Archive of Our Own

“Monsters are coming for me.”

Holly says it simply: quiet, reluctant, aware that there are no such things as monsters. Yet still sure: there are monsters in Hawkins. They’re coming after her. It is a fact that she has already accepted before ever bringing it up. 

But now she has brought it up, and all Mike can do is stare at her, dumbfounded. He and Nancy discussed it, of course: how to tell their family about the Upside Down, and if they could try to get their parents to leave town with Holly. When the gates opened last year and the town went into a martial lockdown, it offered them an opening (“So, you know that huge rip in the universe in the middle of town? Remember when Will was missing–?”) but every time they planned the conversation, they would arrive at the point that neither of them could argue past. Mike and Nancy were not going to leave Hawkins, not until Vecna was taken care of and everyone was safe. And they both knew, as much as they griped about their dad’s obliviousness and their mom’s ability to pretend that things were okay even when they weren’t, that there was no way that their parents would leave town without them. 

“What makes you say that?” Mike asks, fighting to keep his voice level. What did the counsellor say about deep breaths? Four seconds in, eight out? 

“Mr. Whatsit told me. And he doesn’t lie. He said he’d protect me, but they’re still out there.” Holly looks up at Mike. Her brow is scrunched in an expression much too anxious for someone her age. For a second, Mike blanks on how old she is— seven? Eight?— before he snaps back into the moment. Mind whirring, he speaks on autopilot: what’s my line again? 

“Holly, do you remember that conversation we had about stranger danger?”

Holly glares at him and shoves the book she was fidgeting with into her backpack. “He’s not a stranger!” 

“Okay,” Mike says, “is this more of an imaginary friend thing?” It’s the only explanation; if he hadn’t already heard that no one else could see Mr. Whatsit, Mike would have called the cops yesterday. 

The icy look Holly shoots him is straight from Nancy’s playbook. Mike holds up his hands in conciliation. “Okay, okay! Sorry.” He wracks his brain for something, anything. He’s supposed to be the heart, a leader, but he’s felt so stuck this past year. If he didn’t have Will— and Dustin and Lucas, he would barely be able to make it to class. 

Thinking of Will— of his friends— gives him an idea, and he reaches into his own backpack for his walkie. “Do you remember how to use this?” he asks, handing it to her. Holly nods, but he shows her anyway. “This is on and off, really simple. Press this to talk. When you’re talking, if someone else is speaking, you won’t be able to hear them. So whenever you’re done with what you have to say, you have to say ‘over’, so the next person knows it’s their turn to talk. And keep it on channel five— that channel is connected to my spare. Holly, can you make me a promise?” 

Holly looks up at him from where she was carefully testing the buttons. She nods, taking in his serious tone. 

“The next time Mr. Whatsit shows up, or if you see a monster, radio me, and I’ll come help you. I’ll keep my walkie on at all times. And keep yours on, too, okay?” 

“I will,” Holly promises, still somber but more at ease now that someone believes her. Mike can’t help but think of himself when Will went missing, telling everyone that he was still out there. He was right back then; he hopes his growing suspicion isn’t right now. He seriously needs to talk to Nancy. And El. His gut twists at the thought. 

The classroom door opens, and Mike stands up as his mom and Holly’s teacher come into the hallway. 

His mom schools her expression (harried, exhausted, bewildered) when she sees her kids. “Hi, Mike,” she says, smiling. She gestures to him and Holly, and they walk to the car together. 

“I’ll meet you at home later, I have to bike back,” Mike says reluctantly, hooking his thumb over his shoulder to where his bike is chained up. Holly’s is already in the trunk. His mom stares across the parking lot at it for a long moment before she says, “We can all fit. Holly, can you move your bike into the backseat? It’s smaller. Honey, don’t just stand there, go get your bike! We’ll put it in the trunk.” 

Mike gapes at her for a second too long. “Dad won’t like—”

His mom scoffs and throws her hands up. “He can be a little stuck-up sometimes, huh? If there are scuff marks on the seats, we can clean them. The car isn’t a Picasso. It’s a car. Honestly.” When Mike just stands there for another beat, she gestures to the bike rack. “Michael, please get your bike.” 

Mike shakes his head. “No, go ahead, Mom. I’ll be fine. I was gonna meet up with Lucas anyway.” He doesn’t say, I don’t want you to get in trouble. 

His mom flicks her eyes over his face for another second, then gives him a tight smile and concedes. “Okay. I’ll see you at home.” 

Mike watches them drive off before unlatching his bike and taking off down the road. He feels the impossible urge to be in two places at once. He has to watch his sister; he has to join the Party at WSQK to begin the crawl. He’s already late. The sun is setting. 

Mike is halfway across town when a streetlight flickers above him. 

He slows, watching as the streetlights blink in and out in a clear line, going in the opposite direction of him. A sense of foreboding crawls up his spine, and he turns his bike around, standing upright in the pedals to get more momentum as he bikes in the direction of his neighborhood. 

He just has to check, and then he’ll turn back around. 

As Mike drafts different explanations for his lateness to the Party in his head, his walkie crackles to life in his backpack. Muffled, he can only make out the urgent tone, and he pulls over to the shoulder before taking it out of his bag. 

“Mike?! I think they’re coming! …Over!” 

White-hot fear races through him as chittering laces the static in the background. If he had any doubts before, they’re gone now; he’s heard that noise in his nightmares since he was twelve. 

“Holly! Get Mom. Hide. I’m on my way. Over.” 

He curses under his breath and switches channels until he reaches the Party. “It’s Mike. Change of plans. Code Delta on Maple Street. Over.”

Lucas’ voice crackles over the walkie. “Mike, repeat? Over.” 

“They’re after Holly,” Mike says, abandoning procedure as he kicks his bike into motion and tries to steer one handed. “It’s at my house.”

“Wait for us, Mike, we can—”

Mike switches the walkie back to channel five and shoves it in his coat pocket. He cuts through backyards and the woods, swerving to avoid tree roots. Branches hit his face as he rides; he barely notices, the only thing on his mind a ticking clock counting down how much longer he has until he reaches his house, how much longer his family has. The flashing lights in his house are visible from a block away. When he finally arrives, he throws his bike down and sprints across the lawn, shoes slipping in the damp grass. He briefly registers his dad’s golf bag abandoned outside before he bursts through the back door. 

A crash sounds from upstairs, and Mike follows the noise. The landing is empty, but he can see a glimpse of a Demogorgon through the doorway of his bedroom. The wall between his room and Holly’s is smashed through, and for a horrifying second he thinks the Demogorgon is advancing on his sister. He steps forward, but stops when he hears movement from his parents’ bedroom. He whips his head around and sees his mom and Holly crouched in the doorway, and he ushers them over. His mom’s face is covered with dark lines of mascara, and she and Holly are soaking wet. 

“Mike,” his mom whispers, eyes wide, but he cuts her off. 

“Get downstairs. I’m right behind you.”

He waits for them to move before he runs into Nancy’s room, dropping to his knees to drag a shoebox from under her bed. A revolver lays within, and he checks the cylinder for ammo before leaping to his feet and bolting out of the room. 

In the hallway, the Demogorgon steps out of Mike’s room, covered in blood. It cocks its head and horror-movie-slow turns to face Mike. 

Ignoring his pulse pounding in his ears, he plants himself on the landing to block the staircase and raises the gun. 

The Demogorgon chitters, tilting its head, considering him. It drops to all fours and tears a rift through the floor, falling into the kitchen below. 

“Motherfucker,” he mutters, and runs down the stairs. He keeps the muzzle of the gun facing down, held against his side like he remembers Nancy telling him. He jumps down the last few steps and turns the corner into the kitchen, stumbling to a stop when the Demogorgon slashes into his mom. She jerks, collapsing to the floor. A wine bottle smashes against the tiles, sending glass flying across the kitchen. 

“Hey!” Mike yells. He grabs a large shard of glass off of the floor and throws it; it sinks into the monster’s back. With a roar, it turns from where it was advancing on Holly. She quickly kneels behind the kitchen island, reaching a trembling hand out to shake their mother’s shoulder. 

The Demogorgon— Christ, it’s tall— faces Mike and shrieks. It takes a menacing step forward, hunching its shoulders like it’s about to pounce. Mike cocks the gun— aims— 

And misses. 

“Shit, shit, shit.” Mike scrambles backwards. He can’t look at his mom. He aims again, taking a deep breath to steady himself before he fires. He hits the Demogorgon in the shoulder, but it only seems to enrage it. It surges forward in a blur of motion and slings Mike over its shoulder. He pushes against it— its open maw is right there, it has so many fucking teeth— and draws a knee up to try and dislodge himself from its grasp. 

The Demogorgon digs its claws into Mike’s side, and he yells, kicking futilely at its stomach. He slams the butt of the gun into the side of its neck, and it screeches again before shifting its weight; its claws rake down his side as it throws him, slamming him into the ground. His vision whites out with pain. 

It’s intelligent, Mike thinks, dazed, as he lays still for one shocked, breathless second before the Demogorgon latches onto his leg and drags him across the floor. He can’t suppress his cry of pain, and he realizes that he only has a second before he’s taken. He twists, trying desperately to see his sister. “Holly, call 911!” he yells. His mother's body is crumpled on the floor. A pool of blood spreads over the tiles. “Call Nancy! Channel four!”

“MIKE!” 

The last thing he hears is his sister screaming before he’s dragged through the gate, and all goes black. 

Mike wakes up in the woods. 

Dark vines thread through tree roots, racing like sickly veins through the forest floor. His hands are tied in front of him by a vine that loops down his legs and around his ankles. Mike scans the trees, looking for the Demogorgon, or a league of Demobats, but the horizon is clear. The bright, midday sun sits high in a cloudless sky, sending dappled shadows through the vivid green canopy overhead. The vines suggest that he’s not in Hawkins anymore, but there aren’t any spores in the air. He doesn’t know what to expect from the Upside Down, though, not actually. 

