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Argyle drove the pizza van, head bopping along to the same two cassettes they’d been listening to since they left Lenora, while Jonathan softly snored in the passenger seat. Will glanced between them, double checking that neither of them were paying attention, particularly his brother, before he slowly slid closer to Mike.
“Hey,” Will whispered. Mike snapped out of whatever reverie he’d been in and looked over at Will.
“Yeah?” Mike asked, just as quietly.
Will leaned in a little closer. “The next time we pull over, I’m gonna need your help with something.”
Mike’s brow furrowed. “What’s going on, Will?”
“Look, I really need to make a phone call but I don’t think Jon would let me if I asked, and if I ask and he says no, he’s going to be watching me like a hawk,” Will admitted. “It’s important.”
“I mean, all the phones in Hawkins are probably tapped by the same assholes who are after El. They’ll know the second we call anyone,” Mike said. Their eyes glanced furtively at the front seat when Jonathan sighed in his sleep before they looked back at each other.
Will shook his head. “Not Hawkins,” he said. “Lenora.”
Eyes widening, Mike asked, “Who?”
Will bit his lip. Sure, Mike knew he was gay in theory, but other than a clumsy kiss shared with Mike after Mike showed up at his house crying the night of the 8th grade Snow Ball because he hadn’t liked kissing El. After Will had calmed him down, Mike asked if he could kiss Will to see if he liked boys instead. Nursing a bit of a crush on his best friend, Will agreed and, while it was nice, it hadn’t been the mind blowing thing he’d always imagined kissing to be and he could tell by Mike’s reaction that he hadn’t felt much of anything at all.
“Maybe you just don’t get feelings for anyone,” Will said, gently petting Mike’s hair as he leaned his head on Will’s shoulder.
Mike’s head had popped off Will’s shoulder and his eyes were wide as he looked at Will. “Is that real, not like anyone?”
Will shrugged. “I don’t see why not. Some people like boys or girls or both, so I’m sure there are people that like no one like that. It’s okay if you don’t like anyone, Mike. You’re always going to be my best friend no matter what.”
“Yeah?” Mike asked, considerably happier.
“‘Course! Nothing is going to change that.”
Mike smiled. “Cool.”
“Cool,” Will echoed. “Um, actually, I’m not exactly normal either ‘cause I…I like boys like Lonnie and Troy always said.”
“Lonnie and Troy and all those other mouth breathers just say that shit to be mean to you. They don’t care if you’re actually gay or not,” Mike insisted. “But there’s nothing wrong with being gay. I’m always going to be your best friend too, Will.”
Sure, it hurt a bit to know Mike hadn’t enjoyed kissing him and would never like Will back, but it was hardly the end of their friendship. If anything, their friendship became stronger for it because they could share things with each other they didn’t feel comfortable sharing with anyone else yet. It hurt, but Mike’s unconditional support meant the world.
“My boyfriends,” Will replied.
Mike’s eyebrows shot up. “Boyfriends? As in more than one? Damn, Byers, I’m impressed.”
Flushing, Will fought a grin and said, “Eddie and Richie. They kind of came as a package deal. They’ve known each other about as long as we have and were already dating when I met them.”
“No, I really am impressed,” Mike insisted. “Pulling a couple really is impressive.”
Will swatted his friend’s arm. “Anyway, they had to take the PSATs on Saturday and then work most of the weekend, so I planned to introduce you guys today, you know, if we were still in Lenora. Only I just realized I never told them not to come over and they’re going to show up at my shot up house and not have a clue what happened. They might have already showed up if they called a few times since we left and no one answered. Someone could be watching the house and I don’t want them on the government’s radar.”
“Shit, no, that would be bad,” Mike agreed.
“I…well, I think they went through some bad shit back in Maine before they moved to Lenora. I don’t know if it was the same kind of thing we keep dealing with, but it wasn’t normal. They mentioned missing kids when I mentioned my disappearance once, but their town had dozens of them, including their friend’s little brother. And something about homicidal clowns?”
Mike squinted. “That’s weird.”
“Yeah,” Will agreed. “It didn’t feel right to ask when I wasn’t telling them things too. When they came over, they could tell there was something my family all knew that they didn’t. Richie and Eddie never called me on it though. We agreed to open up about things after we knew each other longer, but I can’t just let them worry about me like that, you know? It’s cruel.”
Mike grabbed Will’s hand and laced their fingers together the way they did when they were younger. “No, you’re totally right, Will. You can’t do that to them, not if you love them.”
“I know it’s kind of early, but I do love them,” Will said, no longer fighting a smile. “If the end of the world doesn’t fuck things up, I could see it being the real deal.”
“That’s amazing, Will,” Mike said, squeezing his hand. “And when you someday get a house with your lovers, I still get a room, right? That was the agreement.”
“Obviously! We’ll need the free childcare from Uncle Mike once we start having kids. Duh!” Will said, giggling.
“Sounds good to me,” Mike said. “I’m not having kids of my own, so I’m relying on you and Nancy and Holly and the rest of the Party to bring up the next generation for me to spoil.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about them before,” Will said. “I wasn’t trying to hide them from you. It just felt like such a big thing that I wanted to tell you about them in person.”
