down the hall.
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Nighttime is worse. Will managed to slip into the bathroom while everyone else was still finishing up in the kitchen, Karen sharing wine with his mom, Holly curled up on the living room floor coloring with markers Will had lent her, Ted absentmindedly watching from his La-Z-Boy and occasionally shooting Jonathan suspicious looks where he sat with Nancy on the couch. Mike had disappeared, Will assumed to his room, until a soft knock sounded on the door while Will was getting ready to brush his teeth.
Now, he stands a careful distance from Mike, the only sound in the room the scraping of toothbrush bristles and soft spattering of toothpaste foam dripping onto the marble counter. Mike still has yet to speak a word, but Will can see out of the corner of his eye in the mirror that Mike keeps glancing over.
He thinks he’s going to pass out.
Mike leans across the sink to spit out his toothpaste and rinse his mouth, and Will’s breath hitches almost audibly when Mike’s elbow brushes his side.
Get it together, he tries to warn himself. It’s already awkward enough. He doesn’t need to be audibly gasping every time Mike just exists in the same room.
It’s hard to keep it from happening, though. It always has been. And with the tension now hanging even thicker between them, like a cloud of smoke Will could cut with a knife, it’s even harder to keep it together.
By the time he finishes the mental war, Mike has slipped out the door and Will flinches slightly at the slam of the door down the hall.
“Jesus,” he whispers to himself after spitting out his toothpaste, hands propped on the edge of the counter. “This is… pathetic.” His cheeks are warm and his fingertips are tingling. And it’s honestly just sad how sharp the thrill is that slices its way through his chest when he puts his toothbrush in the shared cup, right next to Mike’s.
He won’t even speak to me. He won’t even look at me. Not exactly the time to get all woozy about “domesticity.”
Jonathan can tell from the expression on his face when he finally makes it downstairs that there’s some extra weight stacked on his shoulders. “What’s up?” He asks with some blatantly fake casualness, arms folded behind his head where he leans back on the couch armrest.
“He actually won’t even look at me. Lucas said it was bad, but— I wasn’t expecting this. I thought…” Will huffs out a humorless laugh as he flops down on the mattress. “I dunno. It’s dumb.”
Even staring at the ceiling, he can hear the creak of the couch as Jonathan sits up further to look at him. “It’s not dumb. Talk. It helps to get it off your chest, Will.”
Screw Jonathan and his helpful advice.
“Lucas told me it was bad but… I just thought that maybe me being here… Hanging out and basically having another one of those sleepovers we used to have, obviously a lot longer, but you get my point— I thought it’d be better. I thought it’d help him, like, talk more. Or something. But he—” Will’s face heats up again at the thought, and even more in embarrassment when he recognizes the tingling behind his eyes. “He didn’t even come say hi.”
His voice sounds almost pathetically small and that thought is enough to have him blinking rapidly at the ceiling, hugging a pillow to his chest in the attempts to squash all these big feelings right back down.
There’s no time for this right now. There’s way too much going on for me to be acting like a little crybaby just because—
Just because we’re not best friends anymore.
God, it sounded pitiful, even in his head. Worrying about things like best friends when the world could end any day now. When a party member was in a coma, and another was being hunted by the military, and the entire town had split into pieces. And here Will was, getting all butt-hurt that his playground buddy wasn’t speaking to him.
And of course, Jonathan being the psychic he is, jumps in. “That’s not dumb, Will. There’s hell everywhere and it’s probably the most normal thing in the world to look for something familiar in all this. Everything’s weird and wild and changing so fast. Sometimes you have to find something solid and familiar to hold onto while the world keeps spinning, just so you won’t fly right off of it. And Mike’s being a dick. Not saying there aren’t valid excuses for it, because sometimes there are reasons to just be an asshole, but he’s still being one. And you’re not dumb, or whatever, for being upset about it. Maybe just… give him a little wiggle room? And talk to him?”
“Fuck you,” Will mumbles, no real fire behind his words as two tears slip from the corners of his eyes, leaving icy trails down his cheeks. “Why do you have to be so good at that?”
He can hear the smile in Jonathan’s voice. “Cause we’re related. I can read your mind, duh.”
Will huffs another soft laugh, finally rolling onto his side to yank the blankets over his body in a jumbled mess. The blue fleece-y one is, of course, tucked right under his chin, the cinnamon-y scent of Mike’s shampoo cloying in his nostrils.
