Chapter Text
For years after leaving Hawkins, Mike has nightmares.
They start immediately after the end of everything. And he figures it’s understandable, considering he watched his girlfriend die to save the world. El helped to defeat Vecna and close the Upside Down, but it was a suicide mission—for all their plans, he’d overlooked one fatal flaw: his love for her wasn’t enough to give her the strength she needed to save herself. She had loved him—loved them all—enough to die for them. But his love alone wasn’t enough to get her back.
Mike knows he’s not the only one haunted. Lucas mentioned nightmares once or twice, though he’s never been one to talk about these things. Dustin clearly struggles to sleep, though whether it’s bad dreams or alcohol, who can say. And Will… well. Will was always tormented by Vecna, more than any of them realized.
So yeah, they survived, but not unscathed. Isn’t that to be expected?
High school graduation comes and goes, and the nightmares follow Mike to college. At Oberlin, he channels them into creative writing. Storytelling is familiar, therapeutic—a way to process guilt and confusion. He changes the specifics. Everyone assumes the psychic girl, the Demogorgon, the Russians are metaphors.
At first, the nightmares ease. Professors say he has promise. He gets a short story published in the Plum Creek Review as a sophomore and a small scholarship for a summer writing intensive. He becomes a minor sensation in the niche writer world on campus, which brings a new girl every week for a few months. Mike tells himself he’s not being an asshole; he’s not promising anything, and it’s college. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be?
But his success fades. By senior year, his work stagnates. It turns out, Mike has only one story inside him, and he’s running out of ways to avoid telling the full truth of it.
His senior advisor pushes him to focus less on the fantastical, more on relationships—a note that leaves him uneasy and angry for days.
“A good story isn’t just the plot,” she says. “It’s how it makes your readers feel.” Mike nods, as he always does. “The most compelling part of your work isn’t your world-building. It’s the dynamics between the two main male characters. But it’s muddy. What are they to each other? What are you trying to say?”
She’s right. But to answer her, he’d have to be honest with himself—figure out what happened between him and Will. He doesn’t even know where to begin.
They haven’t been in touch for months, not like they used to. Not since… Will came out to the party. But not since before that either, if he’s honest.
Mike tries not to take it personally. Of course Will wanted to build a new life, off to RISD on a full ride. Mike wanted to forget Hawkins, too. And the rest of them drifted anyway—Dustin at CalTech, Lucas at MIT, Max out in San Diego. That’s normal, he tells himself.
Except.
Except it’s him, and it’s Will, and the more Mike writes his little stories, the more he realizes that the emotional core is never the girl who saves the world.
It’s always the boy who vanished, and came back. The boy who knows what to say without being asked. The one who waits. The one who believes.
The one whose love was never loud enough to scare him—but maybe loud enough to save him, if he’d let it.
He thinks of picking up the phone and calling, saying hey, what’s up? Or how’ve you been or I miss you. But he doesn’t. He tells himself he doesn’t want to disrupt Will’s life. That if Will wanted to talk, he would’ve called.
But mostly, he's too afraid to let himself think about it much at all.
The last time Mike sees Will in Hawkins—winter break, freshman year—it’s colder than he remembers Hawkins ever being.
It’s the last time Will came back, when Joyce and Hopper packed up what was left of their lives and moved to Arizona. No one could fault them for leaving, not with Will and Jonathan out of the house. Not after El’s death. A warmer climate, a change of scenery, a fresh start.
Snow hasn’t stuck—not really—but everything is rimmed with frost, the dead grass crunching underfoot as Mike cuts across the yard toward Hopper’s old cabin. The place looks smaller than it used to, like it’s already halfway to being a memory. Boxes are stacked by the door, Joyce’s handwriting scrawled across them in thick black marker: KITCHEN, BOOKS, WILL.
Will answers the door with his sleeves pushed up and a smear of dust on his cheek. He looks tired, but not in the hollowed-out way Mike has learned to recognize. This is a different kind of tired—earned, almost peaceful.
“Hey,” Will says, smiling.
“Hey,” Mike says back, stupidly relieved that Will looks… good.
Inside, the cabin smells like cardboard and pine cleaner. Half the walls are bare. Will gestures vaguely around them. “Sorry. It’s kind of a mess.”
“It’s fine,” Mike says. He shoves his hands into his pockets. “I just—I heard you were back.”
Will nods. “Yeah. Just for the week. Mom and Hop wanted to get everything sorted before the spring.”
