Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

May 1st, 1997

Hawkins, Indiana

Dustin considered himself to be pretty smart - not to toot his own horn or anything, but he got three degrees before he was twenty-five! That was a significant achievement in his book, and to everyone around him as well. 

So how come he was stuck in his red, busted-up second-hand Honda Civic - the only thing he could afford with his student debt and Steve Harrington (a middle-grade teacher and baseball coach with his fourth kid on the way) as his guarantor - absolutely dreading his shift at what once had been his dream job?

The engine kept running even though he was already parked, and that’s how he knew he was stalling. He spared a glance at the dashboard’s digital clock as it blinked 7:52 A.M. in that dull red font that made everything feel vaguely like a countdown. Eight more minutes before he had to clock in, not even near enough time for him to try and suffocate the frustration sitting heavy in his chest, but he guessed trying wouldn't hurt.  

Dustin rested his forehead against the steering wheel and felt the vinyl’s warmth seep into his skin. Coffee sloshed faintly in the thermos cradled in his hand, its familiar bitter smell mixing with pollen and cut grass as spring settled over Hawkins. The cap still didn’t seal right - not after the night he’d smashed it against his wall in a moment of pure, incandescent frustration he couldn't even remember what for.

The smell reminded him of Mike.

Mike, who’d been borderline insufferable about coffee throughout their whole high school experience - brewing it way too strong, drinking it way too late, swearing it helped him think. At the same time, Dustin insisted it just made him twitchy and anxious. Mike had treated caffeine like a personality trait back then, walking around with his chipped blue mug as if it were a badge of honor. Dustin huffed softly at the memory, the edge of his irritation dulling just a bit.

MIT. Physics major. Astronomy minor. Master’s in Applied Physics.

He recited it like a spell, as if it might still work if he said it often enough.

He tried to cool down a bit more, turning on the radio as Robin's familiar - sometimes aggravating - voice announced Blur’s new song, "Song 2", and glancing at the clock again - 7:55. The opening guitar hit hard and fast, melting away some of his sulking. He wasn’t quite chipper enough to sing along, but he felt less furious. The song reminded him of Will, who’d always leaned harder into Brit bands than the rest of them.

How have they been lately, anyway?

Will had been even quieter the last few years - not distant, exactly, just… turned inward in that careful way he'd learned young. Mike, on the other hand, seemed to make it his mission to make it harder for everyone to reach him. As the years passed, he became less responsive to their calls, to the point where it made more sense to just give up on calling altogether. At the end of the day, Dustin hadn’t seen them in person ever since before coming back to Hawkins, only getting some passing updates through short phone calls, pictures, and secondhand stories - he knew Will had had a boyfriend for a while now, Carlton. He’d met him once, briefly, when they decided to have a 4th of July get-together in NYC a couple of years ago that felt more like a checkpoint than a proper party - filled with the awkwardness that came with polite smiles, careful laughter, everyone still figuring out how to exist at the same time in the same room once again after so much time.

Carlton had seemed nice. Soft-spoken and quiet, the kind of guy who listened more than he talked and stood just close enough to Will that it was obvious without being too loud about it. Dustin liked that about him. Liked the way Will seemed safe around him, like he wasn’t always bracing for something to go wrong, at last.

It made Dustin strangely emotional to think about - Will finally letting himself be loved properly. After everything he’d been through, after all the years where happiness felt temporary at best and he was insecure to exist, like he had to apologize for being, it felt right that he’d found someone steady. Someone gentle who gave him space to be himself.

Dustin hoped he knew how happy everyone was for him. How proud they all were.

He swallowed, the feeling settling somewhere warm and tight in his chest, and let the song carry him the rest of the way.

It was hard not to think about all of his friends constantly. Between balancing his coursework, relationships, research, and the new, sprawling social life that came with college, keeping in touch the way they had when they were kids had been impossible. Everyone had splintered outward, following their own trajectories, carrying their own quiet damage, dealing with their own shit that came with adult life.

At least some of that distance faded when he came back to their childhood town the year before to pursue his career - driving through the same roads he used to bike down at all hours, stepping back into his childhood home (which had become his adulthood home as well, seeing as his mom moved to Florida to live her best life and left it for him to take care of), breathing in the scent of the woods and asphalt and familiarity so deep it had lingered even while he’d been states away in Cambridge.

It helped that Lucas and Max were still here, too.

They’d gone to college together in Chicago for Max to pursue her Psychology degree. When Dustin heard they were coming back to Hawkins after graduation - lining up almost perfectly with the end of his Master’s - it felt like a strange kind of mercy. Lucas had a job lined up in town as an assistant basketball coach for Hawkins High's team, having gone full circle after earning a varsity scholarship through his efforts.

Max and he shared an apartment where she held her counseling sessions for troubled teens; it was small and simple, but homey, stubbornly carved out of a place neither of them had ever really intended to return to, yet ended up doing so anyway. Being able to sit on their beat-up leather couch, surrounded by pictures full of their memories and drink cheap beer, laughing about old stuff that felt unreal now - that grounded him in a way nothing else did.

It reminded him that he wasn’t completely untethered. That not everything had been sacrificed at the altar of ambition.

Still, this part of town wasn’t nearly as fond of him.

Hawkins Lab rose in front of him in the warm morning - concrete, flat, smug in its certainty that it and all its dirty (not to say highly unethical and outright illegal) secrets had been here longer than he had and that it certainly would outlast whatever ambition he dragged in with him. A year ago, if someone had asked him what it felt like to work as a scientist in the most advanced, top-secret lab in the state, he would’ve beamed and called it the coolest thing in the world.

And it was. Kind of.

The Hawkins National Laboratory was a huge opportunity, both financially and academically, but it was also heavy - especially considering his and his friends’ history with the place. Still, he’d hoped it would be worth it. That if he did his best, he could one day land somewhere important enough to make a difference. To use science for good. To make sure that what happened in this town before never occurs again.

Twice valedictorian. A thesis that damn near killed him. Entire terms where the sun rose and set without him noticing - because orbital mechanics don’t really give a fuck if you’re heartbroken after your girlfriend chooses to “take a tactical break” the night before finals week. Days and nights where the only thing keeping him awake was the thought that one day this would mean something. That he’d earn his place and work with what he loved, with something that made sense. That when he walked into a lab, people would see him for everything that he was.

Instead, he badged in and got asked if he was old enough to be there.

“How ya doing, kiddo?”

“Could you go fetch me a sandwich, son?”

“Are you even supposed to be here?

Once, someone had asked Dustin if he was an intern - funny thing is, he didn't even correct them! He just laughed, because laughing is easier than explaining how many nights he'd stared at equations as big (or bigger) as the national anthem until they blurred into stars, how many times he had to run to the campus nurse scared he was having a heart attack when he was actually nearing an energy drink coma, or how he'd learned - painfully so - that intelligence didn’t automatically translate into authority when your face still looked like it belonged in a yearbook.

As the song reached its end, Dustin shut off the engine. Silence rushed in, heavy and immediate.

The thing was - he knew how good he was at this, not out of arrogance so much as self-respect. He knew how to do math like muscle memory at this point. He could spot an error in any model from across the room. He’d seen anomalies no one else noticed because he’d learned, painfully, what happened when you ignored the feeling that something was wrong. Really, really wrong. The kind of wrong that doesn’t show up on instruments until it’s already too late and everything's gone to shit.

He knew just how dangerous science could be when not handled with attention, with care.

But Hawkins Lab didn’t give a shit about instincts, attention, or care. Hawkins Lab cared about politics and hierarchy. About tenure and badges and age and credentials and who drank with whom at conferences. About the unspoken rule that if you looked too young, you still had everything left to prove.

His jaw tightened, and he caught himself before he could start grinding his teeth, a habit he was trying to avoid so as not to damage the pearly whites he worked so hard on - after finally taking his braces off in junior year of college, the last thing he needed was to crack his now perfectly normal teeth over bullshit like this.

Dustin has to, once again, tell himself not to get too angry. Again. He’d spent these last years mastering the art of keeping his rage contained - how to clamp down on his very much still present childish instinct to snap back all the time, to raise his voice, to remind everyone exactly just how much he knew. 

Anger never helped before. Anger gets you labeled as difficult. Anger gets you sidelined.

So he took a deep breath. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Slow. Measured. Just as his teachers taught him when things went wrong in the field, and panic meant certain death.

Was it all worth it?

Was it worth trading late nights with friends for problem sets? Worth missing things he couldn't even remember anymore because he was always chasing the next answer, the next certificate, the next proof that he did belong in rooms like this?

Was it worth the distance? Separating from his best friends in the world for so long without as much as a second thought?

He glanced at his reflection in the rearview mirror. Same curls, just shorter. Same eyes, just bleaker. Still looked like the kid who talked too fast and laughed too loud and believed the world made sense if you were smart enough.

The badge around his neck felt heavier than it should.

Not letting himself get lost in his thoughts any longer, he looked at the clock once more - 8:01. 

“Shit”, he muttered, sighing deeply as he opened the car door. 

Cold air rushed in, and the lab loomed closer now, all sharp edges and security checkpoints.

Dustin stepped out anyway.

Because even if they treated him like a child, he knew what he’d seen. He knew what he’d survived - and what the people closest to him didn't.

Eddie.

El.

When Dustin thought about one, it always bled into thinking about the other, even though the two of them had never really occupied the same space in his life. Eddie was noise and chaos and untamed, stubborn joy; Eleven was a little bit more complicated - that mysterious, quiet gravity. After all that suffering, he quickly discovered that loss had a way of stitching people together in his memory like that.

With her, it had always been different. From the beginning, he hadn’t looked at her like a weapon, a miracle, or a problem to solve. Amongst all the things that hurt Hawkins, El's existence had truly been the one that had harmed it the least. Dustin hadn’t needed her to be useful or a hero. He’d noticed the way she listened more than she spoke, the way her face softened when someone waited for her to ask, and then explained something to her instead of just assuming she didn't know, the way she laughed with her whole body when something genuinely caught her off guard. To Dustin, she’d never just been powers or trauma or someone else’s girlfriend or daughter - she was a person who liked her own things - dressing up, soap operas, bad jokes - who hated being underestimated, who got embarrassed when praised and stubborn when challenged, just like he was.

There had been a fondness there, gentle and unclaimed, the kind that doesn’t demand anything back. He loved her in a way that never even thought to possess or define her, a way he’d later realize was rare. Not falling in love - not that consuming, terrifying plunge he saw in other people - but something quieter and steadier, something he would probably never know how to name properly. And now that she was gone, frozen in memory, that affection felt unfinished, like a sentence cut off mid-thought.

Sometimes he wondered what it would’ve been like to know her without the monsters, without the blood and the running and the world-ending stakes. To meet her as an adult - her own person. The thought always hurt more than he expected.

He didn’t let himself linger there for long. Thinking about El like that felt dangerous - like hoping for something the universe had already proven it loved to take away.

The thought made his heart ache, so he swallowed it down.

One day, whether they were ready or not, everyone would have to listen to what he had to say.

Just not today.

Today, Dustin walked in quietly.        

The first thing he heard when he crossed the doors of the building was that obnoxious voice from Sheila, the old lady at the reception.

“You are late, Mr. Henderson”, the small-framed woman shook her head in disapproval, her grey curls dangling along with the pearled string that held the back of her glasses.

“Morning, Sheila”, he forced himself to answer, looking at his watch. “It's been, what? Like, two minutes?”

“That’s two minutes more than allowed”, she scanned him as if he'd committed a federal felony (which, admittedly, he had, a few times). “Your generation has no sense of urgency; it's deplorable.”

“Yeah, I'll keep that in mind next time.” Despite his best efforts, Dustin threw her a forced smile, ignoring the last part.

He couldn't help but mutter an annoyed “old hag” when he was out of earshot, just so that he wouldn't blow up on the spot.

The automatic security doors swallowed him whole.

Hawkins Lab smelled like ozone, disinfectant, and stale coffee that had been sitting on a hot plate since before sunrise. Dustin followed the familiar corridor toward the monitoring room, where Kelly Nguyen - one of the less painful people to be coworkers with in that place, and his official lab partner - was already flipping through a stack of printouts thick enough to kill a man if dropped from the right height. Her silky black hair was pulled back in a tight bun, contrasting beautifully with her olive-toned skin.

“Morning,” she said, without looking up, chewing on a pencil absent-mindedly.

“Define ‘morning,’” Dustin replied casually, dropping his backpack under the bench and pulling on a lab coat. “‘Cause the way Sheila clocked me in the entrance hall, you'd think it's noon or something.”

She snorted. “You are late, so...”

“By two minutes!”

“That’s how they get you.”

Dustin smiled despite himself.

Kelly Nguyen was technically his work partner, though the hierarchy here was a mess of titles that meant very little in practice. On paper, she outranked him. She always had, and she deserved it.

She was the only girl in their department and sharper than all of the men in the room, faster with her hands, quicker to see implications they missed - while also being treated like that mattered only about half the time, if not less.

In reality, they both spent most of their days just the same, elbow-deep in simulations, data revisions, and equipment maintenance for projects they weren’t even allowed to fully understand.</p

Today’s assignment glared up at them from the folder on the bench in bold black letters:

NON-LOCAL MASS DISTRIBUTION ANALYSIS

Project Threshold - Phase II

Dustin exhaled through his nose.

“Still calling it that, huh?” He said. “As if slapping an euphemism on it makes it any less terrifying.”

Kelly shrugged. “If they called it ‘stuff that shouldn’t exist behaving badly,’ then they’d have to admit that we're messing with something unnatural and volatile that could kill all of us, wouldn't they?”

Fair point.

They got to work in no time.

Dustin booted up the terminal, fingers flying over the keyboard as he pulled up last night’s simulation logs - energy density fluctuations, spacetime curvature anomalies, mathematical models that tried very hard to pretend reality was stable. His job, officially, was to assist with data verification and model refinement. Unofficially, as a certified snooper, he was there to notice when the numbers started lying.

Which they did. A lot.

The readings showed another spike - brief, sharp, and wrong. A mass-energy signature that didn’t decay the way it should, hovering at the edge of the model like a held breath.

“That’s not noise,” Dustin muttered, leaning closer to the screen and squinting, just to make sure he was right - which he was, of course.

Kelly frowned. “You’re sure?”

“If it were noise, it’d be messier,” he explained. “This… this is intentional.”

She didn’t argue; never did when he said things like that with that type of certainty.

Before either of them could dig any deeper, a voice cut across the lab.

“Nguyen.”

The girl stiffened instantly at the tone.

Dr. Kale stood a few benches down, arms crossed, lab coat pristine in a way that suggested he didn’t do much actual lab work anymore. He was in his mid-forties, with a (rapidly) receding hairline and a permanent look of mild irritation - the kind of man who liked being deferred to.

“Yes, Dr. Kale?” Kelly replied, doing her best to appear neutral.

“Run up to the break room and grab me a coffee, will ya, dear?” He said in a monotone manner. “Black. And make it quick, I’ve got a meeting in five.”

As soon as the words left the man's mouth, they hit the air wrong.

Dustin glanced at Kelly. He saw her tense up even more, but she didn’t move. Just raised an eyebrow, her fox eyes in a defiant stare.

“I’m in the middle of-”

“It’ll only take two minutes,” Kale interrupted, waving a hand. “Let’s not make this complicated, yeah?”

Dustin’s jaw tightened at his condescending tone.

Two minutes.

Funny how those wasted moments seemed to matter when he was late, and now they suddenly didn't anymore.

He couldn't help but think of Suzie then - brilliant, relentless Suzie, uninvited and immediate - and how professors had smiled condescendingly at her intelligence, called her “surprisingly good for a girl,” as if it were an exception instead of the rule, how they looked past her raised hand and chose to call on boys who hadn’t even read the problem yet. They’d broken up to focus on their academic growth, but that didn’t change the fact that she was still the most intelligent person he knew.

Kelly was one of them, too. She was better than this. Smarter than this. And Kale knew it - that's why he chose to humiliate her so that he wouldn't feel threatened.

Before he could stop himself, Dustin said, evenly, “Why don't I get it?”

The room went quiet. Kale scoffed with a malicious grin.

“No one asked you,” he bit, seeming inconvenienced that someone was wasting his time talking back to him.

