Chapter Text
The gate was opening again. Inside out and suffering under the fever-bright sky of Hawkins. A bleeding hand outstretched, fingers trembling as they unravelled the sutures of that ugly interdimensional slit.
Nancy and Mike waited at its edge, the rest of the party scattered elsewhere, the adults' whereabouts uncared for. They had waited, withering and terrified, believing they had lost their sister for good, and Mike– his best friend, gone once again. But the hand, achingly slowly in its emergence, ripped apart the tendons, almost gently. An arm would appear, then a body, soon attached to two figures struggling to walk out of the darkness.
Will was alive. Again, he was alive. Again, he had cheated death - alone he had defeated Vecna.
He could not rid the feeling: the raising of hairs and dead skin on his neck, black ash clinging to the roof of his mouth, burning and bleeding hands. But Holly Wheeler was alive and Will had saved her. He had brought her back. Those feelings, whatever residue they left, couldn’t matter anymore, they couldn’t compare.
Will had made his decision long before entering the cave, long before Holly was even taken. It had been brewing for months, unbeknownst to him, unnamed. He would walk around Hawkins and feel those remnants of the upside down clinging to him, sporadically spreading off, infecting everything else. He was never left alone, and soon, once again, he was unable to shake the feeling that it was all his fault. Vecna had told him as much. He was the first, he was that catalyst, and once voiced, he could never outrun that truth. He hated it here, he hated it there.
The upside down was hellish, but its grip on him didn’t always grow through fear. Sometimes it came through sleep. Through the breaks between dreaming and waking, where Will would find himself forced sideways into memories that weren’t his. He followed Henry through middle school hallways, high school corridors and play practices, every mundane moment, and everything that could have led him to that fate. He watched how it happened, how it didn’t have to happen. He listened to the words Henry would utter to the all-consuming, cursed dust in the ajar suitcase.
“It’s you, it’s me, it’s us.”
He watched how it came alive, watched it consumed him.
Vecna had taken all of the children now, all of whom he needed. Instilling this immovable gravity well to their hearts and entrapping their souls. Will remembered this. He remembered how close this was to his fate, how he barely made it out alive. The black specks and bloody phlegm he would cough up each morning, burning lungs and learning to breathe again. He was freed, they said. Saved by a path written by God. But often, Will felt as though death could have freed him more than having to live with this aftermath, could have been a kinder option.
He keeps remembering it, swirls of black and blue and movement, rubbing, sinking feelings, no escape. No edge to push against, his whole body pressed into something thick and endless. A face vibrating, a jaw locking, chattering. A body taken away, consumed. And then a body invisible, dismantled piece by piece. The world would fall apart and all that remained would be that tired sensation, the warm salty water slipping down cheeks to ears, pooling in ridges, filling skulls. That haunting cold that would follow, that last feeling, before there are the two outcomes: death or survival. The first as what is hoped for, the latter as the hardest way out.
And then it is over. And somehow Will survives it again, though he resents this resilience, left with these memories and implanted with bits and bits of the Upside Down, infected forever. And after, when he would look in a mirror, it wouldn’t be him looking back, not even a person, a body, certainly not his own. And healing didn’t feel like returning to himself, it was grieving, shedding skin, adapting and hating it all. Will would tell himself it did not matter.
It did not matter because Vecna had taken Holly, and Will knew of her fate. And Mike had thought he knew, but he only knew of the surface. That dumb luck ending. Mike only knew what it was to lose someone that would come back.
And so Will had entered the cave.
Through a series of flashbacks, montages, memories, Will had familiarised himself with his decided fate. It was not, of course, decided nor fate, at least not yet, but he knew there was not another option, any other way out.
He repeated what he had learned, what had been given to him through Henry’s memories, hoping with every bone in his body it would change something, some sort of control would switch, that he could somehow save Holly. Facing Henry, Will had retraced the path he took through the cave and the case, the fear. The opening and the regret.
“It’s you, it’s me, it’s us.”
He yelled. He pleaded. The world outside the cave did not hear him. Vecna did.
-
It happened again. A child assumed dead comes back to life – Holly on Will’s hip, emerging from this cave, eyes sunken and heavy, suffocating through a frantic hug by both Wheelers. For lack of any better explanation, it will be called luck. The cost hidden. The kids Vecna took would wake up again, demogorgons would retreat. The world would try to stitch itself back together, a flawed and scared community would thank God.
And Will would blink. He would try to breathe, convince himself he was still there. He would try to feel the air float down his esophagus, his ribs expanding to accommodate his lungs.
Half-alive to the brightening sky, half dead already, Mike swallowed Will into another hug. It happened fast, a trigger and the sharp scent of a smoky backfire, unmistakably intentional.
The car ride home to the Wheelers immediately exploded with stories, Holly retelling Henry’s memories, Nancy carefully explaining her experience in the Upside-Down. She let Holly sit in the front seat for once, and as the talking slowed, the radio turned off with its incessant over-popularised comfort songs, all that could be heard was Holly’s breath, hypnic jerks and occasional hums. Nancy looked over at her, smiling at her safety, and then looked back at Will, mouthing a ‘thank you’, and continuing on driving. Mike and Will, seated in the back, hadn't uttered a word to each other. Mike kept his eyes on Holly, calculatingly laughing during her stories, quickly smiling at Will and looking away, as if he was trying to convince the both of them it was an accident.
