Stranger Things (Mike's Version)

by jilyaremydivorcedparents

Summary:

Mike Wheeler falls in love with his best friend, deals with the Upside Down, heteronormativity and internalised homophobia. This is a Stranger Things recap from Season 1-4 but solely from Mike's perspective.

Chapter 1: The Vanishing of Will Byers

On November 6th, Mike’s life takes a turn he had only ever imagined to see on a screen in the cinema. His childhood thus far wasn’t much different than the childhood of any other kid, he imagined. This was about to change, although he had peace for one last night.

“Something is coming. Something hungry for blood,” he says quietly in the silence of his basement. He can hear the birds from outside, both his hands planted on the table. He’s exited for what’s to come.

“A shadow grows on the wall behind you, swallowing you in darkness,” Dustin swipes his nose in concentration, “It is almost here.”

“What is it?” Will asks exitedly.

“What if it’s the Demogorgon?” Dustin prompts while Will leans back in his chair. Mike can’t help but smile at them. He’s really proud of what his campaign turned out to be.

“Oh, Jesus, we’re so screwed if it’s the Demogorgon,” Dustin again.

“It’s not the Demogorgon,” Lucas denies from Mikes left.

Oh, if only they knew.

“An army of troglodytes charge into the chamber,” Mike exclaims, placing the figure in the middle of the table.

“Troglodytes?” Dustin asks confused.

“Told ya,” Lucas says proudly which makes the two of them chuckle. Will has a content smile on his face, which Mike wants to challenge.

“Wait a minute,” he starts softly while turning around ever so slightly, “Did you hear that? That… that sound? Boom… boom…,” he looks up. “Boom,” he yells and slams the table. The others flinch. Oh, he has them good. Will’s content smile faded away.

“That didn’t come from the troglodytes. No, that…” he locks eyes with Will as the other leans forward in anticipation. “That came from something else,” he breathes out, his heart beating fast.

He slams another figure on the table. They all know what’s coming but he says it nonetheless. “The Demogorgon,” he yells while the other ones groan in frustration.

“We’re in deep shit,” Dustin lets them know as if they all didn’t already.

“Will, your action!” Mike says.

“I don’t know,” the boy across from Mike urges, obviously overwhelmed.

“Fireball him,” Lucas tells Will.

“I’d have to roll a 13 or higher,” Will reminds Lucas.

“Too risky. Cast a protection spell,” Dustin starts but Lucas interrupts quickly. They’re all on the edge of their seats. It’s all in Will’s hands now, he has to make a decision.

“Don’t be a pussy. Fireball him!”

“Cast Protection,” Dustin stands his ground. Mike knows this won’t go anywhere and by looking at Will, he knows the boy already made a decision. He slams on the table again and raises his voice.

“The Demogorgon is tired of your silly human bickering! It stomps towards you. Boom!”

“Fireball him!”

“Another stomp, boom,” Mike continues.

“Cast Protection,” Dustin yells, while Will looks in concentration on the table.

“He roars in anger,” Mike screams. They’re all saying different things but Will shuts them up efficiently. “Fireball,” he screams and throws the dice out in front of him. It gets quiet, the dice cluttering to the floor.

“Oh, shit,” Will says quietly.

“Where’d it go?” Lucas jumps up following Will, who’s already looking for the dice. “Where is it?”

“I don’t know,” Mike stands up too, looking around.

“Is it a 13?” Dustin asks from behind him.

“I don’t know,” Will answers.

Mike is on edge, he needs to know what Will threw. They all simultaneously freak out and search different areas on the floor. As Mike looks under the stairs a light blazes at him from above.

His mother stands in the open doorway, a hand on her hip. She screams his name.

“Mom, we’re in the middle of a campaign,” he explains himself, not able to bother with anything else than the dice right now.

“You mean the end? Fifteen after,” his mom says and turns around, putting an end to the discussion before Mike has time to get a compromise out of her. He sighs and runs after her to bargain.

“Mom, wait, just 20 more minutes-“ he tries.

“It’s a school night, Michael,” she interrupts her son. “I just put Holly to bed. You can finish next weekend.”

“But that’ll ruin the flow,” Mike immediately prompts. It’s Sunday, they can’t wait another five days.

“Michael-“

“I’m serious, Mom,” he tries a calmer approach. “The campaign took two weeks to plan. How was I supposed to know it was gonna take ten hours?”

“You’ve been playing for ten hours?” his mom asks in shock. Maybe he should’ve kept that detail to himself. He turns around to his dad, which means despair, because his dad’s never been one to speak up for Mike.

“Dad, don’t you think that 20 more-“
“I think you should listen to your mother,” his dad seems more keen on fixing the TV than advocating for his son. Honestly what did he expect?

He looks between his parents, knowing he lost the fight. It has always been like this, but it stings nonetheless.

Lucas and Will already grabbed their stuff, ready to leave. As he follows them outside he’s saddened by the end of the evening.

“We can finish another day,” Will tells him. When Mike steals a glance at his friend he sees the boy already looking at him.

“Yeah but we were nearly finished, it sucks.” Mike groans. Will looks at him in understanding. He knows how important this campaign was to Mike, who wouldn’t stop teasing them all, but especially Will. He always gets Mike, no matter what, so of course he understands.

Mike smiles slightly.

“There’s something wrong with your sister,” Dustin interrupts them as he storms out of the house.

“What are you talking about?” Mike asks as Dustin goes to pick up his bike.

“She’s got a stick up her butt,” Dustin explains.

“Yeah,” Lucas agrees. “It’s because she’s been dating that douchebag, Steve Harrington.”

“Yeah, she’s turning into a real jerk.” Dustin keeps going. They all get on their bikes and turn on the lights.

“She’s always been a real jerk,” Mike says. Honestly, he couldn’t care less about Nancy right now.

“Nuh-uh, she used to be cool,” Dustin prompts and starts on his bike. “Like that time she dressed up as an elf for our Elder tree campaign.”

“Four years ago,” Mike shouts after him as Dustin starts on his bike. Lucas follows with a short Later thrown at Mike who looks after them, trying to comprehend why Dustin cares so much about his sister.

“It was a seven,” Will interrupts his thoughts from the side.

“Huh?” He turns to his left to look at Will, having almost forgotten he hasn’t left yet.

“The roll, it was a seven,” Will explains. “The Demogorgon, it got me.”

Mike doesn’t answer. He can’t while he’s comprehending the fact that they didn’t even had this one victory.

“See you tomorrow,” Will gets on his bike and starts biking after the others.

Mike keeps standing there as the lights above him start to flicker slightly. He turns them off before he heads back inside.

“The kids gone?” His mom asks as he’s going up to his room.

“Yeah, just left,” he says. His mom wishes him a good night which he quietly gives back before leaving to his room.

This night he didn’t sleep well, but it didn’t really cross his mind until the next morning at breakfast.

***

“That’s disgusting,” Nancy calls out when Mike puts maple syrup on his scrambled eggs.

“You’re disgusting,” he replies quickly. His mum is on the phone so he excitedly takes his chance and puts some syrup on Nancy’s eggs too.

“What the hell, Mike,” Nancy exclaims annoyed while Mike snickers to himself. His dad only interrupts them with a calm Hey! Language so he automatically knows he got away with it.

They keep bickering until their mom comes back to the table, having hung up the phone.

“Who was that?” Mike asks curiously.

“Calling this early? Unnecessarily rude if you ask me,” Ted mentions, not even looking up from his newspaper.

His mom gives Ted an exhausted glance before looking back at Mike. “Just Joyce. She sounded a bit distressed, she asked if Will spend the night.”

“He didn’t come home?” Mike asks confused.

“Well did he sleep here?” Ted asks, “You boys don’t need to spend all your time together, that’ll look weird from the outside.”

“Ted!” His mom says.

“Just saying,” Ted grunts and lifts his newspaper up higher, clearly done with the conversation.

“He’s fine. Joyce said he left early for school,” Karen reassures Mike with a smile.

***

He rides the bike to school, Dustin and Lucas along with him. He tells them on the way about the weird call this morning, he honestly can’t stop thinking about it. Not only that, but also what his dad said, too. Ted Wheeler always makes unnecessary remarks on everything and everyone, Mike’s used to that, but his dad makes them mostly about Will. He never uses such words when they talk about Lucas or Dustin.

Why is Will different?

At school Will isn’t anywhere near the entrance. “That’s weird. I don’t see him,” he says.

“I’m telling you, his mom’s right. He probably just went to class early again,” Lucas says calmly.

“Yeah, he’s always paranoid Gursky’s gonna give him another pop quiz,” Dustin adds.

Mike is confused and still has this weird feeling of wrong inside of him but before he can say so he gets interrupted from behind.

“Step right up, ladies and gentlemen,” they turn around and, of course, it’s Troy and James. “Step right up and get your tickets for the freak show. Who do you think would make more money in a freak show?” Troy takes a step closer towards them.

“Midnight,” he kicks Lucas back with his flat hand. Mike knows whats coming so he tries to get back, but isn’t fast enough before Troy’s hand also lands on his chest, “Frogface, or Toothless?” He says, pushing Dustin back, too.

James sighs, pretending to think, and answers, mimicking Dustin “I’d go with Toothless.”

“I told you a million times, my teeth are coming in. It’s called cleidocranial dysplasia,” Dustin stands his ground.

“I told you a million times,” James mimics Dustin once again. He chuckles.

“Do the arm thing,” Troy orders.

Dustin hesitates, clearly uncomfortable. Mike doesn’t really know what to say, he’s not looking forward to another punch.

“Do it freak,” James demands.

Dustin puts down his bag and pulls off his jacket with it. He cracks his bones and to no ones surprise Troy and James groan in disgust.

“God, it gets me every time,” Troy states before he and James push them out of their way to go past them.

“Assholes,” Lucas declares when they’re away.

“I think it’s kinda cool,” Mike says while Dustin picks his stuff up from the ground. “It’s like you have superpowers or something. Like Mr. Fantastic.”

If he can’t stand up to the bullies, at least he’ll try to support his friends afterwards.

“Yeah, except I can’t fight evil with it,” Dustin remarks.

They go inside the school and get to class. Mike can’t help but notice that Will is still not here. Not in the hallways, not in the classroom, not anywhere. The feeling of wrong grows all throughout class until the hour ends and Mike feels like only minutes have passed.

As Mr. Clarke finishes up class and everyone starts to leave, Lucas and Dustin chat excitedly about the machine that Mr. Clarke wanted to provide them for their AV club. This gets Mike a bit more excited for the day. He almost forgot about it. Too bad Will’s not here to see it, too.

They try not to run into the AV Room when Mr. Clarke confirms it came. Mike gets there first and sits down in front of the radio, setting everything up to get it started.

“The Heathkit ham shack. Ain’t she a beaut?” Mr. Clarke says proudly.

Mike picks up the headphones ready to start this thing.

“I bet you could talk to New York on this thing,” Dustin says.

“Think bigger,” Mr. Clarke insists.

“California?” Lucas asks?

“Bigger,” Mr. Clarke repeats.

“Australia,” Mike guesses in disbelief, the headphones firm over his head. Mr. Clarke just nods.

“Oh, man,” Lucas exclaims, “When Will sees this, he’s totally gonna blow his shit.”

“Lucas!” Mr. Clarke condones.

“Sorry,” Lucas apologises.

Mike turns up the station and begins to talk into the microphone using his best Australian accent. “Hello, this is Mike Wheeler, president of Hawkins Middle AV Club,” he gets interrupted by Dustin pulling the headphones of his head. He leans down towards the microphone and begins talking, too. “Hello, this is Dustin, and this is the secretary and treasurer of Hawkins Middle AV Club. Do you eat kangaroos for breakfast?”

Mike laughs as Lucas leans over Mike to get the headphones as well, but he doesn’t get a chance to talk into the microphone. There’s a knock on the open door. The principal stands in it. Behind him appear the chief and another police officer. Even before anyone says anything, Mike can feel his heart drop.

In the principals office they get sat down on a sofa. The chief and officer in front of them, while the principal sits on their right behind his desk.

They explain to them that Will is missing, that no one saw him after he left Mikes’ last night. They ask them where he might’ve went. Mikes whole body feels cold and the feeling of wrong wrong wrong presses against his forehead.

They try to explain, overlapping each other until the chief, Hopper, interrupts them. “Okay, okay, okay. One at a time, all right? You,” he points at Mike who nods. “You said he takes what?”

“Mirkwood,” Mike instantly replies.

“Mirkwood?” He makes sure.

“Yeah,” Mike tells the chief.

“Have you ever heard of Mirkwood?” Hopper asks his colleague.

“I have not. That sounds made up to me,” the other one replies.

“No, it’s from Lord of the Rings,” Lucas explains.

“Well, The Hobbit,” Dustin corrects him.

“It doesn’t matter,” Lucas claims outrageously.

“He asked,” Dustin exclaims which Lucas repeats in mocking.

“Shut up, guys!” Mike says his headache getting worse.

“Hey, hey, hey. What’d I just say? One at a damn time. You.” Hopper directs at Mike leaning forward now.

“Mirkwood, it’s a real road. It’s just the name that’s made up,” Mike explains. “It’s where Cornwallis and Kerley meet.”

“Yeah, all right, I think I know that-“ Hopper says leaning back.

“We can show you, if you want,” Mike offers. He has the deep urge to go right this second and look for Will until they’ve found him.

“I said that I know it!” Hopper says loud and clear.

“We can help look,” Mike persists.

“Yeah,” Dustin agrees from the side.

“No,” Hopper stands his ground. “No. After school, you are all to go home. Immediately. That means no biking around looking for your friend, no investigating, no nonsense. This isn’t some Lord of the Rings book.”

“The Hobbit,” Dustin once again corrects.

“Shut up,” Lucas exclaims from Mike’s right and punches Dustin’s knee, leaning over Mike who really regrets sitting in the middle of them. His thoughts are distant though. He’s already thinking where Will could be, where they can go look for him. Because he’s going to look for him. No matter who’ll try to stop him.

“Do I make myself clear?” Hopper now stands right in front of them, looking down with a strict face. They don’t answer so Hopper repeats the question in a more authoritative voice.

At last, they all agree. A little lie never hurt nobody.

***

After school they go home. Mike persists they should go looking for Will but Dustin and Lucas agree that it’s no use after school. Their parents will expect them home. He feels so much guilt. He could’ve already found him. It’s cold outside and Will is freezing for sure. He was always the first one to get cold.

At dinner he explodes. “We should be out there right now. We should be helping look for him,” he tries again.

“We’ve been over this, Mike. The chief says-“ his mom begins.

“I don’t care what the chief said,” he interrupts her.

“Michael!”

“We have to do something. Will can be in danger.”

“More reason to stay put.”

“Mom!”

“End of discussion,” she says and looks at her family in shock. They sit there quietly. No one really says anything against his mom. She’s the head of the family and everyone knows it.

“So… me and Barbara are gonna study at her house tonight. That’s cool, right?” Nancy asks while Mike stares at the food in front of him. He can’t eat, won’t eat. Will’s probably hungry, too. He should take something with him in case he goes looking for him.

“No, not cool,” his mom replies to Nancy.

“What? Why not?”

“Why do you think? Am I speaking Chinese in this house? Until we know Will is okay, no one leaves.”

“This is such bullshit,” Nancy exclaims and for once Mike agrees with his sister.

“Language,” Ted pipes in.

“So we’re under house arrest? Just because Mike’s friend got lost on the way home from…”

“Wait, this is Will’s fault?” Mike explodes.

“Nancy, take that back,” Karen demands with a strong tone.

“No!”

“You’re just pissed off ‘cause you wanna hang out with Steve,” Mike says to Nancy. The table goes quiet immediately and Mike looks at the confused glances of their parents.

“Steve?” Ted asks. “Who is Steve?” Karen says at the same time.

“Her new boyfriend,” Mike rats Nancy out, he couldn’t care less. This is so unimportant. They all should be looking for Will right at this moment.

“You are such a douchebag, Mike!”

“Language!” Ted orders, this time louder. Mike feels a bit proud, he has to be honest. Nancy stands up from the table and goes away.

“Nancy, come back,” Karen requests. “Come back!” Nancy goes upstairs to her room, clearly not planning on leaving it anytime soon.

“You see, Michael?” Ted directs his tone towards Mike, this time a bit more serious. “You see what happens?”

“What happens when what?” Mike shouts. “I’m the only one acting normal here! I’m the only one that cares about Will!”

Karen gives Ted a look while comforting Holly who sips on her orange juice quietly.

“That is really unfair, son. We care,” Ted says in the most uncaring tone Mike may have ever heard from him.

He stands up from the table in disbelief, following his sister’s root and leaves the table despite his mother calling after him.

He doesn’t go to his room though. Instead his feet lead him to the basement. He looks at the table, which still has everything from the campaign laying on it. They still need to finish the game, Mike thinks dumbly. He looks at the figures for some while, thinks about how this game would’ve went if they had more time, if Will hadn’t rolled a seven. Whatever would’ve happened, one thing is clear.

He grabs his walkie decidedly. “Lucas, do you copy? It’s Mike. Lucas?”

“Hey, it’s Lucas,” the other boy answers.

“I know it’s you. And say “over” when you’re done talking so I know when you’re done. Over.”

“I’m done. Over.”

“I’m worried about Will. Over.”

“Yeah,” Lucas sighs. “This is crazy. Over.”

“I was thinking… Will could’ve cast Protection last night, but he didn’t. He cast Fireball. Over.” Mike says in hope Lucas understands what he’s getting at.

“What’s your point? Over.”

“My point is… he could’ve played it safe, but he didn’t. He put himself in danger to help the party. Over.”

“Meet me in ten. Over and out,” Lucas replies and Mike lets out a sigh of both exhilaration and determination. They’re going to find him. He’s sure.

He quickly packs a bag and sneaks out of the house. While he walks up the hill with his bike he sees Steve climbing up towards Nancy’s window. For a short moment they lock eyes and Steve has the audacity to try a nonchalant face on him. Mike only rolls his eyes before getting on his bike. He has more important matters to get to.

***

Lucas and him pick up Dustin on their way and drive towards Mirkwood. The weather becomes worse and while they’re driving thunder begins to rumble over their heads. Rain will probably fall soon, too.

After a little while they find a closed off area at the side of the road.

“Ah, man. This is it,” Lucas says. They stop at once and look out into the dark forest. Mike gets his flashlight ready and tries not to think about how scary this is. If he feels scared how must Will feel?

“Hey, guys. You feel that?” Dustin asks, looking up at the sky. “I think maybe we should go back.”

“No,” Mike declares immediately. “We’re not going back. Just stay close. Come on,” he tries to reassure Dustin. He’s scared himself but he can’t show that. Someone has to be the strong guy right now and for Will he will take that spot easily.

He goes ahead and ducks under the red and white striped tape, Lucas on his heels. “Just stay on channel six. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Hey, guys, wait up,” Dustin shouts at them just before they leave for sure. “Wait up!”

Lucas and Mike stop walking and turn around to watch Dustin duck under the tape and run after them. Mike can’t help but smile. Six eyes see more than four.

A little while later after walking through the forest and shouting for Will, it starts to rain. Really hard as well. They keep looking despite Dustin’s wailing.

At one point, Dustin and Lucas start to argue once again. Mike tunes them out, this time not just because they’re annoying but because he actually heard something. He’s not sure because the rain is pretty loud and his shouting friends don’t make it any easier either.

“Dustin, shut up,” he says and tries to concentrate on the sound. Dustin counteracts but Mike shuts him up again. “Did you guys hear that?”

It rustles behind them, someone is there. They quickly turn around until it rustles again from the other side. They turn again and point their flashlights not at Will, sadly, but a boy - no - not a boy, it’s a girl. She has buzzed hair and wears a big yellow t-shirt. She looks scared, downright terrified.

Great, Mike thinks, yet another problem to deal with.

Notes:

English is not my first language, and tbf my grammar sucks even in my first language, so please ignore if there're any mistakes.

Chapter 2: The Weirdo on Maple Street

Mike is stressed, even more stressed than he was before he met this strange girl in the woods. She doesn’t talk, doesn’t provide any information of where she came from or who she was. He was so focused on finding Will that he was almost annoyed to find and save anyone that wasn’t him.

Mike has a moral compass nonetheless, so of course they had to take the girl to his house. It felt a bit weird because it is weird, but what were they supposed to do? Just leave her out there? In the storm? Mike wouldn’t let that happen to anyone and besides, if this took his mind off other things he would gladly take it.

Although she wouldn’t talk, she still went with them, she still took Mike’s jacket when he offered it. It felt good to take care of someone. It was like finding a wounded stray and taking it home to warm and feed it.

Now, in Mike’s basement they’re trying to get her to answer at least some questions. They can’t help if she won’t talk. “Is there a number we can call for your parents?” Mike asks the heavily breathing girl on his sofa.

“Where’s your hair? Do you have cancer?” Dustin inquires.

“Did you run away?” Lucas adds.

“Are you in some kind of trouble?” Mike asks.

“Is that blood?” Lucas points towards her shirt which has something red on it that definitely looks like blood.

“Stop it! You’re freaking her out,” Mike shouts and slaps his hand away.

“She’s freaking me out,” Lucas exclaims in distress.

“I bet she’s deaf,” Dustin says and promptly claps his hands in front of her. She flinches back, like anyone would. “Not deaf,” he sums up.

“All right, that’s enough, all right? She’s just scared and cold,” Mike says. When he looks at the small girl he has the urge to help her, to do something to take care of this situation as quickly as possible. He promptly turns around and takes some of his clean laundry which he still hasn’t put away. His mom’s been moaning about it for days. His heart is thumping in his chest, still full of adrenaline. The raging thunder outside doesn’t help him or anyone right now, if anything it frightens the girl even more.

“Here, these are clean. Okay?” He holds the clothes out to her when he steps up next to his friends. She takes them slowly, holding them close to her face, against her cheek. For a second she closes her eyes, willing her breathing to slow down. After that, she stands up and starts to… she starts to undress.

“No, no, no,” Mike immediately screams, stopping the girl from stripping her shirt over her head while Dustin and Lucas turn around in shock and freak out. Mike takes a short breath and points towards the bathroom door. “See over there? That’s the bathroom,” he stammers. “Privacy. Get it?” He gets the feeling, from the look on her face, that she does in fact not get it. He pities the girl, wondering yet again, why she’s so strange. What or who made her that way.

She takes the clothes carefully and walks towards the bathroom. Mike follows her and tries to close the door when she doesn’t. Before he can fully close it, the girl grabs the door, stopping Mike from closing it fully. He looks back at her confused, but when he sees her scared face, he understands.

“You don’t want it closed?”

“No,” she says which flabbergasts Mike for a moment.

“Oh, so you can speak,” he figures. “Okay, well… um, how about we just keep the door…,” he slowly pulls the door away from her until there’s only a small gap to see through. “Just like this. Is that better?”

“Yes”, she answers. Mike nods and leaves her to it to give her the privacy she deserves.

“This is mental,” Dustin says when Mike joins the other two again.

“At least she can talk,” Mike argues.

“She said “no” and “yes.” Your three-year old sister says more,” Lucas notes which Mike sadly can’t deny.

“She tried to get naked,” Dustin reminds them.

“There’s something seriously wrong with her. Like, wrong in the head,” Lucas adds.

“She just went like…” Dustin imitates her trying to take off her clothes and accidentally pulls his cap off his head.

“I bet she escaped from Pennhurst,” Lucas remarks.

“From where?” Mike asks.

“The nuthouse in Kerley County,” Lucas explains.

“You got a lot of family there?” Dustin smirks at Lucas.

“Bite me,” Lucas says. Mike becomes a bit annoyed with them, not because they’re wrong, there definitely is something wrong with her. It’s their useless bickering more than anything else. It was easy to tune them out when Will was there, but now it’s giving him a headache he isn’t able to shake quite off again.

“Seriously though, think about it,” Lucas starts again. “That would explain her shaved hair and why she’s so crazy.”

“Why she went like…” Dustin yet again imitates the girl.

“She’s an escapee is the point. She’s probably a psycho,” Lucas urges.

“Like Michael Myers,” Dustin states.

“Exactly,” Lucas exclaims. “We should’ve never brought her here.”

“So you just wanted to leave her out in that storm?” Mike questions in disbelief.

“Yes! We went to find Will, not another problem,” Lucas points out and to be fair, yes, he’s totally right. Mike had the exact same thought when he saw the girl in the woods.

“I think we should tell your mom,” Dustin says.

“I second that,” Lucas agrees.

Yeah, Mike does not want to do that. “Who’s crazy now?” Mike asks.

“How is that crazy?”

“‘Cause, we weren’t supposed to be out tonight, remember?” Mike reminds them.

“So?” Lucas asks.

“So if I tell my mom and she tells your mom,” he points to Dustin, “and your mom…”

“Oh, man,” Dustin says shocked.

“Our houses become Alcatraz,” Lucas finishes.

“Exactly. We’ll never find Will,” Mike urges. He can’t let that happen but he has a feeling the other two understand. “All right, here’s the plan. She sleeps here tonight,” Mike begins.

“You’re letting a girl-“ Dustin interrupts him.

“Just listen,” Mike says loudly. “In the morning, she sneaks around my house, goes to the front door and rings my doorbell. My mom will answer and know exactly what to do. She’ll send her back to Pennhurst or wherever she comes from. We’ll be totally in the clear. And tomorrow night, we go back out. And this time, we find Will,” Mike finishes and looks at them in expectation. Dustin and Lucas share a look and then sigh simultaneously. Mike knows he won them over with his plan.

They quickly build a place for her to sleep. They put a duvet over the table and chairs to hide it. It’s like a small cave, Mike thinks with a smile. Not long after that, Dustin and Lucas get up to leave while Mike gives the girl his sleeping bag.

“Hey, um, I never asked your name,” Mike implores.

She looks a bit unsure for a moment but then pulls her sleeve up. Underneath it he can see her arm with, Mike can’t believe it, a tattoo on it. It’s a number, 011.

“Is that real?” Mike asks excitedly and leans forward to touch it. She flinches back and looks up at him. They lock eyes. “Sorry, I’ve just… never seen a kid with a tattoo before,” he nervously laughs. “What’s it mean? Eleven?”

She points at her chest twice and Mike gets this sad feeling yet again. “That’s your name?” He asks. She nods. It’s a sad one.

“Eleven. Okay. Um, well, my name’s Mike. Short for Michael. Maybe we can call you “El.” Short for Eleven,” he prompts. She nods again, this one feels more open, which sends a bolt of proudness through Mike’s body.

“Um, well, okay. ‘Night, El,” he says softly, standing up to put the duvet down so she’s hidden. A small smile on his face.

“Night, Mike,” she says quietly as she looks up at him.

A warm, fuzzy feeling fills his stomach when he pulls the duvet down and steps away. He switches the light off and gets up to his room. He lays in bed for a long time before he falls asleep. Thoughts filled with this weird girl named Eleven in his basement.

***

The next morning Mike’s in a rush. He puts some Eggos in the toaster and quickly stuffs one of them in his pocket without anyone seeing. Then, at breakfast with his family, he tries to get his own Eggos down his throat as fast as possible so he has time to talk to Eleven.

“Slow down, Mike. That’s disgusting,” Nancy says with a judgy look from his right.

“Do a lot of studying last night?” He turns towards her and asks with his mouth full.

“Yeah, actually, I did,” she says.

“What was your test on again? Human anatomy?”

Nancy looks at him in disbelief and kicks him with her foot under the table. Obviously, he kicks back.

“Hey, what’s going on?” Their mom asks and he feels himself shrink down under her fierce glance.

“Nothing,” Mike and Nancy say at the same time.

***

As soon as he’s finished his breakfast he goes down to the basement. The duvet is still pulled over the table. No one would notice her except for Mike. He pulls it up and sees Eleven awake, with his Walkie in her hand.

“Hey, you found my supercomm. Pretty cool, huh?” He says excitedly. “I talk to my friends with it. Mostly Lucas, ‘cause he lives so close. Signal’s pretty weak,” he shares.

She doesn’t show any reaction to anything he said but Mike likes to belief that she understands him nonetheless. He grabs the Eggo out of his pocket and holds it out to her with a shy smile “Got you breakfast.”

She takes it from him, taking a big bite out of it straightaway. She must be starving to be fair, which reminds Mike that Eleven is a strange kid who has problems he can’t deal with at the moment. Will is still his top priority. “So listen, this is gonna sound a little weird, but I just need you to go out there. Then go to the front door and ring the doorbell. My mom will answer and you’ll tell her that you’re lost and that you need help. But whatever you do, you can’t tell her about last night or that you know me. Understand?” He asks the girl.

She stares at him while continuing to slowly chew on her Eggo. She looks like she follows, Mike doesn’t understand what the problem is. “Really, it’s no big deal. We’ll just pretend to meet each other again. And my mom, she’ll know who to call,” he tries to reassure her.

“No,” she says firmly, which confuses Mike.

“No?” He makes sure.

She shakes her head and repeats “No,” before looking down at her Eggo in thought.

“No… you don’t want my mom to get help?” He assumes.

Eleven looks up at him and shakes her head one more time. Mike feels a sting of the familiar wrong while looking at her. She’s a mystery and he wants to crack it. “You’re in trouble, aren't you?” He asks even though he already knows the answer.

She doesn’t reply, just keeps looking at him intensely, which is answer enough.

“Who… who are you in trouble with?” He goes on.

She stills for a moment before she eventually whispers “bad.”

“Bad?” Mike repeats in question. “Bad people?”

A slow nod.

“They want to hurt you? The bad people?”

What Mike doesn’t expect from Eleven is for her to lift up her hand in a gun position and point it at her own head. What he expects even less is her changing the gun’s direction from her head to his face. He doesn’t know what his face looks like but he feels chilled down to his bones. “Understand?” She asks and for a moment he’s shocked at how their positions changed, how she’s the one explaining him something now.

The moment doesn’t last long, not even a second. “Michael, where are you? We’re going to be late. Let’s go!” His mom calls from upstairs.

“All right, I’ll be back,” he stammers. “Just stay here, okay? Stay here.”

He gets up to pull the duvet down again, Eleven disappearing behind it. He quickly goes up the stairs and tries to pretend like everything’s normal. His mom looks at him weirdly as if she knows something’s wrong. Well, something more than his missing best friend. She doesn’t ask though, which he’s extremely thankful for. He pretends to bike to school but before he fully drives away, he hides behind the bushes near the fence to wait for his mom to leave with the car. He planned to go to school but now his plans have changed and he doesn’t want to leave Eleven alone at the moment. After a little while his mom’s car passes him and he bikes back home.

Now that he’s alone with El, he takes her upstairs to the kitchen. “You want anything to drink? We have OJ, skim milk… what else?”

Eleven doesn’t seem to be interested in Mike’s offer and instead walks off into the living room and eyes the TV. “Oh, this is my living room. It’s mostly just for watching TV. Nice, right?” He puts his arms on the TV. “It’s a 22-inch. That’s, like, ten times bigger than Dustin’s.”

When he looks up he sees she has wandered away again. This time towards the other side of the room. She stands still in front of a few pictures his mom has put up on a shelf. She particularly seems to be watching a picture of Nancy. “Pretty,” she quietly says and Mike feels himself pulling a face.

“I guess,” he answers confused. “That’s my sister Nancy,” he tells her as she moves on to other pictures. “And that’s baby Holly. And those are my parents. What are your parents like?” He smoothly asks. “Do they live close?”

Yet again he’s met with no answers.

“That’s our La-Z-Boy,” he says when he sees Eleven’s touching it curiously. “It’s where my dad sleeps. You can try it if you want.” She moves around it, apparently open to do so.

“It’s fun,” Mike says when she sits down. He kneels next to her and locks eyes. “Just trust me, okay?” He says when she sees her nervous face. She nods slowly and Mike pulls the handle. The La-Z-Boy goes into motion and Eleven falls back on it with her legs lifted up. She looks surprised but in a nervous way so Mike tries to ease her up a bit more. “See? Fun, right?” She smiles, which he sees as a small victory. He pulls the La-Z-Boy up and resets it. “Now you try,” he tells her in excitement.

He lets her hand search for the handle, she pulls, and falls back again. She laughs and he laughs right along with her and while everything about this is still so very weird he feels a bit calmer now. Like he’s doing something right.

***

After a bit more looking around they go up to his room which she hasn’t seen yet. He gets quite exited when he shows her his figures he likes to play with. He has a little Yoda and lots of dinosaurs. When she stands up and walks away, Mike slowly gets the feeling he’s not entertaining enough because she tends to always leave as soon as he really gets into showing her something. Girls, he figures.

He stands up and goes to look at what she’s eyeing up this time. She stands in front of his dresser which has some trophies and pictures of Mike and his friends on it. He smiles at them fondly. “Oh, these are all my science fair trophies. We got first every year. Except for last year when we got third. Mr. Clarke said it was totally political,” he explains and for a moment he’s happy she’s listening and not walking away again. That is, until he looks at her face. She wears a different expression now, one of familiarity and shock. Slowly, she raises her shaking finger and points at a picture.

The picture in question shows Mike, Will, Lucas and Dustin with their trophy they won this year. It’s one of Mike’s favorite pictures. They all look so happy there. They were happy, he knows that for sure. It’s a bittersweet memory now.

He’s swept up in the memories for a moment until he notices something about El’s demeanour. She’s not just pointing at the picture. She’s specifically pointing at Will. “You know Will?” He asks in disbelief. “Did you see him? Last night? On the road?”

It’s this moment when Mike realizes that Eleven is not just some random girl with random problems. She’s somehow connected to all of this. He can’t for the life of God figure out how she’s involved but somehow she knows Will. Maybe she can help find him? Maybe it’s no coincidence they found her shortly after Will disappeared.

His thoughts are racing ahead of him and just when he’s about to ask her more questions he hears a car approaching nearby. He knows that noise, it’s his parent’s car. He steps back to check the window and sees his mom driving up to the house. He didn’t expect her so soon. “We gotta go,” he quickly takes Eleven by the arm and drags her down the stairs to get her to the basement again. When they’re nearly down the stairs he sees his mom coming through the door with Holly on her arm. He quickly turns around and drags Eleven back up.

“Ted, is that you?” Karen calls out.

“Just me, Mom!” Mike shouts back while pulling Eleven to his room.

“Mike? What are you doing home?” Karen asks, clearly confused.

“One second,” he calls back before closing the door to his room and jumps to quickly pull his closet open. “In here. I’ll be right back, okay? Please, you have to get in, or my mom, she’ll find you. Do you understand?” he tells Eleven urgently.

The girl looks at him hesitantly and scared, not moving a bit.

“I won’t tell her about you. I promise,” he says earnestly to calm her down.

“Promise?” She repeats in question.

“It means something that you can’t break. Ever,” he explains to her.

“Michael?” His mom calls him again.

“Please?” He begs her with pleading eyes. Finally, she seems to understand the urgency of the situation, sighing and stepping into the closet which he then closes to get to his mom.

***

Karen sits him down on the sofa in the living room and looks at him expectingly with her arms crossed.

“I just… I don’t feel good. I woke up and my head, it really hurt bad, and my throat was all scratchy, and I wanted to tell you, but the last time I told you I was sick you made me go to school anyway, and-“

“Michael,” she interrupts him.

“Yeah?” He asks a bit scared by her firm voice.

“I’m not mad at you,” this comes as a surprise to Mike. He totally expected her to be furious.

“No?” He asks quietly.

“No, of course not,” she sighs and seems to try and put together exactly what she’s going to say next. “All this that’s been going on with Will, I can’t imagine what it’s been like for you,” the storm hits him out of nowhere, it’s awful to be seen like that by an adult, let alone by his own mother. “I just… I want you to feel like you can talk to me. I never want you to feel like you have to hide anything from me. I’m here for you, Okay?”

He doesn’t know what to say at all to that so he just nods. He doesn’t even know what he’s feeling, everything’s been so chaotic, but somehow he feels seen like he never felt seen before and it scares him a lot.

The moment is ruined by a thud from upstairs.

Eleven. Right.

“Is there someone else here?” His mom asks.

“No,” he tries to act nonchalant like he isn’t hiding a girl in his closet.

“All right, then. You go to bed and rest some more. Call me if you need anything. Okay?” She says with a reassuring smile on her face.

He nods in answer and quickly gets up to go get Eleven out of his closet.

“Eleven,” he locks the door behind him as he gets back to his room. “Is everything okay?” He opens the closet and finds Eleven cowered in herself on the floor of the closet. Her face covered in tears. She looks haunted.

“Mike,” she sobs quietly.

“Is everything okay?” He repeats.

Eleven inhales and gives him a small nod.

“Are you sure?”

“Promise,” she whispers back. He’s not sure she means it exactly but he takes her word for now.

***

After school Dustin and Lucas come over to Mike’s house. Mike awaits them pacing in his room. Eleven sat down cross legged on his bed a while ago. Now, she’s just staring at nothing.

When Dustin and Lucas get there, they stare at Eleven in shock. “Are you out of your mind?” Lucas asks.

“Just listen to me,” Mike has been planning what to say to them for the last few hours. He has to convince them.

“You are out of your mind,” Lucas states this time.

“She knows about Will,” Mike shuts him up.

“What do you mean she knows about Will?” Dustin asks confused.

Mike sighs then goes and picks up the picture from earlier. “She pointed at him, at his picture. She knew he was missing. I could tell.”

“You could tell?” Lucas asks, not convinced.

“Just think about it. Do you really think it was a coincidence that we found her on Mirkwood, the same place where Will disappeared?” Mike explains.

“That is weird,” Dustin states, looking at Lucas.

“And she said bad people are after her. I think maybe these bad people are the same ones that took Will. I think she knows what happened to him,” Mike finishes up.

“Then why doesn’t she tell us?” Lucas states, which fair. The boy looks at the group before going over to Eleven who’s watching them silently from the bed. “Do you know where he is?” Lucas raises his voice. “Do you know where Will is?” He grabs her arms on both sides and shakes her slightly.

“Stop it, you’re scaring her!” Mike stops Lucas.

“She should be scared,” Lucas exclaims before turning back to Eleven. “If you know where he is, tell us.” She stays quiet, even though her face tells that she knows more than she lets on.

“This is nuts. We have to take her to your mom,” Lucas states.

“No! Eleven said telling any adult would put us in danger,” Mike protests.

“What kind of danger?” Dustin asks quietly from the side.

“Her name is Eleven?” Lucas asks.