They stand there for a second too long, like they’re both waiting for the other one to remember how this is supposed to work.
Eventually, Will leads him to the small table by the window. There’s a sketchbook on it, open to a page full of shapes and lettering—bold lines, confident. Graphic design, Mike realizes, with a jolt. Not the careful pencil drawings Will used to make, hunched over in the basement.
“You did that?” Mike asks.
Will glances down, a little self-conscious, but he nods. “Yeah. It’s for a class. Typography and layout.”
“It’s… really good,” Mike says, and means it. “Like—really good.”
Will’s smile this time is softer, more real. “Thanks. I like it. School, I mean. RISD’s—” He stops, searching for the word. “It’s different. But good. I think I finally found my thing.”
Something twists in Mike’s chest.
“That’s awesome,” he says. “I mean, you deserve that.”
Will looks at him for a long moment, like he’s deciding whether to say something else. When he does speak, his voice is quieter.
“I feel like I finally know who I am,” Will says.
The words land between them, careful and deliberate.
Mike nods too fast. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s—” He swallows. “That’s great, Will. I’m really happy for you.”
It’s true. It’s just not all of it.
Outside, a truck door slams. Joyce’s voice carries faintly through the trees. Time, Mike thinks, suddenly aware of it in a way that makes his skin prickle.
They talk a little more—about classes, about Providence, about Dustin and Lucas and how weird it is to be back in Hawkins and feel like a visitor. Mike wants to say something important. He can feel it pressing against the back of his teeth, heavy and unformed.
He wants to say I’m sorry. He wants to say I miss you.
Instead, he says, “So… Arizona, huh.”
Will laughs, quiet and fond. “Yeah. Big change for them.”
“You know. We should—keep in touch.” Mike says, immediately. “I'll call.” He swallows. “Not like California. For real this time.”
Will’s smile doesn’t fade, but something in it settles. “Yeah,” he says. “That’d be nice.”
They hug on the porch before Mike leaves. It’s awkward at first—then familiar, Will’s arms warm through his coat. For a second, Mike thinks about not letting go.
He does anyway.
As he walks back to his car, he doesn’t look back. He tells himself that there will be other chances. That this isn’t an ending, just a pause.
Years later, this is the moment that comes back to him—not in nightmares, not at first—but in quiet, unguarded flashes. The version of Will who knew exactly who he was becoming.
And the version of himself who didn’t ask to be part of it.
Chicago is loud in a way Hawkins never was.
Mike likes that about it. The trains, the traffic, the way the city never seems to notice him. He rents a one-bedroom in Lakeview with exposed brick and windows that face another building’s windows, close enough that he can see a stranger’s TV flickering blue at night. It feels adult. It feels like progress.
Citadel Financial is not his dream. It’s spreadsheets and timelines and lots of meetings. But Mike is good at it—good at organizing chaos, good at predicting what will go wrong before it does. His boss calls him “reliable,” which feels like a compliment he’s supposed to want.
He tells people he writes in his spare time. This is technically true. He opens his notebook sometimes. He stares at it. He closes it again.
He dates.
At first, it’s casual—appetizers, drinks, easy laughter. Then he starts having Serious Relationships, because that’s what people his age do, and because part of him is still convinced there’s a correct order to these things. Graduate. Get a job. Fall in love. Build something that looks normal from the outside.
The women are kind. Smart. They like him. They tell him he listens well, that he’s thoughtful, that he makes them feel safe.
Something is always missing.
At first, he assumes it’s El.
That makes sense, right? First love. Trauma. The kind of loss that calcifies inside you if you let it. He tells himself that no one will ever compare to her, and that this is just the cost of surviving what they survived.
But then, slowly, he realizes that’s not it.
When his girlfriends talk, he listens—but he doesn’t hear them the way Will used to hear him. They don’t notice when his mood shifts, don’t ask the right questions before he’s even figured out the answers himself. They don’t feel like home in the quiet moments, when there’s nothing to distract them from each other.
He catches himself wanting to tell Will when something small happens—a funny sign on the L, a dumb movie line, a memory that surfaces without warning. He never does.
Sometimes, late at night, he thinks about the last battle. The red sky. The way El’s face looked when she realized what she had to do. He’s replayed it a thousand times, always wondering what he could’ve said differently, what words might have anchored her to the world a second longer.
And then, one night, the thought arrives fully formed, uninvited and undeniable:
If it had been Will.