Even though he felt like smacking that stupid smirk off the asshole’s face, Dustin bit his tongue and kept his tone light. Casual. Almost polite, even.

“Right. Just… I don't know, figured it made more sense to send the junior assistant instead of pulling the senior associate off a live run.”

Kale turned slowly, eyes on Dustin as if he’d just discovered an insect capable of speech.

“Excuse me?”

“I’m the assistant,” Dustin repeated, keeping his voice even and careful, “If someone needs to grab coffee, shouldn’t it be me?” 

Kelly shot him a look - part warning, part gratitude.

Even though Kale’s mouth tightened, it still held the same shit-eating grin as always, as if abusing his subordinates actually made his day. Which it probably did.

“Respectfully, sir,” the curly-haired boy added, because he appeared to still have some sense of self-preservation in him, “she outranks me. And, as I said, we’re in the middle of a run.”

“Who asked you to speak, kid?” He stepped closer, as if this inconvenience was entirely Dustin's fault, and not his own for being a dick. “You're way out of line.”

The other researchers in the room seemed to completely stop what they were doing to watch and see if the situation would escalate further.

Dustin stared and felt the familiar heat rise in his chest - that dangerous, electric pressure he’d spent years learning how to contain. He bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted copper.

He breathed. In. Out. In.

Kelly straightened in her seat. “Dr. Kale,” she said, sharp, looking at her wrist watch and tapping it softly. “Your meeting.”

Kale huffed and walked away without any further commotion. As soon as they saw that everything was resolved, the other workers returned to their tasks.

The moment he was gone from the room, Kelly exhaled and rubbed her face.

“You’re insane,” she murmured, shaking her head with an unamused expression.

“Yeah,” Dustin said, finally allowing himself to breathe. “I know.”

She gave him a small, tired smile. “Thanks anyway.”

As she went back to her work, Dustin stared back at the terminal. The anomalous spike still hovered there, unresolved.

He wondered, not for the first time, which was more dangerous - the things they were studying, or the people in charge of it.

The day dragged by with no further complications.

Not loudly. Not dramatically. It dragged the way water erodes stone - slowly, persistently, until something gives.

By six, the lab had settled into its end-of-day rhythm. Keyboards clicked less frequently. Conversations dropped to murmurs. Somewhere down the hall, a cart rattled as someone wheeled equipment back into storage. The fluorescent lights didn’t change, but Dustin could feel the shift anyway; that subtle permission to finally disengage.

He didn’t, obviously.

The anomaly sat at the back of his mind all afternoon, gnawing. Every task he completed - recalibrating sensors, filing reports, pretending to pay attention during a briefing he wasn’t invited to speak in - felt like a detour around something important.

Wrong.

That was the word that kept coming back to him.

Wrong in the way the numbers clustered too neatly, and the decay curve flattened instead of tapering off. Wrong in the way his skin prickled every time he thought about it.

Exotic matter wasn’t supposed to behave like that.

Not unless it was being stressed on purpose.

Dustin shut down his terminal last, fingers lingering on the keys as the screen flickered dark. He slipped his notebook into his bag - his actual, real one, not the sanitized lab-issued binder under his arm - the pages inside crowded with margins full of questions he knew he wasn’t supposed to be asking.

He told himself, firmly, that he’d look into it later. At home. Quietly. On his own time.

Because if he was right - if the fluctuation he observed correlated with the lab’s exotic matter reserves - then this wasn’t just a modeling error or a sensor glitch.

It was structural.

He swallowed, feeling his throat dry out.

They never called it exotic matter out loud, not in official documentation. It had too many implications, too much history, and most people didn't even recognize it as something real, only theoretical. Instead, it lived behind euphemisms and clearance levels, behind locked doors and warnings not to speculate.

But Dustin knew it existed, what it was - and, most importantly, what it could do.

He’d seen it before. What happened when it pooled wrong, when it was allowed to stabilize something that should have collapsed under its own impossibility. He knew that without it, the Upside Down couldn’t have sustained itself.

And with too much of it-

He zipped his bag shut harder than necessary.

The idea sat heavy in his chest as he swiped his badge one last time and stepped into the evening air. The sun was already low, bleeding orange across the parking lot. His Civic waited where he’d left it, paint catching the light just enough to make it look almost respectable (keyword being almost).

As he reached for the door handle, his pager vibrated.

Dustin froze.

He glanced around out of reflex - old habits - then pulled it free from his front pocket. The screen flashed a short numeric alert, followed by text truncated by the system's limits.

MAD MAX: we need to talk. pls come over?

That was it. No punctuation wasted. No explanation. No smiley face or silly emoticons, which was saying something when it came from Max.

His stomach dropped.

The redhead didn’t do vague unless it mattered. And she definitely didn’t ask for his help unless it was important or bad - or both. 

He stared at the message for a moment too long, the hum of the lab still audible behind him, the weight of the anomaly pressing in from the other side. The thought of why she wouldn't give him a call instead crossed his mind - maybe she didn't have the time, which made his thoughts race. Was it an emergency or something?

“Yeah,” he murmured to no one. “Yeah, okay.”

Dustin slid into the car and shut the door, the sound solid and final. He turned the key, the engine coughing to life, and pulled out of the lot without looking back.

Whatever he’d find later in his notes could wait a few more hours.

If Max said they needed to talk, then something was already wrong.

And if there was one thing Dustin Henderson knew by now, it was that when things went wrong in Hawkins, they never stayed contained for long.

Chapter Text

May 1st, 1997

Manhattan, New York City

Will woke up slowly, tangled in warmth that wasn’t his own.

Carlton’s defined arm was slung over his slim, naked waist - loose, familiar - the steady rhythm of his breathing brushing against Will’s shoulder blade. The apartment was still half-asleep as well, muted gray light filtering through a grimy window, the distant groan of the Lower East Side’s early morning traffic somewhere below, the hum of an old refrigerator that never quite shut up. Everything smelled faintly of turpentine, cheap coffee, and last night’s light spring rain.

Will lay still, staring at the water stain on the ceiling that vaguely resembled a bird if you squinted hard enough. The bed took up most of the bedroom, and what little space remained was claimed by a crooked desk, a thrifted couch with a tear in the armrest, and a narrow corner where his canvases leaned against the wall like they were waiting for permission to exist. 

There was barely enough room in the apartment to paint properly - certainly not enough to breathe while doing so. It was very clearly designed for only one person.

Carlton shifted beside him, mumbling something soft and unintelligible, fingers curling slightly and pressing to Will's side as if afraid he might disappear if he let go. The brunette looked at his partner, as if reminding himself of all the reasons for him to be there.

His boyfriend was lovely. Kind. Attentive in that careful, practiced way that made it impossible to fault him for anything. He wasn't bad looking at all - in fact, he might have been the most handsome guy he'd managed to date so far. He remembered to buy groceries. He asked about Will’s day. He was always respectful of his boundaries. He was a generous, passionate lover. He listened, really listened, even when Will talked himself in circles.

Carlton was just perfect - he loved him in a way that made sense.

And that, somehow, made the dull ache in Will’s chest worse.

Because love wasn’t supposed to feel like this -  settling into a shape that wasn’t painful, but wasn’t right either. Like waking up next to someone who fit perfectly on paper while his thoughts drifted, uninvited and unwanted, back to another set of dark curls - to that boy who understood him without him ever even needing to say anything. To silences, to shared looks, to the way some things had never required any explanation at all.

The way some things never really reached a closing point.

Hawkins. Childhood fears and monsters, both real and impossible.

And, inevitably, El.

El had been different. Not a sister just by circumstance, but by recognition. They had seen each other in ways no one else ever quite had - two unwanted, unlucky children who didn’t fit, who had learned early that pain could be weaponized when you didn’t name and control it. They had shared bruises no one talked about, secrets that lived (sometimes quite literally) under skin, that quiet understanding of what it meant to be watched, controlled, shaped by forces far bigger than you.

They had both loved Mike. Differently, surely. Similarly, sometimes. Neither of them brave or wise enough to say it the way it needed to be said.

And they’d never gotten the chance to know each other without the Upside Down between them. Without danger pressing in. Without the world burning down around their adolescence.

They never would.

Will squeezed his eyes shut, annoyed at himself. 

Childhood wishes, memories, and crushes were supposed to fade. He’d just turned twenty-six! He had a job. Friends. A boyfriend. A life in New York City.

Even if that life felt… stalled.

He slipped carefully out of Carlton’s arms and sat up, bare feet touching the cold floor. From here, the apartment looked even smaller. His art supplies were stacked with an almost apologetic neatness against the pale yellow wall - brushes cleaned too well, paints capped and orderly. 

Evidence of restraint - of someone who made art in the margins of his life instead of at its center.

Once, his art had been vibrant. Surreal. Emotional in ways people leaned toward instead of away from - he was talented, everyone had said so. Family, classmates. Now he could see it was darker. Angrier. Shapes that twisted too sharply, colors that bled into one another without permission. Professors had started calling it challenging. Galleries had stopped calling at all.

Somewhere between graduation and now, the fire had dimmed. Will still painted, still drew, but it felt mechanical - like muscle memory without the heart. As if he were imitating himself, as if that whimsy and wonder were missing and had been replaced by some great mysterious darkness. 

He painted what lived inside him now - grief, dread, impulse - and people didn’t like seeing themselves reflected in that.

Sometimes he didn’t either.

There were days he wondered whether that darkness came from him alone, or if the Upside Down had left something behind. A residue. A hunger. The intrusive thoughts scared him more than he ever admitted. The ones that came late at night. The ones that suggested edges, sharpness, endless empty roads, bridges, recklessness.

He had learned, slowly, to survive them, but even he knew that wasn’t enough for his well-being or that of the people around him.

So instead, he taught art to little kids five days a week, coaxing creativity out of crayons and construction paper. He designed layouts part-time for an indie comic studio that paid barely enough to matter, but enough to help cover rent - enough to justify being here.

Enough to help his family finally finish paying off his tuition so that they would be free of burdens at last.

Living with Carlton had been practical. Necessary, even. New York City wasn't the type of place that cared about passion if you couldn’t afford rent, as it turned out. Will hadn’t planned to move in so soon into their relationship - less than half a year together at the time - but wanting had started to feel like a luxury he couldn’t afford or justify.

He could have kept living with Jonathan after he graduated.

The thought resurfaced quietly, as it always did when he let himself linger too long on his life choices. Jonathan had offered - carefully, as always - for them to keep sharing their place in Queens, where it was farther out, cheaper, familiar. Two brothers splitting rent the way they’d always split everything else: responsibility, pain, silence, worry.

Will had declined.

Not because he minded, of course, but because he needed Jonathan to finally stop orbiting around him. To stop watching every breath and checking in every pause, every mood shift, every quiet moment. Every time he went out, he got scared his little brother would do something stupid and end up never coming back. Again. Jonathan had spent too many years being half a parent, half a shield. 

Will wanted - needed - him to choose himself for once. To live. 

Living with Carlton had felt like proof that he was okay now. That Jonathan didn’t have to keep watching all the time, that the kid he needed to fuss over would be fine by himself for once in his life.

Even if the cost was waking up in an apartment where his presence didn’t quite fit in, beside a man who loved him in all the right ways, while something inside him stayed unresolved.

He stood, stretching his stiff shoulders, and glanced back at said man - still asleep, peaceful, trusting.

Outside, the city was already awake. And so, reluctantly, was he.

Will padded into the kitchen barefoot, the cold linoleum snapping him fully awake in a way the light hadn’t managed to yet. 

The kitchenette was barely a kitchenette - two burners that heated unevenly, a sink that stained no matter how much he scrubbed, cabinets that smelled faintly of old wood and something chemical he couldn’t name (probably some thinner he should’ve done a better job at cleaning). 

He filled the kettle to make coffee, listening to the hollow rush of water, grounding himself in routine. Will never liked the bitter taste; it was just one of those things adulthood imposed onto him. Besides, he’d grown used to the feeling of handling his and Carlton's morning meals - one of the small ways to feel useful around the house.

Routine was safe. Predictable. It didn’t ask questions and didn't let him think too much.

While the kettle heated, he leaned against the counter and let his eyes drift to the refrigerator. The door was a patchwork of magnets, sketches, notes, and photographs, held up by sheer will and a mismatched collection of Will’s artsy, handmade clips and Carlton’s diverse, travel-themed ones. It was the first thing he’d decorated when he moved in, as if staking emotional territory in a place that still didn’t quite feel like his - like putting the pieces of his life he deemed essential up was the best way he could afford to do so.

Hawkins stared back at him all the time.

There he was at high school graduation, orange cap crooked and a tentative smile, as if he didn’t quite trust happiness yet. Joyce was crying up in the background while Hopper comforted her silently, Jonathan’s arm slung around his younger self’s shoulders, proud in that quiet, watchful way. Will touched the corner of the photo absently, remembering how that day had felt - like an ending he hadn’t known how to grieve.

Next to it was the picture from his goodbye party, the week before he left for Parsons. Everyone crammed into the Byers’ newly-emptied living room, cheap pizza boxes stacked on the moving-designated ones on the floor, colorful balloons drooping by the ceiling fan. Dustin, grinning too wide, and Lucas, trying to look serious and failing, pressed close to Max, who wanted to hide the fact that she was tearing up throughout the whole thing. Mike was there too, half in frame, looking at Will instead of the camera - he remembered pretending not to notice, not to think much of it at the time.

Below that, Max’s twentieth birthday - right before she left for Chicago, before distance did the damage that the rest never quite managed to do all the way. They were a bit older in that one, sharper somehow, but still laughing like kids who believed they’d always end up in the same place eventually. The familiar vibrant accents decorated the SQUAWK station walls behind them. He remembered Roxette's brand-new hit, "Fading Like a Flower," in the background. Max and one of her mixed smiles - her beautiful blue eyes still a bit milky, but less so than in their graduation pictures, due to her intensive years of physical therapy and rehabilitation.

At least I'm not legally blind anymore, she'd laughed into her third cold beer, courtesy of Robin Buckley. Means I could still drive someday.

He and El, smiling as they finished decorating her new room in their house over in California. She immediately stole the whole focus from the lenses, smile full as her warm eyes complemented the giddiness that came with her newly-discovered hairstyle, lip gloss, and rosy cheeks. It was the only picture of her he’d managed to preserve after leaving the place behind more than a decade ago. The only way to remind himself that that time wasn't just a fruit of his wishful, lonely, juvenile imagination - that for those few months, he had had a sister for real. 

Then, the Fourth of July photo from two years ago. Red, blue, and white fireworks bleeding color into the sky, everyone tired, flushed, glowing, and loud. That had been the last time all of them were together, the last time it felt somewhat easy to breathe.

And, as always, Mike.

The photo Jonathan had given Will after Nancy sent it sat behind most of the other pictures, somewhat hidden. NYU, Class of ‘93. Mike peeked from the part of it that wasn’t covered - purple cap and gown attire, hair longer and straighter than it used to be, smile a bit softer and less strained than usual, like he’d grown into himself while Will wasn’t looking; still nervous, just less so. The day he’d gotten it, Will sat on the toilet - the only privacy one could afford in any apartment in that wretched city, really - for an hour after opening the envelope, the picture trembling between his fingers as it might burn as he looked through it.

He remembered wondering to himself, "What now?" Would Mike go back to their hometown? Would he choose to stay around the city? Was he planning on living alone? What kind of job would he get? How did he feel about a roommate?

He hadn’t seen Mike since the summer of ’95, now.

And he’d silently missed him ever since.

Leaving Hawkins had been the right choice. Will knew that, even when his chest tightened like this. Distance meant safety. Distance meant quietness in his head, meant nights without cold dread crawling up his spine, meant knowing Henry could never reach him again out here. New York was loud enough to drown out the echoes.

It also meant not having to see Mike every corner he turned - there was no history here.

No reopening something that should never have been allowed to exist in the first place.

The kettle screamed, sharp and accusing. Will flinched and turned it off, searching in his cabinets for a cup to fill - his hazel eyes caught the distinct, chipped pastel-blue mug right away, placed behind the other glass cups - a home-warming gift from Mike after they’d first arrived and settled into New York City. For an instant, he could feel the sensation of those long, cold hands in his again, as if it had just happened.

Handle it wisely, the writer had said back then. It’s already broken enough as it is.

That was one of the last times they’d hung out together. Alone, in that intimate, knowing, honest manner only childhood best friends could, that is.

