Will
Billy takes the blow like a champ.
He skids backwards on bare feet - but doesn't topple, instead falling into a wide crouch to keep his balance - and then, the moment his momentum halts, he uses that crouch to lunge.
The Party scatters. Back against the walls, dispersing, Lucas using his body to shield Max as her once-brother-in-law makes a grab for her hair. He only gets a few strands before he's slammed sideways by El's invisible force, his shoulder punching a deep dent into the lockers and knocking a hollow grunt from his lungs.
Dustin regains his bearings first, bellowing through the confusion of shouts and movement - "Ring 'em in!"
It's a noble idea, and Max and Mike even step forward, white-knuckling their weapons with wide eyes - but El doesn't seem to be in the mood for help. She stands in the center of the room, glaring, feet planted and shoulders set.
Billy, meanwhile, has pried himself from the him-shaped dent in the lockers, regained his footing, rolled his neck and shoulders with unhurried assurance, and set his sights once again on his many smaller opponents. His appearance is imposing, almost otherworldly, like a comic book character in the flesh - but the kind of character that's been cursed or mutilated somehow, the kind with pulsing veins of shadow rippling across their skin and shiny, void-black eyes without whites. Sometime in the last few moments, the darkness overtook his eyes entirely. His mullet, though still clearly identifiable, is becoming patchy as the skin of the scalp stretches - his split-seam mouth pulls back in a grimace to reveal a second layer of teeth within, like a shark. His movements are at once too jerky and too certain to be entirely human. Like a robot, like an automaton on marionette strings.
El shoves him back as he moves to stride towards them, but he's grown wise to that. Center of gravity low, he skids again through blood and gore - and through the door to the weight room - like he's riding a skateboard. Pissed off but unperturbed.
And as soon as she depletes her burst of energy, his body snaps around in a movement nearly too quick to see. Something blurs through the air, and a moment later, the wall behind Will explodes. His back and side flare with multiple aches that quickly turn to sharp, wet little stings of pain where ceramic and concrete shrapnel peppered him. Mike staggers with a curse and Will's head jolts around - but Mike is okay, it seems, or no worse off than Will - and an iron weight plate half the size of a car tire protrudes from the wall just behind and between them.
Screams and shouts of warning and alarm bounce around the closed and echoey space, and El's voice shrills above all of them - "Move!"
She's sweeping her arms back, wrenching at ropes that no one else can see, and as the Party scrambles aside, the rest of the weight plates squeal and clatter through the weight room door and into the locker room. Crashing, squealing against the floor, wobbling as they roll into shower stalls and clanging to the floor like giant coins. Will bodily shoulders Mike aside before one can fall on his sneaker.
Mike is already nudging him back. Broom jerking and bobbing in his hands as he digs an elbow into Will's ribs, repeating, "Janitor. Janitor."
"What?"
Oh.
Their new angle of view into the weight room has revealed the source of the gore within. The top half of him is still there, pea-green jumpsuit and all. Steel-gray hair matted with black and red, upper body intact except for the dent in one side of his skull. Past his ribs it's just loose guts and wet, protruding bones.
Will isn't sure who realizes first. Just that it's a mad scramble for the door, limbs flailing and sneakers slipping in blood and chunks of gore, everyone yelling over each other as they all realize that Billy is near the sauna, and we have to keep him there.
But keeping him in this room means shutting themselves in with him, in this space pungent with sweat and rubber and disorienting with flickering overhead lights.
No one seems keen on doing that. They all congregate near the door, no one willing to close it behind them as El jerks out of the way of a fist. She nearly falls; black mats cushion areas of the floor, catching at the heel of her sneaker, and exercise equipment stands empty and dormant. Spindly metal aliens with unwieldy appendages, crouching in the corners. El catches herself on one of these contraptions, and meanwhile, Billy closes in. He's striding like Terminator towards her, steady and inexorable - but just as he reaches out as if to grab her by the throat, totally heedless of the dart Lucas just loosed at his torso, her own two hands shoot past his. This time, he doesn't fly back.
The last remaining barbell in the room does.
Lifting from its rack like a balloon, it jets across the room. Over the exercise equipment. Over El. Catching Billy squarely in the sternum. He's slammed back against the wall, iron rings keeping him pinned on either side, his hands the only things preventing the bar from grinding into his throat.
And beyond this scene - the sauna.
The little metal sign beside the door marks it as such. This door is blue as well. A thick black pipe runs beside it - the deliverer of heat and moisture. The almost-square glass window is fogged, revealing only an opaque impressionistic painting of the orange-tan walls and wet wooden benches within. The controls are directly beside the door: a flat silver display the size of a palm, ticked off with lines of temperature up to 220 degrees, and a small dial underneath.
Max is the one that yells, "The sauna! Get him to the sauna!"
Billy, unsurprisingly, doesn't seem to like the idea. His arms flex and he shoves back against the bar, roaring, even as El redoubles her efforts with a growl of her own. The weights crush back into the bricks, shattering a portion of ceramic tile on one side, and still Billy fights back, and the lights are no longer just blinking but flashing and strobing and El gives a pained gasp of effort -
And Will doesn't realize he pulled Mike by the hand until they're already a step back, steered by his burst of panicked instinct. Like they're six years old crossing Main Street together -
Mikey, come on, there's a car coming!
Mike's sweat-slick fingers twitch - and then tighten against his.
The bar is lifting. Billy is lifting it, prying it away with strength far surpassing human abilities - and with a triumphant grunt, he hurls it off of him. El barely flings herself out of the way in time, with yelps of alarm and truncated expletives filling the air around her. The bar smashes to the ground behind her with a resounding clang and rolls to the corner - but just like that he has a grasp on her hair, on the half-ponytail she's been sporting today, and she shrieks, and Dustin rushes in with a roar of his own and the wrench aimed straight at Billy's temple. With unsettling speed, Billy's free arm whips up and catches it. Yanking it away with a steel grip and making Dustin stumble and sprawl with the momentum.
It all happened so fast, Will doesn't even register that Mike's hand is still in his until he starts to pull away. And in the split second that he does, his head turns, and their eyes meet.
It's over too soon to make sense of it. Mike seems to squeeze and let go in the same moment and then they're moving, launching in to defend their friend, and Will doesn't even have time to feel anything except a momentary, muted firework burst in his belly.
He held my hand, he thinks, giddy and sick with terror, and that's all he can think before Max is helping Dustin up and Lucas is yelling to get out of the way so he can shoot Billy in the eye.
And meanwhile Billy shifts his grip to El's throat and lifts. The toes of her sneakers skitter across the floor as she tries to gain purchase and push herself away, choking and trying to scream, her arms flailing as she strikes at him anywhere she can - and there's a clang as Dustin's wrench, in Billy's hand, connects with the empty weight bar that Mike just tried to swing at his skull. Sometime in the last few seconds, the mop clattered to the ground next to its erstwhile owner, and now Mike's new weapon is braced against Billy's. El is still dangling, cheeks purpling as she fights to breathe past the obstruction - but as Mike yanks away and swings again, voice cracking hideously on his battle cry - "Go to hell, you piece of shit!" - Will is on the move.
Mike's second strike is wild, sloppy, but just powerful enough to pop Billy in the knuckles and skew the wrench out of his grip - earning Mike a solid punch to the gut instead. He makes a noise like he's about to wretch and falls to a knee beside El's thrashing sneakers.