Taking in his surroundings, Mike notices a man tied up to a tree about forty feet away. His arms are held up above him by vines, and his head hangs down against his chest. Mike can’t tell if he’s breathing. Mike casts around for a sharp stick, anything, and finds a rock with an edge to it. He leans down and grabs it, using the side to saw at the vines. It makes his wrist cramp, but it works; slowly, it works, and Mike pulls his wrists apart. Hands now free, he starts to work on the vines around his ankles. In the back of his mind, he wonders about the hivemind, if they can feel his ministrations, but he frees himself and still no Demogorgons come running. 

He carefully makes his way to the other person. He could be a teenager; he looks about Mike’s age, maybe a little older. 

“Hey,” he whispers, and repeats himself a little louder when he gets no response. He kneels in front of the guy and starts to cut away the vines that hold his wrists up. Now that he’s up close, he notices a graze on the man’s head, dried blood matting his blond hair to his forehead. 

“You better not punch me when you wake up,” he says under his breath. 

After he frees one wrist and starts on the other, the man stirs. Mike leans back on his heels. He wakes, lifting his head, and focuses sharp blue eyes on Mike. 

Mike holds up his hands and hopes he looks harmless. “Hey,” he says. “Do you know where we are?”

The guy stares at him for a moment longer, and Mike drops the rock, which immediately feels more suspicious than when he was just holding it. “I woke up just over there,” he says, pointing behind him without taking his eyes off the other man. “Look.” He points to the rip in his shirt (Jesus, that’s a lot of blood, he thinks, and then: Don’t think about it) as proof of his innocence in the kidnapping of it all. “I got taken by something, and if I’m right, maybe it took you, too?” 

The guy nods; he still looks calculating, but Mike knows he himself wouldn’t be trusting if he was just exposed to a Demogorgon for the first time, either. Mike stands, deliberately slow and careful, and kicks the rock closer to the other man. 

“We should get out of here,” he says, watching the guy pick up the rock and examine it with a look of surprise. He flicks his eyes up at Mike and begins to cut himself free of the vines. As he saws away, Mike looks over his shoulder, examining the grove. He feels watched, though nothing’s there. “The monsters brought us here for a reason, so the way I see it, we should be anywhere but here.” He glances back at the other guy as he stands up. 

“I’m Mike, by the way.” He doesn’t know if he should try for a handshake; what’s the proper social cue in this situation? 

“Clive,” the man says, after a moment. 

Recognition clicks into place. “You’re in Miss Burns’ English class, right?” Clive nods in acknowledgment. “Cool.” Mike spins in place, looking for a clue of where to go. In the distance, he spies a blue dormer, a window glinting in the sun. “We should go that way,” he says, pointing. “Are you down?” 

“I suppose. You seem to know your way around.” 

They set out, and Mike tries to explain the Demogorgons without mentioning Eleven or Vecna, which he realizes is nearly impossible as soon as he starts. Clive takes it all in stride, only asking questions occasionally. He seems cool enough; sure, he’s wearing a Van Halen band tee, but Mike can forgive him for that. 

“How do you know so much about all this, anyway?” 

Mike debates what to tell him. “Me and my friends, we sorta look for stuff like this.” 

“What, creepy supernatural shit?”

“Yeah. We’re trying to fight them.”

Clive gives him a slow once-over and raises an eyebrow. You? it asks.

Embarrassment pricks his chest as he flashes back to the absolute rout he just experienced. You got it away from Holly, he reminds himself, and pushes the unhelpful feeling aside. “We’ve known about all of this for a while, so we have experience,” he says, and pushes on through the trees. 

They arrive at the edge of the woods. The Creel House lies just beyond. It looks more intact than it does in Hawkins, but it’s still old, abandoned. 

“The haunted house? Really?” Clive looks at him sideways, as if he’s rethinking his opinion of him. 

“I know,” Mike says. “But I bet our way out is in that house. The Creels are involved with the monster that brought us here.”

“Are?” Clive looks at him closely. “What do you mean?”

Mike picks at his cuticles as he thinks; how do you even begin to explain a homicidal kid with kinetic powers that became a lich? “The kid, Henry, ended up here, and it turned him into… something else.” 

Clive looks around at the idyllic woodland surrounding them. “He ended up here? You mean in town?” 

“We’re not in Hawkins, it just looks like we are. We’re in like… mirror-Hawkins. You ever play DnD? Nevermind,” he says quickly, seeing Clive’s expression. “It’s… We’re in an alternate dimension.” 

Clive snorts. “Sure.” 

“Hey, believe me or don’t. You’re the one who was brought here by an eight-foot-tall faceless monster.” 

Mike walks up to the Creel House, expecting hordes of Demogorgons to swarm at any moment. Something’s off, but he can’t put a finger on what. When Dustin or Will spoke about the Upside Down, they described it as dark and dangerous. Hopper did say it was quieter, now, and he hasn’t found anything of note on a crawl in a long time. 

The front door is ajar, and Mike takes a deep breath, steeling himself, before he pushes the door open. Inside, the house looks normal enough, with sheets covering furniture to save them from dust. A chandelier hangs above the entryway, crystals glinting in the afternoon sun that cuts through the windows. Against a far wall, a grandfather clock chimes, the elegant glass front disrupted by a large crack. 

Mike wanders, taking in the large dining room and adjoining parlor. The furniture is covered throughout the different rooms, though a log of fresh firewood sits in the fireplace. There’s an air of potential in the room, like someone will walk in at any moment. When he finishes a lap of the downstairs, Mike returns to the foyer, where Clive waits. He’s staring at the grandfather clock, and Mike wonders if he’d been under Vecna’s curse before. 

Mike starts up the creaking stairs and gestures for Clive to follow. The house appears empty, so Mike breaks the silence that fell over them and talks about the Creels, relaying what Nancy told him from her research and from what Vecna told her in his villain monologue, when she was cursed. 

Upstairs, the doors are all closed. Mike opens the first one by the landing and stops, startled. “Wait. This is my room.” 

He steps inside. 

Unlike the rooms downstairs, Mike’s room looks lived-in; the duvet from his bed is rumpled, and his clothes are strewn across the floor just like they are in Hawkins. Cassette tapes lay with his Walkman on his dresser. On his desk, his campaign notes for the Party’s last D&D session are folded alongside his schoolwork. The mini figurines he uses for the campaign are scattered across the papers. He picks one up and turns it over in his hand before canvassing the rest of the room. His bookshelf is crowded, and he runs fingers over the spines of the books that line it. Frankenstein, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dune, Lucas’s copy of The Fellowship of the Ring that he’s been meaning to return. 

“So, anyway,” Mike says, picking up his train of thought, “long story short, everyone thought it was the dad, but really it was Henry.”  

Clive’s face is impassive. “You sure know a lot about them.”

Mike shrugs. “My sister is an investigative reporter,” he says, eliding the whole horrific secret lab of it all. “She looked into the Creel murders last year, when those kids were murdered in town in the same way.”

“Didn’t that end up being that freak, Munson?”

Mike spins around. “Shut the fuck up,” he says hotly. “He was framed.”

Clive raises an eyebrow. “Okay, chill. I didn’t realize you were friends.”

Mike shrugs, crossing his arms. “Well, we were.”

Clive is quiet as Mike steps further into his room, pausing on one of Will’s drawings that are on the walls. Over the past few years, he took most of them down, but here in this Shadowfell-version of Hawkins they almost cover the walls entirely.

“But you wanted to be more.”

Ice shoots through him. Mike slowly turns on his heel to face Clive. “What did you just say?” 

The Clive he turns to see looks like another person entirely. His posture is straighter, and his hands are clasped in front of him, no longer fidgeting with the figurines on Mike’s desk. His face has completely changed: where his expression was loose and emotive, it’s now flat, eyes calculating. 

“You, and Eddie. Your little… crush,” Clive says. He turns to the window. Outside, the lush green of the leaves seems perverse with the sudden chill in the room. 

Mike’s chest tightens; he can’t breathe. His feet are frozen to the floor, though every nerve in his body tells him to run. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he manages. His voice sounds rough to his ears.  

Clive looks over his shoulder. “You may try to hide it from yourself, but you cannot hide it from me.” 

Mike shakes his head and backs up into his dresser. His mind is a wild animal in a cage: it thrashes against the bars and bites. “You’re fucking crazy.” He clears his throat. “Let’s just— we have to get out here.” 

“You can’t be happy with a normal friendship, can you? You have to ruin it with your unnatural desires,” Clive continues, as if Mike hadn’t said anything. His voice grows deeper, gravelly. “What would your mother think if she knew, Michael Wheeler?”

“Shit,” Mike breathes. Suddenly it clicks into place— did he forget where he was? Idiot, he chastises himself, as he tries to remember what he said about the Party’s current plans against Vecna. 

Clive smiles, slow and cold. “Your mind is really quite… malleable,” he says. “Easy to invade. Your guilt rules you so strongly, you didn’t even notice when I’d stepped inside.” 

Mind racing, Mike runs his mouth, stalling while he puts together a plan. “So what was with the whole–” He waves a hand in the air. “This act? As if you were another kid who got taken? Pretending to be some high school student?”  

“What better way to obtain your trust than to supply you with someone weak for you to use? The subconscious can be so telling.” Clive— Vecna, Henry, One— holds up a battered copy of Maurice that Mike stole from the library years ago. “And you gave me such intriguing information, and so willingly, too.”

Mike pushes the sharp flash of fear aside. “They’re going to kill you.” 

“Would they still come to save you if they knew the truth?” Vecna slowly transforms, vines growing from his shoulders to wrap around his arms. His hands lengthen, long, sharp nails curling like claws. “Do you deserve their efforts?” 