If it had been Will standing there instead—afraid but resolute, already halfway gone—Mike knows, with a terrifying clarity, that his love would have been enough.
Not because it was louder.
Because it was truer.
The realization doesn’t bring him relief. It doesn’t give him a path forward. It just sits there, heavy and permanent, reframing everything that came before it.
He breaks up with his last girlfriend on a Sunday afternoon, sitting across from her at their usual coffee shop. She cries. He feels like a monster, because he knows he should feel worse than he does.
“I just think,” he says carefully, because he’s learned how to do this kindly, “that you deserve someone who’s all the way in.”
She looks at him like she’s trying to solve a puzzle. “And you’re not?”
He thinks of Will—of Providence, of years of silence, of a love he never asked for and never returned properly.
“No,” Mike says. “I’m not.”
That night, he dreams for the first time in years.
Mike almost says no to the wedding.
Not because he doesn’t want to be there—because some part of him is afraid of what being there will confirm. But Lucas sounds so happy on the phone, so steady in a way Mike hasn’t heard since they were kids, and Max’s voice cuts in at the end, bright and certain, and Mike finds himself saying yes before he can overthink it.
He brings a date, Natalie, who’s something between a hookup and a girlfriend. He thinks she half said yes to the invite because she has family in Boston and plans to stay a few extra days. That’s fine with Mike; she fits into his life the way his furniture does—pleasant, coordinated, easy to explain. She squeezes his hand during the ceremony, leans in to whisper observations that are meant to be affectionate.
Mike nods and smiles at the appropriate moments. He feels like he’s watching everything through glass.
The venue is beautiful—twinkle lights strung across dark wood beams, late-summer air drifting in through open doors. The kind of wedding that feels intentional without being ostentatious. Lucas grins like he can’t quite believe this is his life. Max looks radiant, unbreakable as she brings herself closer to Lucas when the ceremony begins, her wheelchair angled just enough that their knees brush when he reaches for her hand.
Mike cries during the vows.
It surprises him—the sudden, embarrassing heat behind his eyes—but something about the promises lands too close to home. The certainty of them. The way Lucas says Max’s name like it’s the easiest truth he’s ever known.
Beside him, Natalie dabs delicately at her eyes. Mike stares ahead, throat tight, thinking about all the ways he’s failed to want this the way he’s supposed to.
He doesn’t see Will right away.
It’s only when the guests start shifting toward the cocktail hour that Mike catches a flash of familiar color across the room—a suit jacket in a shade Will would’ve been too shy to wear once. He looks up, and there he is.
Will looks… incredible.
Not just attractive—though he is that, effortlessly—but settled. Comfortable in his own skin in a way that makes Mike’s chest ache. He’s laughing with someone Mike doesn’t recognize, head tipped back, thick hair catching the light.
Happy.
The realization hits Mike like a physical blow: even now, even after all these years, he can still read him.
Will isn’t nervous. He isn’t bracing himself. He isn’t sad.
He’s just genuinely, truly happy.
Mike doesn’t realize he’s staring until Will’s eyes meet his from across the room.
There’s a flicker of recognition, then warmth. Will’s smile is immediate and unguarded as he makes his way over.
“Mike,” he says, like the name still belongs to him. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Mike says, and hopes his voice sounds normal.
They hug. It’s brief, easy—no hesitation, no awkwardness. That might be the worst part.
Lucas barrels into them before Mike can think of anything else to say. “You two! Finally.” He throws an arm around each of them. “Man, it’s been way too long.”
Dustin appears, bringing tumblers of whiskey for everyone. "Cheers!" He cries, tipping his back and draining it.
“What, no boyfriend?” Lucas asks Will, grinning, the words casual and thoughtless in the way only Lucas can manage.
“Oh—he couldn’t make it,” Will says easily. “Family emergency. But he sends his congrats.”
Mike feels something sharp and unfamiliar twist in his chest.
Lucas nods, unfazed. “Well, he’s missed out. You clean up nice, Byers.”
Will laughs. “Thanks, Sinclair.”
Later, during the speeches, Mike notices Will crying, quiet and unselfconscious, wiping at his eyes with the heel of his hand. The sight undoes him. There was a time when Mike would’ve been the one passing him a tissue without thinking.
After the cake is cut and the dance floor opens up, Lucas and Max make the rounds. Lucas pulls Will into a hug that lifts him clean off the ground.
“Dude,” Lucas says, loud enough for Mike to hear. “You didn’t say anything about the ring!”
