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It’s later, when they’ve gone over a symphony of a plan, one that includes fire and Metallica and a sawed-off shotgun and salt being carried to the bathroom, that Will finds himself in the kitchen, chugging a glass of water like his life depends on it.
It does nothing to soothe the ongoing, anxious feeling in the pit of his stomach, some unknown voice that keeps whispering to him that their plan won’t work, that, no matter how hard they try, Vecna will win, they will lose. And what will be left of them, then?
It’s not something Will likes to think about, but in times like these, when it’s staring him dead in the eye, he can’t help but spiral.
It would’ve helped to have some company. It would’ve helped to have someone. Anyone.
Mike.
But he’s busy. They’re all busy. Will always feels like he’s waiting around for something to happen, lately.
Everyone else is paired off, occupied in some sense or another. There is still the white noise of scratchy strumming from where Eddie practices a complicated tune in the living room, electric guitar unplugged. Steve, Robin, and Dustin had all left to grab dinner, a three-man job when all of them had felt useless at the cabin. Jonathan had gone off with Nancy to grab more supplies for their weaponry, too restless to do anything else.
He’s sure Lucas and Max were somewhere else in the cabin, probably catching up and taking this chance before battle to say the things they haven’t already. Mike and El are most likely in the same boat, remedying their relationship that had gone through the wringer in California. Will doesn’t linger on them.
It leaves him alone and in the kitchen, empty glass in hand. Once upon a time, he would have had someone. Now, though, not so much. His head is still pounding.
Will feels inexplicably lonely, suddenly.
It’s on a whim when he heads to the front door, not quite hungry nor in the mood to go looking for company. Some fresh air will do him some good, hopefully. His mother would recommend it, if she were here. He absently wonders what she’ll think when she arrives to a disaster of a home.
He’s barely a few steps away from the front door when he hears, “Byers, right?”
Will stops where he stands, arm almost raised for the doorknob, and turns to look at Eddie, who has taken a break from his guitar. He’s got a leg propped up on the coffee table, bent upward where he leans forward with his guitar in his lap. He looks like a caricature of teenage rebellion. Will would almost be intimidated, if not for the world ending tomorrow.
He forgot Eddie was in here. To think he would’ve gotten away with leaving without anyone noticing.
Will nods. “Yeah. Will Byers.”
Eddie raises an eyebrow, gaze sticking to him as an unfamiliar look flits onto his face, raising a hand to point, wrist turned upward, almost beckoning. “I’ve heard that name.”
The same, uncomfortable feeling from so many years crawls up his spine, and he breathes out a sigh. “Yeah. I – I was on the news a few times.”
Both eyebrows go up at that. “I was referring to Wheeler’s constant praises about Will the Wise, actually.” Will can’t help it when blood rushes to his cheeks, both at the embarrassment at accidentally exposing himself, as well as the – the prospect of Mike even remembering Will while he’d been in California. He can barely find it in him to be bitter that they’d all joined another party. “What’s this about you being on the news? Your D&D skills that legendary?”
Will huffs a light laugh, shaking his head. “No, no, I – I went missing, a few years ago, and people thought I was dead before –”
“You’re the kid who came back to life!” Eddie recognizes, volume raised just a little, before he quiets down. “Holy shit, you’re that Will Byers?”
“Well, I don’t really know any other Will Byers,” Will mumbles, fidgeting, and Eddie laughs, easygoing. He doesn’t know what he was expecting, exactly, but it was much different than this. He’s not difficult to talk to; on the contrary, really, he’s welcoming. Will can see why his friends had been so quick to get attached to him.
Eddie puts his hands up in surrender. “Well, you’ve got me there. Can’t say I can really match that sort of fame, but maybe you’ve heard of me? Eddie Munson?” He points to himself, thumbs raised, as if there could be anyone else he was referring to.
He introduces himself like Will doesn’t know his name already, whether it be the scarce letters he’d received from almost everyone but Mike, or the fact they’d been in close proximity since the middle of yesterday.