No, I don’t. Mike shoves the thought aside. “Who cares about me? They’re after you already,” he says, frantically scanning the room for anything he can use as a weapon. “After Max, after what you did to Eleven—”

“What I did?” Vecna roars, and inhumanly stretches his arm out to grab Mike. He scrambles backwards out of the room and runs down the stairs, heart in his throat as he trips over his feet and jumps down the last step.

He turns, and suddenly finds himself in the living room of his house. His mind goes blank as he takes in the scene. His dad is on the recliner, and the news plays too loudly on the TV, a droning voice echoing throughout the room: “The death total has climbed to a staggering amount… Protestors swarm the steps of the FDA…”

Mike stumbles to a stop and is overcome with the need to cover his ears like a little kid. 

His dad turns in his chair as he hears Mike enter, his expression blank. The light from the television whites out his glasses, making it impossible to see his eyes. 

“You see what happens, Michael? What being a sodomite does to you?” He rises from his recliner, imperiously tall, and Mike cowers backwards. The memory warps into something nightmarish. “Get out. You’re not welcome in this house.” 

No, no, no, not this. “Dad,” Mike starts, horrified to find his voice small and broken. “I’m not—” The denial sticks in his throat. 

His father’s face contorts into a look of rage, a look of pure hatred. “You’re no son of mine.” 

Mike backs up until he hits the door, and he wrenches it open. Outside, the woods are closer, darker than before. He runs into them without a second thought, and is absorbed instantly. 

He runs, the trees a blur around him. Eyes burning, chest heaving, he moves mindlessly, putting as much distance between himself and the Creel House as possible. The sky is dark, making it hard to see, and he almost runs through a stream before skidding to a stop. Rocks tumble down a slope into the water. He gasps for breath, hands on his knees. 

Crack. 

Straightening, Mike looks out into the woods. Something flashes between the trees— red hair, wait— and suddenly Max Mayfield is in front of him. 

He gapes at her. “Max?!” He crushes her into a hug, and Max squeezes him back. He pulls back and searches her face. She looks okay, if a little wild. “You’re alive!” 

Max quirks an eyebrow at him. “Hi to you, too, Wheeler. Am I not alive out there?” 

Mike flushes. “You are, but it’s been so long, so we didn’t really know— we hoped, duh, of course we hoped you were still—”

Max takes pity on him and holds up a hand to stop his rambling. “Take a breath.”

“Sorry. Does Vecna know you’re here?”

“Uh, yeah. I don’t think it’d be possible for him not to, since we’re in his mind.” 

Mike is shocked. “We’re what? I thought this was the Upside Down?” 

“No, I’m like, ninety percent sure this is his mindpalace or whatever. It’s made up of his memories.” 

Mike looks back in the direction of the Creel House. “That explains a lot. Did you… see anything, back there?” 

“No, I didn’t want to get too close. Why? You okay?” 

“Yeah.” He shakes himself, pulling himself together. “Yeah, ’course. I just didn’t realize that his mind tricks would be so—” He pauses, not sure what he can say without revealing too much. 

“Personal?” Max asks, and Mike nods. “Yeah, he really gets in there. He’s pretty omniscient here. Speaking of, we should get out of the woods before he finds us. I have somewhere safe to hide.” 

Max leads him through the forest, which follows dream-logic in its arrangement. As they get farther from the Creel House, the sky lightens and the sun glows warmly through the canopy of leaves overhead. The oaks and elms give way to tall firs, and fallen needles soften their steps. Max guides him with ease; she expertly ducks under branches, warning Mike before he trips over a root. A quick glance at the horizon tells her all she needs to know about which fork in the trees to turn down.

She’s familiar with it, Mike recognizes with a pang; she’s been here, navigating Vecna’s psyche, alone, all this time. He didn’t mean to say it, before, but it is uncanny seeing her awake. There’s a wildness to her; not just the state of her hair, or clothing, but in the energy she exudes. Mike has almost forgotten who she used to be. When he thinks of Max now, he pictures her still and pale in a hospital bed, or withdrawn and detached after Billy’s death. Listening to her describe how she’s navigated Vecna’s memories (or, rather, Henry’s, as they’re from before El expelled him to the Upside Down), Mike is struck with how strongly he’s missed her. 

Before long, they arrive at Max’s cave. 

Seeing the sandstone formation reinforces the surreality of Vecna’s mindpalace; the forest floor seamlessly transitions into dusty redbed, and Max leads him into a cavern that overlooks a desert landscape. It’s as far from the Indiana forest they just left as Mike could imagine, but he can see the foliage through the cave’s entrance as if they were natural neighbors. Inside, the cavern is overflowing with scavenged items, clothes and knickknacks and blankets. It reminds Mike of when he found a crow’s nest in his backyard, full of stolen buttons and bits of ribbon. 

“Cozy, right?” Max says, watching him take it all in. 

Now safe, Max asks Mike about what she’s missed over the past year. Mike begins reluctantly, worried she’ll think everyone’s moved on without her, but she listens intently, asking questions in earnest. 

“I can’t believe how calm you are,” Mike says. “You seem so—” He waves a hand at her. “Adept. If it was me, I would’ve had a breakdown within a week.” 

“I’m glad you finally see how much cooler I am than you,” Max jokes, grinning. “It was rocky for a while, but I managed.” Mike wonders if he should believe her blithe tone. “Now,” she continues, expression sobering. “For how we’re gonna get out of here.” 

Max stands and combs through one of the many piles that line the alcove. She emerges with a hand-drawn map and lays it flat over a rock. 

“So here’s where we are.” Max marks the cave with an X and moves her marker across the map. “Here’s the Creel House. Henry usually stays in there. He avoids the other memories; I think he shut the rest of them away on purpose. But, anyway, as long as we stay clear of the house, we should be able to avoid him.”

“And where are we going?” 

“I have a theory, based on the memories. I think he had to open a portal in order to get your consciousness in here, and we can use it to get out.” 

It tracks. “Just like the dimension door spell.”

“The—” Max shakes her head. “I don’t even want to know.”

“You’re playing with us one day,” he remarks absently, analyzing the map. He traces a winding river back to the Creel House. “So if we find my door, you think it’ll lead me back to the real world?”

Max nods in confirmation and points at the map again. “You arrived somewhere in this area. I didn’t see where exactly, but we should be able to find it quickly.” She rolls the map up and shoves it in her pocket. 

They leave the cave, Max leading Mike through the forest again. She consults the map when they arrive at the river, and soon Mike recognizes the thicket where he woke up. The vines hang from branches like marionettes with their strings cut, inanimate in a way that the vines in the tunnels never were, as if they were just set dressing all along. 

At first glance, they don’t find anything that fits Max’s theory. There’s nothing out of place, nothing similar to the doors that sort Henry’s memories. Mike does, however, find a seam at the base of a tree. It reminds him of the gates created by the Demogorgons, and when he presses his hand to it, it gives way under his palm. 

Max crouches by his side. “Can you see anything?” 

Mike kneels and peers through the opening. Within, he sees himself facing the Demogorgon; his mom, falling; Holly, mouth open mid-scream. They’re frozen in place, like a paused movie. Mike sits back up and looks at Max. “You were right.” 

She grins. “I usually am. Now, go.” 

Mike crawls through and moves away from the door to allow Max in after him. Once she stands, the scene slams into motion. Mike flinches as he watches his back hit the floor, feeling the impact all over again. 

Memory-Mike is dragged through the rift, Holly screaming from where she kneels above their mother’s fallen body. 

“Shit, Mike,” Max whispers, and Mike grunts in agreement. She walks through the scene, and they notice the basement door together. Light shines from underneath, and Max opens it. 

A wave of vertigo hits Mike as he sees himself at the top of the basement steps. Max gestures for him to follow and walks around memory-Mike. They descend the stairs and find the Party seated around a table, homework mixed with maps and crawl plans. Mike glances back up at himself at the top of the stairs. He stands still, frozen, one hand on the doorknob, having caught his friends’ conversation about him. 

“I mean, he’s clearly having a tough time. With everything.” Will’s voice was low, and he stared at the table where their grid map of Hawkins lay. He traced the streets from Cornwallis to Maple. 

Lucas made an affirmative noise in the back of his throat. “Yeah. I know he hates that he wasn’t here to help us when all the shit went down in March.” 

Will snapped his head up. “He talked to you? Sorry, that sounded wrong—”

Lucas held up a hand to slow him down. “I get what you mean, dude.” He sighed. “He didn’t tell me anything— I mean, this is Mike we’re talking about— but I’ve had a feeling something was wrong. He kind of… implied something to me.” 

Nausea crawls up Mike’s throat. In memory and in the present, he presses a hand to his mouth. He knows, he knows, he knows—

Dustin frowned at Lucas and spun his pen on the table. “Implied what?”

Lucas shrugged. “Something like, if he’d been here, maybe it would have gone better. An extra pair of hands to help with…” He trailed off, clearly not wanting to bring up either Eddie or Max.

Dustin scoffed, and when he spoke his voice was laced with venom. “As if he wouldn’t have just been glued to El’s side the whole time.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. He’s been different since they broke up.” 

“They’ll get through it,” Will said quietly. “They always do.”

Lucas just shrugged again, unconvinced. 

Memory-Mike waited an excruciatingly long minute before he closed the basement door and jogged down, making sure to hit the creaky steps. He joined the group as if he hadn’t heard them and threw a bag of chips onto the table, handing Will a soda.

Max looks at present-Mike searchingly. “It wouldn’t have been up to you, you know. It was my choice to make.” 

He clenches his jaw and keeps his eyes trained on the memory. He watches himself force a smile, his mouth moving with nothing of substance coming out. 

“I should have been here. I was useless, with El— when you—” He stops, tries again. “I’m supposed to be— I could have done something. If not to help you, then at least I could have been with Dustin and Eddie, and maybe…” He swallows past the lump in his throat and looks to the ceiling, composing himself. 

“I’m sorry to hear about Eddie, too,” she says quietly. “I didn’t know. It must have hit you really hard.” 

Mike shakes his head. “Too hard.” 