Will blinks, then laughs sheepishly. “Oh—yeah. I didn’t want to steal focus from you guys.”
“Are you kidding me?” Max says, grinning. “That’s huge! When did it happen?”
“Last month,” Will says.
Mike feels like the floor has shifted under his feet.
Dustin, already halfway drunk, slings an arm around both of them. “At least this means we’ll all get together again soon, right?”
Will hesitates just a beat. “Actually, we’re probably just doing something small. Close friends and family.”
He meets Lucas’s eyes. Holds them.
Mike understands, with awful clarity, that he is not included in that category anymore.
He deserves the way this feels, he tells himself. That doesn’t make it hurt any less.
They leave the reception later than Mike expects; Natalie now long gone to her parents’ house for the night. Not the original plan, but Mike can’t work up the energy to protest when she finally finds him, halfway through the band’s second terrible rendition of TLC’s “Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls” and tells him curtly that she’s leaving. He knows he won’t see her again when they get back home.
The walk to their hotel is short. Dustin is flushed and loose-limbed, one arm slung over Mike’s shoulders as they weave through the parking lot. Will walks on Mike’s other side, quiet but present, like he always used to be. The night air is cool, carrying the distant thrum of music from inside.
“Man,” Dustin says, words already blurring together, “that was—hic—an excellent wedding.”
“You cried during the vows,” Mike says.
“I cry at commitment,” Dustin says solemnly. “And cake.”
Inside the hotel lobby, the lights are too bright, the carpet too patterned. Dustin squints at the elevator buttons like they’ve personally offended him.
“I’m done,” he declares. “I am an old man. I am going to sleep for twelve hours.”
“Goodnight, Dusty-bun,” Will says fondly.
“Love you guys,” Dustin adds, then pauses, squinting at them. “Come get me if you do anything stupid.”
The elevator doors slide shut, leaving Mike and Will standing there alone.
For a second, neither of them moves.
The bar is off to the right—dim, low, still open. Mike can hear himself thinking too loudly. If he doesn’t say something now, he knows he won’t.
“Hey,” he says. “Do you, uh… want to grab another drink?”
Will glances toward the bar, then back at Mike. There’s a question in his eyes, but no suspicion. Just curiosity.
“…Sure,” he says. “One more.”
They sit side by side on barstools, close enough that Mike can feel the warmth of Will’s arm when he shifts. Mike orders something neat; Will asks for a gin and tonic. The bartender doesn’t rush them.
For a while, they talk about nothing. Chicago versus Providence. Flights. How hungover Dustin is going to be in the morning.
Mike keeps circling the thing he actually wants to say.
“I’ve been thinking about writing again,” he blurts finally, staring down at his glass.
Will hums softly. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. I mean, not—like before, in college. Not the same stuff.” Mike exhales. “I think I was missing something. Someone, maybe.”
Will doesn’t answer right away.
“I was thinking,” Mike continues, words picking up speed now that he’s started, “that maybe it could be different this time. More grounded. More—honest.” He swallows. “And I remembered how much I always loved working with you. The way you saw things.”
Will turns toward him then, fully.
“What are you asking, Mike?”
The question is gentle. It doesn’t let him hide.
Mike’s pulse thunders in his ears. “I was wondering if you’d want to—maybe—illustrate something with me. Just… see what happens.”
For a moment, Will just looks at him.
Then he shakes his head, slow and sure. “No.”
The word is soft. Final.
“Oh,” Mike says, stupidly. “Okay. I just—”
“I haven’t done that kind of drawing in a long time,” Will says. “It’s not really… where I am anymore.”
Mike nods. “Right. Yeah. Of course.”
He tells himself to stop there. He doesn’t.
“But if you wanted to,” he says, quieter now. “For me.”
The silence stretches.
Will’s expression shifts—not hurt, exactly, but something careful settling into place.
“I shouldn’t,” Will says. “And you shouldn’t ask.”
Mike’s mouth goes dry. “I didn’t mean—”
“I know,” Will says. He offers a small, sad smile. “But this doesn’t get to be about nostalgia. Not for me.”
He stands, setting some bills on the bar. “I should go to bed.”
“Will—”
Will pauses, hand on the back of the stool. “I’m really glad to see you, Mike. I mean that.”
Then he walks away.
Mike stays where he is, staring into his drink long after the ice melts. He orders another one he doesn’t finish. Eventually, he takes the elevator up alone.