“Hey, I’m not mad, okay? I mean, yeah, I wish you’d told me about it earlier but honestly, who you tell about who you’re dating is your business.” Smirking, Mike added, “I know you would have told me before I got the wedding invitation in the mail.”
“Oh, fuck you,” Will said snickering.
“What’re you guys laughing at?” Jonathan sleepily asked, making both Will and Mike jump. Jon looked back at them, still blinking sleep from his eyes.
“Oh, um, Mike’s just been telling me about the campaign Hellfire just finished up. Apparently, Erica subbed in for Lucas because he had a basketball game and she totally saved the day,” Will said, thinking back to what Mike had told him Saturday night in Will’s room. He felt bad about lying to his brother but he knew he’d feel even worse if Eddie and Richie ended up hurt because of him.
“Nice,” Jon said, smiling at them. “Look, we’re going to have to fuel up soon, so we might want to stock up on snacks too.” He turned back around in his seat.
“Sounds good, Jon.”
Mike leaned back in. “When we get there, I’ll distract him in the store while you call your boyfriends, okay?”
Will smiled at his best friend, the boy who Will may have loved in another life. In this one, Will was happy having Mike as his best friend. “Thank you.”
“Anything for you, Byers,” Mike said, elbowing Will’s arm.
“Crazy together,” Will said, elbowing him back.
“Crazy together.”
*
Will fed his coins into the payphone and punched in the familiar number for the Tozier-Kaspbrak residence. It rang twice before a strangled voice asked, “Hello?”
“Eddie?” Will said breathlessly. “Ed?”
“Will, is that really you?” Eddie asked. Will was gutted when he realized Eddie was crying.
“Will?!” Richie yelled in the background. “Is that him?”
“Guys, it’s me,” Will said. “I’m here.”
“Will, we went to your house and there were fucking bullet holes and police tape everywhere,” Eddie frantically said.
Will heard a small scuffle over the line before Richie’s voice came over the line. “There was fucking blood all over the sidewalk. We didn’t even know if you were alive and the pigs wouldn’t tell us anything.” Will winced when he heard Richie’s voice tremble.
“I am so fucking sorry you had to see all that.” Taking a deep breath as he attempted to keep himself calm, Will said, “You know that my family isn’t normal, that I’m not normal.”
“Like how you know we’re not normal,” Eddie replied easily because, yeah, they all knew.
“Exactly. I know we haven’t really talked about it, but this has to do with that. The thing my family ran from. People were hurt at my house, but it wasn’t any of us. We’re all okay, more or less. I can’t really say more. It’s too dangerous.”
“Fuck, Will, we really don’t know what to do with all this,” Eddie said desperately. Will could just imagine the way his frightened brown eyes would meet Richie’s, huge behind his glasses and worried in a way he always tried to hide because, while Eddie never bothered much to hide his fear, Richie did until he was pushed.
“I know,” Will softly said. “I know this is a lot, and I know that it sucks that I can’t tell you more, but I had to at least let you know we were okay. I hate the thought of you guys worrying about me.”
Eddie sighed, probably white knuckling the phone as he held it between his and Richie’s ears. “Of course we’re going to worry about you, Will. You’re our boyfriend. We love you.”
Tearing up, Will said, “I love you both too. So, so much. I’ll call again as soon as I can, okay? I promise. I gotta go now. Love you.”
And then he hung up the payphone before he had the chance to hear their voices again because, if he had, Will never would have gotten off the phone but for the fact that his sister was in danger.
Will walked around the side of the gas station, wiping tears from his eyes with his sleeve, and nearly ran into Mike who was fumbling bottles of Coke and food packages that he probably should have gotten a bag for. Will grabbed half his load and followed him to the van.
After looking around to make sure Jon and Argyle were out of earshot, Mike muttered, “I told your brother you were taking a shit.”
“Thanks, Mike. I really appreciate it.”
“‘Course,” he replied, climbing into the van after Will opened the door. “Did you get to talk to them?”
“Yeah,” Will said as he sat down. Sighing, he added in a sad voice, “They saw the house.”
“And were understandably upset, I'm sure,” Mike said, opening his ham and cheese sandwich and taking a bite.
Will dug into the turkey sandwich Mike grabbed him. “Pretty much, yeah. I told them we’re all okay and that I’d talk to them again when I could.”
“‘Bout all you can do at this point unfortunately,” Mike said between bites. Together, they watched Argyle and Jonathan exit the gas station and head for the van. “At least until we know more or find a way to securely talk to them.”
“True,” Will said, just as Jonathan opened the driver's side door and quickly changed the subject.
*
Will lived through years of abuse at the hands of Lonnie Byers. He escaped after a week in the Upside Down with raw lungs from breathing in the toxic air and broken ribs from when Hopper performed CPR to save his life, and was possessed by an eldritch entity and had it burned out of him with a red hot fire poker by Nancy.
But even after all that, Will could definitely say that getting shot was its own unique experience. One that fucking sucked.