“Lucas and them mentioned you before,” Will nods, before he makes a face. “And it’s not – I’m not famous. Not the good kind, anyway,” he mutters, just a little too revealing, and it’s quiet, but heard anyway in the silent room.
Eddie shrugs. “Well, if I came back from the dead, I’d carry that sort of badge around everywhere. The Boy Who Came Back to Life!” He brandishes, raises his arms to motion them, theatrical and dramatic, and Will can tell he makes a great DM. Will’s lips raise in a smile, but doesn’t let himself look too impressed. Eddie glances back at him, grinning. “What? Not a fan?”
Will shakes his head. “You make it sound much cooler.”
Eddie tilts his head questioningly, and pats the seat next to him, Will still hovering near the door. “Well, then, what title did you get, pray tell?”
Will shuffles over to take a seat. “It’s not as fun.”
“Come on,” Eddie nudges at him, elbow to Will’s side, and he grins. “Let me hear it.”
Will presses his lips together before letting his gaze drop to the coffee table. “I, uh, I got Zombie Boy.” His hands hold at his own thighs, nervous, and the name Zombie Boy is something he hasn’t heard in a year. Lenora was mercifully ignorant like that.
There is a silence that settles, for just a moment, and Will figures this is why he never talks to new people. He always, inevitably, brings the mood down, no matter how intentionally. Then again, Eddie did ask. But still. He couldn’t have known. Maybe he had thought it’d be something cooler, much more –
“Dude,” Eddie interrupts his inner spiel, and when Will looks up, he looks not a bit affected, if not a little more hyped up, for some strange reason. “That’s metal as hell! Come on,” he leans over, like sharing a secret, “definitely solid competition against Eddie “The Freak” Munson.”
“I – really?” Will questions, a little flabbergasted. This sort of excitement had not been what he was expecting. He’d been expecting the complete opposite, in fact, maybe a recoil and the awkwardness that he often gets whenever people remember the smokey past that haunts him.
Eddie seems undeterred. “Are you kidding? I’d shove that in everyone’s faces! I mean,” he gestures vaguely, “compared to the rest of these clowns? It’d be an honor to be Zombie Boy. Way better than prom king.” He makes a face, and Will can’t help but laugh.
It feels so nice to laugh about it, as though the name hadn’t chased him throughout his younger years, taunting him through anonymous letters and whispers throughout the halls. Eddie says it in a way Will has never heard it. Like a prize. An honor. An accomplishment.
Will’s hands fiddle where they rest in his lap. “What about you?”
Eddie pauses where he’d begun picking at his guitar again. “What about me?”
“Why do people call you ‘The Freak’?” He raises his hands to quote. Eddie throws it around like a middle name, something Will should know him by. Maybe he would, if he’d made it to Hawkins High. As it is, all Will has ever heard has been praises.
“Kid,” Eddie tilts his head forward, face straight, and his hands gesture to himself with no grandiosity, “come on. Just look at me.”
And, well. When he says it like that, hand waving towards his hair, his tattoo so apparent on his arm, the various pins and rings he adorns, no wonder the little bubble that is Hawkins, Indiana had attached such a name to him. Will can’t help but be a little impressed, really.
He’d ditched his too colorful clothes, and tried his best to fit back into his broken shell. It hadn’t worked, but he had tried. Eddie doesn’t seem to try. The way he carries himself appears effortless. It makes Will all too aware of his hunched shoulders, how he’s a little nervous all the time, just barely at ease even in his own home. He rolls his shoulders back.
“I’d vote you for prom king,” Will says, and Eddie falls back in laughter.
“I see why your friends talk about you so much,” Eddie smoothly mentions, as if it doesn’t rock Will’s entire world to imagine that he matters enough to mention, as if he doesn’t disappear from existence when he’s not around. At Will’s surprised look, Eddie shakes his head. “You have no idea, Byers, you really don’t. Every campaign, it’s always Will would’ve done this or Will would know what to do or whatever else.” He taps a finger against his guitar. “I heard you’ve got a great character costume.”