The handle of the mallet is slick in Will's clammy palm. It almost flies out of his grip with the recoil when he winds up like a pitcher and run-skids to his knees, throwing all his weight and momentum into cracking the head of the mallet down on Billy's kneecap. His own knees sting with concrete-burn as the solid shape above him crumples stiffly with a whip-sharp shout. He only knows he was successful because he hears a body thump to the ground, he hears El gasp and cough.
There's no time to celebrate. Billy is only down long enough to roll, snatch a shard of ceramic from the ground, and surge to his feet again.
Will is trying to recover his own footing, scurrying aside in anticipation of a return blow, but the monster - because that's what he is now, there's no humanity in that expression, that growl, that quality of movement - the monster is single-mindedly pursuing El. She's still down, choked and breathless, heaving deep, wet coughs with her hand cradling her throat and her face wet with tears. The monster doesn't even break its stride to sweep Max aside when she darts in and tries to stand over El protectively. He bowls her over by the shoulder and, gripping the ceramic shard like a dagger, lifts it high and brings it -
Three things happen at once.
A furious, screaming, writhing blur of red hair and clawing nails launches itself at the monster's back, barely knocking him off-balance but hindering him nonetheless.
The sauna door hisses open as Dustin yanks on the handle, yelling, "Max, here! Get him here!"
And Lucas charges into the fray, one of Max's sneakers landing a solid accidental kick to his shoulder as she fights to keep her piggyback position, and yanks their opponent away by the hair.
There's a harsh scream of pain, and Billy grasps and yanks the Swiss Army knife from where Max managed to plunge one small blade into the meat of his shoulder. The little knife goes flying, and then Max gasps as a clawed hand crushes down around her calf, tearing her from her precarious perch on his back, and she only avoids bouncing her skull off the concrete floor by merit of landing squarely on a half-recovered Mike instead. But Lucas isn't done helping El up, and Dustin is too far to make it in time.
Will jumps forward, grabbing a hank of tattered, bloody tank top and yanking the monster away. Or, he tries. No-longer-Billy is so heavy that Will only manages to jostle him. But it gets his attention. The head of ratty hair turns with a snap, and Will is frozen. This isn't Billy, but it isn't just a mindless monster, either. He's meeting the black gaze of the Mind Flayer.
I remember you, that wordless sneer seems to say, and Will wants to run but he can't, he wants to scream but he can't. The twisted smile stretches. I know you. You're mine.
Breaking through the paralysis is like punching through a sheet of glass. Will rips himself away with a snarl of, "No."
The black eyes glitter. The sneer sours. Something like displeasure or annoyance.
And with a pivot and a deft adjustment of grip, that shard is coming at him.
He feels the bite and sting of the improvised blade before he even realizes that he moved. Mike's scream of "Will!" echoes around the space.
El's scream overlaps and clashes with his, and from a low angle, Will watches the Mind Flayer, in Billy's body, fly through the air like it was hit with a cannonball the size of a VW Bug. Billy hits the back wall of the sauna. Dustin has the door closed before he even slides to the ground, and then Max is jamming Mike's weight-bar-sword through the door handle and behind the black pipe. Barring him in.
The temperature dial cranks itself up as high as it can go.
Will is on the ground. He ducked so fast he sat down, when Flayer-Billy swiped at him, and the razor-edge that was destined for his throat instead glanced over his scalp just behind his ear. Fine strands of hair come away on his fingers when he reaches up to probe the damage, and a moment later, the welling blood begins seeping down his neck. The strike that could have ripped out his esophagus only sliced off a chunk of his hair. And a bit of his scalp.
The Party is around him, multiple pairs of hands bracing his shoulders and patting his arms and back, everyone's voices overlapping as they try desperately to figure out how dead he is. He waves them off with vague reassurances, letting them haul him upright, and reaches for El. Her eyes are still wet, her face still red - and her neck redder. She folds into his worried embrace, letting him pat her on the back and waver, "Are you okay?" before she pulls back and turns to glare at the sauna with puffy eyes and a pink nose.
Will tries not to wish that Mike would have pulled him up by the hand instead of the elbow.
There's a boom, and they all jump. Billy just discovered the barred door.
"Hey!"
They stiffen as one, looking at each other. It's the first thing Billy has said aloud since they first saw him. In English, at least.
The door booms again as he throws himself at it, again, and then again, seething, and then his palms pound on either side of the window. From this angle, Will can just barely make out Billy's shoulder - and the way it moves underneath gray skin, resetting itself, mending itself from his collision with the back wall.
When he speaks again, it's like his humanity returns in an ugly rush. "Max!"
Max flinches. Lucas inches closer to her, arm around her shoulders, his glare rivaling El's.
Billy gives the door another punch. "Let me outta here!" And then, slightly more breathless, as if he's trembling - "Let me out." This, toeing the line of a plea.
His bangs hang wet and stringy into his face, his skin glistening with perspiration, gray chest heaving, his ever-present turtle necklace stuck to his sternum and askew.
No one knows what to do. They glance at each other again, then at the thermometer. 180 and creeping upwards. All they can do is wait.
"You kids..."
His voice is thicker now - he's speaking around too many teeth, Will realizes.
"You think this is funny? You kids think this is some kinda sick prank, huh?"
Abruptly he pounds on the metal once more, flat-palmed, the noise booming around the room, and he's and he's roaring again - but it's wrong. It's distorted - deeper, more frayed than his normal voice, than any normal voice. Like a bad recording, played back on the wrong settings. It reverberates and resonates in a way that makes the skin of Will's neck tighten with gooseflesh.
"You little shits think this is funny? Open the door!"
Another hit to the door, harder this time, and the steel bar bulges outwards. The Party takes a collective twitching, nervous shuffle backwards.
"Open the door! Open the goddamn door!"
Through the increasingly foggy glass it's hard to see, but Billy's head jerks down, like he's convulsing, seizing, and just like that the yelling turns to a hoarse scream. As if of frustration or rage - or pain.
"We're at two-tenty," Mike reports, shakily, reading the thermometer beside the door.
And as he does, the scream fades into echoes in the hard, damp space, and the next noise is a choked kind of groan. They can't see Billy anymore, not even the top of his head, but they can hear him when he starts to weep.
Will looks to Mike, who looks back at him. They both frown to each other. The hell is going on now?
"It's not my fault. It's not my fault. It's not my fault, Max..."
At the sound of her name Max lets out a long breath, trembling as she hugs herself, and begins to creep forward despite El and Lucas trying to grab her arms to hold her back. But she peers through the little window, and the Party moves forward as one behind her, not willing to separate the herd. If the glass wasn't there, she'd be within arm's reach.
Billy is sitting on the floor in front of the bench, and he's crying so openly that snot slimes his upper lip. "What the hell," Lucas breathes.
"I promise you it's not my fault."
The Party shares another look, almost but not quite glancing back in the direction of what used to be a girl who liked rhinestones and a man just trying to do his job.
Max swallows, then tries to say, "What's not your fault, Billy?"
Her voice is thin. His hands are pressed together as if in prayer, mullet a frizzed-out mess. The tears just beginning to drip from his void-like eyes are black as ink.
"I've d... done things, Max, really... bad things - I didn't mean to -" He's a kid again, eight years old again, tones and inflections that of a child.