Too distracted by the flaming heap of what used to be a helicopter and Brenner dying on the ground, no one saw the government agent sneak out of NINA. Will, who was closest to El, saw him at the last second and shoved her hard just as the gun went off. He felt the impact but didn’t feel the pain until he was on the ground staring up at the clear gray desert sky. It felt a bit like if Nancy, instead of merely touching the fire poker to his side, had instead thrust it straight through him.
“Will!” El screamed from where she fell on the ground next to Brenner. Her eyes landed on the government agent and she snapped his neck before he had the chance to fire another round.
Will whimpered as his shaking hands touched the excruciating wound on the upper right side of his chest. Some part of Will knew it was probably better to get shot on the right side of his chest rather than the left where his heart was located, but it was still agonizing.
Will’s eyes closed and when he opened them again, El’s face looked down at him. He thought he heard Jonathan shout something and the sound of multiple feet slap against the hard ground. He blinked and then Mike and Jon were there too. Someone pressed on his wound, making him howl in pain. Voices washed over him and it took everything Will had to stay conscious.
“Will,” a distraught voice said. Was that Mike? It sounded like Mike.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” That was his brother. Will opened his eyes and saw tears in Jon’s eyes. Why was he crying? They found El. Things were going to be okay now that they’d been reunited. They had to be.
“We gotta get out of here!” a trembling voice said.
“Let me,” El said. She sounded so sad. Will didn’t like it when she was sad. He met her eyes. She had her arm outstretched and lifted him into the air with her powers, which would have been cool if Will hadn’t just been shot.
He blinked and found himself in the back of the pizza van once again. He hissed as he felt something pierce his skin and saw Jonathan hunched over him with needle and thread in hand.
“Thank god we picked up that first aid kit,” Will croaked.
“Will!” Jonathan said, a smile stretching across his face. “I’ve almost got you all sewn up, bud.”
“Hey,” Mike said, peering down at him. El was next to him and they both had worried expressions on their faces. “How are you feeling?”
“Been better,” Will said honestly, making them laugh.
“You aren’t nearly as funny as you think you are, Little Byers!” Argyle called from the driver’s seat.
“I’m hilarious,” Will mumbled, wincing as Jonathan tied off the last stitch. “Richie told me so.”
“Richie’s a good kid, but he has the worst sense of humor I’ve ever seen,” Jonathan said, leaning back on his haunches as he examined his work.
“Rude,” Will said, making El giggle. Will reached out and took her hand. “So, guys, what’s the plan?”
“We’ll take care of it,” Jonathan said. “You just focus on resting and healing.”
Will huffed. “Uh uh, I want to know.”
“Max is in trouble,” El said, squeezing Will’s hand.
“Shit.”
They told him the plan, which involved El remotely using her powers inside a makeshift sensory deprivation tank at a Surfer Boy Pizza. It sounded absurd enough to work, or so Will hoped.
*
Unfortunately, the plan didn’t work the way they wanted it to. El nearly died and something bad happened to Max in Hawkins. They weren’t sure of the extent of the damage and wouldn’t until they reached Hawkins because the phone lines in Hawkins were down when they risked calling.
While it wasn’t ideal, they booked a hotel room for the night because they were all exhausted. Will all but collapsed onto one of the beds after Mike helped him clean off the dried blood caked to Will’s chest and back where he’d bled out from the entrance and exit wounds.
“Damn, what were they feeding you in California?” Mike asked, squinting at Will’s naked chest as he used a soapy rag to wipe him down.
“Don’t go falling in love with me this late in the game, Wheeler,” Will said in a raspy voice.
Mike rolled his eyes. “Haha, you wish.”
“Maybe when I was twelve,” Will said, making Mike snort.
El’s eyes darted between them from where she sat on the bathroom counter. “You both are very weird,” she said.
“Ouch, don’t make me laugh,” Will groaned.
After they helped him change into a pair of athletic shorts and a t-shirt Jonathan managed to scrounge up, they ate the takeout Argyle brought back to the motel room (thankfully not pizza) and turned the lights out.
Will waited until he heard the familiar snores of his brother and Argyle before he tapped Mike’s shoulder and whispered, “Can you help me get to the payphone outside? It’s by the vending machine outside.”
“Going to call the boyfriends again?” Mike asked.
“I am coming with you,” El said.
They helped Will out of the bed the three of them crammed into and, as quietly as possible, made their way outside. Mike handed Will a coin that he fed into the phone before dialing Richie and Eddie’s number.
It was late so it wasn’t surprising that it took longer this time for his boyfriends to answer.
Eddie’s voice came over the line. “Please be Will,” he said desperately.
“It is,” Will said, a smile tugging at his lips.
“You’re okay!” Eddie said.
“Relatively speaking.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Richie asked, loud enough that Will was forced to pull the receiver away from his ear.
Grimacing, Will said, “I, um…there was an incident.”
“An incident,” Eddie repeated in a flat voice. “What does that mean?”
El deftly snatched the phone from Will’s hand. “Hello, Eddie and Richie. This is Jane.”
“Hey, Janey!” Richie said. “How goes it, my lovely Lady Jane?”