Will feels himself flush in the face. “Oh, God.”
It’s surprising they’d even think about him, when he had begged and pleaded to play D&D during his last summer here. It had almost made him think he was the problem, when he had found out about them joining another party. Those thoughts hadn’t really gone away, but they quieted at Eddie’s words.
“You know what?” Eddie sits up a little straighter, guitar in his left hand, and he places both feet on the ground, facing Will properly. “After we save the world, you owe me a campaign. I wanna hear about this famed Will the Wise.”
He puts out a hand, hovering in the space between them, and Will, for the first time since so long, feels a sudden surge of happiness, a weird excitement at the idea that, at the end of everything, he has something to look forward to.
Because he didn’t have one before this. Not really; it had been the expectation of going back to Lenora, or a slow move back to Hawkins, or something along those lines, but maybe being in Hawkins again wouldn’t be so bad, sitting next to Eddie “The Freak” Munson. Not when he makes it seem so easy.
Will shakes his hand. “Deal.”
Will Byers is nothing like how Eddie expects him to be.
Honestly, when the entire California gang, Wheeler included, had arrived, his eyes had more or less skimmed over all of them, before being introduced to them individually later. Will had shrunk away when they first met, blending into the background and looking vaguely pained as he sunk into the sofa.
Eddie only knows what happened to him later, through a very brief explanation from Dustin. Something about being kidnapped, missing for a week, being possessed, and now he’s got some sort of superpower of knowing Vecna’s feelings, or whatever the fuck. True Sight, Dustin had called it.
Well, then. He doesn’t blame the kid for looking so freaked out. If Eddie had made it out of this hellhole after experiencing all of that, he wouldn’t be so overjoyed to come back, either.
So when Byers stumbles into the living room, clearly headed for the front door, well. Maybe Eddie was a little intrigued.
This kid, looking like an average ninth grader, save for maybe the dark smudges under his eyes and the way he constantly fidgets – this kid looks nothing like what Eddie expects him to. He doesn’t look like someone that’s been through hell and back, countless times. He looks like he needs a long, long nap. Maybe some company.
Because ever since he’d gotten here, Eddie’s pretty sure he’s seen Byers entirely by himself, save for a few conversations here and there with Henderson and Sinclair. Wheeler, surprisingly, has spent absolutely no time with the other guy, which is shocking, for the fact that Eddie is pretty sure he’s heard more about Will the Wise, more than he’s heard of the girlfriend with superpowers. Which is to say, he has heard nothing of her.
Back to the point. Will has been alone every time Eddie has seen him. He clearly doesn’t gravitate to the comfort of community, doesn’t go looking for someone to talk to, doesn’t seem to care for it.
Eddie doesn’t get it. Ever since he’s been dragged into this, he’s mostly been sticking to Harrington and Buckley, who are swell company, sure, but even better when he considers the fact he definitely doesn’t want to spend any time alone during this. Eddie doesn’t get it.
And he doesn’t have to, he supposes. He doesn’t have to, but he calls out, “Byers, right?”
Will looks up, startled, and nods. “Yeah. Will Byers.”
And, alright.
He sees it.
He gets why the rest of the rugrats had been so quick to mention him in everything, how Henderson had been quick to praise Will Byers as this badass, this guy who fended off Demogorgans and the Mind Flayer by sheer willpower. He gets why.
The way Byers holds himself is one thing. A little uptight, and he doesn’t really let himself relax, and Eddie understands that. But then Eddie says something, and Will quips back a little snark, and it takes him to surprise.
He’s quick-witted. Entertaining. A tinge of genuine sweetness to counter it all. It almost makes Eddie want to hunt down anyone who has done anything to hurt this boy.
And maybe, maybe he sees something else in Will. Something that looks a lot like himself, sixteen and scared of his own thoughts. Maybe, just a little, Will Byers looks a little familiar.
