Mike

"It can't be good for her to be in there for this long."

Max slaps down the kid's menu from Gloria's Burgers and Shakes Diner. There's a cartoon map of Hawkins on the back, and she and Will have been using it as reference for the larger, more detailed map they're currently tracing onto the D&D grid map. Will is carefully sketching in Weathertop, the Party's various houses, the lab, and Starcourt Mall in lieu of such historic landmarks as Bun Hill and The Milkshake Mines.

"Mike. You need to relax."

Mike can't relax.

Relax? At a time like this? Not only is the whole world falling apart around their ears, again, but it's been nearly an hour since El disappeared into the basement bathroom with a spare radio and a blindfold. First it was Dustin and Lucas. It was a long time before she came out. They were running, she said, yelling. Like they were scared. Steve holding something, some strange little object that glowed faintly green. She followed them until they collapsed on the black-water floor, gasping and cursing, pointing fingers at each other for whatever happened.

They can't call. Mike wanted to, they all wanted to, but Joyce is right. Or rather, her coded message is.

We can't talk about this on the phones. It's not safe. Someone could hear.

And if phones are a no-go, radios are out too. Dustin heard the new lab from his radio. Who's to say they couldn't hear the Party somehow?

So they used El instead.

A decision Mike is beginning to deeply regret.

Because first it was back to Dustin and Lucas - and Steve, and Robin - to make sure they hadn't been kidnapped by evil scientists or befallen some other fate. Then it was Hop. Joyce turned out to be no challenge, the two were together -

"Working," El said vaguely when Will asked, her brows pinched in a slight frown, making her forehead dimple in two places just above the inner corners of her eyebrows. Normally Mike would poke her right between those dimples to get her to stop frowning, but... well, there's been a weird energy between them lately. And right now she needs to focus.

"Working?" Will had echoed. "On what? Where?"

"Home. I think." She scratched her nose, head tilting. "They are... putting up newspapers."

They argued over El's idea to spy on the Mind Flayer. El was adamant, and Max supported her. But Mike dug in his heels just as hard, and Will took his side. Too dangerous. Way too dangerous. Getting the Demogorgon's attention in the Void was how the Gate opened in the first place. And eventually, it was Will that talked her down, talked her out of it.

But he didn't even try to talk her out of stopping.

So now it's Jonathan. And next, Nancy. And who knows what after that.

And the pile of bloody tissues on the bathroom floor grows higher every time El comes out to make a report.

"What if she gets brain damage or something?"

Will turns and frowns from where he had been about to adjust the radio. It's still playing, softly, just loud enough to keep an ear out for electrical or radio-wave disturbances. No signs of approaching monsters... so far. "Do you think that could happen?" He reaches up to rub his cheek as he says it, his skinned knuckles and bruised cheekbone dark against the sleepless-dull pallor of his skin. Mike's stomach gives a guilty little tug at the sight of his swollen cheek, the dark curves under his eyes. He wasn't supposed to have to go through this again. He shouldn't have to. Not Will.

"No -" Max cuts in, almost before Will finishes his sentence. She makes a gesture as if to slap a palm to her forehead. "He made it up. Mike doesn't know what the hell he's talking about."

Mike bristles, attention instantly re-focusing on his opponent. That's how it is, huh? They're cursing at each other and accusing each of of incompetence now?

Fine. If that's how she wants to play -

"Oh, and you do?"

Will, surreptitiously, dials up the volume on Blue Monday a few notches. It does not drown out Max's reply.

"Uh, no, I - okay. Will?"

"I don't -" Will ducks his head, trying to back away, but Max is making him a part of it whether he agrees or not. "Settle something for us. Who do you think should decide El's limits? Mike? Oooor Eleven?"

Oh, hell no.

"The way that you frame that is such bullshit!"

She braided her hair in two long, flame-colored braids sometime after washing up, and they bob and swing as she advances on him. Mike refuses to budge. Feet planted and jaw set, even as Max gestures sharply between them. "It's not bullshit, Mike, this is your whole problem. The fact is, she's not yours! She's her own person, fully capable of making her own decisions."

Will is trying to step in now, gingerly - "Okay, let's - you know, maybe we should just -"

Mike talks over him, standing on tiptoes to argue back over the top of his head. "She's risking herself for no reason!"

Max scoffs. "For no reason? Did you suddenly forget everything about the Mind Flayer and how if we don't -"

The bathroom door bangs open. Everyone jumps. Startled and guilty. El doesn't even have her blindfold off - she stands in the doorway with her eyes still covered, a dab of red under her nose, impossible to miss in her high-waisted black pants and loudly patterned black-and-yellow shirt.

Mike isn't quite sure what that's about, to be honest. Apparently Max took her shopping. To the mall, into the crowds, for the second time in as many days. Mike tried and failed not to make a few half-veiled comments about that.

Now, El whips the blindfold off and glares. "I cannot do this when you are all yelling."

"Sorry."

"Sorry, El."

"We'll..."

She does not seem moved by their murmurs of contrition. The blindfold falls to the floor.

"Mike." She's walking across the room, and all at once she's snagging his elbow and tugging him towards the stairs. "Talk."

"Uh -"

She doesn't give him a chance to argue.

Even a year and a half after her clandestine sojourn in the Wheeler house, El still navigates it with a sure and silent familiarity. She leads them in a deft circle through the kitchen and to the base of the staircase, slipping past the dining room behind his mother's back and lifting a finger to her lips when Holly spies them.