“I am not good,” she said bluntly, ignoring Richie’s silly nicknames the way she typically did. “but Will is worse because he got shot.”
“Shot?!” Eddie shouted into the phone, making El pull the receiver away from her ear. “What do you mean Will’s been shot?”
Will grimaced and buried his face in his hand. He’d known this call wasn’t going to go well. It would be bad enough for them to hear that their boyfriend had been shot, but Eddie was a chronic worrier and Richie wasn’t the best at regulating his emotions.
El frowned. “I mean that a bad man pointed a gun at me and Will pushed me out of the way. He got hit instead.”
“Is he okay?” Richie asked urgently.
Will snatched the phone away from his sister. “I’ll be okay. It hurts, but Jonathan stopped the bleeding and sewed me up.”
“Why the fuck didn’t you go to a hospital?” Richie demanded. Will winced again. Mike smiled sympathetically at him.
“Because we’re still kind of on the run. Something really bad happened back home and we need to get there as soon as possible. Jon’s going to get me checked out as soon as we get there.”
“Promise me you’ll find a hospital if it gets worse,” Eddie said.
Overhearing this, El nodded and said loudly enough for the receiver to pick it up, “We will.”
They talked for a few more minutes before they said their goodbyes. Just as Will was about to hang up the phone, El held up her hand and said, “Mike, help my brother back to the room. I would like to speak to them in private.”
“What’s going on, El?” Will asked suspiciously.
“Do not worry about it right now.” She gently tugged the phone from Will’s hand and nudged him back.
“Okay,” Will said suspiciously. “I love you guys. I’ll call when I can.”
“Love you too, Sweet William!”
“Yeah, we love you, Will.”
Though Will could more or less walk on his own, though not without pain, Mike wrapped his arm around Will’s waist and led him back towards the room. He didn’t hear the indistinct murmur of El’s until they were too far away to understand it.
“What do you think that’s about?”
Mike snorted. “Who knows with El.”
*
Eddie’s voice came over the line. “What did you want to talk about, Jane? Is Will really okay?”
“Yes,” she assured them. “He is in pain, but he is okay. He will not be okay when we get to our hometown. He will need you.”
“Should we come?” Richie asked. “We have a bit of experience with weird.”
“Will would never ask you to come because it will be dangerous. I think you must
“You know where we are from, yes? I do not want to say the name over the phone.”
“Yeah, Will mentioned it,” Eddie said. A few seconds later, he added, “We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
After telling them how to get ahold of them once they were in Hawkins, they said their goodbyes and El hung up the phone. She heard Will and Mike whispering to each other when she got back to the room and laid down next to her brother, curling up on his non-injured side.
Tears sprang to her eyes as she laid there, not even trying to fall asleep. She tried desperately to hide her sniffles, but Will must have heard it because he tugged her closer, laying her head on his shoulder and wrapping an arm around his stomach.
“El?” he asked hesitantly after Mike’s deep breathing filled the room.
“You saved me today.”
“‘Course I did,” Will said. “Just like you saved me.”
El leaned up on her elbow to look down at him. Her mouth was pinched and eyes glossy with tears. “You are not allowed to die, Will. Even if it means saving me.”
“I’d do anything for you, El,” Will insisted. “You’re my sister, my best friend.”
“I thought Mike was your best friend.”
“He is, but you are too.”
Her face brightened. “You are my best friend too. I love you.”
“Love you too.”
Haltingly, she said, “Some of the other numbers at the lab, they were not good siblings like you and Jonathan. I am so lucky to have you both.”
“They didn’t deserve you,” Will said vehemently. “They didn’t know how lucky they were to have you in their lives. It’s their loss because you’re the best sister I could have asked for. Me and Jon, we both know how lucky we are.”
*
While Went and Maggie Tozier weren’t exactly helicopter parents, they knew when something was up with the kids. After arriving home after discovering the Byers’ house to be a crime scene, they became suspicious and only became more suspicious the weirder the boys acted. They started to hover over the next few days, making it exceedingly difficult for them to sneak out.
Richie and Eddie would have left right after they got off the phone with El, but there was a problem: money. Between the two of them, they had about six dollars and even after snooping around the house, they were only up to ten bucks. They’d never make it all the way to Indiana on ten dollars, which meant hitting up the bank and dipping into their savings. While Eddie had very complicated feelings about his mother and her death, he was thankful for the small bit of money she’d left him. Eddie wasn’t able to access the money from the sale of their house for a few years yet, but everything that had been in Sonia Kaspbrak’s savings was now Eddie’s.
Throughout the next day, they clandestinely packed their bags, napped much of the day, and waited for nightfall when they could make their escape after leaving Richie’s parents a short note that promised to call when they could. They knew they’d be in heaps of trouble once they got back to Lenora, but it was worth it if it meant helping Will and the Byers family.
Ultimately, sneaking out wasn’t too hard, what with Eddie’s bedroom on the ground floor. They slipped out the window, closing it quietly behind them, and got into the car the Tozier’s bought for the boys to share.
“He’s going to be alright,” Richie said after nearly an hour of silence.