Sue him, then, when Eddie starts keeping an eye on him.
It brings out the side of him that had recruited terrified freshmen as new Hellfire members, the side that’s always a little worried about Henderson, the side that sees Steve dote over the kids like a worried mother, and gets it.
So when the rest of the crew are chatting over lunch, sun high in the sky and shining through dusty windows, Eddie’s eyes wander over in a half-minded headcount, shoving down a string of panic when he counts one less person than he should.
Then he sees someone move outside the front porch window, and takes a deep breath. He grabs a slice of pizza, and gets up from his seat beside Henderson, who argues with Buckley about some film or another. Eddie had mostly been trying to shove down food as fast as possible without choking to remember.
Eddie quietly, or as quietly as he can manage, pushes open the screen door, and steps outside.
“Not a fan of pizza?”
Will looks up from where he sits on the steps, back turned and knees brought up, and there’s a sketchbook in front of him, where he turns the page just as Eddie looks at it. His hand holds a pencil.
He shrugs. “I wasn’t hungry.”
Eddie frowns, because breakfast had been hours ago. He walks over, inviting himself as he takes a seat next to him. “Well, you’ve gotta have something in your system.” He places the plate between them, but Will spares it no glance.
They sit in silence for a moment.
Eddie doesn’t really know how to deal with this, to be frank.
All the other kids – Henderson, Wheeler, Sinclair, they’re all quick to complain, easy to push out problems or whatever inconvenience was bothering them. He’s heard much about Sinclair’s loud neighbor, Henderson’s menace of a cat, Wheeler’s parents’ constant arguing. He knows about their issues. They’ve never hesitated to come to him to rant.
Clearly, Will isn’t the same.
“So,” Eddie begins, feeling painfully awkward. He doesn’t know how to do this. He’s never had to convince someone to tell him their problems. He doesn’t know why he cares so much, either, but screw it, maybe he cares for the boy. Just a little. Enough that it matters.
Will looks away from where he’d been staring at the woods, the looming trees, and raises an eyebrow at him. “So?”
“What’re you drawing?” Eddie asks instead. Jesus. He doesn’t know how people do this shit. He kind of wants to turn around and go back into the cabin. He couldn’t, though. Not in good consciousness.
Will offers a one-shoulder shrug. “Nothing, really. Was just sketching out the woods. I didn’t really know what to draw.”
Eddie knows art can be a private thing – hell, he himself is sometimes stingy with who can see him play alone, scratchy voice crooning out words only meant for his eyes. He knows that it’s not always meant for show.
Even so, he’s always spoken before thinking, so he asks, “Can I see?”
Will shrugs again, but it’s more nervous this time, when his fingers shake a little as he makes to turn back the page. “I – I guess. It’s not good, I mean, I was mostly just warming up, and it’s just a sketch, but it –”
Will turns the page, and Eddie raises his eyebrows, impressed.
In the middle, there’s a messy sketch of the landscape in front of them, knotted trees and leaf-covered grounds, but it’s accurate, more realistic than he expected, with the way Will had undersold himself. It’s nice. It’s better than people Will’s age are.
Other than that, there’s other sketches littered around the page. A soda can, shaded in accuracy. Red’s Walkman, with scribbled in details. A hand on a guitar. A small headshot of Eleven’s concentrated face, eyebrows furrowed and focus in her eyes. It’s realistic enough that Eddie recognizes her immediately, despite him never having seen such an expression on her. Not yet, at least.
“Dude,” Eddie begins over Will’s own rambling, “this is awesome!”
“It’s not very – what?” Will looks dumbfounded, too shocked for his liking, and Eddie can’t believe he doesn’t know.
“That looks just like her, man,” he hovers a finger over her face, “like, I’ve never even seen her pull that face and I knew that was her. You’ve got her face down scary good.”