“No, Mike, grief—” 

“He died in Dustin’s arms,” Mike snaps, cutting her off. “What right do I have?” Mike pushes his temper down and scrubs a hand over his face to avoid Max’s sympathetic grimace. “And now I’m whining to you, and you’ve been stuck here for a year.” 

She puts a hand on Mike’s arm. “Then let’s get out of here, so we can have this talk for real.” Max slaps her hand against his back bracingly, closing the vulnerable moment. Mike is immensely grateful for it. “Okay. If I’m right, it should be right out there.” She gestures to the windows, where the clouds outside slowly fade to a deep red sky, jagged stalagmites jutting into the air and dotting the landscape. Further out, a hazy portal floats midair. 

“Max,” Mike breathes, at the same time she says, “It’s back.” Mike looks down at her; her eyes are glued to the portal, where her body back in Hawkins lays in a hospital bed. 

“That’s the way out?” Mike asks, and Max nods. She tears her eyes away and looks up at Mike. 

“I didn’t know if it would really come back. I’ve gotta— this could be my only chance.” Her voice is weighed down with apology, and she keeps glancing back out the window. 

“I understand.” Mike pulls her into a hug. “I’ll see you on the other side, Mayfield. We miss you out there.” 

Max starts to reply, but is interrupted as thunder booms, shaking the windows. The ground rumbles, and Mike pushes Max towards the door. “Go!” 

The floor splits beneath them, and Mike jumps back before he falls through. Max looks at him regretfully before she sprints out into the red wasteland beyond. 

The basement deteriorates around him, the walls crumbling. Mike closes his eyes and concentrates. “Plane shift, plane shift,” he mutters to himself, picturing the Upside Down as Will described it: dark, a sense of death in the air, tentacle-vines covering everything in sight. He remembers what Max said, about connecting to the physical world, and allows himself to focus on his thoughts of Will. He must think Mike is dead, by now. No, he reconsiders, Will won’t accept that, not without proof. Mike’s heart lurches as he remembers watching the police dredge a body from the quarry. No one will fake Mike’s death; Will would have to scour the Upside Down to find him, and Mike knows that he will. Mike knows what he can’t have, and he also knows what he does have, in his best friend. 

The wall Mike leans against suddenly gives way, and Mike stumbles backwards into the rocky barrens. Out of the corner of his eye, Mike sees movement; turning, he sees a portal, and within it he sees himself, wrapped in vines in a dark space. He runs without a second thought and leaps through. 

Mike wakes with a start, gasping for breath. His body tenses, trying to keep his momentum and run, but he’s held back against a wall by winding vines, overgrown and twisting over his ankles, his wrists, his neck. He struggles against them, but they only tighten further, and he has to stop before they crush his windpipe. His side aches fiercely; he hadn’t noticed before, but there was no pain in Vecna’s mindpalace. He takes slow, deep breaths, and studies his surroundings. He’s in a cave, or a hollow of some sort. Weak light shines through a crack in the ceiling, which is latticed by vines. A tunnel leads out, but it’s too dark for Mike to see beyond a few feet. Mike considers how he can start to free himself when a rock clatters down the tunnel, and he freezes. 

A figure emerges, and Mike laughs in relief when their face is revealed by the moonlight. 

“Will!” 

Will smiles, joy brightening his face as he rushes up to Mike. He starts ripping at the vines. When he frees Mike’s left hand, Mike grabs Will’s shoulder, giving in to the familiar ache of longing and unable to stop the urge to touch him, to make sure he’s really there. Will smiles up at him and briefly presses his cheek to Mike’s hand in response. He feels Will’s breath ghost against his arm, and he’s overcome with the sudden need to tell him everything. 

“I’m so glad you’re here,” he whispers, moving his hand slightly up to the crook of Will’s neck. 

Will’s smile is a bright beam of sunlight, and it cuts through the chill of the Upside Down. “Are you gonna help me with these vines or what?” Will asks. 

“Nah, you seem to have it handled,” Mike jokes, but he reluctantly moves his hand to try and dislodge the vine wrapped around his stomach.  

“You owe me big for making me come back here,” Will says. “Once was bad enough.” 

“Anything,” Mike promises. “I’ll convince Murray that new paintbrushes are super vital to the anti-apocalypse effort. I’ll treat you to a five-course dinner at Enzo’s.” 

Will stills, one hand on Mike’s shoulder, the other on a vine that is wrapped around Mike’s throat. “So it’s true?” he asks quietly. He stares beyond Mike, avoiding looking up at his face. There’s a betrayed edge to his voice, one that calls up bad memories of when they’ve fought before. 

“What? Is what true?” Mike desperately tries to make eye contact with Will, to see what he’s thinking. Did El go into his mind? Horror tightens his throat. What did they see? 

Will looks up at Mike, eyes narrowed. “We always knew you were a freak, worse than the rest of us. But I never imagined that you’d be such a flamer,” he spits. “Disgusting.” He steps back, and Mike feels unbalanced, a rush of vertigo crashing over him. 

“No, Will, whatever you saw— it was just a trick, it’s not true. Please,” Mike begs.

Will slowly shakes his head. “No, you deserve to be here. ‘Friends don’t lie’, right, Michael? But you’ve been lying to us all this time about what you really are. You let Eleven, your girlfriend, believe you were in love with her, just so you could lie to yourself a little longer.” His gaze hardens, and Will— Will, his closest friend, who understands him more than anyone— is suddenly unrecognizable to Mike. The hatred in his cold look, his sneer. But he is still standing there, waiting— 

“Vecna,” Mike says, as a wave of realization hits him. He feels pulled under, caught in a riptide of shame and guilt and fear and relief.  

Not-Will raises an eyebrow. “Such a childish impulse, to try and name what you do not understand.” 

Mike struggles as more vines creep over him, undoing the illusioned progress and wrapping up to hold his wrists down again.

“What do you want from me, One,” he snaps, and is gratified when not-Will flinches; his minute step back, his blink, gives away his discomfort with Brenner’s impersonal label of a name. Got him, Mike thinks. 

Vecna draws himself up, Will’s features melting away into Clive’s— or, Mike supposes, Henry’s. 

“Soon you will realize I am right, and you will give up.”

Mike blinks, and he’s alone again. 

The soft sound of footsteps brings Mike back into consciousness. Someone’s calling his name, and it echoes down the tunnel. He blinks awake and finds himself staring at the dirt floor of the cave. The vines wrapped around him are the only thing holding him up; exhaustion has settled deep in his bones. 

“Mike? Mike, are you there?” 

“Just leave me alone!” Mike yells, jerking his head up. 

“Mike?” Will stands before him, lit by a shaft of moonlight that comes in through a crack in the cave’s ceiling. Motes of ash catch in the light, and Mike can faintly see a long scrape down the side of his face. 

“Again?” Mike scoffs. “I’m not going to fall for the same trick twice, One.” 

“What?” Not-Will frowns and shakes his head. He slowly takes another step forward, hands outstretched like he’s calming a wild animal. “Mike, it’s me,” not-Will says. “We’re here to get you out.” 

Mike rolls his eyes and tilts his head back against the cold stone wall behind him. His arms ache from their forced position back and above his head, and he fruitlessly attempts to stretch his shoulders to relieve the tension. He closes his eyes, not wanting to see Vecna’s facsimile of his friend’s face. Weariness is a thick shroud over his mind, blurring his thoughts. Or maybe that was just a side effect of the spores. 

“Whatever, ‘Will’. What’s the play this time? Gonna call me a sodomite again? That was new, I’ll give you that. The real Ted would have just called me a fag.”

Not-Will inhales sharply, and silence fills the cave for a tense beat. “Mike,” he says, voice low and strained. “It’s me. It’s Will. You sh– you should stop talking. El’s here with me.” 

Mike opens his eyes. Not-Will’s face is blanched white, his mouth pressed into a tight line. A million thoughts race through Mike’s mind, but the loudest is: Fuck. 

“I can’t even ask you to prove it,” Mike says, hating how his voice cracks as his throat constricts. “You’re in my mind. You know— everything,” he continues, and he can’t fight the tears that escape. He wishes Vecna would just get it over with and kill him already. 

Not-Will’s jaw clenches as his eyes desperately search Mike’s face. “What about something you don’t know? About me?” he asks quietly.

Mike frowns at him. The urge to believe that this is really Will, really rescuing him, wars with the knowledge that this is exactly what he wants, exactly what Vecna would show him, has shown him. 

Will reaches out a hand but stops a breath away when Mike flinches. Not-Will closes his eyes and inhales deeply, exhales slowly. “I’m sorry, El,” he whispers, and then looks up at Mike with new determination. “The painting wasn’t from El. It was from me. Everything…” Not-Will— Will?— clears his throat and barrels on. “Everything I said in that van was from me.” 

Mike stares at not-Will— at Will. “I don’t…” he breathes, confused. And then, as reality crashes upon him: “Oh, fuck.” 

Will twists his face in a defeated, sad smile. “Oh, fuck,” he agrees.  

Mike faintly feels something tugging at his wrists. Glancing up, the vines there are withering and receding. El, he realizes, and, again: Fuck. He swallows, pushing his anxiety down, down, down and shutting it away. He can have his crisis later; he has to live in order for everyone he knows to hate him, so there’s no use worrying about that before he’s even out of the Upside Down. 

Will helps him down, untangling vines from where they’re wrapped around his chest and up over his shoulder. A tiny spark of hope lights in his chest. Will doesn’t seem to hate him. He’s not leaving him for dead, anyway. Maybe Mike can claim insanity from Vecna’s visions. Maybe he’ll forget what Mike said. Maybe Will will forgive him, if he apologizes enough. 

“You’re bleeding,” Will says quietly, pressing careful fingers to the slash in his shirt. Mike winces, and Will eases Mike’s arm over his shoulders to support him. 

“Demogorgon,” he says. “It came after Holly— oh God, Holly!” He jerks to look sideways at Will. “Is she–? And Mom–?”