“It’s Will,” Eddie said, his voice thick with emotion. “He’d never tell us how hurt he was over the phone because he doesn’t want to worry us.”
“True, but Jane wouldn’t sugarcoat it,” Richie said, risking a glance at Eddie, who was already looking at him. His eyes were glossy and bottom lip trembled. Richie could tell he was really trying to keep it together. Richie took his right hand off the wheel and laced his fingers through Eddie’s, who immediately clutched their entwined hands to his chest. “Will was talking to us just fine and said his brother fixed him up. Yeah, he’s hurt, but he’s going to be okay.”
“He got shot, Richie! Will got fucking shot! He is not okay.”
“Hey, Ed, I know he did, but there’s no way Jonathan or Jane would let anything happen to him. They’re so protective of him.”
“Yeah, because something really bad happened to him in Hawkins, and now he’s headed back there injured while something else bad is going on. I’m so scared for him, for all of them.”
“For us too?” Richie asked, his eyebrows raised.
Eddie huffed. “I’m trying not to think about that part or I’ll throw up.”
“I hear you there.”
After a long silence, Eddie asked, “What do you think is wrong with Hawkins?”
“Well, I doubt it’s killer clowns. Can’t imagine there’s too many of those running around.”
“But it must be really bad, Richie. Will said he went missing when he was twelve! And you’ve seen that huge scar on his side. Someone in Hawkins hurt him and now he’s going back there.” Sighing, Eddie despondently added, “I’m not brave, Richie, not like you and the rest of the Losers. Not like Will.”
“Eddie, you were scared and you still faced It anyway. If that’s not brave then I don’t know what is.”
“Thanks, Rich,” Eddie said, using his free hand to wipe away stray tears. “You’re brave too.”
“Yeah?” Richie asked, smiling as he looked over and met Eddie’s eyes.
“Yeah,” Eddie said, smiling back. “Now we just need to be brave for Will because he’s going to need us.”
“For Will.”
*
Running on just a few hours of sleep and loaded up with coffee, bottled water, and enough food to get them to Hawkins, the California Crew was back on the road by six o’clock the next morning. It took two days to get back to Hawkins, two long, painful days in the van with only aspirin and weed to mitigate the pain. He slept most of it, waking up occasionally to hear Mike and El quietly talk with each other. He heard snatches of what happened with Max during El’s battle of minds against One and was told greater details when awake. A lot was still unknown and they’d only know more once they got to Hawkins.
During a stop to fuel up, Jonathan came back to the van with a grim expression. “There was an earthquake in Hawkins. A big one. A lot of people died,” he said as they pulled out of the parking lot.
“An earthquake?” Mike repeated.
“But there isn’t even a fault line in Hawkins,” Will said.
“Little Byers is right, man,” Argyle said. It seemed the weight of everything had finally dawned on him and his usual cheerful demeanor had turned glum and sullen. “It doesn’t make any sense!”
“Earthquakes can happen in places without fault lines, but from what I remember from science class, it’s really rare. But when they do happen, they can still cause a ton of damage,” Mike insisted.
Jonathan’s knuckles turned white as his grip on the steering wheel tightened. “I don’t know any more than that. I tried calling both Nancy and Steve, but the phones are still down. Guess now we know why.”
“Fuck,” Mike said. He looked dazed. Will reached over and took his hand. In a low voice, he said, “I’m sure everyone’s okay, Mike.”
“But Jonathan just said people died!” Mike’s wide eyes were shimmering with tears.
“Until we get to Hawkins, all we can do is hope that all our people made it.” The unspoken question of Max’s survival hung in the air. Will winced as he readjusted himself on the bench seat. Clearing his throat, he said, “The earthquake has to be because of One, right? It’s too much of a coincidence for it not to be.”
“It was One,” El said, staring out the window. “I know it.”
*
Thankfully, the rest of the drive back to Hawkins was uneventful, at least until they reached the got within fifty miles and Will was hit with a wave of nausea. Clutching his stomach, he gagged at the overwhelming feeling of wrongness.
“What do you feel, Will?” El asked.
Grunting, he said, “Something isn’t right.”
“In Hawkins?” Mike asked. “You can feel it from this far away?”
“Mhm. It’s bad.”
The feeling only worsened as they got closer. Cars poured out of Hawkins, only adding to everyones’ unsettledness. Crossing into town, they saw just how bad it was. Hawkins was broken.
It took much longer to get to the Wheeler house than it normally would have. There, they reunited with Nancy who apparently had been stocking up on supplies to take to Hopper’s cabin where some of the group was hiding out. The story they told was unbelievable but then again, so was a teenage girl pulling a helicopter from the sky with her mind.
*
“Where’s Will?” Lucas asked when he pulled back from the hug he shared with Mike and El. He definitely didn’t like the way they looked at each other. “What? What else could have possibly happened?”
“Will got shot,” Mike said with a grimace.
“I’m sorry, I don’t think I heard you correctly,” Erica said, leaving her seat at Max’s side and joining them. Her arms were crossed over her chest. “It sounded a lot like you said Will got shot.”
Sighing and running a hand through his hair, Mike replied, “That’s because I did.”