“El for short,” Mike tells him.

“Mike, what kind of danger?” Dustin repeats, more urgently this time.

“Danger danger,” Mike doesn’t really know how to explain the seriousness of the situation so he decides to follow El’s demeanour. He raises his hand in gun shape and points it at Dustin’s forehead, who looks about to be sick. He then moves the gun in Lucas’ direction who slaps his hand away annoyed. “No, no, no,” he shouts. “We’re going back to plan A. We’re telling your mom.” Lucas doesn’t wait for an answer before promptly turning to Mike’s door. But when he tries to open it, it shuts closed. When Lucas tries again, it shuts with such a force, Mike’s figures fall off his table. The door not only closes this time, it locks. On its own.

When they turn around to Eleven, Mike quickly realizes, that it wasn’t the door, it was some other force. He could almost feel it. Feel the gravity changing around him. It was Eleven, the girl who sits on his bed, nose bleeding and her face not scared or unsure anymore. She looks powerful. “No,” she says, simple but effective.

Before they’re able to talk about any of this, Mike’s mom calls them downstairs for dinner and they silently decide to deal with whatever just happened later.

***

Dinner is awkwardly quiet. All Mike wants to do is make Eleven explain to them what she just did and especially what happened to Will.

“Something wrong with the meatloaf?” Mike’s mom asks the kids.

“Oh, no, I had two bologna sandwiches for lunch,” Dustin says. “I don’t know why.”
“Me, too,” Lucas chuckles nervously.

“It’s delicious, Mommy,” Nancy tells Karen, who thanks her with a smile.

Mike doesn’t really listen when Nancy asks her mom about some assembly she wants to go to - which sounds fake if you ask Mike - he’s more focused on one single sentence that is stuck in his head.

There’s a girl with superpowers in my room. There’s a girl with superpowers in my room. There’s-

“Why don’t you take the boys, too?” Karen asks Nancy.

“No,” they all exclaim simultaneously, shaking their heads fiercely.

“Don’t you think you should be there? For Will?” Mike’s mom asks them, clearly confused.

Mike doesn’t get a chance to reply to her. He nearly chokes on his milk when he sees Eleven coming down the stairs behind his mom’s back.

Karen turns around, but before she can see Eleven, Dustin saves the day and hits the table with his fists. Twice.

The whole family looks at the boy in shock, Dustin only smiles. “Sorry. Spasm,” he explains.

***

After dinner, the boys go down to the basement, this time Mike is ready to figure this mystery out, or at least try to. “El?” Mike calls for her. They find her in her little cave again, with Mike’s Walkie in hand. “No adults. Just us and some meatloaf,” Mike says, setting down the tray in front of her. Dustin and Lucas stay behind him when he sits down. “Don’t worry. They won’t tell anyone about you,” Mike reassures El. “They promise. Right?”

“We never would’ve upset you if we knew you had superpowers,” Dustin tells her excitedly. Mike slaps him in his leg for that.

“What Dustin is trying to say is that they were just scared… earlier. That’s all,” Mike explains.

“We just wanted to find our friend,” Lucas states.

“Friend?” Eleven asks, and if that isn’t the saddest thing Mike has ever heard her ask.

“Yeah, friend. Will?” Lucas clearly doesn’t understand her question.

“What is “friend”?” Eleven asks.

“Is she serious?” Lucas asks Dustin, “Um, a friend-“

“Is someone that you’d do anything for,” Mike interrupts him.

“You lend them your cool stuff, like comic books and trading cards,” Dustin adds.

“And they never break a promise,” Mike keeps going.

“Especially when there’s spit,” Lucas says.

“Spit?” Eleven asks, her face looking somewhat disgusted.

“A spit swear means…”, Lucas spits in his hand, “you never break your word.” He then shakes hands with Dustin. “It’s a bond,” he explains.

“That’s super important, because friends…”, Mike pauses, “they tell each other things. Things that parents don’t know.” He hopes this way, he gets her to open up and tell them what she knows about Will’s disappearance. She looks up at Mike and he has the feeling they won her over.

She stands up and paces a bit in the basement. She looks like she’s thinking, so the boys let her be, even if Mike feels a bit impatient.

At some point she sits down at the table and plants both of her hands on it.

“What’s the weirdo doing?” Lucas asks as they go to stand around here.

Mike notices Eleven has closed her eyes and seems quite concentrated. “El?” He asks.

She opens her eyes and picks up the wizard figure, which represents Will the Wise, from the board. She holds it close to her face and stares at it intently. “Will,” she states. Not a question, but a fact.

“Superpowers,” Dustin explains as if that makes this any less crazy.

Mike carefully sits down next to Eleven and looks at her. “Did you see him?” He asks. “On Mirkwood? Do you know where he is?”

She takes a quick look at him, acknowledging his question. Then, she sweeps off all the other figures from the board and flips it upside down. She takes Will’s figure and puts it back on the other side of the board. “I don’t understand,” Mike says.

“Hiding,” she replies quietly.

“Will is hiding?” Mike makes sure. She gives him a small nod.

“From the bad men?” he asks. She shakes her head. “Then from who?”

She’s still for a moment before taking another figure - the Demogorgon - and places it next to Will’s.

The roll. It was a seven.

Mike has never felt so scared in his entire life. And he wonders how it could ever get worse than this.

The demogorgon. It got me.

Notes:

Also, I just wanted to let anyone who reads this know, that this is not a usual fanfic. I mean, if you've read until now, you can see that I mostly just recap what they're saying in the show hence I don't add a lot of my own material in this.
My goal is to point out the (to me) obvious internalised struggling that goes on in Mike's head. Especially because I know the GA of Stranger Things doesn't really perceive Mike that way. All they see is a boy falling in love with a girl while imo, yes, he gets obsessed with her but also has his main priority set: Finding Will. So if you're already deep into Byler, this won't be anything new to you.
This is literally just me dealing with the wait for Season five. I probably won't take too long uploading new chapters since, again, I don't really have to put a lot of creativity in this. I just let the episodes play and write it down how I think Mike perceives it. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to finish this before Season 5 comes out.

Chapter 3: Holly, Jolly

Dustin and Lucas slept over in Mike’s basement. Their parents obviously didn’t want their kids riding home on their bikes this late in the evening after what happened with Will. Ted didn’t say anything about it, which sat weirdly in Mike’s stomach. He was glad, but deep down he knew if it had been Will his dad would’ve made a side comment about it.

The next morning they discuss a plan in the basement. Eleven is yet again doing God knows what with Mike’s Walkie, while the boys stand around the table. “We just tell our parents we have AV Club after school,” Mike suggests. “That’ll give us at least a few hours for Operation Mirkwood.”

“You seriously think that the weirdo knows where Will is?” Lucas asks sceptically.

“Just trust me on this, okay?” Mike tells him. “Did you get the supplies?”

“Yeah,” Lucas replies and shows them what he brought. “Binoculars… from ‘Nam. Army knife… also from ‘Nam. Hammer, camouflage bandana… and the wrist rocket,” Lucas seems to be extremely confident in the last item.

“You’re gonna take out the Demogorgon with a slingshot?” Dustin doubts.

“First of all, it’s a wrist rocket,” Lucas clarifies. “And second of all, the Demogorgon’s not real. It’s made up. But if there is something out there, I’m gonna shoot it in the eye…”, he uses the wrist rocket on Dustin, “and blind it.”

Dustin and Mike flinch back, but of course, there wasn’t anything in the wrist rocket to begin with. “Dustin, what did you get?” Mike sighs and turns his attention to his other friend.

Dustin takes his bag and empties it on the table. Out fall, well, nothing important, just a lot of snacks. “Well, alrighty. So we’ve got Nutty Bars, Bazooka, Pez, Smarties, Pringles, Nilla Wafers, apple, banana, and trail mix,” Dustin counts.

“Seriously?” Lucas asks with an unamused face.

“We need energy for our travels. For stamina,” Dustin explains himself. “And besides, why do we even need weapons anyway? We have her,” he points to Eleven.

“She shut one door,” Lucas exclaims.

“With her mind!” Dustin pronounces. “Are you kidding me? That’s insane! Imagine all the other cool stuff she could do. Like,” he thinks for a moment and then goes to grab Mike’s Star Wars Spaceship. “I bet… that she could make this fly!” He stands in front of Eleven now, holding it out to her. “Hey. Hey,” he says to an unimpressed Eleven. “Okay, concentrate. Okay?” He then let’s the spaceship unceremoniously clatter to the floor. “Okay, one more time,” Dustin says, clearly not giving up. Mike can’t help but imagine Dustin playing ball with a dog instead of testing the powers of a supernatural girl. “Okay. Use your powers, okay?” Dustin says slowly, and once again the spaceship falls to the floor.

“Idiot,” Lucas says and Mike can’t help but agree.

He picks up the spaceship from the floor and looks angrily at Dustin. “She’s not a dog,” he exclaims.

They get interrupted by Mike’s mom calling for them. They have to go to school. Dustin and Lucas grab their stuff and sprint up the stairs without another word while Mike kneels down in front of Eleven who’s still seated on the sofa. “Just stay down here. Don’t make any noise, and don’t leave. If you get hungry, eat Dustin’s snacks, okay?” He makes sure.

“Michael!” Karen calls for him.

“Coming,” he screams back.

He turns back towards Eleven and keeps speaking in a softer tone. “You know those power lines?” He asks her.

“Power lines?” She repeats in question.

“Yeah. The ones behind my house?” He explains.

“Yes,” she finally says.

“Meet us there, after school.”

“After school?”

“Yeah, 3:15.”

She looks confused but Mike understands. He takes off his watch and puts it on her wrist. “When the numbers read three-one-five, meet us there,” he explains to her.

“Three-one-five,” she repeats.

“Three-one-five.”

Eleven smiles at him. Mike never had a girl smile at him this way. It feels comforting, but somewhat strange. He quickly gets up, grabs his bag and leaves upstairs.

***

At school, Mike can’t stop thinking about their mission. At break, the three of them go looking for stones Lucas could use in his slingshot. “How about this one?” He shows a stone he found to Dustin.

“Too big for the sling,” Dustin replies.

Mike shrugs and keeps looking.

“So, do you think Eleven was born with her powers, like the X-Men, or do you think she acquired them, like… like Green Lantern?” Dustin inquires.

“She’s not a superhero. She’s a weirdo,” Lucas comments.

“Why does that matter? The X-Men are weirdos,” Mike mentions.

“If you love her so much, why don’t you marry her?” Lucas says.

“What are you talking about,” Mike asks, already annoyed with the conversation. Does he have to like her just because she’s a girl? How does this even work? How does he know if he likes a girl? He hasn’t thought about this before.

“Mike, seriously?” Lucas asks in disbelief.

“What?” Mike really doesn’t understand what he’s supposed to say right now.

“You look at her all, like…” Lucas takes a step forward and imitates Mike, “Hi, El! El! El! El! I love you so much!” Lucas kneels down. “Would you marry me?”

“Shut up, Lucas,” Mike says annoyed, he feels uncomfortable, he doesn’t really know why. He knows Lucas is only joking. Or is he? He feels embarrassed with this whole situation, not really knowing why, but also not eager to find out.

“Yeah, shut up, Lucas,” Troy’s voice booms from behind them. Mike didn’t notice him and James sneaking up on them. “What are you losers doing back here?”

“Probably looking for their missing friend,” James jokes.

“That’s not funny. It’s serious. He’s in danger,” Dustins says.

“I hate to break it to you, Toothless, but he’s not in danger,” Troy says. “He’s dead. That’s what my dad says. He said he was probably killed by some other queer.” Both him and James start laughing. It’s nothing new from them, even if the words hurt, Mike is used to them by now.

“Come on. Just ignore them,” Mike says to his friends and starts to leave until he stumbles to the ground. Troy tripped him. He falls face first to the ground, his chin meeting with a hard stone.

“Watch where you’re going, Frogface,” Troy says as Lucas and Dustin lift him up. Mike’s chin is throbbing, he feels dizzy.

“You all right?” Lucas asks him carefully. Mike’s chin is bleeding, he notices when he touches it with his fingers.

“Yeah,” he answers quietly while he watches Troy and James walk away, laughing to each other. He feels empty, somewhere inside he hurts but he doesn’t like to look at that part.

Dustin kneels down to the ground and as he comes up he holds out a stone to Mike. “Hey! How about this one?” He asks as he claps Mike’s shoulder encouragingly.

Mike can’t help but chuckle with his friends. “Yeah,” he says, smiling. He already feels a bit lighter. No matter what, he will always be so deeply grateful for his friends, even if they annoy him from time to time.

***

Later, at 3:15, they pick up Eleven and start their search for Will again. They’re walking through the woods. El walks next to Mike while the other two walk a few feet behind them. Mike is still in thought about what happened earlier.

He’s used to the bullying, but it’s not just that anymore. He feels sad and angry, so angry. Will is missing, he’s in severe danger and these guys don’t care. They don’t care at all or show any kind of empathy. He’s pretty sure he’s going crazy with each passing second Will’s gone, and Troy and James just hit the nail right where it hurts back there. He’s a master of pushing down his true feelings to keep calm and collected, otherwise he would lose it completely.

“Why did they hurt you?” Eleven asks him and Mike hates how obvious it is.

“What?”

She points towards his chin and Mike realizes it’s not the inner hurt she means. Well, that’s a good thing at least. He hates to be seen. “Oh, that. Uh…”, he mumbles. “I just fell at recess,” he lies.

“Mike…” Eleven says softly.

“Yeah?”

“Friends tell the truth.”

She’s not wrong there, he guesses. But he doesn’t like to admit the truth at all, especially not to her. “I was tripped by this mouth breather, Troy, okay?” He admits. He can’t make himself look at Eleven, he just keeps staring forward in shame.

“Mouth breather?”

“Yeah, you know… a dumb person,” he explains. “A knucklehead.”
“Knucklehead?”

“I don’t know why I just didn’t tell you. Everyone at school knows. I just didn’t want you to think I was such a wastoid, you know?”

“Mike…”, she says again softly.

“Yeah?”

“I understand.”

“Oh,” he doesn’t know what to say. “Okay, cool.”

“Cool,” she replies with a smile.

Mike smiles back at her. He was scared to be honest like that, especially with her but now he feels a lot calmer because he knows she understands. She still doesn’t know the whole picture, but she supports him nonetheless and it almost feels easy, like that.

***

They keep walking for a long time. At some point, the sun sets and they’re still going. They’re sort of following Eleven, and Mike can’t help but notice the direction she’s leading them. He knows this way by heart.

He’s proven right when she stops walking in front of the Bylers’ house and looks at Mike expectantly. “Here,” she simply says.

“Yeah, this is where Will lives,” Mike tells her.

“Hiding,” she says once again.

“No, no, this is where he lives,” Mike corrects her. “He’s missing from here. Understand?"
Lucas and Dustin catch up to them and throw their bikes down to the ground. “What are we doing here?” Lucas asks.

“She said he’s hiding here,” Mike explains.

“Um… no,” Lucas says.

“I swear, if we walked all the way out here for nothing-“ Dustin begins.

“That’s exactly what we did,” Lucas explodes. “I told you she didn’t know what the hell she was talking about!”

Mike doesn’t know if he agrees with Lucas fully, but it’s strange. How would she even know Will lives here. “Why did you bring us here?” He asks of her, a bit annoyed. They can’t just waist time like that.

She clearly has something she wants to tell them, but doesn’t say anything. She looks a bit confused herself, if he’s honest.

“Mike, don’t waste your time with her,” Lucas tells him.

“What do you want to do then?” Mike asks, getting more annoyed by the second.

“Call the cops, like we should have done yesterday.”

“We are not calling the cops,” Mike exclaims, because really, that’s not the answer.

“What other choice do we have?” Lucas shouts.

“Guys!” Dustin screams and that’s when Mike hears it, too. Sirens.

When he looks at the street he sees two police cars and an ambulance pass them by. His heart drops because he has a feeling he knows what that means. “Will…” he states.

They all rush back to get their bikes and promptly follow the sirens. Mike pushes on the pedals as hard as he can to follow them. His heart is racing and his chest burns but he keeps on driving.

They pull up at Sattler Quarry and hide behind a fire truck to look out at what’s going on. There are multiple people assembled at the shore. Two police men are lifting something out of the water on a stretcher.

A body?

It’s a body.

“It’s not Will. It can’t be,” he hears himself say. He doesn’t really feel like he’s there at all. He’s a body, but he doesn’t feel part of it, he feels heavy and light at the same time. Like he’s jumping in and out of his form.

“It’s Will,” Lucas says quietly. “It’s really Will.”

No.

No.

He walks backwards, he has to get away, but he’s dizzy. He feels sick, so very sick.

“Mike…,” Eleven says while reaching for him.

“”Mike”? “Mike,” what?” He slaps her hand away. He’s angry. He holds on to that anger, it’s better than whatever else he’s feeling. “You were supposed to help us find him alive,” he points out. “You said he was alive! Why did you lie to us?”

Friends don’t lie.

“What’s wrong with you?” He shouts. “What is wrong with you?”

Eleven looks hurt, there’re tears in her eyes but Mike couldn’t care less. He’s overwhelmed with anger.

“Mike…” she repeats softly.

“What?” He snarks at her, basically begging her to say something, something that matters. He can’t read between the lines of whatever she wants to tell him. He doesn’t really care to. Instead, he walks past her to grab his bike.

“Mike, come on. Don’t do this, man,” Lucas calls after him.

“Mike, where are you going? Mike,” Dustin weeps.

He doesn’t reply, doesn’t really listen either. Will is dead, Mike doesn’t know where he’s going. How is he supposed to know? How is he supposed to know anything anymore.

He drives and drives. The roads are flying by, he’s sure he never drove that fast in his life, it’s like he’s outrunning something he can’t even name. He feels himself shifting in and out of consciousness. Later, he will think back on this moment, wondering how he was even able to drive like that.

He doesn’t think at all, if he’s honest. What is there left to think of?

Will is dead. Will is dead. He is dead.

He doesn’t know if he cried, or if his face was dry until he got home. He only recalls freezing air, an empty heart and a headache that might kill him if he wanted it to.

He can’t really remember how he got home, all he remembers is falling into the arms of his mom who hold him tight, comforting him as he fell apart

Notes:

Honestly, breaking down. Mike's just a baby.

Chapter 4: The Body

Mike feels hopeless. He still has no idea how to deal with any of this. He doesn’t want to, he refuses. But it’s useless, there is really nothing to do anymore. All he can do is sit in his sorrow and wait. He’s not sure what he’s waiting for, but as long as he’s waiting he’s in the process of doing something. It’s no end, he’s hanging in between hope and acceptance and can’t bring himself to get himself out of this area. He’s sitting in a waiting room, waiting for his best friend to come home, knowing he won’t.

Lucas drove Eleven back to Mike’s on his bike. She’s now with Mike in his basement. He doesn’t know what to do with her after all this, but he doesn’t really care what’s going to happen with her anymore. He’s still waiting. He sits on the sofa with the drawings he has from Will, looking through them, admiring them, waiting for him.

Eleven is still caught up with his Walkie, she’s been on it for the last few minutes or even hours, Mike can’t really tell. The static of the radio is making a bunch of noises which annoys Mike immensely. “Can you please stop that?” He asks the girl.

She looks at him, turning it off. He goes back to the drawings when a few seconds later the static starts crackling again. “Are you deaf?” He raises his voice in annoyance. “I thought we were friends, you know? But friends tell each other the truth. And they definitely don’t lie to each other. You made me think Will was okay, that he was still out there, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t!”

Eleven looks sad but Mike has no empathy towards her at the moment. He doesn’t care about her. He doesn’t care about anything anymore, to be honest. “Maybe you thought you were helping, but you weren’t. You hurt me. Do you understand? What you did sucks. Lucas was right about you. All along.”

A moment passes. Eleven doesn’t say anything but what did he expect? An apology maybe, but-

“So come on and let me know.”

He looks up confused, wondering for a moment if his imagination’s playing tricks on him.

“Should I stay or should I go?”

Eleven looks at him, Walkie in hand, the static still crackling in the background.

“Should I stay or should I go now?”

He jumps up and joins Eleven on the floor.

“Should I stay or should I go now?”

Eleven holds the Walkie out to him.

“If I go there will be trouble,”

Mike grabs it in disbelief.

“If I stay it will be double.”

“Will, is that you? It’s Mike! Do you copy? Over.” Eleven’s nose is bleeding. The static is crackling. “Will, are you there? Will!”

There’s no answer. Mike looks back at Eleven in question. “Was that…, was it…”

Eleven smiles ever so slightly and then she says the name that Mike needed to hear all along. “Will.”

He wasn’t sure what he was waiting for, but he’s done waiting now.

***

First of all, he can’t go to school. There’s no time for school. So the next morning, when his mom knocks on his door, he stays in bed.

“Hi, honey. How are you feeling?”

“I, uh… I don’t think I can go to school today,” he tells her.

“Oh, that’s fine, sweetie. I need to drop off Nance, then I’m gonna check in on Barb’s parents.” Right, Barbara, Mike remembers. Nancy’s friend who went missing. Nancy’s been weird and quiet ever since it happened. Mike feels bad for her, he knows how she feels better than anyone else. He also wonders if Barbara’s disappearance has anything to do with Will’s. “Why don’t you grab a book or something and come with me? We can stop by the video store on the way back, pick out whatever you want. Even R-rated.”

“I think I just want to stay home today. I mean, if that’s okay?” He asks with his best vulnerable voice, hoping his mom will buy it.

“Well, are you sure you’re gonna be all right here by yourself?” She asks him.

“I think so.”

His mom sighs before eventually agreeing. “Okay. But if you need anything, call Dad at work,” she tells him. She kisses his forehead before leaving him alone. As soon as she’s gone, he gets out of bed and grabs his Walkie from his nightstand.

“Lucas, do you copy?” There is no answer at first. “Lucas, come on, I know you’re there! This is urgent. I’m serious.” There’s still no answer. Mike stands up and decides to keep going. “I’m not gonna stop until you answer,” Mike says, then goes on to repeat his name until there’s finally an answer from Lucas.

“Go away, Mike. I’m not in the mood, all right? Over and out.”

“No, not “out,”” Mike stops Lucas. “I’m not messing around, okay? This is about Will. Over.”

“What about Will?” Lucas asks. “You mean about his funeral? Over.”

“No, not his funeral. Screw his funeral,” Mike exclaims.

“What?” Lucas asks confused.

“Just get over here stat. And bring Dustin,” Mike tells him. “Over and out.”

***

When Dustin and Lucas finally arrive, Mike brings them down to Eleven and tells her to show them what she showed him. She takes the Walkie and works her powers. Will isn’t singing anymore, but they can hear him whimpering on the other end. Mike can’t imagine a more horrible sound, but that’s proof. He’s still out there, somewhere. He won’t accept the other possibility. “We keep losing the signal, but you heard it, right?” Mike asks his friends.

“Yeah, I heard a baby,” Lucas says unconvinced.

“What?” Mike asks confused.

“Mike, you obviously tapped into a baby monitor. It’s probably the Blackburns’ next door,” Lucas goes on.

“Uh, did that sound like a baby to you?” Mike asks. “That was Will!” He would know his voice anywhere. No one can convince him that’s not his best friend.

“Mike…”

“Lucas, you don’t understand. He spoke last night. Words! He was singing that weird song he loves. Even El heard him!”

“Oh, well, if the weirdo heard him, then I guess-“

“Are you sure you’re on the right channel?” Dustin pipes in.

“I don’t think it’s about that. I think, somehow, she’s channeling him,” Mike explains, referring to Eleven.

“Like… like Professor X,” Dustin states in disbelief.

“Yeah,” Mike breathes out, finally happy that someone understands.

“Are you actually believing this crap?” Lucas asks Dustin.

“I don’t know, I mean…” Dustin begins. “Do you remember when Will fell off his bike and broke his finger? He sounded a lot like that.”

“Did you guys not see what I saw?” Lucas keeps going. “They pulled Will’s body out of the water. He’s dead!”

“Well, maybe it’s his ghost. Maybe he’s haunting us,” Dustin prompts.

“It’s not his ghost,” Mike says firmly.

“So how do you know that?” Lucas inquires.

“I just do,” Mike stands his ground.

“Then what was in that water?”

“I don’t know,” Mike exclaims. “All I know is Will is alive. Will is alive! He’s out there somewhere. All we have to do is find him.” They are silent for a moment. Eleven is still trying to catch Will on the Walkie. “This isn’t gonna work. We need to get El to a stronger radio,” Mike figures.

“Mr. Clarke’s Heathkit ham shack,” Dustin smiles at Mike.

“Yeah,” Mike grins back.

“The Heathkit’s at school,” Lucas mentions. “There is no way we’re gonna get the weirdo in there without anyone noticing. I mean… look at her,” he points lazily in her direction.

***

They decide to give Eleven a makeover. While Dustin and Lucas go through Nancy’s old stuff, Mike tries to put some make up on Eleven’s face. He doesn’t really know what he’s supposed to do and, to be fair, he can’t really see a big difference afterwards.

Dustin and Lucas come back with a dress and a wig for her to wear. She goes to change in Nancy’s room, while the boys wait outside. When she comes back outside, Mike can’t help but stare at her in amazement. She doesn’t look so boyish anymore, she looks like a real girl. She looks- “pretty,” he says out loud. Eleven gives him a small smile, which flusters Mike a little bit. “Good. You look pretty good,” he tries to save himself.

Eleven goes to look at herself in the mirror. She smiles, which warms Mike’s heart. He feels proud of her, oddly enough. She came such a long way since they found her in the woods. And it’s only been a few days.

***

They ride their bikes to school after that. Eleven rides with Mike as usual, she holds on to him from behind and Mike can’t help but wonder. Wonder about Eleven and him. Wonder about what Lucas said the other day. He likes Eleven, she’s been a big help and he sort of grew fond of her, aside from the aftermath of yesterday’s events. He’s not sure if he likes her the way Lucas suggests he does, but he also never felt so close to a girl before in his life. Maybe this is how it’s supposed to feel like. Maybe this is it.

Eventually, they arrive and go into the school towards the AV room. “Okay, remember, if anyone sees us, look sad,” Mike reminds them.

“Attention students,” a man speaks through the speakers, echoing through the hallways. “There will be an assembly to honor Will Byers in the gymnasium now. Do not go to fourth period.”

They arrive at the AV room, but when Mike tries to get in, the door won’t open. “It’s locked,” Mike tells the others.

“What?” Lucas asks and tries to, unsuccessfully, open it himself.

“Hey, do you think you can open it?” Dustin asks Eleven. “With your powers?”

Before Eleven can try, Mr. Clarke comes around the corner. “Boys?” He looks at them a bit suspiciously. “Assembly’s about to start.”

“We know,” Mike starts, trying to sound sad. “We’re just, you know…”

“Upset,” Lucas finishes for him.

“Yeah, definitely upset,” Dustin confirms.

“We need some alone time,” Mike says.

“To cry,” Dustin goes on.

“Yeah, listen…,” Mr. Clarke says. “I get it. I do. I know how hard this is, but let’s just be there for Will, huh? And then,” he pulls out a the key for the AV room and throws it at Mike. “The Heathkit is all yours for the rest of the day. What do you say?” The boys smile at him. This was easier than breaking in, Mike thinks happily.

Mr. Clarke takes a look at Eleven in confusion. “I don’t believe we’ve met. What’s your name?” He asks her.

When she goes on to say Eleven, Mike interrupts her quickly. “Eleanor! She’s my, uh-“

“Cousin,” Lucas jumps in.

“Second cousin,” Dustin corrects.

“She’s here for Will’s funeral,” Mike sighs.

“Ah, well, welcome to Hawkins Middle, Eleanor,” Mr. Clarke says. “I wish you were here under better circumstances.” Eleven looks at Mike before saying a polite “thank you.”

“Uh, where are you from exactly?” Mr. Clarke asks, suspicion rising in his voice. The boys look at each other in distress.

“Bad place-“ Eleven says. “Sweden,” Dustin talks over her.

“I have a lot of Swedish family,” Mike adds.

“She hates it there,” Dustin goes on.

“Cold,” Lucas exclaims.

“Subzero,” Dustin says.

Mr. Clarke looks at them confused, not asking anymore questions, thankfully. “Shall we?” He asks.

Together, they go to the assembly, Dustin leading the way. When he opens the door to the gymnasium he does so with a bit too much force. The door bangs open and all heads turn in their direction. “Abort,” Dustin whispers but gets shoved forward by Lucas before he can escape.

They sit down while the principal continues his speech. Mike’s not really listening to what he’s saying, considering he knows Will is alive and would much rather not listen to this. Instead, he takes a look around at the other students who actually look quite sad and somehow, that doesn’t sit right with Mike. “Look at these fakers,” he whispers to Lucas, who sits next to him.

“They probably didn’t even know his name till today,” Lucas says back.

They hear snickering from their right and turn to look at who it is. Unsurprisingly, it’s Troy and James. “Who is interested in this. This is so stupid,” Mike hears them say. Anger rises up in him. It’s one thing to bully his friends and him at every possible opportunity, but this goes too far. They don’t have to grieve him, but to show this sort of disrespect…

“Mouth breather, “Eleven comments on his left.

***

After the assembly, Mike quickly jumps up, his anger and hurt having reached a boiling point. He follows Troy and James to confront them. “Hey! Hey,” he shouts after them. “Hey, Troy!” They slowly turn around, watching him with dumb looks on their faces. “You think this is funny?” He asks them, his voice full with emotion. Mike hates it.

“What’d you say, Wheeler?” Troy asks back.

“I saw you guys laughing over there,” he stammers, feeling his eyes grow wet. “And I think that’s a real messed up thing to do.”

“Didn’t you listen to the counsellor, Wheeler?” James says. “Grief shows itself in funny ways.”

“Besides, what’s there to be sad about, anyway?” Troy jokes. “Will’s in fairyland now, right? Flying around with all the other little fairies,” Mike has to grit his teeth to hold back his tears. “All happy and gay!” Troy imitates a fairy flying around which makes Mike want to throw up. He feels such deep anger, it hurts him. Somewhere inside of him there’s shame, too. He doesn’t dare to look at it though.

Troy and James laugh and turn around, apparently done with the conversation. But Mike isn’t. No, not this time. He follows them and pushes Troy in the back, hard. The boy grunts and falls down to his feet.

“You’re dead, Wheeler,” he exclaims as he looks back at Mike. Mike doesn’t feel scared, he almost looks forward to the fight. Troy stands up and goes to lunge at Mike, but before he reaches him, he suddenly freezes in place.

Mike looks at him confused. Troy’s not moving, it’s like something stopped him, making it impossible for him to keep going. There’s a dripping noise and when Mike looks down at Troy, he sees the boy’s pants wetting themselves.

“Dude, Troy peed himself,” someone yells excitedly. Mike smiles down at Troy, delighted but slightly confused.

This doesn’t feel like something that just happens. Mike already has a suspicion, which is confirmed when he catches sight of Eleven behind him, wiping her nose with a smirk on her face.

Oh hell, Mike really does like this girl.

When the principal comes their way, Lucas grabs him and together the group runs out of the gymnasium in the direction of the AV room.

They quickly go inside and close the door after them. Mike turns the light on and together they stand around Eleven who sits down in front of the Heathkit. “Now what?” Dustin asks from behind.

“She’ll find him,” Mike says. “Right, El?” Mike turns on the Heathkit and tunes the radio. When he looks back at Eleven, the girl has closed her eyes. “She’s doing it,” Mike tells the others. “She’s finding him!”

“This is crazy,” Dustin says astonished.

“Calm down. She just closed her eyes,” Lucas tells him unimpressed. Right on cue, the light above them turns off, making them flinch.

“Holy…,” Dustin starts but is interrupted by a voice coming out of the radio. “What is that?” He asks as the clanging grows louder.

“Mom?” They hear a voice. Not just any voice.

Will.

“No way,” Lucas exclaims in wonder.

“Mom… please,” Will continues.

They immediately start to scream into the microphone calling for Will, but he doesn’t seem to hear them. “Hello? Mom?” Will says instead.

“Why can’t he hear us?” Lucas asks distressed.

“I don’t know,” Mike exclaims

That’s when they hear a growling noise. “Mom, it’s coming,” Will screams. “It’s like home, but it’s so dark… it’s so dark and empty. And it’s cold! Mom? Mom!” He keeps on begging for help when out of a sudden fuse is blowing. The Heathkit catches fire and promptly turns off. The boys yelp, jumping back while the light flickers back on.

The fire alarm starts to ring because of the smoke. Dustin grabs the fire extinguisher from the wall and uses it on the fire while the alarm keeps ringing. Mike leans down to Eleven to find her white as a sheet. Her nose is bleeding profoundly. “El, are you okay?” He asks while grabbing her arms. She doesn’t answer, she doesn’t really seem present at all. “Can you move?” He asks distressed.

He looks back at Lucas, his heart’s racing. “Here, help her up,” Mike tells him. They both grab one of her arms and lift her out of the chair. Dustin grabs her legs and as a group, they drag her out of the room.

Thankfully, they find a trolley outside and lay Eleven on top of it, racing her out of school.

Notes:

Troy peeing himself is definitely one of my favorite scenes. It makes me so happy every time. Another reason to love Eleven, I don't accept any Eleven slander because she is That Girl.

Chapter 5: The Flea and the Acrobat

When they get back to Mike’s house, they brainstorm in the basement while Eleven rests on the sofa. They need to figure out what the next steps are. They learned something new, but what do they even do with that. “What was Will saying?” Mike thinks out loud. “Like home… Like home…”, he stands up to stroll around in thought. “But dark.”

“And empty,” Lucas points out.

“Empty and cold. Wait, did he say cold?” Dustin wonders.

“I don’t know. The stupid radio kept going in and out.”

“It’s like riddles in the dark,” Dustin sighs.

“Like home,” Mike is still hung up on that detail. “Like his house?”

“Or maybe like Hawkins,” Lucas adds.

“Upside down,” Eleven whispers quietly from the sofa.

“What’d she say?” Lucas asks.

“Upside down,” Mike repeats.

“What?”

“Upside down,” Mike says, raising his voice. He sits down at the table, he has an idea where this might go. “When El showed us where Will was, she flipped the board over, remember?” He asks the boys and shows them what he means, flipping the board over. “Upside down. Dark. Empty.”

“Do you understand what he’s talking about?” Lucas asks Dustin confused.

“No,” Dustin replies shortly.

“Guys, come on, just think about it,” Mike says impatiently. “When El took us to find Will, she took us to his house, right?”

“Yeah,” Lucas says. “And he wasn’t there.”

“But what if he was there?” Mike proposes. “What if we just couldn’t see him? What if he was on the other side?” Mike flips the board over once more. He sees Lucas and Dustin thinking, so he keeps going. “What if this is Hawkins and…,” he flips the board again, “this is where will is?” He says, pointing at the dark side of the board. “The Upside Down.”

“Like the Vale of Shadows,” Dustin presumes.

Mike looks at Lucas expectantly. “Well, alright, let’s assume you’re correct, what does this mean for Will?” Lucas asks them.

“Let’s go and find out,” Dustin says, standing up to bring their D&D folder to the table. He puts it down and opens it until he finds the correct page. “The Vale of Shadows is a dimension that is a dark reflection or echo of our world,” Dustin begins. “It is a place of decay and death. A plane out of phase. A place of monsters. It is right next to you, and you don’t even see it.”

“An alternate dimension,” Mike sums up.

“But… how… how do we get there?” Lucas asks.

“We cast Shadow Walk,” Dustin answers.

“In real life, dummy,” Lucas reminds Dustin.

“We can’t shadow walk, but…,” Dustin looks at Eleven, who’s still on the sofa. “Maybe she can.”

They all turn around to look at Eleven. Mike can’t help but notice how exhausted she still looks. He’s not sure she can just that easily go into another dimension. “Do you know how we can get there?” He asks softly. “To the Upside Down?”

She slowly shakes her head and well, that’s that.

***

The next day is the day of Will’s funeral. Mike is not looking forward to it, but on the other hand at least they have a plan now. To ask Mr. Clarke at the funeral about alternate dimensions. Maybe he can help them.

Mike’s dad helped him with his tie in the morning. He made it too tight for Mike’s liking and so he goes to the funeral even more uncomfortable than he would have liked.

He doesn’t really pay much attention to the service. He knows that Will’s not dead but he doesn’t like to imagine himself ever being at his funeral. It’s so surreal to him that he kind of just blacks out. What he will remember later is Dustin kicking him in the side and pointing at a girl who’s crying. “Just wait till we tell Will that Jennifer Hayes was crying at his funeral,” he snickers.

What he also notices is the presence of Lonnie, Will’s dad. Mike never liked the man. He was never much around, but he knows from Will, that Lonnie took him to baseball games every now and then, which is absurd, considering Will doesn’t even like baseball.

He also got an overall aggressive and uncomfortable vibe from Lonnie. He noticed before how shaken up Will was sometimes after spending time with his dad. It all sat very wrong with Mike, so naturally he avoided him at the funeral.

Later, when the people who attended the funeral come together, Mike and his friends go seek Mr. Clarke out, who’s currently grabbing some food from one of the tables. “Mr. Clarke?” Mike asks.

“Oh, hey, there,” he says gently when he sees them. “How are you boys holding up?”

“We’re in mourning,” Lucas answers.

“Man, these aren’t real Nilla Wafers,” Dustin says from behind. Mike notices him eating something.

“We were wondering if you had time to talk?” Mike asks hopefully.

“We have some questions,” Lucas adds.

“A lot of questions,” Mike defines.

Mr. Clarke agrees and together, they sit down at a round table. “So, you know how in Cosmos, Carl Sagan talks about other dimensions? Like beyond our world?” Mike presumes.

“Yeah, sure. Theoretically,” Mr. Clarke agrees.

“Right, theoretically,” Mike says.

“So, theoretically, how do we travel there?” Lucas asks.

“You guys have been thinking about Hugh Everett’s Many-Worlds Interpretation haven’t you?” Mr. Clarke assumes. Mike’s not sure he has ever heard of that before, but sure. “Well, basically, there are parallel universes. Just like our world, but just infinite variations of it,” he explains. “Which means there’s a world out there where none of this tragic stuff ever happened.”

“Yeah, that’s not what we’re talking about,” Lucas corrects him.

“Oh.”