Holly giggles and says, "Hi!"

But they're already halfway up the stairs when Karen absently calls back, "Hi, baby," still absorbed in decorating her American Flag cake with blueberries and strawberries.

That's right. Today is the 4th of July. With everything else going on, it had totally slipped Mike's mind.

It's strange, how the world keeps turning all around you even when you know it's in catastrophe.

El navigates the space like its her own, tiptoeing through the hall to Mike's room in a way that manages to convey a silent stomp and closing the door firmly behind them with the authority of one who lives there.

"Okay," Mike drawls, "We're here. What was so important that it couldn't be spoken around mortal ears?"

He's not used to seeing her here, in his room, and something like nostalgia is hitting hard. All at once he understands Will's compulsion to turn back time, his desire to be a kid again and start everything over. Why can't he close his eyes and open them again before all the bad, before the days of horror in the lab, before El disintegrated into ash before his eyes - my fault, the old thought whispers in the back of his mind - before shadows and spies and bad men?

But, unfortunately, he's still in the present.

El has her arms crossed. "You yelled at Max."

Mike slings an arm towards the closed door like he's pointing back to the basement, sputtering. "Bu- she yelled first!"

"No. You were mean, Mike." Her wise brown eyes drill into him. Seeing everything, understanding everything - maybe too much, right now. Her brows are slanted in a sad frown. When she speaks, it's soft. "You have been mean to everyone."

If she was looking for a sucker punch, she found it.

Mike's throat constricts. That's not fair. That's too similar to the shit that Nancy says, and anyway it's not true.

"Who?" he challenges. "Who have I been mean to?" He sneers the word, mocking it - mocking her, he realizes as her expression hardens with hurt.

"Me," she says softly. She extends a finger and points at his mouth, like she can still see his last words there. "Like that." The finger drops. "Max."

"She yelled first, and -"

"Hop."

"What? When?"

"You said he was fat."

"You laughed!"

Mike is sweating. The upper levels of the house always get so hot during the summer, especially with the windows closed - and he feels trapped. Like he's being backed into a corner. And she's not being fair. She's taking all this stuff out of context, putting it all together to make a neat little pamphlet of his sins. And the thing is, she's not... wrong. But this stuff, it - he didn't -

"You told Lucas his A-tari game was stupid."

"Okay, that is not what happened. I said I'd go see you that day and -"

"You ignore Will."

"I do not."

"He says you do."

This stops Mike short. "What? When did he say that?"

El gives him an infuriatingly superior look. "I talk to other people on the radio, you know."

Mike is still reeling with the revelation that apparently his best friend and his girlfriend have been talking about him behind his back when -

"You do it because of me."

She's wandering the room now, not talking to him, addressing his books and mementos instead. "I... I do it too."

"Huh?"

El struggles to put her thoughts into words at the best of times. She spent so long as a lab rat, treated as a semi-mute dumb animal, that talking has been a long and frustrating process for her. She struggles now, and Mike reigns in his impatience to try to listen.

She's trying to express something but can't make it into a sentence, and eventually she mumbles, "I... hated Max. Tried to hurt her."

"What? When?"

"The gym."

He tries to go to her but she remains stiff, cold, unyielding to his hand on her shoulder. "El, I'm lost. I'm sorry, okay? I shouldn't have yelled. I just - I don't want you to get hurt. I can't lose you again."

She turns, finally, and gazes up at him. "You won't lose me."

He thought that might earn him a kiss - a headbut of forgiveness, at least - but she steps back. Out of arm's reach.

"But I can't be your girlfriend all the time, Mike."

He can feel his lip curling. Something about that feels accusatory, and his walls are creeping right back up again. "Never said you had to be."

"No, but -" The frustration is back, and she scrubs her hands over her face, cheeks reddening. Stymied. Some thought is trying to come out, and it just won't, and she has to breathe deep a few times to ease herself away from overwhelm.

It doesn't work. Even as Mike watches, that redness creeps into her eyes and the tip of her nose, and her voice is choked and watery when she finally bursts out, "But - it - I don't even know who I am!"

In a strange way he feels relieved, hearing that. Because this, at least, he knows exactly how to respond to. If this was a movie, he could predict the exact line before it was spoken:

"You're El, and I love you."

It's the kind of thing you're supposed to say; at least he can get that right.

But she dodges his hands before he can place them on her arms, eyes wet now. "That's not enough."

Something stings in Mike's chest and he lets out a scoff to cover up the hurt waver in his voice. "Oh, I'm sorry I'm not enough for you. I'm trying my best, okay?"

El just nods. Lips pressed together and her brows raised, like he just proved her point, like she's saying I told you so.

She points and curtly says, "That. You see? You're mean. I..." She looks down and sniffs, a tear falling. Up again, meeting Mike's eyes to deliver the blow. "I make you mean. We... we make each other... bad."

"No - no." This time she lets him gather up her hands, and he squeezes, earnest and intense and trying so hard to catch and hold her gaze. His heart throbs in his chest. Something in his throat tremors. "No. That's not true. Hey. Come on." Mike flounders. He's scared now, she's scaring him, and it's enough to push him back to earnestness out of desperation. "I was just... You're really important to me."

He feels like he's flubbing this so badly. He doesn't even know why they started fighting in the first place and this feels bad, it feels serious, not like their other fights so far where they were kissing again within an hour or a day. Those fights... There was yelling, there was door slamming. Cold-shouldering and snippiness afterwards, sure, but it never lasted.