“They’re alive,” Will assures him. “Your mom’s in the hospital but she’s okay. Nancy and El got to them in time.” 

Mike sighs, relieved. His limbs feel heavy as he and Will slowly walk out of the cave, and the gash in his side has graduated from numb to a dull pain that pulses with each step. “Wait,” he says, “Isn’t El–?” 

“She’s in Hawkins,” Will says. “She helped us get through a gate and piggybacked to come here. She’s probably out of the bath by now. C’mon, Nancy and Jonathan are outside. We have to meet back up with Dustin and Steve at the gate.” 

“I’m glad you didn’t come alone,” Mike says. “Even though I hate that you’re back here at all.” 

Will shrugs, and it jostles Mike’s whole body. “Shit, sorry,” he says. “Yeah. Definitely not my favorite place.” His tone is strained. “But I had to come get you.” 

Mike’s heart constricts in his chest. “I wish I believed this was real.”

He feels Will turn to look at him, but keeps his own gaze down as they step around the rocks and vines that litter the ground. 

“It’s real,” Will says. “I’m real.”

Mike nods. “Right.” 

He feels Will’s exhale and can picture his exasperated face: Really, Mike?

They walk in silence, navigating the tunnels.

“It was originally just going to be you,” Will says abruptly, startling Mike from his thoughts. He looks up at Will, confused. 

“What?” 

“The painting,” Will elaborates. “Just you and the dragon. But that felt like— like I was being obvious. So I added everyone else. I used acrylic paint. I think it worked okay. Even though they had some in my art class in Lenora, I’ve never really used oil paint. I want to try it, but it’s kinda expensive, you know? Or I guess you wouldn’t. But acrylic’s what we used to paint the minis for our campaigns, so I’m familiar with it, and with Mom’s new job we were able to buy more art supplies than before. Not that I don’t love sketching still, but with painting, I can really create a whole scene.” 

“Obvious? I— Okay,” Mike says, feeling unmoored and two steps behind whatever track Will is on. “Um, Will, I swear I’m interested, but…?” 

“You don’t know anything about painting, right? But I do. So you know I’m real. Here,” Will says, as they come to the mouth of the tunnel. Mike is stunned, unable to keep up with how fast Will is talking. “We’re out.”

As they emerge from the tunnel, Nancy quickly descends on Mike and draws him into a tight hug. 

“We’re teaching you how to shoot,” she says, muffled against his shoulder. Her voice sounds thick with emotion, but when she looks up at Mike her eyes are dry, face set and determined. 

“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Mike says faintly. He sways, feeling suddenly bereft, and realizes that Will released him to stand next to Jonathan. Nancy sticks by his right side and helps prop him up, taking his weight. 

“Are you hurt?” Nancy skims her eyes over him and catches the rip in his shirt. “Mike—”

“I’m fine. ‘Tis but—”

“If you quote Monty Python at me, I’m leaving your ass behind.” 

Will and Jonathan share an amused look. 

“Good to see you in relatively one piece,” Jonathan says, a small smile on his face. He has a rifle slung over his shoulder, matching the one Nancy carries. They’re both also covered in scrapes and splotches of what looks like tacky, white paint. 

“You, too,” Mike says weakly. “Sorry you guys had to come here just to rescue me—”

“Shut up,” Nancy interrupts. “In no universe would we leave you here. Now, let’s go. Will already had to down like six Demogorgons on our way here.” 

“Am I still hallucinating?” Mike asks, as they set out. “Will did what?”

“Hallucinating?” Nancy frowns up at Mike. He waves a hand in dismissal, and she narrows her eyes but explains. “Will used a vision to control them,” Nancy starts. “He—” 

“What?” Mike cranes his neck to look at Will. “Vision? Like your now-memories?”

Flustered, Will ducks his head. “Yeah, kinda. I could see through the Demo’s eyes, feel what it felt.”

“Wicked.” Mike grins. 

“Creepy,” Will corrects. 

“Nah. You’re spying back on them.”

“That didn’t work so well before,” he mutters mournfully. 

“But this time you used it against them,” Jonathan says. “You turned it around and stopped them before they could get us.” 

“I can’t believe I missed that,” Mike says over his shoulder, turning to look at Will more fully. “I totally called it.”

Will rolls his eyes. “You did not.” 

“Did too. Ask Lucas.” 

“Guys, do me a favor and discuss this later?” Nancy unfurls a map and pulls a compass from her pocket, struggling to hold them both one-handed. Mike grabs the map with his left hand and holds it for her. Nancy flashes a quick smile in thanks and consults the compass. 

Chittering echoes behind them; Mike whips his head around, but nothing’s there, and he realizes it’s just ringing in his ears. He scans the horizon anyway, studying the clearing they stand in. An uneven limestone wall juts out of the side of a hill, arcing over the tunnel’s entrance, covered by the mire that lines the entirety of the Upside Down. There’s a sickness to the trees, warped and twisting into the air; a stringy, mucosal growth spreads across branches. The air is oppressive, bearing down on them like humidity before a storm despite the chill, and Mike feels ridiculous for ever mistaking Vecna’s technicolor dreamscape for the Upside Down. 

They’re near the lab, he realizes, as he surveys the surrounding woods. Odd, that Vecna would want to return here, to this area. It’s not very hidden, either; the mouth of the tunnel is visible from the woods, and the area around it is clear of trees, large enough for their group to stand in a circle. 

A memory suddenly comes to the forefront of Mike’s mind: Vecna, shrouded in shadows, flashing between Will-Nancy-Eddie-El-Lucas-Dustin-Steve-Jonathan-Max, his deep, inhuman laugh echoing in the cavern. “The perfect bait, for William and Eleven both. It’s… poetic, don’t you think?”

“Guys,” Mike says, frantic, “I was bait. He’s expecting you—”

“Oh,” Will says, “we figured.”

Will’s easy tone catches Mike off guard, and his heart stutters, confused, in his chest.

“You–? Huh?” Mike’s sudden rush of adrenaline makes it impossible to catch his breath. He swings his head from Will to Jonathan to Nancy and back again.

“We distracted him. It’s under control,” Nancy says. Jonathan shoots her a look, and she adds, “For now, anyway.” 

“What kind of distraction?” Mike asks, uneasily reminded of Dustin telling the Party about Eddie’s sacrifice. 

Nancy and Jonathan share a long look, clearly having a silent debate.

Will watches them and cuts in before they can prevaricate. “Nancy shot a weird ball of light in the sky,” he says, too casual. 

Mike wheels on his sister, incredulous. “You what?” 

Nancy throws Will an annoyed look. “It’s fine. We threw a grenade at it. From a reasonable distance,” she insists when Mike raises his eyebrows. 

“You guys are all crazy,” he says. 

“You’re welcome,” Nancy huffs. She puts the compass back in a pocket of the tactical vest Hopper had procured for her over the summer and folds the map away. 

They head in the direction of town. Nancy leads the way with Mike at her side, and Jonathan and Will stay close behind. Every so often, Nancy checks her compass again, redirecting them down different paths. The tree line breaks, and they arrive at a field that stretches wide. The grass underfoot is dark and dead and crackles with frost as they walk across. 

“Something’s coming,” Will warns, voice tense. 

As he speaks, a susurration of wings precedes the swarm that rises from the horizon. The Demobats are a dark cloud that covers the sky, lit by the red lightning that flares in the distance. Mike instinctively moves back and almost knocks into Will, who steps in front of the group with his arms held high. When he speaks, it’s through clenched teeth. 

“I can hold them off.” He turns. Mike’s breath catches; Will’s eyes are clouded over, white, and Mike knows that he’s drawing on his powers. 

Beside him, Nancy taps his back to get his attention. “We have to run,” she says. “Can you do that?” 

He nods, and they set off. Nancy leads, one arm holding her rifle steady across her chest as she runs. Will is close behind her, arms outstretched. The bats surge and rush down all at once, only to bounce back as if they hit an invisible wall. 

“Shit,” Mike breathes in awe, watching Will’s hands flex with effort. 

“Don’t slow down,” Jonathan urges. Mike nods, but takes another moment to stare at the tense line of Will’s shoulders before he focuses on the ground in front of him. 

They sprint across the field until they reach Wright’s Farm. When the grain silo is visible, Jonathan clicks his Supercom on and transmits. 

“It’s Jonathan. We’re two minutes out. We got Mike. Do you copy?” 

The walkie immediately bursts to life with Steve’s reply. 

“Fucking finally, Byers! Everyone okay?” 

“We’re good,” Jonathan says, “but we’re surrounded by bats. We need to make a hot exit. Over.” 

A rush of air crackles over the speaker. “Damn. Okay. The gate’s closed on this side.” Faintly, Mike hears Dustin’s voice snap something through the walkie. “Over,” Steve adds. Mike can hear his eyeroll. 

The four of them arrive at the silo. The harsh, serrated line of a closed gate runs through the length of it. Nancy and Jonathan look it over, and Mike stands next to Will. His arms are still outstretched, and his attention is glued to the forcefield overhead. He leans imperceptibly into Mike as he comes up alongside him. 

Nancy takes the walkie from Jonathan. “We can see if Will can do anything on our end.” She glances backwards and reconsiders. “Actually, strike that. Do you have anything that can break through? Over.” 

“Not unless you want the van to end up like my car,” Steve snips. 

Will presses heavier into Mike’s side; when he glances at him, a steady stream of blood runs from his nose. His face is screwed up, concentration crossing into pain. Mike loops an arm around him to hold him steady. Leaning forward, he grabs the radio from Nancy and says, “They use flamethrowers at the MAC-Z. Do you have a lighter, or something? Over.” 

“I can do that,” Dustin says. “You keep hairspray in the van, right, Steve?” Mike can’t discern Steve’s reply, and Dustin says, “Stand by.” 

They stand in silence for a moment before Nancy says, “What’s going on? Over.” 