“We were thinking of more of an evil dimension, like the Vale of Shadows,” Dustin tells Mr. Clarke. “You know the Vale of Shadows?”
“An echo of the Material Plane, where necrotic and shadow magic-“ Mr. Clarke begins, nodding along.

“Yeah, exactly,” Mike interrupts him. “If that did exist, a place like the Vale of Shadows, how would we travel there?”

“Theoretically,” Lucas adds.

“Well…,” Mr. Clarke thinks for a moment before grabbing one of the paper plates and a pen. “Picture… an acrobat…”, he starts to draw, “standing on a tightrope. Now, the tightrope is our dimension. And our dimension has rules. You can move forwards, or backwards,” he draws some more. “But, what if… right next to our acrobat, there is a flea? Now, the flea can also travel back and forth, just like the acrobat. Right?”

“Right?” The boys repeat.

“Here’s where things get really interesting,” Mr. Clarke holds out a finger in the air before continuing to draw. “The flea can also travel this way… along the side of the rope. He can even go… underneath the rope.”

“Upside down,” the boys say in unison.

“Exactly,” Mr. Clarke agrees.

“But we’re not the flea, we’re the acrobat,” Mike makes sure.

“In this metaphor, yes, we’re the acrobat,” Mr. Clarke explains.

“So we can’t go upside down?” Lucas presumes.

“No,” Mr. Clarke shakes his head.

“Well, is there any way for the acrobat to get to the Upside Down?” Dustin inquires.

“Well… you’d have to create a massive amount of energy. More than humans are currently capable of creating, mind you,” Mr. Clarke begins. “To open up some kind of tear in time and space, and then…,” he folds the paper plate in the middle and takes his pen and pushes it through both sides of the plate. “You create a doorway.”

“Like a gate?” Dustin asks.

“Sure. Like a gate,” Mr. Clarke accepts. “But again, this is all-“

“Theoretical,” Lucas finishes.

“But… but what if this gate already existed?” Mike asks.

“Well, if it did, I… I think we’d know,” Mr. Clarke says. “It would disrupt gravity, the magnetic field, our environment. Heck, it might even swallow us up whole. Science is neat. But I’m afraid it’s not very forgiving.”

***

After the funeral, Mike, Dustin and Lucas go back to Mike’s to show Eleven what Mr. Clarke showed them. “It would take a lot of energy to build a gate like this,” Mike sums up. “But that’s got to be what happened. Otherwise, how’d Will get there, right?”
“Right,” Eleven agrees.

“What we want to know is, do you know where the gate is?” Lucas asks Eleven, who shakes her head in answer. “Then how do you know about the Upside Down?” Lucas inquires. Eleven doesn’t give them an answer. Instead, she looks to the side where Dustin is walking in circles with a compass in hand.

“Dustin, what are you doing?” Mike asks the boy.

“Dustin?” Mike and Lucas repeat when Dustin doesn’t answer.

“I… I need to see your compasses,” Dustin stops walking.

“What?” Mike asks, not following.

“Your compasses. All of your compasses, right now,” Dustin demands.

They collect all compasses they have with them and throw them on the table. Mike still doesn’t have a clue what Dustin is on about. “What’s exiting about this?” Mike asks, feeling a bit dumb.

“Well, they’re all facing north, right?” Dustin states.

“Yeah, so?” Lucas asks, apparently also confused by Dustin’s observation.

“Well, that’s not true north,” Dustin explains.

“What do you mean?” Mike questions.

“I mean exactly what I just said. That’s not true north,” Dustin repeats. “Are you both seriously this dense?” Lucas shrugs with a confused face. Mike feels similar. “The sun rises in the east, and it sets in the west. Right?” Dustin says pointing at both directions. “Which means,” he points forward, “that’s true north.”

“So what you’re saying is the compasses are broken,” Mike sums up.

“Do you even understand how a compass works?” Dustin sighs. “Do you see a battery pack on this?”

“No,” Mike says.

“No, you don’t. Because it doesn’t need one,” Dustin explains further. “The needle’s naturally drawn to the Earth’s magnetic North Pole.”

“So what’s wrong with them?” Lucas asks.

“Well, that’s what I couldn’t figure out, but then I remembered. You can change the direction of a compass with a magnet. If there’s the presence of a more powerful magnetic field, the needle deflects to that power,” Dustin goes on, looking in between Lucas and Mike. “And then I remembered what Mr. Clarke said. The gate would have so much power-“

“It could disrupt the electromagnetic field,” Mike finishes.

“Exactly,” Dustin agrees.

“Meaning, if we follow the compasses’ north-,“ Lucas begins.

“They should lead us to the gate,” Dustin continues.

They pick up a compass each and grab their jackets. As soon as they’re outside, they follow the direction of the needle. They eventually end up on dysfunctional train tracks. Dustin and Lucas end up walking in front of Mike and Eleven.

The way is long and Eleven is quiet, which is not unusual but when she says she’s tired and they should turn back, even Mike thinks that something about this is suspicious. He doesn’t dwell on it, though. He trusts her at this point and would much rather think about the fact how near they’re to finding Will.

Once they find the gate, they can go to the Upside Down and look for Will. They could bring him home this day.

After what feels to Mike like endless walking, they reach an abandoned junkyard. The sun is much lower than it had been when they started at Mike’s house. “Oh, no,” Dustin says suddenly, coming to a stop.

“”Oh, no”? What’s, “Oh, no”?” Lucas asks.

“We’re headed back home,” Dustin says when he turns around to the other three.

“What?” Mike asks at the same time Lucas asks, “are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Dustin concludes. “Setting sun, right there. We looped right back around.”

“And you’re just realizing this now?” Lucas asks annoyed.

“Why is this all on me?” Dustin says offended.

“Because you’re the compass genius,” Lucas explains.

“What do yours say?” Dustin inquires.

“North,” both Mike and Lucas answer after looking at their compasses.

“Makes no damn sense,” Dustin says.

“Maybe the gate moved,” Mike suggests, all his hopes for bringing Will back today evaporating into thin air. His heart feels heavy again.

“No, I don’t think it’s the gate,” Dustin disagrees. “I think it’s something else screwing with the compasses.”

“Maybe it’s something here,” Mike wonders.

“No, it has to be like a super magnet.”

“It’s not a magnet,” Lucas says, interrupting them. He turns around to look back at Eleven who stands a few feet behind the boys. “She’s been acting weirder than normal. If she can slam doors with her mind, she can definitely screw up a compass,” Lucas concludes.

“Why would she do that?” Mike says, disregarding Lucas’ statement immediately.

“Because she’s trying to sabotage our mission. Because she’s a traitor,” Lucas exclaims. He slowly walks up to Eleven which makes Mike nervous. Eleven just stands there, arms on both sides, a hurt look on her face.

“Lucas, what are you doing?” Mike asks, following him, hoping he doesn’t need to interfere anything. Why can’t they all just get along?

“You did it, didn’t you?” Lucas confronts the girl, now standing face to face with Eleven. “You don’t want us to reach the gate,” he conspires. “You don’t want us to find Will.”
“Lucas, come on, seriously, just leave her alone,” Mike exclaims.

“Admit it,” Lucas continues, ignoring Mike.

“No,” Eleven whispers.

“Admit it,” Lucas screams at her, grabbing her arm. “Fresh blood,” he slams her arm back. “I knew it.”

“Lucas, come on,” Mike raises his voice. This is absurd.

“I saw her wiping her nose on the tracks! She was using her powers,” Lucas finally turns towards Mike.

“Bull! That’s old blood,” he turns to Eleven. “Right, El?” When she doesn’t answer, doubt starts rising in him. She looks back at him, a guilty look on her face. “Right, El?” He asks again.

She shakes her head slowly. “It’s… not… it’s not safe.”
After that the situation kind of explodes.

“What did I tell you?” Lucas asks Mike, “She’s been playing us from the beginning.”
“That’s not true. She helped us find Will,” Mike counters back.

“Find Will?” Lucas screams. “Find Will? Where is he, then? Huh? I don’t see him.”

“Yeah, you know what I mean,” Mike tells him. He heard Will. They all did. They know where he is, they just have to get there. Eleven helped them, with all of this.

“No, I actually don’t,” Lucas disagrees. “Just think about it, Mike. She could’ve just told us where the Upside Down was right away, but she didn’t. She just made us run around like headless chickens.”

“All right, calm down,” Dustin screams at his friends, stepping between them to pull them apart.

“No,” Lucas slaps Dustin away. “She used us, all of us! She helped just enough so she could get what she wants. Food and a bed. She’s like a stray dog.”

“Screw you, Lucas,” Mike screams at him.

“No! Screw you, Mike. You’re blind… blind because you like that a girl’s not grossed out by you.”

Now, hold on.

“But wake up, man! Wake the hell up! She knows where Will is, and now she’s just letting him die in the Upside Down.”

“Shut up,” Mike yells. She wouldn’t do that. No, Will won’t die. She wouldn’t let that happen. Not Eleven.

“For all we know, it’s her fault.”

“Shut up.”

“We’re looking for some stupid monster…,” he punches Mike in the shoulder. “But did you ever stop to think that maybe she’s the monster?” He points towards Eleven.

“I said shut up,” Mike screams before he lunges at Lucas, pushing him to the ground. They kick each other around, while the other two scream at them to stop. Mike doesn’t really listen, he’s filled with anger. Lately, he feels like anger accompanies him more than any other feeling. He used to be such a calm person but since Will went missing, all what he used to be disappeared with him, too. Now, he can’t even recognise himself anymore.

A piercing scream interrupts their fighting. But not only that. He feels Lucas lift off of him. Before he can truly realize what just happened, Lucas has flown multiple feet away. When Mike looks at him, Lucas doesn’t show any sign of movement.

He quickly gets up and runs to his friend. Dustin right on his heels. “Lucas! Lucas! Lucas, are you all right?” He yells.

“Lucas, come on,” Dustin exclaims, clearly distressed.

They shake the boy but he doesn’t show any sort of reaction. “Lucas, wake up! Lucas,” Mike repeats. Only then does it hit him, what just happened. Eleven happened. “Why would you do that?” He turns around to scream at her. “What’s wrong with you? What is wrong with you?”

She started sobbing. Her nose bleeds. Mike couldn’t care less. A moment later, Lucas finally moves. He slowly sits up, not saying anything but at least he’s there. He’s okay. Dustin and Mike exhale in relief but when Mike tries to look at his head, Lucas fully comes back to himself. “Get off of me,” Lucas exclaims, slapping Mike’s hand away before standing up.

“Just… Lucas. Lucas, let me see,” he says softly.

“Get off of me,” Lucas repeats before fully walking away.

Mike wants to follow his friend to check if he’s truly alright but Dustin holds him back. “Let him go,” he tells his friend. “Man, let him go.”

Mike sighs, overwhelmed by this entire situation, not able to form any coherent thought. When he looks to his left he notices something. No, he notices the lack of something. Someone. “Where is El?” He asks. He can’t see her.

“El?” He shouts, but there’s no answer. Both him and Dustin walk around the junkyard, screaming for Eleven, but she’s nowhere to be found. She left.

She left.

But they need her.

They need her.

They need her to find Will.

Notes:

Mind you, I wrote this at 4am, so not really sure how I feel about this one. It's whatever.

Chapter 6: The Monster

They don’t find Eleven. When Mike goes home, he immediately checks the basement but Eleven isn’t there. She’s nowhere to be found. She’s gone.

After some useless waiting he goes to sleep, his thoughts troubling him. She may come back in the morning, she doesn’t have anywhere else to go. He feels a bit bad for shouting at the girl but he’s still so angry, too. He feels hopeless enough already. That feeling doesn’t go away over night, still, when he looks for her in the morning he’s disappointed at the sight of the empty basement.

They need to find Will. He’s been gone for several days now and with each passing hour, Mike goes a bit more insane. They know where he is but now, without Eleven, it seems almost impossible to get to him. His best friend is all alone out there, probably scared to death, if he isn’t already.

No.

He’s not. Mike can’t think about that. If he does, he might start to cry in his mom’s arms all over again. He’s not sure he wants to experience this kind of pain one more time. He can’t even face the possibility of Eleven having lied to them. That maybe Will is dead, has been since the body has been lifted out of Sattler Quarry.

But he heard him. He heard him. He has to be out there and he can still be saved. Mike wants to cling to that hope, but it’s hard when he knows he has no idea what to do next.

He always had a plan these past few days, but now he comes up empty. He has no idea for how long he’s been sitting on that sofa, looking at Eleven’s little fortress.

Anger boils up in him, so much anger. The anger feels familiar now, he can’t shake it off anymore. He stands up and draws the blanket away from the table, kicking the place in with all the force he can muster.

Eventually, he stops. He looks around at the mess he made, breathing heavily. His eyes are slightly wet but he tries to ignore that.

After some more moping around, Dustin comes over. Mike has never felt so relieved to see his friend. Dustin is the logical one, maybe he can help him form a plan. Mike can’t do this alone and as much as he hates it, he relies on his friends like that. He’s useless without them.

“I just… I can’t believe she didn’t come back,” he tells Dustin.

“She’s gotta be close,” Dustin reassures him.

“She said it wasn’t safe. She just messed up the compasses because she wanted to protect us. She didn’t betray us,” Mike denies. He can’t lose Eleven like that. He has to believe she meant it good, has to believe she’ll come back. Otherwise they’re truly hopeless.

“Mike, calm down.”

“I shouldn’t have yelled at her. I never should’ve done that.”

“Mike, this isn’t your fault.”

“Yeah, it’s Lucas’,” Mike agrees.

“It wasn’t his fault, either.”

Wait a damn second.

“It wasn’t his fault?” Mike makes sure, now turning fully towards Dustin.

“No.”

“So you’re saying he wasn’t way out of line?”

“Totally, but so were you!”

“What?” Mike asks confused.

“And so was Eleven.”

“Oh, give me a break!”

“No, Mike, you give me a break,” Dustin yells back. “All three of you were being a bunch of little assholes! I was the only reasonable one. But the bottom line is… you pushed first. And you know the rule. You draw first blood…”

“No! No way,” Mike interrupts him. “I’m not shaking his hand,” Mike refuses.

“You’re shaking his hand!”

“No, I’m not,” Mike stays stubbornly.

“This isn’t a discussion. This is the rule of law. Obey or be banished from the party. Do you wanna be banished?”

Mike looks down, feeling like a small child, throwing a tantrum. “No,” he eventually says.

“Good,” Dustin says then goes to grab his jacket.

“Where are we going?” Mike asks.

“Where do you think? We’re going to get Lucas. And then we’re gonna find Eleven,” Dustin explains, throwing Mike’s bag at him, apparently ready to go. And go, they do.

They grab their bikes and ride up to Lucas’ house. Mike is not a person who likes to apologise, but Dustin made it clear how urgent it was. And, well, if him and Lucas make up, they can go after Eleven. It sounds like a plan, and wasn’t that exactly what Mike wanted?

Lucas opens the door shortly after Dustin rings the doorbell. He looks gloomy and very pissed. “What do you want?” He asks them.

Mike doesn’t say anything, until Dustin slaps him in the side. Mike hates this already. “I drew first blood, so…,” he holds his hand out for Lucas to shake.

Lucas looks him up and down. He doesn’t shake the hand, but let’s the two of them inside. There, he walks up and down in front of the fireplace, seeming to think. Eventually, he stops, looking back at his friends. “Okay, I’ll shake,” he says. Thank God, Mike thinks and holds his hand out again. “On one condition. We forget the weirdo and go straight to the gate.”

“Then the deal’s off,” Mike almost spits at Lucas.

“Fine,” Lucas yells, throwing his arms up.

“Fine,” Mike repeats.

“No, no, not fine,” Dustin speaks up. “Guys, seriously? Do you even remember what happened on the Bloodstone Pass?” Dustin asks Mike, who turns around to Lucas who seems as clueless as him. “We couldn’t agree on what path to take, so we split up the party and those trolls took us out one by one. And it all went to shit. And we were all disabled,” he yells. “So we stick together, no matter what,” Dustin concludes.

“Yeah, I agree. But this is the party, right here in this room,” Lucas says.

“El is one of us now,” Mike corrects him.

“Um, no, she’s not. Not even close,” Lucas exclaims. “Never will be. She’s a liar, a traitor-“

“She was just trying to keep us safe,” Mike yells at him. “She didn’t mean to hurt you. It was an accident!”

“An accident?” Lucas asks, disbelieving.

“All right, accident or not… admit it, it was a little awesome,” Dustin says.

“Awesome?” Lucas screams.

“Yeah, she threw you in the air with her mind!”

“I could have been killed,” Lucas exclaims.

“Which is exactly why we need her. She’s a weapon,” Mike tells him. “Do you seriously wanna fight the Demogorgon with your wrist rocket? That’s like R2-D2 going to fight Darth Vader. We’re no use to Will if we’re dead.”

“If you two wanna waste your time looking for a traitor, go ahead, ‘cause I’m not spending my time on her anymore. No way,” Lucas tells them. “I’m going to the gate. I’m gonna find Will.”

He walks through them, kicking them aside to get to his room.

***

Dustin and Mike leave on their bikes, on their way to find Eleven. “This is weird without Lucas,” Dustin comments.

“He should’ve shaken my hand,” Mike tells him.

“He’s just jealous,” Dustin says.

“What are you talking about?” Mike asks confused.

“Sometimes, your total obliviousness just blows my mind,” Dustin sighs. “He’s your best friend, right?”

“Yeah… I mean, I don’t know,” Mike says, not sure how to comment on this. He loves all his friends. He doesn’t have a lot, so he never felt like he had to choose favorites.

“It’s fine. I get it,” Dustin says. “I didn’t get here until fourth grade. He had the advantage of living next door. But none of that matters. What matters is that he is your best friend. And then this girl shows up and starts living in your basement, and all you ever want to do is pay attention to her.”

“That’s not true,” Mike denies.

“Yes, it is. And you know it,” no, he really doesn’t. “And he knows it. But no one ever says anything until you both start punching and yelling at each other like goblins with intelligence scores of zero. Now everything’s weird.”
“He’s not my best friend,” Mike says, truly meaning it.

“Yeah, right,” Dustin chuckles.

“I mean, he is, but so are you. And so is Will.”

“Can’t have more than one best friend,” Dustin tells him.

“Says who?”

“Says logic.”

“Well, I can bull on your logic, because you’re my best friend, too.” Mike looks at Dustin earnestly, hoping his friend gets it. Dustin smiles at him with a quiet okay on his lips.

Mike has never thought about it the way Dustin proposed it just now. It was always obvious to him that the four of them were best friends. They were a group, not individual pairs. He met Will at first, who was his best and only friend for all of kindergarten. They had a different bond than Mike had with the other two. Still, Dustin and Lucas were his best friends, too. Just because he met Dustin much later doesn't change this fact.

Mike doesn’t dwell on the thought much longer. When they pass through town they simultaneously come to a halt in front of the town store where a group of people have gathered. Two police men stand among them. There’s shattered glass in front of the entrance. “Whoa,” Mike exclaims.

“You don’t think…,” Dustin begins.

“Uh… definitely,” Mike replies.

Eleven.

They take their bikes through the forest nearby where Eleven is likely hiding. Together they scream for her and continue like this until Mike hears a bypassing noise.

“Hey, stop. Do you hear that?” He asks Dustin.

“What?”

He screams for Eleven but when he looks forward he sees, sadly not Eleven, but Troy and James. His heart sinks. This is the last thing they need at this moment.

“Hey there, Frogface,” Troy says. “Toothless.”

Mike’s heart sinks even further when he notices a knife in Troy’s hand. “Shit,” Dustin screams. “Run, Mike!”

“You’re dead, Wheeler,” he hears from behind when they run backwards, leaving their bikes on the forest floor.

They run for a while, their feet leading them out of the forest and on the road that leads to Sattler Quarry. Behind him, Dustin groans, clearly out of air. “Cramp,” Dustin screams.

“Just keep going,” Mike calls back at his friend. “Keep going!”

Mike sees another figure running towards them, the sight of it makes his heart drop so far down, he doesn’t know how to pick it up again. It’s James. “Shit,” Dustin exclaims when they come to a stop. Mike picks up a stone while Dustin grabs for a branch.

“Stay back,” Mike tells them. “Don’t come any closer!”

He throws the stone at James, but misses unfortunately. “Nice throw, numbnuts,” James scoffs.

Dustin starts yelling behind him. When Mike turns around he sees Troy has taken a hold of Dustin with his back towards him, the knife to his throat. “Get off! Get off me,” Dustin yells.

“Let him go! Let him go,” Mike screams.

“Stay back, or I’ll cut him,” Troy tells him.

“What do you want?” Mike asks distressed.

“I want to know how you did it,” Troy exclaims.

“How I did what?”

“I know you did something to me. Some nerdy science shit to make me do that.”

“You mean piss your pants?” Mike makes sure.

“Our friend has superpowers, and she squeezed your tiny bladder with her mind,” Dustin tells Troy.

“Shut up,” Troy says, holding the knife even closer. “I think I should save Toothless here a trip to the dentist,” Troy says. “Help him lose the rest of his baby teeth.”

“Let him go,” Mike immediately starts screaming at Troy.

“I’ll let him go, sure,” Troy agrees. “But first… it’s your turn.”

“My turn for what?

“Wet yourself,” Troy tells him.

“What?”

“Jump…,” he nods towards the cliff next to them. Sattler Quarry. Right. “Or Toothless here gets an early trip to the dentist.”

“Stop! No,” Dustin says, gasping for air. Mike can’t help but stare, he feels helpless, so very helpless.

“I’ll cut him right now,” Troy exclaims.

“All right just hold on,” Mike tells him. “Hold on!”

He steps backwards, towards the cliff, his mind blank. “Mike, don’t do it. I don’t need my baby teeth, Mike,” Dustin screams. “Mike, seriously, don’t!”

Mike doesn’t listen to his friend. Instead he steps closer to the edge, looking down into the water. He can feel his heart beating in his ears, unable to fully decipher the voices behind him anymore. All he hears is a steady thump. The wind is strong on the edge. When he watches as a stone fall down the cliff, his breathing becomes stronger, his heartbeat faster. He looks down into the endless depth of blue as if he would find any solution in it.

Will’s body was found there.

The thought crosses his mind out of nowhere. His mind goes empty. Will might not be dead, but there’s a chance he died down there. Right underneath his feet.

The water looks clear, undisturbed as if nothing tragic ever happened here. Mike hates it. He stands on the edge and he almost feels a force pulling him towards the water. He feels drawn to it, like a magnet to iron. A quiet voice inside his head tells him, it’s okay.

Who knows what, or who, he might see on the other side of the water’s surface.

He doesn’t remember making the decision to jump, he doesn’t even remember falling. All he remembers is that there was a stronger magnet than the one down in the water, holding him midair.

That same magnet slowly pulls him back up, pulls him against gravity. For a long time to come, that is one of the most insane feeling he has ever felt. He falls down on top of the cliff again. Dustin, Troy and James stand in front of him, mouths wide open in disbelief.

As soon as he touches the ground, the weird feeling inside of him comes to a halt. Gravity comes back to him. He needs only a short moment to realize what just happened. He looks to his left and sees Eleven walking up to them like some kind of badass superhero. Her wig is gone, her clothes dirty, her nose is bleeding.

Mike is in awe.

James gets dragged to the ground when he starts towards her. Troy suddenly lets out a loud scream. Mike’s pretty sure he heard a bone crack. The boy let’s go of the knife, cradling his right arm to his chest. “She broke my arm,” he screams. “My arm!”

Eleven stops in front of them, her face one of pure power. “Go,” she simply tells them. Troy and James don’t need to hear that twice, they turn around and run away, faster than Mike has ever seen the two of them.

“Yeah, that’s right! You better run,” Dustin calls after them. “She’s our friend and she’s crazy. You come back here and she’ll kill you. You hear me? She’ll kill you, you sons of bitches!”

Mike looks back at Eleven and smiles at her. She looks back at him weakly before she passes out on the ground. Mike immediately jumps up and runs to her. “El, are you okay?” He asks her. She’s not fully passed out, probably just fell because of exhaustion.

Now, she looks back at him, fully sobbing. “Mike… I’m sorry,” she tells him.

“Sorry? What are you sorry for?” He asks confused. She just saved his life.

“The gate…,” she cries. “I opened it. I’m the monster.”

“No. No, El, you’re not the monster,” Mike tells her soothingly. “You saved me. Do you understand? You saved me.” He hoists her up, pulling her towards him, cradling her back as they hug. A second later, Dustin joins them, putting his arms around both of his friends.

Together, they head home in silence, a smile on Mike’s lips. He’s so glad they got Eleven back, he’s so thankful she stopped him from falling. He’s so glad they can go back to looking for Will now. He feels like a connection just sparked between him and Eleven. A connection he can’t ignore. She saved his life. He’ll be in her debt until the day he dies.

Chapter 7: The Bathtub

Back home, Mike cleans Eleven’s face with a towel while she looks at him with big eyes. So fragile, Mike thinks, then remembers that the girl in front of him is not fragile at all, she’s powerful.

She looks a bit better now with a clean face, but she’s still wearing Nancy’s old dress, which is full of dirt.

He takes the towel away from Eleven’s face, looking at her fondly. “That’s better,” Mike sighs. She still stares at him intensely before turning to her right to look into the bathroom mirror. Her eyes grow wet as she touches the top of her head in sorrow. “You don’t need it,” Mike tells her, meaning it. He kind of likes the short hair.

Eleven takes her hand down and looks at Mike in question. “Still pretty?” She asks.

“Yeah,” Mike answers immediately. “Pretty. Really pretty.” Eleven looks at herself again, now with a small smile on her face. “El?”

“Yes?”

“Um, I’m happy you’re home,” he lets out. And he is, he is.

“Me, too,” Eleven tells him. He feels visibly nervous when she smiles at him. It feels genuine, and there’s a spark of something he’s not capable of reading. He looks to the side shortly, not able to keep looking into her eyes.

His eyes snap back to her when he feels her moving closer.

Closer.


Yeah, Mike is not chill about this whatsoever. He stands rooted to the ground, scared of what might happen. He feels nauseous, ready to dissociate when suddenly the door opens. “Guys,” Dustin stumbles in, “it’s Lucas, I think he’s in trouble.”

Mike follows his friend right away, thankful to get away from Eleven.

Where they about to kiss? What else was that, if not that? Does he want to kiss her? Kind of. He wants to find out what it’s like, he never imagined himself kissing anyone, he never felt the urge to with another girl. Not that he was ever friends with girls, like he is with Eleven.

“Do you remember how he said he was looking for the gate?” Dustin asks.

Right, Lucas.

“Yeah,” Mike answers.

“What if he found it?”

That’s when Mike hears noises coming out of the Walkie that Dustin is holding. He grabs it out of his friend’s hand. His first thought is Will, always Will, but that’s not it. Someone is shouting something indistinctly on the radio. Clearly not Will. It has to be Lucas. “What’s he saying?” He asks Dustin.

“I don’t know, he’s way out of range.”

“Lucas, if you hear us, slow down. We can’t understand you,” Mike tells Lucas over the radio.

There’s some more shouting on the other end that they can’t really decipher. “”Mad hen.” Does that mean anything to you? Like a code name or something?” Dustin presumes.

Mike’s not really listening to Dustin. He’s holding the Walkie close to his ear, focusing on Lucas’ voice. “Bad men,” he whispers, finally understanding Lucas. He turns around to Dustin.

“Bad men,” He repeats.

He quickly puts the Walkie down and runs upstairs. “Stay here,” he tells Eleven.

Mike and Dustin run towards a window and try to see if anything or anyone’s out there. At first, everything seems normal, but then Mike notices a white van with a man inside. On the van are big bold letters that read HAWKINS POWER AND LIGHT. “What’s that guy doing?” Mike asks.

“You don’t think…,” Dustin begins.

Mike turns around, looking for his mom and finding her on the telephone. “Mom,” he screams. She looks at him, before turning back around, ignoring him. “Mom!”

“I’m sorry, can you just hold on, please?” She tells whoever she’s speaking to. “Michael,” she turns around, clearly annoyed. “I’m on the phone. I’ve told you a million times-“

“Did you schedule any repairs?” Mike interrupts her.

“What?”

“Is there anyone supposed to come and do repairs on the house?”

“I don’t understand. Is there something wrong-“

“No, Mom, nothing’s wrong in the house,” Mike tells her.

“Mike,” Dustin yells from behind them.

“One second,” Mike tells him.

“Mike,” Dustin yells even louder which makes Mike turn around immediately. “We need to leave…,” he’s panting. “Right now.” Dustin starts running back downstairs, Mike follows him quickly.

“Michael,” His mom calls after him.

“If anyone asks where I am, I’ve left the country,” Mike turns around to tell her, before running down to grab Eleven and get the fuck out of here.

They leave out the back, so the bad men won’t see them. Together, they run up the hill with their bikes. As soon as they’re on even ground, they get on them, Eleven on Mike’s back as always.

That’s when Mike senses movement from their right and when he takes a look at it he feels his heart speeding. Four men are coming their direction, behind them stand even more and a bunch of vans. “Go, go, go, go ,go ,go ,go, go,” Dustin screams and in sync they both start pushing into their pedals as if their life depended on it, because it does.

Dustin drives a feet or so behind him. Mike turns around to look at his friend when he notices him talking, but he’s not talking to Mike, he’s talking to Lucas on the Walkie.

“Copy. Elm and Cherry!”

They’re now driving on a real road. Behind them the vans appear, not too far away. “Shit,” Dustin yells.

“This way, come on,” Mike tells him, and leaves the main road to bike down through a garden where some kids play.

“Out of the way,” Dustin yells at them, as they jump to the side.

They drive right through them and end up on Elm and Cherry where Lucas drives up to them. “Lucas,” Mike screams.

“Where are they?” Lucas wastes no second.

“I-I don’t know,” Mike stammers.

“I think we lost them,” Dustin assumes.

A second later they hear tires screeching behind them. When they turn around Mike sees the vans driving up to them, way too close. “Go, go, go, go, go,” Mike screams and yet again they drive away, being followed by the vans with a too small amount of distance.

As Mike tries to think of a way to get away from the vans, another one appears in front of them, driving their way. They’re getting blocked from both sides and they can’t escape to the side fast enough.

Just before they’re about to get stopped or hit - Mike doesn’t really know - the van in front of them gets forced up in the air. Mike is sure he can feel gravity shifting once again, even though this time it’s not him Eleven uses her powers on.

The van flies over them in what seems almost like slow motion and crashes down head first behind them, blocking the other vans from following them. They keep driving, no time for processing what the hell just happened. Mike looks at Lucas in shock, who stares back at him with the exact same face.

Somehow, they end up at the junkyard once again as the sun is slowly beginning to set. It’s very similar to the last time they were here, fighting, Mike can’t help but remember.

Mike gets there first, helping Eleven down from the bike. Dustin and Lucas follow them a few seconds later.

“Holy… holy shit,” Dustin exclaims. “Did… did you see what she did to that van?”

“No, Dustin, we missed it,” Mike deadpans.

“I mean that was…”

“Awesome,” Lucas finishes. “It was awesome.” The boy walks up to Eleven, who sits on the ground in exhaustion. He kneels down in front of her. “Everything I said about you being a traitor and stuff… I was wrong,” he says earnestly. “I’m sorry,” he reaches out and puts a reassuring hand on her back.

“Friends… friends don’t lie,” Eleven says weakly. “I’m sorry, too.”

“Me, too,” Mike contributes and holds his hand out, now for the third time, for Lucas to shake. When his friend nods and finally takes his hand, Mike’s heart warms up a little bit. It feels good to have them back, even though Mike can feel the emptiness of Will between them.

With no time to waste, they sit together in a circle, forming a plan. Lucas explains what he found out when he looked for the gate, grabs some branches and builds some sort of circle with them. “This is Randolph Road, right here,” he draws a line next to one of the branches. “The fence starts here, and goes all the way around,” he points at the branches. “And this is the lab right here,” he puts an empty can in the middle of the circle. “The gate’s gotta be in there somewhere. It’s gotta be.”

“Well, who owns Hawkins Lab?” Dustin inquires.

“The sign says “Department of Energy”,” Lucas tells them.

“Department of Energy? What do you think that means?”

“It means government. Military,” Mike explains.

“Then why does it say “Energy”?” Dustin wonders.

“Just trust me, all right?” Mike says. “It’s military. My dad’s told me before.”

“Mike’s right. There’s soldiers out front,” Lucas pipes in from the side.

“Do they make, like, lightbulbs or something?” Dustin asks.

“No, weapons…,” Mike begins. “To fight the Russians and commies and stuff.”

“Weapons,” Lucas says looking at Eleven.

“Oh, Jesus,” Dustin gasps. “This is bad.”

“Really bad. The place is like a fortress,” Lucas tells them.

“Well, what do we do?” Dustin asks.

“I don’t know, but we can’t go home,” Mike says convinced. “We’re fugitives now.”

They’re silent for a moment, all in thought. “Guys,” Dustin stutters, “do you hear that?” Mike listens up before looking at his friends in fright. A helicopter is approaching in the distance. They quickly jump up and grab their bikes to hide them beneath a mini-bus. After that, they jump in the bus so the people in the helicopters can’t see them.

“Mental,” Dustin says and Mike can’t help but agree. What have they gotten themselves into?

They stay in the bus for a little while. The helicopters are still hovering nearby, probably searching the area. The silence between them is interrupted when Mike hears… his sister?

“Mike, are you there? Mike?”

“You guys hear that?” Dustin asks.

“Mike, it’s me, Nancy,” Mike jumps up and rapidly gets his Walkie out of his bag. The others hover around him while Nancy continues to ask for him over the radio. He holds the Walkie close to his ear.

“Mike, we need you to answer.”

“Is that your sister?” Lucas asks from Mike’s left.

“This is an emergency, Mike. Do you copy? Mike, do you copy?”

“Okay, this is really weird,” Dustin comments.

Lucas tries to grab the Walkie out of Mike’s hand but Mike holds onto it. “Don’t answer,” he tells Lucas.

“She said it was an emergency,” Lucas argues.

“What if it’s a trick?” Mike asks.

“It’s your sister!”

“What if the bad people kidnapped her?” Mike explains. “What if they’re forcing her to day this?”

“I need you to answer.”

“It’s like Lando Calrissian. Don’t answer,” Dustin agrees with Mike.

“We need to know that you’re there, Mike.”

“Listen kid, this is the chief. If you’re there, pick up,” Hopper’s voice calls through the radio. “We know you’re in trouble and we know about the girl.”

“Why is she with the chief?” Lucas asks, confusion all over his face.

“How the hell does he know about…,” Dustin looks at Eleven.

“We can protect you, we can help you, but you gotta pick up,” Hopper says again. “Are you there? Do you copy? Over.” They look at each other. This could be a trap, Mike thinks, but they’re also surrounded by Helicopters and could use some help.

Lucas nods at him when Mike lifts the Walkie to his mouth. “Yeah, I copy,” he says. “It’s Mike. I’m here.” He looks around. “We’re here.”

Mike tells Hopper their location, who says afterwards that he’ll come to get them. Now, there’s nothing but to sit around and wait for help to come.

Mike gets a bit lost in thoughts, thinking about Nancy being with the chief. He knew his sister was acting weird, but he didn’t imagine her to be involved in this. She never seemed to him like the person who would take action in anything that didn’t revolve around her perfect little life. She seemed quite upset because of Barbara and he knew she was probably having issues with Steve, since he noticed Jonathan being a companion by her side more than any other person. But for her to truly take action like that in Barbara’s disappearance was surprising to Mike. They were friends for a long time, sure, but- but what? It seemed different than Mike’s situation with Will, but Mike couldn’t explain for the life of him why that was.

He stops his thoughts when the movement in front of him distracts his inner back and forth. Dustin drives Mike a bit insane because the boy started to get up several minutes ago and hasn’t sat down again. “Will you stop pacing?” Mike asks.

“It’s been way too long,” Dustin tells them. “Do you know what? Maybe you’re right. Maybe this is all a trap and the bad men are coming to get us right now!”

“It’s not a trap,” Lucas tries to reason with Dustin. “Why would the chief set us up? Nancy, maybe, but the chief?” Mike throws his hands up. He has his problems with Nancy, but at the end of the day, that’s still his sister. She wouldn’t rat them out like this, at least he thinks so.

“Lando Calrissian,” Dustin points at Lucas.

“Would you shut up about Lando,” Lucas asks.

“I don’t feel good about this. I don’t feel good about this.” Dustin is fully freaking out now.

“When do you feel good about anything?” Lucas shouts back at the pacing boy. Mike is once again annoyed with his two friends bickering like that. At least, he has Eleven now, who doesn’t participate, the same way Will never did. But well, as much as he likes her, she will never be him.

Dustin and Lucas’ useless fighting dies down when they notice vehicles approaching. They run to the windshield of the bus to see who it is. It’s not Hopper, instead it’s two cars with some men inside.

Bad men.

“Go, go, go, go,” Mike urges them back. Quickly, they hide in the bus so no one can see them from the outside.

“Lando,” Dustins pants.

“You think they saw us?” Lucas asks nervously.

“Both of you, shut up,” Mike tells them firmly before closing his eyes to listen to what’s going on outside of the bus. He hears someone approaching.

That’s when it hits him. The bikes, they forgot about the bikes.

He snaps his eyes open the same moment someone opens the door to the bus. But before this person can get inside, there’s a grunt and the sound of people fighting.

A few seconds later Hopper steps inside, gun in hand. “All right, let’s go,” he tells them. “Let’s go!”

***

They drive up to the Byers’ house. Before they even get out of the car, Joyce, Jonathan and Nancy run out the front door to meet the others outside. “Mike. Oh, my God. Mike,” his sister breathes out, walking up to him with worry all over her face.

This is so weird, Mike can’t stop thinking.

She hugs him, which makes this even more awkward. Mike doesn’t hug her back, his arms hanging stiffly on both sides. He can’t remember the last time he was hugged by his sister. “I was so worried about you,” she breaks the hug, still holding on to both of his arms.

“Yeah, uh… me, too,” he answers quietly.

That’s when Nancy looks behind Mike for the first time, her gaze stopping at the sight of Eleven.“Is that my dress?” She asks.

***

The heartfelt moment is over after that. They all get inside and sit in a circle to do a bit of catching up. Nancy and Jonathan explain what they think happened to Barbara. It’s no shock to Mike, he already expected something like that.