"You're important to me too," she half-whispers. Eyes glistening as she looks up at him. "But - I don't know how to -"

She gestures between them, one hand breaking from his, and he folds the remaining hand between his own.

"Hey, you've been doing great."

"I need to do great at other things." She nods to the door. "Like the Upside Down. And things that I like. Not just Star Wars and D-and-D and arcade. Things that feel like me. Like..." She casts around for words, licking her lips. "Like... shopping."

His entire face scrunches up. "Shopping? Seriously?"

Since when exactly is shopping better than Stars Wars?

Her eyes roll and she turns away, her last hand tugging out of his as she goes to sit on the bed. "You don't understand."

"No, I don't. Look, can we just - go back down and talk about this later?"

She chews on her lip, and for a second he thinks she'll agree. Then she looks up. "Mike, why are we boyfriend and girlfriend?"

He gapes. "C... uh... cause I love you?"

How is he supposed to explain this all the sudden? What is there to say beyond, That's how this goes. We cared about each other, we found each other after we were ripped apart, we kissed. Then you're boyfriend and girlfriend. \

But she shakes her head and clarifies, "Why are we boyfriend and girlfriend if..."

She trails off again, unsure and lost again.

"If we... fight?" Mike suggests. Trying to help her, trying to fill in the gaps of the knowledge and experience she doesn't have. "If you -?"

"Let me think," she snaps, and he lifts his hands.

"Okay, so-rry! I never know when I'm supposed to help and when I'm supposed to leave you alone, all right?"

"You're supposed to leave me alone," she fires back. She's on her feet again, voice rising dangerously near a shout. If they're not careful his family will hear. "I'm not a baby."

He doesn't care who hears. His temper boils over.

"Then don't act like one!" Her offended frown deepens and he goes on, "God, you are so immature sometimes! You know that? It's like talking to Holly! What do you want? Do you want me to help? Because sometimes you get mad if I do and sometimes you get mad if I don't, so -"

"You are such a jerk."

"Yes, see? Like that. Just like that. You make these huge problems out of these tiny things and -"

"I do that? Mike, you do that."

"Well maybe if we ever just talked instead of having to be romantic all the time -"

She gives a frustrated scream-growl, the kind that girls do with their teeth bared. Like they're morphing temporarily into some predator from the jungle. It's a loud, grating sound, and Mike doesn't even get a chance to tell her to keep it down, okay? before she flings a sharp gesture at him.

"See, this! This is not good. We are not good."

"Oh, come on -"

She doesn't come on. She gets serious. Eyes still watering and nose pink with oncoming tears, she sniffs and goes deadly serious. And Mike feels the floor drop out from beneath him. Everything about this screams, you messed up and you messed up bad! Buckle up, boy-o, you're in a heap of trouble!

"We are not good, Mike."

He can't form an intelligent thought while he's so angry-frustrated-anxious. All that comes out is a lame repeat of what he's already said. "What are you talking about? Yes, we are. We are."

"Mike. Friends don't lie."

"I'm not -"

"Yes, you are!" She sobs, swipes at the tears on her face, and then backs up a step. "You lie."

Mike stands there, numb and not sure what he's feeling, not sure why he's not stopping this, watching her take another step back. He should be stopping this. Doesn't he want to stop this?

"We are not good. Not like this."

The feeling returns to his limbs all at once and he scoffs, nodding, heartsick. Putting up walls of venom to hide behind. "Yeah, I guess you're right," he spits back.

El turns and starts for the door.

"Hey - wait -"

Is that really it? She's gonna leave him like that?

"I'm not your girlfriend anymore, Mike." Her hand on the doorknob, her hair hiding her face. "Go away."

He sputters. Not knowing what to do, what to say, hurt and confused and mad.

"Fine!" he spits. "Good! I will! You were a pain in the ass anyway!"

And he regrets that as soon as he says it, because he can tell it hurts her by the way her footsteps in the hallway speed up until she's practically running, but then it's over, and she's gone.


Will

Will crouches on the bathroom floor. He's gathering the bloody tissues, piling them into the little trash can under the sink and squashing them down until they fit. El went through a lot.

She is pushing herself. But after what she's done before... this can't be too bad, can it? Compared to blasting the Mind Flayer back into his own dimension and sealing the gate after him, surely this is a piece of cake.

But she did look kind of bad when she came out. Pale. Sweaty.

Then again, Will hasn't exactly been feeling 100% either. None of them have.

He closes the cabinet and leans back against it with a long breath, sliding down until he hits the floor. He'll get up in a minute. In just a minute, he'll get back to work on tracking Party members' locations, old tunnel entrances, the lab, the mall, locations of known phenomena.

It's something. Something to focus on, something to do. A battle plan. Like they would use in their campaigns.

They're prepared this time. That's what he tells himself. They have their emergency packs, they have plan A, B, and C. They won't be taken by surprise - not this time.

He's staring at his hands when it happens. The hardening scabs on his knuckles, to be specific. He's flexing his fingers, wincing at the sting of barely-scabbed flesh threatening to crack and split with the movement, drawing out the short moment of solitude. The door is closed, Max is out in the basement somewhere and Mike and El are both upstairs, presumably having another fight.

Maybe he's imagining it. He's been trying to puzzle it out since last night, rolling it over and over and over in his mind.

But if not...