The child pleads.
"He made me do it."
Max, Will realizes, is crying too. Just a tear or two, but she is. Even though he was a monster long before the shadow took him. Even despite everything he did to her. And Will, suddenly, regrets labeling her as aloof and prickly when they first met.
She puts a hand up on the glass. "Billy, it's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay, we want to help you."
He's slumped over now, leaning on the bench, rubbing at his alien eyes, and it's almost too easy to forget that this is the same person who tormented Max during her first months in Hawkins.
Almost.
"We're at two twenty," Dustin says quietly, and they're all watching, they're all waiting, but -
Mike gets impatient first. "Why isn't it working?"
Lucas's weight shifts back and forth like he wants to pace. "Maybe it isn't hot enough."
"No, this..." Will shakes his head. "This should work. This should be working. He shouldn't be able to live in there."
He meaning the Mind Flayer.
Because Will can tell, he can tell by how his own instincts are triggered by that heat, how much he wants to get far away from it - this should be working.
But it's not. The veins of shadow pulsing under Billy's skin aren't straining towards freedom. He's not vomiting up the Mind Flayer, expelling it from a body much too hot for the creature of cold and darkness to survive.
El says it before he does.
"Maybe they can't separate anymore."
Her voice is horrible, creaking out in wisps between rusty whispers.
"So what do we do?" Lucas demands, and an argument breaks out as Mike snaps back, "I don't know!"
The Party talks over each other in confused half-whispers -
"We can't just leave him in there, he might die!"
"Well we can't exactly let him out!"
"How are we gonna explain a murder to the cops?"
"Yeah, I'd rather not be a murderer before I get into high school."
"He ate two people."
"I'm just saying, it -"
It's Billy's voice that breaks through the hushed bickering.
"What's gonna happen to me?" He almost slurs it, and they all fall silent, guilty. Wondering if he could hear them through the door. Billy blinks, sniffling, and more ink-tears streak his sweaty cheeks. When his head lowers again, swinging back and forth like he's trying to shake something away, his voice comes out as a whimper. "It hurts."
Will's nose stings. He fights the compulsion to close his eyes, to take a break from this for just a moment, because closing his eyes might push the building haze of moisture down onto his cheeks.
Max risks trying to steer his attention back to the more useful question, the most important question.
"Who made you do it, Billy?"
They all know. And they all need to hear it.
They never do.
Like a flip has been switched, Billy straightens. One moment he's sniveling and pathetic, all his asshole bravado stripped from him by pain and confusion - and the next, it's like all emotion dries up from his face. He stands up in one smooth motion, making the Party hiss with quiet curses, and approaches the window on silent footsteps. It's hard to tell exactly who he's looking at, with no iris or pupil to follow, but his head tilts first towards Will, then El.
When he speaks, his voice is different. Steady. Rumbling. Much deeper than it seems Billy's vocal cords should allow, reverberating around the cramped little room.
"You. You let us in. And now, you are going to have to let us stay."
Will's breath shudders on his next inhale. Was he talking to El? Or him?
Or both?
Billy's head moves and now he's definitely looking at Will, looking straight at his eyes. The stare is like an icy draft. Will does not look away. Not this time. He grits his teeth and stares right back, hatred roiling in his gut and heating his cheeks, heating his blood, bringing warmth back to extremities that had gone cold.
The Mind Flayer smiles. A small, knowing, patronizing smile. "You think you can beat me. I know you. Don't forget I've been inside your head."
Will's chest rises and falls with a hard breath before he says, "I've been in yours."
I know your plans too. I know your weaknesses too. You're not a god. You're just a bully.
The resulting chuckle makes half the party tense up and the other half shudder. The Mind Flayer licks Billy's split lower lip - which splits a little further as they watch. "Always so tenacious. What will you do when your..." He scoffs the word. "Friends find out?"
Will feels his head swivel, drawing in on himself in a minute but unsuppressable reaction, eyes widening just a degree as his heart seizes in his chest.
Oh, no.
Please, no.
Please don't.
But the Mind Flayer does not know mercy, and Will knows that.
He seems to know Will's thoughts. The too-wide mouth curls. "When they find out who you are? What you are? Do you really think they would still stand with you?"
Dustin shuffles a little closer to him, gripping the wrench like a baseball bat in preparation. "It's bullshit, Will, don't listen to him."
"He's just trying to split us apart," Mike chimes in, and then orders the general group - "He's a liar, don't believe a word he says. He's just trapped and desperate."
The Mind Flayer doesn't so much as glance at either of them. He's totally focused on Will, staring, and Will can feel the blunt, eyeless gaze of that spade-shaped head bending down towards him, he can feel it like he felt it on the field, and his resolve is waning.
"Shall we tell them?" The featureless eyes glint. "Should we tell them what you really are?"
Lucas gives an impatient huff. "I say we knock him out and leave. He's monologuing like a Bond villain. He's clearly just trying to waste our time. He doesn't want us going near the mall in time, so let's move."
A few noises of agreement circulate, but Will is rooted in place as the Mind Flayer leans a forearm above the square of glass with a vicious grin. Visibly enjoying watching Will tense up. He draws out the words so that each is clear, each is unmistakable.
"Did you really think he could ever want you?"
Something in Will calcifies. Stiffening in his lungs and veins, the creep of cold holding him in place. He can't turn to look at Mike. And maybe that's a good thing. He doesn't want his expression to give away more than what's already been said.
Max has been getting antsy, glancing back and forth between Will and what was once her step-brother, and now she says, "Billy, shut up!"
The Mind Flayer watches with some amusement. Will can almost hear him - almost believes, for a moment, that he can hear him whispering in the back of his head -
That's the problem with individuals. So inefficient. So prone to discord.
He shakes it away. It's just a memory, he reminds himself, trying to calm the trembling in his chest and throat. He's not in your head anymore. Not this time.
"They will always leave you," he sums up matter-of-factly in Billy's voice. "But - you knew that. And it doesn't matter, in the end. You'll die anyway. You're just wasting your time."
"Enough."
This time it's El that speaks up. Cold, authoritative, and rusty as an ancient gate.
"You can't have this world."
Her shoulder appears at Will's. Like she's bracing him. Keeping him from falling.
She knows. Better than any of the others. She's the only one he's ever told about the Mind Flayer's machinations, his twisted motivations.
The Mind Flayer smirks a final time - a very Billy-like, sideways smirk - and then goes serious. "You shouldn't have looked for me. Because now I see you. Now we can all see you."
The Party flinches at a new noise - one that surrounds them. Dry, almost hissing. Papery. Clicking and scratching. A sinuous, reverberating flutter that tightens into gooseflesh at the nape of Will's neck - but there's something different this time. Not just the reality-glitching hiss and judder of otherworldly dust rubbing against itself, twisting and undulating in midair as it traverses a type of existence it was never meant to interact with - but something more. Something far more earthly, far more corporeal. Not slick and cold like the Demo-monsters, but small and warm-blooded and squealing. The pungent must of ammonia and grimy fur surrounds them, and then Max gives a gasp of revulsion and Lucas screams in a way he'll certainly deny later and takes an unbalanced kick at something that just ran over his shoe. The group contracts in upon itself as they all look around, turning and looking up for the first time in minutes, and realize that the room has filled with a seething floor of rats.