The kids also tell the others about Eleven, how they found her in the woods, and that she has superpowers. They mention the bad men, too.

Mike decides to explain to everyone the whole Acrobat and Flea thing, drawing it on a paper.“Okay, so, in this example, we’re the acrobat. Will and Barbara, and that monster, they’re this flea. And this is the Upside Down, where Will is hiding. Mr. Clarke said the only way to get there is through a rip of time and space.”

“A gate,” Dustin tells them.

“That we tracked to Hawkins Lab,” Lucas adds.

“With our compasses.”

The adults stare at them, obviously overwhelmed by all this new information. It makes Mike proud, he feels like they actually really did something in the search for Will. They didn’t just sit around, they have actual theories.

“Okay, so the gate has a really strong electromagnetic field, and that can change the directions of a compass needle,” Dustin explains furthermore.

“Is this gate underground?” Hopper asks.

“Yes,” Eleven immediately answers the man. The two of them share a look that Mike doesn’t really understand but also doesn’t have time to dwell on.

“Near a large water tank?”

“Yes,” the girl nods.

“H-How do you know all that?” Dustin stutters.

“He’s seen it,” Mike says when Hopper doesn’t answer, dots finally connecting in his head.

Joyce looks at Eleven in thought. “Is there any way that you could… that you could reach Will? That you could talk to him in this-“

“The Upside Down,” Eleven finishes for Joyce.

“Down. Yeah,” Joyce whispers. Eleven nods at her.

“And my friend Barbara?” Nancy joins in from across the sofa, “can you find her, too?”

Another nod.

This doesn’t work out as successfully as they’d like. Eleven sits down on the table top, her eyes closed. They all stand around her, only Mike and Joyce sat down. In front of Eleven sits the Walkie, static noise coming out of it.

After a few minutes the light starts to flicker, the static becomes faint and eventually Eleven opens her eyes, looking at Joyce with sorrow in her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“W-What? What’s wrong? What happened?” Joyce stutters, panic rising in her voice.

“I can’t find them,” Eleven admits.

***

Following that, Eleven goes to the bathroom. Mike uses that moment to explain her powers to the others. “Whenever she uses her powers, she gets weak.”
“The more energy she uses, the more tired she gets,” Dustin adds.

“Like, she flipped the van earlier.”

“It was awesome.”

“But she’s drained,” Mike tells them.

“Like a dead battery.”

“Well… H-How do we make her better?” Joyce asks them.

“We don’t,” Mike says simply. “We just have to wait and try again.”

“Well, how long?” Nancy pipes in.

Mike shrugs, unsure with the whole situation, “I don’t know.”

“The bath.”

Mike and a few others turn around. Eleven came back to the living room, Mike didn’t even notice her standing there until she spoke.

“What?” Joyce asks.

“I can find them. In the bath.”

***

Dustin has the glorious idea to call Mr. Clarke and ask him about sensory deprivation tanks. On the phone, he needs a second to convince Mr. Clarke to tell him all of that right now but, of course, because it’s Dustin, he gets all the information they need.

What they need, is apparently a pool and 1,500 pounds of salt. They drive to the Middle School and more or less break in. It’s the only place nearby that apparently has enough salt.

In the gymnasium, Dustin and Lucas build the pool up while Jonathan and Hopper take care of the salt.

Mike goes outside with Nancy to figure out the water situation. The shed outside the school that hordes all that stuff is closed off. Mike throws himself against the door without much luck, it doesn’t budge a bit. “Stand back,” Nancy tells him as she picks up a stone. Mike looks at her in shock as she slams the lock down, wondering when she became such a badass. They pick up multiple water hoses and put them in a wheelbarrow before going back into the school.

“What did she even eat?” Nancy asks Mike out of nowhere.

“What?” Mike asks, confused.

“Eleven.”

“Oh. Candy, leftovers, Eggos…,” Mike tells her. “She really likes Eggos.”

Nancy’s quiet for a moment. Mike can’t help but wonder what is going on inside of her head. That’s new. He doesn’t think he ever cared. “I knew you were acting weird. I just- I thought it was because of Will,” Nancy eventually says.

“I knew you were acting weird, too. I thought it was ‘cause of Steve.”

“Hey,” Nancy stops, sitting the wheelbarrow down. Mike turns around to look at her. When he sees her determined face he doesn’t feel like he ever knew his sister at all, but he kind of likes this part of her very much. “No more secrets, okay?” She tells him, “from now on we tell each other everything.”

“Okay. Do you like Jonathan now?” Mike immediately takes his chance to be nosey.

“What? No,” she looks to the side, Mike doesn’t believe a word she says.

“No, it’s… it’s not… it’s not like that.” Mike nods, carefully to not start laughing at her. He knows better. “Do you like Eleven?” She asks him, and the urge to laugh immediately disappears.

“What? No. Ew. Gross,” he looks her up and down before promptly turning back around, ending this conversation. Why does everyone think that he likes Eleven? He does like her. But not differently than he likes Lucas… or Dustin. She’s his friend. Right?

***

They finish setting up the pool, fill it with water while regulating the temperature. Then, they put the salt in and set the Walkie up. Mike turns the volume as high as he can, static echoing through the gymnasium. Eleven puts on some goggles with tape over them before stepping into the water. As soon as she floats on her back, the lights start to flicker. The electricity surges until it fully goes out. After that, there’s an eerie silence. All Mike can hear is the sound of Eleven’s breathing.

A few minutes go by like that, until there’s a whisper. “Barbara?” Eleven becomes more tense, she starts to gasp, the lights flicker again. “What’s going on?” Nancy asks.

“I don’t know,” Mike answers.

“Is Barb okay?” Nancy directs her voice at Eleven. “Is she okay?”

A second passes.

“Gone. Gone. Gone,” Eleven mumbles, starting to cry. Mike takes in a sharp breath and quickly turns to Nancy who has her hand over her mouth in shock.

Joyce starts to talk quietly to Eleven repeating It’s okay over and over again. “It’s okay, we’re right here. We’re right here, honey,” Joyce grabs Eleven’s arm, giving her something to hold on to.
Joyce’s words are clearly helping. The light stopped flickering and Eleven calmed down, now floating in the water again, still as if asleep.

“Castle Byers,” she mutters after a moment. Mike’s heart short-circuits. He feels his breathing coming out more forced.

Please, don’t let him be dead. Please not him, too.

“Will?” She says, her voice pitched high.

Please, please, please.

“You tell him… tell him I’m coming. Mom is coming,” Joyce tells Eleven.

Silence.

“Hurry.”

It’s Will. His voice is coming out of the radio. Mike let’s out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. Something like relief is spreading through his chest.

He’s alive.

“Okay. Listen, you tell him to… to stay where he is,” Joyce keeps going. “We’re coming. We’re coming, okay? We’re coming, honey.”

Eventually, Eleven breaks out of her mind. She throws the goggles off of her face and breathes deeply. Joyce hugs the crying girl from behind, holding her in a close embrace. “It’s okay. I got you. I got you.”

Afterwards, Mike, Dustin and Lucas sit aside on the stands with Eleven, warming the girl up in a blanket. Mike sits next to her, feeling disconnected. He’s hopeful, they know where Will is and Hopper will get to him, bring him back home.

It’s almost been a week since Will went missing. The only time Mike hasn’t seem him in so long was when he went with his family on vacation. Will has been in his life since the first day of kindergarten, he has been there for all of it. A week shouldn’t feel that long, but for Mike it’s a new kind of eternity, some black hole he found himself in.

Will has to come home, it’s not a wish, it’s a want so deep inside of Mike he knows if it won’t go that way, everything will fall apart.

Chapter 8: The Upside Down

The wait is incomprehensible. They sit and wait and wait some more. Mike can’t stop his heart from beating like he’s on the run from something incredibly dangerous. He can’t seem to stop himself from moving. His hands are shaking and his leg won’t stop bouncing.

Everyone else is eerily quiet. Everyone else, meaning Dustin on his right who is staring at the ground as if he found some great revelation in it, Lucas, who sits behind them on the stands, also staring at nothing in particular. Eleven sits on Mike’s left, her head on his shoulder, breathing evenly as if asleep.

Why is Mike the only one freaking out here? Why is it so quiet? Where is everyone else? What if something went wrong?

Mike has never been one for waiting around, waiting for a problem to be fixed instead of taking it in his own hands. He trusts the people around him to try and work things out, but most of the time he still feels like no one cares as much as he does. He needs to do something, not only to prove himself, but to stay in control. He needs to know he has done everything in his power, or he won’t forgive himself if things go wrong. He probably won’t forgive himself either way, if he’s completely honest with himself.

Eventually, he has done enough of sitting around. He jumps up without announcing himself. Eleven slightly startles but Mike couldn’t care less. He runs out of the gymnasium, throwing the doors to the chilly air open. The breeze hits his bare arms immediately, the cold November air hitting him like a brick.

“Nancy? Jonathan?” He calls in the quiet night air, goosebumps forming on his arms. He looks around, searching for the two of them. But they’re nowhere to be found. Just when Mike starts to realize they might be up to something, without him, he notices the empty space in front of him.

A car should be here. Jonathan’s car.

He runs back inside, the cold air following him. He feels his control slipping as he walks up to his friends. They do look worried, but no one matches the way Mike feels. “They’re gone,” he declares, holding his emotions back, no one has time for them right now.

“What?” Lucas is the first to look up at him, a confused stare from Dustin and Eleven follows.

“Nancy and Jonathan. His car’s gone,” Mike explains quickly, hoping for the others to grasp the urgency of the situation.

“They’re probably just sucking face somewhere,” Dustin replies, unbothered, which sends an arrow straight through Mike’s heart. Why are they not listening to him? If this was a TV show, this would be the climax. Something big is going to happen, whether they like it or not. Mike can’t believe the others don’t see that.

“No. No way,” Mike denies at the same time Lucas comments “gross.”

“Did they go with the chief?” Dustin asks Mike as if he had any answer to that.

“I don’t know,” Mike says, almost loosing his mind. Why should he know? No one tells him anything.

“No,” Eleven whispers, her eyes focused on Mike. She looks at him in pity, seeing right through his panic.

“What? Did you see them? Do you know where they went?”

“Yes.”

“Where? Where did they go?” Mike asks, almost hyperventilating. How can she stay this calm. He’s used to her not saying much, and honestly it’s fine by him. He feels like he can understand her even without her having to explain too much. It connects them, he hopes. But in this moment all he feels is the urgency to go out to do… to do what? He doesn’t know. All he knows is that they need to do something. They can’t just sit around and stare at the walls. They need to act.

As if Eleven’s reading his internal monologue she finally interrupts Mike’s overthinking. “Demogorgon,” she whispers calmly.

Mike starts to panic even more after that. They all know Eleven is usually correct with her assumptions and while she sits there rather calmly, Mike knows she’s deep in her head, thinking about something.

So really, it’s great. Totally great. Nancy and Jonathan are gone, dealing with a Demogorgon apparently, probably risking their lives, while Hopper and Joyce are looking for Will and god knows how successful they are.

“We need to form some sort of plan,” he tells his friends who just dumbly stare up at him. Mike could explode, honestly. He drags a hand over his mouth then turns around to walk around for a bit, he needs to think, he needs to do something.

“Mike, Mike stop. You need to calm down,” Dustin tells him, close to his right. Mike notices that Lucas and him followed his pacing and are now standing in front of him, looking at Mike in worry. Eleven still sits behind them, her knees drawn up.

“Guys, guys! This is crazy,” Mike eventually says. “We can’t just wait around.”

“Mike, in case you forgot, we’re still fugitives. The bad men are still looking for us,” Lucas tells him.

“Yeah,” Dustin agrees, “and we don’t even know where your sister is.”

“El can find them,” Mike tells his friends. Why are they so unbothered? Hopeless, is the word that springs up to Mike’s mind. They’re acting as if everything’s out of their control. Like there’s nothing to do but hope the others will figure it out.

“Mike, look at her,” Dustin says, pointing with a flat hand in Eleven’s direction. When Mike turns to her he doesn’t see a weak girl. Sure she looks like she could need a rest, but they all could. Will hasn’t been resting for almost a week.

“I still think we should stick to the chief’s plan,” Dustin concludes.

“Exactly. We stay here, keep El out of sight and keep her safe,” Lucas agrees. “That’s the most important thing, remember?” Mike does remember, of course he remembers. He doesn’t want Eleven to go back to the bad men. He wants her safe. “Besides, she’s okay. She’s with Jonathan,” Lucas continues, referring to Nancy.

“Yeah, and she’s kind of a Badass now, so…” Dustin adds before promptly turning around and leaving without another word.

“Well, where are you going? You just said stick to the plan,” Mike yells after his friend.

“I am. I’m just gonna go get some chocolate pudding,” Mike can’t help but stare disbelievingly after Dustin. “I’m telling you, Lunch Lady Phyllis hoards that shit.”

That guy needs to set his priorities.

“Are you serious?” Mike screams at him, throwing his arms up, taking a double look at Lucas, when the boy just smirks at Mike before following Dustin.

“El needs to be recharged,” Dustin yells back. Mike looks back at the girl in question, who stood up behind him and yes, she does look hungry and when Mike concentrates enough, he can feel his own empty stomach. But is now the time for that?

Without having anything else to do, Mike and Eleven follow their friends to the cafeteria. While Lucas and Dustin go for the fridge, Mike and Eleven sit at a lunch table. The silence between is not awkward per se, but Mike can’t help stealing glances at Eleven uneasily.

“Mike, I found the chocolate pudding,” he hears Dustin scream from the other room.

“Okay,” he yells back, the urge to roll his eyes almost overcoming him.

He is turned towards Eleven, an arm on the table. Their knees are almost touching.

“Are you feeling any better?” He asks her, trying for a soft tone.

She just shrugs, not giving him much of anything. Mike attempts a smile but feels incredibly awkward for it.

Eleven eventually leans a bit forward, staring at Mike. “What’s “putting”?” She asks, and Mike wonders if she really has to look at him like that for such a question. He laughs nervously before replying, “pudding, it’s… it’s this chocolate goo you eat with a spoon.”

She stares at him in disgust which sends an amused flutter through Mike.

“Don’t worry, when all this is over, you won’t have to keep eating junk food and leftovers like a dog anymore. My mom, she’s a pretty awesome cook. She can make you whatever you like.”

“Eggos?” Eleven asks, glancing up at him with pure childish hope.

“Well, yeah, Eggos, but real food, too,” Mike sighs in thought. Eleven is staring at him, not staring, looking. Mike feels seen and while he’s not sure if he’s truly comfortable with it, he still feels a small smile forming on his lips.

“See, I was thinking, once all this is over and Will’s back and you’re not a secret anymore, my parents can get you an actual bed for the basement,” Mike feels excitement bubble up inside of him, especially when he sees Eleven’s soft smile at his words. “Or you can take my room if you want, since I’m down there all the time anyways. My point is, they’ll take care of you. They’ll be like your new parents, and Nancy, she’ll be like your new sister.”

He doesn’t really realize what he just said until Eleven leans closer and asks, “will you be like my brother?” Mike hasn’t thought of it like that when he said it but he can internally feel Lucas mocking him for his choice of words.

“What? No, no,” he scoffs, irritated.

“Why “no”?” She asks, clearly not getting the point. Mike’s not sure if he’s able to explain it to her, nor does he want to.

“Because,” he sighs, “‘cause it’s different.”

He looks at her with, what he hopes is a meaningful glance, hoping for her to get it, for not making him explain. It’s awkward, if Mike’s being honest, he’s not sure he ever imagined himself in a situation like this.

“Why?” Eleven keeps going, her face leaning even more forward. Mike curses internally, he doesn’t even think she’s doing it on purpose.

“I mean, I don’t know, I guess it’s not,” Mike looks to the side, not able to handle her stare like that. “It’s stupid,” he finalises. He’s on the edge of something yet again. He’s frustrated with himself. Why can’t he just explain it to her. Explain how it should be, how it’s not and how it’s everything.

“Mike?”

“Yeah?”

“Friends don’t lie,” Eleven punctuates. Her gaze trailing over his face in a quick movement. Mike feels trapped with it. He does everything in his power to avoid her fierce-full stare, to make her not see it.

“Well,” he sighs, “I was thinking, I don’t know…” what would Lucas say in this situation? “Maybe we can go to the Snow Ball together.”

“”Snow Ball”?”

“It’s this cheesy school dance, where you go in the gym and dance to music and stuff. I’ve never been, but I know you’re not supposed to go with your sister,” he explains, feeling as if he found the right path again.

“No?” Eleven’s eyebrows quirk.

“I mean… you can, but it’d be really weird.” Eleven looks at the table, not necessarily confused but still not understanding a 100 percent.

“You go to school dances with someone that, you know…” their eyes lock, “someone that you like.”

“A friend?” Eleven asks, almost mockingly. Does she understand him yet? Mike’s not sure.

“Not a friend,” her stare intensifies when he keeps on stuttering, not able to explain. “Uh, someone like a…” his brain very much short-circuits. He cannot say it, he can’t get it over his lips, he lost all vocabulary known in the English language and he feels lost, so lost. Eleven’s stare is unbearable and shockingly close, he almost has the urge to lean backwards, get away from it, before she sees, before she understands.

In hindsight, he probably should’ve given her some kind of warning. Hell, he would’ve liked a warning himself, because when he leans forward and kisses her, he almost feels something drop. His heart probably. It feels wrong to just go for it. It also feels incredibly right, he almost wishes Lucas and Dustin would walk in at this exact moment. See that he can do this, he’s doing something right, something normal. Every guy in his position would’ve acted that way and Mike feels almost proud of himself. He doesn’t even register the kiss. Was it good? He doesn’t know, but he’s sure of it. How’d it feel like? He doesn’t remember, but it had to be amazing.

When he leans back, Eleven’s eyes are bigger than he’s ever seen them. Her confused stare vanished completely and all that’s left is a girl, a girl who’s just been kissed. Who he just kissed.

He smiles at himself, he hasn’t felt that good in such a long time, he feels amazing honestly.

When car lights outside the windows flicker at them, he remembers. This had been the first moment since Will’s been gone that he didn’t think about the other boy or think about anything at all, to be honest. This was the first time he was able to let his mind rest, the first time all worry disappeared with the sight of the girl in front of him.

“Nancy,” he whispers, still in shock. “Hold on, I’ll be right back. Stay here.” He gently touches her shoulder when he goes up to look at what’s going on. He feels safe in doing do. He feels safe overall.

That feeling doesn’t persist for long, because when Mike opens the doors to the gymnasium he doesn’t see Jonathan’s car, he sees multiple cars, some vans, with men inside of them. They park in front of the main entrance to the school, far away, they won’t see Mike at first glance. When they step outside, Mike notices the men are not only in uniform, they’re armed as if they were leading into war. His heart stops but before he’s able to froze, he remembers to move. He has to act, now. He runs back inside, his friends standing around the table with multiple cans of chocolate pudding in front of them.

“Guys! Guys,” Mike screams.

“What is it?” Lucas asks as Mike comes to a halt.

“They found us,” he pants “We have to leave, now!”

He doesn’t have to say anything else. They scurry out of the doors as fast as they can, leaving everything behind as they run through the halls of their school.

“How did they find us?” Lucas whisper-screams.

“I don’t know, but they knew we were in the gym,” Mike explains.

“Lando,” Dustin adds, once again. Before anyone can tell him to shut up, the door a few feet ahead of them jumps open. Flashlights hit their faces and for a second everyone freezes.

The men start screaming at them and that seems to bring them back into motion. Mike doesn’t remember a lot, but at every corner they turn, agents come flooding down towards them. They’re circled, there’s no exit. At one of those hallways a woman with short blonde hair approaches them with some men behind her. She has a gun in her hands already raised at them. Suddenly, everyone goes quiet, and for a second Mike doesn’t understand, until he sees Eleven and the way she doesn’t move. She’s using her powers.

The people in front of them look frozen, as if someone stopped time. The only thing moving is blood. Not just any blood, but blood out of their eyes, noses and ears. The lights around them start to flicker and Mike swears he can hear someone whimpering.

But before he can look at who it is, time starts to move again. All agents around them fall to their feet, not moving anymore. Dead, Mike concludes.

Mike breathes heavily, not processing what just happened, but what he does process is Eleven falling down. Her face gleaming with sweat and paler than Mike’s ever seen her.

“El, are you okay?” He asks as he leans down towards her. Dustin and Lucas are also crouching down on her other side. “Something’s wrong,” he tells his friends.

“She’s just drained,” Dustin tries to calm Mike down, but it’s not helping because…

“No, no, no, she won’t wake up. El,” he screams at her. “El! El!” He leans closer to her, trying to notice any sign of life.

“She’s barely breathing,” Mike tells them at the same time as Lucas says strongly “we gotta go!”

“Leave her,” Mike jumps up and turns to the voice that just appeared behind them. A man in a suit comes up to them. He doesn’t look that old, besides his white hair. He looks like trouble, Mike thinks. Behind him stand three other men, all of them heavily guarded.

“Step away from the child,” the white haired man tells them.
“No!” Mike immediately says. “You want her, you have to kill us first.” Dustin and Lucas step up with him, in front of Eleven.

“That’s right!” Dustin says at the same time as Lucas screams “Eat shit,” in the grown man’s face. Mike’s adoration for his friends don’t last very long, when they’re all of sudden pulled back by some other men that must’ve sneaked up from behind. They all simultaneously start to scream and try to get away from the men as they watch the white haired man almost softly kneel down next to Eleven, picking her face up in an almost fatherly movement. He seems to be saying something to her but Mike can’t make it out with all the shouting going on around him.

“Let her go,” Mike screams. “Let her go, you bastard!” Eleven turns her head to look at Mike, having clearly woken up. She looks dazed, her nose is bleeding.

“I’m going to make you better… I can make you well again… so no one else gets hurt,” Mike picks up from the man. He doesn’t hear everything but all he did hear makes him so angry inside, he fears he might burst right then and there.

The man has his hand on Eleven’s cheek. He looks at her with a deep understanding of knowledge. He knows her. They know each other.

Eleven seems to whisper something else which Mike can’t hear before she turns her head again, “Mike. Mike,” she says, her voice strained and painful, she almost seems to be pleading.

Mike has never felt so hopeless before. They can’t take her away, not now. Not after everything. He’s not processing any of this.

His thoughts, Eleven’s pleading and even the grip of the agent starts to slip for a moment when the lights start to flicker, the electricity is humming above them. Something is coming.

“Blood,” Mike hears himself say.

“What?” Lucas urges next to him.

“Blood,” Mike repeats, this time realizing what he even means. All the agents that Eleven killed are bleeding profoundly, still on the floor. And if they learned anything-

The wall across from them starts to shake, bricks are falling down, dust from the paint collects around the few agents who just mere seconds ago, stood in front of the wall. It seems like something is pushing from the other side. Mike knows what other side that is. When the head of something, is it even a head, Mike doesn’t know, comes through the wall he feels the grip of the agent who was holding him fully leave him.

“Demogorgon,” Dustin pants next to Mike. Mike feels like fainting if he’s honest.

The Demogorgon now, fully emerged through the wall, leaving behind a slimy hole that seems to be moving, with vines and everything. When the Demogorgon screeches at them, Mike can see no eyes, no face at all, just like Nancy and Joyce told them. There is only one enormous mouth, full with teeth, ready to take down whatever crosses it’s way.

The agents immediately start shooting at the monster and leave the kids behind, now occupied with more important things. They scurry around Eleven, Dustin picks her up into his arms as they start running down the hallway, leaving the mess that’s happening behind them.

They run into an empty classroom, putting Eleven on a table. Mike goes to grab her hands, holding them tightly as the girl below him gasps.

“Just hold on a little longer, okay?” He sniffles, feeling his eyes start to form with tears. “He’s gone. The bad man’s gone. We’ll be home soon, and my mom… she’ll get you your own bed,” he smiles at her, trying to be reassuring. “You can eat as many Eggos as you want.” Eleven has started crying, her gaze set on Mike in nothing but pain. “And we can go to the Snow Ball.”

Eleven looks at him as if he hang the moon, her grip on his hands just as strong as his own. “Promise?” She whispers softly.

Mike sniffles once more before he opens his mouth.

“Promise.”

They stare at each other and Mike realizes he rarely felt so scared in his life. Scared what’s about to happen. He doesn’t know anything. Where his sister is, if Hopper and Joyce found Will. All he hears is the Demogorgon screeching, much too close for his likeness. He jumps back when he hears the monster close to the door. He can only pray it’ll move on or gets shot down by the guns he can hear blazing outside of the door.

But, of course, that’s wishful thinking. The gunfire stops and for a second everything stops.

“Is… Is it dead?” Dustin stutters. Mike knows better than that when the door flies open, and when he means fly, he means fully loosing it’s hinges and being thrown through the room. The Demogorgon jumps on it, turning it’s head in their direction.

Mike starts screaming, in fairness they all start screaming besides Eleven. The monster is roaring at them, standing at full height while Lucas scrambles for his wrist rocket and Mike screams at Dustin. “Get the rocks, get the rocks, get the rocks.” Dustin only screams back at him before putting one of the rocks in Lucas’ hand. “Go, go, go, kill it, kill it,” he hears himself screaming. Lucas tries but the stone just falls off the Demogorgon’s enormous body.

“Give me another one,” Lucas yells at Dustin who fumbles before handing Lucas a stone yet again. The Demogorgon doesn’t seem to be affected by the stones at all, but Mike doesn’t know what else to do, so he keeps screaming as Lucas repeats to throw stones at the bastard.

When the Demogorgon opens his mouth, Mike can feel gravity shift around him. While Lucas concentrates on hitting the thing, Mike looks aside at Eleven, knowing what’s about to happen.

When Lucas let’s go of the stone, Eleven’s piercing scream hits the room. The Demogorgon flies backwards, pushing all tables and chairs aside as it lands on the wall across from them, hanging there.

Eleven’s eyes are red when she walks by them, her walk full of power. Mike truly doesn’t know where she pulls the energy from. She looks like a walking corpse, just much more powerful, like some sort of entity.

“Eleven, stop,” Mike follows her. He doesn’t know what happens when she overuses her powers, but he can’t just watch that happen. The gravity leaves his body and immediately his mind jumps back to the moment he was stuck in the air over Sattler Quarry. It doesn’t last as long this time. He merely gets pushed back by Eleven as if he’s an afterthought, her gaze still fixed ahead of her.

The monster is squealing more and more in pain the closer Eleven gets to it. She stops only a few feet ahead and from the ground, Mike notices just how small she looks compared to it.

Eventually, Eleven does turn her head to look at him, her face so, so pale, veins visible through her skin, blood leaving not only her nose, but ears.

She smiles at him, it’s a painful smile, one that knows what’s about to happen.

“Goodbye, Mike,” she whispers. She doesn’t stare much longer, her head turning to the Demogorgon once again. She lifts her hand and the screeching that leaves the monster is so unbearably loud all Mike can do is crawl into himself while holding his ears closed. He feels tears and snot all over his face. When did he start to cry? The screeching intensifies, but it’s not just the monster anymore, it’s Eleven’s yelling that accompanies it. It is the most disturbing sound Mike has ever heard. He wants to close his eyes so badly, but he can’t stop staring, he’s scared that if he looks away, she’ll be gone.

The light becomes brighter, it’s not just coming from the ceiling anymore, it’s coming from the monster as it starts to dissolve. It’s bright, it is so bright it hurts Mike’s eyes so eventually he forces them to close, his sight turning into a startling red. For a second he feels like the world might be exploding, everything shakes, but maybe that’s just him.

All of a sudden, everything drops. The noise, the flickering lights, the yelling, it all stops. Overbearing silence is all Mike notices when he slowly opens his eyes.

He doesn’t see anyone. He closed his eyes and his worst thought became reality. Eleven’s gone, the Demogorgon with her. All he sees are small black particles floating at the place Eleven just stood at. The wall where the Demogorgon hung is blackened, it stinks of decay.

“El!” Mike screams, he can’t even hear his own voice. A chilling ringing sound over-tunes everything else.

“El, where are you?” He turns in circles as if she might just appear behind him. She does not.

It's a thought that should let Mike feel ashamed, but it crosses his mind nonetheless. They need her. What if Hopper and Joyce weren't able to get Will back? What if it's not over yet? What if they won't be able to find Will without her.

***

He remembers screaming a lot, for a long time, so long that his throat now hurts. He sits at the back of an ambulance, some kind woman gave him a warm blanket, but it won’t help his shivering. He’s cold, chilled down to his bones. He has not processed anything. The only thing he knows is that Eleven is gone, the rest is unclear. He doesn’t think much at all. He stares at nothing, he doesn’t talk, he feels lifeless.

That is, until his mom appears before him, her face one of pure shock and worry. She also looks relieved but Mike doesn’t catch anything else, his vision growing blurry once again. When his mom hugs him and whispers You’re okay over and over again he can’t help but think of the night they found Will’s body in the Quarry. The last time his mom hugged him like that. He’s aware that he is fully sobbing into his mother’s arm now.

Will, what about-

“Will-,” he croaks, barely a whisper in his mom’s arms.

“He’s okay, honey. They found him, he’s in the hospital with his family.” Mike doesn’t think he has ever cried so hard in his life, but now it’s not just sorrow, it’s relief, such deep relief, he feels he might burst with it.

“He’s okay?” His voice breaks. “Can we go visit him?”

“Shh, it’s okay,” his mom says as Mike breaks down. “He’s okay, we have to go home first, some people have questions they need you to answer. After that we can go straight to the hospital, I promise.”

At the last word Mike’s crying becomes so much, he’s scared he might faint. He presses his face into his mother’s jacket so no one can see him like that. His mom only hugs him tighter in response.

***
His parents drive him home soon after that. The house is full with men in suits, women who stare at him. They ask him for what happened, and so he tells them what happened, well some of it. He doesn’t fully trust these guys.

But in the end, when they ask him if he knows where Eleven is, he doesn’t have to lie. He has no idea, he tells them that and even though they don’t seem to believe him, it’s all Mike can give them. Even if he knew where she was, he wouldn’t tell them.

“I know it’s difficult to accept,” the woman tells him. “The stories she told you were not true. She’s a very dangerous individual.”

The man says something else, but Mike doesn’t listen because just as he turned to look at him his gaze lingers on something in the window. No, behind the window. Outside.

For a moment he wonders if he’s imagining things, but as he’s looking at the girl in a pink dress outside of the window, he’s almost a 100 percent sure it’s her.

Eleven.

***

As promised, Mike’s mom drives him to the hospital. Mike is quiet all the way there, though he can feel his mother’s careful glances in the rearview mirror. His dad sits quietly in the passenger’s seat, sparring Mike not one glance. Karen doesn’t say anything, for which Mike is extremely thankful. It was embarrassing enough to break down in her arms like he did earlier.

In the hospital, they meet Lucas and Dustin, who are already in the waiting area, both asleep. Nancy is also there. She gives Mike a small smile but that’s about it, she looks quite shaken up herself. Mike still has no idea what she and Jonathan have been up to, but he also doesn’t really care. He also notices Steve, which makes him scoff for a second. He has blood on his face and a blue eye. Hopper is there, too, and Mike can’t help but think about the fact that he was probably the one who found Will alongside Joyce. He’s almost jealous.

He’s feeling tired but can’t bring himself to sleep, scared what might await him in his dreams, if he dreams at all. Besides, he can’t stop the thought of Will being there, just a few rooms away from him, resting. He’s here, he’s alive, that’s all what matters.

He is sad about Eleven, but she has to be out there somewhere, he saw her. It could’ve just been a figment of his imagination but he’s so sure of it. He doesn’t really want to consider another answer. She’ll come back to him, he’s sure, he hopes so.

Will is back and that’s all that matters. That’s the most important thing at the moment and while Mike still hasn’t fully grasped the fact that he’s going to see his best friend again he’s still incredibly scared. Scared of how Will has to be feeling, if he still hurts. Every few minutes or so, Mike’s mind flickers back to the Demogorgon he saw. It was so scary. How’d Will manage to even survive from the fear of having to hide from that thing for almost a week. It must’ve been so scary.

He doesn’t really notice time going by. Every now and then, Nancy or Karen leave the waiting room to grab some coffee or whatever. Mike doesn’t really care, he keeps staring at the floor while Lucas next to him snores with Dustin on his shoulder, drool slipping from his mouth, which Mike normally would’ve found extremely hilarious but ignores as of now. Maybe he’s going to make fun of his friend later, when he knows for sure that Will is safe.

That’s the thing. He knows Will is safe, that he’s recovering but his leg won’t stop bouncing until he’s a 100 percent sure, until he’s seen Will with his own eyes.

After what could’ve been half an hour or the entire night Jonathan appears in the door. He looks at Mike who immediately turns to him. Jonathan looks exhausted, huge circles under his eyes and hair all messed up. It’s like looking into a mirror. He nods at Mike and mouths a small yeah.

Mike’s heart stops for a moment, because he knows what that means.

He jumps up, shaking his friends awake. “Guys. Guys, he’s up. Will is up. Guys, Will’s up.”

His friends grumble in protest, for being woken up, but Mike doesn’t care. He runs out of the door, past Jonathan. He has probably woken up everyone else in the waiting room, but he couldn’t care less, he’s going to see Will. He runs past the doors that don’t belong to Will’s room and when he catches sight of an open doorway he almost falls inside.

Inside is a bed, and there on it is no other than Will. Joyce stands next to him, but Mike doesn’t even spare her a glance before he throws himself on top of his best friend, hugging him. His ear lays right on his chest and he when he notices a quiet thumping inside of Will’s chest he almost starts crying again.

Lucas is right behind him, also throwing himself on top of Will, hugging him.

The moment doesn’t last for long. Dustin grabs them both and jolts them backwards. “Move,” he tells them before hugging Will himself. Mike can’t stop smiling and when he notices the hurt in his cheeks, he realizes that he hasn’t smiled like that since before Will went missing.

“You won’t believe what happened when you were gone, man,” Lucas tells Will.

“It was mental,” Dustin joins in.

“You had a funeral.”

“Jennifer Hayes was crying.”

“And Troy peed himself.”

“What?” Will says, his voice so small. That’s when Mike takes him in for the very first time. He’s pale, his eye bags are even more pronounced than Jonathan’s. He has a nose tube on and a smile that doesn’t fully reach his eyes. He looks haunted, Mike recognizes.

Will starts to cough, which stops the conversation like a thunderbolt. Worry seeps through Mike immediately.

“You okay?” He asks nudging his friend carefully. Will looks at Mike then, properly this time. It makes Mike’s heart stop.

“It got me,” he tells him. “The Demogorgon.”

“We know,” Mike answers sadly, remembering how Will told him this already, in front of his garage, the last words he told him, actually. How could Mike ever forget?

“It’s okay,” he continues. “It’s dead.” Will nods slowly, taking Mike’s words in. Man, he missed Will so much. “We made a new friend,” Will’s head quirks up at these words. “She stopped it. She saved us. But she’s gone now,” Mike tells him.

“Her name’s Eleven,” Dustin keeps going when it’s clear Mike won’t say much more on the topic.

“Like the number?” Will asks.

“Well, we call her “El” for short,” Lucas explains, leaning on the bed with his hands.

“She’s basically a wizard,” Dustin adds.

“She has superpowers,” Lucas whispers with a big smile.

“More like a Yoda,” Mike turns to Dustin to correct him.

Will’s face is one of sheer disbelief which grows the more they keep talking. If Mike didn’t know better he would’ve thought the guy was almost jealous for missing all that. Mike isn’t annoyed with Lucas and Dustin for rambling anymore, he does so himself. As long as Will is there, nothing can truly touch him. All he cares about is making Will laugh and keeping a smile on his face for much longer.

***

On December 24th no one goes missing, no girl is found in the woods but still, the party is together, playing D&D in Mike’s basement. Mike hasn’t felt happy like that in a long time.

It’s snowing outside, Christmas decoration hung up all over the house and streets. It’s dark outside, Mike has no idea what time it is and he would rather not know for another few hours.

“Something is coming. Something angry. Hungry for your blood,” he tells his friends. “It is almost here.”

“What is it?” Will asks from across him, catching his eyes over the open book in front of Mike.

“It’s the thessalhydra, I’m telling you,” Dustin pipes in from the side, also having a book in his lap.

“It’s not the thessalhydra,” Lucas disagrees, his composure much more relaxed.

“I’m telling you, it’s the thessalhydra.”
Mike interrupts the bickering of his two friends with a loud thud. The figure of the thessalhydra landing on the board in the middle of the table. “The thessalhydra,” he exclaims, which makes Dustin and Lucas groan.

“It roars in anger. Will, your action!” Mike screams, staring at Will in anticipation.

“What should I do? I-“

“Fireball him,” Lucas interrupts Will, now leaning forward, not relaxed anymore.

The table grows quiet, Mike is sure that he’s not the only one who has a sense of deja-vu at this moment. They all stare at Dustin now, waiting for him to comment on the matter at hand.

Dustin only smirks, leaning forward ever so slowly, before looking at Will with the biggest grin on his face.

“Fireball the son of a bitch,” he says and so Will does. He takes the dice and lets them roll, the group quiet, as they stare down at the dice.

A second later, they’re all shouting in amazement. “Fourteen,” Dustin shouts lifting his arms in the air in triumph.

“Direct hit. Will the Wise’s fireball hits the thessalhydra,” Mike yells over his friends’ shouting and stands up. “It makes a painful…” he imitates a screeching noise before letting himself fall down. Lucas and Will jump up from their chairs to see him better as Mike continues to act. “And then… it crumbles to the ground. It’s clawed hand reaches for you one last time and, and, and…” he let’s his arm down, closing his eyes, imitating death.

He slowly gets up and sits back down at the table to watch his friends cheer in celebration, his cheeks hurt from smiling so much. “Lucas cuts off its seven heads, and Dustin places them into his bag of holding,” Mike continues as Will and Lucas settle down again, Dustin holds his bag up proudly.

“You carry the heads out of the dungeon, victorious, and you present them to King Tristan. He thanks you for your bravery and service.”

“Whoa. Whoa, whoa, that’s not it, is it?” Dustin asks, taken aback. Lucas gives Mike a funny glance from the side.

“No, there’s a medal ceremony-“

“Oh, a medal ceremony? What are you talking about?” Dustin complains.

“And-” Mike’s voice grows quiet, looking at Will confused who gives him a reassuring smile back.

“The campaign was way too short,” Lucas adds from the side.