Will situates himself more firmly on the ground. Planting his feet, sitting up straighter. Back braced against the cabinets. He closes his eyes.

For the first time since last night, he's trying to make it happen again. On purpose, this time. Trying to summon back the feeling, trying to manifest it in his body like he's there again, in the woods again, watching the writhing scrap of shadow scream down at him. The tug in his belly, like the first lurch of an elevator - the flash of hot-cold through his muscles, pins and needles burning through his arm, turning his whole hand numb from the wrist down - the heady rush of... something that doused and suffused him, putting a tremor in his bones and a jolt of fire in his flesh. Not pain, not like those fires, the fires in the tunnels. This heat didn't hurt. Was it heat? Or cold? Or just energy?

He tries to feel it again, breathing deep.

It doesn't work.

Second pass and nothing happens and he's starting to feel silly. Or does he feel something else, too? Some little twitch of sensation? He pushes for it. Tries to latch onto it, tries to tap into it. It slips through his fingers like water.

He tries again.

And now, now that it's fresh in his mind, now that he almost had it -

Two sharp knocks startle him so badly that he jumps and knocks his head on the knob of the cabinet.

And the bathroom lights drop in brightness by a degree.

Will's head whips back and he stares up at them upside-down. Did that happen? Or was it just his eyes? Or a coincidence?

"Will?"

"Yeah," he says, already annoyed despite his state of distraction. "I'm fine."

Even Max is checking on him now?

"Move your ass, Wizard, I have to pee."

He stares, and the lights don't flicker. They don't change.

The full implications are only just beginning to dawn on him, and it makes him wonder if he should just turn around and vomit into the toilet like when he and Mike were ten and they ate an entire pizza and a full batch of cookies in one go during a sleepover. He didn't want this. He didn't ask for this. He didn't ask for yet another mark on him, another way the Upside Down has touched him.

He stands stiffly, sniffing. Something runs down his upper lip. When he reaches up to touch it, sick to his stomach and disbelieving, the tip of his finger comes away wet with a dab of red.

It's gone when he opens the door, evidence scrubbed away and disposed of with all the other bloody tissues.

Max drifts nearby, and she heaves an impatient breath and shoulders past him when she sees him emerge. "Took you long enough."

"You could have used the one upstairs."

She cracks open the door again to wedge her face between the door and doorframe. "And have to make small talk with Karen on the way by? Awkward."

But just as she's about to snap the door closed again, they're both stopped by the sound of the basement door sighing open and footsteps shuffling - speeding - down the stairs.

"Shit," Max says, and steps out into the basement again.

El marches straight to her, cheeks wet and whole face blotched, and Will can't even get out the first syllable of What happened? before El is saying, "Get me out of here."

"Wh - yeah, I - okay."

"Now."

"Okay. Jesus. Did something happen?"

"I just need to go."

Max puts a hesitant hand on El's back and El turns for the door.

"Whoa." They both turn to look at Will, who darts between them and their path to the outside world. Chester appears at his knees, head and tail down, sensing discord. "I dunno if you should go alone."

Max purses her lips in thought, but only for a moment. Her head jerks at El. "We're not alone."

"We shouldn't split up. Especially if something happened. El?"

He tries to catch her eyes, saying help me out here with his gaze, but she's crying again and the fresh wave of tears has her entirely occupied. She just shakes her head and sniffles something that might be, "Nothing happened. Not... like that."

He looks back to Max, stumped, and she shrugs helplessly. "Look, I'll just - take her back to my house, okay?"

He doesn't like it. But El has her heels dug in, and there's not much he can do to stop her short of bodily restraining her. So, under Will's anxious eye, out they go, a survival pack on both their backs. At least they agreed to take those.

The second they're out, Will is tiptoe-dashing up the stairs with his heart battering his ribs. El said it was nothing bad bad, but -

But Mike is fine. At least, he's alive. He's just in his room - more specifically, kicking things in his room.

Will is plenty used to Mike's tantrums. He was a screaming-in-the-grocery-store kid. So he makes eye contact with the rage-filled friend in question, to let him know he's standing there, and then leans against the doorframe and waits for Mike to finish taking out his fury on his backpack and desk chair. Mike gives a frustrated snarl, and his voice cracks and he grimaces and kicks the chair again because he hates when that happens.

And then he's done. He throws himself down onto the edge of his bed, jaw clenched, and Will raises his eyebrows - can I come in now?

Mike gives a short, go-to-hell kind of shrug, like, fine, sure, whatever.

He comes in. He closes the door behind him. He sits next to Mike. He waits.

For a while, Mike is tight-lipped, refusing to say anything. This, too, is expected. But when enough time goes by, and Will is painfully aware of the seconds ticking past and all the things that could be happening during those seconds, he finally gives in and prompts him.

"What happened?"


"And then she just... walked away?"

Mike nods with a sniff. His eyes stayed dry as long as he could let his anger carry him, but near the end it gave out.

Will blinks a few times at the Dark Crystal poster across the room, blowing out a breath between his lips. Trying to process.

"Do you think it's... like..." He hates himself for the halfway-hopeful tilt that almost snuck into his voice. "For good?"

If Mike noticed, he doesn't show it. "I think so," he rasps. "Maybe? I dunno."

"Max and Lucas break up all the time... Maybe this is just like that."

He shouldn't be happy. He's a horrible, awful person for feeling anything positive about this. And obviously he feels bad for Mike. His best friend just went through a breakup, of course he feels bad for him. But...