Mike echoes Max's noise of revulsion and slaps at something disgustingly warm that just landed on Will's shoulder, and the little weight goes tumbling off.
"Oh... shit." Dustin kicks and nudges at the various toes and elbows around him, the bill of his hat angled up, and one by one they follow his gaze upwards - to where the rodents have spread to the fixtures of the ceiling, clinging to fire sprinklers and running along exposed pipes.
Will's stomach turns at the smell alone.
So this is your new army, he thinks. At least, for now.
Not all of them are rats. Some are... Will doesn't know what they are. Wet and fleshy. Partway between something Upside Down and something earthly - but it's like something earthly turned inside-out. They lumber between the normal rats, squealing in a way that sounds so painful it makes him wince.
Something about the twist of bones, the split of skin, the inflation of musculature and cracking of the jaw into multi-segmented mouths is... familiar.
Billy straightens from his lean and watches. Hair wet with sweat, skin wet with plasma-streaked-with-blood as his joints crunch and his frame distorts, bloats. His lips pull into a grimace, neck craning back to the ceiling as something pops in his spine, and meanwhile, the Party has started trying to swipe away the encroaching sea of fur and flesh around them. But the rats are getting bolder - nipping at them, hissing, their beady eyes gleaming and yet sightless, worm tails lashing behind them.
El pushes her hands down with a grunt, like she's driving something into the earth, and a perfect circle of empty concrete clears around their feet.
"God I hope everyone has their rabies shots," Dustin pants, just as Lucas says, "Ah, son of a bitch."
The clicking, squeaking, crunching noise they've all been hearing for the last few minutes, while they were preoccupied with the rats, was several of the not-rats chewing at the hinges and bar of the sauna door. And making good progress.
"Abort," Will suggests, nearly at the same time as Lucas, but they can't step backwards without stepping into the squirming carpet of fur.
And meanwhile, the Mind Flayer has locked his black gaze once again on Will, El, and the rest of the Party behind them. "We are going to end you. We are going to end your friends. And then we're going to end... everything."
The words snap out of Will's mouth before he plans them, vocal cords raw with harsh exertion. "No, you're not." A brief, boiling pause - "Because I'm gonna kill you first."
The Mind Flayer just smiles, shakes his head at the ground - a very charming, Billy-like gesture, so human and so affectionate it's horrible - and he says, "We'll see."
And without preparation, without warning, Billy dashes at the door - blasting it open where the rats have weakened it.
With so much of him hidden behind the door, and so much of his face fogged by the steam-opaque glass, Will hadn't realized just how much Billy changed in there. He looks less and less human and more and more like those not-rats. His silhouette, which was mostly human but wrong when they first found him, has now bulged and hunched into something only reminiscent of human, jeans and tank top beginning to rupture and tear. The raptor-like claws have pushed past his fingers, eclipsing them, turning his hands long and knifelike. Horn-like protrusions have begun to sprout and push through the skin on his spine and sides, flexing now and again like little vestigial legs. El catches him mid-jump and holds him back, letting him thrash against the intangible barrier, and those spines flutter and twitch.
And now, as they watch, he howls an otherworldly, ululating howl in El's face.
And his jaw splits in half with a wet crack, unfolding at what used to be his chin to form the gaping, tooth-lined maw characteristic of all Upside Down denizens.
"Eugh!" several people exclaim at once - and then there's another, louder collective exclamation of panic as they feel the weight and claws of rodents trying to climb socks and pant legs. With El's concentration shifted to the monster, the force field around them has decayed, and the masses are closing in again.
"Go!" she yells, as the monster uses the leverage of an exercise machine to pull itself closer to her. The machine tips and falls with a crash, rats scattering beneath it, and El starts backing towards the door and pushing the others behind her. Her voice strains and cracks. "Just go!"
They give up avoiding the rats and just sprint, Max grabbing El and pulling her along with them - and in doing so, breaking her concentration and dropping the monster to the floor. It's right on their heels as they pelt hell-for-leather through the weight room door, through the locker room, slipping and sliding and tripping and rolling ankles on the round little bodies underfoot. But the monster lopes ahead of them, running on hands and feet like a half-turned werewolf, and slides between them and the door. Will runs into Dustin, who runs into Lucas as they screech to a halt.
"Can't you tie him up or something?" Lucas snaps, fed up and scared, and El gives a hard little nod and yanks at the air.
A slim pipe tears from the wall, rupturing, taking chunks of brick with it and sending a burst of water across the room. The frayed electrical wires that it ripped along the way pop and spark. The smell of rat worsens as it soaks their fur, and the smell of ozone joins it as the wires fizzle. Will can feel that fizzle in his own fingertips.
A fine mist touches down on his arms and legs and cheekbones, and water begins to lap at the Party's sneakers as the length of pipe curls across the room with the shrieking, moaning sound of bent metal. The monster sees it coming but it's too late; the pipe knocks against his waist, unbalancing him, and twists like a long pool noodle around his form. El drops her hand and the metal hardens, impenetrable once more, immovable once more. Pinning the monster's arms to his sides and his legs to each other.
She doesn't look good. Her skin is as gray as Billy's was, her forehead beaded with sweat. When she pushes her hands down and out, trying to clear the floor around them again, the rats disperse - and then close in, climbing over each other and piling into little mounds around Party members' feet, and El leans heavily on Mike's shoulder.
"Did she pass out?" Max hollers from the back of the group, as Lucas makes a valiant attempt at picking off rats with his crossbow. But he's very low on dartboard darts already, and there are so many.
"No," Mike yells back as he drags El's arm over his shoulders and hefts his shoulder under her armpit to support her. "But she's pretty bad!"
"Door!" someone yells, Will can't even tell who, but there's a problem - the thing that used to be Billy is teetering in front of the door, blocking their path, and while his limbs are immobilized, his mouth certainly isn't. The split jaws snap and snarl, the claws flex and splay at his sides, and El can't fight anymore.
And the rats are starting to engulf them like rising water. Piling like zombies around their feet, their legs, scurrying up clothing. Will feels the first bite on his ear, the second soon after on his leg, and the others are twitching and yelping too. Swiping them off doesn't work, kicking doesn't work; they just come back a second later, filling in the gap like a liquid.
Will finds himself back-to-back with Dustin as, with wrench and mallet respectively, they fend off jumping attacks on either side. Mike, weaponless, takes on the sisyphean task of swiping away the piles with his feet, toppling the little mounds of screaming, biting, clawing bodies and yelling vague encouragement. Max stomps on a rat-monster and it squeals, many little legs scrabbling against the floor, before she steps down harder and something snaps and it goes still. They're no closer to the door, despite a consistent collective shuffling motion, and El is faring no better. In fact, cringing away from rats and trying to shake, slap, and knock them from her body doesn't seem to be doing her any favors.
But just as Will is deciding what he wants on his tombstone, Max does a double-take at something across the room. She starts edging in that direction, shoving and wading through rats.
"Anyone got a lighter?"
"Why?" yells Lucas, while Mike says, "Just matches!"
Dustin shoves a hand into his survival backpack and then thrusts his fist in the air. "HERE!"
He throws. She catches. Sharp little claws run across the skin of Will's arms, the back of his neck, his shoulders, dropping onto his head and trying to worm their way under the fabric of his clothes, and Max screams, "Cover me!" and dives.