His hands shook just slightly as he poured the coffee into it, making it spill. 

It splashed hot against his skin, sharp and sudden. Will sucked in a breath - not from the pain, but from the memory it triggered. Cigarettes. The smell of smoke. The hiss of skin. His father’s voice, slurred and cruel.

Don’t be such a pussy.

He pressed his hand against the counter until the sting dulled, grounding himself. He breathed slowly as he felt the burning sensation quickly subside - in and out, the way he’d taught himself to with enough training.

Will felt guilty. Standing here, thinking about his old life while sharing a whole new one with another person. Carlton, who was sleeping peacefully in the other room, deserved someone fully present. Someone who didn’t flinch at photographs and didn't spill coffee over stupid childhood memories.

The young man pressed his lips together and turned away, carrying his coffee to the narrow window in the wall. Outside, the city moved on without him, relentless and alive. He took a sip and let the bitterness ground him.

He’d left for a reason.

He just wished it didn’t still feel like he’d left something behind.

The bedroom door creaked open behind him.

“Heya,” Carlton’s voice came, rough while soft and still warm with sleep. “You’ve been up for a while.”

Will didn’t turn right away. He sighed and wrapped both hands around his mug, feeling the now more tolerable heat seep deep into his palms and ground him. “Couldn’t really sleep.”

Carlton shuffled closer, barefoot, curly dark hair a mess in that effortless way Will had once found disarming. He leaned in to kiss Will’s bare shoulder, lingering there, his chin resting lightly against him as he followed his boyfriend’s line of sight. 

“So busy looking at the fridge, you forgot to make breakfast, huh?” Carlton suggested gently with a subtle laugh in his voice.

Will reciprocated without much thought, turning away from it so as not to seem suspicious.

He could tell Carlton noticed as he hummed, thoughtful, then smiled when his eyes landed on the graduation photo. “That’s Mike, right?”

There it was. Casual. Unloaded. Like saying that chair over there or that song on the radio.

“Yeah,” Will said. His voice stayed even, practiced.

Mike and his boyfriend had met once. Will couldn’t really remember the details, just the tension - the way his friend had been polite but distant, conversation stilted, smiles didn’t quite reach his eyes. Will had spent the entire time hyperaware of every gesture, every pause - hoping for something, anything, that would make that situation any less weird. That would finally unravel the truth lying between the two. That would make him give up on the idea of moving in with Carlton.

He’d wondered afterward if Mike had something against him - against this version of him, that is. Maybe it was his lifestyle. Hawkins had not been kind to boys like him, and Mike’s parents had been nothing if not conservative. Will tried not to think about what might’ve been said in private or what assumptions might’ve settled in over time.

Or maybe Mike had just been uncomfortable.

About everything Will never said out loud, but suspected Mike had always known anyway. The past. Something akin to a feeling that neither of them had ever named but that insisted on staying anyway.

Carlton tilted his head. “Is he still in New York?” He observed as his boyfriend shrugged. “Maybe you guys should talk. It’s been, what, years?” He said it with genuine concern, as if he were suggesting Will call an old professor or finally return a library book. “It’d be nice to catch up, don't you think?”

Will almost laughed.

“Maybe,” he chose to say instead, because that was way easier than explaining how meeting up with Mike could never be just a normal catching up for either of them. He learned it was just best to stay quiet, not try to get too many answers. 

He wondered if there ever could be such a thing as closure when it came to Mike Wheeler.

Carlton squeezed his arm once, affectionately, then pulled away. “I have to leave early, gotta be there by nine - big meeting, can’t be late.”

Of course.

Will sipped his coffee while arranging haphazardly the usual breakfast - a simple bowl of cereal, buttered toast, and some fruit - as well as a packed one for his boyfriend. In the background, he could hear Carlton crossing the apartment, disappearing back into the bedroom. The usual sounds followed soon after: drawers opening, hangers clinking, the faint buzz of a razor. The artist leaned against the counter and listened, cataloging it all the way he always did.

In a few minutes, his partner emerged, dressed in a stage-crisp navy blue button-down, tailored slacks, and a belt threaded smoothly, as if he’d done it a thousand times before. He moved with the confidence of someone who knew exactly where he was going and why he belonged there - a far cry from Will’s paint-stained jeans and soft sweaters, from classrooms full of children who barely remembered his name by the end of the week.

The contrast sat heavily in Will’s chest.

Carlton adjusted his cufflinks in the mirror - silver, subtle, probably the most expensive item in their closet - and Will had the sudden, uncomfortable thought that from the outside, this must be what they looked like: the successful boyfriend and the open-minded, “creative” one tucked neatly at his side, like an accessory. 

Something as pretty as it was naive. Something cool, but not as cool as he was.

A trophy wife, his own mind supplied unhelpfully.

Carlton turned, smiling. “You okay?”

Will nodded again, automatically. “Yeah. Just tired.”

The black-haired boy stepped closer, caressing his boyfriend’s right ear with careful fingers as he twirled Will’s subtle silver earring. “You work too hard,” he said, fondly. “You know you don’t have to prove anything to anyone.”

Carlton didn’t seem to get the irony. Didn’t see the years of trying to justify his space in every room he entered. Didn’t see how standing next to someone so effortlessly put together sometimes made Will feel rougher, weirder, smaller, like his edges were being sanded down relentlessly by the hand that feeds him.

“I’ll be late tonight,” Carlton continued, grabbing his jacket. “Dinner with clients. There are leftovers in the fridge, though. I’m leaving the car, so feel free to skip the walk to the subway today. I know you need it.”

“Okay,” Will said with a small smile.

Carlton kissed his cheek, warm and familiar. “Love you.”

“Love you,” the other echoed, words automatic, practiced into place.

The door clicked shut behind him, and the apartment felt emptier for it - too quiet, too small, filled with ghosts on the refrigerator door.

Will stood there for a long moment after, mug cooling in his hands, wondering when love had started feeling like something he had to fit himself around instead of falling into.

Carlton’s car keys sat on the counter where he’d left them, deliberately visible, the way he did when he was trying to be considerate without making a show of it. Will noticed them while rinsing his mug, fingers lingering on the chipped rim before setting it in the sink and pocketing the dangling shiny keys to his boyfriend's Volvo while preparing to start his day - for real, this time.

Outside, Manhattan was already in full motion. Delivery trucks double-parked with their hazard lights blinking like nervous tics, steam curling up from sidewalk grates, vendors shouting over one another in a dozen accents. He slid into the driver’s seat and let the city watch as he took his course, windows cracked just enough to let in the noise - horns, brakes, voices overlapping until it all blurred into something like music.

The drive to the elementary school took longer than it should have, mainly because New York traffic had its own opinions about time. When he finally parked three blocks away, he didn’t mind the walk. The air smelled like exhaust, baked goods, and spring trying its best in such a chaotic place. Somewhere nearby, a basketball thudded against warm concrete, punctuated by laughter that echoed off brick walls.

By the time Will reached the elementary school he worked at, the city had already decided what kind of day it would be. Car horns stacked on top of each other at the corner, a bodega radio spilling salsa onto the sidewalk, the smell all mixing into something uniquely NYC - utterly different from the peaceful life in Hawkins. He slipped inside with the other teachers, brown coat still half-buttoned, shoulders already bracing.

The school was already alive when he stepped inside - little kids spilling through hallways, teachers corralling them with practiced efficiency. Will’s classroom was tucked at the end of the hall, a little quieter than the rest as it was still relatively empty. It smelled like tempera paint and old paper, the kind of smell that soaked into clothes and stayed there. Sunlight streamed through tall windows, catching on drying drawings taped crookedly to the walls: monsters with too many eyes, families holding hands, houses with smiling faces. Nearly every page had a yellow sun in the corner.

At the school, Will learned early how to measure himself.

Not by what he said - he was careful, always - but by how he stood, how he listened, how much of himself he let soften in front of the other adults. He never corrected anyone who assumed anything about him, but never volunteered details either. No pronouns, no stories that couldn’t be trimmed into something harmless. 

He let people decide for themselves, and most did.

It wasn't exactly confrontational - it was subtler than that. Conversations that stalled half a second too long when he entered the teachers’ lounge. Jokes that curved around him instead of landing at his feet. The way certain coworkers - mostly older, mostly men - watched him with a practiced neutrality that felt less like tolerance and more like quiet evaluation as they avoided touching him every chance they got. A few others were warmer, but even then, there was caution, curiosity wrapped carefully in politeness.

No one ever said gay; most of his coworkers avoided it like the plague, but the word lived everywhere.

He saw it in the crooked AIDS awareness flyer on the teacher's bulletin board, printed in stark, menacing red letters, lingering longer than the others. In the way health assemblies were discussed in hushed, clinical tones. In the casual questions that weren’t casual at all.

Once, a mother picking up her son had asked, lightly, whether he had a wife. Will had smiled and said no, and something had shifted - just enough to notice, just enough to sting.

New York liked to think of itself as progressive. And compared to Hawkins, it certainly was, but the AIDS crisis had carved fear deep into people’s bones. Even here, even now, queerness came with an invisible asterisk. Something tragic, dangerous - to be quietly wary of.

With the kids, it was different.

In the classroom, none of that mattered. The kids didn’t ask many questions that came with weight. They didn’t look at him like he was something to decode. They only cared about brushes, colors, and whether the glue would dry in time. They liked that he knelt beside their desks instead of looming like the other teachers. That he listened seriously when they explained their drawings. That he treated their work like it meant something.

Because it did, of course it did.

They didn’t know him deeply - not really - but they didn’t have to. They enjoyed his presence in the uncomplicated way children do, without judgment or suspicion. When they smiled at him, it was clean. When they laughed, it wasn’t measured.

Sometimes, standing in front of the class with paint-stained fingers and chalk dust on his sleeves, Will felt more himself than he did anywhere else in the city.

The exhaustion crept in later. In meetings. In hallways. In the careful neutrality he wore among adults. By the end of the school day, he often felt more tired than his schedule justified - not from teaching, exactly, but from the constant calibration. The quiet math of survival.

It was part of why living with Carlton made sense, not just financially and logistically. Their neighborhood was softer around the edges, with rainbow flags in windows year-round. Men holding hands on stoops, women kissing goodbye without having to check who was watching. It didn’t make Will immune, of course - the glances, the jokes, the assumptions still existed - but it meant at least he could exhale when he got home.

Still, even there, he stayed half-hidden. Not officially out. Not officially anything. Just visible enough that the people who knew knew, and people who didn’t could pretend otherwise.

Sometimes he wondered if that limbo was its own kind of punishment. Not hiding, but not being himself like he once was either.

When the bell rang, Will organized his things slowly on his desk. He loved the kids. Loved the moments where art mattered, and nothing else did. But among adults, among systems, he was always aware of the balance he maintained - between expressing himself and being allowed to stay.

“Mr. Byers!” A girl shouted the second she entered class and saw him. “Look, I finished my butterfly!”

The teacher smiled before he could stop himself, crouching down to her level. Complimented the colors, the way the wings curved instead of sticking straight out. He meant it - he always did, as he wished more of his teachers had done when he was a little kid.

It didn't really matter, though, because the right people always did recognize his talent - the people that mattered enough.

The class passed in a blur of small moments - sticky fingers tugging at his sleeve, questions fired faster than he could answer, laughter bubbling up without warning. When the bell rang again, Will felt the familiar mix of relief and guilt: relief at the quiet that followed, guilt for craving it so much.

All of this still wasn’t enough to make him feel whole.

He took the car across town for his designer shift, looking like he'd lived a thousand lives before lunch. 

The indie comic studio he worked at part-time occupied half a floor in a converted warehouse. Red brick walls still bore the scars of whatever the building had been through before - faded paint, old numbers stenciled near the ceiling. Desks were crammed close together, littered with sketchpads, empty cups, and action figures used as reference models. Someone argued loudly about fonts in the corner. Someone else swore under their breath at a missed deadline.

Will slipped into his seat and worked quietly - adjusted panels, fixed speech bubbles, chose colors that wouldn’t overpower the art. Careful, invisible work - the kind that left no discernible trace of him behind.

When his shift ended, no one noticed him leave.

The drive to Queens for his and Jonathan's weekly meet-up felt like crossing into another version of the city; the streets widened slightly, and the pace slowed just enough to breathe. 

Jonathan’s building was a narrow walk-up with peeling paint and a perpetually broken intercom, which fortunately granted the younger sibling key privileges. Will climbed the stairs two at a time, the jagged stone steps worn smooth by decades of feet. His older brother opened the door before Will could knock.

“Hey,” he said with a hug, relief flickering across his face like it always did, like Will’s presence still eased something deep and instinctive. Like he was relieved he was still alive, surprising him each time he showed up at his door.

“Hey,” Will echoed as he let go of his brother and went inside.

Jonathan’s apartment was exactly what Will had always imagined it would be after he left, and after years of adjusting, it still surprised him. Warm, cluttered, unapologetically lived-in. Books were stacked everywhere - on the floor, windowsills, precariously balanced on shelves that bowed under their weight. Camera equipment leaned against the walls like trusted companions: tripods, lenses, a battered old camera that looked like it had seen things.

Photographs covered the main wall of the loft in uneven rows. Black-and-white shots of city streets at dawn, faces caught mid-expression, light slicing through shadow in ways that felt almost accidental. There was a recent one of Joyce laughing, head thrown back as the corners of her eyes crinkled with age and grey strands peppered her brown hair. One of Will himself, younger, unaware, standing in a yellow field with the wind tugging at his hair. Jonathan had always seen him like that - before Will had learned how to fold himself even smaller than his once fragile and petite body allowed.

Diverse movie posters filled the remaining space: Paris, Texas. The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Blue Velvet. Do the Right Thing. Even Jonathan's original indie piece, The Consumer - unfortunately a flop, but that's just because it was “way ahead of its time” - with the edges curling, corners held up with tape. 

Nancy’s presence was there too, subtle but unmistakable - a pink cardigan draped over a chair, a second toothbrush in the bathroom, a half-finished crossword on the coffee table in handwriting that wasn’t Jonathan’s. Will pretended not to notice, but he was pretty sure they were hooking up - at least ever since she came to NYC for work, anyway.

“Tea?” Jonathan asked, already reaching for the kettle.

“Yeah,” Will said. “Please.”

“Blunt?” With a swish of his hand, his older brother produced said artifact from his pocket, as if waiting for his cue.

That took a laugh out of Will, who gasped at the sight. After Cali, the Byers siblings had taken up the healthy hobby of smoking together in secret occasionally. Still, they had since then fallen out of practice due to their busy schedules, general distance, and after Carlton had prohibited “substances of any sort” under their roof. Will obliged, of course. For the most part.

“Oh, you're bad!” He shamelessly took it into his hands and lit it on the stove. “I thought you quit smoking.”

“I don't think a true artist has ever really quit anything in their lives,” Jonathan argued. “Besides, I wanted to treat you; we haven't done this together in a while.”

“Well, I don't think I can get high though, I gotta drive back…”

“Don't worry, it's not strong stuff,” he shrugged. “Just to take the edge off, I can see you need it.”

They sat at the small kitchen table, steam and smoke rising between them. Outside the open window, a train roared past somewhere in the distance, the sound vibrating through the glass.

They talked about a little bit of everything: new music, movies, fashion, and how much Will missed being amused by Jonathan's reluctant time as a paparazzi throughout college.

“Dude, you'd go crazy about Lady Di right now. Every magazine’s got her on a yacht with Dodi like it’s a crime scene. Telephoto lenses, boats following boats - it’s insane!”

“So she's seeing someone? Good for her.”

Inevitably, their harmless chitchat hit its tension point.

“So...” Jonathan said, carefully observing as his brother took a long hit. “How are things with Carlton?”

Will stared into his cup longer than necessary as he blew the smoke away. Jonathan didn’t rush him. He never did.

The younger boy couldn’t help but feel like he'd need yet another cigarette after this conversation - sometime after the seventh time trying to quit, he had just given up. He figured that if his brother was right about his previous take on quitting, he might just be the artist of the century, after all.

“He’s good,” he said finally. “He’s great. Left me his car today, makes dinner when he’s home early, remembers everything. Stuff like that.”

Jonathan nodded, waiting patiently as he knew there was a “but” coming.