His eyes flutter closed involuntarily as he sucks in a quiet breath, sighing as the smell seems to wash his body in a wave of warmth. “Well, stop reading it so fast.” Jonathan snorts.
Will hears a click and the faint orange glow shining through his closed eyelids vanishes, the dark settling over his body like a second skin. “Night, Jonathan.”
“G’night, Will.”
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Being back in Hawkins is jarring. Everything is so different; most stores are closed down completely, houses are empty, half of the population has vanished, not to mention the literal army base being set up in the middle of town at the center of the cracks rippling through the streets.
And yet, everything is still somehow the same. Will’s mom and Karen are already fussing about back to school shopping. Jonathan and Nancy are job hunting. The party is hanging out, biking around town when Lucas isn’t at the hospital with Max, discussing Dungeons and Dragons campaigns like they aren’t living through one.
But the party doesn’t feel the same because Mike still refuses to speak to him.
Will has tried (vaguely) to start casual conversations in the kitchen, simple things like asking to pass the cereal and commenting on the comics Mike reads while he eats breakfast, or asking about something on TV, anything he can think of to try and dull the jagged edges of tension rippling between them.
Mike won’t answer him at all. He passes the cereal without looking up. He grunts in response to comments on his comics. He shrugs off questions about TV shows. And every time Will speaks to him, Mike finds a reason to leave the room as soon as possible.
He won’t even look at him.
Every time Will speaks, Mike starts to look up, but it’s like his eyes snag on something just before he makes eye contact. He refuses to look Will in the face, and it’s about to send him off the deep end.
He’s been finding as many excuses as possible to leave the house, whether it be walking around in silence with Dustin (to keep him from finding some jock asshole to fight with) or sitting with Lucas in Max’s hospital room.
Lucas hasn’t left Max’s side at the hospital for more than a few hours to go home and shower once in the past two months. And Will knows if he had to watch the same thing happen to Mike, and had Mike ended up in the same situation, Will wouldn’t be acting any differently.
He’d gone to visit almost every single day in the two weeks since coming back to Hawkins, and Lucas seemed to be on the verge of shattering completely. He’d never been one to be overly affectionate, but now any time one of the other party members stopped in to visit, Lucas would envelop them each in suffocating hugs that lasted far longer than the brain could handle without oxygen. He seemed to be just desperately searching for any source of comfort to latch onto.
So Will let him squeeze until his head got foggy, and then he’d sit in the other chair and keep his hand tightly wrapped around Lucas’s while they read to her, talked to her, showed her new music, anything they could think of. Even Dustin would pause his recently discovered brooding, asshole-y, “locked in the anger stage of grief” mood to sit with Lucas and hold Max’s hand.
She was still wrapped in a cast. The doctors said it would be another few months at minimum.
The only thing that seemed to bring Lucas out of his fog was when Will asked him to tell him stories about Max.
Will had never been too close with her since she joined the party; he obviously loved her and loved her presence with the group and seeing Lucas’s relationship with her made his heart feel all warm and fuzzy because of how much they truly loved each other. It warmed his heart to see one of his best friends so happy and in love, and a smaller, sneakier part of him relished in the idea that Lucas and Max could be proof that regardless of the circumstances, true love was real.
Will remembered hearing about the night Max’s brother came to his house. He barely remembered anything from that time period; his memories weren’t even his own. But Dustin and Mike had quietly told him about what had happened, about how Billy had gone after Lucas. But Lucas and Max were truly happy and so in love with each other, no matter the opinions of anyone else around them.
And he would never admit it, but that gave him hope.
Lucas loved talking about her. Laughing softly over retellings of fights they’d been in, times Max had dumped him and he had to “win her love back” with the most disgustingly sweet gestures and gifts. Their late night talks over the walkie, arguments over who would win in Wonder Woman versus Superman. Their movie dates and how Max would go on for hours and hours dissecting the plots and ranting about the dialogue and she would come up with all these ideas of how to rewrite it.
While he told the stories, Will could almost see the scenes in his mind. The red watercolor from Max’s sneakers staining the edge of Lucas’s white basketball shoes. The glow of a projector lighting up their smiles and drawing stars in their eyes in a movie theater. Red hair strewn over a pillow with a walkie resting beside her head, delirious and giggly from lack of sleep and whatever dumb joke Lucas was cracking.
And as the paintings formed in his mind, the idea did as well.
He hadn’t painted since…
But talking to Lucas and seeing the love and pain in his eyes when he put the tape back in and rewinded it, Will realized there were much more important things to worry about than his silly little crush on Mike Wheeler.