But during this silence, despite this tension, he offered a tenderness Will couldn’t help but accept– a knee, slowly, deliberately, pressing against Will’s. Quietly, Mike whispered “Sleep in my room tonight, we don’t know if it’s fully safe yet. Please.” Will wanted to protest, carve out space where he could argue, pretend to not hear him and force him to mean what he said. Instead, he slowly nodded. He whipped his head towards the window, rested on it and felt the familiar vibrations of potholes, that path he had memorized that always led him back to the Wheelers.
-
Will lay on the familiar blue bedsheets as still as possible. Each move would awaken the sleeping bag; its static hiss, plastic rasps, too loud for the night. He could not fight staying here, especially not now, despite everything. Mike had insisted. He was scared, Will could tell.
He would not dare move to face Mike, but he allowed his head the grace to silently shift, just enough to look up at Mike’s face, slightly hanging off the bed, painted in freckles. His eyelashes trembled softly with each breath. He felt lucky and terrified.
They had not properly spoken outside of thank yous. Mike did not ask what happened, what Will had done to save Holly, to save himself. He only gripped Will tighter in his hugs, stood closer than necessary, lingered when Will would stop, exhausted from everything. It was not that this closeness was foreign. Joyce had once told him how Mike stayed over, sleeping on the floor the week he was possessed, though he didn’t remember this. That year's Halloween, though: he remembered how Max had called Mike possessive. Mike argued it was protection, not of Will, but of the party, their safety, their friendship. But Will knew. They both did.
So Will found himself asleep on the floor next to Mike’s bed, curled up and trying hard not to breathe too deeply as Mike’s hand dangled off the mattress above him. Every exhale, Will would measure the risk of that hand brushing his chest, the tips of his fingers, softly scraping ribs. Almost, he had let himself believe the danger was gone. That it was all over.
He closed his eyes. He would pretend to sleep.
He had learnt very young that while sleep could not always save him, the performance of it could sometimes act as a shield. It had started before Vecna. Before the upside down. Though blurred at the edges, he remembers those nights. He remembered lying there, praying the walls, the sky– something, someone, was listening, desperately begging to be taken away. He would imagine running down Hawkins, past manicured lawns, Reagan signs, chalked sidewalks, to Mike’s house. He imagined telling him everything ugly and uncensored and the two of them running away together. He never did, never told him this, or about those nights, the wishes, but he would walk over to the Wheeler’s house in the morning, sit next to Mike, and Mike would know. And maybe Mike had sensed it again now. Maybe this was why he insisted Will sleep in his room. Why his voice turned soft and hedged, why he confessedly pleaded.
Will thought he should feel relief, but he lay rigid, eyes fixed on the ceiling painted black, and heard it. He heard Mike. They had known each other for too long, too well for Will to pretend he couldn’t hear that first tear hitting the pillowcase. The hitching of Mike's breath, turning to quiet, strained sobs. He did not know whether Mike was asleep or awake, or trapped in some half space between. He would not dare move to check. He listened as Mike’s hand lifted from the spot just lingering above Will’s chest, to wipe his eyes, to press his knuckle to his mouth, some desperate attempt to seal the noise and return to peaceful sleep. The bed slightly shifted, the hand returning, trembling, damp and dripping with those tears Will could not figure out. Relief? Fear?
All Will wanted to do was reach up and hold it, squeeze it, try to reassure in some normalcy that he was okay, but he could not even convince himself of this normalcy, any kind of relief in what had happened. Mike was crying, and he did not know of anything that would happen, that really happened in there anyway.
Holly was breathing, this mattered most. She had made it out okay, untouched, and alive, and yet Will had opened himself up to the Mind Flayer. He felt like he was drowning. How long could he ignore the low rumble, a virus invited and waiting? How long could he hide it before it infected everyone else?
As the quiet returned, that violent kind, the kind that only appeared after something terrible, Will tried to convince himself it was peace. That it was over. The gate closed, the children safe, the world finding its way back to something resembling normal. This was the end and it was fine. What had once been intrinsically attached to him had been expelled, he told himself. A door shut and locked could not be opened again unless chosen to.
But there, in the space underneath his ribs, between his heart and his careful breaths, waited that familiar feeling, patient and sickly, its timing not his to know or control. He had chosen to open himself up, had he not? Let it inside with those words? It felt too far away, whether it was a choice, whether it was done for Holly or for Mike, or some sort of sadistic sacrifice to punish himself, hidden. He tried to keep breathing, but felt unable to keep up with this familiar dwelling. He could just let himself succumb to it again –circles and circles of that same despair. But Mike’s hand suddenly brushed through his hair. “Go to sleep,” he murmured, pestering and gentle.
Will exhaled, playfully pushing Mike’s hand away “Shut up,” he groaned, smiling despite himself.
He could feel safe, or at least okay, next to Mike. And he would sleep, he would try to – for this, to try and keep this. Everything in him wished it could be enough.
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