“I just don’t know if I’m… in it the same way anymore,” Will admitted, to his own surprise, voice low as he passed the blunt to his brother. “It feels like I’m trying to convince myself that stability is the same thing as happiness.”

The other boy's expression softened. “You don’t have to stay just because it makes sense, Will. You know that, right?”

“I know,” Will said, taking a hit. “I just didn’t want to need you again. I didn’t… want you worrying about me all the time.”

Jonathan let out a small, humorless laugh. “Will, I worry about you whether you live with me or not. It's my job, I'm your brother - we're supposed to look out for each other.”

Something in Will’s chest loosened at that.

They talked some more for a while -  about their mother and Hopper's happy, retired life and how they should visit soon, about work, about money, about the exhaustion of feeling left behind. Jonathan mentioned Nancy casually, how they’d been talking on the phone more, how maybe they’d get dinner soon, and see where things went; if they could be together again after some time distant from each other.

Will smiled. He wanted that for them. Maybe growing apart had been good in their case - the last time he saw Nancy, she had been more confident, stable. Maybe their relationship could really take off now that they'd taken time to sort their stuff out separately.

“Speaking of Nancy…” Will surprised himself once again as the words slipped from his lips. Jonathan shot him one of his knowing looks. He appeared older, but his familiar, tired expressions had changed little. “Any news on Mike?”

The other boy paused - it was subtle, just a second too long as he reached for his mug, fingers tightening slightly around the handle. Will caught it anyway. He always did. Growing up with Jonathan had trained him to notice the things people didn’t say, the small shifts that meant something was being weighed carefully.

“Yeah,” Jonathan said after a moment with a sigh. “Actually… Yeah.”

Will’s chest tightened despite himself. He braced himself for the worst - as he always did with Mike - and focused on the pattern in the table, on the nick in the wood by his thumb, like that might keep him grounded.

“He’s still in the city,” Jonathan continued. “Brooklyn, I think - Greenpoint or somewhere around there. Works at a publishing house now - not anything glamorous, their books actually sucks, but… It's him, you know? Writing, editing, that kind of thing.”

That tracks.

“NYU seems to have treated him well,” Jonathan added. “He’s… less antisocial. Or at least Nancy said he sounds like it on the phone, always busy going out or doing something and stuff.”

On the phone.

Will nodded, like the information was neutral. It surely didn’t feel like someone had just reached into his chest and gently twisted something or anything.

So Mike could call, he just chose not to.

“She actually said he's been…” He cleared his throat, uncomfortable. “Having some issues lately,” he gauged Will's reaction to this, the boy’s eyebrow raising in silent worry. “Serious stuff. Didn't give any details, but she seems really worried about him lately.”

Will’s stomach dropped at that, a quiet, familiar sinking he hadn’t felt with such intensity in some time. His mind slipped back to his own lowest point - the first years of college, when Mike started to escape from him and the freedom he’d wanted so badly curdled into something hollow and dangerous. Nights blurred together then: strangers’ beds, careless hands, his own body treated like something disposable, unprotected in every sense of the word. He remembered staying with people who were cruel in ways that felt almost deserved, who mistook his silence for consent and his softness for weakness. How small he’d felt afterward, how heavy everything became, how some nights the loneliness had pressed so hard on his chest that he’d genuinely believed the world would be better off without him in it. It had taken years - therapy, Jonathan’s quiet vigilance, sheer stubborn survival - to crawl out of that place. The thought that Mike might be anywhere near that edge now made Will’s throat tighten, fear blooming sharp and helpless in his chest.

“Does he-” He stopped himself and exhaled, feeling a little pathetic to ask this after just receiving the news that his childhood best friend seemed to be at his lowest right now. He blamed it on the weed. “Does he… ever ask about me?”

Jonathan didn’t answer right away, throwing him a look he didn't want to interpret as pity despite himself.

That was answer enough.

“Nance says he always asks how you’re doing,” the photographer said carefully. “In a general way. Like he doesn’t want to pry, I guess.”

Or like he’s afraid of what he might find, Will thought silently.

Jonathan leaned back in his chair, studying Will over the rim of his tea. “You don’t talk much about him anymore.”

His brother let out a soft, humorless huff. “That’s because every time I do, it feels like opening something I already packed away.”

“Doesn’t mean it stopped existing,” the older boy said gently.

Will swallowed.

“You’re… different… when he comes up,” Jonathan added, not accusing, just observant. “You get quiet. Like you’re… measuring your words.”

Will pressed his lips together. “Mike always knew how to read between the lines, even when I didn’t want him to. It's not like I could ever hide much from him, even when I really wanted to.”

The unspoken words are loud - Mike wasn't actually as dumb as he made himself to look; he knew how to interpret Will, he could reach out, he just preferred not even to try.

There was a silence then - not awkward, just heavy. The kind that sat between brothers who had lived through too much together to pretend this was casual conversation.

“He seemed strange the last time we all met,” Will said finally. “For the Fourth of July. I couldn’t tell if it was… me. Or us. Or just the past in general.”

Jonathan’s expression softened. “Mike’s bad at unfinished,” he said. “Always has been. He doesn’t like not knowing where he stands.”

Will let out a quiet, dry laugh. “Funny. Neither do I.”

Jonathan reached across the table and nudged his brother's hand with his own. “You don’t owe him anything. And you don’t owe Carlton an explanation for thoughts you haven’t acted on, either. Don't chew yourself for things like this, Will. You're only human.”

The artist looked at him. “It doesn’t feel fair.”

“No,” Jonathan agreed, wisdom far beyond his years in his deep brown eyes, like he knew what he was talking about. “But feelings rarely are.”

Will stared out the window, watching the city move - strangers crossing paths, lives brushing together without ever really colliding.

“Sometimes I wonder,” he admitted softly, “if leaving Hawkins was good for me… or if it just delayed having to face things.”

Jonathan didn’t rush to answer.

“Maybe both,” he said eventually.

Will nodded, letting that sit between them.

Some distances kept you alive. Others just made the ache quieter.

When he left at roughly 10 P.M., the city felt quieter somehow, the noise settling into something manageable. The weight in his chest hadn’t disappeared, but it had shifted - less sharp, less lonely.

Carlton’s Volvo hummed steadily as Will drove back while having a smoke (sue him), neon lights streaking past like memories he couldn’t quite catch. 

He thought about everything he’d said - and everything he hadn’t. 

About love that made sense, and love that never had.

Chapter Text

May 1st, 1997

Notre Dame, Indiana

Lucas had never planned on taking a road trip halfway through the state with his parents at the big old age of twenty-six.

As it turned out, plans had a way of changing when your dominant hand was wrapped in a cast, and your family doctor told you - politely but firmly - that driving was off the table for at least another month. The accident had been fast, stupid, and entirely “his own damn fault”; Max had said as much, reminding him pointedly that he was, in fact, very much not indestructible.

So not only did they have to worry about the medical bill and the expenses to fix his recently acquired (and pretty rad, if he said so himself) Yamaha, but there he was, riding shotgun in his folks' old car. At the same time, his dad drove, and his mom navigated, bickering relentlessly as they entered the imaginary town of Notre Dame for Erica’s college graduation.

He didn’t mind, not really. It was endearing.

In the time between finishing college and now, Lucas had discovered how easy it was to live close to people and still miss them. He hadn’t been far from his parents, but time had a way of thinning itself out, stretching into obligations, polite smiles, and half-kept plans. Erica, most of all, had been MIA for quite some time  - a few hundred miles away, buried in coursework and growing into herself at a pace they only caught in fragments. In that sense, fate’s intervention had worked out neatly enough. Whatever else it was, this trip gave him back something he hadn’t realized he’d been missing so much.

He wished Max could have come, too.

The thought arrived uninvited, gentle but persistent. She hadn’t seen Erica in a while, either. He imagined her sitting at home, hours folding into one another, the quiet stretching long between moments of movement. She’d been better lately - not fixed, not untouched by what had happened, but steadier. Stronger in ways that didn’t announce themselves out loud. Still, his worry lingered, reflexive and familiar, surfacing whenever he let his mind drift too far ahead.

The road stretched in front of them, unspooling in a straight, indifferent line. Lucas let the thought fade before it could harden into guilt, pulling himself back into the present as the song playing on the radio faded, replaced by the low hum of the engine and the distant murmur of Charles and Sue talking up front. Lucas barely registered it - his hands rested loosely in his lap, his gaze unfocused, the familiar ache settling somewhere between memory and fear.

Then the car slowed, gravel crunching beneath the tires. The landscape shifted as the university loomed ahead, solid and immovable, like a line drawn in the ground. Bricks and glass replaced the open road, banners strung between lampposts, students crossing the street without urgency in clusters, laughing, unaware. 

The world narrowed again, solid and immediate. Lucas exhaled, grounding himself.

Whatever he was leaving behind - whatever waited for him when he got back to Hawkins in a few hours - this moment was here now.

The University of Notre Dame looked like it had been built to endure.

Stone buildings rose clean and symmetrical under the mid-spring Indiana sun, ivy climbing their sides like it had been invited there on purpose. Bells rang somewhere distant and ceremonial. Everything felt curated - history preserved and polished until it gleamed. Lucas took it in with the trained eye of someone who’d learned, early on, to read institutions like people.

As they parked, he scanned the manicured lawn bordering the quad where the graduation ceremony was set to take place. Everything about the place felt intentional - old, dignified, overwhelmingly white. A performance of tradition, more than anything else.

It reminded him, bittersweetly, of Chicago.

Back then, he hadn’t gone there chasing prestige. Not really. UChicago had seemed like the practical choice back then - close enough to home that his parents could still reach him in a few hours, far enough that Hawkins and what it held for him and Max didn’t press in at every corner. A city dense and layered enough to disappear into; a place he’d convinced himself would be safer. More open. Somewhere he and Max could exist without being stared at like a debate someone didn’t want to have.

It had promised diversity in its brochures. Smiling faces of every color, language, and background, arranged neatly across campus pamphlets. And there had been financial aid - real, tangible support - that would help cover both his tuition and hers. Lucas had believed it. Wanted to believe it. 

The reality had been heavier.

The South Side taught him fast that proximity didn’t equal protection. That diversity didn’t mean equity. That being black in academic spaces still meant proving - over and over again - that he belonged there for reasons beyond his skin, his body, his varsity jump shot.

He learned to keep his student ID visible at all times. Which buildings could he walk in and out of freely, and which ones would earn him suspicious looks. There were nights he couldn’t walk Max back to her dorm without feeling the weight of eyes on them, sensing the unspoken calculations happening behind polite smiles. White classmates who swore they were progressive until they had to reconcile the fact that the black guy in their seminar wasn’t just passing through - he was brilliant. 

They loved to talk about his athleticism. Rarely about his papers.

Spoke of talent, like he hadn’t bled for every inch of progress he’d made - the hours he spent studying, training, or revising in his dorm room so that people wouldn't have to wonder if he actually deserved his scholarship or not, his relentless self-discipline; it all didn’t count for shit when compared to the narrative they were comfortable with.

Lucas learned how to swallow that rage early. Learned how to outperform expectations with his jaw clenched and his back straight - because being exceptional just meant survival, not praise.

And still - still - it had been easier than staying in Hawkins in the early 90s. 

Because in Chicago, at least, Max could walk beside him openly. They could hold hands without whispering or hiding behind excuses. Even when the world pressed in, they pressed back together. They had each other, and for a while, that had been enough. 

Until it wasn’t. Until even that closeness began to feel fragile.

Until safety for them came to mean staying inside. Curtains half-drawn. Sleep measured in hours lost rather than rest gained. Until hospital waiting rooms and those hushed voices hollowed something out of them both - something that never quite filled back in.

Now, watching Erica laugh with her friends in a sea of white gowns and proud families, Lucas felt the contrast settle deep in his chest. 

Notre Dame was different from Chicago in shape, in tone - but not in structure. The same polished exclusivity. That same not-so-quiet (nor hidden) resistance to bodies like theirs occupying spaces meant to be inherited, not earned.

And yet - there she was. 

Brilliant in a way no institution could dilute.

Lucas squared his shoulders, pride blooming thick and warm in his chest.

If Chicago had taught him how to endure, Erica had taught him how to transcend. 

They hadn’t survived these places by accident; they’d made room where there was none.

He shifted in his seat and exhaled slowly, quickly leaving his place as they joined the crowd.

The quad buzzed with anticipation, a low hum of voices and rustling programs as families leaned together, adjusting caps and snapping pictures, careful not to wrinkle the moment. It was beautiful in that overwhelming, slightly alien way - like stepping into someone else’s legacy.

The Sinclair family stood out immediately, of course.

The only black family going to the front rows, clustered together in their bright colors amid a sea of expensive, behaved linen pastels. No one said anything outright; no slurs, no confrontation, or anything of the sort. Just the looks, the second glance, the quick recalibration, the polite surprise that lingered a beat too long.

Lucas knew those by heart.

“Three hours,” his mom muttered towards his dad beside him, fanning herself with the program. “Three hours in that car with one hour to spare, and you still drove like you were late for something!”

Charles laughed faintly. “You didn’t have to come, then.”

She shot him a look sharp enough to cut. “Boy, please!”

Lucas laughed at his parents’ antics, watching them bicker with the same ease they always had. Admiring how even after all this time together, they still bantered like teenagers.

He hoped - quietly - that one day, that would be him and Max.

The weight of the ring case he'd brought with him felt heavier in his blazer’s pocket, warming up the place where it sat in his chest.

Erica sat a row ahead, robe falling perfectly from her shoulders. She didn’t turn around - didn’t have to. Lucas knew she was focused; probably had been since dawn. 

Valedictorian. It still sounded surreal in his head. 

His little sister had been sharp with him ever since they’d parted ways - gentler too, in a way that told him she knew more than she ever asked. Erica and Dustin had been the two people who clocked Max’s silence early. The way their phone calls were shortened, how Lucas stopped mentioning plans for the near future, or their short updates. 

They’d been supportive to a fault, even when they didn’t know what exactly was going on. Between the two of them, he was proud to say that more than extraordinary people surrounded him.

His dad leaned over slightly, nodding at Lucas’ wrist. “You gonna tell your sister why you showed up here half broken, or you want me to do it?”

Lucas flexed his fingers inside the cast. “Dad, come on. I told y'all, it's not broken.”

“You have a cast,” Sue said flatly. “On your dominant hand, as you said yourself.”

“I don't think the bike checked if I was right-handed before it threw me off,” he muttered sarcastically.

Erica turned around just enough to glare at him over her shoulder and whisper. “You couldn’t have waited until after my graduation to try and die?”

Her brother grinned, whispering back. “I survived. That's character development.”

“More like idiot development,” she shot back, facing forward again.

His dad chuckled. “You’re lucky at least you still have your reflexes, or it could’ve been worse. Coaching high schoolers all day will dull them if you’re not careful enough.”

“I still got game, just so you know,” the son argued.

“Oh, now look at Mr. Big Shot over here,” Sue teased on his other side. Lucas noticed Erica snort at that - the women in his life just loved ganging up on him.

The ceremony began, names flowing past in a blur until the announcer paused - just long enough for the silence to sharpen.

“Let’s give it up for valedictorian of the Class of 1997 - Erica Susane Sinclair, Nuclear Science and Engineering.”

Applause rose as the man spoke, polite at first. Then louder. Then uncertain, recalibrating again as soon as they saw his sister getting up.

Her coiled, dark curls cascaded down her shoulders against the harsh white of her robes - she wore shining golden earrings and a small necklace of the same color, with her signature ‘E’ dangling from it. The look was greatly complemented by her dark brown and gold eyeshadow and her sharply-lined brown lips full of lip gloss - her way of standing out without seeming too flashy. Lucas didn’t think she needed to make much of an effort to take the attention of the crowd, anyway.

He stood immediately and applauded, wooed and whistled, as hard and unapologetic as he could, until his palms and throat stung. His parents followed; his father focused on capturing the whole thing on camera, while his mother threw her daughter encouraging phrases along the way. Erica walked up to the huge podium with her chin lifted, composed and unbothered, like the weight of the moment wasn’t pressing down on her shoulders - it probably really wasn't, Lucas figured. 

She began calmly.

“I stand here today, valedictorian of this graduating class,” the girl began, voice steady. “As a woman. A black one, at that. As someone who was often told - explicitly or otherwise - that I was nothing but an exception.”