“It’s – I’ve had a lot of practice,” Will waves off, pink in the cheeks, and Jesus, he’s really gotta work on his self-esteem issues, clearly. “Back in Lenora, she used to let me use her as a reference for facial expressions and stuff, it’s not really – it’s not that impressive, when you’ve got a bunch of practice.”
Eddie shakes his head. “No way, man, this is good. No amount of practice would get me here, even at my age, and you’re, what? Sixteen?”
Will shakes his head, bashful. “Fifteen.”
“Fifteen,” Eddie whistles, nudging Will’s arm, who looks moments away from imploding. “Come on, fifteen and that sort of skill? You’re gonna go far, I know it.”
Will doesn’t look completely convinced, but his face is fully pink now, and he’s stopped fidgeting as much. Eddie leans closer to look, the lines of graphite light on the page, and he pauses, for a moment, at one of the doodles, a hand strumming on a guitar.
The hand holds a guitar pick, pressed tightly between the index and thumb, but there’s a circular ring on the ring finger, familiar in its design, and Eddie checks his own right hand to double check.
“Is that,” Eddie begins, and it’d be a little embarrassing, to be wrong about this sort of thing, but he’s almost one hundred percent sure, “is that my hand?”
Will nods, fingers tightening around the edge of his sketchbook. “Yeah, I – I’m sorry, I’m not really good with hands or anything, it was just for practice, and – I should’ve asked, sorry.” He doesn’t meet Eddie’s eyes. “It’s weird, I know.”
Eddie gives him a disbelieving look. “No, man, that’s – you’ve really gotta stop doing that.”
Will looks like a deer in headlights. “Doing what?”
“Apologizing,” Eddie exclaims, leaning away, and he pokes at him, “you’ve gotta stop saying sorry all the time!” Will presses his lips together, eyes darting from the page to Eddie, as if he’s still waiting for some kind of reaction.
“I don’t –”
“Byers,” he interrupts, and gestures to the drawings. “This? This shit is awesome, alright? This is good, it’s genuinely impressive, and just ‘cause you’ve got a hard time believing it doesn’t mean it isn’t true. And it definitely doesn’t mean you should be apologizing for it.” At Will’s silence, he eggs on, “Come on, I mean, as far as I go, you would never have to apologize for drawing me. And especially when it’s as sick as that!”
He says it with full confidence, and it’s because it’s true; his hand does look awesome, his knuckles shaded in, bracelet dangling from his wrist, and the slight sight of his hand’s tendons outlined. It’s just his hand on a guitar, but it makes him feel good. Makes him feel like the artists he listens to, posters plastered on his walls. Makes him feel cool. Makes him feel cool as hell.
“Thanks,” Will mumbles, fidgeting with his pencil. “I – thanks.”
It’s clear whatever had been bothering him still clings onto him, apparent in his frame, hunched together, but he doesn’t look like he wants to curl up and die anymore, and that’s enough of a success in Eddie’s book. He knows when not to push.
He leans back, satisfied, if only for the moment.
Eddie nudges the plate of sliced pizza a little closer, unsubtle. Clears his throat incredibly loudly when Will just sits there. Pokes at the plate one last time.
Will rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling, and takes a bite.
It’s raining.
It’s coming down in thick sheets, pattering against the windows, but the cabin inside is warm, yet Will feels cold. He’s been feeling cold a lot, ever since he’s come back to Hawkins.
He can barely focus on that, though. Not right now, at least, when Mike had come stumbling through the front door about eight minutes ago.
He’d looked like a drowned cat, hair soaked and clearly having biked through the storm, his jacket doing nothing to protect him from the rain. His shirt had been dripping wet, and there’s wet steps leading to the hallway.
Will fidgets with his pencil. He keeps replaying the way Mike had burst through the door, Eddie jumping from where he sits. Mike had paid neither of them any mind, entirely disregarded Will, who he had glanced at, for just a moment, before he hurried into El’s room.
It’s not a big deal. It’s just too reminiscent of last summer.