Mike lunges and slaps at a skinless monster-rat with his bare hand just before it bites down on Max's side with many small, doubtless venomous teeth, and then she's up with a can of hairspray.
The Party stumbles back at the rattle of the agitator clacking within the can, trying to clear the path.
And meanwhile, the monster has popped one arm free - thanks to the dislocation of several joints, by the looks of it - and has started to un-bend the pipe from around itself, methodically, nearly free even as Max aims the can, flicks on the lighter, and jams her thumb into the trigger.
The stream of flame is so bright it tattoos itself against the backs of Will's eyelids as a blue-purple ghost. He can feel the heat of it from here, pushing past his arms and face like a physical thing, and the smell of chemical flame blots out everything else - until the smell of the rats turns to the stench of burnt fur and flesh. The noise is like the roar of a jet engine in miniature.
"Go!" Max urges, pausing to shake again, and at that moment, the monster hurls aside the last of the mangled water pipe and sprints at her. But she gets the spout of flame going again while he's mid-step. It blasts him directly in the face and he howls, clapping misshapen hands over the seared skin and stumbling against a wall, and Max's face contorts with shock and guilt.
But the path to the door is open.
Will doesn't realize how stiff he is until Dustin shoves him in the back, urging him forward, through the path cleared by the fleeing Flayed creatures.
He has to push through another glass sheet of resistance before he can make himself move, un-glue his feet from the wet floor, but then he stutters forward and the spell is broken, he's splashing through a thin layer of water with the others, Max giving bursts of flame behind them to keep the army back. But the can of AquaNet is guttering; she's almost out of fuel. And then it runs out entirely and the bright flame winks out.
An ear-splitting shriek makes them all startle violently, and a split second later the fire sprinklers deploy.
Mike trips. Will doesn't see it but he hears it, the scuffle, the splash, the grunt of pain, and Lucas is already doubling back to grab him, but a shape on all fours closes in like a dark blur before Lucas can get there. Mike shoots backwards on his stomach with a scream, clawing at the rough ground as the monster yanks at his foot - with its mouth. It gives a toss of its now-bare head, a few final chunks of singed, wet hair detaching with the movement, and gets a better grip, this time on Mike's calf.
Mike gives an animal yelp of pain-panic and something in Will snaps like a pencil.
He can feel the wires across the room fizzling, smoking, burning their plastic casings and pulsing with energy. It takes no effort at all to get ahold of that energy, feel it buzzing, sharp and strident, and pull it down into the water. He feels it leaping through the form of the monster, white-hot, and he feels the cold spots around each Party member where he won't let it go.
Max says, "Oh my god," as the monster seizes with a scream all too reminiscent of the Demogorgon, and Mike kicks his way free and launches himself upright into Lucas's helping hand.
If it wasn't mad before it sure is now. It takes a booming step towards them, still twitching with aftershocks, water splattering under its elephantine foot -
And doesn't get any further. Because El is standing again, gray-faced and determined, and as they watch, the monster lifts into the air, hangs suspended for a single moment, and then shoots backwards. Through the brick wall.
She's shaking like a leaf as she lowers her hand, breathing out a long, slow breath like she's trying to keep from blacking out, and the Party folds in around her as they finally burst out through the locker room door and pelt for freedom.
Some rats try to follow. But not many. Max singed a lot of them with her flamethrower, and Upside Down creatures can't survive much heat.
When Will takes one final glance back through the hole in the wall, fearing pursuit, he catches sight of a large, spine-covered monster of slimy flesh loping off into the night on several too many legs.
Will's hair looks weird with just that one bit missing.
Lucas probed the wound already, using his Rugged Outdoor Survival Skills - in his words - to determine the need for stitches. Will himself took a look at it in the mirror, then Mike, then El, and eventually everyone came to a consensus: no stitches needed.
(A haircut, on the other hand...)
No one else is doing much better. In fact, most of the others are doing worse. El has dark bruises around her throat just under her jaw and her voice goes in and out like a weak radio signal when she talks. Max has deep bruises and shallow cuts on her leg where Billy dragged her off his back. Lucas's eyebrows are a bit singed and he rolled an ankle from stepping on rats. Dustin is nursing a bruised hip and tailbone and what might be a sprained wrist, and everyone has rat bites.
Mike has tooth-patterned gashes on his calf, bleeding heavily and deep enough to make him limp. He's sweating, jaw clenched, and on top of it all he's winced and put a hand to his belly both times he's laughed. Will suspects there would be a developing bruise there, if he pulled up his shirt, from Billy's fist. And although Mike says it doesn't hurt much he takes three of the pain pills from the bottle Will fetches from upstairs.
No risk of being seen or heard. The Wheelers left for the 4th of July Fair already. Or so claims the note on the counter addressed to Mike and Nancy, inviting them to join their parents and little sister if and when they can.
The Party retreated here to regroup and come up with a plan. And do First Aid. A lot of First Aid.
They already had their bewildered freak-out on the way back, yelling to each other and swearing and riding so fast they nearly ate shit several times, in case the monster turned around and began a pursuit.
Why was he like that!?
Is everyone alive? El, are you good? Mike?
What was wrong with him?
Guys, what the hell -
Is it behind us?
I don't see it -
Just go, go!
Chester was barking up a storm when they got back to the Wheelers' - making it extra lucky that Mike's parents had already left. He must have only started after they were gone, or else the Party would have arrived to a much different note on the kitchen counter.
Chester was displeased to be left alone, and he shot through the door the moment they opened it, bounding at people and whining and baying, trying to lick everyone's faces and wounds and generally getting underfoot. They all smell awful, like wet rat and viscera, which was endlessly fascinating and exciting to the dog. Will had to pull him away by the collar so he wouldn't hurt anyone further in his endearing incompetence. Now, as the Party collapses to do First Aid and regroup, Chester cruises the space between pieces of furniture and whines, aware that the pack is distressed and injured and unhappy with his own canine ability to fix the problem. Eventually he settles by Dustin, who keeps him occupied with head pats.
They're talking in vague and shaky circles between gulps of water and the sounds of pages turning as El and Dustin try to look up how to treat rat bites in the First Aid kit handbook. What now? Can they still fight? Do they need more people? Would that help? Should they go straight to the Gate? But they can't do that without the key-code to the lab. But they can't spend too much longer trying to crack Dustin's code, the sun has already set and the minutes are ticking by. They need to get there tonight, now, before the lab tries again and succeeds this time.
But no one is in a shape to move just at this moment.
Will has been pawing at his hair the whole time, running his fingers over the abrupt empty space where inches of length used to be, and finally he huffs out a breath and snaps, "Can someone just cut the rest of this off? It's driving me nuts."
The Party glances up. Mike looks like he wants to volunteer, but he's been nursing his leg, and Lucas is still struggling to wrap his own ankle.
"I'll do it." Max gets up. "My mom used to cut my dad's hair, before they divorced. She taught me once. I could probably do it."
And so, upstairs in the quiet house, they locate Mrs. Wheeler's sharp sewing scissors and Max sits him down on a stool from the kitchen. It reminds him of his mother cutting his hair, like she has ever since he can remember, but instead of getting out a bowl to fit over his head Max just wets down his hair with tap water and goes in.
She hesitates before the first cut, fidgeting for a moment. "You sure about this?"
"Yeah." He sits up a little straighter on the hard stool and it wobbles beneath him. "Let's do it."