Murmurs quickly rippled through the crowd at the sharpness and bluntness of her words. Erica didn’t even flinch. Her mom hummed and nodded, encouraging her to keep going. 

“There were rooms I walked into where I was the only one who looked like me, where my excellence was treated as surprising instead of expected in an institution with pristine standards such as this one. Where mistakes were magnified, and successes were attributed to sheer, dumb luck.”

Lucas felt something tighten in his chest as he heard his little sister's voice go on without even trembling.

“I need to say that I didn’t do this alone,” Erica continued. “I did it with friends who reminded me why I started this journey in the first place. With a family who drove hours to visit me too frequently and asked way too many damn questions,” the crowd laughed lightly, unwinding a little at the unexpected jab. “ Even though they didn't understand why I followed this path, they supported and believed in me even when the thought that giving up would be easier crossed my mind.”

She paused, letting it land.

“I still did it though, because I believe in a world where everyone is equal in the eyes of science - a world where knowledge crosses the border between our differences and leads us to progress. And I did it knowing that someone like me being here is not a reward - it’s a duty. A responsibility far bigger than me.”

Some of the applause was louder now. Less polite, more fractured. A few people nodded as she spoke and clapped harder than others.

Lucas scanned the crowd and caught it again - the majority of the crowd's tight smiles, crossed arms, the discomfort masked as contemplation. 

He’d seen it before. 

At Max’s dorm, when campus security stopped him and asked who he was supposed to be visiting while the other students walked freely, and then told him he couldn’t wait inside. 

At his basketball games, when his teammates who couldn't even throw the ball right joked about his “natural predisposition” instead of recognizing the hours he’d put in alone on the court, the intensive workout routine he'd established early on that almost broke him to pieces.

In any store he walked into, as soon as he neared something deemed “too expensive,” he was followed and watched, labeled as suspicious.

He’d learned quite young that just surviving wasn’t enough - you had to be better than everyone around you. Quieter, smarter. Relentless, stronger.

That's exactly what his sister was - if not more - and he couldn't be happier.

“So today we gather here to celebrate not only our capacity to overcome our obstacles and achieve our victories,” she continued as her parents teared up. “But also to welcome growth - to welcome a bright future, where nothing could ever stop anyone that's been deemed too different from being a part of something as liberating as getting an education and making a difference in the world.” 

Erica smiled and took a step forward, pressing something like a small button on her palm. The crowd was taken by murmurs and interrogations when they saw a fine spray of water mist erupt from the front of the stage, splashing the girl lightly as she twirled in place.

Lucas' breath hitched as he watched his sister's previously white and pristine robe and cap getup slowly turn darker, achieving a beautiful, onyx shade of black that contrasted against the rest of the all-white scenery.

He could see the staff appalled by their surprise as the crowd erupted in gasps and cheers at the performance.

Erica took her diploma from the dean's hand as he stood, perplexed, jaw agape, and held it up in a fist, resilient. “We're graduating, y'all!” 

She finished to a standing ovation from her peers that lasted almost a whole minute as she descended the steps.

After they’d handled all the diplomas, as the banter of families flooded the quad and students mingled with their peers, Sue caught up with the rest of the extended family that had attended the ceremony. Charles stood a little apart from the crowd, not saying much at first, his hands folded around his paper cup, watching Erica laugh with one of her professors, as if she belonged anywhere she chose to stand.

Lucas joined him, shoulder to shoulder.

“Didn’t think I’d ever see that,” the older man said softly.

“See what?”

“My baby girl telling a room full of people how the world ought to be,” Charles smiled, but there was something else there - something older. “Makes you realize how fast life comes at you.”

His son nodded. Then cleared his throat as some silent moments went by, tentative.

“Mom says you get quiet like this when you’re thinking about the war.”

His father huffed a breath. “Your mom says a lot of things, doesn’t she?”

Lucas waited - he’d learned patience from him, after all.

“I was a bit older than Erica is now when they sent me to Vietnam.” Lucas nodded for his father to continue. “Thought adulthood was about being tougher than everyone else. Loud, determined. Proving something. Turns out it’s mostly about learning when to stand still - and when to stand in front of somebody else.”

His son felt that settle in his chest as the older one turned away.

“War strips the pretending out of you, y’know?” Hesaid. “You learn real quick that bravery isn’t about not being scared. It’s about doing what’s right anyway, especially when it costs you.”

The younger man swallowed. He saw himself there - every choice he’d made, every time he stood up for himself and his friends, every kid he’d coached, every fight he’d stepped into - even when walking away would’ve been easier, and definitely safer.

“I guess I’ve been trying to live up to that,” Lucas said quietly.

Charles looked at him then, really looked. “Son,” he said, voice firm, “you didn’t live up to it. You made it your own.”

He felt the pride in that - not loud, not showy. The kind that stays.

Across the quad, Erica caught their eye and lifted her chin, defiant and bright all at once.

His dad straightened. “That’s the job,” he said. “Protect the people you love, teach them how to protect themselves. Hope the world gives them a better fight than the one you had. Remember not to take anything for granted.”

Lucas nodded. In that moment, he knew exactly where he’d learned how to be brave.

One of his aunts from Indianapolis clapped him on the shoulder, interrupting their intimate conversation and engaging the men in casual banter with the rest of their people.

“So, politics, huh?” Aunt Lee Anne teased about his degree, as usual, which most of his extended family didn't even bother to remember the actual name of. “You actually gonna save the world or just write about it?”

He could feel the heat creep on his nape as he laughed lightheartedly at the irony of that statement.

As if all the other times weren’t enough…

Lucas ended up choosing to major in Public Policy Studies - a relatively new degree, and an underestimated one, at that - with a Health and Society minor, especially drawn to physiotherapy and physical wellness subjects; the way the body told its own stories: from damage, to recovery, and the resilience in the middle - what debilitating injuries meant for people’s future lives and for their role in society, how minorities were treated once they’d been deemed too broken to function.

The choice had clicked into place the moment he realized he could help people like Max and his own friends, who had once suffered damage deemed irreparable and still managed to go on with somewhat normal lives - disabled people, athletes, trauma survivors, patients learning how to trust their bodies again. Maybe even build something together someday, a joint practice with her psych degree anchoring the other side of the process of healing; something that would help their community. 

Most people didn’t see the value in that kind of work, especially if you ended up coaching teenagers and hauling balls around all day instead.

“Leave the boy alone, Lee Anne,” their other aunt, Barbara, rolled her eyes, not amused by her sister's unfiltered tone.

Lucas smiled, used to it. “Well, someone’s gotta explain why the system's broken.”

“I know that's right,” his father clapped him on the shoulder with a firm hand, beaming proudly. “He's his daddy's son, alright!”

“You walked with the Panthers once, you phony,” Lee Anne teased with a snort.

“Hey,” Charles called in a mock-serious tone. “Don't hate me ‘cause you ain't me.”

“And he was also scared of the hoses, too!” Barbara continued, also mocking casually.

His younger cousin, Lee Anne's kid - a certified brat just like his mother - snorted and muttered under his breath so that only they would hear. “Should’ve gone into engineering. At least then you’d actually have a real job.”

Erica finally came back to them after being borrowed by the university staff so they could discuss how in the hell she did what she’d done (and probably hand her the cleaning bill for the stage).

“Beat it, knucklehead,” she shooed the young teen away behind her parents’ backs as they kept bickering back and forth with their aunt. She slipped an arm through Lucas's as their relative walked away, squeezing. “Ignore him,” she said softly. “You make things make sense.”

“Yeah,” he shrugged. “Guess we all do our part.”

“I’m serious, Lucas. What you do is important,” Erica shot back, fixing him with a look that cut straight through the joke. “Whatever it is that you do, you're always doing it to your fullest extent.”

Lucas stilled.

For all her mouth, she saw him. Had always seen him. He looked at his sister, still seeing that soft, childish face with round cheeks, curious eyebrows, and a defiant smirk - fierce, unyielding in a way that felt earned rather than performed - and felt the pride settle deep in his bones, heavy and grounding.

“Hey,” he said, stepping forward and blinking back the sting in his eyes. “I’m supposed to be the supportive sibling today!”

He took her by the shoulders, tugged her recently turned black cap off, and ruffled her slightly damp hair just enough to make her yelp.

“Lucas! It’ll take me even longer to fix it now-”

She shoved him. He shoved back. It devolved into a brief, stupid scuffle that ended the way it always did: with him pulling her into a tight hug, her face pressed against his chest.

“I’m so proud of you, sis,” he said with a bright smile. “For real. You’re the smartest person I know.”

He felt her hesitate. Then she pulled back quickly, blinking hard so as not to tear up, rolling her brown eyes like emotion was something mildly embarrassing she’d accidentally stepped in with that irreverent streak of hers.

“Bet Dustin would beg to differ, though,” the older sibling tried to smooth the tension.

At the mention of his best friend, her face softened despite herself. Somewhere between D&D nights and late phone calls about college stress, Dustin had become hers, too - another thread in the messy family Lucas loved more than he ever said out loud.

Lucas laughed. “Speaking of him, I can see you took a page from his book with the theatrics,” he gestured to her robe. “How’d you even do that, anyway?”

“I think you're forgetting I am, as of today, officially a scientist,” she shrugged, smug. “It was just some water-soluble polymer and a little bit of elbow grease; no big deal, really.”

Her older brother nodded, pretending to know what any of that poly-whatever mumbo jumbo meant.

“He’s gonna lose his mind when you get back,” Lucas added. “Start calling you Doctor Sinclair or something.”

“As he should!” 

They stood there a moment, watching their parents argue animatedly with another family over where to take pictures. Their dad gestured wildly. Their mom laughed way too loudly.

Distracted.

Lucas cleared his throat.

“Hey,” he said. “Come with me for a sec?”

Erica eyed him suspiciously but followed as he steered her a few steps away, toward the edge of the road past the quad, where the noise dulled, and the trees offered a sliver of privacy.

“What’s up?” She asked. “If this is a lecture about responsibility, I literally just finished a degree in nuclear science. I don't do irresponsible.”

He huffed a laugh, then reached into the inside pocket of his jacket.

“Actually…” Pulled out a small and obvious red velvet box. “It's even better.”

Erica froze, her eyes widening and glowing in instant understanding as he opened it.

“No!” His sister yelled-whispered.

Inside, the ring caught the sunlight - simple and small, elegant, chosen with more thought than he’d ever put into anything in his life, just so it would be perfect for his Max.

Erica stared. Then looked up at him. Then back at the ring.

“Oh my God,” she breathed, as it finally settled in her head that she'd officially be a sister-in-law. “Oh my God!”

“I haven’t asked yet. I just-” He swallowed, now suddenly aware of his heartbeat. “I wanted you to know, first things first.”

Her hands flew to her mouth as she took her time examining the delicate diamond, seeming to ignore what it meant for Lucas for her to give the first go-ahead for such a huge thing to happen in his life. “You’re proposing!”

“Planning to,” he nodded. “Soon, I think.”

She laughed, sharp and bright and wet-eyed. “Man, you’re such a sap!”

“Yeah,” he laughed along. “Thanks, I guess.”

His sister looked at him then - not teasing, not deflecting. Just honest. “So… You’re ready for this?”

Lucas thought of Max’s laugh. Of the way she challenged him. Of their agitated mornings and the hard conversations - the ones that started in hospital beds and ended in silence thick enough to bruise. Of the fact that loving her had never felt like shrinking, only growing - how it never meant pretending they hadn’t lost something along the way, only choosing to stay anyway. How terrified he was to ever spend even a day too far from her.

“I am,” he said. “Scared as hell. But I’m positive, that’s for sure.”

Erica nodded slowly. “You’d make a good husband.”

A beat of silence passed.

“And a great dad, too, of course,” she added more somberly, as if it were obvious - the most normal thing ever to think about. 

The words hit him harder than he expected - he didn't think she'd actually say anything of the sort out loud. The silence lingered between them longer than it should have. Erica didn’t flinch, and neither did he. They’d both learned how to sit with ghosts without naming them.

Lucas wanted it so badly. He could see it, almost feel it, suddenly and vividly, what had been taken away from Max so soon - something solid, chosen. A life built deliberately. A family that knew how to show up.

“Yeah,” he said softly. “I think so.”

She reached out and punched his arm lightly. “Guess we’re really growing up, huh? We should go to a club or something after this, seeing as we never drank together and I'm of legal age now or whatever.”

Before he could answer, their mother’s voice cut across the quad.

“Absolutely not!”

They both turned.

“You’re not dragging my daughter to a club today,” she continued. “Graduation or not.”

“You’re no fun!” Erica pouted loudly.

Lucas laughed, tucking the ring safely away as they headed back toward the noise - toward family, toward celebration, toward whatever came next.

After Erica took her time going up to her colleagues and professors - accepting her handshakes, hugs, and well-deserved praise she so clearly savored - the road trip back to Hawkins finally started around 4 P.M or so. The sun was already sinking, the sky bruised light pinks and oranges as Charles loaded Erica’s last bag from her dorm into the trunk with the kind of care reserved for very fragile things and children you’re proud of.

Indiana stretched ahead of them in long, obedient miles, green and yellow cornfields blurring into one another like they were all part of the same unfinished thought.

His dad had taken the wheel, as usual. Lucas folded himself into the backseat beside Erica, his head tilted uncomfortably toward the ceiling due to his height, his casted wrist propped on a pillow his mom had insisted on bringing, as if it were an absolute medical necessity rather than a mild inconvenience. 

Erica sprawled out shamelessly with her legs open, claiming all the space like she hadn’t just spent four years learning how to survive in a shoebox dorm room with the messiest roommate known to man.

Ten minutes in, the radio crackled and landed on an oldies station.

“Oh, absolutely not,” Erica protested immediately.

Sue turned the volume up in response, unfazed and stubborn, just like her daughter.

Guess she had to get it from somewhere.

Stevie Wonder filled the car, bright and insistent.

Lucas groaned. “You do realize we have ears, right?

“You also have culture,” his dad said, tapping the steering wheel in time. “And you’re about to respect it, young man!”

Their mom harmonized effortlessly, as if she’d never stopped singing in the church choir. Charles sang with confidence and enthusiasm, getting about half the lyrics wrong and all the vibes right (which, really, was the only thing that mattered). Erica held out for thirty seconds exactly before rolling her eyes and belting the bridge like she’d been waiting her whole life for permission.

By the second chorus, they were all singing. Loud. Off-key. Shameless.

Lucas leaned back, laughter bubbling out of him before he could stop it.

The station rolled naturally into Marvin Gaye, The Supremes, and Al Green. Windows cracked open as the darkening road hummed. The car became a time capsule - voices layered, generations overlapping, the past stretching itself comfortably into the present.

About an hour in, when the energy softened into something warmer, Sue twisted around in her seat and tapped Erica’s knee.

“Alright, my little brainiac,” she said. “Your turn. Play something from this century, will you?”

Erica’s smile turned wicked. “Careful. You asked for it.”

She dug into her bag and handed their mom a tape - scratched, hand-labeled, edges worn soft from years of use.

Lucas recognized it instantly.

A mixtape - one he and Erica had made together before she left for college; R&B, hip-hop, pop, blues - songs carefully ordered, argued over, refined. Max had helped with transitions and levels to achieve maximum musical cohesion, insisting that it mattered how one song felt as it slid into the next.

Sue slid it in. Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy” burst through the speakers, bright and buoyant.

“Ah, I love this one!” She said, eventually snapping her fingers to the rhythm.

They were grooving within seconds. Erica danced in her seat, smug. Their mother laughed, clapping along. Even Charles bobbed his head, pretending not to enjoy it too much.

A few tracks in, one of Lucas’s songs came on - Boyz II Men’s “End of the Road.”

The opening harmonies slid softly into the car, smooth and aching, the kind of song that didn’t demand attention so much as ask for it. The rhythm was slow, patient. A song about staying, about refusing to let go even when the ending had already been named.

Lucas felt it settle in his chest the way it always did - heavy, familiar. It reminded him of long nights with the radio turned low, of sitting awake while Max slept in a hospital bed that wasn’t really sleeping at all. Of loving someone quietly, steadily, when there was nothing else to do but wait. The song didn’t dramatize the pain; it held it, the way Lucas had learned to. Calm on the surface, breaking underneath.