“Will saved my life,” El said. “He protected me from the bad men.”
Lucas’ eyes bulged. “Is that why we couldn’t get a hold of you? Because we called like fifty times and got a busy signal the whole time.”
Mike told them the short version of what happened in Lenora and with the NINA Project. “We didn’t have time to get to a hospital so Jonathan had to sew him up. They’re getting him checked out now.”
“So my girlfriend got all her limbs snapped like twigs and my best friend got shot,” Lucas said faintly.
“Nancy said Steve and Eddie got turned into Upside Down bat chow too,” Mike said, entirely unhelpful.
“That is not what I said,” Nancy said, rolling her eyes at her brother.
“Yeah, thanks for that, Wheeler. We’d forgotten,” Erica said.
“How is Max?” El asked before anyone could say anything else.
They all turned to the girl in the bed, taking in her still body and casted limbs. El walked over and sat down next to the bed while Lucas reclaimed his seat.
“Considering what happened to Patrick, Chrissie, and Fred, she could be a lot worse,” he said. He sounded like he was fighting the urge to cry. “But she’s still here. She woke up but was in so much pain they had to induce a coma.”
“So, what, they wait until she heals a bit and then bring her out of it?” Mike asked.
“I don’t know,” Lucas said. “They won’t tell me anything because I’m not next of kin, and her mom is MIA.”
“Dead?” El softly asked.
“We don’t know that either,” Erica said. She looked sad and every inch the eleven year old she was.”
“I will look for Susan later,” El said, not wanting to use her powers in the hospital if she could help it.
“Thank you, El,” Lucas said.
The four of them caught each other up on what had happened since the start of spring break. At some point, a knock came from the door and in came Will in a wheelchair pushed by Jonathan. Nancy followed behind them. Dressed in just athletic shorts and a hoodie jacket thrown over his shoulders, Will looked tired and pale under his California tan. A large bandage peaked out from under the hoodie and his left arm was in a sling. He looked like hell, but he was alive.
Lucas jumped from his seat and collapsed to his knees in front of him. “Will,” he said, bursting into tears.
“Hey, Lucas,” Will said, pulling him into a one-armed hug. “I missed you.”
“Missed you too, man. I’d say I’m glad you weren’t here for what went down, but it seems like you found your own trouble.”
“Unfortunately.” When they pulled apart, Will asked, “How’s Max?”
For the second time, Lucas and Erica rehashed what happened in Hawkins with Nancy interjecting when necessary. They stayed until Will grew tired and Jonathan insisted that he needed to sleep.
“We’ll come back soon,” Will promised as he hugged Lucas again, and then Erica.
“Don’t get hurt again in the meantime,” Erica snarked, making Will grin.
“I’ll do my best, Lady Applejack.”
“You better, Will the Wise.”
*
Their next stop was Hopper’s old cabin where apparently Steve and Robin were hiding out with Eddie Munson on account of him being a fugitive. It would have been a good hiding place if it wasn’t for the giant hole in the roof and the weather damage it had accumulated since last summer when the Mind Flayer tried to kill them, but they didn’t have a lot of choices, not with the cops after Eddie and some unknown government group after El.
Robin met them outside, a huge grin on her face when she saw who it was, hugging each of them. When she reached Will, she mussed his hair and said, “Man, what the hell happened to you?”
Will couldn’t help smile at the girl who’d given him the courage to finally come out to his family. “We ran into some trouble.”
“Oh, you guys too?” she asked. “Guess we’ll have to exchange stories. C’mon inside. Not that I need to invite you into your own cabin,” she said to El, who smiled at her. “We’re trying to get it fixed up but it’s hard when Steve and Eddie both got turned into bat chow-”
“See, Nancy, Robin called them bat chow too!” Mike sniped at his sister.
“-and Dustin broke his foot. And me? Well, I’m not exactly cut out for manual labor but I’m trying my best.”
“I’m sure you’re doing great, Robin,” Will said, following her inside.
“See, this is why you’re my favorite kid,” she said, nudging his non-injured arm.
“I thought you said you didn’t play favorites, Robin!” Dustin shouted from the kitchen area. When he turned around to see who she was talking to, his eyes practically bugged out of his head. “Holy shit! You guys are here!” he said, hobbling over as quickly as he could.
“Stop running, Henderson,” Steve said, popping up out of nowhere. “You have a broken foot! C’man, man, your mom is going to kill me if you re-break something.” Then noticed the newcomers. “Oh, oh my god! We called you, like, a million times.”
Will accepted a surprisingly gentle hug from Dustin, unable to keep the smile from his face. Will knew he’d missed his friends but didn’t know how much until after seeing them all.
“We were kind of on the run from the government,” Jonathan said with a shrug.
“You guys too?” a new voice said. Will looked over and saw Eddie Munson slumped on Hopper’s couch. “Will the Wise, you look like shit.”
“You’re one to talk,” Will said, slumping down next to him.
“Wait, you guys know each other?” Dustin asked, sitting on Will’s other side. The rest of the group joined them, El sitting on the floor in front of Will leaning back against his legs.