Dustin’s sardonic voice crackles over the radio. “Hairspray, meet lighter. Let there be light.” Mike hears Steve yelp before the walkie cuts out, and the gate in front of them glows red, the tentacle-vines retreating. 

Once Dustin gives the all-clear, Jonathan steps forward. He takes a deep breath, bracing himself. “This never gets any less gross,” he says, before he shoulders through the membrane of the gate. 

Nancy gestures for Mike to follow. He removes his arm from over Will’s shoulders and walks forward; his left leg screams in protest, but he shoves himself through the gate and breaks through the other side. The bright sun is nearly blinding after the gloom of the Upside Down. He joins Jonathan out of the way of the gate as Nancy comes through; she stands half-in, half-out, and drags a disoriented Will out by his arm. Will collapses, hands hitting the dirt, and the gate closes behind him. Mike immediately falls to his side. His hands flutter over his shoulders, not sure how to help, and moves to give Will space as he comes back to himself and sits up. He drags in a ragged breath and stares into the distance. Absently, he wipes at the blood under his nose. 

“What happened to ‘we’re good’?” 

Steve stands above them, hands on his hips as he looks them over. 

“Relatively speaking,” Jonathan snipes, and Steve knocks a playful fist into his shoulder. 

“Good to see you again, Wheeler,” Steve says. Mike casts another quick glance at Will and slowly gets up, giving Steve a nod. Before he can reply, he’s knocked back a step as he’s tackled in a hug. 

“Never do that again,” Dustin says, voice muffled from where his face is pressed into Mike’s shoulder. 

“Deal,” Mike says, looping his arms around Dustin and squeezing him tightly. Dustin’s face is bruised, dark rings circling both his eyes. He wonders if there was a fight; is Lucas hurt, too? “Wait,” Mike says, as a realization dawns on him. “Vecna’s going to go after Max next. She’s working against him.”

Steve’s brow furrows in confusion, but he repeats Mike’s warning into his Supercom. He walks away from the group as he talks, over to where the WSQK van is haphazardly pulled off to the side of the silo. 

Dustin pulls back enough to look Mike up and down, assessing. “You saw Vecna? Did he put you under his curse?”

“No,” Mike says sourly. “He Mr. Whatsit-ed me.”

Dustin stares at him blankly before looking down to where Will still kneels. “He’s lost it. We have no choice. We have to Old Yeller him.”  

“Here,” Jonathan says, holding a notebook out to Dustin before he can take Mike out back behind the not-so metaphorical barn. “This looks like something you can decipher.” 

Untangling himself from the hug, Dustin takes it and skims the first few pages. “What is this?” 

“We found it in the lab, in Brenner’s office.” 

Before Jonathan can explain further, Steve claps to get their attention. “We good to leave? Yes? Okay. You four–” He points to Nancy, Jonathan, Dustin, and Will, who looks mostly present again. “–go in the back. Mike, you get shotgun privileges.” Steve ushers them into the van. Mike struggles to climb in, suppressing a grimace when his side lights up in pain as he lifts himself into the passenger seat. 

Steve shifts the van into gear once everyone’s inside, and the tires squeal as he drives off faster than necessary. 

“It’s not your Beemer,” Dustin scolds from the back. “You have to be nicer to it.” 

“Where is your car?” Mike wonders. 

Steve holds up a firm hand. “I don’t want to talk about it, Wheeler.” 

Mike shrugs and looks at the rest of the group in the rearview. Dustin sits by the antenna controls, and Nancy’s on the floor of the van next to him. She has one arm looped around the leg of the desk to hold her steady, and the other cradles her rifle. Across the van, Jonathan sits next to Will, watching his brother closely. Will’s eyes are closed, his head tipped back against the side of the van. Dried blood is smudged on his pale face. His arms lay loose in his lap, and Mike would think he was asleep except for the slow, repeated motion of him opening and closing his fists. Assured that they’re all okay, Mike looks away and out the window. 

In the back, Nancy catches Dustin up with what they found. After separating from Steve and Dustin (by driving Steve’s car through the gate, Mike discovers, which explains Steve’s attitude), Nancy, Jonathan, and Will searched the Upside Down for any trace of Mike or Vecna. Soon after they arrived— triggered by proximity or intentionally shown— Will had a vision of where Mike was being held, and he recognized it from his time in the Upside Down. On their way there, they were attacked by Demogorgons; something in Will unlocked, and he was able to use his powers to kill them. 

“No way,” Dustin says, surprised. 

“Yes way,” Mike cuts in from up front. “He cast a real-life Shield of Faith.” 

“Anyway,” Nancy interrupts, impatient. “When we got into the lab…” Nancy breezes past the topic of Will’s powers as if it’s old news, and Mike knows he’ll have to ask Will a million questions later. 

Mike zones out from the conversation, mind fading with exhaustion. He leans his forehead against the cool window and begins to drift off, only to jolt in his seat when Dustin exclaims, “You shot dark matter?!”

“From a reasonable distance!” 

“El helped,” Jonathan adds. From the rearview mirror, he watches Jonathan move to lay a hand on Nancy’s shoulder but stops himself, withdrawing. “She was with us, in the void. She held the grenade midair while we got to a safe distance away.”

“When the grenade went off, it sent out a shockwave. The Demogorgons all fled after. There was something about it that affected them, like a dog whistle only they could hear,” Nancy says. 

Mike tunes them out and closes his eyes. He relaxes in the seat and allows for his friends’ voices and the quiet rumble of pavement under the van’s tires lull him into sleep. 

He wakes to a hand on his shoulder. 

He spins in his seat and instantly regrets it when his side burns. He presses a hand to it and takes a slow, deep breath to ground himself. Faintly, he hears Nancy’s voice, and he looks up to meet her eyes where she’s crouched behind the front seat. He looks around; they’re parked at the Squawk, and everyone else is already out of the van. 

“I wanted to talk to you, before we go inside,” Nancy says. Her voice is quiet, and dread pools in Mike’s gut. He almost knows what she’ll say before she speaks. 

“El and I drove to our house as fast as we could.” She’s speaking so quietly she’s barely audible, and her eyes shine as tears brim. “Holly called the police, and the ambulance got there in time to save Mom. But Dad…” Her voice cracks, and Mike reaches out. She takes his hand in hers and clutches it tightly. “Dad was already dead. I couldn’t…” A sob breaks free, and she presses a hand to her mouth to stifle it. 

His dad. Dead. And his last memory of him is a twisted simulacrum of him calling Mike slurs. Well, at least the real him never had the chance, Mike thinks, sharp and bitter, and mentally shoves it all into a box and locks it away for later. 

“It’s not your fault, Nancy,” he says. It was his, he didn’t even look—

He hugs her, pulling her close. It’s awkward, over the center console, but they stay locked together for a long moment. 

Nancy pulls back and wipes the heel of her hand under her eyes. “We should go inside. You need to be patched up.” 

Mike twists his mouth but doesn’t argue.

Nancy climbs out of the van and comes around to Mike’s side to help him down, and they walk up the steps into the WSQK station together. Mike’s leg throbs with each step, but Nancy supports him. They pass by the reception desk and into the main area of the Squawk. Inside, Joyce and Hopper talk with Will by the windows. The sun breaks through the slits in the blinds, casting Will in a golden glow. Joyce pushes his hair back, examining his face. Mike can almost hear her fretting. Dustin sits on a couch in front of the DJ booth, engrossed in Brenner’s notebook, and Steve sits beside him. Mike can hear El and Jonathan talking around the corner, where they keep their snacks. Steve spots the siblings as they enter and gets up from the couch; he collects a bundle of fabric as he stands, and he heads their way. 

“Lucas and Robin went to the hospital to check on Max,” he says in greeting. “El and Hopper got here just before we did and said that there haven’t been any more Demo sightings.” 

“Where’s Holly?” Mike asks, scanning the room again to see if he missed her. 

“With the Sinclairs,” Nancy says, as Steve hands Mike the towel and extra shirt he was holding. “Erica’s helping watch her.”

“And the babysit-ee becomes the babysitter,” Steve says. He nods sagely to himself.  

Nancy flicks him an unimpressed look before turning back to Mike. “Wash up. There’s a first aid kit in the bathroom.” 

“I can help,” Will says from behind Mike. He jumps; he didn’t hear him approach.

Mike swallows and nods. “Thanks.” Will quickly glances up at him before setting off in the direction of the radio station’s bathroom. Mike follows. He’s steadier on his feet now, but still has to walk slowly. 

The bathroom is small and dingy, only equipped with a toilet and sink and a filing cabinet shoved in the corner as makeshift storage. He hears water running, and as he comes into the doorway, Will cuts the sink off and dries his hands. He turns when he hears Mike enter. 

They stare at each other for an infinite moment. Mike is incredibly aware that this is the first time they’ve been alone since the cave. Eventually— days or years or seconds later— Will breaks the moment by gesturing to the sink. “We should start with just getting the Upside Down gunk off of you.” He moves across the bathroom, giving Mike space, and starts sorting through the first aid supplies in the filing cabinet. 

Mike nods. “Right.” He turns, and wets the towel under the sink. He hears the door click closed behind him and looks over his shoulder. He doesn’t know what his expression is, but it makes Will flush. 

“I can open it, I just figured you didn’t want everyone gawking at you.” 

“No, yeah, you’re right. Thanks.” 

Will turns a bottle of rubbing alcohol over in his hands, back and forth. “Do you want to sit?” 

Mike considers it, and shakes his head. “It’ll be easier if I stand, I think. It’s kinda awkwardly…” He gestures to his side.

“Okay.” Will sits on the filing cabinet, settling the rubbing alcohol between his legs and balancing gauze on his thigh. He doesn’t watch, keeping his eyes downcast to give Mike privacy, as Mike fidgets with the hem of his shirt.

He’s stalling, and Mike feels abruptly ridiculous. How many times has Will seen him without his shirt, at the pool or the lake or getting ready together for sleepovers? But it feels different now, charged, now that Will knows. 