The car quieted - not uncomfortably, just attentive.

His dad hummed along under his breath, thoughtful, eyes still on the road. “This one’s yours?”

The boy nodded. “Yeah.”

“It’s good,” his mother said after a moment. “Sad, but good.”

“Figures,” Erica muttered from the backseat - she didn’t reach to change it, though.

Lucas stared out the window as the song played, watching fields give way to trees, thinking about how much music had always meant in his life - how it had been a bridge when words failed him. In his and Max’s house, music wasn’t just background noise. It was a language both of them learned during their teenage years that meant survival. Records playing while grief sat heavy on the couch. Cassette tapes passed back and forth like secrets. Loud enough to drown out what hurt. Soft enough to sit with it.

Loving Max had taught him that music didn’t need to fix anything to matter either - sometimes it just needed to be there.

And he was happy. Really happy. With her. With this - this messy, loud, loving family. With a life that felt solid beneath his feet, even when it scared him a little.

They talked after that. Not in any loaded, dramatic way - just casual banter and threads woven between miles.

Charles and Lucas talked about the next basketball season. Sue talked about work, about a promotion she might finally get, and whether she even wanted it anymore. 

Erica talked about grad school. About staying in Indiana. About maybe not.

Lucas talked about his time in Chicago. Thinking about possibly teaching in the future. About how some days he felt exactly where he was supposed to be - and others like he’d missed an exit miles back and was too stubborn to admit it.

At one point, Max came up - not dropped into the conversation so much as eased into it, the way you might test the temperature of water with your toes before stepping in and taking a dive.

His mother was the one who said her name, eyes still on the road ahead through the windshield. “How’s Max doing? I really wish she'd been able to come…”

He could feel Erica looking knowingly at him, observing his next steps through the dance that was this conversation. 

“She’s good,” he settled for - the word practiced, careful. “Busy with her patients. Still pretending she doesn’t need sleep. Still better at pretending she’s fine than anyone I know.”

Erica snorted softly. “Shocking!”

Lucas smiled, fond despite himself. “Her body's been better too; she doesn't feel nearly as much pain as she did back when her physical therapy first started, so that's good. We’re-” He hesitated, then let it come out naturally. “Great, actually. Living together’s been… nice. Like we finally stopped running on borrowed time. Of course, some days are easier than others, but...” Through the rearview mirror, he took a glance at his father. “That’s the job, right?”

Erica didn’t joke this time. She just nodded once, small and deliberate, like they’d agreed once ago on how much of the truth belonged to the people outside their little bubble.

Charles huffed a laugh from the driver’s seat, shaking his head in an amused fashion.

“See, I’d tell you to be mindful of them white girls,” he said, teasing but not unkind, “but it’s pretty clear that one already’s got you hooked.”

“Dad!” Lucas groaned automatically, heat creeping up his neck.

“I’m just saying,” his father went on, grinning, eyes still on the road. “Whatever she did, she did it right. You ain’t been this settled ever since you were a kid.”

Sue reached over and swatted her husband’s arm lightly with a smile. “Charles!”

“What?” He protested. “I like Maxine - that’s high praise, just so you know.”

Lucas laughed under his breath, shaking his head. “You’re unbelievable.”

“Unbelievably correct,” Erica chimed in, smirking. “You are down bad.”

“Et tu, Brute?” He shot back, earning a bark of laughter from his dad.

Sue glanced at him in the rearview mirror, her expression warm and knowing in a way that made his throat tighten. “I’m glad,” she said. “You’ve always been better when you’re not alone.”

“Yeah,” Charles added. “That girl grounds you.”

Lucas thought of mornings in their shared kitchen. Of Max, half-asleep, bright orange hair a mess, leaning into his space like it was second nature. Of her laugh echoing off the walls that finally felt like home. Of the ring, safe in his pocket.

“She does,” he agreed softly.

The road stretched on, darkening as the sun slipped fully below the horizon. Headlights cut through the dusk. The mixtape rolled into other songs, switching genres. Backstreet Boys, TLC, Jackson Five - the works. The rhythm of the tires against the asphalt was steady enough that Lucas’s thoughts began to drift despite himself.

The boy rested his head back against the seat, one hand curling unconsciously over his cast, the other imagining the future in shapes he was almost brave enough to name. A proposal. A yes. A life built properly, carefully, with love and patience and room to grow.

For the first time in a while, he let himself think about the few, passing moments he’d ever thought about leaving.

Not because he wanted distance from Max, but because staying had started to feel like holding his breath. Like bracing for something that never quite happened, but always threatened to and broke both of them to hope for. She had been doing better, slowly. The kind of better that revealed itself in careful increments: answering calls without long silences, sleeping through the night more often than not, laughing without immediately shrinking back afterward. He’d learned with time not to name the improvement out loud, only celebrate it silently. Some things still felt too fragile to speak.

Still, the worry never left. It lived in the quiet moments - the way she sometimes stared too long at nothing, how her voice softened when she thought he wasn’t listening. Healing wasn’t a straight line; they, of all people, knew that better than anyone. They’d lived long enough in the aftermath of things to understand it.

The thought of stepping away, even temporarily, always twisted something in his chest. It didn’t feel like choosing himself - it felt like testing whether love could survive being out of reach, and what the hell would he do that for, anyway?

He knew love didn’t guarantee safety - they’d already learned that in the most painful ways possible - but he also knew that walking away had never saved either of them.

He didn’t say any of it out loud; he didn't want to jinx it.

But for the first time in a long time, he didn’t feel like he was in bated breath, outrunning what came next.

The road hummed beneath them. The music kept playing.

And for a while - just a while - the future didn’t feel like something to fear, but to look forward to, to embrace.

Chapter Text

May 1st, 1997

Brooklyn, New York City

Mike Wheeler woke up with a headache and the taste of regret - a routine that had stopped feeling temporary sometime in the early ’90s, if he was being honest.

The memories of last night came in flashes rather than a full picture: laughter too loud to be sincere, a bar he’d sworn off quite a few times, the burn of cheap whiskey, someone’s hand on his arm. He remembered thinking, briefly, thinking he should stop. He didn’t remember actually doing it, though.

Sunlight leaked in through his crooked, yellow blinds, cutting thin, accusatory stripes across the unmade bed. The city was already alive outside - loud and impatient as always, unconcerned with whether he was ready for it. 

He wasn’t, as a matter of fact.

Mike lay there longer than he should’ve, staring at a wine stain on his wall - vaguely Kansas, if you were high enough - that he’d noticed about a year ago, but hadn’t fixed yet. Hadn’t fixed much of anything lately, really.

His flip-phone buzzed on the nightstand. After silencing the alarm he’d snoozed twice already, he stared at the stack of missed messages, calls, and voicemails: Nancy. Holly. Hopper. Work. Someone from NYU he hadn’t spoken to in years. Rehab. He flipped the device face down.

“Fuck,” he groaned, dragging a hand down his face as if he could physically wipe the everlasting exhaustion off.

When he sat up on the edge of the bed, the room tilted just enough to make his stomach lurch. Not drunk, not exactly - just unsteady. His body was still catching up to decisions his brain had made without it, and hadn’t quite forgiven him for last night yet (or the night before).

His time through puberty had felt like that; clumsy and lanky, as his limbs had grown faster than his sense of where to put them. College hadn’t fixed it so much as reframed it. Hanging around people who were already on the margins - the weird ones, who didn’t pretend to be normal - had helped; with them, being awkward wasn’t a failure, it was just another way of existing.

Exploring the city back then had felt like permission to be strange. To be true, the way he failed to do so when he was a kid. To want more things he hadn’t had words for yet. 

It had also been a very fast track to routines that felt exciting until they weren’t.

The apartment was small, even by Brooklyn standards. After college and his less-than-ideal adult life shenanigans, all he could score was a one-bedroom that didn’t feel lived in so much as occupied. A place he passed through eventually, between nights out he regretted and early mornings he didn’t remember agreeing to.

A mattress that sat on the oldest metal frame of the entirety of New York, a brown couch that smelled faintly of smoke and old takeout, a kitchenette that always carried the ghost of burnt coffee (because he never stayed long or felt hungry enough to cook anything resembling an actual meal). A partially separated living room, with a desk against the wall, buried under his legal pads, crosswords, newspaper columns, and old comics. A wobbly shelf that held his multiple paperbacks - Joan Didion, Baldwin, Stephen King, Kerouac, Susan Sontag, a battered copy of The Sun Also Rises that he kept meaning to reread and never did. Books he thought he should love - books that reminded him of who he thought he’d be by now.

Color came from two places: classic movie posters scattered everywhere, and Will’s painting, propped carefully against the main wall like the main piece of the pitiful work of art that was his house. He didn’t look at it too long, never did.

After high school, young Mike had understood it for what it really was, far too late - a confession disguised as something else, an offering he hadn’t yet known how to accept without lying to himself about the true meaning of it. 

Now, a painful reminder of what could’ve been.

In the bathroom, his reflection looked older than twenty-six. Not dramatically so, just… worn. Tired. The kind of tiredness that settled into your eyes and refused to leave. A faint yellow bruise bloomed along his deep collarbone - from bumping into something, or someone, he couldn’t quite place.

Good start, Wheeler.

He splashed water on his face, brushed his teeth too fast, skipped shaving. Pulled on a wrinkled light blue button-down that smelled faintly of grease and smoke. Told himself he’d do laundry tonight, knowing fully well he wouldn’t. Put on his cracked slick office glasses.

Coffee was a non-negotiable, obviously. He burned it slightly, given that he couldn't focus enough and always walked away halfway through brewing it. Poured in too much sugar, trying to drown the bitterness, hoping it might help. It didn’t.

Standing in front of the fridge, he sipped as he stared at the yellowed photos taped to it. One caught his eye like it always did - the one with him, his sister, and friends at the Snow Ball. Hawkins, ‘85. El smiled as if the world had, only then, finally been kind to her. He, with his arm around her shoulders, terrified, too young to know how badly you could fuck things up and hurt people without meaning to.

Now that he was older, he knew all about that.

At some point, someone - probably one of his sisters - had suggested to him, gently, that he should take it down, as it might help with the grief. Like it was just a wound you could air out and disinfect instead of something that sank into the bones and stayed there, low-grade and permanent. 

Mike had promised to think about it at the time - nodded along, even. He had never actually done it.

Some mornings, he could look at it without flinching. This wasn’t one of those.

He finished the coffee, even as it went lukewarm in his hands. The bitterness lingered at the back of his tongue, stubborn and familiar - he wondered, not for the first time, whether he actually liked it that way or if he’d just gotten used to enduring things instead of fixing them.

Mike’s jacket lay slung over the back of a chair, pockets heavy with last night: crumpled bills, a matchbook from some club in the East Village he barely remembered leaving, a stranger’s number written on his wrist in faded ink. 

He stared at it for a moment, trying to summon something - regret, satisfaction, embarrassment. What he felt instead was blank, like the moment after a punch lands, before your body has decided how much it hurts yet.

That was the pattern, too. Bars. Drinks. Easy people who didn’t require anything of him and didn’t ask any questions. People who didn’t expect anything - didn’t know his history, didn’t look at him like they were remembering the old Mike.

Sometimes he wasn’t even Mike  - and it was simpler that way. 

He could be charming in short bursts. He could be reckless. He could be confident and attractive. He could be whatever they wanted him to be, for some hours, and then leave before anyone asked for any more. 

People who didn’t look at him like they remembered a version of him he’d failed to become.

He told himself that meant he was fine. 

The lie had started small, manageable, then it grew teeth.

Mike washed the number off his skin and checked his phone again, half-expecting - half-dreading - something. Another missed call from his family. A message he’d looked over. There was nothing else, just the date blinking back at him, the reminder of another day he had to move through, whether he wanted to or not.

New York had been his idea. That was the cruelest part of it.

He’d told himself he needed the space. That Hawkins was a closed loop he couldn’t breathe inside anymore. That El’s absence pressed in too hard there, filled every room with echoes. That remembering the life he lived with Will by his side all the time only hurt. 

New York, he’d decided, would be loud enough to drown that out. 

As a teenager, it had sounded like salvation. Reinvention. A place where you could try on versions of yourself without the past probing at the seams. Where being strange wasn’t a liability, just another flavor. Mike had imagined himself normal there - or at least convincingly close to it - a guy with opinions, friends, a life that moved forward instead of folding in on itself.

And at first, it almost worked.

The city made space for curiosity. For bars where no one was weirded out when you stared too long. For parties that felt electric, dangerous, and freeing all at once. For whimsy, emotion, and realness. For people who lived fast and loud and unapologetically on the margins - artists, sex workers, addicts, kids who’d already learned the world wasn’t built with them in mind. Mike fit there better than he ever did back home, it seemed.

But permission, like everything else, came with a price.

It took him a very long time to admit that the same openness that allowed him to breathe also made everything riskier. A lesson long taught by life he thought he’d never need to remember again - being genuine didn’t make you safe, it just made you even more visible. 

Danny had learned it the hard way.

After that - and every other fucked-up thing that happened throughout the past years - New York stopped feeling like an answer and started feeling like something he couldn’t leave for the life of him.

He missed home sometimes - the idea of it he had back when he was a child, at least. But there was nothing to go back to that needed him. 

Slowly, but surely, Hawkins had learned how to function without Mike Wheeler. 

Everyone did, eventually.

Needless to say, after everything this hell of a city put him through, NYC had left him feeling drowned, alright. In the best and worst ways.

What he hadn’t admitted - what he still barely let himself think about, most of the time - was that Will was somewhere out here.

Not with him, never with him. But here. 

Somewhere in the same sprawling grid of streets, he was living a life Mike had watched from a distance - casual run-ins with siblings, secondhand stories from other friends and colleagues, and an at least partially shared social circle. Phone calls that grew shorter, then rarer, then stopped altogether. 

Relationships. Academic, social, professional, emotional.

Personal. Intimate. Raw.

Mike had told himself that it was normal; people drifted apart. That Will had moved on, had found something - someone - better suited for him in every sense of the word.

He’d told himself his friend’s life was good - better, even - without him ruining it.

Some days, he almost believed that.

The boy shrugged into his jacket, winced as the rough fabric brushed the tender bruise on his collarbone, and grabbed his keys. The legal pad on his desk caught his eye as he passed, a sentence half-written hastily at the top of the page:

Grief isn’t loud. It just refuses to leave.

Mike hesitated, fingers hovering, then tore the bit of page off and stuffed it into his pocket like he might need proof later that he’d once known how to actually say something true.

The drive to work was uneventful in the way only New York could make uneventful feel loud. Horns. Steam rising from grates. A woman yelling at a man who was definitely not listening. 

He moved through it on autopilot, shoulders hunched, mind somewhere else entirely - stopping when the lights told him to, going when they didn’t, letting the city carry him forward without ever really asking where he was headed. He missed a turn and didn’t bother correcting it until two blocks later.

Work sure as hell didn’t help.

The publishing office was everything it claimed to be and nothing it promised, sitting in a squat building with peeling paint and delusions of literary grandeur. Independent, prestigious, underpaid. The kind of place that survived on grants, ego, and the stubborn belief that literature still mattered if you cared hard enough. Mike liked to tell people he worked in “editorial,” which sounded better than admitting he was an assistant editor for a midlist imprint that specialized in books no one ever bought and even fewer people finished.

When he first began college, he was fine with tutoring high school kids and helping college students with essays for some extra cash - Mike, the local weirdo, soon found out, though, that it was pretty humiliating to beg the mouthbreathers on his campus for work opportunities, considering he wasn’t very popular (or liked, for that matter). Being in and out of the psych ward for most of the time surely didn't help maintain his clientele either - soon enough, he had to find a real job to pay for the pretty big expenses that came with his existence.

He swiped in, nodded at the people whose names he knew but whose lives he didn’t, and dropped into his chair like it might open up and make him finally disappear. The desk in front of him was cluttered with manuscripts in various stages of neglect. Red pen caps chewed down to nubs. Coffee rings bleeding into galley proofs. A blinking voicemail light he ignored, because anything important would come back around eventually - and anything else could wait. His inbox filled steadily with requests for feedback, revisions, reassurance.

Mike was very good at making other people sound smarter and more important than they really were. That, more than anything, made his chest ache.