Well, he'd be lying if he said he wasn't relieved. Maybe now that Mike isn't... Well, maybe things can go back to the way they were before.

Way before, the back of his mind whispers. Before before. When we were kids and no one cared if we both slept on the couch or held hands when we went down the water slide. When Mike didn't care.

He shakes it away.

Mike is back to talking, re-hashing the fight once again. It's all the same things he said before, and Will tries his best not to let his thoughts drift. But maybe this is good. In a way. It's just, some of the stuff that El has told him - some of the stuff Will has noticed - both of his closest friends seemed different around each other. Once, in a fit of indignant jealousy late on a sleepless night, he remembers thinking, God, they really bring out the worst in each other, don't they?

Where El is involved, Mike can be fixated to the point of obsession. They both can be, to be perfectly honest. But Mike, already bullheaded, crosses the line into boneheaded. Not just stubborn, but single-minded to the point of being blind to all else. Aggressive. He only started getting in trouble at school after El. He only started excluding and lashing out at new Party members after El. Will told himself long ago not to jump to conclusions, not to be mean, El didn't cause any of that.

But then, El gets weird around Mike, too. She can get jealous. And reckless, and clingy. And okay, maybe Will can't really judge her on the jealousy thing, but at least he wasn't monopolizing -

"Oh," Will says, realizing a beat too late that he's only been half-following Mike's rant. He just asked a question. He asked if the girls were in the basement. "No, they went to Max's house."

"They left?"

"I tried to tell them not to."

Mike growls and flops back onto the bed, hands pressed over his eyes. "This is so bad."

Will can't exactly disagree. He nods, sighs, and follows suit. Being horizontal sounds good right about now.

He wonders what El might say to him, later. They talk sometimes, just the two of them. Even though they haven't known each other that long, even though they don't see each other nearly as often as she sees Mike... they have a bond that feels bigger than friendship. Like they were siblings in another life. Like they were twins. Will has told El things he hasn't told anyone else. About his dad, about the Upside Down. And she's told him things, too. Like how overwhelmed she's been. How uncertain.

And it makes sense. A year and a half ago, Will's pseudo-sibling didn't know the word "friend." Or "kiss." And for the great majority of that time, she was locked away with the TV as her only link to the outside world. She still quotes commercials and soap operas to get her thoughts across, sometimes. Aside from Hopper, it was her only source of information, her only teacher. And he knows she's been frustrated. Anxious. She once confided that she doesn't know how to balance a life, her life, after spending so long without agency - much less balance a romance. She didn't know if she was doing it right. She worried.

And she tried really hard, they both did. So he hates himself for even thinking about what he was just considering.

Well, not considering. He would never. Never, ever. He's not looking to get punched. He's not making any moves - not now, not ever. Mike just broke up, and moreover, he just broke up with a girl. If ever there was proof-positive that Mike is never gonna want -

... or.

Or would he?

Will's heart rate picks up, in spite of himself, as he follows this train of thought. It's something he's wondered before. Something that's been eating at him ever since last fall. Ever since Mike opened up to him, half-sniffling, and said they were going crazy together; when Mike grabbed Will's hand and promised they wouldn't let the Shadow Monster spy back; when Mike bared his soul to Will in the shed, talking to him about the first day they met... saying that becoming friends with Will was the best thing he had ever done. Will can still hear it. Mike's exact inflections, his exact expression, the tremor in his voice, the tear that streaked down his face. That was when it started. When Will started wondering, started hoping -

And then El stepped into the Snow Ball, beautiful in her blue dress and her purple-shadowed eyes and glossed lips, and Mike kissed her, and that little spark of hope extinguished.

But now... Well, Will is thinking back on all that again.

Maybe it's just because of what happened with the Shred, and how it's bringing back all those memories from last November, but Will finds himself murmuring, "It was the best thing I've done, too, you know."

Mike turns his head away to wipe his face without Will noticing. "What?" he croaks.

Will's shoulders draw up, head scrunching down like he's trying to retreat into his shirt like a turtle. He shouldn't have brought that up, especially not now, but he clarifies, "Agreeing to be your friend."

Mike turns toward him this time, and Will doesn't turn to look back. They'd be too close. They're too close - barely a few inches apart on the bed, leaned back with their feet dangling off the edge. If Will turned to look back at him, they'd be barely a few centimeters apart.

So he tells the old paper planets on Mike's ceiling, "You said - last year, I mean - um. You said it was the best..."

He stumbles and then lets the sentence hang entirely, and Mike is quiet beside him. Quiet and warm and breathing, and the small sounds of his head adjusting against the unmade blankets fill Will's ears.

Then Mike moves again - turning away, Will thinks, looking up. He can't feel Mike's breath stirring the strands of his hair just above his ear anymore.

"I... wasn't sure if you remembered that." Mike's voice is halting, perhaps with embarrassment, but not confused. They both know what Will is thinking of.

Will swallows, but his voice still scratches when he says, "Yeah. Yeah, I do."

He clears his throat. He can blame it on yesterday. His voice has been a little raw ever since.

Will wants to roll over and curl across Mike like a cat, pillowing his head on Mike's shoulder and resting an arm across his chest. Shielding him. Holding him. He goes a little warm at the thought, grateful that they're both looking up at the ceiling instead of at each other. He wants to, but he knows better. But the instinct to comfort is too strong to ignore, so he settles for moving his leg a little and tapping the side of his socked foot against Mike's where they rest on the carpet.