"I might just mess it up worse, you know."
He twists to offer what he hopes is a reassuring smile, but he's pretty sure it just ends up looking tired. "I don't care. I just wanna get rid of that one part."
Because every time he's reminded of the hair, he's reminded of that moment. Frozen in the Mind Flayer's gaze, feeling like it's reaching into his brain all over again. Seeing the change in Billy's expression right before the Mind Flayer finally deemed Will useless and tried to dispose of him. The gut-freezing shock of realizing how very close he just came to death.
He wants it gone. And he needs to change his hair anyway. He still looks like a little kid like this.
She combs his bangs away from his forehead with her fingers. "Do you want a part?"
"Um..."
"That's... it's kind of all I know how to do, so..."
"Yeah, no, that's fine."
"Are you sure?"
"Totally."
She arranges his hair, parting it slightly to one side, and mutters about how she should have put a towel around his shoulders.
"I can just shave it all off and grow it back if it's really awful," he adds, and that seems to do the trick. Max finally twists his head straight and takes a lock between her first two fingers. A moment later the scissors snip.
"You'd look like you're in the military," Max snorts, and Will pretends to shudder. Her fingertips press on either side of his skull again. "Don't move."
"Sorry."
For a while everything is quiet. Just the soft metallic snip of Mrs. Wheeler's sewing scissors in Max's hand, sporadic and sometimes so close to Will's ear that the whisper sounds more like a buzz, like a zipper pulling. He tries not to move, but every once in a while he'll catch a flick of motion in his peripheral vision as a piece of hair falls to the ground.
Max works front to back. Will can't see himself - there's no mirror like on the rare occasions when the Byers visit a real barber shop - but she seems to be leaving the top of his head mostly alone, except for shaping it with her fingers and giving a snip here and there. She focuses mostly around ear-level, about where the cut is.
"That's where that bit got sliced off, anyway," she explains, apologetic, as she lops off a chunk near his neck. The hair falls away and he feels suddenly cold.
They can hear the others in the basement. Not clearly, but their voices buzz through the walls and floor, familiar and comforting. El's speech patterns, Dustin's tone of voice, and Lucas's emphasized interrogatives are clearly identifiable even from here.
And of course Will can pick out Mike. It's impossible not to recognize the timbre and inflections of his best friend.
The kitchen is getting dark. Max turned on the light above the sink to see, when they came in, but the dusk is slowly deepening, and the sky outside the window is a gradient of blues.
"So I've been dealing with El's side of things." Max's elbow dips in and out of Will's peripheral vision. She has a skinned elbow - more like a skinned arm actually, the concrete burn extending down the outside of her forearm. From when Billy threw her off? Will isn't sure. "Post-breakup," she clarifies. "How's Mike holding up?"
"Ah..." He gives a small, loose shrug, puffing out a breath. It moves a strand of wet hair hanging near his face. "He, you know. He's Mike."
"Mm." She runs a strand through her fingers, like she's measuring it, and evens out the end with a series of small, quick snips. Feathering the tips, maybe? And after a pause, she ventures, "How are you holding up?"
Now he does move. Turning sharply to look back at her over his shoulder, making her pull the scissors back so he doesn't jam his head into the blades.
Does she mean now that the Upside Down is back, or now that Mike is single?
He decides to interpret it as the former, and faces forward again with a mumble of, "'m okay," ignoring her what-the-hell-was-that frown.
Will has an inkling that Max knows.
Neither of them has ever said it. Neither of them has ever brought it up. It's just this unspoken thing, and Will isn't sure if the understanding that passes between them is all in his head or not. While El is too socially inexperienced to pick up on it, and Dustin and Lucas are too used to it to give it any thought, Max surely sees that Will is different around Mike. In fact, Will remembers her asking about it. Last fall some time after the exorcism, before the Snow Ball. He and Mike had been leaving the AV Club early because Mike was having a bad day, full of too many memories, and just before the door closed behind them Will heard her half-whisper -
Are they always like that?
Like that. Walking side-by-side, strides synced up. Standing next to each other, talking in inscrutable inside jokes, sharing food. Things that Mike started to subtly pull away from when he got a girlfriend and started trying to be an adult already.
He doesn't know what Dustin and Lucas said in response. He wishes he did.
"Okay," Max sighs, arranging his hair and then giving it a final shake. "That's as good as I can do."
They head to the Wheelers' guest bath to take a look. The empty spot is still there, slashed with a thin line of red - nearly black now, as the bleeding stops and congeals. That particular spot was impossible to save, the hair was sliced so close to the scalp. But the rest...
Will blinks at himself in the mirror as Max stands nervously in the doorway, not sure he recognizes himself - but in the best way. It's not the most even haircut in the world, and the execution is somewhat clumsy, but... it's not terrible. And moreover, it's new. It makes his face look different, sharper maybe, more mature. Or maybe it's just that his old hairstyle was more childlike than he had realized. But suddenly he looks almost like a grown-up. Like someone else and like himself at the same time.
His hair is still wet, but Max has arranged it in a side part. Instead of hanging straight down over his forehead, his bangs are split and brushed back and to the side. The hair on the top and sides of his head is still plenty long enough to comb his fingers through, but at ear-level and below, it transitions to a shorter length, cropped close to his neck.
Max says, "So?" and Will turns to look at her, having half-forgotten she was there.
"Yeah," he says, and rakes it back from his face one more time with his fingers. A few strands of bangs fall forward again, framing his face in a way that has him grinning inside even though he keeps his expression muted. "Yeah, it's good."
"Really?"
He glances back at himself.
"Yeah. Totally."
"Oh - here." She steps forward with the scissors, gesturing for him to turn. "There's a spot I missed."
Mike
"Could somebody shut that overly optimistic dick up?"
Lucas is referring to Corey Hart, who at the moment is crooning Never Surrender from the radio. They turned it back on when they got home, monitoring it for electrical disturbances - an especially important precaution, now that the Billy-Monster is on the loose somewhere. So far the signal has remained smooth and clear.
But Lucas's ankle is twisted - not badly, thankfully, just enough to make it hard for him to maneuver quickly - and he's grumpy.
"With a little perseverance you can get things done," Corey Hart insists from the radio, as Dustin hefts himself up from the couch to change the channel. "Without the blind adherence that has conquered some - and nobody wants to know y-!"
"Fourth of July sale!" interrupts an advertisement, as Dustin twists the dial. "Buy one, get one half off if you come in before -"
He twists again, through static, through a classical music station, and lands on a rich-voiced radio DJ announcing Fortress Around Your Heart by Sting.
"Suitably morose?" Dustin asks, and Lucas grunts and leans back against the armchair.
They've been dressing their wounds. Dabbing disinfectant, bandaging cuts and gashes, handing around the bottle of headache pills, trying their best to wash the stench of wet rat and Upside Down from themselves, gulping water and using the restroom and, in El's case, taking a cat nap on the couch. She's been out for about ten or fifteen minutes, basically since Will and Max went upstairs, and now she stirs. Maybe the changing radio woke her, because she looks groggily towards it, sees that Dustin has been fiddling with the dials, and relaxes again. She gives a long breath, then sits fully up to the opening lines -
"Under the ruins of a walled city, crumbling towers in beams of yellow light..."
Mike already limped back and forth to the bathroom to refill her water bottle, and he pushes it towards her without really looking.