“Since this guy was a three foot tall pipsqueak,” Eddie said, pointing at Will.
“We used to go to the music store all the time when Eddie worked there. How do you think I found out about DnD in the first place?”
The group talked for a little while longer, during which time Will nodded off thanks to the painkillers they gave him at the hospital. He didn’t wake up until his sister yelled, “Dad!” because apparently Hopper was alive the entire time, held captive in a Russian gulag.
Grinning, Will heaved himself off the couch, accidentally jostling an also dozing Eddie who mumbled something about Steve’s abs, and joined them. His mom fretted over him for a few minutes before she finally released him to give Jonathan a stern talking to for letting his little brother get shot.
“Mom, it wasn’t Jon’s fault,” Will insisted, watching her tearfully deflate before wrapping her arms around Jonathan in a fierce hug, apologies flowing from her mouth.
“Hey, kid,” Hopper said, wrapping an arm around Will’s shoulder. “El says you saved her life.”
Will didn’t really know what to say to that so he shrugged and said, “Of course I did. She’s my sister.”
“Will and Jonathan have been very good brothers to me while you were gone,” El said, leaning her head on Will’s shoulders.
“I’m glad you guys had each other. All of you,” Hopper said, giving Joyce the sappiest look Will had ever seen on his face.
Realization dawned on Will. “So you finally confessed to her, huh?”
Then something unexpected happened: Jim Hopper blushed. “That alright with you, kid?”
Will thought back to everything Hopper had done for them over the years: traversing into an alternate dimension to bring Will home, restarting Will’s heart after he stopped breathing, taking in El and caring for her, coming to all of Will’s appointments at HNL, not to mention everything with the Mind Flayer.
“Yeah, I’m okay with it.”
El smiled up at him and he couldn’t resist pressing a kiss to her forehead.
*
The next day, they got the entire group together to plan. It took several hours to get through everyone’s stories, and Nancy diligently wrote down everything for reference. Will told them he could sense One, that he was hulled up somewhere in the Upside Down, injured but alive. It was hard to plan their next move when nearly half of their group was injured in some way. There was also the problem of the town believing that the members of Hellfire Club to be a satanic cult, along with Hopper’s presumed death and the government after El.
Robin and Nancy reported the huge military presence in Hawkins that seemed to be growing by the day. Lucas and Erica mostly stayed at the hospital with Max with a rotation of friends popping in for a visit. Max was still in an induced coma with the doctors refusing to tell them anything. When she went into the Void to locate Susan Hargove, El discovered she was alive but couldn’t tell where. In the chaos, a nurse eventually let it slip to Sue and Charles Sinclair that they planned to keep Max in a coma for a few more weeks, that they wouldn’t know the extent of the damage to Max’s eyesight until they brought her out of it. She would also need a lot of physical therapy in the future. It sucked, but she was alive.
*
“What the fuck,” Richie said as they finally pulled into Hawkins. “The news wasn’t kidding.” The footage they saw on the news before they left California was bad but still hadn’t prepared them for the extent of the damage.
As Richie parked the car, Eddie pulled the walkie talkie El told them to bring and switched it to the channel Will and his friends used. Hesitantly, he pushed the button and said, “Um, this Eddie and Richie checking in. We just got into town.”
A moment later, a voice replied back. “You didn’t say over. Over.”
“Right, sorry. Uh, over?”
“Also, who the hell is this?” the same voice snarked. “Over.”
A cacophony of sound came from the walkie before they heard a familiar voice. “Where are you guys? We’ll come get you,” Jonathan said.
Eddie glanced around. “It looks like we’re pulled over on Benton near a pizza place.”
“I know where you’re. You guys hang tight and we’ll be there soon, okay?” Jonathan said.
“You guys keep forgetting to say over!” the first voice called from the background before the channel went dead.
“So this is Hawkins,” Richie said. “Kind of a shithole, huh? I can see why Will’s family left.”
“They just had an earthquake,” Eddie said. “I assume Hawkins doesn’t normally look like this.”
“Earthquake or not, this town hurt Will,” Richie said. “Bullies and his fucking dad and whoever gave him that fucking scar. So forgive me if I’m not feeling very generous to this place.” He sighed and brought Eddie’s hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it. “Sorry, Ed. I’m not mad at you. I’m just mad that Will had to come back here. His family too.”
“Hey, I get it,” Eddie softly said. “I wish he didn’t have to come back here either, but most of his friends are here. You know we’d go back to Derry if it was the Losers.”
“Yeah, we would. We’d hate every minute of it, but we would.”
“Bev already got out, and so did we,” Eddie said. “It won’t be too long before the rest of them graduate. They can get away, go to college or something.”
“And Mike?” Richie asked despondently. “He’s never going to leave the farm. At least not while his grandparents are still alive.”
Sighing, Eddie said, “I don’t know, Rich. We can’t exactly make him leave.”
“I guess we’ll just have to convince him then.”
Jonathan showed up a few minutes later in a station wagon with a pretty brunette girl driving. “Hey, guys! This is my girlfriend Nancy,” he said.
“Hi,” she said, giving them a pinched smile. Eddie supposed he couldn’t blame her less than enthusiastic greeting after everything that had happened over the last few days.