Mike reaches down to tug his shirt over his head, but he’s only able to make it halfway before a flash of pain stops him. His breath catches, and Will looks up at him, briefly meeting his gaze before looking away. His eyes skip over the room before settling on Mike again. Mike watches his throat move as he swallows. “Want me to help?” 

Mike’s dead. He must’ve died and is in some kind of afterlife, because what other explanation is there for the gentle way Will reaches for him now? 

“Okay?” Will whispers, his hands hovering by Mike’s waist. He nods, not trusting his voice, and Will carefully reaches under his shirt, lifting the hem without touching his skin. Mike lifts his arms, and Will draws the shirt over his head. He drapes the shirt over the edge of the sink and surveys the damage. 

Two long, jagged cuts curve along Mike’s side, stretching from the middle of his ribs to the top of his right hip. Will inhales sharply through his teeth and reaches out a hand, stopping when he’s an inch away. 

“God, Mike,” Will says, voice low. There’s an edge to his voice that Mike can’t place, and when he looks up and meets Mike’s eye, he realizes that Will is furious. 

“I’m okay,” Mike says softly. Will just shakes his head and reaches out for the towel that’s clenched in Mike’s fist. He folds it and delicately cleans the area around the gouges.  

“I’m going to kill him.” The controlled rage in his voice is at odds with the tender way he holds Mike’s hip, keeping him in place as he dabs at the edges of Mike’s wound. 

“You, personally?” Mike jokes weakly. Maybe he should have sat down. 

Will looks up at him, eyes dark and sure. “Yes.” 

All he can do in response is stare mutely back. He’s certain that Will can hear his heart, with how fast it’s beating. Will returns his attention to Mike’s side, dropping the towel, now stained rusty brown, on the floor and going in with rubbing alcohol and gauze. It stings, but Will makes quick work of it, and soon he starts to wrap fresh gauze around Mike’s abdomen. 

“Hold this?” he murmurs, and Mike follows his direction, keeping the end of the gauze down as Will winds the rest around Mike’s ribs. 

He stands; they’re close, each keeping a hand on an end of the gauze. Will opens the drawer and searches it. Mike takes the moment of Will’s distraction to look him over, from his tousled hair, the worn, dark shadows under his eyes, the curve of his nose and his expressive mouth. 

“One sec,” Will says, having found the medical tape, and he frowns before bringing the tape up to his mouth to hold it in place while he tears off a piece with his free hand. “Turn for me?” he says softly, and Mike belatedly drags his eyes up from Will’s mouth before nodding and moving so that Will can better access the gauze. Once his hand is free, Will tears off another piece of tape, and finishes the bandage. Mike reaches behind him to grab the extra shirt Steve gave him, and Will wordlessly reaches up to help him slip it over his head. 

They stare at each other for a moment more, until Mike thinks he’ll spontaneously combust if he doesn’t say something. 

“Think I’ll get rabies?” Mike quips, and immediately regrets speaking. 

Will smiles. “I think you’re good. Let me know if you start foaming at the mouth.”

You have no idea, Mike thinks, and takes a step back from Will before he bursts into flame. Pain lances up his leg as he puts weight on his left foot, and he can’t hide his wince. Will immediately raises his hands to steady Mike. 

“What is it?”

“Oh. Uh, the Demo might’ve grabbed my leg. When it, y’know. Dragged me into hell.”

“And you weren’t going to say anything.”

“It’s fine. You’ve already done enough.”

“Sit,” Will says, pointing to the closed toilet lid. Mike sits. Will drags the filing cabinet over, making a face at the sharp shriek of metal on tile, and grabs fresh gauze. Mike rolls up his pant leg; the Demogorgon’s claws had sunk into his calf, right under his knee, but the cuts are shallower than the gashes in his side. Will cleans them easily, and soon he clears Mike to roll the leg of his jeans down again. Will seems to be on the edge of speaking, flicking his eyes over Mike’s face. 

“Mike,” he starts, hesitant. “I know it’s not fair to bring it up, since you thought I was a hallucination, but…”

Mike squeezes his eyes shut. Here it is, he thinks. He digs his nails into his palms and attempts to control his breathing. He opens his eyes to Will staring at him, brow drawn in concern. Or disgust. Mike pushes the thought away.

“No, go ahead. It’s… go ahead,” he repeats. It isn’t fine. He feels like crawling back through a gate to avoid this conversation. But he owes it to Will. You’ve been lying to us this whole time, Vecna-Will sneers in his mind, and it was true. He’s a liar, and a hypocrite, and worse.

Will’s frown deepens as if he can feel Mike’s reluctance. “Okay. Stop me if you want to. Or need to.” He looks down where his hands are twisting the roll of gauze. “What you said… Did Vecna show you visions of me?” 

Mike clears his throat. “Yeah.” 

“And did he— well, you said… he showed you your dad calling you…”

Mike nods, a stiff jerk of his head. His pulse is loud in his ears. 

“I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but I doubt that was much of a stretch for him. No offense. But… if he… I want you to know that, if Vecna showed you a vision of me, saying those things to you, I want you to know that I wouldn’t.” Will looks up and meets his eye, and Mike blinks, taken aback by Will’s sudden intensity. “You know my own dad, and half the town, they call me that. So I get it, if you’re worried that they think you’re…” Will’s voice falters, and his sudden confidence shrinks as he folds in on himself, hunching his shoulders forward. Mike feels suddenly lost.

“Maybe it’s the blood loss, Will, but you’re not making a ton of sense.”

Will snorts a laugh. “Sorry. I know. All of this stuff with Vecna, it’s bringing up a lot of shit I thought I had buried.”

“Yeah, of course,” Mike says, “I get that.” Nerves make his hands unsteady, and he shoves them under his thighs to hide their shaking. 

Will sighs. “I’m just gonna say it.” 

Mike’s heart leaps to his throat. “Okay.” 

“If Vecna showed you that because you’re… I don’t care if you’re into guys,” he says finally. Mike just stares at him, stunned. “Or— I care, because I care about you,” he continues. His ears are bright red. “But I won’t judge you, and I’d never call you those things. I mean—” Will cuts himself off with a manic laugh. Mike is starting to worry that the Upside Down had poisoned both of them. “It’d be pretty hypocritical if I did.” 

“It’d be— what?” Mike’s voice is hysterical to his own ears. Maybe he is still hallucinating.

Will finally looks up, and Mike’s breath catches at the fervent emotion in his eyes. “I’m gay, Mike. I mean, you must know that already.” 

“How could I have?” Mike looks at Will, trying to sense if he was lying. If he was trying to make Mike feel less embarrassed for his deepest, darkest secret being revealed so messily. His mind rushes, thoughts tripping over each other. “El said you liked some girl in California— you were painting for her—”

Will makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat. “You mean the painting I gave you?” 

“Oh.” 

“Yeah, oh,” Will says. “But don’t worry about that. I know you don’t, I mean— it’s fine.” 

“Will. My past few days have been full of mind games, remember? My brain still hurts. Spell it out for me, please?” 

Will rolls his eyes, but the corner of his mouth turns up in a small, fond smile. “You can’t play that card forever.” He grows quiet, and sets aside the roll of gauze he’s destroyed with his nervous fidgeting. “You were the girl I liked.” 

Mike is so lightheaded he’s sure he’s going to pass out. “‘Were’?” 

Will exhales roughly but doesn’t say anything. He stares down at his hands, which are clenched together, knuckles white. 

“Remember lunch, like forever ago, I was talking to Lucas about how to ask someone out?” Mike asks softly. “And he kept bugging me about who the girl was?” Will nods once, sharply. He’s still not looking at Mike. He reaches out and gently puts a finger under Will’s chin, tilting his head up until their eyes meet. “You’re him,” Mike whispers. 

“Oh,” Will whispers. 

“Yeah, oh,” Mike echoes, unable to fight the smile that’s threatening to take over his face. “I had a whole plan. I don’t know if I was ever actually going to act on it, but...” He trails off, taking in Will’s amazed expression. 

Will’s eyes flick down to his lips and back up, and Mike finds himself drawn closer, magnetized. His mind’s silent for once, lead by instinct instead of double-thinking every move. He leans down, keeping eye contact, and Will’s eyes widen. His pupils are blown, the hazel of his iris hardly visible, and Mike feels a rush of satisfaction knowing that he’s the cause. Will tilts his head up, his nose brushing Mike’s cheek, and Mike closes the distance between them and brushes their lips together. 

It’s shy, chaste, before Will melts into the kiss, his hands coming up to rest on Mike’s knees. Something clicks in place in Mike’s chest, a feeling of rightness, of surety. He presses deeper into the kiss, lightly biting Will’s lower lip. 

Will’s hands skate lightly up his thighs and onto his hips, slowly moving upwards. Mike hisses at a flash of pain when Will touches his ribs, and Will hums an apology into his mouth before raising his hands and cupping Mike’s jaw. Will’s thumb brushes his cheek, and his skin buzzes from the contact. He deepens the kiss, angling his head to get closer, closer. He slides a hand over the back of Will’s neck to angle his head in kind, and Will responds immediately, opening his mouth to Mike. Time drags, sweet and slow as molasses, as Mike focuses solely on getting Will to repeat the soft sound he made when he first licked into his mouth. 

Will draws back to catch his breath, and Mike unconsciously chases him, leaning forward to rest their foreheads together. 

“You’re incredible,” Mike whispers. 

Will presses a kiss on Mike’s cheek, before moving across his face to kiss his forehead, his nose, his chin.

“Hi,” Mike laughs, “can I help you?”

“I’m trying to get all of your freckles,” Will murmurs. He brushes a finger across Mike’s cheek. “They’re pretty.” Mike can only stare at him, this beautiful boy who, by some crazy shred of luck, called Mike pretty. He pulls Will against him and feels Will’s smile. 