“Yeah,” Will agrees, the traitor.

“It was ten hours,” Mike tells them, almost shouting now.

“But it doesn’t make any sense,” Dustin says.

“It makes sense,” Mike disagrees, affronted.

“Uh, no, what about the lost knight?” Dustin asks. “And the proud princess?” Lucas adds. “And those weird flowers in the cave?” Will inquires.

“I don’t know, it’s-,” Mike stops when the door to the basement opens. They all grow quiet when they hear footsteps approaching. Jonathan’s coming down the stairs. “Jeez, what’s that smell?” He asks them. “Have you guys been playing games all day, or just farting?”

They chuckle in answer. “Oh, that’s just Dustin. He farted,” Lucas says which makes Dustin’s smile drop immediately. “Dustin farted-“ Lucas laughs as he imitates the boy.

They bicker for a moment while Mike just adoringly watches his friend, happy to have them all together, laughing.

“Will,” Jonathan directs his voice at the boy, “come on.” Will nods, standing up to follow his brother. “Bye guys,” he tells his friend who tell him all goodbye with the biggest smiles on their faces. Mike watches as Will leaves up the stairs fondly. After the boy disappears out of Mike’s sight, his gaze turns to Dustin and Lucas who keep bickering.

He looks back at Eleven’s little fortress then, his friends’ voices fading in the background. Mike has cleaned it up. He laid everything out carefully, as if she was coming back. He did so the night after they visited Will in the hospital, sitting down there with his Walkie in hand, like Eleven has done so many times. He spoke into it, in hopes of- what? In hopes of an answer? In hopes she might be somewhere, listening to it. In hopes, she knew just how much she was missed. But there wasn’t an answer. He has been trying to contact her every day since. She has to be out there somewhere, if only she would reach out to him.

Notes:

That's a wrap for Season One, hope you liked it. I'm gonna give myself some time to work over some chapters because I'm not very happy with how I wrote them overall. But after that I'll continue with Season Two, honestly give me a week and I'm good lol.

Thanks to everyone who's reading and leaving kudos <3

Chapter 9: MADMAX

Mike has never been one to sit around and wait for something. He takes action when there’s trouble, he is one of the first who’ll take matter into his own hands and work it through until there’s nothing left to deal with. At least, he likes to think of himself like that. He hopes other people perceive him like that, too.

It’s October 29th, it’s been nearly a year since his best friend went missing for a week. Since he found this strange girl in the woods who has been there for him and his friends like no one else ever has been. To this day, it seems incredibly odd to Mike, that Will never even got to meet her. When he thinks about it, it makes sense somehow. He can’t see the two of them next to each other and honest to God he can’t explain why that is.

He misses Eleven, is the thing. He has missed her for nearly a year and he’s counting the days as if that would bring her back, when in reality he can’t even truly remember what she looks like anymore. He’s fourteen years old, for gods sake. A year is a long time.

He has never gotten rid of Eleven’s little fortress, as he likes to call it. He kept it in hopes, that she might come back one day, to see nothing has changed. He hasn’t changed. He hopes he hasn’t, he doesn’t like change. He wishes everything could stay the same forever, even though he knows that’s unrealistic.

He has been calling Eleven on his Walkie every day since that night she went missing. He clings to the hope of her hearing him, sometimes he imagines her answering, telling him what to do. Sometimes he feels like he’s going insane by the mere thought of her being somehow still out there, deciding to not reach out. He has in mind, that there is the possibility of her not coming back because she simply doesn’t want to. She’s a superhero, maybe she’s meant for bigger things than Mike’s basement.

Now, he sits in Eleven’s fortress, Walkie in hand, waiting like every other day, for her to give him a sign. It doesn’t come, like most days. And when someone calls through, it isn’t the quiet whisper of her voice he heard so many nights, it’s just Dustin. “Mike, do you copy? Mike, do you copy?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I copy,” he answers his friend.

“What the hell are you doing on this channel?”

Mike feels called out, he furrows his eyebrows before replying, “nothing.”

“Lucas and I have six bucks total. What’s your haul?” Dustin inquires. Mike has the sudden urge to slap himself in the face with his Walkie.

“Shit! I don’t know yet,” he totally forgot about the Arcade, if he’s being honest.

“What do you mean you don’t know yet?” Dustin asks, voice annoyed. Well, that’s on Mike.

“Hold on. Call Will,” he says before he presses the antenna down, jumping up in distress. He doesn’t have any money, he figures with a quick look around the basement. He walks up to his room to look if he can find something in there, knowing there won’t be any. He stops at Nancy’s room. The door is slightly ajar, the light off. He takes a look back at the hall before slipping inside his sister’s room. He knows she keeps a piggy bank somewhere hidden in between her clothes. It used to sit on her dresser, but decided to hide it from Mike when she noticed him borrowing money every now and then.

He successfully finds it and shakes it on top of Nancy’s bed, coins clattering out.

“What the hell are you doing?” Nancy’s voice surprises him. He turns to the door to see his sister standing there, her face full of anger. Shit, he doesn’t have time for this.

“I’ll pay you back,” he says nervously before promptly taking as much coins as he can in his hands, pushing them in his jacket pockets. “Bye,” he shouts as he runs out of the room and down the stairs. Nancy follows after him, shouting his name. Mike doesn’t spare his parents and Holly a glance when he runs by them to get out of the house.

Once he’s outside, he grabs his bike up from the ground and keeps running. When he jumps on it and starts driving he hears Nancy screaming a loud Asshole after him. He doesn’t turn his head to look at her, he’ll get enough bullshit from her when he’ll come back home later. It’s a problem for future him, he decides while he bikes through town to get to the Arcade. At least, he’ll have some money for him and his friends. That’s the most important thing right now.

On the way there, he meets up with Dustin and Lucas who immediately ask him if he got some money, relieved when he tells them he found a way.

Just on time, when they pull up at the Arcade, Mike hears a car honk from behind them. When he turns around he sees Will immediately. His eyes drawn to the boy like a compass to True North. He feels flushed from the drive, which explains his heart picking up a beat when he sees Will smile as Mike waves in his direction.

***

The arcade has always been a big hangout spot for the group. When they’re not playing D&D, they’re mostly here. They have perfected most games, and even reached high ranking spots in some of them. Dragon’s Tair is Lucas’ speciality. He’s on place one, even if Dustin tries to take that spot every damn time. Mike doesn’t care about this one specifically. There’re better ones out there, but he still enjoys watching his friends play.

“Oh, Jesus! I’m in unchartered territory here, guys,” Dustin tells them while his eyes are fixed on the game in front of him.

“Down! Down! Down,” they scream at him when the dragon reaches out. “I’m going! I’m going,” Dustin yells. A few seconds later the game’s over. Dustin lost. “No! No! No! I hate this overpriced bullshit,” Dustin yells at the screen, punching the console angrily. “Son of a bitch! Piece of shit!”

“You’re just not nimble enough. But you’ll get there one day,” Lucas says holding a finger in Dustin’s face. “But until then, Princess Daphne is still mine,” he tells them as he looks at the screen again. It shows the princess with her long blonde hair. Dustin replies something but Mike’s not listening. Instead he’s staring at the screen in front of him, wondering what they find so fascinating about her.

“You sure about that?” A voice comes from their right, pulling Mike out of his head. He looks over at Keith, standing there with a bag of Cheetos in hand.

“Sure about what?” Dustin asks.

Keith doesn’t reply, but apparently he doesn’t have to. Dustin and Lucas run straight through Mike and Will, pushing them aside. Mike runs after them, for a second confused, not knowing what’s going on, but when Dustin comes to a stop in front of Dig Dug he sees what his friend means.

Dustin’s first place has been replaced by some person named Madmax. “751,300 points,” Will exclaims in wonder. “That’s impossible,” Mike comments, sharing the sentiment.

“Who is Mad Max?” Dustin turns around to ask Keith who is still looming behind the four.

“Better than you,” the guy replies.

“Is it you?” Will asks.

Keith only scoffs at that. “You know I despise Dig Dug.”

“Then who is it?” Lucas inquires.

“Yeah, spill it, Keith,” Dustin adds.

“You want information,” Keith turns towards Mike now, “then I need something in return.” His friends turn around to look at him expectedly and oh no, Mike knows what that means.

“No, no, no. No way. You’re not getting a date with her,” Mike exclaims outraged.

“Mike, come on. Just get him the date,” Lucas tells him from the side.

“I’m not prostituting my sister,” Mike almost screams.

“But it’s for a good cause,” Lucas disagrees.

“No, don’t get him the date. You know what?” Dustin begins, “He’s gonna spread his nasty-ass rash to your whole family.”

“Acne isn’t a rash and it isn’t contagious, you prepubescent wastoid,” Keith replies.

They keep on fighting, trying to get information out of Keith who stays stubborn. While Mike stares the guy up and down he’s more sure with each passing second that even if Mike would get Keith a date, Nancy would leave not even a minute in it. She has higher standards than this.

A moment later, when Dustin says something outrageously aggressive and Mike looks at him he notices the empty space between Dustin and himself. He turns around, immediately noticing the absence of Will anywhere around them. He steps away from the group to look for his friend, nervous out of a sudden.

Just when he’s about to turn another corner, he sees Will standing outside, still as a stone staring up at the sky. “Will! Are you okay?” He asks as soon as he pulls the door open. The other boy gasps in shock, turning around locking eyes with Mike before looking back. He almost seems like he’s searching for something in the cloudless sky above them.

“Yeah. I just…,” he says calmly, “I needed some air.” Mike has a feeling there’s more to it but no matter what, Will looks not well.

“Come on,” Mike says softly, walking up to his friend. “You’re up on Dig Dug.” He puts an arm around Will’s shoulder, distracting the boy from whatever he needs distraction from. He’s not sure if it works but Will immediately walks back with him to the door, leaning into his touch. “Let’s take that top score back, huh?”

***

The next morning Mike wakes up with a gnawing feeling inside of him. He’s worried about Will, when is he not? He wishes he wouldn’t notice every small detail about the boy, but Mike can’t help it. He seems different. He’s been different ever since he’s been in the Upside Down. It makes sense, it had to be traumatic, it changes a person, Mike figures. He doesn’t feel any different towards Will, but now it’s like there’s a part of him that will always be terrified for his best friend, a part of him that just wants to go back to the way things were before.

At school Mr. Clarke introduces a new student to the class. She has a mean attitude, fiery red hair and an intimidating presence. Her name is Maxine.

“It’s Max,” the girl corrects Mr. Clarke. “Nobody calls me Maxine. It’s Max.”

The boys look at each other in shock. Lucas whispers Mad Max at Dustin. Mike can’t help but be surprised. He thought Mad Max would be a boy.

After class, they follow the girl outside. Mike is annoyed by the boys’ interest in her. She might not even be Mad Max. “There’s no way that’s Mad Max,” he tells his friends, while they watch Max on her skateboard.

“Yeah,” Will agrees, “girls don’t play video games.”

“And even if they did, you can’t get 750,000 points on Dig Dug. It’s impossible.”

“But her name is Max,” Lucas says.

“So what?” Mike asks.

“So, how many Maxes do you know?”

“I don’t know.”

“Zero. That’s how many,” Lucas concludes.

“She shows up at school the day after someone with her same name breaks our top score. I mean, are you kidding me?” Dustin mentions.

“Exactly. So she’s gotta be Mad Max,” Lucas adds.

“And plus she skateboards, so she’s pretty awesome,” Dustin turns around at Mike who only stares back at him in disbelief.

“Awesome? You haven’t even spoken a word to her,” he tells Dustin.

“I don’t have to. I mean, look at her,” he turns back around. “Shit, I’ve lost the target.” Looking ahead again, Mike notices the absence of the redhead. Honestly, he couldn’t care less about where she could’ve gone to. He doesn’t understand the obsession the others have with this random girl. At least Will doesn’t seem as much on board like the others.

“Oh! There,” Will says, walking away.

Oh, seriously?

They follow Will’s stare. Max’s going up the stairs to go inside the school again, Just before she leaves inside, she throws a piece of paper down into the trash bin before slamming through the door.

Mike’s friends immediately run up to the bin, gleaming with excitement. Mike only rolls his eyes before following them. Dustin leans over the trash bin to search for the paper while the other’s wait for him. Some girls look at them weirdly, so they awkwardly wave at them before Dustin tells them with an overexcited grin, “got it. There we go.”

He unfolds the paper. In unison they read “stop spying on me, creeps,” aloud which brings a grin to Mike’s face. That was funny, he has to give her that.

“Well, shit,” Dustin comments.

Before Mike can say something to that, they get interrupted by the principal who steps up to them from behind, “William Byers. Your mother’s here.”

Right, Will has to go to his thing.

He leaves with the principal through the school building. Mike, Dustin and Lucas run around it, to see their friend leave, spying from behind a wall. “You guys think he’s okay?” Dustin asks.

“He’s always weird when he has to go in,” Lucas comments.

“I don’t know,” Mike wonders. “He’s quiet today.”

“He’s always quiet,” Lucas tells him.

Mike can’t disagree with that. Will has never been one of the extroverted kind, but still, he’s been different since the Upside Down, and it’s been even more strange the last few days. He doesn’t know why the others can’t see it. They don’t know him like he does, he figures.

***

After school, Lucas and Dustin persist on following Max. Stalker behaviour, if you ask Mike, but no one does. He doesn’t care about it one bit, so he leaves them be and bikes home alone feeling sad bordering on angry. Things are changing and Mike despises it.

When he gets home, he leaves to the basement, feeling bored but also not really having the urge to do anything. When his mom calls him for dinner he realizes he’s been doing nothing but stare at Eleven’s fortress.

“After dinner, I want you to pick out your toys for the yard sale,” his mom tells him after a bit of silence. Mike stares at his plate in disinterest, not feeling any appetite. Holly sits next to him instead of Nancy, who’s eating dinner with Barbara’s parents tonight.

“Fine,” he says.

He wonders how Nancy has been feeling about the whole Barbara thing. It’s not the first time she has been over to Barbara’s house the last year, but she never says much about it. She’s rather silent. So much about, from now on, we tell each other everything.

“Two boxes’ worth,” his mom says, pulling Mike out of his head.

“Two boxes?” Mike repeats in disbelief.

“You heard me,” Karen tells him.

What a bunch of bullshit.

“I’m fine with you giving away a couple, but the other ones have way too much emotional value,” Mike says, meaning it.

“Emotional value?” His mom asks, clearly not getting it.

“They’re hunks of plastic, Michael,” his dad adds which Mike ignores as most things his dad seems necessary to mention. Instead he turns back to his mom. “You already took away my Atari.”

“If you didn’t wanna lose more toys, you shouldn’t have stolen from Nancy,” his mom reasons. Mike should’ve known this was gonna get back at him, eventually.

“I didn’t steal. I borrowed,” he corrects her, knowing it won’t help the situation at all.

“Oh, and you didn’t curse out Mr. Kowalski last week either, right? Or plagiarize that essay? Or graffiti the bathroom stall?”

“Everyone graffitis the bathroom stall,” he tells her, his voice coming out weaker than intended.

“So if your friend jumps off a cliff, you’re gonna jump, too?” His dad says. Mike closes his eyes in exhaustion, a headache already forming behind his eyes. Memories come back from the day he did indeed jump off a cliff.

“We know you’ve had a hard year, Michael. But we’ve been patient,” his mom says while Mike is barely listening to her. “This isn’t strike one. This isn’t even strike three.”

“It’s strike 20. You’re on the bench, son,” Mike turns to his dad, almost wishing the man would just go back inside of his head and pretend he doesn’t exist. “And if it’d been my coach, you’d be lucky to still be on the team.”

God, dinners without Nancy are exhausting.

“Two boxes. Two,” his mom repeats, giving Mike a strict face. He knows better than to try to talk against it anymore. There’s no compromising in this house, there is only one way things are done, and it’s never Mike’s way.

***

Later, in the basement, he takes one of the boxes his mom gave him and fills it up, feeling something lost with each toy he puts in there. Memories of each item flashing him by as he takes them. Out of sight, out of mind. His childhood being put into a box, forever out of reach. When he takes his dinosaur Rory from the table, he lets it roar, remembering the day he showed it to Eleven. She didn’t show any interest in the toy that day or any of his toys if he remembers correctly, but still, he can’t help but be sad at the screeching sound it makes when Mike pushes the bottom. He softly puts it aside. Emotional value exists after all, even if his mom disagrees.

His eyes fall on the Star Wars space shift below his table. When he takes it into his hands he can’t help but steal a glance at Eleven’s fortress. He knows she won’t answer when he calls, but…

Before Mike even made the decision in his head, he stands up, walking over to the cave and sitting down in it. He breathes nervously as he takes the Walkie and lifts it up to his mouth. “El, are you there? El?” He says.

There’s no answer, just the crackling noise of the radio as always. “It’s me. It’s Mike. It’s day 352,” he stares up at the clock, "7:40 p.m. I’m still here,” he says hopefully. The static keeps crackling. “If you’re out there, say something. O-or give me a sign. I won’t even say anything. Just… I wanna know if you’re okay.”

Static, again.

He sighs, feeling tears spring to his eyes. “I’m so stupid,” he says to himself, putting the Walkie aside as he stands up and walks away.

“Mike.”

He stops in his tracks before quickly getting back to the Walkie.

“Mike?”

“Hello, is that you?” He asks urgently.

“Yeah, it’s me, Dustin. What’re you doing on this channel again?”

Oh.

“I’ve been trying to reach you all day. We were right. Max is Mad Max,” Dustin continues.

“Yeah, I’m busy,” Mike replies, before cutting Dustin off, turning the Walkie off, just to stare at nothing for a bit. His breath coming out harder than he’d like to.

It was Eleven, a 100 percent it was her. She’s out there somewhere, she probably needs his help.

Mike has never been one to wait and sit around for something. But with each passing day, he notices how he sits around and does nothing but wait. It wasn’t the first time he heard Eleven. He swears sometimes he sees her, peeking through a window or through trees in a forest. He feels her gaze sometimes. The lurking feeling of being watched follows him every now and then. He hasn’t seen her in months, but her voice, that comes back.

If he looks deep inside of him he sees guilt. Guilt for not doing more, for not searching for her more. Most of the times, when he hears or sees her, he pretends it’s his imagination playing tricks on him. That she isn’t truly there, that he just imagines her because he misses her so much. But that’s not it, he knows that.

Notes:

Another case of, do I like this chapter, or is it just 6 in the morning.

Anyways, we're back with Season 2 (my personal favourite yey) and let me tell you, protective Mike is going to be insufferable. I had so much fun writing this chapter. Especially looking forward to the whole Eleven/Mike dynamic throughout this season, because I don't see lots of people talking about Mike's internal feelings this season, the way I interpret it. So fun!

Chapter 10: Trick or Treat, Freak

Halloween has always been one of Mike’s favorite holidays of the year. The picking out your costume, the carving out pumpkins, the eating sweets until you feel sick. Yeah, Mike’s a big fan of that.

What he’s not a big fan of, is his mom taking pictures of him. He was never a very photogenic kid and most of the times, he hates the way he looks in pictures. This year he’s dressed as Venkman from Ghostbusters, obviously it’s a group costume which they all made themselves. It’s pretty cool, but not worth all the polaroids that his mom is spending on him at this moment. They should do group pictures later, not now when he’s alone.

After this horrible start in the day, Mike bikes with Lucas and Dustin to school, his mood lifting up immediately when they sing the Ghostbusters theme together. Arriving at school, Will appears behind them, also in his Ghostbusters costume. “Egon,” Lucas screams at their friend before giving Will an enthusiastic hug. “Venkman,” Will calls back. Mike stops at that.

“Whoa! Whoa,” he says, reaching towards Lucas’ name patch. “Why are you Venkman?”

“Because I’m Venkman,” Lucas replies.

“No, I’m Venkman,” Mike disagrees, pointing at himself.

“Why can’t there just be two Venkmans?” Will asks from the side, already annoyed by their bickering. Normally, Mike would be on his side, but this is important.

“Because there’s only one Venkman in real life. We planned this months ago,” Mike disagrees. “I’m Venkman, Dustin’s Stantz, you’re Egon,” he points at Will, “and you’re Winston.”

“I specifically didn’t agree to Winston,” Lucas tells him.

“Yes, you did,” Mike says, annoyed by this whole conversation.

“I don’t think he did,” Will jumps in from aside, which honestly fuck Will, he’s being no help here.

“No one wants to be Winston, man,” Lucas keeps going.

“What’s wrong with Winston?”

“What’s wrong with Winston? He joined the team super late, he’s not funny, and he’s not even a scientist,” Lucas exclaims.

“Yeah, but he’s still cool.”

“If he’s so cool, then you be Winston.”

“I can’t,” Mike disagrees hesitantly. Lucas looks him only up and down in response. “Why not?”

Mike starts to stutter, not sure where to start. He always felt the most connected to Venkman, the leader of the group, the charismatic one. He wants other people to perceive him like that, too.

“Because you’re not black?” Lucas interrupts him, which sends a bolt through Mike’s heart. He didn’t mean it like that.

“I didn’t say that,” Mike tells his friend.

“You thought it,” Lucas says, which is so ultimately wrong that Mike can’t help but keep pressing on it. He’s not that kind of person, Lucas should know that.

“Guys!” Their bickering gets interrupted soon after. “Why is no one else wearing costumes?” Dustin asks as the others step up to him. Oh. Oh no. As Mike looks at the other students, he doesn’t see one other person who’s dressed up. Shit, that’s embarrassing.

It doesn’t get any better when they walk inside. People stare at them, some even laugh. This is Mike’s worst nightmare. He feels like he has one of those dreams where he accidentally goes to school in his underwear.

“When do people make these decisions?” Dustin asks the group while they’re walking to class.

“Everyone dressed up last year,” Mike mentions, pinching his leg, because this has to actually be a nightmare.

“It’s a conspiracy, I’m telling you,” Dustin tells them, which Mike can’t help but agree to.

“Just be cool,” Mike says in probably the most uncool voice ever while nudging Will in the arm. He wants to punch his head inside a wall.

“Who you gonna call? The nerds,” a boy laughs at them. Haha, so funny.

***

The day goes by slower than Mike’d like. Every class is dragging. All he can focus on is people staring and laughing at them. He can’t even rely on Lucas and Dustin to distract him. The two of them talk about Max the entire time, talking about how they’re so excited for trick-or-treating and how so very cool Max is. Fair to say, Mike is tuning them out as much as he can.

He can’t even focus on Will. The boy is not as obsessed with Max as the others but he also doesn’t say anything against her, even agreeing with Lucas and Dustin every now and then. This is hell.

After school, Mike’s impression of Max only becomes worse when they nearly get run over by her and her brother. Mike doesn’t know the name of the guy, neither has he ever seen him, but Lucas and Dustin say they saw him dropping Max off at the Arcade. He’s a jerk, as far as they know. He’s probably at school with Nancy, Mike thinks. But it’s not like she would tell him anything about him. They don’t talk a lot. Mike’s not too mad about it. They were never that close.

Later, Jonathan drops Will off at Mike’s house when they’re about to go trick-or-treating. Mike wonders for a second why Jonathan doesn’t come with them, he’s pretty sure he was supposed to look after Will. Mike’s not mad about it, it would’ve felt like they were supervised and they’re old enough to go out alone. Mike can take care of Will himself, better than anyone else if he’s honest.

Will took Jonathan’s camera with him, filming a bit every now and then. He enjoys it a lot, Mike notices by the tiny smiles Will’s face wears looking down at the camera.

They go from house to house, putting as much candy in their pockets as they can fit. It’s fun.

“If I get another 3 Musketeers, I’m gonna kill myself,” Lucas exclaims after yet another house.

“What’s wrong with 3 Musketeers?” Dustin asks.

“What’s wrong with 3 Musketeers?” Lucas repeats in disbelief.

“No one likes 3 Musketeers,” Mike pipes in. “Yeah, it’s just nougat,” Will adds. Mike flashes him a smile.

“Whoa. “Just nougat”?” Dustin laughs in shock, “Just nougat? It is top three for me.”

“Top three?” Lucas asks doubtful.

“Top three!”

“Oh, God. Give me a break,” Mike says as they return to the street.

“Seriously, I can just eat a whole bowl of nougat. Straight up,” Dustin persists.

They don’t get to argue about it any longer. Some kid jumps at them from the side, a machete in hand and a mask over their face. Lucas squeals so incredibly loud, Mike wonders if something in his ears just broke. The kid just laughs, pulling off their mask.

Mike sees red hair first, then Max herself who has a big, annoying grin on her face. God, help him. “Holy shit! You should have seen the look on your faces. And you?” She looks at Lucas. “Who screams like that? You sound like a little girl.” She turns around, walking away. When they don’t follow, she turns around again, a question on her face. “Hey, you guys coming or not? Oh, I heard we should hit up Loch Nora. That’s where the rich people live, right?” She chuckles before she continues to walk up the street excitedly. Lucas and Dustin almost screech when they run after her, immediately in conversation with the redhead. Even Will follows, with a grin on his face, the traitor. Mike can only sigh and figure, that the rest of the evening is going to suck.

After about half an hour, Mike’s mood is so far down, he feels like he’s going to become insane by the mere look of Dustin and Lucas being so invested in speaking with Max. The three of them walk ahead, laughing together. They look like they’re having fun. Mike hates it.

Will stays back with Mike, filming with his camera. Sometimes he turns at Mike with a grin on his face. Mike doesn’t bother. He doesn’t mind Will filming him, even in his sour mood. “Did you agree to this?” He asks the other boy who’s currently holding the camera in his face.

“What?” Will asks, smile dropping. He pulls the camera down and looks at Mike in question.

“To her joining our party,” Mike clarifies, ignoring the fluttering feeling in his stomach during Will’s intense look.

“It’s just for Halloween,” Will tells him softly.

“You should have checked with me,” Mike says staring at the back of Max’s head as if that would make her disappear.

“Well, they were excited. I guess I thought you’d be okay with it,” Will says, his voice quiet.

“She’s ruining the best night of the year,” Mike sighs, walking ahead. He’s not necessarily angry at Will, he doesn’t feel capable of that feeling when it comes to the boy. But he’s hurt, hurt that Will just agreed to all of that.

He catches up with the other three who haven’t stopped laughing with each other. It’s not that Mike feels left out, he doesn’t want to be a part of this mind you, but his sour mood is still growing with each second. “Hey where’s your friend?” Max asks a moment later, directing her voice at Mike, who’s standing just a feet behind the others, sulking. When did she even notice him being there? Mike turns around, ready to call Will to him but he doesn’t see the boy.

He was just there.

“Uh, I don’t- I don’t,” he stutters before stepping back. “Will?” He calls out with no success.

He was just behind him.

“Will, are you there?” He screams, yet again. His palms start to sweat as he clenches them closed.

“Where’d he go?” Dustin asks, his voice not nearly panicked enough, and that’s when it hits him.

Mike’s stomach lurches, his chest is tightening. He was supposed to keep him safe. Jonathan’s not here to look after Will. It was his job, it was his one job, and he couldn’t even get that done. Why can’t he do anything right?

Panic claws up his throat, his chest is hammering as his legs move before his brain catches up. He runs back to the spot he saw Will the last time, but he’s not there. He vanished as if he was never there to begin with. The street is empty, besides some other kids who stare at Mike when he keeps calling for Will. Mike’s heart races, blood thumping through his veins. He can make out voices behind him, but he doesn’t register anything they say.

He turns around and runs down the street. He doesn’t necessarily know where he’s going, but he has to keep looking. Where did he go? Where did he-

That’s when he sees him, running down a path next to a house. Mike stops for a second. Why is he running away from him?

No, that’s not it. Mike has seen Will run, and that’s not just normal running. That boy is running for his life.

“Will,” Mike shouts after him, but his friend doesn’t seem to hear him. Quickly, he takes after his friend. Something is wrong, he knows it. He follows Will down some stairs, finding the boy covered in himself, knees to his chest. His eyes are shut closed while he breathes heavily.

“Will,” he says, trying not to scream out of distress. He takes both of his arms as the other boy jumps back in shock. “Will, what’s wrong? I couldn’t find you. Are you hurt?” He rambles. Will is pale, his eyes big as he looks around himself, anywhere but at Mike.

“Holy shit,” Dustin says, running down the stairs, having followed Mike apparently. “Is he okay?” Lucas asks.

“I don’t know,” Mike says, looking back at his friends, noticing Max’s presence, too. He turns back to Will, who now stares up at him, whimpering quietly. “I’m gonna get you home, okay? I’m gonna get you home. Hold on.” He puts an arm around the boy, pulling him up with him.
“All right, take it easy,” Dustin says, stepping forward.

“I got him,” Mike pulls back, pushing Dustin away. He doesn’t want to overwhelm Will.

“Mike,” Dustin persists.

“Keep trick-or-treating. I’m bored anyways,” Mike tells the others before turning around, taking Will with him as they ascend the stairs.

***

Will doesn’t talk much as they walk home, but stays in his arm for the whole way. Mike is scared of letting the boy go, worried he might disappear again. Every now and then, he looks down at his friend to check if he’s okay. Will never looks back, eyes focused on the street in front of them. He calmed down after a little while, his breathing’s back to normal, his eyes more tired than scared. It gives Mike a chance to exhale.

Something inside of him screams wrong and it might just break Mike’s heart into a million pieces. He has never felt so disappointed in himself before. He should’ve taken better care of Will. It’s his fault the other boy is feeling like this now. He should’ve protected him. Normally, he’s the first one to notice, when something’s wrong, but not tonight. No, he was too preoccupied with Max and how much he despised everything about her joining their party. He was distracted and he can’t let that happen again. He knows better now. Will deserves better than that.

They arrive at Mike’s house a few minutes later. Inside, Mike brings Will down to the basement where they wait for Jonathan to come pick him up. Mike tries to bring Will’s mood back up, so he empties all the candy they received this evening on the table in front of them, although he’s sick with the idea of eating anything sweet right now. Will finally breaks the silence after Mike tries to get him to talk, to explain what happened earlier. He has to know, to fully be able to help and be there for him.

“It’s like… like I’m stuck,” Will explains, staring ahead, avoiding eye contact with Mike, who stares at him from the side.

“Like, like, stuck in the Upside Down?” Mike asks softly.

“No,” Will sighs. “You know on a View-Master, when it gets, like…”

“Caught between two slides?” Mike finishes for him.

“Yeah. Yeah, like that,” Will glances at Mike. “Like one slide’s our world, and the other… The other slide is the Upside Down.” Mike swallows nervously, staring at Will’s hands which are slightly shaking. When Mike doesn’t say anything, waiting for his friend to go on, Will spares him another glance. “And… and there was this noise coming from everywhere. And then I saw something.” Will’s voice gets a bit shaky, his eyes widening again as if he sees whatever he saw earlier once again.
“The Demogorgon?” Mike inquires.

“No,” Will shakes his head. “It was like this, this huge shadow in the sky. Only, it was alive. And it was coming for me.”

Mike tries not to panic at these words. It seems like something left in the past. A chapter closed. But Mike is scared, that instead he found himself in some sort of sequel which he would much rather not read. “Is this all real?” He asks, making sure. “Or is it like the doctors say, all in your head?”

“I don’t know. Just…,” Will stops for a second before turning to fully look at Mike, his eyes pleading. Mike looks away, not able to handle that stare. “Just please don’t tell the others, okay? They won’t understand.”

“Eleven would,” Mike says, before even fully having made the decision to say that.

“She would?” Will asks, softly, still staring at Mike.

“Yeah,” Mike nods, finally getting the courage to glimpse at Will. “She always did.” He feels cut open, his chest laid bare for Will to look inside. It is the single most terrifying thing Mike has ever experienced. He wants to tell Will everything. Mike feels like he would understand. Understand like no one else ever could.

“Sometimes I feel like I still see her,” Mike tells him quietly, admitting it the very first time out loud. “Like she’s still around, but she never is.” Mike can feel his eyes becoming wet. He quickly shakes his head, trying to press the emotions down as good as he can. He’s not sure it’s working. “I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy.”

There’s a moment of silence, Mike wonders if he should’ve better not said anything at all. “Me, too,” Will’s soft voice catapults him out of his head.

Mike has to press the smile that plants itself on his face down. A little something inside him is moving, moving towards the boy next to him. “Hey, well, if we’re both going crazy, then we’ll go crazy together, right?” He says softly, looking at Will, feeling like he’s proposing something that would link the two of them together.

Will chuckles to himself before looking back at Mike. His eyes shimmer as he gives Mike a smile.

“Yeah. Crazy together.”

***

It’s not long after that, that Jonathan picks Will up, driving him back home and leaving Mike on his own. It’s late and Mike is exhausted. He almost goes straight up to bed before realizing that he still has something left to do.

With everything that’s going on with Will, it’s hard to remember to call Eleven each day. It has become some kind of tradition, ritual more like. It’s something he has to do to feel better. To be able to sleep at night, knowing even though he could do more, at least he did something.

“It’s day 353,” Mike begins when he’s sitting down in Eleven’s little fortress. “I had a bad day today. I don’t know. I… I guess I wish you were here. I mean, we all do.”

That’s the thing. If Eleven was here, everything would be easier. He misses her endlessly. He misses her each time, his friends mention the redhead. He’s slowly coming to the realisation, that it’s not Max specifically he dislikes, it’s what her presence mean. It feels like she’s replacing Eleven, and how could anyone ever be able to do that?

“If you’re out there, just please give me a sign.” That’s when something hits him, the air around him starts to feel different, he looks up but of course no one’s standing there. He doesn’t even know where the feeling came from. It felt like a breeze of air just hit him in the face, as if someone opened the window for the first time in days. As if someone was trying to reach out to him.

“Eleven?” He asks quietly. The static just crackles on the other side. Maybe he imagined it after all.

He doesn’t want to consider the other option. He has the urge to quickly get away, run away, not let her see him like this. Because that’s her, right? He feels the pull, the gravity around him shifting. It is her, he remembers the feeling of her powers anywhere. Guilt washes over him all over again when he pushes the antenna down. He jumps up, leaving the basement.

Later, just before he falls asleep, he wonders if she’s mad at him. She has noticed things about him that no one else ever did before. He’s scared that she can see right through his facade. He’s not doing anything after all. He’s useless.

Notes:

Actually went insane writing this chapter.

Chapter 11: The Pollywog

Notes:

Happy September yall!!! Only three months until Season 5 ahh

The next morning, Mike wakes up with a throbbing headache which feels like it’s going to split his head in two. He’s been having dreams all night, waking up from them, until falling asleep again, repeating the cycle until eventually, he has to get up.

When Dustin doesn’t show up to school he’s almost jealous of the guy. Knowing, if he had told his mom about his troublesome night, she would’ve made him go anyway. She has been supportive over the last year, when Will went missing and even afterwards. He has never felt so much love from her like he did during that time. He’s thankful for it, he needed it at that period of his life. Still, time has passed since then, and his mom has gone back to the version she used to be. Mike’s not mad about it, but sometimes he feels like everyone moved on besides him. Sure, Will is struggling and no one will ever understand what it’s been like for him, but Mike hurts. And he misses Eleven, too. No one cares about her anymore, no one does like him.

Will is quiet. Nothing new, but Mike can’t help but replay their conversation from the day before over and over again. Will keeps close to Mike now, it almost seems like they made some kind of promise to each other and while it scares the shit out of Mike, it also reassures him. Will will come to him, if anything’s going on. He’s sure of that now. He also has never felt as connected to someone else ever before. It feels secure, something set in stone, something to be worshipped.

During class, Mike spaces in and out of Mr. Clarke’s teaching. He always loved science, he still does and deep down it pains him, that he’s not able to concentrate on anything their teacher is talking about.

At one point, he’s so deep into disassociating, he almost doesn’t notice the door being thrown open. When Mr. Clarke stops talking, Mike looks at Dustin, who is standing in the door, breathing heavily. His face one of pure anticipation. “I am so sorry, Mr. Clarke,” he says while walking to his table. “Really, I’m so sorry. Please continue with the class. Don’t mind me. Really, continue, please. Thanks.”

He finally takes a seat, immediately turning around and leaning back to catch all of his friends’ eyes. Mike leans forward, intrigued by Dustin’s weird behaviour. “We have to meet. All of us. At lunch, AV Club,” he tells them quietly.

“Why?” Mike asks, confused.

“I have something that you won’t believe,” Dustin says. That’s enough for Mike, for now at least. He nods, sitting back trying to concentrate on their class. He feels a bit more awake now, curious in what happened with Dustin. Dustin leans back again, this time not towards the other three, but in Max’s direction, who sits at the back of the classroom. “AV Club. Lunch,” Dustin whispers at the girl.

Before he can say anything else, he gets interrupted by Mr. Clarke, who seems almost annoyed by the boy, who’s usually one of his favorite students. Mike stops listening, dwelling on Dustin telling Max to come, too. For a second he thought, it would just be the four of them, like it used to be.

***

In the AV room, Dustin pulls out his proton pack from his Halloween costume, explaining to them how he found something in his trash bin after he came back home after trick-or-treating yesterday. For a second, Mike wonders what he hid in there. After a sound escapes the trap, he’s not sure he wants to know. Dustin doesn’t seem put off by this at all, instead grinning at the others’ shocked faces while he opens it without a second thought.

As soon as Mike catches a glimpse inside the box he feels a shiver overcome him. Inside is some kind of creature. It looks like some kind of amphibian, something that should be out in a lake and not crawling around in this box, chittering at them. “His name is d’Artagnan,” Dustin tells them proudly before softly taking it out of the box into his hands. “Cute, right?”

Dustin has lost his mind.

“D’Artagnan?” He asks, disbelievingly. “Dart for short,” the other boy answers.

“And he was in your trash?” Max asks.

“Foraging for food,” Dustin says with a smile on his lips. “You wanna hold him?” He asks Max, excitedly.

“No, no,” Max is shaking her head vigorously, but Dustin is already leaning forward. “He doesn’t bite,” he tells the redhead before slipping the creature into Max’s uninviting hands.

“Oh, God, he’s slimy,” she exclaims in disgust, quickly passing it into Lucas’ hands.

“Ugh, he’s like a living booger,” the other boy says, looking at his friends before letting Dart escape into Will’s hands.

Will’s shoulders turn up immediately, the boy looks really uncomfortable and gives it to Mike without a second thought. Mike immediately notices, what Max means with slimy, the thing leaving trails behind on Mike’s hands like a snail. He holds it closer to his face, pushing the disgust down his throat. “What is he?” Mike asks as he watches the thing up close.