He spent his mornings fixing commas in someone else’s sentences while his own words rotted, untouched. Smoothed out clunky metaphors. Trimmed excess adverbs. Gently suggested stronger verbs in the margins, as if he still believed precision could save anything. 

As if he hadn’t quietly accepted that his best contribution to literature might be cleaning up after the shit people who still believed in themselves did.

How ironic was that?

There had been a time when he thought this was just a step. Editorial work as proximity, an apprenticeship. He’d imagined himself absorbing talent by osmosis, learning how books worked from the inside until one day he’d sit down, and it would finally click.

Instead, for years, he’d been feeling like he’d hit a wall. A clean, unyielding one.

Burnt out. Talentless and tasteless. A guy who knew exactly what didn’t work on the page and couldn’t, for the life of him, figure out what did.

Every so often, he caught himself staring out the window, watching people on the sidewalk below, all of them in motion, all of them seemingly convinced they were going somewhere that mattered. His reflection hovered faintly over the glass, a ghost superimposed on the city.

His thoughts drifted the way they always did when he wasn’t careful.

Eleven.

There was a folder on his home computer with her name on it - it had been there for years. Drafts stacked on drafts: false starts, fragments, scenes that circled the same moments over and over again, like they were afraid to move forward. He’d tried to write her story more than once, seriously. Tried to make it make sense. Tried to give it weight and meaning and a shape that didn’t feel cruel like the reality did.

But he’d never known how to end it.

Heroes were supposed to survive, or at least be mourned properly. El had done neither. She’d just been… erased. And every ending Mike tried felt like a lie. Too neat. Too redemptive. Too hollow to carry the truth of her.

So the document stayed unfinished. Just like him.

And then there was Will.

The way his name still landed in Mike’s chest like a bruise you kept pressing just to see if it still hurt. 

It very much did.

Like proof that some things never really healed, they just dulled enough to function around.

At lunch, a nice, pretty coworker - Jenna, if he was correct - invited him to go grab a sandwich and some coffee - asked casually, kindly, like it wasn’t a loaded thing. Mike smiled and lied through his teeth, said he had plans. She nodded, unbothered, already halfway turned away, which somehow stung more than if she’d pressed him on it. 

He ate a tiny, old bagel at his desk instead, dry and tasteless, chewing without appetite. Scrolled through nothing in particular - headlines, the missed calls he hadn’t yet been able to convince himself to return, an article about a debut novelist way younger than him with a seven-figure advance. He opened a blank document, fingers hovering, pulse ticking loud in his ears.

For a second, he thought about typing El’s name at the top.

Then he closed it again.

By three, he’d made a decision that felt inevitable, settling into him like gravity.

By five, he’d justified it with a neat stack of pros - blamed it on stress, grief, routine, the city itself - even though he had an even bigger list of cons.

By six, he was already on his way, jacket on, keys in hand, telling himself he’d only have one drink. Just to take the edge off. Just to feel normal for a few hours.

Just enough to forget the wall, just enough to stop thinking about the things he had no control over.

The Abbey was loud, familiar, and forgiving. It didn’t ask questions. It never did.

It was one of the few bars in Brooklyn that was diverse in backgrounds, gay-friendly, and relatively cheap, so he spent quite some time there - enough to be familiar with some of the more present locals and bartenders. After passing through rehab - in flying colors, might he add - twice now, he didn't always use it as an excuse to drink, only doing that on occasion, but he always found time to people-watch while there.

He recognized faces. Some nods, half-smiles. The comfort of being known, but not too much.

That’s when he noticed him.

Light brown hair. Sharp nose. Something familiar in the way he stood.

They didn’t talk at first, just looked. Shared glances heavy enough to pass for meaning if you wanted them to, which Mike did.

When they finally did speak, it was clipped. Minimal. Names exchanged and immediately forgotten. An unspoken agreement not to ask anything that might make this too honest.

Up close, the resemblance hit him harder than he expected.

Not the face exactly, but the posture. The quiet intensity. The broad shoulders, moles in the back of his neck, and the way he seemed to fold inward when people got too near him.

If Mike squinted hard enough, he could pretend.

By the time the cheapest booze he could put his hands on burned its way down his throat and the guy leaned close enough to smell like cigarettes and a good time, Mike Wheeler was already slipping into the version of himself he pretended not to recognize.

The one who didn’t mind not thinking, who didn’t mind being wanted for five minutes, as long as it meant not wanting something impossible.

Now outside, pressed against brick and neon and city noise, Mike kissed harder than he meant to.  He always did that - overcorrected, that is. Leaned in too fast, always trying to convince himself he wanted this more than he actually did. Granted, he was pretty tipsy, so it wasn't hard to fool himself into doing this like he always did.

He tasted like stale bagels, alcohol, and someone else’s aftershave and cigarettes - he did his best to pretend he didn’t really mind.

The guy had him pressed up against the wall, one hand braced near Mike’s head, the other warm and confident at his painfully thin waist, snaking around the loop of his jeans and the cup of his backside. It was loud inside - way too loud - so they’d spilled out onto the street where the city breathed around them; bustling commerce, taxis honking, laughter and conversations ricocheting down the block like static.

This mystery dude - Evan, maybe? Or Eric, he hadn't really paid attention - made a pleased sound into Mike’s mouth, clearly encouraged. The ravenette let himself be crowded, let the press of another body ground him in something physical, uncomplicated. This was easy. Normal, even. This was what people did when they weren’t stuck in the past, right?

Someone whistled from across the street in a wolfish manner. Mike pulled back just long enough to grin, sharp and practiced, ignoring any possible danger. It's not like he ever had a good sense of self-preservation, anyway.

“What, you jealous?” He called, breathless, lips red and swollen, like he owned the moment.

The guy laughed, flushed, impressed. 

Mike leaned back in, let the kiss resume - slower now, deliberate, coaxing the other to put his hand on the back of his long, black hair and pull on it slightly.

And still, it wasn’t enough.

Because even like this, with another man’s mouth on his, Mike’s brain betrayed him the way it always did - filling the quiet spaces with lived memory.

Will’s hands, careful and ink-stained. Hovering like they never quite knew where they were allowed to land. The silkiness of his hair. The small sound of his breath.

Mike purred as he felt the guy's hands pulling on his hair, lips slipping into his neck and biting down on the soft flesh, sucking it passionately, like he wanted to leave proof. He could already feel the hickey forming, his skin tingling.

And then -

El's brown eyes, wide and shining, as she looked at him like he was the best thing to ever happen to her. Her tears. The last time they'd ever held each other, their last kiss. Her disappearing in the abyss, his throat raw and bloody from screaming.

Mike shoved the guy away - not hard enough to hurt, but enough to put some distance between them - with his breath uneven, eyes blown wide with something nearing panic.

“Hey,” the other said, confused but not seeming offended. “You good?”

“Yeah,” Mike said way too quickly. He stepped back, raking a hand through his thick hair as the cool night air hit his flushed skin. “Yeah, sure. Just - air. I needed it.”

Mystery man bit his lip in a tiny, predatory chuckle.

“Y’know,” he said, stepping closer again while he took something out of his pocket. He could see a transparent baggie with some colorful pills in the dim lighting. “I was wondering if you wanna come back to mine. We could have some fun, what do you think?”

Mike felt his gaze fix on his hands, pupils dilating. For a second - just a second - he considered it; the relief of not thinking, of letting nothing matter as his body swayed mindlessly with the euphoria of a thousand suns like it did when he was younger.

That feeling of ultimate bliss when it first hit his nervous system and the ghost of it when it left - the luxury of not worrying. Of something even stronger than forgetting. 

Then he also remembered waking up under the fluorescent lights. Holly crying. His mother, not letting go of his hand, prayed under her breath. Nancy, sounding dead serious on the phone while her - now dry - mascara smeared her cheeks and she paced around the blindingly white room.

Truth was, after the first few times, Mike didn't really do hookups with people he didn't know well anymore. After how much damage the AIDS crisis did - how so many people around him were sick or dead - and how dangerous the streets had been for queer people in that decade, he figured it was best to just play it safe. 

He wasn't that irresponsible anymore. He knew he couldn’t keep doing that to his family.

Sex also demanded intimacy. Something he hadn't, for the life of him, managed to build with any resemblance of honesty with another human being lately.

“Ah, actually…” Mike scratched the back of his neck, the bravado draining out of him all at once as he reluctantly turned his eyes away from the drugs. “I gotta work early tomorrow, so…I’m good. Thanks, but no thanks.”

The guy shrugged, already losing interest. Oh, how Mike missed the times when people at least had the decency of pretending they didn't just want a quick fuck. “Whatever happened to romance?” he wondered - then he quickly remembered he was in New York City.

“Your loss,” he bit, already walking away.

Mike rolled his eyes and scoffed, knowing if the guy had to compensate with such a huge ego, he probably wasn't missing out on much in bed anyway. “Yeah, right.”

He watched as the man disappeared back into the bar, already scanning for his next distraction. Mike stayed where he was, hands shoved into his jacket pockets as he searched for a cigarette, pulse slowly settling as he managed to settle his heartbeat and knowingly avoided his phone, scared of doing something stupid.

He hated how easy this had become.

How effortless it was to slip into bars in the Village or Alphabet City, flirt like it was sport, let people assume he was confident, unattached, uncomplicated. New York made it possible. Encouraged it, even. Nobody asked questions unless you invited them in.

Mike never did, of course.

He’d known - painfully so - that he wasn’t straight long before he ever had any language for it. Long before New York. Long before bars like this. He’d known it the moment he realized what he felt for Will wasn’t just friendship stretched thin, but something else entirely. Something raw. Something he couldn’t just pretend away.

Coming to New York - the not-so-lovingly nicknamed Land of Fairies - had helped him on his self-discovery journey. For nearly five years now, Mike had made peace with being a bisexual man, although that “peace” had come late, and it had come bruised.

At first, the realization had felt like a verdict. Something that explained too much at once - the shame, the distance, the awkwardness, the second-guessing, the quiet certainty that he was already doing life wrong, no matter how many opportunities he had or how hard he tried to fix things. 

He’d tried to hate it out of himself. Tried to bury it under fruitless dates with girls, grades, work, substances, proximity to people who already seemed effortlessly certain of who they were. 

It didn’t help with his self-acceptance that the people he was close to in the city were the ones most at risk. Queer, broke, undocumented, hurt, sick, dealing, surviving. Mike had watched enough of them disappear - into hospitals, prisons, graves - to understand, viscerally, that this wasn’t abstract. That it could easily be him. 

That, sometimes, it was him, just differently so.

And still, refusing it had felt worse. Like erasing himself on purpose. Like turning his back on the same kind of outcasts he’d grown up with in Hawkins. Like turning his back on Will.

So he eventually stopped fighting that part. Not because it got easier, but because it was the only thing that felt honest about him, really.

It stopped being a problem a long time ago, despite his early and spectacular efforts to hate himself for it. Truth be told, he’d had far more compelling reasons to loathe himself back then.

If anything, it felt grounding now, even - some of his favorite writers, artists, and thinkers were queer, and seeing what they’d built and the lives they’d lived gave him a quiet sense of pride. As if they could be themselves and still matter. 

As if maybe he could, too.

That didn’t mean his love life had magically sorted itself out.

Contrary to popular belief, twice the gender did not mean twice the game. Outside of a few college flings, failed situationships, colorful friendships, and nights like this - bar link-ups that burned bright and fizzled fast - Mike hadn’t had a serious relationship ever since El.

And that wasn’t on accident.

El had died a hero. That was how everyone remembered her: brave, selfless, powerful. Gone too soon.

Mike remembered the girl who had been lonely and confused and trying so hard to be normal for him. He remembered how often he’d spoken for her instead of listening. Truly listening. How fiercely he’d loved her - and how clumsily so. Like raw devotion alone could make up for all the things he sure as hell didn’t know how to give.

Eleven had been remembered for what she gave up.

Mike was remembered - when he was remembered at all - for what he kept surviving against his will.

She’d deserved better, so New York City had been his penance.

He told himself it was about school - NYU’s spectacular English program, the city’s literary gravity, the idea of becoming someone who told stories instead of just surviving them.

But that was only part of it. The other part had a name.

Will Byers.

He'd been ecstatic when he knew he and Will would go to college in NYC at the same time, hoping that maybe they could be closer again, less distant than they were after teenage Mike realized his love for El wasn't enough to fill the Byers-shaped hole in his heart and decided it was for the best if they drifted apart.

While coming to terms with his sexuality was painful, it was fairly easy compared to coming to terms with the fact that the boy would never be his.

At the end of the day, Will had moved on, and Mike was stuck. 

He flicked his cigarette away and got into his car without thinking too hard about it.

He probably shouldn’t have been driving.

He knew that. The thought surfaced lazily, like the many other silent warning labels life had thrown at him and he’d chosen to peel off years ago. He turned the radio way too loud on Sublime’s “Wrong Way” to drown his thoughts, belting the lyrics as he rolled the window down, letting the city blur past him in streaks of red, yellow, and white.

Somewhere between Brooklyn and wherever the hell he was going - Manhattan, maybe? He didn’t really know why, though - his phone rang. Mike glanced at the screen and answered too fast, before he could stop himself. He sighed deeply and put the device to his ear.

“Nancy,” the boy said, voice slurred just enough to give him away.

There was a pause on the other end - certainly not the relieved kind.

“Michael, hi,” his older sister said carefully. “Where are you?”

He rolled the window down further, letting the night air slap his face as it brushed his too-long dark fringe away from his eyes. “Out.”

“That’s not an answer.”

He huffed a laugh. “Oh, so you called to interrogate me, then?”

“I called because you haven’t picked up in three weeks, actually, so I thought I’d check just in case you were somewhere dead in a ditch,” she shot back, worry sharpened into rapidly increasing irritation. “You have a phone, Mike. An actual, honest-to-God, expensive phone. Holly keeps asking me if you’re mad at her or something. What did we say about communication?”

“Well, now that’s not dramatic at all,” he muttered with a slight chuckle, trying to pretend the thought of his little sister so worried and guilty about his chronic avoidantness didn’t shatter his heart in the slightest.

“You moved hours away from everyone. And that’s fine, we gladly gave you your space, but then…” The younger sibling resisted the urge to groan loudly, bracing himself for the usual irritating - although very deserved - sermon. “Then you went through hell and back, and we gladly went through all that with you, too, just in case you’d forgotten,” she said pointedly before continuing. “Then you always acted as if nothing happened, just to basically disappear. That has been your M.O. for years now, Mike.”

He could hear the sadness behind his sister’s huffs. Even if he was tired of having to go through this, she probably was, too. It’s not like he could blame her; he had been a handful all his life.

“You don’t write, you don’t visit any of us anymore,” Nancy continued, sighing. “You barely call anyone, and when you do answer the phone, you sound like this.”

“Like what, exactly?”

“Like you’re halfway gone.”

Mike swallowed. The radio crackled softly between stations, voices bleeding into static.

“I’m fine,” he managed to push out. “I’ve just… been busy.”

“Oh, yeah?” His older sister barked out a bitter laugh. “Doing what, Molly? Blow? What is it this time, Mike?”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Nancy,” Mike felt his face heat up - partly in shame, partly because he felt offended. He didn’t know why he even bothered going through the effort of trying when people already thought he’d failed anyway. As if living with the knowledge of the things drugs had done to him - and made him do to the people close to him - wasn’t punishment enough. “I'm not doing coke anymore! Or anything, for that matter. I need you to let it go, for fuck’s sake…”

“Let it go?” Nancy huffed, tone finally going up after holding herself all that time. “Are you fucking kidding me, Mike?! We needed to put you in an institution. Twice. People had no idea where you were that whole time, Holly and Mom thought you were dead. I thought you were dead! So no, I'm not letting it go.”

The road ahead blurred slightly, red lights streaking. The white lines on the asphalt began to smear together, stretching and snapping back like elastic. For a split second, the dashboard lights felt too bright - fluorescent, almost - and his wrists prickled with a memory he didn’t invite in.

White rooms. Plastic mattresses. Those pesky paper gowns that never quite closed fully in the back. The sound of all those doors locking behind him, not violently, just… decisively. It tormented him constantly - all those times he felt like a lab rat, an animal trapped in a cage to be studied and controlled.

He’d figured it was probably what he deserved, anyway. 