They startle apart at the sound of loud knocking on the bathroom door, jolting them back into reality.

“Did you guys drown in there?” someone calls from the other side of the door.

Mike leans his forehead on Will’s shoulder. For a moment, he forgot about their friends and family right outside. Even if they had any idea about the quietly world-shattering revelation that they’ve just experienced— his stomach drops at just the thought— the impending apocalypse won’t hold. He groans, newly aggravated at their circumstances, and feels Will laugh beneath him. His fingers lightly come up to play with the hair at the nape of Mike’s neck. 

They bang on the door again, and Mike sits up. “Coming! Jesus, I’m never almost-dying again if this is how I get treated,” he says, yanking the door open. 

Hopper stares at him from the doorway, unimpressed.

“Unbelievable,” Mike grumbles under his breath. “I’m cursed.” 

“What was that, kid?” Hopper frowns down at him. 

Laughter threatens to bubble up his throat, and Mike coughs to dispel it. “Nothing!” Behind him, Will presses his hand against his back, and a shock runs up Mike’s spine at the touch.

“Sorry, Hopper,” Will says, his best disarming smile on. “Mike’s a tough patient. C’mon,” he directs to Mike, pulling him out of the doorway by his elbow.

They join everyone else in the main foyer of the Squawk. Dustin stands by the glass of the DJ booth, marker in hand, and the rest of the group are scattered across the couches. Hopper sits next to Joyce, gruffly muttering something to her that makes her smile. 

“Finally,” Dustin grouses, and doesn’t wait a second more before he launches into an explanation of Brenner’s notes. Mike and Will walk around the couches and stand by the windows. From across the room, El watches them with a contemplative look on her face. She looks between the two of them and gives Will a lightning-quick thumbs-up, a small smile here-and-gone-again in an instant as she redirects her attention to what Dustin’s explaining. 

Mike watches the blush crawl up Will’s cheeks. “All good?” he whispers, leaning down. He shifts closer so that his shoulder brushes against Will’s.  

Dustin clears his throat obnoxiously loud. “Hey, peanut gallery? Shut up unless you want to get sucked into infinite spacetime.”

Mike straightens and fixes an attentive expression on his face. He feels Will shift as he nods next to him. When Dustin turns back to the figure he’s drawing, Will whispers, “What’s he talking about?”

“I have no idea,” Mike admits. “I’m not paying attention.”

Will looks at him, a smug smile on his face. “Distracted?”

“Leagues beyond.” 

Later, once Dustin’s lecture is over and the crew has exhausted all their questions, Hopper disbands them to organize their supplies and refuel. Mike catches the rattled look he sends Joyce and knows that his brusque orders are partially to give himself more time to come up with a plan. 

El goes back to their makeshift kitchen to eat, and the rest of the group stay in the main foyer, taking inventory and sorting through Murray’s last delivery. 

Mike orbits Will as he drifts around the station, examining the desks that are dotted throughout. 

“What are you looking for?” he asks eventually, once Will has tested and discarded seven different pens. 

“I need to draw,” Will replies slowly, distracted, “while it’s fresh in my mind.”

“Something you saw?” 

Will hums in agreement and finally finds a pen he likes, grabbing whatever papers litter the desk. He wanders to a table that’s mostly clear of clutter and sets the paper down. “Vecna’s lair, I think. It was… there were bodies on the walls.” 

Mike twists his mouth in sympathy. “I’m sure that wasn’t fun to see.” 

“Not worse than seeing you get taken,” Will says, voice quiet with regret. He begins to draw, sketching curving walls and sharp edges. While he works, Mike circles the room again. He doesn’t see Steve in front of him until they almost collide, and Mike tears his eyes away from Will, where he’s been staring the whole time. 

“His visions are pretty handy, huh?” Steve says, craning his neck around Mike to look at Will. “Knowing about the attack before it happens. Anything to avoid another knock-down drag-out fight with a Demogorgon is great in my books.” 

There’s a beat of silence, and Mike abruptly realizes he has to respond. His mind is a million miles from the room. “You’re telling me. I already lost once.” Mike rubs his arms absently and continues pacing the room.

He hovers around the different groups, unsure of what to do or where he’s needed. When he passes the kitchen, he makes brief eye contact with Eleven over the sandwich she’s eating before he shuffles away. He knows he needs to talk to her; he needs to thank her for saving his life, again, but sharp shame fills his core when he considers stopping. He doesn’t know how much she heard, and he can’t bring himself to find out just yet. 

He ends up back by Will’s side again and examines his progress. His drawing is jagged, frenzied, an open jaw of sharp teeth. It reminds Mike of that horrible fall (when was the last good one?), when the Byers’ home was covered in Will’s possessed drawings of the tunnels. There’s an energy to Will’s movements now that are similar to back then, and Mike’s stomach turns over. He can’t let that happen again; that won’t happen again. 

“…Hello? Earth to Wheeler? God, I almost miss when you two were fighting,” Steve gripes, waving a hand in front of Mike’s face. 

A chorus of “I don’t!” comes from behind them. 

Mike forces his eyes up. Will glances up, briefly, before returning to his drawing with glazed-over eyes. Mike crosses his arms to stop himself from laying a hand on Will’s shoulder.

“What, Harrington?”

Steve hands him a sweatshirt, a bright red crewneck with the WSQK logo on it. “Here,” he says. “And go lay down or something.”

Mike raises his eyebrows. “I’m fine,” he says, but takes the sweatshirt.

“You’re falling asleep standing up.” Steve glances behind him, where Dustin, Jonathan, and Nancy are preoccupied with sorting ammo. He lowers his voice and says, “And take Byers with you.” Mike opens his mouth to argue, but Steve cuts him off. “He looks like he’s gonna pass out.”

Mike bites his lip, debating with himself. He almost forgot, but Will had just been back to the Upside Down again for the first time since he was a kid. “Okay,” Mike agrees, eyeing Steve warily. 

“What? I pay attention,” Steve says, tapping the side of nose and winking conspiratorially.

Mike scrunches his face. “You spend too much time with Robin.” 

Steve heaves a long-suffering sigh. “Yeah, don’t I know it.” He turns and jumps over the back of the couch, landing on top of Dustin. Mike ignores the ensuing scuffle and taps Will’s shoulder. He blinks up at Mike, disoriented. 

“C’mon, Will,” Mike says softly. 

“Sorry,” he says, voice hazy as if he was coming out of a dream. 

Mike shakes his head to brush away the apology. “Apparently I’m dead weight, and we’ve been exiled.”

Mike leads Will through the station, stopping at the threshold of the hidden basement steps.

“Wake us up when you hear from Lucas!” he calls down the hallway. “The second you hear anything!” 

Nancy just waves a hand in dismissal without looking up. 

Mike looks at Will. “It’s like I’m ten years old again.”

“Welcome to my world,” Will drawls. “They’re not going to wake us up, you know.” 

Mike rolls his eyes. “I know. They keep looking at me like I’m going to fall apart.” 

They make their way through the bookcase-door and down the basement steps. The projector is still set up, the table laden with maps and papers, frozen in time from the last crawl. There’s really only one place for them to sleep: the lone couch, pushed against the far wall. Mike’s back aches just looking at it, but he’s so tired that he can’t bring himself to care. He nudges Will in the direction of the couch when he doesn’t move from the foot of the stairs. 

Will hesitates. “If someone comes down—”

“At this point, Will, let them. It’s cold down here and they banished us. Besides, we used to share a bed all the time.” 

Will raises his eyebrows. “When we were six,” he says, but Mike can tell that he’s won him over. Will sits on the couch and slides bonelessly down until his head hits the back cushion. 

“If anyone says something, I’ll claim that we have to be close in case you have another vision. Plausible deniability. And we could always… loop someone in,” Mike says, fidgeting with the cuff of his sweatshirt. The words feel like taking a sledgehammer to this delicate, new thing between them, but he wants Will to know that the option’s there, should he want it.

Will inhales deeply and exhales through his teeth. “Eventually.”

“Eventually,” Mike agrees. “When this is all over.” 

He flops onto the couch next to Will, who slants a look at him. “Will this be over?” he asks. 

“Yes,” Mike says, projecting a confidence he’s not quite sure he feels. 

Will’s eyes track over his face, weighing his tone. Satisfied with whatever he reads there, he sighs and settles back into the couch. Mike glances in the direction of the stairs, checking that they’re still alone, before he leans close and presses a quick kiss to Will’s cheek. He’s rewarded by the blush that travels up Will’s neck as he turns his head to face Mike, tilting up to brush their lips together briefly. Mike smiles and knocks their foreheads together before drawing back. 

He elbows Will, and when he gets only a groan in response he puts a hand on Will’s shoulder and directs him to lay down. Mike shifts so that he’s sandwiched between Will and the couch; they lay parallel. It’s a tight fit, and they both need to scrunch their legs up, but Will gradually relaxes. The tension melts from his shoulders, and Mike presses his lips to the top of his head. Giddiness fills him, warming his chest. He’s allowed to want this; he’s allowed to touch without worrying about giving himself away. He’s already laid his heart bare, and Will accepted it. Mike never let himself imagine what it would be like, if Will returned his feelings— he never let himself imagine anything but having a blurry future wife and two-point-five-kids— but now that he knows, he lets his mind run wild, thinking of what could be. He tucks his head so that his nose presses into the nape of Will’s neck. In front of him, Will gently hooks a leg under Mike’s, and reaches back searchingly. Mike hums into Will’s neck in question when he hits his shoulder. 

“Hand,” Will says, voice heavy with exhaustion.

“What happened to plausible deniability,” Mike mumbles, but reaches up anyway. Electricity dances up his arm when Will interlaces their fingers.

“Screw plausible deniability.” Will pulls Mike’s hand up and gives it a featherlight kiss before settling, holding his hand over his chest. Mike can feel Will’s ribs expand with every breath. He matches the rhythm, and soon slips into an easy, dreamless sleep.