“The place we’re headed is a bit off the beaten path, so just follow us and keep an eye out for any cars following us. If one does, we’ll have to go to Nancy’s and try again later because we have a few people we can’t afford getting found.”
“That doesn’t sound suspicious at all,” Richie mumbled as they followed Nancy’s car.
Thank god they had a car to follow because Richie would have definitely missed the narrow driveway through the woods. After parking next to Nancy’s car, they got out and followed her and Jonathan up to a small cabin that had definitely seen better days.
“Is this where you murder us for defiling your brother?” Richie asked skeptically.
Jonathan stopped and turned to them, an unreadable expression on his face. Eddie swatted Richie’s arm.
“Ow!” he cried dramatically, holding his arm. Eddie rolled his eyes.
“We haven’t defiled your brother,” Eddie reassured him and saw Jonathan’s protective brother facade dissolve into a smirk.
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “Will would have told me. But seriously, don’t make jokes about defiling my brother or Hopper’s head will explode. He’s really protective of Will, but he’s got nothing on my mom.”
“I thought Jane’s dad was dead,” Richie whispered.
“You know, we all thought Will and El were dead at one point too and yet here we are. Will even had a funeral,” Jonathan said, walking up the steps.
“What the fuck is wrong with this place?” Richie asked.
Between fake dead kids and police chiefs, unexplainable earthquakes, and the weird white stuff falling from the sky, Eddie thought that was a fair question.
There were a lot of people inside the cabin when they stepped inside. Obviously, Eddie recognized Jane, Joyce, Jonathan, and Argyle, along with Mike who really did look a lot like Richie, but there were plenty of unfamiliar faces.
“You came!” Jane said, quickly standing up from the table she sat at and flung her arms around them.
“‘Course we did, Janey!” Richie said as they hugged her back. “We promised we would.”
Joyce walked over and hugged them too. “You boys don’t know what you’re getting into,” she said, patting their cheeks, “but Will is going to be so glad you’re here.”
“Don’t tell me Wheeler’s evil twin and a kid with a fanny pack are our reinforcements,” a guy with long curly hair said.
“And you look like you got chewed up and spit up, dude,” Richie said, indignantly pushing his glasses up his nose. “So I’d say we’re in a better position to be helpful than you are.”
Eddie narrowed his eyes at the guy. “We’re here to help if we can because we have experience in the weird, but mostly we’re here for Will.”
The long haired guy just chuckled. “Fair enough, kid.”
That’s when Will appeared, rubbing his eyes and yawning as he walked into the room. “What’s going on?”
“You have some visitors,” Joyce said, clasping her hands together.
“Hm?” Will asked, opening his eyes and looking around the room. His eyes widened when he reached Richie and Eddie. “Oh my god, how are you guys even here?”
Will was pale and had deep purple bags under his eyes. He wore a sling and clothes that were clearly borrowed because they were too big on him. His walk wasn’t fluid the way it usually was but jerky and pained, but he still looked so perfect and beautiful and alive that Eddie wanted to cry.
The three of them met in the middle. Richie didn’t waste any time grabbing Will’s face and drawing him for what looked to be a kiss much too dirty to have in front of Will’s mom and siblings and what seemed like half of the remaining population of Hawkins. It made Eddie blush, but that didn’t stop him from taking Richie’s place when he finally drew back.
Much like kissing Richie, kissing Will felt like coming home. In the grand scheme of things, they hadn’t been with Will for very long but that didn’t matter when Eddie loved him so much he felt as if his heart would burst from it the same way he loved Richie.
“Oh, okay, so he’s kissing that kid too,” a guy who looked to be around Jonathan’s age said.
“Damn, get it, Byers!” a girl with chin length light blonde hair said.
A voice that sounded an awful lot like the snarky guy from the walkie said, “I didn’t even know you could date more than one person at a time.”
“You can if everyone’s okay with it,” the girl said.
“Henderson, there’s no way Suzie is going to let you have another girlfriend.”
“What if I wanted a boyfriend, Steve? What then?”
“Do you?”
“Maybe.”
Someone cleared their throat and then did it again louder when they didn’t separate the first time. Finally, Eddie pulled back despite the fact that all he wanted to do was dive back in and kiss him again.
“I can’t believe you’re both here,” Will said, his voice thick with emotion.
“Janey called us,” Richie said, leaning in for another quick kiss that made Will smile. “She said you needed us.”
“I do,” Will softly said. “I didn’t want you guys wrapped up in all this, but I can’t deny that I’m glad you’re here.
Suddenly, the guy who could only be Hopper hissed, “I don’t care that he’s gay, Joyce! I’m not homophobic. I’m just wondering how many boyfriends a 15 year old boy needs!”
Joyce swatted Hopper’s arm. “Oh, Hop, they’re good boys. Leave them alone.”
“I know how teenage boys think and it’s only about one thing,” Hopper insisted. “I should know, I was one.”
“You know that Will’s also a teenage boy, right?” Joyce asked, amused. “He’s probably also thinking about that.”
“Yeah, yeah.”