That night, he dreams.
Mike dreams he’s on a rooftop. The sun is setting, clouds tinged mauve and red against a hazy sky.
The other details are wrong at first—the building is taller, the city unfamiliar—but the feeling is immediate and unmistakable. The night air is warm. The edge of the roof drops away sharply, the streetlights below glowing like distant stars. Somewhere nearby, music hums softly through an open window.
Will is sitting beside him, legs pulled up, arms resting loosely on his knees.
It takes Mike a second to understand what that means. Not fear—just a quiet, grounding certainty. The way it always used to feel, being next to him like this.
And for a while, they just sit there, watching the city breathe. Mike feels lighter than he has in years, like something he’s been holding finally loosened its grip.
“This is nice,” he says, softly. “Just… us.”
Will glances at him. “Yeah. It is.”
Mike swallows. He knows this moment. Knows the shape of it. His chest tightens with recognition.
“There’s something I’ve been thinking about,” he says.
Will waits. He always did.
Mike exhales, steadying himself. “Do you ever think about what comes next? Like—after everything?”
Will tilts his head, curious. “I think about it all the time.”
Mike laughs under his breath. “Figures.”
He stares out at the lights below, at the endless sprawl of possibility. “I used to think the future was supposed to look a certain way. Like if I just wanted it badly enough, it would all work out.”
Will’s voice is gentle. “And now?”
“And now I think I was just scared of wanting the wrong thing.”
He turns then, really turns, and meets Will’s eyes.
“What if we didn’t have to be afraid anymore?” Mike asks. “What if this—” He gestures vaguely between them, inadequate. “Do you think this could be real? For us?”
Will studies him, searching his face the way he always has, like he’s looking for the truth beneath the words. Whatever he finds there makes his expression soften.
“What’s stopping us?” Will asks.
The question echoes, perfectly balanced on the edge of hope.
Mike’s breath catches. He waits for the fear to come—for the list of reasons, the doubts, the careful distance he’s built his life around.
None of it arrives.
He smiles, wide and unguarded, the way he hasn’t smiled in years. “Nothing,” he says. “Nothing.”
Will’s hand finds his, fingers warm and sure as they lace together. The contact feels right in a way that makes Mike’s chest ache.
“This could be enough,” Mike says, voice barely above a whisper. “We could be enough.”
Will squeezes his hand. “You always were.”
Mike leans in—
And wakes up.
The hotel room snaps back into place around him, dark and silent except for the steady hum of the air conditioner. His heart is pounding, his hand clenched around nothing.
The dream doesn’t dissolve the way nightmares usually do. It lingers, vivid and cruel, every word etched too clearly into his mind.
Because he knows that conversation. He’s had it before—on a different roof, with a different person, under a different setting sun. And this time, the only thing that changed was the truth.
Mike turns onto his side, staring at the empty space beside him, and understands with aching certainty that this is the dream his mind will keep returning to. Not the world ending. Just the moment where he finally said yes, and meant it—and woke up anyway.
Mike is up before the sun, the city muted through the hotel blinds.
His chest is tight, still echoing with the dream, still carrying every word he said and didn’t say. He sits on the edge of the bed, staring at the empty chair across from him where Will should have been.
He thinks about knocking on Will’s door. About saying one more thing. About asking if anything—anything—could be real.
Then he thinks about the life Will has built without him, about the quiet dignity in that smile the night before, about the fact that Will didn’t need him.
Mike stands, quietly, gathering his things. He’s meticulous in packing—folding, stacking, zipping—doing everything he can to avoid thinking too hard about why it hurts so much.
At the front desk, he drops the keys into the basket. “Thanks,” he says to the clerk. His voice is flat, calm. Controlled.
Outside, the city is waking. Morning air is crisp, carrying the faint hum of traffic and the smell of coffee from the café below. Mike walks away from the hotel, past the bar where they drank last night, past the lobby where Will’s suitcase probably still sits.
He doesn’t look back.
He doesn’t call.
He finally gets it. Some choices aren’t about being brave—they’re about letting someone else be happy, and letting yourself finally accept what you want. And what you can’t have.
Mike keeps walking. The sun edges higher, lighting the streets in gold, and for the first time in years, he feels a small, sharp kind of clarity. Like the city skyline at sunset, he thinks, beautiful and untouchable.
He doesn’t know what comes next. But for the first time, he knows what he won’t do.
And that, in its own way, is enough.
It has to be.