Mike taps back.

Then he says, "We should call the girls."

The little flame in Will's chest dims again. He slides his foot away an inch. "Yeah."

"Make sure they got to Max's okay."

"Yeah."

Mike's head moves. "Are you okay?"

This time Will does look over at him, the twitch of his head a motion of surprise if not intent. "What do you mean?"

Mike gives a little shrug, looking steadily back. Eyes unfocused because they're too close - to focus in he'd have to go cross-eyed - and Will has the impulse to shuffle away with a mumbled apology, but he's frozen in place. Too afraid he'll seem weird if he retreats, too afraid he'll seem weird if he doesn't.

Even at this blurred distance, Will can make out the troubled crinkle of Mike's eyebrows. "Are you, like... mad?"

Will blinks a couple times. Then he realizes. He closed himself off again when Mike's attention turned back to El. And, somehow, Mike knew. He could tell.

He shrugs, finally breaking away, turning back to the ceiling. It feels like breaking the surface of water, finally taking a gasp of breath, though he never felt like he was drowning. "No." Even without looking he can tell Mike is giving him a skeptical glare. He hoists himself upright. "Come on. Let's radio them."

Mike uses Will's shoulder as leverage to sit up himself, and his hand stays there until they're both on their feet. And this time Mike doesn't bother to disguise a final wet sniff, though he gives a sheepish little smile and eye-roll as he buffs the back of a hand under his eyes, like, Geez, look at me.

Will throws a tissue box at him as they cross the room. He doesn't take one for himself, even though his own nose is a little warm with emotion. Mike's upset, so he's upset - not to mention that it's all happening again and damnit he's scared. But he doesn't want to see red on the tissue.

And he doesn't want to do this, either. This, this thing he's doing. This thing where his mind is turning over possibilities in the background while they make their way downstairs again. The what ifs, the maybe he coulds. Will doesn't want to, doesn't mean to. Because he's been through this song and dance before, he knows better than to hope, he really does - but the way Mike was looking at him...

How Mike was talking, upstairs lying flat on his bed, in that soft voice that Will has never heard Mike use for El, only ever for Will -

And how Mike came looking for Will in the woods, how he pulled him right into his arms in the rain and held him like that, one arm curled all the way around Will's torso and the other palm fitted to the back of his skull, and squeezed like Will was a lifeline -

Well, maybe Will starts to hope again. And maybe he hates himself for it.

There's a knock on the basement door mere moments after they thump down the stairs. A familiar knock, six beats - Lucas.

Will peeks through a crack in the curtains before letting him in, and Dustin tumbles in at his heels. Both are already talking a mile a minute, voices overlapping, something about the mall and a closet and an explosion, and Chester bounds around yipping, excited by all the commotion. Will is trying to shush his dog and listen at once, barely following along, when Lucas stops to take a breath and looks around, frowning.

"Where are the girls?"

Mike and Will glance at each other, both wondering who's gonna drop the bomb, before Mike huffs and flops his arms in a kind of hell if I care shrug, letting them slap back stiffly against his sides. "El dumped me."

Lucas's eyebrows lift towards the bill of his baseball cap and Dustin stops in his tracks, hands suspended where they're pulling pages of notes from his backpack. One says, "What?" while the other says, "When?"

But Will is just processing something himself. "You blew something up?"

"Shit, dude," Lucas is saying, offering a back-thumping bro-hug to Mike. "That sucks. Don't worry about it, okay? Max has dumped me like five times, I'm sure..."

And meanwhile, Dustin nods distractedly, transferring his notes into the survival pack Will hands to him. "The government is trying to make devices that can contain the Upside Down, but I guess they don't work yet, because ours blew up."

"I - wow. Is everyone okay?"

"Yeah, Steve's a little sunburnt 'cause he was closest to the blast. And I got a scrape." Dustin holds up the back of one hand to demonstrate the concrete-burn.

Mike has surfaced from his mini-pity-party. "Well, are you sure you were using it right?"

"We didn't have a lot of time to figure it out, okay?" Dustin snarks, standing and slinging the backpack over his shoulder. "Here." He swipes Mike's radio from the coffee table and tosses it to Lucas. "See if you can get Max and El back while I catch these two up. Sorry, Mike, but we don't really have time to recover from heartbreak."

Mike watches all this with a bemused frown, petting Chester without looking when a furry face appears under his hand. "What's the rush? It sounds like these things aren't even ready for testing. That's good news, right?"

Dustin's head shakes, solemnly, his Camp Know Where cap wiggling a little loosely over his curls. "Ready or not, they're doing it. We heard another transmission before we left. They're opening the Gate tonight."


El

"I have an idea."

El, eyes and nose swollen and cheeks blotched, peeks out of the tissue she was buried in and looks through a film of moisture at Max. "Hm?"

"Something fun," Max coaxes, knocking an elbow against El's, and El sniffs with a half-suspicious frown.

"What... is it?"

"What if we use those superpowers of yours to have some fun?"

She chews on the inside of her cheek. She isn't sure. Max took her home because El asked her to, because she needed to cry and throw some things around in the patch of woods behind Max's house before collapsing with tissues and ice cream. She couldn't be around Mike, she can't, not then and not now. But they still have to keep going. Don't they?

Her throat aches at the thought. She daydreams, just for a moment, that she can give up and go home, that someone else can do this. That she can just lie down on her couch with her teddy bear hugged to her chest and watch TV, safe in the dim, musty space, without the weight of the world on her shoulders. And everything would be fine. By tomorrow it would be gone.