He curls his hands into the couch cushion, and looks up to the ceiling. To where they’ve poorly patched up a hole from last summer, when the Mind Flayer had struck through the wood, and it’s fixed enough to keep the rain out, but it’s barely functionable. He doubts it’ll last another storm.
Will doesn’t know why he ever expects anything to change. He shouldn’t – not with Mike. Not with Mike Wheeler, extraordinaire of hating change.
Will glances back to El’s door. They’re probably making out or something. Jesus. He wrinkles his nose at the thought.
He sighs, and tries to get back to his sketchbook.
He loves drawing, loves art in general, he does, but to be entirely honest, he doesn’t really want to draw anything right now. There’s simply not much to do in the cabin, not when they’re still scrambling to figure out what to do about Vecna. He doesn’t really have the energy to do much else, anyway. He’s been tired recently. Really tired.
When he glances at Eddie, lightning flashing through the window behind him, he’s already staring at Will.
Will stares back. “What?”
“Nothing,” he muses, high-pitched at the end, although it doesn’t seem like nothing; his eyebrows are drawn close together in thought, and he has his fingers on his guitar, tapping rhythmically.
He still has bandages wrapped around his middle from the Demobats, hair bunched up at the neck while his head rests on the couch. Will had nearly strangled him when he’d come back. For all that Eddie likes to reprimand Will’s own self-deprecating habits, he sure was a hypocrite. They still had their campaign to play.
Will squints at him, and Eddie suddenly sits up, leaning close like he does.
He talks like he’s about to share the biggest secret in the world when he asks, “You ever heard of my friend Dorothy, Byers?”
Will blinks. He’s only known one Dorothy in his life, and that was back in Lenora, a girl in his art class that once complimented a painting of his. Still, he uselessly asks, “Dorothy who?”
Eddie sighs at that, slumps his shoulders like he’s disappointed, and leans back. He keeps staring at Will, for a second, and then says, “Nevermind.”
Will frowns. “Okay.”
Eddie is weird like that, sometimes, saying things like a secret, looking strangely disappointed when Will replies, presumably with something he didn’t want to hear. He’d feel bad, if he knew what he was supposed to feel bad for. It’s not his fault he doesn’t know of Eddie’s mysterious friend.
Nonetheless, the subject is dropped, and Eddie goes back to mindlessly picking at his guitar, maybe in the same fashion Will stares at his sketchbook, both of them occupying themselves, just on the edge of complete boredom. It makes sense, he supposes. He finds that they’re more similar than he had realized.
They sit in silence together, as Will keeps his eyes to the page in front of him, blank and empty. He doesn’t feel like drawing, not right now. His chest feels like a hurricane, a mess of everything stirring in his head. He hates it. It’s too much to focus on, but it begs for his attention.
He’s all too aware of the closed door in the hallway. He hates it. He hates caring.
He shouldn’t. He shouldn’t care. El is his sister. Mike is his friend. Best friend. He shouldn’t have these sorts of feelings.
“Wanna hear about my first kiss?”
Will startles out of thought, head whipping up to look at Eddie. “What?”
“I was sixteen,” he says, continuing without an answer, “a late bloomer, you could say. I was packing up after a concert, if you could call it that, since the crowd mostly consisted of eight people.” He keeps tapping his fingers on his guitar. His left hand wraps around the neck of the guitar, the metal of his rings clicking. “One of my best friends had come to see it, which meant a lot to me, you know, for obvious reasons.” He clicks his tongue. “So I repaid them.”
There’s a pause, as Will digests the incredibly riveting story. Out of everything Eddie has ever shared to Will about his life, this may be the most uneventful, even if it was his first kiss. He can’t figure out why he’d said it.
Eddie raises a hand, adding, “With a kiss. Obviously.” As if it wasn’t already clear.
If Will didn’t know him, he’d say Eddie almost sounded nervous. Why, he couldn’t even begin to put it together.