Of course, he’s still going to worry about it. It’s Mike. But he doesn’t want that to hold him away from everything else in his life.
So after his fourth visit with Lucas, he had pulled out that bundle of paintbrushes and the palette of watercolors El had bought for him a month ago and stared at them in his hands until electricity jolted in his brain like a slap to the face.
And he began to paint.
It is on a very rare break from painting that Jonathan comes down to the basement, laughing softly at the colors staining Will’s fingers.
“We’re having a meeting. Everyone. At the radio station. Remember Jimmy ‘Fast Hands’?”
Will frowns, wiping his hands on a wet paper towel until the memory clicks. “I think?”
“Well, he left town with everyone else. Robin and Steve are taking over the station and we’re all gonna meet up there. Hopper’s been planning… something, I don’t really know, but he wants to talk to everyone about it.. We’re leaving in ten.”
A familiar chill is crawling up Will’s spine as he washes the paint off his hands. Things are obviously different in Hawkins now. The gate is obviously not closed like they believed, and Vecna is still obviously very much alive, and the town has quite literally been ripped apart.
But settling back into normal life had almost helped Will forget it was all happening again.
Hopper wants to have a meeting to discuss a plan, and now Will realizes how stupid he was for thinking he could just forget it all.
His chest is clenching so hard from the relapsed anxiety that it almost doesn’t hit him when he climbs into Nancy’s car, but when she whips a turn a little too hard and a knee bumps his, he realizes just how close he and Mike are sitting.
He thinks his ribs are shrinking. His lungs are being crushed and his heart is jumping to his throat and every inch of skin on his body feels like it’s on fire.
Mike, of course, is not looking at him. Why would he?
Instead, he’s sitting with his arms crossed and staring determinedly out the window and watching the houses fly past, and Will feels like something inside him is crumbling.
He can’t help the memories that decide to pour through.
Sitting on a swing at five years old, kicking his feet back and forth and listening to the chains jingling. Plastering a smile on his face so the teachers maybe will stop giving him such sad looks, maybe they’ll believe he’s happier alone. Stray threads on his raggedy hand-me-down jacket are fluttering in the wind and he misses the box of crayons his mom bought him and his little heart is aching with loneliness. He wants to show his drawings to someone who isn’t his mom, or his brother, or Lonnie.
A voice next to him startles him out of the fog. “Hi.” The boy is beautiful. His hair is such a deep black it almost looks violet in the sun. His eyes look like chocolate and Will stares at them for a moment too long. His voice is quiet but strong, and when he smiles Will can see a missing tooth. “Do you wanna be friends?”
His jaw almost drops and his face is burning and his heart is doing silly little somersaults in his chest but he smiles back and timidly replies, almost a whisper, “Yes.”
The next year Mike introduces him to Lucas, his neighbor. They sit in the basement together poring over player’s manuals and giggling about the funny names. Mike sits closer to Will’s chair.
When Dustin joins the party, the group feels complete. Lucas and Dustin, Mike and Will. But Will always noticed that Dustin and Lucas were so different from him and Mike. They teased each other and bickered about theories and shoved each other’s shoulders and wouldn’t share comics. But Mike talks to Will softly and gives him long hugs goodbye and complains when his mom says no to their sleepovers because he’s going to miss him until school the next day.
Mike loves looking at Will’s drawings. He has one up on a corkboard in his bedroom, a drawing of all their characters. He has another one he keeps lovingly tucked in a binder, a paladin bearing a crest of a bright red heart.
Will almost flinches when the image in his head switches, from a seven year old’s crayon drawing to a painting he’ll never speak of again.
He had caught a glimpse three days before through Mike’s cracked door of the painting rolled up and tucked behind a box beside Mike’s desk.
Will would understand the gesture more if Mike knew. But to Mike, it’s El’s painting. El’s message.
He can’t quite figure out why Mike would be avoiding it.
Fitting the entire crew into a tiny little room in the radio station is a labor of love (and a lot of mumbled curses when someone else squeezes their way in and elbows meet ribs, boots meet toes, and wedging onto the sofa is like a can of sardines).
Hopper and Nancy, of all people, are talking quietly in a corner, pointing occasionally at a whiteboard that has been turned away from the group. Will is crosslegged on the floor, his shoulder grazing the side of Dustin’s leg from where he leans back against the edge of the couch.
Mike is on the opposite end of the room, of course.