It's been awkward. During the battle there was no time to think about any of that. They were allies, friends, soldiers-in-arms, just fighting to survive and protect each other. Now they're back home, with no immediate threat to their lives, and Mike doesn't quite know what to do.
How is he supposed to act? They haven't made up, not by a long shot, but... They can't really keep fighting or cold-shouldering each other right now. They just don't have time for that. They can keep yelling at each other once they're sure the world isn't going to end.
But part of Mike hopes they don't have to. Do they have to? It's been... he doesn't know how to describe it. Nice. Almost. It's awkward, and clearly they're both still hurt - he knows he is. But something about this, something about having the Party all together without having to act like a couple with her... It feels almost like that first November. Like when he and Lucas and Dustin and El were all together, looking for Will -
Mike. I understand.
She's our friend and she's crazy!
No, El, you're not the monster.
But Will is here now. He's not lost, he's not dead, his empty coffin isn't being lowered into the ground with roses draped across it. And Max is here too. And for the first time, it feels almost like it used to. In the old times. And Mike hadn't realized how much he missed it.
Except for, you know, all the pain and catastrophe. He could do without that part.
"Why do you think," Lucas ventures, and then chews on his words like he's not sure if he wants to say them.
Mike thinks he knows. "Billy was like that?" He's been sitting on the question this whole time. He's sure they all have.
"No - well, yeah, but I mean." Lucas glances to the stairs, where Will and Max disappeared, and then says, "Why didn't that happen to Will?"
No one speaks, and the radio keeps playing. "I had to stop in my tracks for fear, of walking on the mines I'd laid..."
"Will was already a suitable host."
The guys look at each other and then back to El as she rubs her lips together. She has her hands clasped between her knees, hunched forward on the edge of the couch cushion. She's still so pale that for a moment Mike is afraid she's about to puke.
But she just takes a breath and says, "He already had a -" One hand swishes in the air as she searches for words. "Connection. With the Upside Down. But the rats, Billy... They weren't connected at all. They needed to be. Changed?"
She's speaking with some authority, and Mike leans forward to catch her eyes. "Did you feel that?"
Her gaze flickers up - catching his just for a second, then back down - and she nods. "I think so."
Dustin gives a deep sigh. "Shit. Okay. Who's up for ice cream? We need a pick-me-up before we can kick this thing's ass, right?"
They chuckle a little. Hands go up.
Dustin gives double finger guns to the group. "Comin' right up."
Lucas climbs to his feet with a dramatic wince, testing his weight on his swelling ankle before following Dustin to the deep freezer in the far corner of the basement. Usually they'd go for popsicles from the kitchen, but Dustin knows exactly where to find the good stuff. And in circumstances such as these, nothing less than Breyers Neapolitan will do.
Mike waits a few moments before saying, "You okay?"
El makes a motion like a shrug, stretching her arms out between her knees. "Yeah."
A beat goes by, and then - "You look like shit."
She gives him an affronted frown, and then breaks into a little laugh. "So do you."
He snorts back, and after a moment, gestures to her water. "Here."
This time, she takes it. She grimaces when she swallows.
"How's your throat?"
"Hurts." She caps the bottle. "Leg?"
"Hurts."
They sit for a moment, the silence just a degree warmer than before. Mike is surprised when El speaks up again.
"We are a good team." She says Good Team like both words should be capitalized, like it's important. When Mike looks, she's eyeing him out of the corner of her eye, watching his expression.
He can't bring himself to agree aloud. He's still too sore, too tender.
When he doesn't respond, El tries again. She's more hesitant this time, almost timid.
"Are we... friends?"
A big part of him wants to lash out. Part of him wants to scoff and get up, leaving the question unanswered. Because he knows he can't say no. Even after today.
He doesn't know who drew first blood this time, it's all too confusing and convoluted. But El is trying to call a truce. And this isn't the time to have rifts in the Party.
"Friends," he agrees - begrudgingly, but he does it. "Truce?"
"Truce."
They shake. Her hand is freezing cold and clammy.
"Will!" It's Dustin, craning his neck to holler up the stairs. "Can you bring down bowls? There's ice cream!"
He's balancing a precarious tower of other frozen goods while Lucas extracts their prize from the bottom of the freezer. As Mike and El watch, a TV dinner slips in his hands and the pile goes down, tumbling onto the floor and back into the freezer to a chorus of curses. El meets Mike's eyes, and for a second, they both purse their lips in suppressed laughter.
He says it before he can change his mind. He wants it off his chest - especially if they die today. "You're not a pain in the ass."
El lifts her eyebrows, head bobbing, then gives a mischievous little smile. "Yes I am." She pokes him. "So are you."
"I resent that."
She knows it's a joke, and she narrows her eyes playfully.
That's about the time when there's a creak on the stairs and the Party turns almost in unison to see Max and Will coming down the stairs.
Lucas whistles.
Dustin says, "Ho-ly shit."
El gives a delighted, open-mouthed laugh, and Max slaps her arm and snaps, "Don't laugh. I did the best I could, okay?"
Will's smile is nervous as he hands a small pile of bowls and spoons off to Dustin. "That bad?"
"No," Mike blurts, and Lucas says, "You look good, Byers!"
Dustin, bowls propped in the crook of one elbow, uses the other hand to clap Will on the back and says, "John Connor who, am I right?"
"Oh, god." Max covers her face with her hands. "I knew it looked familiar."
"Without the dumb bangs, though," Lucas says, and Dustin immediately retaliates, "Shut up, that haircut was badass."
"You lookin' to get the same 'do? The bird nest wasn't enough?"
"Bite me."
And Mike, aware that he's supposed to voice some sort of reaction as well, fights through the paralyzed mess of his brain and says, "Pretty good. Yeah. That, uh. Wow. That's different."
Will reaches up and tugs on it self-consciously, his hand running over the blank space just below the cut. "Thanks. Yeah, uh, Max did good."
"Yeah. Totally."
Will looks...
Well, it's unavoidable.
Handsome. He looks handsome.
He looks older, almost. Like removing the round, straight fringe of hair around his face also pulled away the afterimage of childhood-round cheeks and a button nose, revealing sharper, more defined features than Mike remembered.
Except, nothing has changed. Not really. All of those features were there, all of those changes were there. Mike has tracked them in real time over nine years. He knows Will's face as well as his own, and this new attractiveness isn't really new at all. It's just, he usually doesn't see it. Or - doesn't let himself see it.
People are gathering around, ruffling Will's hair and smothering him with equal amounts of compliments and friendly insults until he waves both away with apple-red cheeks and a flustered laugh. Dustin sets down the bowls on the card table, carefully avoiding the battle map, and begins portioning Neapolitan into bowls.
Mike registers Lucas hovering near Will, and only hears the quiet conversation on accident -
"Hey. What the Mind Flayer said about your dad... It's bullshit. Yeah?"
Will doesn't respond, but takes a breath as if he's going to, and after a moment Lucas goes on -
"You don't need that asshole to want you anyway. You're better off without him."
Mike can picture Will's uneasy smile by the tone of his voice, though he himself is hovering around the card table, facing away, trying to school his expressions.
"Yeah. Thanks, man."
There's the sound of someone slapping someone else on the shoulder, and a moment later Will is at Mike's side, clicking into place just like always, but Mike almost can't stand it. Not now.