Will is so, so confused. “Um. Okay,” he replies, at a loss. A beat passes. “Why are you telling me this?”
Eddie looks away from him, and stares up at the ceiling. At the patched up hole in the corner.
He shrugs. “Just thought you’d like to hear about him.”
Him.
Will nearly falls out of his seat.
“What do – what?” Will keeps blinking, keeps staring at Eddie, who keeps staring up at the ceiling. There’s static in his brain, like his mind had melted out his ears, and Will can’t help but keep repeating, “what do you – when, I mean, what – how did you – why are you – what?”
He finally catches onto a word, but it’s not even a question, more of an exclamation than anything, and it falls empty, and he can’t look away from Eddie.
Eddie looks at him, raising an eyebrow, and Will can feel his insides twisting up, unraveling and unbecoming, yet knotting and suffocating him all the same. Something new growing out of something old.
He has so much to say. All of it falls short.
He takes a deep breath, and it untangles, just a little. “What do you mean?”
Eddie shrugs again. “Doesn’t have to mean anything if you don’t want it to.”
But it does. It means so much, it almost means more than the world, at this very moment, and Will looks down at his trembling hands, the past ten years of his life, his heart thundering in his chest, and swallows. “No, I – I’m just confused, I think.” He twists the cloth of his shirt. “So – so you’re –”
“Into guys, yeah,” Eddie finishes for him, sighing as he slouches further into the couch, and he finally pays Will some mercy. “Byers, you look like you’re about to die from thinking so much.”
“Sorry,” he replies, instinctual, but cringes when Eddie gives him a knowing look. “I just – I just want to ask, I guess, I don’t even know what I – well, I know, but I don’t – I’ve never let myself think about it, I guess, is what I’m saying, which sounds stupid but I don’t know, and you – you say it so easily, I don’t –”
“Byers,” Eddie interrupts, a small smile when he says, “breathe.”
Right. Breathe. Air was something that he did, in fact, need to live. “Sorry, I’m just –”
“Take your time,” Eddie grins, and it’s reassuring, light, as if what they’re talking about isn’t maybe the heaviest thing Will has ever carried. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Will can feel the anxiousness leave him, and maybe he had thought this was a strange fever dream, twisting and turning under him and carrying him along like a turbulent tide, but he pinches himself discreetly, just once, just to make sure. It stings his arm. Eddie is still there, tapping on his guitar. Rhythmic. Steady. Constant.
He lets himself breathe.
“I –”
“Will?”
Both Eddie and Will jump, turning to the hallway, where Mike stands, hair still wet, and pink in the face. His eyes are a little teary, and his shirt is soaked through from the rain. El is nowhere to be seen.
Will stares at him. “Yeah?”
Mike looks sheepish when he rubs a hand against his nape, clearly oblivious to what he’d interrupted, and he asks, “Can we, uh, can we talk?”
It makes him jump to conclusions, take a leap of faith he shouldn’t. Even so, this is the first time Mike has attempted to have a one-on-one conversation with him since they’d arrived in Hawkins, and Will can feel his hopes rising.
Will should know better by now, stop hoping for happy endings that don’t exist.
But – then Eddie had said him, and it makes Will wonder, for just a moment, if maybe he’s allowed to hope, just once, just for this. Just for this one thing.
Eddie exists effortlessly. Maybe he could, too.
“Alone?” Mike adds, fidgeting with his hands. Something new.
“Um,” Will answers, and turns to Eddie.
The man waves him off. “Don’t worry about me,” Eddie replies, picking idly at his guitar strings as he watches Will stand up, uncertain. He lifts his guitar a bit. “I’ve got her to keep me company.”
“Are – are you sure?” Will asks, just to double check. He takes one last glance at Mike, who looks back, unwavering. He still looks good, dripping in rainwater. Will drags his eyes away, and looks at Eddie.
“Go on, young padawan,” Eddie grins, fingers tapping. Constant. “I’m not going anywhere.”