“My question exactly,” Dustin replies before taking it out of Mike’s hands and putting it on the table. Before Dart can escape, he circles it with the hose of the proton pack.

Afterwards, he pulls some books out of his bag and slams them on the table. “At first, I thought it was some type of pollywog,” he starts to explain.

“Pollywog?” Max asks.

“It’s another word for tadpole,” Dustin clarifies. “A tadpole is the larval stage of a toad.”

“I know what a tadpole is.”

“All right, then you know that most tadpoles are aquatic, right?” He opens one of the books in front of him, pointing at a page about tadpoles that he tabbed. “Well, Dart, he isn’t. He doesn’t need water.”

“Yeah, but aren’t there nonaquatic pollywogs?” Lucas inquires.

“Terrestrial pollywogs? Yep. Two to be exact,” Dustin says, opening another page of the book. “Indiana Semipalmata,” he flips a few pages ahead, “and the Adenomera Andreae.

“One’s from India, one’s from South America. So how did one end up in my trash?”

Mike looks back down at Dart, the animal turning around in circles, it almost looks like it’s in pain.

“Maybe some scientists brought it here, and it escaped?” Max considers.

“Do you guys see that?” Mike interrupts the others, pointing at Dart who now sits still. “Looks like something is moving inside of it.” He takes the lamp on the table and moves it closer to Dart who immediately screeches at the change of light.

They all simultaneously gasp as Dart climbs over the hose, trying to escape the brightness of the lamp. It almost jumps down the table but Dustin quickly catches it before it falls down. “Whoa. It’s okay. It’s okay,” he whispers to the small thing. “I got you little guy. I know you don’t like that. It’s okay,” he continues while Dart chitters at him, wiggling it’s tail like a dog. “And there’s another thing,” Dustin looks up. “Reptiles, they’re cold-blooded. Ectothermic, right? They love heat, the sun. Dart hates it. It hurts him.”

“So, if he’s not a pollywog or a reptile…,” Lucas begins.

“Then I’ve discovered a new species,” Dustin tells them, the proud look back on his face.

Until they can discuss this furthermore, the bell rings, calling for the beginning of the next class. They all jump up, grabbing their things and step outside of the AV room.

“We gotta show him to Mr. Clarke,” Lucas announces to the group.

“No, what if he steals my discovery?” Dustin disagrees.

“He’s not gonna steal your discovery,” Mike tells him, believing in their teacher.

“You know, I’m thinking about calling it Dustonious Pollywogus,” Dustin says, excitement spreading all over his face. “What do you think?” He asks Max.

“I think you’re an idiot,” Max tells him.

I think you’re an idiot, Mike thinks to himself.

***

During their next few periods, Dustin doesn’t stop talking about his new discovery. He tells them how he spent last night watching Dart, apparently putting him into the terrarium of his tortoise and feeding him 3 Musketeers. When school’s over for the day, Mike waits for Will while the others already have rushed to Mr. Clarke. The smaller boy is moving slow, not really talking. Mike can’t really tell what Will is thinking about, but there’s something on his mind. Mike will ask him later.

“Will, you coming? Let’s go show Mr. Clarke,” he tells Will who’s slowly closing his locker, before looking at Mike with a pale face. “What?” He asks, suddenly nervous as Will walks up to him, quite close he notices. He looks over Will’s face, trying to decipher something he cannot name. “What?” He asks again when the other boy stays quiet.

“It’s about d’Artagnan,” Will says quietly, looking into Mike’s eyes from below.

“What about him?” Mike asks, confused, still worried at the sight of his friend.

“I don’t know. I-I felt something earlier, or more like remembered,” he looks away, gulping. “I think it’s not a new species,” he locks eyes with Mike.

“What are you saying?”

“It’s a long story,” Will sighs. “But it’s from- it’s not from here.”

“What do you mean it’s not from-,”

“Mike,” Will interrupts him which sends a shiver down his spine. “I saw it okay. About a year ago, Dart, but I didn’t see it here. It was- it was one of my visions.”

Mike didn’t think it was possible, but Will’s face grows even paler. “Hey, hey,” he takes his arm softly. “It’s okay, you’re here. You’re fine.”

“And then earlier, I remembered. That- that noise he made,” Will whispers, looking down at where Mike holds on to him. “I heard it before,” he looks back at Mike, “Yesterday.”

Oh.

Oh.

Mike turns around, dragging Will with him as they run to Mr. Clarke’s classroom. This isn’t something their teacher should know about. They need to kill it.

They run around a corner and just before Mike rushes through the door, he lets go of Will’s arm. “Stop,” he screams when he sees his friends, and Max, cornered around Mr. Clarke’s table. His teacher gives him a surprised look when he pushes in between Lucas and Max. “I’m really sorry, Mr. Clarke. It was just a stupid prank,” he gasps, grabbing the proton pack from the table. “I told him to stop. We need to go,” he says at the same time as Dustin exclaims, “what the hell are you doing?”

Mike steps backwards towards the door, holding out a hand at the others. “Right now, Right now,” he screams before turning around, running out of the room back to the AV.

Just before Max can enter with the others, Mike holds out an arm in front of her. “Not you,” he tells her.

“Wait, what?” She asks, furrowing her eyebrows. Before she can say or do anything else he quickly shuts the door, turning the lock, so she won’t be able to come inside.

He gathers his friends around the table, putting the proton pack in front of them. He then goes on to explain the gist of what Will told him, the smaller boy standing next to Mike, staring at the trap like it’s gonna jump at him at any given moment.

“Hello?” Max eventually bangs on the door, sounding slightly pissed. “Hello? Guys, come on. Can I come in yet?”

“No,” Mike yells at her, before leaning back on the table, his left hand slightly gracing Will’s. He doesn’t pull away.

“I don’t understand,” Lucas says.

“What do you not understand?” Mike asks, annoyed.

“Will saw something that looked like Dart last year?”

“Kind of,” Mike turns around to look at Will as he begins to speak. Mike nudges his hand in encouragement. “But there was no tail.”

“But then he heard it yesterday. The exact same sound,” Mike turns towards Dustin and Lucas again.

“Why didn’t you tell us before?” Dustin asks Will.

“I wasn’t sure,” Will replies quietly.

“So it’s a coincidence?”

“Or not,” Mike says looking in between his friends. “What if when Will was stuck in the Upside Down,” he gives the boy another nudge when he sees his panicked face, “he somehow acquired True Sight?”

“True Sight?” Lucas asks.

“It gives you the power to see into the ethereal plane,” Dustin explains.

“Elaborate,” Lucas shakes his hand, sighing.

Mike does so. “Maybe these episodes that Will keeps having aren’t really flashback at all. Maybe they’re real. Maybe Will can somehow see into the Upside Down.”

“So that would mean…,” Lucas begins. “Dart is from the Upside Down,” Mike finishes for his friend.

Lucas sighs, looking down at the box that’s holding Dart trapped. “We have to take him to Hopper,” he says.

“I agree,” Mike speaks up.

“No. No way. If we take him to Hopper, Dart’s as good as dead,” Dustin objects.

“Maybe he should be dead,” Mike exclaims.

“How can you say that?”

“How can you not? He’s from the Upside Down.”

“Maybe. But even if he is, it doesn’t automatically mean that he’s bad.”

“That’s like saying just because someone’s from the Death Star doesn't make them bad.”

“We have a bond,” Dustin says, having the audacity to look sad. Mike can’t believe the guy right now.

“A bond?” He leans forward in disbelief. “Just because he likes nougat?”

“No, because he trusts me,” Dustin shouts back.

“He trusts you?” Lucas pipes in from the side.

“Yes, I promised I would take care of him.”

They don’t get to fight anymore about this as the screeching sound of Dart interrupts them. When Mike looks back at the box he quickly takes a step back as he sees it shaking.

He almost jumps out of his skin when Max bangs once again on the door. “Guys, what’s going on? Come on,” she yells.

No one answers her as they all look at the box when it flips to the side. Mike quickly grabs the microphone from the table, standing in front of Will, holding it up, ready to use it.

“Don’t hurt him,” Dustin reaches out at Mike. “Only if he attacks,” Mike says, still staring at the shaking box.

“Just open it already,” Lucas points at the proton pack in distress.

Dustin does as he’s told, reaching forward. When the box finally jumps open, Mike’s eyes grow with horror. No wonder this thing was screeching, it grew. It barely fits into the box anymore. “Holy shit,” Lucas exclaims.

As if that wasn’t enough, Mike can see it squirming until out of a sudden something is tearing through it’s skin. They watch without movement, as Dart grows two other legs, leaving behind some organic liquid.

When it roars, Mike decides he had enough, he gets ready to hit this monster to death. “No,” Dustin screams, reaching towards Mike, redirecting his hit. When Mike hits the table just next to Dart, the thing jumps off the table, clearly making an escape.

When Max opens the door, god knows how, Mike decides that this girl will never be his friend. Dart runs past her, escaping into the corridor.

Dustin and Lucas are the first to reach the door, stumbling over Max who is kneeling in front of it. Mike runs past them to catch Dart. “Where’d he go?” Lucas yells behind him. Mike can’t see it anywhere. It got away.

“What was that?” Max asks the group as she gets to her feet.

“Dart,” Mike yells at the girl, turning around.

“You let him escape,” he exclaims. He doesn’t seem to be the only angry one though, he realises as Dustin gets in his face. “Why did you attack him?” He screams at him.

“Come on,” Mike pushes his friend aside running down the corridor, searching for Dart.

“Don’t hurt him,” Dustin yells after him. “Don’t you hurt him!”
Dustin can yell as much as he wants. When Mike catches sights of the little monster, he’s not going to leave until that thing is dead.

***

They all search different areas of the school, communicating though their Walkies. Just when Mike almost lost hope of finding this little bastard, he enters the gym, watching as the door on the other end swings. He follows what he can only hope to be Dart, grabbing a mop he finds in the changing rooms.

He quietly continues through every room, prepared for being attacked any second. When he hears a noise all of a sudden he presses his back against a locker, trying to hide before jumping around the corner, ready to attack. He doesn’t scream at Dart though, it’s just Max with her skateboard.

“What the hell are you doing?” She asks him.

“What are you doing?” He asks her right back. “Why are you in here?”

“I’m looking for Dart,” she explains.

“This is the boys’ room.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So you should go home,” Mike tells her before throwing the mop to the ground, promptly leaving. He doesn’t get away from her as soon as he’d like, he notices when she follows him back to the gym.

“Why do you hate me so much?” She calls after him.

“I don’t hate you,” Mike denies, not sure if he means it or not. “How can I hate you? I don’t know you.”

“But you don’t want me in your party.”

“Correct.”

“Why not?”

Mike turns around, stopping them both. “Because you’re annoying. Also, we don’t need another party member,” he explains. “I’m our paladin, Will’s our cleric, Dustin’s our bard, Lucas is our ranger and El is our mage.”

“El? Who’s El?”

Oh, he said that out loud?

“Someone,” he hesitates. “No one.”

“Someone or no one?”

“She was in our party a long time ago. She moved away, okay?” He’s so done with this conversation. He turns around, walking away again. He hates himself for revealing El to Max like that. She doesn’t deserve to know about her. He doesn’t want to bring her up like that. It just feels more like she’s getting replaced by Max, that way.

None of them bring her up anymore. He’s the only one who does, he thinks, although he can’t remember whenever he did that besides when he talked with Will. He doesn’t want to seem like he’s the only one still hung up on her, when everyone else moved on. It makes sense why he told Will. He doesn’t know El, first of all. And also, Will also doesn’t seem like he ever truly got to move on from that fateful week last year.

“She was a mage?” Max pulls him out of his thoughts, following Mike on her skateboard.

“Well, what could she do? Like, magic tricks or something?” She inquires, before jumping down from her skateboard right in front of him, bringing him to a stop. “Well, I could be your zoomer.”

“That’s not even a real thing,” Mike exclaims.

“It could be,” she jumps back on her skateboard, driving around him in circles now. “See? Zoomer.”

“Mind-blowing,” Mike says disinterested.

“Come on, you know you’re impressed.”

Well, even if he were, he would never tell her so. “I don’t see any tricks. You’re just going around in a circle.”

“If it’s so easy, you try it.”

“No,” Mike immediately says.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know how,” Mike tells her.

“So, then you admit it’s kind of impressive,” she lifts an eyebrow at him, a knowing smirk on her face. Mike wants to scrap it off.

“I think if I spent, like, all day practicing, I could do that.”

“I would give you a million bucks if you could,” she says still driving around him.

“Okay, you’re making me dizzy,” Mike admits as he keeps turning in circles the entire time.
“Please just stop.”

“I’ll stop when I join your party,” Max tries.

“Come on, just stop.”

“It’s a simple question. Am I in or out?” She asks yet again, smirking at him when he gives her a sly smile.

That’s the thing, he never disliked her. And yeah, her skateboarding is pretty awesome. But she’s no Eleven, and she never could be. Honestly he doesn’t know why he’s still so hung up on this.

Max drives another round around him, before suddenly falling off the board. She let’s out a surprised yelp just before she hits the floor. “Jesus! Are you all right?” He asks her, leaning down next to the redhead.

“Yeah, yeah. I think so.” She takes his hand and let’s him pull her up.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. It was like a magnet or something pulling on my board,” she shakes her head. “I know that sounds crazy.”

Mike goes very still, watching out of his periphery as Max gets her board back.

It can’t be. No, he hasn’t seen her in so long. And all the other times, it could’ve been an illusion. She always just stood there, watching.

He doesn’t think clearly when he starts to run, pushing through the doors of the gym. It’s eerily quiet, she’s not here. Why would he even think that she’d stay? All the other times, she left, too.

For a second, he wants to run through every corridor in the school and search for her. But deep down, he knows that if she wanted to stay, she would’ve. She obviously doesn’t want to see him. Otherwise, she would’ve stayed.

He almost jumps, when the door behind him bangs open. “Will found Dart,” Max tells him, pressing Mike’s Walkie into his hand. “Let’s go. He’s in the bathroom.”

While they run through the halls, Mike wishes he would run into El, but she clearly left by now. They pick up Lucas on their way just before they get to the bathroom. Mike throws the door open, finding Dustin inside. “Where’s Dart?” He asks his friend. “I don’t know. Not here,” the other boy replies.

“What,” Mike exclaims, looking through each bathroom stall.

“He said by Salerno’s, right?” Max makes sure.

“Yeah, maybe Will has him,” Dustin wonders. Mike comes to a halt. He slowly leans back out of the second stall. “Where’s Will?” He asks Dustin while his heart begins to race. Dustin looks back at him confused, probably noticing the panic in Mike’s voice. “I don’t- he wasn’t in here when I got here.”

“Shit,” Mike gulps, running back out of the room, the others right on his heel. They split up to look for Will in different areas of the school. Mike hears Lucas follow him in the same direction while Max and Dustin go another way. He has no idea where Will might’ve gone but he notices a sick feeling in his stomach which usually means that something is incredibly wrong.

This feeling turns out to be right when he runs outside, checking the fields behind the school. Mike stands there for a second, eyes wandering around. A few seconds later, he spots Will on the field. He’s far away, but Mike immediately can tell that something is very wrong. “Will,” he calls out as he runs towards his friend. When the other boy doesn’t react, he begins to sprint. As he gets closer, his heart drops so deep down, he’s scared he might never get it back. Will stands there, shaking, his eyes are not open but also not completely closed. He’s gasping, as if he isn’t getting any air.

“Hey Will,” Mike grabs him, fully screaming into his face. He never screams at the boy. He knows that triggers something inside of him. He never asked why that is, but he also doesn’t want to press him. He’ll tell him whenever he’s ready.

“Will, please, I need you to get back,” Mike says, shaking his friend. “Please, come on.”

“Oh my God, what happened?” A noise snaps Mike’s head around. Lucas stands a few feet behind him, out of breath. Apparently having followed him here. “Go get the others. He needs help. Please, Lucas, I don’t know what to do.”

Lucas, just nods. Mike doesn’t watch him run back inside, fixing his gaze on Will instead.

Notes:

first time using the "oh. oh." trope, kinda nervous. (using it for plot and not romantic realisation though)

Not to spoil or anything, but I will be using it again.

Chapter 12: Will the Wise

A hurricane has a spot in the middle where no wind occurs, nothing is amiss, it’s calm. Early meteorologists and sailors noticed this calm spot in the middle of these violent storms and metaphorically called it the “eye”, like the centre of a storm looking out at the surroundings. Mike feels like that right now, like the eye, focused in on the storm around him. The storm being Will.

A few minutes pass before the doors bang back open and his friends, plus Joyce - thank god, run in their direction. Those have been the most frightful few minutes of Mike’s life, probably. “I just found him like this,” he screams as the others come closer. “I think he’s having another episode!”

When Joyce begins shaking Will and shouting his name, Mike takes a step back. He takes in deep breaths, trying to get his breathing more under control, failing abominably at it. “Sweetie, wake up! It’s Mom,” Joyce continues, her voice one of pure distress.

“Will, wake up! Can you hear me?” She softy takes his face in between her hands, cradling it. “Will, please, just wake up.”

Mike is clenching his fists as he tries to think hard, what else could they do to wake him up? But his mind comes up empty. It’s pure chaos. He feels totally useless.

“It’s Mom. It’s me,” Joyce shakes him some more.

Then, all of a sudden, Will opens his eyes. He takes a deep gasp. The shaking is gone, he stands still as a statue. “Oh, Will, hey baby,” Joyce says, cradling her kid’s face again. Will looks around as if he had just woken up from a very long sleep. His eyes flicker over Mike, who realizes he has been holding his breath for way too long now. “Okay honey. I’m gonna get you home, okay?” Joyce tells her son who just nods in reply, his gaze far away.

Together, they leave through school to get to Joyce’s car. The kids follow them to the school entrance, then watch as they get off. “Okay, that totally freaked me out,” Max says turning to the boys. “Did that not freak you guy out?”

“Two episodes in two days,” Lucas sighs, staring ahead at Will.

“It’s getting worse,” Mike adds.

“You think it’s True Sight?” Lucas asks. Mike looks at his friend, wondering himself. “True Sight?” Max asks, confused. Mike slightly shakes his head at Lucas, the redhead is not a party member yet. Besides, it would be too much to explain. They have better things to do. “It’s nothing,” Lucas replies nonchalantly, going back to stare ahead as the car drives off.

***

The rest of the day goes by rather quickly. Mike and the others bike home, well Max does so on her skateboard. Mike has the urge to visit Will, to really check out if he’s okay. He knows Joyce will take care of him, but he still wants to be there for his friend. But it’s getting late, he’ll have to check in on the situation tomorrow.

When he arrives at school the next morning, he tries not to be worried, when Will doesn’t show up right away. He’s quite relieved to get distracted by Lucas and Max, otherwise he would’ve gotten sick in some bathroom stall. Lucas persists they keep looking for Dart, which is not the worst idea. Mike’s not sure how they’ll be able to find this little monster, considering it could be god knows where by now, but Lucas says that there’s one place they haven’t checked out yet.

He leads them to the side of the school where the trash container is located. Lucas looks at the other two expectantly. “In there?” Max face squirms in disgust. Lucas nods in answer. “Ok, well I’m not going to look through trash,” Max shakes her head, looking at Lucas firmly.

“Well, someone has to do it,” Lucas says. “Well, then, you go do it,” Max tells him.

“Ew, no!”

“Both of you shut up, let’s just draw sticks,” Mike interrupts them.

When Lucas draws the short one a minute later, Mike can’t help but notice the grin that flashes over Max’s face.

Lucas sighs, climbing up the container to take a peak inside. He looks at his friends again, in what Mike can only think is hope, that someone else will do the dirty work.

“Stop being a baby and do it already,” Mike says, which spurs Lucas on, he puts one leg over the side of the container, then the other one. He lands with a thud in the trash, disappearing from sight.

“This is so disgusting. Is this really necessary?” Max asks. Mike can’t help but agree.

A second later, Dustin turns around the corner, looking at them in confusion. “What the hell’s going on?”

“What do you think? We’re looking for Dart,” Mike explains, just before Lucas throws some trash out of the container. “Jesus,” Dustin exclaims. After Lucas throws some more trash bags at them, he jumps out himself, grunting when he lands. “Well, well, well,” Lucas says, turning to Dustin. “Look who finally decided to show up. After I drew the short straw. Real convenient.”

“You stink,” Max mentions before Dustin has any way to defend himself. She leaves Lucas’ side and stands next to Dustin who grins at her widely. “Hi, Max.”

“Hi,” she replies, making it sound like a question. Mike could roll his eyes at them, maybe he does so, who knows? For a moment, he forgot about Lucas and Dustin’s weird crush on the redhead.

Eventually, Dustin and Max turn back to the other two, Max’s face one of clear confusion. “Where’s Will?” Dustin asks, looking specifically at Mike. “He’ll be here,” he replies, trying not to sound too worried.

“Are you just gonna stand there?” Lucas asks Dustin, slightly pissed off with the guy, apparently. He takes one of the broomsticks and throws it at Dustin who catches it smoothly. “Or are you gonna help?” Lucas continues.

Collectively, they begin to look through the trash, but soon realize there’s nothing to be found in it other than some cockroaches and flies. The bell rings soon after, making them abandon their mission to look for Dart. For now, at least.

Mike trudges after his friends who keep talking about god knows what. He looks around, waiting for Will to turn up, but he doesn’t. In class when they sit down, Mike can’t help but feel the empty table next to him. Will’s abstinence making itself a hole through his stomach.

Once again, he doesn’t concentrate on class, disassociating at any given moment.

***

As soon as the period ends, Mike tells his friend he’s going to call Will, to see if he’s alright. They agree and follow him outside, waiting for him by the entrance while Mike continues to the payphone. He knows the Byers’ house number by heart, he knows Dustin and Lucas’ too, considering there was a time before they had their Walkies to communicate.

The telephone rings after Mike impatiently punched the number in. He closes his eyes in disappointment when he hear’s Joyce voice on the answering machine. He slams the receiver into the machine, holding back the urge to kick the thing.

“Anything?” Lucas calls out to Mike, when he runs back to his friends.

“We need to talk. AV room. Right now,” he tells them, taking two stairs at once. When he notices Max getting up behind him, he quickly turns around. “Party members only,” he tells her.

“Come one, Mike,” Dustin says.

“No! This is non-negotiable,” he presses. He doesn’t have time for this. He opens the door and leaves inside, waiting for Lucas and Dustin to follow him.

Thankfully, when he reaches the AV room and looks back at his friends, he sees Max hasn’t followed them. Inside, he sits on the table, the other two boys look at Mike expectantly, taking a seat in front of him. Mike sighs before beginning to talk. He feels a bit guilty for telling them, but he doesn’t have another choice. He doesn’t know what else to do. “Will didn’t want me to tell anyone, but on Halloween night he saw a sort of shadow in the sky.”

“A shadow?” Lucas makes sure. “What kind of shadow?”

“I don’t know. But it scared him. And if Will really has True Sight…,” he looks in between his friends. “I mean, if he can really see into the Upside Down, maybe he saw that shadow again yesterday,” he sums up.

“So that’s why he was frozen like that?” Dustin assumes.

“Maybe,” Mike replies.

“Can it hurt him?” Lucas asks. Mike feels his heart drop. “I mean, if this shadow thing isn’t from our world.”

“I’m not sure,” Mike looks down at his hands. “Dustin?” He looks at the other boy in hope.

“Well, if you’re in another plane, you can’t interact with the material plane, so theoretically no, the shadow can’t hurt him,” Dustin explains.

“Yeah, if that’s even what’s happening,” Mike furrows his brows. “This isn’t D&D. This is real life.”

“So what do we do?” Lucas asks, looking at his two friends, clearly lost.

“We acquire more knowledge,” Mike says, sitting up more straight. “I’ll go to Will’s after school. See what’s going on. You guys stay here and find Dart.”

“Dart? What’s he gotta do with this?” Dustin peeks up, confused.

“Will heard him in the Upside Down,” Mike says. “I don’t know how yet, but he’s gotta be connected to all this. He’s gotta be.” Mike isn’t too sure about that fact, but he has to consider every lead. Every little detail, if he truly wants to help Will. “If we find Dart, maybe we can solve this thing. Maybe we can help Will.”

His friends agree eventually, and so, they have a plan.

***

The ride to Will’s house is a long one, it gives Mike’s anxiety even more opportunity and time to grow. Mike wonders and wonders and keeps wondering when he pulls up at the Byers’ house. His heart is pounding from the speed he used to bike here. He takes not a second to breathe before stepping up to the door. He knocks, waiting for someone to open it. There’s no reply, so Mike keeps knocking.

“Hello?” He speaks up when he knocks on the door for the third time. “Will?” They have to be home, where else would they be. Mike remembers that no one picked up the phone earlier as well. Panic boils up in him, what if they left? Where would he even start to look? He wonders for a second if maybe he can climb through a window, if no one opens. “Mrs. Byers?” He calls out. When the door finally opens, Mike lets out a relieved sigh. “Hey,” he breathes out when he sees Will’s mom standing in front of him.

“Hey Mike,” she replies softly.

“Is Will here?” Mike quickly gets to the point.

“You know-“ she turns to look back behind her. Mike can’t help but notice her worried face which probably matches his own. “Now is not a really good time.”

“Is he okay?”

Joyce sighs, stepping forward and closing the door behind them. “Yeah. You know, he’s… he’s just not feeling real well.” She puts a hand on Mike’s shoulder, guiding him back to his bike. “He’s laying down, so I’ll tell him you stopped by, okay?” Mike hates this already.

When she returns to the door, clearly done with the conversation, Mike keeps his ground, not willing to go until he sees Will for himself. “It’s about the shadow monster, isn't it?” He asks, his voice comes out steadier than he expected.

Joyce turns back around, staring at him, horrified. At the sight of her, he’s sure he got through to her. He assumed right, he’s going to help them help Will. Of course he’s going to do that. It’s what he’s best at.

Notes:

Sorry for the short chapter, but I really want to keep the chapter/ episode thing consistent. And I'm not going to drag something out just for the sake of it. Anywayyys, so exited for the next four chapters, y'all don't understand.

Chapter 13: Dig Dug

As soon as Mike steps into the house his brain completely shuts off. He takes everything in for a second before realizing what’s even in front of him. Everything, and he means everything, is covered in papers. Lines upon lines, a hundred of drawings. Mike doesn’t have to guess twice who that was. The drawings cover the whole house. The walls as well as the floor and ceiling. It shows… Mike doesn’t exactly know what they show. It looks like roads he would guess, but he’s not sure. “What is all that?” He asks Joyce, who closes the door after him.

“Will drew all that, I just connected them with Hopper’s help,” she answers him softly. Mike nods as if that makes any sense. “Do you know what it means?” He asks next, to which she replies with a slow shake of her head.

“Why don’t you go ahead and say hi to Will. He’s in his room,” Joyce tells him. “Just, be careful with him, he’s really worked up. Yesterday, I’m pretty sure, one of these visions became too real for him.”

Mike thinks he knows what she means. The shadow monster must’ve been able to reach out to Will in some way. That’s why he was in such a horrifying state the day before. He must’ve not been able to hide.

“Yeah sure, thank you for letting me in,” Mike says politely. Will’s mom nods, her face makes it clear she’s not done yet. She seems to have questions for him, too.

Mike walks up to Will’s room, nervous all of a sudden. He knocks quietly on the door while he feels Joyce eyeing him from the living room. “Yeah,” Will answers, his voice small. When Mike comes in he finds Will on his bed, looking straight ahead at nothing. His head snaps up at Mike when he sees him walking in.

Mike softly closes the door behind him, turning around and lifting his hand in greeting. Will stares at him before he whispers a small “Mike,” which would melt Mike’s heart but he’s too occupied by the state of the boy in front of him. Will looks like he hasn’t slept since yesterday, his shirt is drenched in sweat while his hair sticks to his forehead. His leg is bouncing up and down and he gulps nervously when Mike doesn’t say anything else for a moment. “I’m sorry, how are you? Drew a lot?” he nods his head to the left letting his gaze follow the lines that continue in this room, too.

“Yeah, right,” Will croaks, taking his gaze off of Mike to stare at the floor. “Can you tell me what this is all about, I just- your mom left me kind of in the open on this one,” he tries to laugh to lighten the mood but it comes out horribly wrong. Will is silent for a moment. Mike knows he’s thinking, he always gets quiet for a moment when he has to sort through his thoughts. Mike gives him a moment, walking ahead to take a closer look at some of the drawings.

“It’s like… It’s like I feel what the shadow monster’s feeling. See what he’s seeing,” Will eventually says. So he drew what he saw in front of his inner eye. That’s some impressive work, Mike thinks to himself.

“Like in the Upside Down?” He wonders aloud, looking at Will from behind, moving closer to his friend to see his expression.

“Some of him is there,” Will says. Mike comes to a stop, looking at Will from the side. “But some of him is here, too.”

“Here, like, in this house?” Mike asks, feeling goosebumps all over his skin.

“In this house and…,” Will stops for a moment, gulping. “In me,” he finishes. His voice almost cracks. Mike steps closer, sitting down next to the boy, never taking his eyes off him. “It’s like… It’s like he’s reaching into Hawkins more and more,” Will’s voice becomes almost panic-like, he’s talking fast, barely able to stop himself from getting the words out. “And the more he spreads, the more connected to him I feel.”

“And the more you see these now-memories,” Mike adds, looking down, trying to put it all together.

“At first I just felt it in the back of my head,” Will lifts his left hand, reaching towards his neck. “I didn’t even really know it was there. It’s like when you have a dream and you can’t remember it unless you think really hard. It was like that.” Mike glances down at Will’s shaking leg, trying to connect the dots so hard. “But now it’s like… now I remember. I remember all the time.” He started to fully shake now. Mike wants to reach out, help his friend calm down, but he’s not really sure if it’ll help Will or just freak him out even more.

“Maybe,” he begins as soft as he can. “Maybe that’s good,” he looks at Will carefully.

“Good?” Will almost laughs, looking at Mike in shock. Yeah, okay, maybe not the best choice of words.

“Just think about it, Will,” Mike tries. “You’re like a spy now. A superspy. Spying on the shadow monster. If you know what he’s seeing and feeling… maybe that’s how we can stop him.” Mike looks up, letting his gaze spread over the drawings. “Maybe all of this is happening for a reason,” he says, focusing back on Will.

“You really think so?” Will asks, his voice more quiet now.

“Yeah, Yeah, I really do,” Mike tells him, fully meaning it. Mike notices Will’s gaze being stuck on something on his right. He follows its direction and notices yet another drawing. It’s just one, not part of the big project going on in the house. Mike freezes, probably holding his breath, too. It’s a drawing in black and white, some huge monster on it. If that’s the shadow monster, they’re all incredibly fucked.

“What if he figures out we’re spying on him?” Will sniffles which snatches Mike’s gaze away from the drawing, back to his friend. “What if he spies back?”

“He won’t,” Mike immediately denies. He will make sure of that somehow.

“How do you know?” Will asks, his eyes so full of tears, Mike wonders how none of them fall. His leg is shaking again. This time Mike reaches out, laying his hand on top of Will’s who lets a breath out at the contact, his shaking stops immediately. “We won’t let him,” Mike tells Will, putting all his energy in the words coming out of his mouth. Mike won’t let him.

***

Mike stays with Will for a long time. He truly can’t tell how much time has passed when suddenly his mom calls the house phone. Joyce asks Mike if he wants to sleep over, since it’s already dark outside and naturally, Mike agrees. He stays on the floor next to Will’s bed overnight with a sleeping bag, falling asleep to the sound of Will’s breathing.

Although there’s so much to think about, so much to be scared of, and a hard floor underneath him as well, he sleeps better than he has in a very long time. Knowing that Will is right next to him, and that if anything happens, he’ll be there.

So to say, when he gets woken up by a loud gasp the next morning, he’s so relieved to be there right by Will’s side to take care of him.

Will sits straight up in bed, catching his breath. Mike leans up on his arm, looking for a sign of trouble. “Will, what’s wrong?” He asks his friend. Will immediately turns around, locking eyes with Mike. He looks like he forgot about Mike’s presence. “I need to talk to my mom,” Will tells him.

So that’s what they do. When Mike follows Will out of his room, they find Joyce awake in the living room, sitting cross-legged on the floor. She seems to be still occupied with all the drawings Will made. Mike wonders if she’s been up all night, she sure as hell looks like it. She takes a while to react when Will repeats Mom over and over again. Only when the boy touches her shoulder, does she flinch back, gasping when she looks back at her son. “Yeah?” She asks, eyes wide.

“I saw him,” Will tells her, leaning down.

“You saw who, baby?”

“Hopper,” Will admits. “I think he’s in trouble. I think he’s going to die.”

It’s quiet for a moment. The three of them needing a second to take that in. “Where- where is he. What did you see?” Joyce stutters, clearly overwhelmed by this situation.

“I know- I just have to…,” Will looks around, before walking back to his room. Mike and Joyce quickly look at each other before following him. Will sat down at his desk, now taking an empty paper as he begins to draw. Mike stays behind Will, waiting for his friend to finish. He notices Joyce’s nervous demeanour right next to him. She can’t seem to stand still, looking over Will’s shoulder every few seconds.

When Will finishes, she leans down to him, glancing at the drawing for a second before focusing on her son. Will made another drawing that matches the ones covering the house, Mike notices. “Hey, is this where you saw him?” Joyce asks Will. “Is this where you saw Hopper?”

“I think so. Yeah,” Will mumbles.

Will stays seated when Mike and Joyce look around the house, searching for a place where the drawing might fit in. After a few minutes of looking, Mike recognizes a pattern in front of him. “Here,” he speaks out loud, looking for Joyce who is already walking up to him, drawing in hand. She puts the paper above the place Mike pointed out for her. It fits perfectly. “Okay, so… Hopper is here?” Joyce clarifies.

“Yeah. Now we just need to find out where here is, right?” Mike says, pointing at the drawing once more. “Right,” Joyce answers.

“Did he say anything? I mean, before he left?” Mike inquires.

Joyce sighs, trying to think for a moment. “Uh, some… something about vines?”

They hear a car from outside of the house. “Hopper?” Joyce wonders as they walk up to the front windows, looking for who it is. It’s not him though, that much is clear when Joyce turns to Mike and says “I’ll be right back, just a moment.”

Just as she closes the door, Mike notices some movement behind him. “Who’s there?” Will asks. Mike turns around to look at Will who apparently came out of his room, now staring at the window, letting out a quiet “ah, Bob,” before turning his gaze back at Mike. “You know Bob, I told you, he’s dating my mom,” he tells Mike.

“Yeah, yeah I know who Bob is,” Mike replies. They stare at each other, not saying anything for a moment, before suddenly the door bursts open. Mike snaps his eyes away from Will when he sees Bob enter with Joyce. Bob’s eyes open immediately at the sight of the living room. “What in the-,“ he says, taking a few steps inside the room, seeming to be very interested in a specific wall. “Hey kids,” he says as an aside when he stops walking. Now he just stares up at one of the walls. The others step closer to him and Mike tries to follow Bob’s glance.

After a little while, Bob turns around, glancing at Will. “You drew all these yourself?” He asks, astounded. “Why, exactly?” He wonders, as he turns back to the wall.

“I… I told you the rules. No questions, okay?” Joyce tells him. Bob only nods in answer. “We… we just need you to help us figure out what…,” she begins to walk away. When Bob doesn’t follow, still just staring at the wall in confusion, Joyce repeats, “Bob? Bob? Over here.”

He eventually turns around and gives Mike some box and DVDs he was holding, before following Joyce. Mike quickly sets them aside before following the others.

Joyce walked back to the drawing Will just drew, marking it with a big X, using a red crayon. “Where… where this is,” she tells Bob.

“That’s the objective. Find the X,” Mike explains.

“Yeah?” Bob leans down, taking a closer look at the drawing. “What’s at the X? Pirate treasure?” He chuckles, looking back up.

“Bob, no questions,” Joyce repeats once again, her voice firm. Mike looks to his left, noticing Will there. They meet eyes for a moment.

“Okay,” Bob says, reaching out to grab Joyce’s arm. “Let me talk to you for a second. Hang on, guys.” The two of them leave to another room. Mike locks eyes with Will again, shrugging. Together they go and wait for the other two at the dining table. Will stares at all the paper in front of them. Mike had caught Will earlier, looking around himself staring at all the drawings he made as if he never even saw them before. As if he has no recollection of how he drew them. He has that same look right now.

He snaps up after a moment, noticing Bob and Joyce coming back. Bob is talking and pointing his finger at different areas on the wall. “Yeah, that’s uh, Sattler’s Quarry,” he turns around walking back. “And if you just follow it naturally… it moves to… the Eno River. And there it is,” he holds out a hand at one of the lines. “That’s the Eno, do you see it? Okay, so the lines aren’t roads,” Bob continues as he walks back to the front. “But they act like roads. And they act like roads ‘cause when you follow ‘em, you’ll see…,” he now stands right behind the dining table. “They don’t go over water.

“And that’s the giveaway. That’s the giveaway. Ha,” he exclaims. “Don’t you get it? It’s not a puzzle, it’s a map,” he now stands still, coming to his conclusion. “It’s a map of Hawkins.”

Mike catches Will’s eyes, the other boy looks just as shocked as he himself feels. In the background Bob laughs while Joyce just stands there, speechless. “Right, Will?” Bob turns around to the boy who doesn’t answer at all.

Mike has never met this man, but already he’s more than thankful for his existence. He would’ve never figured it out that fast.

“Ok, so now we just need to find the X,” Mike says while Bob is already grabbing some papers, writing names of lakes and other places on them. “Joyce,” he looks up at his girlfriend. “I need a map and a ruler, can you bring me that?”

Will’s mom nods before she rummages through some cupboards in the kitchen. They put the names Bob wrote on the wall and while the man sits down, now with a map, pen and ruler Mike turns around, admiring this map in front of him.

Bob continues to ask them for measurements and so it goes. They take a measuring tape and do as Bob says.

Eventually, they gather back around the table. Bob comes to the conclusion that the X must be a half mile southeast of Danford. Joyce gives him a kiss before more or less running out of the house. Mike and Will glance at each other before following Joyce. “What? Are we… we really going?” Bob calls after them, already stepping up after them.