Mike tightened his grip on the steering wheel, sweat slicking his palms. His breathing went shallow, uneven, like his body was bracing for something it recognized even if he didn’t want to. He could feel the knot in his throat tighten until it was hard to breathe.

Nancy exhaled, interpreting his tense silence as a form of silent shame. “Mike… You know I won’t judge if you’re sleeping your way through New York or drinking too much or lying to yourself, pretending everything’s okay. Truly, if it helps you in any semblance of a healthy manner, go for it. I just care that you’re doing it alone, in silence. I’m worried you’re going to end up hurting yourself.”

Again.

“I’m not pretending anything!” He finally snapped, voice shaky, then rapidly softened. “I mean - sorry. I just… I’m okay, Nance. Really.”

She didn’t buy it. He could tell.

“You always say that right before you do something really stupid,” she said quietly. “You always push until something breaks. Usually you.”

Mike tightened his jaw. He remembered his times in the hospital, the weight of the bindings on his scarred wrists, the burning of the fluorescent lights, the shame of making everyone worry, and having to hide once again.

“That’s not fair.”

“It is,” she said, more careful - still scolding, but softer now. “You’ve always done this. You disappear into yourself, hoping nobody notices. Or worse - hope they do and can’t do anything to stop you.”

The words hit closer than he liked. He sensed the prickling behind his eyes before he could feel the single tear running down his cheek

“I’m not a kid anymore,” he said, eyes flicking to a yellow light ahead. “I know what I’m doing, and I can handle myself.”

“I know,” Nancy replied, her voice suddenly small. “That’s exactly what scares me.”

Silence stretched between them, heavy and intimate in a way only siblings could manage. Nancy had run out of points to make, and Mike didn’t have any more of his already memorized excuses.

“Jonathan said hi,” she added gently, as if changing the subject might make it any better. “We talked earlier. He asked about you. I'm - uh - thinking of coming into the city sometime soon. Maybe dinner. If you want.” 

Mike’s chest tightened as he swatted away the other tears threatening to roll down his face. 

“Yeah,” he said, voice small and noncommittal as always. “Sure. That’d be… nice, I guess.”

Another pause.

“You sound tired,” his sister said.

The younger sibling had to hold back the snappy “No shit” he had reserved for that one.

“I am.”

An ambulance raced past his car, the sirens obnoxiously loud and absolutely giving him away.

“Are you driving?”

Mike hesitated. Just long enough to make himself seem suspicious (as he usually does to his family).

“…Yeah.”

“Michael.”

“I’m not drunk!” He automatically defended himself, immediately flinching at his poor choice of words.

Not what she asked.

“What the hell? Pull over, Mike!” Nancy said immediately.

“I’m fine, Nance.”

“Pull. Over.”

“I said I'm fine!”

“And I said, pull over! Right now!”

The aggravating sound of his sister’s voice made his ears ring as the red light ahead bloomed suddenly in his vision, his brain processing it a few seconds too late. He slammed down the brake.

The jolt was sharp but small, manageable - a bump more than a crash.

“Man, what the…” Mike groaned, heart hammering in a mix of adrenaline and blooming rage. “I just bought this goddamn… Nan, I’ll call you back, I promise. I’m sorry!”

“Micha-!” She heard her protest, to no avail, as he hung up.

The radio hissed, the music now cut off. His hands trembled on the wheel as he ran a little past the light and pulled over, irritation flaring hot and misplaced as he shoved the door open and stepped out into the street, already rehearsing whatever apology-turned-ass-chewing he was about to deliver to whoever had done this to his brand new car.

Then he heard it - that voice.

Soft. Familiar. Apologetic in a way that made his chest cave in.

“Oh my God, I’m so, so sorry, I-”

The sound of it hit him like a punch.

Mike froze in his steps.

Not sobered, per se, only contained. Like something volatile inside him had been sealed off by mere instinct alone.

Will.

For a split second, his brain tried to protect him - offered absurd alternatives. Someone who simply sounded like him, a coincidence. Memory misfiring and playing tricks on him the way it always did when he drank too much and thought too hard.

But there were some sounds you couldn't forget.

Will Byers apologizing had always sounded like that: gentle, loaded, instinctive, like he believed the world was already mad at him and he was just trying to stay ahead of it.

Mike’s fingers loosened around the car door.

Slowly - carefully, like one wrong move might make this real - he turned.

Seeing Will like this felt disorienting, like running into a childhood dream that had kept growing after you woke up.

Will Byers stood a few feet away, hands half-raised, posture apologetic without trying. His hair was a bit longer than the last time he saw him, now parted differently. He looked good in a way Mike didn’t let himself linger on - a soft white jacket with faint paint smudges at the cuff, light blue jeans worn just right. He was taller than Mike remembered, nearly his height now, broader through the shoulders, his softness rearranged rather than lost. That nervous shyness had eased into something steadier, something learned. He still looked kind - devastatingly so - and timid, but not breakable - not the way he’d been before.

He seemed… older. Settled. Not untouched by everything that had happened, by any means - Mike, of all people, knew better than that - but no longer bent inward. Like someone who had learned how to exist without constantly apologizing for taking up space and learned how to stand proudly in his own body after a lifetime of feeling like he didn't deserve the light of day.

Like someone who had fought hard for peace and then kept it.

Mike’s chest seized.

“Oh,” he breathed, because apparently that was the full extent of his vocabulary now.

Will blinked. Once, then twice. Surprise flickered - then something warmer, brighter - before something more guarded slid gently into place.

“Mike,” he said, quieter this time, as if he was scared that saying it might make it true, breaking the moment. “I- I didn’t realize it was you, I swear. The light changed so fast, and-”

Mike waved a hand vaguely, cutting him off before Will could spiral himself to death.

“No, it’s- I mean, I should’ve stopped sooner, sorry. I was-”

Drunk, his brain helpfully supplied.

“Distracted,” he finished instead.

Which was true, just not in the way Will probably assumed.

A passed beat. Then another.

The city rushed around them in its usual chaos, but the space between them felt suspended, sealed off. 

Will glanced at the front of his car, then back at Mike. 

His eyes lingered - not openly or indulgently, but long enough to notice. Mike’s mouth, faintly swollen and red. The angry, fresh hickey on his neck. The bruise peeking from his collarbone. The stubble. The hollowed-out tiredness beneath his eyes.

Concern crept into Will’s expression before he could hide it.

“Oh,” he said softly.

Mike felt it land anyway. Not simple awkwardness or judgment - rather, something like recognition.

“Yeah,” he muttered, because apparently he was officially incapable of full sentences now.

They both laughed then - short, mismatched, brittle. The sound of two people trying to remember how to stand in the same orbit without falling into old gravity wells.

“I can’t believe it’s you,” Will said finally. “I mean, I knew you lived here - New York isn’t that big, you had to be around here somewhere - but…”

The writer tried not to think too closely about the fact that Will had thought about his presence at all for the last few years, a warm smile tugging at his lips.

“But you didn’t think you’d run into me while rear-ending my car?” He supplied dryly with a bit of humor.

Will winced. “I really am sorry about that. I can pay for it, of course.”

Mike glanced at the barely-there scuff on his silver bumper. He could’ve pretended it mattered, but chose not to.

“Nah, don’t worry about it, it’s fine,” he said. And then, because he was incapable of leaving things alone: “Trust me, I’ve done worse.”

Will smiled - cautious, measured - like he wasn’t sure just how much of Mike he was allowed to see anymore, how far he could go, and how much he should hold back.

“Yeah,” he said, with no real bite. “I can tell.”

That stung more than it should have.

Mike shoved his hands into his jacket’s pockets, now suddenly hyper-aware of everything wrong about himself: the smell of vodka on his breath, the stale cigarette smoke engulfing his body, the raggedy - probably dirty - shirt he was wearing,  the way his hands shook just slightly, the way his thoughts kept veering into places he didn’t trust.

And - more sharply - of everything he wasn’t allowed to do. Stare too long, step closer, let his voice soften the way it used to when they were kids.

“So,” he said, gesturing vaguely to the street in front of them. “You… live around here?”

Will nodded. “On an apartment on the Lower East Side.”

“Of course you do,” Mike teased with a weak chuckle. “It suits you.”

The other man smiled a little more genuinely at that before clearing his throat. 

“I actually live there with my boyfriend, Carlton,” he said, carefully. “You remember him, right?”

There it was.

Plain. Unembellished. A line drawn without accusation. Not defensive or cruel, just the truth.

Mike nodded too quickly. Pretending it didn’t shatter him into pieces for Will to be so eager to get on that subject. “Right. Yeah, Carlton. Cool guy.”

He didn’t trust himself to say more than that. Didn’t trust the part of him that wanted to ask questions he had no right to ask - whether Carlton was kind, if he listened to his ramblings and knew when to respect his silences, whether Will laughed the way he deserved to. If Will painted for him, if they cared about each other’s families. Whether they got to touch each other without fear, if he felt safe in his arms.

Those weren’t his questions anymore. He knew that.

Will watched him for a beat - like he could see the interrogations piling up behind Mike’s eyes - then deliberately didn’t step closer.

“He is,” he said, grounded. As if there was nothing more to say after that. After a moment passed: “Your hair,” he smiled, pointing. “It’s even bigger now.”

Mike laughed, flustered, fingers instinctively lifting toward it before stopping halfway - like he’d caught himself reaching for something sharp without quite remembering why.

“Yeah,” he said, forcing a dry laugh. “Can’t really trust myself around scissors.”

He expected Will to at least let out a pity chuckle. Instead, the boy tilted his head, curious but not prying, a glimpse of sad understanding in his eyes. His gaze drifted back to Mike - he studied him, eyes flicking briefly over all the signs Mike pretended weren’t obvious, studying silently. 

As if he were this earth-shattering, grandiose thing to look at, and not just… good ol’ Mike Wheeler.

“Anyway,” Mike cleared his throat awkwardly. “I always hoped it would curl a little bit more eventually, but…” He shrugged, gesturing to the hair down his shoulders. “It just stays like this.”

“Well, it suits you,” Will complimented. “Kind of reminds me of you in high school, actually. It makes you seem younger.”

Mike felt something warm and unexpected bloom in his chest at that - a quiet, almost embarrassing relief. After being molded back and forth by his father’s idea of acceptable: neat, short, clipped into obedience, he’d had a complicated relationship with his hair for quite some time. He’d hated it back in senior year and hated it all the other times he had to cut it, every glance in the mirror feeling like a concession he didn’t remember agreeing to - just his way to try and emulate some sense of closeness or normalcy around his emotionally-stunted, homophobic douchebag of a father.

Immediately after Ted left the Wheeler household for good in 1993, when it finally dawned on him that he’d never have to see the fucker again, he’d buzzed the whole thing off - like he needed to start over, peel away the image that godforsaken haircut painted of him all those years. Standing in a dorm bathroom with a pair of dull scissors and Danny’s old hair clipper, heart racing, no plan beyond enough. Less like an act of rebellion and more like reclaiming something that had never really been his - letting it grow out of his father’s shadow for the first time.

So hearing Will say that - that this version of him echoed something truer, older, him - settled deep inside. Like being recognized retroactively. Like proof that at some point, without really meaning to, he’d finally grown back into himself.

“Yeah,” Mike said, voice light but honest. “I guess I just stopped trying to make it look like someone else’s.”

“Oh, believe me, I get that,” the artist gestured to his mid-part before changing the subject. “So, editing books no one reads?”

“Hey!” Mike protested weakly, playing it off to hide the fact that it actually embarrassed him. “Some of them get reviewed, just so you know.”

“Glowing silence is still silence,” Will teased, and-

God.

There it was.

That thing they used to do so naturally. That rhythm, that ease. The light back-and-forth that made Mike forget, just for a second, that there were years of grief and distance and unspoken truths wedged between them.

Mike felt it instinctively, and just as instinctively, he forced himself to shut it down. 

He took a moment to notice a silver lock necklace on his neck and a silver band on his ring finger - no doubt lovely gifts from his boyfriend, which he hated himself for noticing.

Another pause settled in, heavier this time.

Will shifted his weight. “You know, I just left Jonathan's, actually. He said Nancy told you were… not doing great.”

Mike grimaced. He wondered how much of it she’d mentioned to the oldest Byers, shame quickly filling his chest.

Ah, shit.

“She always did love airing my business,” he let out a dry chuckle.

“She’s worried, I guess,” Will said, gently. “We all are.”

We. The word echoed in the black-haired boy’s head.

“You don’t look so good,” he continued quietly. “And I don’t mean that in a-” he stopped himself, then tried again after a huff. “I mean… You don’t seem okay.”

Mike huffed out a breath, now suddenly feeling even more in the spot. “Wow. Running into you and getting diagnosed again,” he bit. “Guess we really can’t expect what comes around next in this city, huh?”

“I’m serious, Mike,” Will said firmly, very clearly trying not to indulge in his dark humor. “You don’t need to hide anything from me,” he finally took a step closer to Mike. “We’re still friends, after all, right?”

Mike looked away, pained to hear that Will still cherished their relationship. The one he’d worked so hard on ruining over the last few years, and still…

Will seemed to slowly wilt at the other’s silence. “It’s fine that we didn’t end up as close as we were after we grew up, that you wanted space and everything, I’m not mad. I just- I care,” his childhood best friend let out, eyebrows crinkling in silent worry. “We all do. Our friends, your family.”

Mike’s gaze dropped to the pavement, an embarrassed frown on his forehead. “Well, I just didn’t want you guys being part of all the drama,” he teased, half-serious, and crossed his arms. “We’re all adults now, it’s not like everyone has the time to deal with my stuff.”

“You… could’ve called me, you know? If you needed someone to talk to.” 

Mike exhaled slowly, tempted. “I… honestly didn’t think you’d want to hear from me.”

Will looked up then, really looked at him with those beautiful multicolored eyes.

“Of course I wanted to,” he said simply.

The admission settled between them, fragile and terrifying.

Mike felt something inside him give - not break, exactly. More like… loosen. Like he’d been holding his breath for years without realizing it. Maybe he was.

Silence again - but this one felt different. Not brittle, but heavy with everything they weren’t saying. The space between them filled with their could’ve beens, then receded - deliberately, carefully - like both of them had learned when to step back from edges. That nostalgic, hopeless yearning, covered by years of distance and sadness. Lost time and rushed memories. 

“I just… figured I didn’t know how to be in your life properly without… y’know. Messing it up,” Mike admitted quietly. “And I thought that after everything, you deserved some peace and quiet. To be happy.”

Will’s expression softened. “Mike, you don’t get to decide what I deserve or not to have in my life. I should be able to say what makes me happy or not.”

The words weren’t sharp. They didn’t need to be.

“Did I ever even manage to make you happy, anyway?” He thought of asking, but couldn’t get behind the lump in his throat - just like when he was a kid, couldn’t say the words when they mattered most.

Traffic slowed nearby after the light lit green, a cab idling impatiently and a bike honking by, as if reminding them the world hadn’t actually stopped for their emotional reckoning.

Will glanced at his watch, then back at Mike, with a indeciferable expression.

“Um, I should go,” he said, regret seemingly threaded through the words. “It's late, I’ve got to take Carlton's car back.”

Hearing the car wasn't even his to begin with made Mike feel a little guilty for all of this.

He couldn't help but wonder if Will would tell his boyfriend about it. If they talked about him in their home - and if they did, what did they say? Was he even that important to begin with?

“Yeah,” Mike said, heart thudding. “Yeah, of course.”

Will hesitated - just long enough to matter - then reached into his bag and pulled out a pen, scribbled something on a receipt, folded it once.

“My landline,” he said, holding it out. “In case you want to… I don’t know, stop disappearing.”

Mike took it as it might dissolve in his hands.

“I just might,” he said, forcing himself to instill that smooth confidence he used on strangers more often than not and surprising himself when he realized he actually meant it.

Will smiled - not cautious this time, nor distant. Real, honest. Just Will.

“I really hope you do.”

Then he stepped back, gave Mike one last look - lingering, restrained, unmistakably fond - and got into the car, turning down the street and disappearing into the glow of the city lights like a memory refusing to fade.

Mike stood there long after the car was gone, receipt clenched in his fist, pulse loud in his ears.

For the first time in years, the ache in his chest didn’t feel like punishment.

It felt like a possibility.

And that scared him more than anything else ever had.