Because the thing he never thinks about - he's thinking about it now.
It was the locker room that loosened it all, stirred it all up from where it usually lies half-dormant on the streambed of his consciousness. The hand holding thing. Whatever that was. He still doesn't know why he allowed it. Why it didn't feel weird. But it started this avalanche, and now it's like he can't stop. The thing he usually avoids with zero effort, pushing down in his mind so habitually he almost stopped noticing he was doing it - now it's like he can't escape. Now it's all he can think about. His mind runs in circles, looping like there's something holding him in orbit, over and over, clipping against the-thing-he-doesn't-think-about on every pass.
The sleepovers when they were little, sharing a couch or bed before that wasn't allowed in an unspoken kind of way -
The slippery-cold squirming in his belly whenever Troy jeered the word fairy or queers or gay, when Mike's own mother or father made some veiled and less-than-complimentary remark about those kinds of people -
The burning-raw emptiness inside him when he saw Will's body being pulled from the quarry, and the shining lightness when Mike heard his voice again, when he realized Will wasn't gone, he wasn't dead, he wasn't gone -
The indescribable happiness of seeing him again, tumbling through the door of his hospital room and straight to him, laying his head on Will's chest to hear his heartbeat, to be sure -
That night on Halloween, candy spread before them, opening up to his best friend in a way he hadn't even opened up to his sister or mother because they trusted each other and always had -
Putting a clumsy, hot hand over Will's cold one, heart pounding and unsure of himself but determined -
What if he spies back?
He won't.
How do you know?
We won't let him.
Standing helpless and terrified while Will screamed himself hoarse, chest so full of anguish that Mike wanted to scream too, like that might take some of it away from Will, like that might lessen his agony somehow.
The nervousness, the uncertainty, and the buoyant bubble of glad relief when Will still knew him, still recognized him.
That's my friend. Mike.
And the big one. The one that pulled all of it into the light with a harsh tug, merciless, throwing Mike into a tailspin that lasted weeks until he finally leveled out around the Snow Ball and managed to sweep it all away again. But it was never as invisible after that, never as easy to ignore or brush off. The lid had been blown open, and now all of it could come oozing out at the most inconvenient of times.
The shed. Will, possessed. Will, there but gone, changed. Mike's one and final chance to pull his best friend back from wherever he had gone, wherever the Mind Flayer stuffed him after taking up residence in his body. One and only one chance to reach him. And Mike reached into himself to do that. So deep down that he shocked himself to the core, leaving himself shaken for hours afterwards, literally trembling with the intensity of what he dredged up.
It was the best thing I've ever done.
And that reminds him of today, something unexpected but oddly welcome, something that made his stomach flip -
It was the best thing I've done, too, you know.
Now it's like the lid is gone entirely. And all of it comes frothing up around Mike's frantically pressing palms, pouring out from between his ribs like blood from a chest wound, impossible to ignore anymore.
He's one of those.
Mike is "one of those kinds of people."
And Will...
And Will?
The hurt, the panic in his eyes - It's not my fault you don't like girls! - the hand in Mike's, fingers squeezing and not letting go in the pool locker room -
"You okay?"
Mike startles like he's been zapped by an electrical fence, although the little sting of static where Will nudged his arm was barely enough to feel.
"Yeah," Mike says, the answer automatic. He realizes he's holding a cold bowl, and he stuffs a spoonful of vanilla into his mouth. He must have taken it from Dustin at some point. Everyone has ice cream now.
Will doesn't buy it, but he doesn't push, either. He just knocks his elbow against Mike's again, then retreats an inch or two, gazing down at the map while spoons clink against bowls.
El reaches out to shift the pieces on the board - which is strange. Usually she'd be using her powers to move them all at once, seamlessly, like a real little army marching into place. Now she uses her hands to set down the Thessalhydra in the center of Starcourt Mall.
"The Mind Flayer," she says. "On the other side of the Gate. Waiting."
Next, an ogre figurine goes down somewhere beyond the pool. "Billy."
"Who knows where he went," Mike says, and Dustin and Lucas both say, "The mall."
Will is nodding. "He'd want a soldier protecting the Gate from this side to make sure nothing went wrong."
"Nothing like..." Lucas gestures at his sternum. "Us."
"Right."
Max leans over to see better. Her hair has long since been torn out of its neat braids, and now hangs in two tangled masses only vaguely resembling braids. "So, that's our next move."
Lucas has his arms crossed, bowl resting on the edge of the table mainly untouched. "Except that's exactly what he expects. Why do you think he sent Billy there in the first place? We'd be walking right into a trap."
"I can take care of it." El's jaw is square, despite how shaky she still looks. "I can stop it. We just need to get there."
"Your powers are already drained," Mike says before he can stop himself, and El fixes him with an icy stare.
The entire board lifts into the air, map and all, and the Thessalhydra figurine flips to the other side - The Upside Down.
"I'm fine," she says. "I can do it."
He opens his mouth to argue, but Dustin speaks first.
"We gotta let her try. The lab said they were opening the Gate tonight. And I dunno if you've noticed, but -"
He waves an arm at the windows, where outside, darkness has fallen. Once they've all gotten the point, his arm drops and he huddles in a little closer.
"Listen. I've got a plan. We -" He adjusts the board in mid-air a little bit, easing it down an inch or two so they can all see it more clearly, and then points to the various players. "What do we know? One - we know that the government is trying to open the Gate under Starcourt, tonight. Two -" He touches the ogre. "We know that a piece of the Mind Flayer is still on this side, and has been possessing gross creatures like rats and Billy. Most likely to make extra sure that the Gate opens, so the whole Mind Flayer can come through and take over the world and kill everyone on Earth or something."
"And turn it into his world," Will mutters.
They all glance at him. Will never has revealed many details about that. He doesn't like to talk about his time trapped deep in his own mind, watching his body be puppeteered from within.
"Right." Dustin straightens. "So, what do we need to do?"
No one realizes they're supposed to answer until he gestures to them, and then they vaguely chorus, "Stop the Gate from opening."
"And how do we do that?"
"Sneak into the government facility underneath the mall and destroy the machine before they can use it," Mike says. He's feeling a little more solid now that they're making a real plan. He always feels better when they're moving. Acting. Doing something.
"I can destroy it if you just get me in there," El says, firm, and this time Mike doesn't argue.
Because she's right.
"No matter what happens," he says, voicing his thoughts, "We have to stop him."
"But we need the pass code," Lucas says, and Dustin snaps his fingers and points at him.
"Therein lies my plan, amigo. To get the pass code, we'd need to crack the rest of the coded message." His voice rises as several complaints are voiced. "Which is why - let me finish - we'd need to get it done fast. Like, super fast. Which means we'd need somebody super smart. And good with codes."
He grins around at them like they're supposed to get it, but it takes a full three seconds before Max suddenly says, "No."
Dustin sits back, still grinning. "Yes."
"Your imaginary girlfriend is not gonna crack the code."
"She's not imaginary, and she can! Just trust me on this!"
He looks around the table at each one of them, and after a moment Mike tosses his hands and lets them thump back down onto the table. "It's the best chance we've got."
Dustin's mouth splits into a wide grin. "Yeah, it is! Come on." He scrapes up the last of his ice cream, pops it in his mouth, and grabs his backpack from the floor. "We need Cerebro."