While they drive, it begins to slowly get dark outside and Mike wonders when that even happened. It was just morning. His mom is going to be pissed at Mike for not coming home for such a long time, but Mike couldn’t care less. This, right here, is all he cares about at the moment. Will is sitting silently next to him, staring in his lap the entire time where he twists his thumbs. Mike finds it almost endearing but doesn’t dwell on that too long, more focused on looking outside of the window, trying to find any sign of Hopper.

“There’s nothing. There’s nothing here,” Mike tells the others as he looks outside, they should be near by now. “Are… are we close?” Joyce asks, glancing at Bob who is looking down at the map in his hands. “We’re in the vicinity,” the man answers.

“What’s that mean, the vicinity?”

“It means we’re close. I don’t know. It’s not precise,” Bob explains.

The two of them continue to argue but Mike tunes them out, instead he looks out at the fields that pass him by.

“Turn right,” Will suddenly calls out, interrupting the two in the front. Mike’s head snaps to the side, he stares at Will. When he sees the ashen look on his face, Mike knows. Will’s been spying.

“What?” Joyce leans back, confused.

“I saw him,” Will explains.

“Where?” Joyce asks, looking outside.

“Not here. In my now-memories.”

“In your what?” Bob asks, throwing a confused glance back.

“Turn right,” Will repeats.

Joyce does as she’s told, driving off into the field. They hit a sign and drive something over, screaming all the way through it. When they halt with too much force, they collectively jerk forward. Mike notices a car in front of them which, if he remembers correctly, does belong to Hopper. He almost has the urge to grin. “Superspy,” he breathes out, looking at Will for a second.

“What’s Jim doing here? Joyce?”

Joyce ignores Bob for now, instead she turns to the back where Will and Mike are seated. “Boys, I need you to stay here,” she tells them before opening the door, already stepping out.

“No. Mom, Mom, Mom,” Will calls after her, panic rising in his voice, “it’s not safe.”

“That’s why I need you to stay here,” she turns around, looking back at them. “Stay here!”
Bob and Joyce go then, leaving Mike and Will alone. They wait a moment, sharing a look. A few minutes later they leave as well, walking around Hopper’s car. There’s a hole in the ground behind it that leads god knows where. Joyce and Bob probably went in there, Mike thinks. This is where Hopper must be. “Do you see anything?” Mike turns to Will. “I mean, in your now-memories?” Will only shakes his head.

Tires screech behind them, breaking the two of them out of their little bubble. When Mike glances back, he sees multiple vans pull up next to them. Vans from…, he shares a shocked look with Will. Those are vans from Hawkins Lab.

Men in uniform come spreading out, wearing protective suits and weapons. They only spare the two of them a glance before walking over to the hole in the ground. Some go in, some stay to stand guard. An unwell feeling rises in Mike. They could be here to help Joyce, Bob and Hopper, but in Mike’s experience these men never mean any good.

Minutes pass, nothing happens and then without any sort of warning Mike’s heart drops right to the ground when Will falls down in pain, shaking so immensely Mike feels almost dumb for asking. “Will? Will, you okay?” The boy on the ground just sobs, Mike shakes him, trying to think about what made this happen. His head only screams back in answer, not able to concentrate when Will is writhing in pain.

Under his palms, Will’s demeanour changes. Mike feels it instantly like a flip that has been switched. It’s not him anymore, he realizes as he stumbles back. Will became stiff, now letting out an inhumane screech. He lays flat on the ground and if Mike didn’t know any better, he would’ve thought the boy had a seizure. It’s not a seizure, though. Maybe it’s worse. Mouth wide open, eyes rolled back, it looks more like some kind of demon overtook Will’s body. It is not Will, Will was the boy just crying, trying to make himself as small as possible. This, this is something entirely else.

Notes:

wait I kinda hate this chapter lol. I gotta remind myself that I do this for fun and it's okay if it's not perfect but ughhh

Chapter 14: The Spy

Here’s what Mike remembers. Will had some kind of supernatural seizure. Mike didn’t know what to do so he screamed for help, screamed for Joyce. She, Bob and Hopper, who they were apparently able to save from the tunnels underground, came back soon after. They drove to the hospital with such speed that if Mike wasn’t so focused on Will, he would’ve feared for his life. Will didn’t screech anymore, he didn’t look like he was under some sort of possession. He got back to normal, as normal as someone that cries this hard could be. He had his eyes closed while he screamed out in pain. Mike wasn’t sure what he screamed for but sometimes he caught his own name on Will’s lips. It made him want to die.

In the hospital, he ran after the doctors who put Will on a stretcher. They gave him an oxygen mask, but it didn’t stop the screams as much as Mike wished they would. When they got into a room they asked him where it hurt. Mike stood behind the doctors and watched as they cut off his shirt as he screamed at them. He screamed “everywhere”. They asked where it hurt and he screamed like he was being burnt alive.

After what felt like an excruciatingly long time they sedated him, putting him to sleep. Time moved on, doctors left the room, but Mike just stood there, watching his best friend lay there, eyes closed. He probably wouldn’t have moved for another few hours. He would’ve stood there until Will woke up, maybe longer. But in the end, it was Bob who made Mike sit down in an uncomfortable hospital chair next to Will, giving him a blanket. Joyce had left, she was talking to the doctors, Mike was pretty sure. He wanted to talk to them as well, or at least listen to what they had to say. He wasn’t even sure if any of these people could help Will, considering his condition was far beyond the clinical knowledge these doctors had.

But in the end, he couldn’t do anything. He was not sure if he would’ve been able to. He felt frozen to the chair, unable to tear his eyes away from Will.

***

He woke up some time later. Time must’ve passed. The sun was back up and his neck hurt from sleeping in a chair. His eyes needed only a second to adjust, because in front of him he saw Will, awake. “Sweetie, how you feeling? You okay?” Joyce stood next to Will, a hand on his shoulder.

“Okay, they’re on their way,” Mike heard Bob coming in through the door. He didn’t look at the man, eyes fixed on Will, begging his friend to look back at him. Something in Will’s demeanour felt very wrong, almost unnatural. Something wasn’t quite right.

“Who is that?” Will asks, turning his head to look behind Joyce, catching Bob’s stare. Mike looks in between the two, confused.

“What?” Joyce breathes out, matching Mike’s confusion.

“It’s me, big guy,” Bob says softly, reaching out for Will’s hand. “It’s Bob.” Will pulls his hand away, avoiding the touch. “Are you a…,” Will looks him up and down, “doctor?”

It’s the way Will asks, Mike realizes. Will doesn’t talk like that. His voice seems distant, almost empty if Mike had to put a word to it.

“No. No, it’s just me. Just… just Bob.”

The doctors come in soon after, taking Will to another room. Will still hasn’t recalled anything about Bob, he’s oddly quiet. Will is a quiet person, but not like that. That’s not his Will.

While they tape some cables onto Will’s forehead, Joyce tells Dr. Owens that Will doesn’t seem to remember Bob. Dr. Owens is the one who Will has been seeing now for longer. His name sounds familiar, Mike’s pretty sure that’s him.

Eventually, Dr. Owens sits down next to Will, talking to him for a bit while he points a tiny flashlight in his face. “Do you know your name?” He asks, putting the flashlight aside.

“Will.”

“Your full name?”

“William Byers.”

“Do you know… Do you know who I am?”

Will seems to think for a moment, closing his eyes. “A doctor,” he eventually says, more so guesses. He doesn’t seem to recognize Dr. Owens either. Mike wants Will to look at him, he doesn’t need to say anything, just look. He needs to know. Just please, look at me.

“Have we met before?” Dr. Owens asks.

Mike suddenly realizes how used he is to Will noticing him. In a room full of people, they always seem to find each others gaze. Now it’s just Mike staring and staring, without anything in return.

“I don’t remember.”

Please, just a little glance, he’ll know. Mike will know.

“Hm. You don’t remember me?”

Just one look and Mike would be able to tell, to tell if Will still recognizes him.

“Okay,” Dr. Owens continues, turning around to look at Mike. “How about, uh… How about this guy here?”

Mike’s heart skips a beat. Will turns his head and when the two of them finally catch each others gaze, Mike sure as hell stops breathing all together, barely able to slightly wave at the other boy. He takes it back, he has no clue if Will recognizes him. His stare is intense but empty at the same time. Something feels wrong, but at the same time there’s something in Will’s eyes, a shimmer, a flicker of something. Will nods his head at Mike. “That’s my friend,” he says matter of factly. “Mike.”

It’s the way Will says his name. It’s the way Mike knows something is incredibly wrong, but still feels the familiar pull between him and Will. Bob nudges him from the side, Mike can’t help but smile at him and Joyce.

“What about me, kid? You remember me?” Hopper asks then, smiling down at Will who only needs to look at Hopper shortly before shaking his head.

“They tell me you helped save me last night. You remember that?”

Will shakes his head once again, turning back to Dr. Owens when he continues to speak. “Do you remember anything about last night? About what happened?”

“I remember they hurt me.”

“You mean the doctors?” Dr. Owens makes sure.

“No,” Will shakes his head. “The soldiers.”

“The soldiers hurt you?”

“They shouldn’t have done that. It upset him.” Mike can feel himself flinch at those words. It’s so unlike Will to talk that way, as if he’s only half here.

“You say, “Upset him.” Is that him?” Dr. Owens inquires, showing Will a picture. Will looks at it for a moment before returning his gaze to Dr. Owens, nodding slowly.

When Dr. Owens puts the picture back into a folder, Mike catches a glimpse of it. It’s a picture of the drawing Will made of the shadow monster.

“Okay, I wanna try something,” Dr. Owens turns to Joyce now. “It’s gonna seem a little odd at first, but I think it’s really gonna help us understand what’s going on here.” He turns back to Will, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Is that okay?” He asks the boy softly.

“Okay,” Will replies quietly.

About ten minutes later, they pull in a trolley with a terrarium on top of it. In that terrarium seems to be some sort of vine. No, not just a vine, it moves. Some sort of eel, Mike thinks. Something from the Upside Down probably. It could be from the tunnels.

“Now, Will, I want you to just let us know if you feel anything. Okay?” Dr. Owens tells him. Another doctor turns on some sort of bunsen burner, putting the flame a bit over the terrarium. Mike hears a small screech that sounds way too familiar. Definitely from the Upside Down. “Do you feel anything?” Dr. Owens asks. “Little sting,” Will replies.

“It stings? Where?” He asks as the other doctor moves the flame closer to the vine inside the terrarium.

“My chest,” Will replies. Mike’s eyes bounce between Will, who now holds his hand to his chest in pain, and the terrarium.

“How about now?” Dr. Owens asks as the flame once again nears the vine a bit more.

“It… it burns.” Will breathes out, sitting upright all of a sudden letting out a groan. “It burns.”

“Where?”

“Everywhere,” Will almost screams. Mike notices the flame is now uncomfortably close to the screeching something. He also notices goosebumps all over his skin. He feels sick to his stomach.

“That’s enough. That’s enough,” Joyce calls out, reaching for her son. “Stop! You heard her. That’s enough,” Hopper exclaims, jumping up from next to Mike when the doctor doesn’t move the flame away. “That’s it. We’re done!”

Mike’s ears ring. He watches the monitor that shows Will’s heart beat return to normal when the flame eventually gets turned off.

***

Back in Will’s hospital room, Bob, Joyce and Mike wait for Dr. Owens who told them, he had to go in a meeting. Hopper went outside, promising he’ll be back soon. Mike has the urge to grab Will’s hand, to bring the boy some comfort, but something stops him from doing that. Instead he just peers at his friend who vacantly stares at the ceiling. “What the hell is taking so long,” Joyce speaks up after what feels like an hour.

“Hey… doctors take forever, always. Just try and relax. Just be patient,” Bob comforts Joyce who exhales heavily. She looks like she could use some rest. They all could, to be fair. Will most of all.

“You know, I just…,” Joyce apparently had done enough waiting. She stands up, walking straight outside the door. Bob quickly looks at Mike before following his girlfriend out, leaving Will and Mike alone.

For a second, Mike doesn’t think Will even notices them leaving the room, but when he looks back at his friend he can see him staring through the open door, his eyes don’t seem distant anymore, they’re fixed on something. Mike can hear Joyce arguing with some other men in the hallway but he’s not paying attention. What he does pay attention to, is the slight movement in front of him. Will has begun to shake. “Will,” he says softly, but the other boy doesn’t react. “Will,” he repeats.

“Will,” he finally allows himself to reach out, just barely touching the other boy’s arm. Will gasps in reaction, his eyes flicker to Mike immediately. “What’s wrong?” Mike retreats his arm. “Are you hurting again?” He asks softly.

Will shudders while his eyes flicker to the side. “I saw something,” he states, sitting more upright.

“In your now-memories?”

Will nods slowly, eyes laid back on Mike again as he moves closer. “The shadow monster,” he almost whispers, “I think I know how to stop him.”

“What did you say?” Joyce’s voice snaps Mike away from Will. She stands in the door, her face one of anger and softness all at once.

“Dr. Owens is ready for you, big boy,” Bob adds as he walks in after Joyce. Will just nods, sitting up, ready to go.

They’re led into some kind of conference room. Mike sits down next to Will while a bunch of other people stand behind them. Amongst them Bob and Joyce, obviously. Hopper came back too, now leaning against the window behind them. Dr. Owens leans forward next to Will’s right, while about five other doctors stand around them. Will is focused on all the pictures laid out on the table. They show all the drawings hung up around the Byers’ house. Mike looked over them for a moment, but his focus shifted quite soon entirely to Will.

“Sam, this is ludicrous,” some doctor next to Mike says to Dr. Owens.

“Just give him a moment, okay?”

“We don’t have time-“

“Hey, jackass, why don’t you do us all a favor and shut up, okay,” Hopper interjects.

Will stands up suddenly, his eyes are searching for something on the table. He walks to the other end, pointing at one specific place on the map. “That’s it,” he whispers.

“That’s what? What… what’s that Will?” Dr. Owens asks him, looking at the point Will holds his finger at.

“I don’t know,” the boy replies. “I just know he doesn’t want me to see there. I think it’s important.”

***

They let Will go back to his hospital room soon after. They’re bringing people into the tunnels now to look for whatever’s in there. Hopper stays behind with Dr. Owens, overseeing the mission. Mike, Joyce and Bob stay with Will, waiting for an update. Mike has a weird feeling in his stomach, something’s not quite right. Nothing has been right since Will had that seizure moment yesterday.

Mike tries to bring everything he knows in order. He seeks to get a bigger picture of what exactly is going on, and especially what that means for Will. All he does know at the moment is that there are tunnels under Hawkins, that match the map Will drew. Those tunnels… they had to be part of the Upside Down. That had to be why Will saw them in the first place. He could see them because he’s connected to the shadow monster. He’s connected to it ever since they found Will on the field by the school. The shadow monster somehow attached itself to Will, letting him spy on it. But that’s the twist, why would it let him do that? Will said so himself, that he’s scared, the shadow monster might spy back. But how would they even know if it does. Would Will know?

“I’m sorry,” Will stammers, pulling Mike out of his head. His eyes snap to the boy. Will looks downright terrified. Oh, no.

“What?” Joyce breathes out. “What do you mean, sweetie?”

Will shudders as he turns to his mom. “He made me do it.”

Wait, wait, wait.

“Who? Who made you do what?”

“What if he spies back?”

“I told you. They upset him,” Will starts to cry now. “They shouldn’t have done that. They shouldn’t have upset him.”

Mike’s breathing becomes irregular, dots connecting in his head. “The spy,” he exclaims, urgent, watching Will cry for just a second.

“The spy,” he screams now, jumping up, already running out of the room. His feet carry him faster than his brain lets him think. Some guards hold him back when he tries to get through the door that leads to the room where they overlook the mission. “I need to get through,” he screams. “It’s a trap!”

It’s a trap. The shadow monster spied back, it manipulated Will. He knew something was off but he didn’t think it through. Why didn’t he think of this earlier?

“It’s a trap! I need to warn them,” someone draws him back, holding him close. “It’s a trap!”


Notes:

The calm before the storm or whatever. I already wrote the next chapter and I cried while writing the "you said yes" scene. That has never happened to me before.

Chapter 15: The Mind Flayer

Notes:

skipped the lost sister for obvious reasons

Everything erupts into immediate chaos. The guards don’t let Mike through the door. Bob ran after him and now restrains him from totally losing it. An alarm starts to ring through the hallways. It’s too late.

“What the hell,” Bob exclaims with his hands on Mike’s chest to hold him back. “We’re too late,” Mike tells him.

“What?”

“We’re too late,” Mike screams, escaping Bob’s grip to run back to Will’s room.

“What’s going on?” Joyce asks as soon as Mike and Bob get back inside.

“We’re under attack,” Mike explains, glancing at Will over Joyce’s shoulder. As much as it hurts Mike, there’s one thing that needs to be done. He searches through the cupboards on the side of the room, grabbing a sedating needle as soon as he finds one. “We need to make Will sleep,” he tells the others.

“What?” Joyce asks as if she’s not sure Mike is for real or not.

“He’s a spy. If he knows where we are, so does the shadow monster.”

Mike notices Will leaning up on the bed, his eyes flash at Mike. He’s angry, that much is clear. But it’s not fully Will, Mike needs to remind himself. “He’s lying,” Will exclaims.

“He killed those soldiers. He’ll kill us, too.”

Will fully crashes out after that, repeating “He’s lying” over and over again. Mike faintly hears the sound of gunshots from not too far away. They have to hurry. “Those are gunshots,” Bob declares, stating the obvious.

Joyce got the memo that their situation has become quite urgent. She turns back to Will and interrupts his screams. “Okay, Will, Will, listen, listen. Do you know who I am?” Of course he won’t know. The shadow monster took control of Will. He still has to be somewhere inside of his body, he’s just out of reach. “Do you know who I am?” Joyce repeats.

“You’re…,” Will’s eyes flicker around, he truly has no idea. “You’re… You’re Mom.” That sounds like too much of a guess to Mike. Joyce apparently thinks so, too, turning to Bob with a stern face. “Hold him down,” she tells him.

Mike gives Joyce the syringe as Will continues to protest against Bob’s strong grip. Mike can’t help but stare as Will fully freaks out, screaming at them to let him go. His voice is painful to listen to, his body’s jerking in all directions as he tries to get away. Mike doesn’t even recall when he put his hands above his ears. It doesn’t help one bit, the screams still slice Mike’s heart right in half.

Joyce eventually pushes the needle into Will’s arm, which results in him going slack against Bob's grip in seconds. When Will closes his eyes, Mike can’t help but be relieved that he stopped moving. Now it just looks like he’s asleep, Mike can deal with that. Will is better off like that, at least for now.

Not even a minute later, the doors behind them are thrown open. Hopper and Dr. Owens look at them for a second, panting. Behind them a screeching sound occurs, sending goosebumps all over Mike’s skin. The last time he heard that sound was at school last year. The last time he heard that sound, it was a Demogorgon.

Hopper turns to the sound in horror before quickly catching himself. “We gotta go. We gotta go,” he runs to Will’s side, lifting the boy into his arms. All together, they leave the room, running through corridors that are filled with screams and the ring of the alarm. They come to a halt, and when Mike looks forward wondering why that is, he sees a man getting taken down by a Demogorgon. It’s a grotesque look that is turning Mike’s stomach right over. It’s so bloody and vile.

Mike jumps around when he hears the sound of gunshots on the other end of the hallway where they just came from. One of the guards is shooting at something. Mike doesn’t have to guess what that might be. With no way to go, they leave into a room on their right. Dr. Owens pushes the door closed. He locks it while Hopper lays Will on a table. “Oh my god,” Bob mumbles. When Mike turns around to look at what Bob’s viewing, he notices a bunch of monitors. They’re in the surveillance room.

The monitors show all the cameras in the hospital and when Mike looks over them he’s not even able to count the amount of Demogorgons that run through the building. He sees dead people everywhere. The few people that are still alive, run for their lives. They will all be dead in a few minutes. There’s no chance any of them survive.

The light above them starts to flicker just before the power turns off, leaving them standing in a dark room. “Oh my god,” Joyce breathes out.

How will they get out of here? How can they get out of here?

***

Mike’s heart is racing, he keeps throwing glances at Will, searching for reassurance, but of course the boy is knocked out. It’s better that way. But still, Mike feels so alone in between all these adults. Not that he’s complaining because while Mike is still catching his breath, they’re already forming a plan.

“Look, this is us, and this is the nearest exit,” Dr. Owens points on a map that Hopper shines on with a flashlight. “But even if we somehow make it there, there’s no way out.”
“What do you mean?” Hopper asks, voice calm and calculating.

“The locks are fail secure,” Dr. Owens explains, turning to Hopper.

“Fail secure?” Joyce asks.

“If there’s a power outage, the building goes on full lockdown.”

“Can it be unlocked remotely?” Bob inquires.

“With a computer, sure, but somebody’s gotta reset the breakers,” Dr. Owens elaborates.

“Where are the breakers?” Hopper asks.

“Breakers are in the basement,” Dr. Owens returns to the map. “Three floors down.”

Hopper snatches the map out of Dr. Owens hands, already walking to the door. “Hey, where are you going?” Bob stops the man.

“To reset the breakers,” Hopper announces.

“Okay, then what?”

“Then we get the hell out of here.”

“No, then the power comes back on,” Bob corrects. “If you wanna unlock the doors, you have to completely reboot the computer system, and then override the security codes with a manual input.”

“Fine, how do I do that?”

“You can’t. Not unless you know BASIC.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

Oh, this is so stupid.

“It’s a computer programming language,” Mike pipes in.

“All right, teach it to me,” Hopper steps forward, eyes fixed on Bob.

“Shall I teach you French while I’m at it, Jim?” Bob says. “How about a little German?” He turns around then. “How about you, Doc? You speak BASIC?”

“No,” Dr. Owens sighs to which Bob scoffs in reply. “Okay, I got this,” he declares, turning to Hopper again. “I got this.”

“No. Bob,” Joyce speaks up, her voice quiet, scared. “It’s okay,” Bob tells her softly, letting her fall into his arms. “It’s gonna be okay. Remember, Bob Newby, superhero.”

So it’s settled, Bob leaves, Hopper goes with him for a bit before coming back to the surveillance room. Then, they wait.

A couple minutes later, the light flickers back on. Electricity is returning to the building. Mike turns to the monitors, catching sight of Bob in the basement. “He made it,” he breathes out, hope resurfaces inside of him.

Dr. Owens sits down in front of a microphone now, connecting it to the power outlet. “Okay, Bob, can you hear us?” He speaks into it.

“Loud and clear, Doc. Can you hear me back?” Bob’s voice comes through the speakers.

“Yeah, we hear you,” Dr. Owens replies.

Mike doesn’t know how Bob does it so quickly, but in only a few minutes all doors unlock. It all goes according to plan. It’s gonna work out.

“Hold on a second, Chief,” Dr. Owens stops them just before they leave.

“What’s wrong?” Hopper asks, turning back around.

“West stairwell’s not clear anymore,” Dr. Owens points at the monitor in question. When Mike looks at it, he sees a Demogorgon sneaking down the stairs.

“What’s going on?” Bob’s static voice comes through.

“We’ve got some company.”

“Where?”

“The west stairwell.”

“I got an idea,” Bob declares, then goes quiet. Mike sees him back on the computer when he glances at the monitor. “What the hell’s he doing?” Dr. Owens wonders.

Somewhere on a higher level a sprinkler turns on, making the Demogorgon stop in his tracks. It runs back upstairs, following the noise. “Okay,” Dr. Owens announces. “Okay, that worked. Now get out of there,” he tells Bob.

Hopper pulls Will on top of his shoulder. They’re ready to leave now. “Wait a second, Chief?” Dr. Owens stops them.

“What?” Hopper turns back around when Dr. Owens stands up.

“Take this,” the doctor presses a Walkie into Hopper’s hand.

“What are you doing?”

“Any more surprises, I’ll let you know,” Dr. Owens says, nodding to the monitors. “Go, Go!”
Leaving Dr. Owens behind, the three, or four of them if you count Will hanging off Hopper’s shoulder, sneak through the hallways towards the exit. They get there without any problems. Mike throws the door open, leaving into the quiet night air. Hopper is right on his heels, letting Will slide down his shoulders. “All right, you take him,” Hopper tells Mike who nods and pulls his best friend close to him. His limp body falls against Mike’s. It’s heavier than he expected. It’s like dead weight.

There’s a scream piercing through the air. It rings in Mike’s ears like nothing else he ever heard. Hopper looks at Mike in shock for only a second before running back inside, machine gun at the ready. A second later the sound of gunshots accompanies the screams of Joyce. Mike’s body is full with goosebumps, he’s slightly shaking, but that could be the cold night air. The waiting only lasts for about 30 seconds. The door bangs back open. Hopper stumbles through it, a weeping Joyce by his side. “What happened?” Mike screams at them, confused. Demogorgons jump at the closed door behind them. The glass will break in just a few minutes or less. They have to leave now. Where’s Bob?

“He’s gone! He’s gone,” Hopper yells at the crying Joyce. Mike can’t even catch a second to process what that means. A car horn honks behind them. When Mike looks to the side, he sees Jonathan pull up.



Where the hell did he come from?

“Come on! Get in,” he yells at them. They don’t have to be told twice. Hopper takes Will out of Mike’s grip, throwing him over his shoulder again as they run to the car while the Demogorgons keep screeching at them from the inside.

Jonathan drives them to the front of the building so Hopper can take his car with him. They need it anyway, because apparently Lucas, Dustin, Max, Steve, Jonathan and Nancy are waiting just outside the fences.

***

Bob is dead. They drive back to the Byers’ house and the feeling sets in with each cry that Joyce lets out. He’s dead. They drive back, leaving Dr. Owens behind who’s probably also dead by now. The more they drive the quieter she gets, the more empty she looks. It breaks Mike’s heart.

When they arrive, Joyce immediately leaves to her room. She probably needs a moment alone. Will is asleep on the couch, Jonathan kneels next to him, talking to him in a quiet tone. Nancy stands right behind him. They seem closer somehow. Nancy has her hand on Jonathan’s shoulder, comforting him.

Hopper is on the phone, talking to the military or something. “Sam Owens. Dr. Sam Owens,” he tells the woman Mike can hear quietly on the other end. “I don’t know how many people are there! I don’t know how many people are left alive.” Steve joins them from the other room, leaning against the kitchen counter behind the table the party plus Max is sat at.

“I am the police! Chief Jim Hopper,” Hopper screams into the phone, visibly trying to calm himself down after that. “Yes, the number that I gave you, yes. 6767… I will be here.”

“They didn’t believe you, did they?” Dustin asks when Hopper slams the receiver back on the hold.

“We’ll see,” Hopper answers quietly. No, absolutely not.

“”We’ll see”? We can’t just sit here while those things are loose,” Mike exclaims.

“We stay here, and we wait for help,” Hopper says firmly, turning around. Mike watches as he follows Joyce to her room. Right, Bob. They both knew Bob, they went to high school with him.

Mike’s eyes go back to the room. Will is still on the sofa, of course, where else would he be? But something else catches his eye, too. When Bob got here the other day, he brought something. Mike put it aside for him and now the things just sit there, untouched.

He stands up, moving without even having made the decision to do that. He takes the fidget cube that sits on top of the pile, looking at it with admiration. “Did you guys know that Bob was the original founder of Hawkins AV?” He mentions out loud.

“Really?” Lucas says. Mike turns around to his friends, cube in hand. “He petitioned the school to start it and everything. And then he had a fund-raiser for equipment. Mr. Clarke learned everything from him.” He walks back to the table and puts the cube down on it. “Pretty awesome, right?

“We can’t let him die in vain,” he announces.

“Well what do you want to do, Mike?” Dustin speaks up. “The Chief’s right on this. We can’t stop those Demo-dogs on our own.”

“Demo-dogs?” Max stares at Dustin in question.

There’s a beat of silence. “Demogorgon,” Dustin raises one of his hands, “dogs,” then the other, before putting them together. “Demo-dogs. It’s like a compound. It’s like a play on words-“

“Okay,” Max interrupts him, clearly not impressed by Dustin.

“I mean, when it was just Dart, maybe…,” Dustin gets back to the point.

“But there’s an army now,” Lucas adds.

“Precisely.”

“His army,” Mike says, a thought coming to him out of a sudden.

“What do you mean?” Steve inquires.

“His army,” Mike repeats raising his voice and looking in between his friends. “Maybe if we stop him, we can stop his army, too.” The Demogorgons aren’t the problem. It’s the shadow monster. He runs to Will’s room, the others right on his heel. He quickly takes the drawing Will made of the shadow monster and pushes it into Dustin’s hand. “The shadow monster,” the other boy says.

“It got Will that day on the field. The doctor said it was like a virus, it infected him,” Mike explains.

“And so this virus, it’s connecting him to the tunnels?” Max wonders.

“To the tunnels, monsters, the Upside Down, everything,” Mike concludes.

“Whoa. Slow down. Slow down,” Steve raises his hands, taking another look at the drawing.

“Okay, so, the shadow monster’s inside everything. And if the vines feel something like pain, then so does Will,” Mike says, remembering how they tested this just this morning with the vine in the terrarium. It seems like such a long time ago now.

“And so does Dart,” Lucas adds.

“Yeah. Like what Mr. Clarke taught us. The hive mind,” Mike adds, being proud of himself for remembering that. Even though he wasn’t paying much attention in class the last week or so, this stuck to him.

“Hive mind?” Steve follows up.

“A collective consciousness,” Dustin says, turning to Steve. “It’s a super-organism.”

“And this is the thing that controls everything,” Mike points at the shadow monster drawing. “It’s the brain.”

“Like the mind flayer,” Mike’s head snaps to Dustin. Right, yeah that’s it.

“The what?” Max and Steve asks simultaneously while Lucas snaps with his fingers at Dustin, a grin on his face.

So, here they go again. Mike has a feeling of deja-vu when Dustin slams Will’s D&D book on the table. They were here before. Last year, to be precise.

Dustin doesn’t take long to find the character analysis of the mind flayer. “What are you looking at?” Jonathan asks when they all assemble around the dining table. All besides Joyce, Mike notices.

“The mind flayer,” Dustin tells them.

“What the hell is that?” Hopper asks.

“It’s a monster from an unknown dimension,” Dustin elaborates. “It’s so ancient that it doesn’t even know it’s true home. Okay, it enslaves races of other dimensions by taking over their brains using its highly-developed psionic powers.”

“Oh, my God, none of this is real. This is a kids’ game,” Hopper exhales.

“No, it’s a manual. And it’s not for kids,” Dustin disagrees. “And unless you know something that we don’t, this is the best metaphor-“

“Analogy,” Lucas corrects him.

“Analogy?” Dustin looks at Lucas in disbelief. “That’s what you’re worried about? Fine. An analogy for understanding whatever the hell this is.”

“Okay,” Nancy pipes in. “So this mind flamer thing-“

“Flayer. Mind flayer,” Dustin corrects her when she leans forward, looking at the open book.

“What does it want?”

“To conquer us, basically. It believes it’s the master race.”

“Uh- like the Germans?” Steve stammers.

“Uh, the Nazis?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Nazis,” Steve corrects himself.

“Uh… If the Nazis were from another dimension, totally.” Hopper groans behind them. “Uh, it views other races, like us, as inferior to itself.”

“It wants to spread, take over other dimensions,” Mike adds.

“We are talking about the destruction of our world as we know it,” Lucas clarifies.

“That’s great. That’s great. That’s really great. Jesus,” Steve turns around pulling his hand through his hair.

“Okay,” Nancy grabs the book from the table, taking a closer look at it. “So if this thing is like a brain that’s controlling everything then if we kill it…”

“We kill everything it controls,” Mike finishes for his sister.

“We win,” Dustin declares.

“Theoretically,” Lucas adds.

“Great,” Hopper leans into their circle, taking the book from Nancy’s hands. “So how do you kill this thing? Shoot it with Fireballs or something?”

Dustin chuckles for a moment. “No. No, no Fire-“ his smile dies down at Hopper’s serious face. “No Fireballs. Uh, you summon an undead army, uh, because… because zombies, you know, they… they don’t have brains, and the mind flayer, it… it… It likes brains.” Yeah, Dustin seems to realize on his own that this doesn’t help them at all. “It’s just a game. It’s a game,” he concludes.

“What the hell are we doing here?” Hopper slams the book back on the table, already walking away.

“I thought we were waiting for your military backup,” Dustin raises his arms both sides.

“We are,” Hopper exclaims, turning back around.

“And even if they come, how are they gonna stop this,” Mike pipes in. “You can’t just shoot this with guns.”

“You don’t know that,” Hopper says back. “We don’t know anything!”

“We know it’s already killed everybody in that lab,” Mike points to the side.

“And we know the monsters are gonna molt again,” Lucas says.

“And we know that it’s only a matter of time before those tunnels reach this town,” Dustin adds.

“They’re right,” Mike turns back around when he hears Joyce’s voice. He has known this woman for a long time. He never heard her that broken. “We have to kill it,” Hopper takes a step closer to her. “I want to kill it.”

“Me, too. Me, too, Joyce, okay?” Hopper tells her. “But how do we do that? We don’t exactly know what we’re dealing with here.”

A thought crosses Mike’s mind. “No,” he steps forward to Will’s resting form. “But he does. If anyone knows how to destroy this thing, it’s Will. He’s connected to it. He’ll know its weakness.”

“I thought we couldn’t trust him anymore,” Max makes sure. “That he’s a spy for the mind flayer now.”

Mike looks out of the window for a second. “Yeah, but he can’t spy if he doesn’t know where he is.” His eyes land on the cabin out in the garden. “We could bring him out.”

“What exactly do you mean?” Hopper asks.

***

Mike shows Hopper the cabin outside. The air is freezing cold, and when Mike gets goosebumps at the exposure he remembers Joyce’s piercing scream and gunshots. So much blood. Hopper takes a look inside of the cabin, eventually agreeing to the plan.

Mike searches for ammonia under the sink between all the cleaning supplies. Max sits behind him taping a chair so Will won’t recognize it. “I get why El was your mage now,” Max breaks the silence between them.

“What?” Mike asks, looking back at the girl.

“Lucas. He told me all about her.”

“Yeah, well, he shouldn’t have,” Mike replies. He can’t help but be pissed at her involvement. He doesn’t even know why anymore but at this point it comes naturally to him. “And just because you know the truth, it doesn't mean you’re in our party. You do know that, right?”

“Yeah, I know,” she mumbles. “I mean, why would you want a stupid zoomer in your party anyway?” Mike glances at her, sorting through the cupboard a bit more, he draws out a bit of cotton to put the ammonia on. “I’m just saying, El? She sounds like she was really awesome.”

“Yeah, she was,” Mike agrees, closing the counter. “Until that thing took her,” he glances at Max once more. “Just like it took Bob.”

***

After they set everything up, the cabin is not recognisable in the slightest anymore. They bound Will to a chair, so he won’t be able to lash out. They put up big, bright lights that now shine at Will as if he’ll be interrogated. Mike figures that’s kinda true. Everyone leaves besides Joyce, Hopper, Jonathan and Mike. He persisted on staying. No one argued back so now he stands here, watching as his friend’s body just hangs there.

“All right, you ready?” Hopper asks the group.

“Yeah,” Joyce replies. She’s nervous, Mike can tell. He can sympathise with that. Hopper steps forward, kneeling down in front of Will. He puts some of the ammonia on a bit of cotton then holds it right under Will’s nose. A second later Will gasps, his head’s jerking up. He looks around for a second, adjusting to the light. When he fully comes back to himself he notices that he’s tied up. He looks down at himself, jerking, trying to move. “What? What is this?” He asks, clearly becoming nervous. “What is this?” He repeats. “Why am I tied up?”

Joyce steps forward, kneeling down. “Will, we just wanna talk to you?” Joyce tells him softly. “We’re not gonna hurt you.”

Will doesn’t seem to be interested in anything she says, instead he looks up at Hopper. “Where am I?”

Hopper kneels down next to Joyce, showing Will the picture of the mind flayer. “You recognize this?” He asks Will. “Do you recognize this?” He repeats when Will doesn’t answer. He shakes his head slowly. His face looks so pale, Mike notices.

“Hey,” Joyce tries again. “We wanna help you. But to do that, we have to understand how to kill it.”

“Why am I tied up?” Will raises his voice. “Why am I tied up? Why am I tied up?” He doesn’t stop, instead he continues to scream at them in anger. The lights start to flicker while Will jerks, moving his body where he can. “Let me go! Let me go! Let me go!” His screams become unnatural. His voice changes. It turns Mike’s stomach upside down. He feels sick. That’s not his voice. It’s not Will, Mike tries to remind himself.

That’s not Will. That’s not Will. That’s not Will.

His voice gets hoarse, each scream seeming to exhaust the boy more and more until eventually he stops, leaning forward.

Joyce sighs, sitting down in the chair in front of Will. This truly looks like a classic interrogation now. Joyce voice is firm at first, underneath her soft tone she seems almost angry. “Do you know what March 22nd is?” Will doesn’t react. He just stares at her, breathing heavily. “It’s your birthday. Your birthday. When you turned eight, I gave you that huge box of crayons. Do you remember that? It was 120 colors. And all your friends, they got you Star Wars toys,” yeah, that was Mike, thank you very much. “But all you wanted to do was draw with all your new colors. And you drew this big spaceship, but it- it wasn’t from a movie. It was your spaceship. A rainbow ship is what you called it.” Something in Will’s face seems to change. There’s emotion, beautiful rare emotion.

“And you must have used ever color in the box. And I- I took that with me to Melvald’s and I put it up and I told everyone who came in, “My son drew this.” And you were so embarrassed,” Joyce chuckles. “But I was so proud. I was so, so proud.”

It’s silent for a moment. Mike is sure everyone in this room can feel the tender emotions. Mike has to press down his tears and tries to hold his breathing under control. “Do you remember the day Dad left?” Jonathan’s voice booms like thunder from Mike’s left. Will turns his head, his gaze fixes on his brother, when he comes to kneel down in front of him.

“We stayed up all night building Castle Byers… just the way you drew it.” Mike notices a small quiver on Will’s lips. It’s working. “And it took so long because you were so bad at hammering,” Jonathan and Joyce chuckle quietly. “You’d miss the nail every time. And then it started raining but we stayed out there anyway. We were both sick for like a week after that. But we just had to finish it, didn’t we? We just had to.”