But the gravely determined look on Hopper’s face, and Nancy with her analytical reporter manic eyes drilling holes into everyone in the room, Will doesn’t have to think about Mike right now.
“So,” Hopper calls out, and the buzzing of whispers in the room dies so fast the contrast makes Will dizzy.
“Murray got the papers. He’s posing as a delivery guy, transporting groceries and all that shit into Hawkins. And we’ve been trying to figure out exactly what the military’s doing in the middle of town in whatever that weird little hub is.”
Will had seen it a few times, like a metal shell surrounding the center of town. The fences there were stronger and more guarded than the perimeter around Hawkins, and the officers patrolling the gates got mean when they believed you’d been looking a little too long.
“They’re calling it the Military Access Control Zone, or MAC-Z,” Nancy joins in, finally turning the whiteboard around. There’s a separate column to the left full of scribbled notes but the rest of the board is covered in a crudely drawn map of Hawkins.
Hopper points at the large red circle in the center, surrounding the Hawkins library where the zone is focused. Will’s stomach churns slightly.
“They have something focused here. They have those fences all around the place but they have more of those metal panels everywhere blocking any view you can get of the library. Murray thinks he knows what it is.” Packets of papers are passed around the room and Will’s eyes are blurring so badly from the adrenaline rushing through his veins that he can barely read it.
Hopper flips to a page with what appears to be some sort of inventory list. “Look. First aid kits, oxygen generators, steam sterilizers, gas? They’re going through that gate. They’re burning it.” He glances at Will. It seems almost involuntary, but Will still remembers vague flashes of that throbbing pain like his entire body was on fire, screaming and sobbing and begging the scientists to stop.
His chest is aching.
“So,” Hopper says again, clearing his throat awkwardly in the silence that has stretched too long. “We know they’re going through. We know there’s a gate that’s open and obviously not guarded or bandaged or whatever they’re trying to do to the rest of the rifts. And we have no idea where One is.”
A voice from the back of the room makes Will flinch again, and he clenches his hands into fists so hard his nails are cutting into his palms. This is not the time for a freakout. Get it together.
“Um, we did kind of flambé him. How do we know he’s still alive? Will, you haven’t had any of your… well, the goosebumps thing. You always know when something’s close. Have you… picked up on anything?” Robin’s voice is almost timid but still carries the usual intensity Will has found she normally wields. Like she’s afraid to make her voice loud enough to be heard, but once she gets the first word out it’s like she can’t shut it off until everything is spent.
It takes him a moment to realize she asked him a question. He winces slightly, shaking his head. “I— not really. It’s weird. Most of the time, when— when the Mindflayer is close, or planning, or anything, it’s like I can… I can almost hear his voice in my head.” Movement in his periphery catches his eye and he glances over.
Mike is staring at him with an expression so close to devastation that Will’s stomach twists.
“And lately,” he stammers out, tearing his eyes away from Mike’s clenched fists. “It’s like I can feel him just around the corner, but it’s not clear enough. Like the signal’s blocked. He’s… further away. But I can still feel him. He’s… angry.” He shudders. “But before, when he was angry, it was because he was being hurt. When they burned in the tunnels before. And he had that revenge kind of anger.”
Nausea is roiling in his gut. Revenge.
He told them where to go. He told them what they’d find. He tasted the blood in the back of his mouth when the demogorgons found the soldiers. He felt the pride.
“This is different. I think… I think if Vecna were dead, he’d have that revenge kind of anger. But whatever it is now— it’s like he’s enjoying it. He’s angry, but— he’s just watching them and waiting for an opening. Playing with his food.”
The cloud of silence in the room as his voice echoes against the walls makes him feel like all the oxygen is being forcefully sucked out of his lungs.
“Well, that’s why we made this plan,” Nancy breaks the silence, and her voice is so determined that Will straightens his posture like he’s been scolded.
She’s staring at him, and still has that manic gleam in her eyes, but she’s looking at Will with her expression set in one of such fierce love that burning kicks in behind his eyes. She’s looking at him like a mother, like a guardian, like she would rather die than see it all continue.
He feels a hand squeeze his shoulder. Dustin.
Even Mike is watching him. And his face is more guarded than Nancy’s but Will can still see the shine in his eyes of something he’s praying is real.
“We aren’t going to let them do this again. They’re doing regular burns now. They’re going into the Upside Down. And we—” Nancy pulls out a roll of poster paper, jabbing pushpins through like spears and pinning it to the whiteboard. “—are going hunting.”