But it wouldn't. And she knows it. She closed the Gate last time. She opened it, she closed it, and she's the one that has to do this. She started this. She has to finish it. It's her responsibility.

Hopper talks a lot about responsibility lately.

And there's not another person on Earth who could stop this.

She shakes her head. "We should go back."

"Fifteen minutes," Max insists. "The world won't end if we take a break."

She doesn't say it, but El knows she also means, And you need time to cool down.

Cooling down is something El is not good at. Her feelings are big. They get bigger than her, sometimes, and there are no instructions for how to make them shrink again. The movies don't talk about it. TV doesn't talk about it. Hopper doesn't seem to know how to talk about it, but he's trying. Cooling down is something neither of them are good at. They both need more practice.

So maybe Max has a point.

"And it's the Fourth of July, I bet there's a bunch going on." Max is fishing for something off the side of her bed, and she comes up with a spiral notebook. She grabs a marker off of her bedside table and starts writing names on the cardboard back, arranged in a circle. "It'll take your mind off of things."

Mrs. Wheeler.

Mr. Wheeler.

Mr. Clarke.

Billy.

Erica.

Mr. Sinclair.

Mrs. Sinclair.

Mrs. Henderson.

The Mayor.

She taps the marker against the spiraled wire of the notebook, thinking. "Who else?"

El's blanket slips down around her shoulders as she leans forward, half intrigued and half hesitant. She glances up at Max. "Against the rules?"

Max leans forward too, meeting El's eyes with an intense stare. "We make our own rules. Okay?" She sets their empty ice cream bowls aside, shoving them onto her bedside table, and places the notebook between them. "You wanna try?"

So that's how, two minutes later, El finds herself sitting on Max's floor with a bandana in her hands and Max's wood-patterned radio hissing a calming background noise of static on the dresser just above them.

She nods to let Max know she's ready. "Spin."

The marker spins with a wobbly sound.

"Mr. Wheeler," they both read aloud. Max's face scrunches up and she laughs. "Ugh. Boring."

El giggles a little. Maybe she is feeling a little better, already. "Yeah. Boring."

"Spin again."

El spins this time.

The marker arcs past The Mayor, Mrs. Sinclair, and Erica, edges towards Mr. Clarke, and then settles back on the Y of Billy.

"Billy," they say, again in unison. Something squirms in the pit of El's stomach. This feels very against-the-rules, in a way that makes her restless and giggly, and she looks up at Max for confirmation.

Max bounces where she's seated, then scoots an inch closer and pulls in a breath. "Okay, look. I should just warn you - if he's with a girl or doing something gross just get out of there right away before you're scarred for life."

"Max."

She laughs, hands open like she's defending herself. "No, I'm just saying, I'm serious - he's really gross!"

"Max!"

"Okay, okay. Shutting up now."

El shakes her head with another little laugh. Yeah, maybe Max had a point. This is distracting her. And maybe it is making her feel better. As long as she's thinking about anything except that fight and everything that came before it.

She lifts the bandana to her eyes.

The static skips and hisses and she focuses in on it, breathing deep and steady, letting it be the only thing she hears, letting herself feel it. Letting herself feel the Void, the blank emptiness, the rich, echoing black, until just like that she's there. She rolls her shoulders, flexes her toes in the cold water. Solidifying herself in this space of the mind, this space outside of spaces.

Where are you? she thinks. She has his signature, she just needs to tune in. Get closer.

An idea becomes a shape in the darkness, crystalizing out of smoke. A door. Light blue, with a bracket-shaped metal handle. The kind of door they have in big spaces, public spaces. No knob, just the handle. Above, one word spelled out of uppercase silver: M E N.

At first she doesn't know why there's a tingle of uneasiness crawling up the back of her neck. Something just feels... off. She's uncomfortable, on edge right away, and she doesn't know why. Then she hears it. She's been hearing it this whole time, she realizes, it was just so soft she didn't pick up on it consciously until she padded closer to the blue door. It's a crunching sound. A wet sound. Slick and crackle-grinding at once.

"What do you see?" she hears, the distant voice echoing around the space.

"A blue door." Her heart is hammering. Something is wrong. This is bad. But nothing can hurt her; not in here. She walks forward. "I'm opening it."

She does.

And there he is. Crouching. Leaning over something, some large lump that El can't see very well, leaning so far down his head nearly touches the ground. But it's Billy. Red lifeguard shorts and no shirt, and that dark-blonde hairstyle that Max calls a mullet and Mike calls stupid. Billy, for sure.

"I found him."

The response comes a beat late, filtered through reality to the Void. "What's he doing?"

"I don't know."

The slurping-crunching is louder. There are no scents in the Void, but the sound conjures up a phantom-stench that has El's stomach clenching instinctively. That sound is bad. She doesn't know what it is, but she's heard it before. She just doesn't remember where. Billy's head moves, rises, then dips again.

"He's... on the floor." Her voice wavers. "Leaning over."

Water splashes quietly under her feet. She doesn't want to get any closer. She does anyway. Closer, and something is... wrong with Billy. His shoulders, his spine, the way they bend, it's not... right.

She remembers. Just as she comes parallel with him, just as she can see the thing in front of him, she remembers where she's heard that sound before. That slick, crunchy-crackling sound is the sound that the monster made when she saw it in the Void, the night she opened the Gate. The Demogorgon. That's the sound it was making when she touched it. It's the sound of eating.