Mike breathes out slowly, his heart is beating so fast he fears it might run away. He’s quite aware that he started crying at some point but he ignores that for now. “Do you remember the first day that we met?” Will’s stare hits him so immensely, Mike immediately has to look down, not sure he can take it.

“It was… It was the first day of kindergarten,” he stammers while he stares at the ground, only glancing at Will for a second before looking away again. “I knew nobody. I had no friends and…,” he sniffles, tears fully running down his cheeks now. “I just felt so alone and so scared, but…,” he decides to be brave, he’s already pouring his heart out, he might as well look at the boy. “I saw you on the swings and you were alone, too. You were just swinging by yourself. And I just walked up to you and… I asked. I asked if you wanted to be my friend. And you said yes,” he gulps as memories come flooding back at him.

“You said yes.” A beat of silence. “It was the best thing I’ve ever done.” Will’s eyebrows lift up a bit, he now shakes all over as if he’s freezing. He looks at Mike, he just- just looks. But there is something in his eyes, and Mike might never understand what goes on in the head of his friend, but his eyes tell a story that Mike wants to read, wants to rehearse, wants to learn until he knows it by heart. He wants to keep it safe more than anything else. He wants to be worthy of it.

“Will, baby…,” Joyce whispers, breaking Will’s eyes away from Mike. The moment Will’s eyes leave him, Mike lets out a shaking breath. His heart is speeding uncontrollably. “If you’re in there, just please… please talk to us. Please honey, please, can you do that for me?” Joyce continues to beg. Will breathes heavily now, shaking all over his body. He looks like he’s crying but weirdly no tears leave his eyes. “Please, I love you so much.”

Will becomes still, opening his mouth. “Let me go,” he whispers, his voice doesn’t hold any of the emotion his face just portrayed. The cabin goes quiet, all that Mike hears is the tabbing of Will’s hand on the chair he sits on.

Mike is quite hopeless after this whole intervention. But thankfully Hopper seemed to notice something in Will’s behaviour, in Will’s hand. They go back to the house where Hopper immediately looks for a pen and paper. “What happened?” Dustin asks as Hopper sits down at the table.

“I think he’s talking, just not with words,” Hopper explains, writing down morse code on the paper.

“Hey, what is that?” Steve asks dumbly.

“Morse code,” the others reply in unison.

“H - E - R - E,” Hopper finishes. “Will’s still in there. He’s talking to us.”

***

Apparently, Will was communicating with them through the tab of his hand. It’s smart. They need more information, they need Will to tell them what to do. So, Jonathan, Joyce and Mike continue to talk to him, while Hopper keeps an eye on the hand to tell the others inside of the house, via Walkie, the morse code so they can translate it.

Jonathan plays him his favorite song and tells Will how they listened to it together for the first time. Mike goes on and talks about D&D. It’s a safe topic. Emotional enough that it’ll get through Will, but not too much to make Mike cry again.

Joyce is the last one, for now, to talk to him. “You saw that little girl and she was in the sandbox and she was crying. You gave her your Tonka Truck and I told you we couldn’t afford to buy another one. You said she should have it because she’s sad.”

Mike has never heard that story before, but it makes so much sense to him. He’s not surprised by it at all. Will has always been selfless like that. He’s always been better at taking care of others than himself. It warms and breaks Mike’s heart at the same time.

While Joyce is still trying to get through to Will, the ring of the Byers’ telephone sounds from the house. Mike widens his eyes in terror as he looks at Will, realizing this totally tells the boy where they are. Will’s eyes close slightly, moving from left to right. Shit.

“Hey. Hey, can you hear me?” Joyce speaks up when Will’s eyes fully close and his breathing becomes more heavily. Hopper kneels down next to Joyce, taking a closer look at Will. “It knows. It knows where we are,” he says.

Joyce doesn’t waste a second to sedate her son again, pushing the needle into his shoulder. Will’s head immediately sinks forward. He’s gone again.

Only a few seconds later, when Mike, Hopper and Jonathan check if there’s anything suspicious on the outside of the cabin, they hear screeching sounds from afar. This is not good. This is not good at all.

“They’re coming,” Jonathan yells, when they run back inside to get Will. They entangle Will from the chair and carry him back inside. Mike joins Max and Lucas, who look outside the front windows, searching for any sign of monsters.

Hopper calls them back, screaming at them when he enters the living room. He brought guns with him. “Do you know how to use this?” He holds one of them out to Jonathan.

“What?” Jonathan replies nervously.

“Can you use this?” Hopper says, more urgent now.

“I can,” Nancy steps forward. Mike is once again surprised by his sister, wondering what other tricks she has up her sleeve.

Mike looks around at his friends, noticing nearly everyone has something to defend themselves with. He feels a bit silly when he grabs some random object that looks solid enough to hurt someone, but at least he has something now.

The screeching noises come nearer and nearer until they can hear it literally from outside the house. It sounds a lot like a Demogorgon. They can do this, Mike thinks. They’re a lot of people.

They wait for something to happen but the Demogorgon isn’t coming in. Instead it screeches and almost seems to groan. It sounds like it’s fighting something. The screeching stops abruptly, just before it flies through the window. Glass shatters everywhere. The air has a weird taste, Mike notices first of all. It’s weirdly familiar. Mike stands farthest away from the Demogorgon but it sounds like it’s dead. There’s no movement, no noise, just the fresh night air coming through the shattered window.

“Holy Shit,” Dustin exclaims when they move closer to the monster. “Is it dead?” Max asks. Hopper lifts his foot, moving the Demogorgon’s head to the side. It is dead, that’s for sure.

The door creaks which makes them all turn around in shock. Mike’s first thought is another Demogorgon, but when he sees the lock turning on it’s own something inside of him drops. His ears start to ring while everything around him seems to move in slow motion. The door opens and Mike’s breathing stops for a second when the girl he’s been missing for a year steps into the house. She looks different, is Mike’s first thought. Her hair is longer and gelled back. She has some eye make up around her eyes. She’s dressed in all black. She looks so much older than Mike remembers her. She looks confident, powerful. Her nose is bleeding only a tiny bit.

He stepped forward at some point, finding Eleven’s gaze. He’s pretty sure he started to cry, he has missed her so much. She’s right there, finally coming out of the shadows. She’s not just a figment of his imagination anymore. She’s really here.

He feels relieved and happy most of all, but there’s guilt, too. Sometimes Mike catches a glimmer of certain emotions that lie quite deep inside of him, but every time he looks at them it hurts. Sometimes they jump at him out of nowhere. Uncontrollable, like a storm that comes when the sun just shined. Most times, he pushes them down. Most times could be now. For a second he thinks he can manage it.

Notes:

Here comes the storm. MY SHAYLAS. Bob's death will never not make me sad and the whole scene in the cabin ugh get it away from me or I'll start crying.

Eleven is back, which I'm very excited for!!

Chapter 16: The Gate

Notes:

If the pacing of this chapter feels weird, I would just like to let you know that I was listening to songs like Mr. Perfectly Fine while I was editing. It was not fitting at all but I had the time of my life, let me tell you.

There are different kinds of liars. Of course there are the ones who lie to get what they want. They lie to make their life easier. There are the liars who do it for fun, it entertains them. There are liars, who don’t even know they are lying at all. They lie to themselves. They gaslight to protect their peace. Then, there are the liars who hide lies within truths. They don’t particularly lie, they just never mention the full truth. They never say how they truly feel, but they don’t lie either. Most of the times they say nothing at all to escape that predicament. They don’t want the storm to reach them, not knowing it has always been there.

“Eleven,” he croaks out, feeling his legs move forward. “Mike,” Eleven whispers just before they collapse into each other. The hug feels good, it feels solid. It feels real. She’s really here, in his arms, after all this time. These past few days have been so stressful and he forgot how comforting it is to fall into the arms of someone who feels safe. Someone that makes his life better.

He pulls back from Eleven, looking at the girl with tears in his eyes. “I never gave up on you,” he tells her proudly. “I called you every night. Every night for-“

“353 days,” Eleven finishes for him. “I heard.” Mike’s brain shuts off for a second. This means he didn’t imagine her. She heard all that he said to her. He probably saw her the few times, too. It was all real.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were there?” He asks her in the end, needing an answer. “That you were okay?” He should’ve done more. The guilt hits him out of nowhere. It was by his side for such a long time and now, looking at Eleven’s face, he can see that she’s not mad at him for it. He could’ve done more, and she has to know that, right?

“Because I wouldn’t let her,” Hopper’s voice disintegrates the bubble Mike and Eleven created around them. Mike turns around, staring at the man in disbelief. “The hell is this? Where have you been?” The chief asks Eleven as he steps forward.

“Where have you been?” Eleven counters back before tumbling into Hopper’s arms.

Something in Mike’s head connects. She didn’t reach out to him, not because she didn’t want to, but because Hopper kept her away. He wouldn’t let her. “You’ve been hiding her,” Mike concludes, shocked. “You’ve been hiding her this whole time,” he exclaims, punching the man in the back.

“Hey,” Hopper grabs Mike at the front of his shirt. “Let’s talk. Alone.” He nods to the side, pulling Mike with him as they leave to Joyce’s room. “I was protecting her, you have to understand-“

“Protecting her,” Mike interrupts the man as they enter the room. “Protecting her?”

“Listen. Listen to me,” Hopper says calmly, closing the door behind him. “The more people know about her, the more danger she’s in. And the more danger you and your family are in-“

“So what? Should I be thanking you then?” Mike yells at Hopper. Everything boils up in him. He’s overwhelmed, he feels his hands begin to shake. Something inside of him screams wrong, wrong, wrong. But Mike is far beyond the stage of knowing what that feeling even means.

“I’m not asking you to thank me! I’m asking you to try to understand.”

“I don’t,” Mike screams. “I don’t understand.” Nothing makes sense anymore. Hopper was hiding her. Mike could’ve found that out so easily but instead he let the guilt eat him away as he was talking to his Walkie.

“That’s fine. That’s fine,” Hopper raises his voice. “Just do not blame her. All right? She’s upset enough as it is.”

For some reason that’s what makes Mike completely lose control of everything. She’s upset. Is she upset with him? Should she be upset with him? Yes, a quiet voice in his head tells him. Yes, she has every right to, because you’re a liar. “I don’t blame her! I blame you. I blame you.”

“That’s okay, kid. That’s okay,” Hopper begins to turn around. It angers Mike just the tiniest bit more.

“No! Nothing about this is okay,” he punches Hopper right in the chest. His fists are shaking so bad, he almost wants them to bruise. Everything inside of him trembles as he continues to scream and punch the man. “Nothing about this is okay. You’re a stupid, disgusting, lying piece of shit!”

Mike hates liars more than anything else. The rule friends don’t lie is one of the most important ones he lives by. “Liar! Liar! Liar!” He can’t look at himself, not yet, he wants to live in oblivion, just a bit longer, wants the guilt to eat him from the inside out, where no one can see it. Where no one can see how much it hurts. He needs Eleven, he has always needed her. Sometimes he thinks there was always supposed to be someone like her for him. She has always fitted into that spot perfectly. She’s almost made for it. She’s powerful and everything Mike needs to not open that door.

“You’re okay, kid,” a soft voice brings him back. He has fallen into Hopper’s arms. He doesn’t remember when that happened. His throat feels hoarse. “You’re okay.” There are different kinds of liars. Deep down, there are lies in everyone. No one wants to look at those and if you’re lucky, you never have to. If you’re lucky, you can still be happy with not facing the truth entirely or even at all. Sometimes that’s enough. Mike hopes it’s enough.

“I’m sorry, kid.”

***

Back with the others, Mike can’t help but feel stupid. He’s embarrassed about his little outburst and god, he wishes he could take it back. Take everything back. Eleven’s presence is almost unbearable. Mike doesn’t know how to act, but he also knows there are more important things at hand right now. Will said to close the gate. Something isn’t quite right about that statement. Mike just has to figure out what exactly it is.

“It’s not like it was before,” Hopper sighs, talking about the gate. “It’s grown. A lot. And, I mean, that’s considering we can get in there. The place is crawling with those dogs.”

“Demo-dogs,” Dustin turns his head to look at Hopper.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I said, uh, Demo-dogs. Like Demogorgon and dogs. Like, you put them together, it sounds pretty badass-“

“How is this important right now?” Hopper interrupts the boy.

“It’s not,” Dustin sighs. “I’m sorry.”

“I can do it,” Eleven pipes in.

Right, she could close the gate. She’s the only one who could, Mike figures. But closing the gate, what would follow that?

“You’re not hearing me,” Hopper tells her softly.

Will. What about Will?

“I’m hearing you. I can do it.”

“Even if El can, there’s another problem,” Mike finally decides to share his thoughts. “If the brain dies, the body dies.”

“I thought that was the whole point,” Max says.

“It is, but if we’re really right about this… I mean, if El closes the gate and kills the mind flayer’s army…”

“Will’s a part of that army,” Lucas interrupts him. Mike has never been so thankful for his friend. He’s glad he’s not the only one thinking about Will.

“Closing the gate will kill him,” Mike concludes. There’s a moment of silence, it’s a heavy one. One where it’s clear that everyone tries to solve this predicament. “We have to cut the connection between them, then. It’s the only way,” Jonathan speaks up, looking at Mike intensely. His gaze is searching, something unknown passes between the two.

***

They enter Will’s room where the boy is now, sedated on the bed. It’s clear that he’s not simply sleeping. He never lies that still and flat on his back when he’s asleep, Mike thinks. It’s a horrible sight, sending shivers down Mike’s spine.

“He likes it cold,” Joyce announces.

“What?” Hopper asks.

“It’s what Will kept saying to me,” Joyce nods to herself before stepping towards the open window. “He likes it cold.” She closes the window then, turning back around with an angry look on her face. “We keep giving it what it wants.”
“If this is a virus, and Will’s the host, then…,” Nancy begins.

“Then we need to make the host uninhabitable,” Jonathan finishes for her.

“So if he likes it cold…,” Nancy keeps going.

“We need to burn it out of him,” Joyce concludes.

“We have to do it somewhere he doesn’t know this time,” Mike adds.

“Yeah, somewhere far away,” Dustin says from Mike’s left.

So that’s what they do. Jonathan, Joyce and apparently Nancy, too, leave with Will to free him from the mind flayer. Hopper and Eleven plan to go back to the lab and face the gate. She seems quite confident in closing it. Mike hopes she can do it. He hasn’t seen the gate, but the last time she faced this kind of danger, well Mike doesn’t want to dwell on what happened.

“Just be careful, okay?” He tells her when he follows the others outside. It’s the first time the two of them talk with a bit more privacy. It makes Mike extremely nervous. He still can’t shake off all the emotions that have been brought up earlier. He tries to box them away, but he can’t help the shaking. The tears come easily. “I can’t lose you again.”
“You won’t lose me,” she tells him.

“Do you promise?” He makes sure.

“Promise,” Eleven replies. Her stare is intense. Her eyes have watered up, too, Mike notices as she looks up at him. He’s grown, he notices. The last time they’ve seen each other their height difference was not like this. Eleven leans forward, glancing at Mike’s lips momentarily. When Hopper calls her to the car and breaks the moment, Mike realizes she meant to kiss him. He’s pretty sure that’s what it was, at least. She turns back around to look at Mike for a second. He nods at her, hating himself for not leaning forward, catching her. Following her, following Will even. He wants to help somehow, but more than anything else he wants to be near, wants to make sure everything is going according to plan. But in the end he stays behind, watching as the two cars leave. He once again returns to feeling useless.

***

Back in the house, Mike paces, thinking so hard he fears his head might set on fire. Dustin and Steve put the Demo-dog in the refrigerator while Lucas and Max clean up the glass on the floor. He should do something. He can’t lose Eleven again, not when he just got her back. There needs to be something they can do.

“Mike, would you just stop already?” Lucas speaks up.

“You weren’t in there, okay, Lucas?” Mike stops pacing. “That lab is swarming with hundreds of those dogs.”

“Demo-dogs,” Dustin yells, walking back into the living room with Steve right behind him.

“The chief will take care of her,” Lucas continues.

“Like she needs protection,” Max pipes in quietly. Mike ignores her.

“Listen, dude, a coach calls a play in a game, bottom line, you execute it. All right?” Steve declares. His voice is way too calm for Mike’s liking.

“Okay, first of all, this isn’t some stupid sports game,” Mike replies. "And second, we’re not even in the game. We’re on the bench.”

“So my point is…,” Steve stammers, staring to the side in silence. “Right, yeah, we’re on the bench, so, uh, there’s nothing we can do.”

“That’s not entirely true,” Dustin says slowly from behind Steve, who turns his head in shock. “I mean, these Demo-dogs, they have a hive mind. When they ran away from the bus, they were called away.”

“So if we get their attention…,” Lucas resumes.

“Maybe we can draw them from the lab,” Max follows up.

“And clear a path to the gate,” Mike concludes, plans already rushing through his head.

“Yeah, and then we all die,” Steve exclaims.

“Well, that’s one point of view,” Dustin says, but Mike barely listens as he stares at the floor with Will’s drawings all over it. He gasps suddenly, a thought coming to the front of his mind like a thunderbolt. “I got it,” he speaks up, already rushing through Dustin and Steve.

He kneels down in the dining room, tapping at one specific point on Will’s map when he hears the others followed him. “That is where the chief dug his hole. This is our way into the tunnel. So…,” he stands back up, going back to the living room. “Here, right here. This is like a hub,” he explains, now standing on the spot in question. “So you got all the tunnels feeding in here,” he continues as he kneels down on top of it. “Maybe if we set this on fire…,”

“Oh, yeah? That’s a no,” Steve interrupts him.

“The mind flayer would call away his army,” Dustin continues Mike’s thought, ignoring Steve.

“They’d all come to stop us,” Lucas adds.

“And then we circle back to the exit,” Mike goes on. “And by the time they realize we’re gone-“

“El would be at the gate,” Max carries on.

“Hey. Hey! Hey,” Steve claps at them, getting their attention. “This is not happening.”
“But-“ Mike tries.

“No, no, no, no, no,” Steve immediately interferes. “No buts. I promised I’d keep you shitheads safe, and that’s exactly what I plan on doing. We’re staying here. On the bench. And we’re waiting for the starting team to do their job. Does everybody understand that?”

“This isn’t a stupid sports game,” Mike says once again, getting annoyed by Steve.

“I said does everybody understand that?” Steve shuts Mike up. “I need a yes.”

There’s no time for such a thing, even though if there had been time, Steve wouldn’t have gotten the answer he liked. A roaring engine announces itself from outside. Max runs to the window, being followed by Lucas. “It’s my brother,” the redhead says, her voice trembling as she shakes her head rapidly. “He can’t know I’m here. He’ll kill me. He’ll kill us.”

The tires screech when Billy parks out in the front. “All right, I’m going to handle this,” Steve announces himself. “You?” Max asks in shock.

“Yes, me. You,” he points at each of them, “stay here and stay quiet.” Before anyone can say anything else, Steve steps outside. Mike and Dustin immediately rush to the window, joining Lucas and Max as they look outside.

Mike can see Billy stepping out of his car. He’s wearing a red shirt that shows some of his chest. A cigarette is dangling from his lips as he stares at Steve, saying something to him. They stand quite close to each other. Mike can’t hear anything they say.

After a little while Billy glances at the window, while he says something. Steve turns around and this is the moment Mike realizes they fucked up. “Shit,” Dustin exclaims. “Did he see us?” They scramble away from the window, when they hear a groan from outside. A few seconds later the door bangs open. Billy looks at them, his face one of pure rage. “Well, well, well,” he says, slamming the door closed behind himself. “Lucas Sinclair. What a surprise,” Billy steps forward, eyes fixed on the boy. “I thought I told you to stay away from him, Max,” Billy turns to his sister now.

“Billy, go away,” she tells her brother. Mike has never heard the girl so scared before.

“You disobeyed me,” Billy says lowly. “And you know what happens when you disobey me.”

“Billy…”

“I break things,” Billy says, snatching Lucas away so fast, Mike flinches back in surprise. Billy slams the boy against a shelf while Mike, Dustin and Max scream at Billy to stop. Mike’s heart is pounding. He knew Billy wasn’t necessarily kind, but he didn’t know he was that aggressive.

“Get off of me,” Lucas cries out, trying to escape the older boy’s grip.

“Since Maxine won’t listen to me, maybe you will,” Billy tells Lucas, who scrunches his face up in fear. “You stay away from her,” he slams Lucas back once again before screaming, “stay away from her. You hear me?”

“I said get off me,” Lucas screams back, kicking Billy between his legs. Billy grunts as he stumbles back in pain. Mike notices Steve as he comes back inside, apparently having recovered from whatever Billy did to him outside.

“You’re so dead, Sinclair. You’re dead,” Billy screams just before Steve steps forward, pushing Billy away. “No, you are,” he says calmly, punching the guy in the face.

“Steve,” Max yells at him while Billy starts to laugh like a maniac, slowly turning back around. Lucas steps back to Dustin and Mike, who immediately lay their arms around him in protection.

“Looks like you got some fire in you after all, huh?” Billy laughs at Steve. “I’ve been waiting to meet this King Steve everybody’s been telling me so much about.”

“Get out,” Steve replies, his voice calm but steady. There’s a threat underneath his words.

Before Mike can even blink Billy lashes out at Steve, who thankfully dodges before punching back. Everything escalates after that. Steve continues to punch the other guy back into the sink, while Mike and Dustin yell at Steve to motivate him.

Unfortunately, Billy is able to grab a plate and throw it all over Steve’s head who falls back, grunting in pain. “Holy shit,” Mike hears himself say.

“Shit,” Dustin screams when Billy steps forward, pushing Steve to the ground, before pulling him back up. “No one tells me what to do,” Billy tells the other guy before throwing him back to the ground, stepping above him and begins to throw punches at him. Angry fists fly at Steve’s face which turned bloody real quick. Mike screams at Billy to stop, accompanied by his friends who do the same.

Max pushes through him and Dustin a moment later. She steps forward at the two older guys. In just a few seconds she has slammed one of the sedating syringes into her brother’s neck. There was no hesitation at all.

Billy stands back up, moving slowly as he leaves Steve on the ground. He looks at his sister in confusion. “The hell is this?” He asks as he pulls the needle out of his neck. “You little shit, what did you do?” He slurs before crashing to the ground. “Shit,” Mike whispers as he stares at Billy who’s laughing on the floor.

Max takes Steve’s bat with the nails in them and steps forward, looking down at her brother. “From here on out, you leave me and my friends alone. Do you understand?” Mike leans back, staring at the girl in disbelief. He has never seen Max like that. She always had an attitude but this is different. That angry and simultaneously hurt look on her face makes Mike almost sympathize with her.

“Screw you,” Billy mumbles. Mike flinches back when Max raises the bat and slams it right in between Billy’s legs. Mike’s mouth drops open while Max pulls on the bat to get the nails out of the floor again. “Say you understand. Say it! Say it,” she screams at him, holding the bat at the ready, once again.

“I understand,” Billy slurs quietly.

“What?”

“I understand,” Billy mumbles barely louder before he closes his eyes, dozing off. Mike feels his heart slow down as he stares at Billy’s sleeping form. Max steps forward and grabs her brother’s car keys out of his pocket, holding it up as she stares back at them. “Let’s get out of here.”

Mike turns to Dustin and Lucas, who look back in shock. Mike catches something like admiration on Lucas’ face as well. Mike might have underestimated that girl, he has to admit.

***

Max apparently knows well enough how to drive, so she’s the one getting behind the wheel with Lucas next to her. Mike does not like that, but it’s not like anyone else can do it. Dustin and Mike look after Steve in the backseats after Dustin persisted on taking him with them. He’s still unconscious and his face is beaten up horrifyingly.

They left Billy behind. Mike doesn’t want to think about how vile this guy will be once he wakes up but he ignores that for now. After about ten minutes of the drive there’s movement from Mike’s right. Steve has woken up and is now staring at Mike. “Nancy,” he slurs.

Okay, screw that asshole. Mike does not look like a girl.

“No, don’t touch it,” Dustin brings Steve’s hand down when the guy tries to touch his face. “Hey, buddy,” Dustin shushes Steve softly. “It’s okay. You put up a good fight. He kicked your ass, but you put up a fight. But you’re okay,” Steve groans. “You’re okay.”
Lucas gives Max some more directions from the passenger seat. Steve looks confused in between the two. “What’s going on?” He now stares at Max who glances back at them. “Oh, my God,” Steve exclaims, apparently coming back to himself.

“Just relax. She’s driven before,” Dustin tries to calm Steve down.

“Yeah, in a parking lot,” Mike counters.

“That counts,” Lucas disagrees.

“They were gonna leave you behind, but I promised that you’d be cool, okay?” Dustin raises his voice at the panicking guy, who now fully freaks out when Max speeds the car up.

“I told you he’d freak out,” Mike yells at Dustin, while Steve screams at Max to stop the car and slow down.

“Everybody shut up! I’m trying to focus,” Max screams.

“Oh, wait, that’s Mount Sinai. Make a left,” Lucas points forward urgently.

“What?”

“Make a left.”

Max drives something, Mike doesn’t want to know what exactly, over before turning the wheel sharply. The tires screech as Max continues to speed, now in another direction. The car is filled with screams, Mike’s among them.

This is a nightmare.

Mike hates everything about this, but when Max comes to a sudden halt on the pumpkin field, he breathes out in relief. “Incredible.”

“I told you,” Max replies calmly, shutting the engine off. “Zoomer.” Mike can’t disagree with that.

They all ignore Steve when they jump out of the car, gearing up for their mission. Mike takes the gasoline container and a hose with him as he goes up to the front of the car. “Hey, where do you think you’re going?” Steve asks confused. “What are you, deaf? Hello?” Mike ignores the guy as he lets the container fill up with gasoline from the car. “We are not going down there right now. I made myself clear. Hey, there’s no chance we’re going to that hole, all right? This ends right now.”

Dustin tries to calm Steve down, but Mike is concentrated on other things than listening to the two of them any more. He climbs down the hole in the ground, followed by his friends. He has to admit he’s a bit surprised when Steve climbs down the rope they attached to the hole, after them.

Mike has a small, not too precise map in his hands which they drew back at the Byers’ house before they left. It’s quite different to see the tunnels in front of him, than seeing them on a map, but he needs only a few minutes to adjust himself. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s this way,” he calls out to his friends as he points at one of the tunnels with his flashlight.

“You’re pretty sure, or you’re certain,” Dustin doubts.

“I’m 100 percent sure,” Mike turns around, annoyed by his friends. “Just follow me and you’ll know.” Mike says, leading the way ahead.

“Who, whoa, whoa. Hey, hey, hey, hey. I don’t think so,” Steve stops Mike, walking up to him.

“What?”

“Any of you little shits die down here, I’m getting the blame. Got it, dipshit?” Steve rips the map from Mike’s hand before he looks back to the others. “From here on out, I’m leading the way. Come on, let’s go."

Mike accepts this. At least they’re moving forward, that’s the most important thing right now. He doesn’t know how much time they have left.

They walk for a few minutes until eventually, they come to a stop and look around at all the tunnels that lead into different directions. They’re nearly there. “What is this place?” Max asks from behind Mike. “Guys, come on. Keep moving,” Steve orders and so that’s what they do until they all halt when they hear Dustin scream from behind them. Mike’s heart stops as he turns around to look for his friend, but the boy isn’t there. Quickly they run back to their friend. They find Dustin screaming for help on the ground.

“It’s in my mouth! Some got on my mouth. Shit,” he whimpers, coughing something up. He spits on the ground before turning back to the others. “I’m okay,” he sighs out.

Honestly, this guy.


They turn around once again, leaving as Dustin scrambles after them.

Another few minutes later, Steve comes to a stop. “All right, Wheeler. I think we found your hub,” he says as they all look out at the place in front of them.

“Let’s drench it,” Mike announces. They fill the place with every last drop of gasoline they brought with them until everything’s soaking in it. Afterwards, they step far enough back, so they can escape as soon as this place catches flames. “All right, you ready?” Steve asks as they all kneel down together, waiting for Steve to throw the lighter. They all agree. “Light her up,” Dustin adds, looking at Steve from the side. “I am in such deep shit,” Steve pants, looking at the lighter for just a second before throwing it ahead.

A wave of heat spills over them in an instance. Flames light up the dark tunnels as they all scramble away, running the other direction, back to the exit.

Mike’s breathing is heavy as they run through the tunnels. He feels weak, noticing for the first time how exhausted his body is. He can’t remember the last time he ate anything. Dizzy as he is, he stumbles to the ground. It takes him a second to realize, that it wasn’t just his exhaustion that made him fall, but a vine that moves around his leg. He screams for help, noticing his friends have already run ahead.

For a second he thinks he might die, but before that thought fully materializes, his friends come running back. Dustin and Lucas grab his arms, trying to pull him away as Steve draws back to hit the vine with his bat. Mike can feel the vine loosen its grip. He takes the chance to let himself be pulled up and away by his friends.

They barely have a second to breathe or keep going as a growling sound emerges from behind them. Mike’s eyes widen as he catches sight of the Demo-dog that came up to them. “Dart,” Dustin states. When the boy moves forward, Mike’s pretty sure his friend has lost his mind entirely. They all call out to him to get back, but Dustin shushes them. “Trust me, please,” he says as he stands now almost face to face with the beast. “Hey, It’s me, it’s me,” Dustin says calmly, leaning down. “It’s your friend, it’s Dustin. It’s Dustin, all right?” To Dustin’s defence, Dart doesn’t seem like it’s going to attack him. It would’ve done so already, Mike figures. “You remember me? Will you let us pass?”

The Demo-dog opens his mouth immediately, snarling at them. Maybe Mike was wrong with his assumption. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I’m sorry about the storm cellar. That was a pretty douchey thing to do,” Dustin continues to talk to Dart, his voice calm but urgent. “You hungry? Yeah,” Dustin asks as he pulls off his backpack.

“He’s insane,” Lucas whispers next to Mike.

“Don’t,” Mike shushes his friend. Dustin is their only chance right now. Mike doesn’t like the odds, but he has to accept the situation how it is.

“I’ve got our favorite. See? Nougat,” Dustin holds out a chocolate bar at Dart, waving at his friends when Dart begins to eat. They quickly walk around them, leaving the Demo-dog behind. Dustin seems almost sad for a moment when he stands up and follows his friends. Mike doesn’t necessarily get it, but he has never been so thankful for Dustin’s connection with the thing. Because Dustin and Dart had one, that much is clear now. Is it insane? Yes. But stranger things have happened.

Just when they have nearly reached the exit, they hear screeching sounds not too far away. They start sprinting then, but when they reach the rope, Mike knows they only have a few minutes until the Demo-dogs will get to them. They need to hurry. Steve helps Max, Lucas and then Mike up the rope.

When Mike scrambles out, he immediately turns back to help Dustin up next. But the boy doesn’t follow after him. The growling is loud, too loud. And when Mike looks down at Dustin and Steve who holds out his bat ready to fight, his heart comes to a stop. What he sees next is almost so unbelievable to Mike’s eyes, he wonders if he’s hallucinating this to push away the trauma of seeing Dustin and Steve be killed. But after a second, his eyes adjust. The Demo-dogs didn’t attack, they run past Dustin and Steve, barely touching them.

“Eleven,” Mike speaks out loud the second the thought comes to his head. It had to be her. She’s closing the gate. Will has to be freed of the mind flayer or else she wouldn’t be doing that at the moment. He just has to hope she’ll be strong enough to do it before the Demo-dogs reach her and Hopper.

Mike, Lucas and Max quickly help to lift Dustin and Steve out of the tunnels. There’s nothing left to do. They did all they were able to. They stand there for a second, breathing in the night air when suddenly the lights of the car ahead of them grow brighter, shining straight at them.

Eleven. She’s using her powers. Something must’ve changed in the time she was away, because this feels differently. This feels monumental. Her powers have never felt this big.

The shining lights last for not too long. Soon, they go back to normal, leaving Mike and his friends staring at them. Whatever just happened, it’s done now.

***

Time flies by after that night. Eleven managed to close the gate. Will was freed from the mind flayer’s control. Dr. Owens apparently survived after all. Bob is still dead.

Weeks come and go and Mike can’t seem to slow down the time from moving. Will returns back to himself with each day. He’s very quiet the weeks afterwards, but with each day he seems to get back to his older self a bit more. He doesn’t remember a lot from the days he was under the mind flayer’s control. Dustin suddenly seems to be hanging out with Steve on a regular basis, which is very weird to Mike. Lucas and Max have apparently gotten closer, too. Mike has noticed that he’s horrible at admitting mistakes and apologising. Now that Eleven is back, Max’s presence doesn’t concern him as much anymore. Max and Eleven don’t seem to get along though, which is interesting.

Hopper adopted Eleven. Her name is now officially Jane Hopper. She lives with him in the cabin he has been hiding her at. She seems happy about it, Mike figures. He doesn’t see the girl a lot, considering she’s still hiding from the government, but every now and then the guys go visit her at the cabin. Mike doesn’t really get the chance to be alone with her for long though.

Nancy seems different, too. Mike never really knows what’s going on with his sister, but apparently she’s been investigating more about Barbara’s death with Jonathan. With Murray’s help, they found a way to declare the girl for dead. Something about toxic chemicals that they linked back to the lab. Nancy seems not necessarily happy about it, but Mike sees a change in her after Barbara’s funeral. She seems lighter somehow.

About a month later, they all decide to go to the Snow Ball together. Hopper even allowed Eleven to come, which she mentions once when the party comes to visit her. Mike shared a quiet smile with Eleven, reminiscing on the moment they had their first kiss. Mike really wants to kiss her again. He’s nervous and to be honest he barely remembers their first kiss. It was a fleeting one, barely there. Over the course of the last year, he often wondered if he imagined it.

When he arrives at the Snow Ball he meets Lucas, Max and Will. They go and sit at a table on the side, waiting for the others to turn up. Mike has to do a double take when he spots Dustin walking up to them. His hair looks… quite different. It reminds him of Steve’s, just in curly. “Holy shit,” he exclaims, standing up. “What happened to you?”

“What do you mean, “What happened”?” The boy asks, confused. They all stand around Dustin now, staring at the boy’s hair. “Your hair,” Max laughs.

“Is there a bird nesting in there?” Lucas asks, a grin on his face,

“No, what do you mean, what’s wrong with my hair?” Dustin pushes Lucas away as he tries to touch his hair. “There’s no bird nesting in here, asshole. Okay? I worked hard,” he sighs.

They get interrupted when the music turns up. The next song starts playing. It’s a slow one. They stare out at all the other students who have started to dance in pairs.

“Max…,” Lucas turns to the side. “Hey.”

Oh, good lord.

“Um, it’s nice right? You want to, um…,” Mike glances at Will, raising his eyebrows. The other boy looks like he has to hold back his laughter. “Like, just you and me?” Lucas continues awkwardly.

“Are you trying to ask me to dance, stalker?” Max exclaims, her face mocking.

“No, of course not,” Lucas stutters. Max smiles at that. “Unless you want to.”

“So smooth,” Max laughs at him. “Come on.” She takes him by the hand, pulling him into the crowd of dancing people. Mike doesn’t care for it, if he’s honest. He would be lying if he said he didn’t want to dance, too. But the only girl he would dance with hasn’t arrived yet. Which is fine. He can wait.

“Hey, Zombie Boy,” a girl approaches them from the side, looking at Will.

Oh.

“Do you want to dance?”

“Um…,” Will stutters, immediately catching Mike’s eyes. “I don’t…,” Mike nudges him then. “I mean…,” he looks at Mike once more. “I mean, yeah. Sure.”

They disappear together, leaving Dustin and Mike alone. Mike stares after them, a bit perplexed. He hasn’t even thought of the possibility that Will would dance with some girl. Now that he watches them, he can’t help but feel a sting somewhere inside of him. That’s fine. Eleven will be here soon.

Dustin exhales heavily, which allows Mike to tear his gaze away from Will. “Wish me luck, Mike. I’m going in,” his friend tells him. Mike doesn’t reply, just watches as Dustin leaves to a group of girls. Mike regards as his friend gets rejected from a girl but then Dustin disappears into the crowd and Mike loses sight of him. He’s probably trying to ask another girl.

Mike sits back down at the table soon after, staring at nothing. He’s nervous. Eleven will be here soon. He’s going to have to ask her to dance, right? Should he kiss her? He should definitely try to compliment her. This is the right place to do such a thing, isn’t it? He feels sick to the stomach.

Out of his periphery, he notices the door to the gym opening. When he turns to look at who it is, his breath comes to a halt. Okay, this is the moment. She’s here. This is going to be good. They catch each other’s glance, smiling at each other when they move closer until Eleven stands right in front of him.

“You look beautiful,” he tells her.

Oh, god that sounded horrible.

“Do you wanna dance?” He asks as smoothly as he can.

Okay, that went better.

Eleven glances to the side, her eyes wandering over all the other dancing couples. “I don’t know how,” she admits.

“I don’t either,” Mike reassures her. “Do you want to figure it out?” She nods at him, smiling shyly as they take each other’s hand. Together they join the other couples. When they come to a stop in the middle of the dance floor, Mike awkwardly grabs Eleven’s hands and puts them on his shoulders. “I think… like this,” he mumbles before moving his hands to her waist. “Yeah, like that.”

They sway then, trying to follow the rhythm of the song that’s playing. This feels correct, Mike thinks. He smiles down at Eleven as they move closer to each other. Okay, okay, okay.

When they kiss, it’s a fast one. It’s a bit awkward, but they smile at each other afterwards and Mike figures this is the start of something. He can handle it, everybody else can. He’s glad it’s Eleven. Who else would it be?

Notes:

Yes I sneaked in "but stranger things have happened" so what? I didn't plan on doing it but it fitted in there. What can a girl do?

Also, I'd just like to mention that Mike was fully describing Billy's outfit but forgot to tell us how beautiful Eleven's fit was at the Snow Ball. I made him a bit extra gay, so what, we're going into Season 3, and I'm going to make him so insufferable. It's going to be so much fun.

An unreliable narrative is all fun and games, but I wanted to punch Mike through the screen for gaslighting himself like that. (I say as if I didn't wrote this.) Anyways, I hope y'all understand the way I wrote his character. Don't trust Mike's thoughts, they're very manipulating.

I'm going on vacation in a few days and have decided that I will not be uploading until I'm back. I'll be back in business on the 22nd I think. Let's see.

Thanks for reading as always <3