The thing in front of him is large, bloody - wet with the stuff. White and yellow with bone and fat, stringy with sinew, glistening with pale, sausage-like organs. Slimy, gray chunks of a cauliflower-like substance are scattered in the water.

El feels her real self gag, bile acidic in the back of her throat.

She needs to get away. She needs to get away from him, she needs to leave -

"El? What's happening?"

Her head shakes. She's backing up too quickly, stumbling over her own heels. "He's," she tremors. "He's eating a -"

Billy's head jerks and her words cut off in a choked gasp.

It's not me, she reminds herself. He can't hear me. It was something else.

But his head turns. His body twists, torso angling upright as he pivots on his heels. Large, startled and yet curiously blank eyes turn towards her.

And lock onto hers.

El trips. Her hands and elbows hit the water - and slice through. She's submerged. Just like that. The floor is gone. The cold shocks her system, numb-electrifying.

And something is pulling her, it's pulling her, she's rushing downwards through the water, air streaming from her mouth in thick bubbles as she screams, and then she tries to gasp in a breath - you're in Max's room, you're in Max's room, it's not real, it can't hurt you - and she can't.

Max

Max was worried when she saw El stiffen. She was scared when she saw her gasp. But now El is shaking in place, stiff as a board, like she's seizing -

And then she starts to whimper, and Max is beyond scared. Because she recognizes the sound, she knows that sound, it's the sound her mother used to make when she was having a nightmare, when she was trying desperately to scream but her sleeping body wouldn't allow it.

Something is deeply, deeply wrong.

She grabs El by the shoulders and shakes, hard,

"El! El! Hey! Snap out of it, wake up!"

But El just seizes up further in Max's grip and begins to sputter, like she's choking, and oh god is she turning purple? -

The blindfold -

Max fumbles and then rips it off, taking a strand or two of hair with it, then lunges for the radio and snaps it off so hard she almost takes off the dial, and in the abrupt silence El gasps like she's been underwater for minutes. Tumbling to her side, coughing, choking, curling in on herself on the ground with hair splayed over sweaty cheeks, and Max is kneeling over her -

"What happened? El, what happened? What did he do, are you okay?"

El turns her head. Slowly, like it pains her. Her eyes are watering and the blood from her nose runs sideways down her cheek, and Max's eyes flick between hers with panic rising in her throat. Then tears well in El's eyes and she reaches up, and oh god Max doesn't really know how to do comfort, she's not good at it, but she lets El haul herself up by Max's shoulders and cling to her, gasp-sobbing, and after a moment she pries El back and demands again, "El. What. Happened?"

"I d..." Snot blocks her words and she makes a thick sound, tears streaking her face when she blinks, and Max tries again.

"What happened? What did you see? What did he do?"

El looks at her, giving another uneven breath, mouth hanging slightly open like she doesn't know what to say. And then, unsteadily, she shakes her head. "It wasn't Billy."


"You don't believe me?"

"I believe you saw some super weird stuff, totally, but..." Max shoves a washcloth under the stream of water. They're standing at the bathroom sink, and under the artificial light, El looks even paler and sweatier than she did in the bedroom. "You said Mike has sensed you in there before, right?"

El says nothing as Max brings the warm cloth up to her nose, sponging up the blood. She wipes at the half-dried trail of it that runs sideways across her cheek. Something still trembles in the pit of her throat. Her stomach still aches with tension. This was her fault. She was the one that suggested that stupid game.

She speaks haltingly. "So maybe it was just like that. Maybe Billy just... sensed you, somehow."

El takes the washcloth for herself, staring down at it contemplatively. "But the body..."

"Are you sure that's what you saw? Totally?"

El blinks down at the cloth. She thinks. Taking her time. Max waits with her heart in her throat. It can't be right. It can't be real. It just can't be.

But El's voice is low and even when she looks at Max through the mirror and says, "Yes."

She begins rinsing the cloth. Pink water streams down the drain. Max sinks to the edge of the tub with a long breath, lacing her fingers behind her head for a moment.

"I've never fallen through before."

Max comes up from her anti-freak-out pose, and El is coming to perch next to her. The pink and blue bathroom with its soap-bubble wallpaper is hard and echoey around them. The lip of the tub is cold and slick.

El has her hands clasped between her knees, and they bounce slightly as she sits forward with her elbows braced on her thighs. It's such a Will pose that Max is absolutely sure that El is mimicking him, even subconsciously. "Something pulled me."

"Has that ever happened before?"

"No."

They both wait for the other to say it. Neither wants to. After a moment Max takes a sharp breath. No sense in wasting even more time. "You think Will's Shred...?"

"Of the Mind Flayer," El confirms.

"Did it feel like him?"

She considers. Tilts her head. "I don't know. I can't... feel him like Will can." She turns to Max. "But Billy saw me. He shouldn't have been able to see me."

But why Billy?

Max answers her own question as soon as she thinks it. The puzzle pieces are slotting together, forming a horrifying shape, and the warmth starts to drain out of her extremities even in the stifling heat of a non-air-conditioned house in the height of summer.

"Will said he'd want to attach himself to someone again."

El nods at the tiled floor. When she speaks again it's all Eleven, businesslike and practical. The girl that grew up in a lab. "We have to find him."


(Note: if you don't like this concept, no one is forcing you to read it. Hateful comments will be ignored. Don't waste your time, okay? :) )