"Okay. Fine." Will sighs, admitting defeat. "Fine. You guys win."

As soon as Mike hears Will's voice, he backtracks. "Hey,"

"Congratulations." Will continues angrily, shutting off the music and taking off his costume.

"Will, I was just messing around." Mike tries to save the conversation. "Let's finish for real. How much longer is the campaign?"

"Just forget it, Mike." Will's voice is laced with disdain, and it makes Mike feel weird in the gut.

"No," he defies, turning to Lucas. "you wanna keep playing, right?"

Lucas doesn't get why Mike is trying to get them back into the game they just finally escaped but puts trust in his friend's judgment. "Y-Yeah, totally."

"We'll just call the girls afterwards," Mike suggests.

"I said forget it, Mike, okay!"

Will's voice is shaky, and his eyes are wet. It makes Mike do a double-take.

"I'm going home," Will says, his voice low and disappointed.

"Come on, Will." Luca tries, but Will pushes him out of his ay.

"Move!"

Will stamps up the stairs, and Mike follows him quickly. Lucas sighs.

Will opens the door and notices the rain. of course. But he'd rather bike in the rain than stay here another minute while the others talk about the girls and how they could get them back.

He starts to get his bag on his back, ignoring the fact that Mike's following him.

"Will, come on." He tries to scramble something, anything, together that will make his best friend stay. "You can't leave. It's raining."

"Listen, I said I was sorry. All right?" Mike wanted more than anything for that look on Will's face to go away, for them to go back downstairs and play the game. "It's a cool campaign, it's really cool. We're just not in the mood right now."

Will's resolve snaps in half like a twig. "Yeah, Mike. that's the problem." He finally looks at Mike, not bothering to hide the hurt on his face. Mike hates that look. The fact that he put it there makes his stomach drop even more as he looks into Will's broken eyes. "You guys are never in the mood anymore. You're ruining our party."

"That's not true!" He doesn't want this to be his fault, he doesn't want this to be his fault, hedoesn'twantthistobehsfaoult.

"really? Where's Dustin right now?" Will asks. Mike tries to think but he doesn't remember seeing Dustin since he and El left the hill to go to the cabin yesterday. "See? You don't know, and you don't even care and obviously he doesn't either and I don't blame him. You're destroying everything, and for what? So you can go swap spit with some stupid girl?"

"El's not stupid!" Mike lets out. He doesn't want to put this on El. It's not her fault we grew up! Mike thinks. He doesn't realize that it is. Before El, none of them even thought about girls at all. He had only ever thought of the four of them playing D&D in his basement. "It's not my fault you don't like girls!"

Mike wishes he could stop himself from saying those words. He knows never to bring this up with Will, especially after Lonnie. They all did. It was like a rule. As soon as Mike learned what it meant to be gay, he thought of Will. He knew Will better than anyone- or at least he used to- and Will was at the very least not straight. Especially as they got older and started to think about girls more, Will never did. Will looks shocked at Mike's words. Will had known he was gay when he first woke up back when El had closed the gate last year. He looked into Mike's eyes and was suddenly very aware that he had been in love with Mike Wheeler for a long time. Maybe that's why it hurt so much.

Mike closes his eyes and tries to recover from this. "I'm not trying to be a jerk, okay?"

Will's eyes searched Mike's for comfort. That's what usually calmed him down. It didn't help. His mind was focused on that one line.

But it is your fault. Will wanted to scream. It is entirely and I wish I could hate you for it but I can't.

"But we're not kids anymore." Mike continued, trying to brush past it like he hadn't just totally shattered Will's heart. "I mean, what did you think, really? That we were never gonna get girlfriends? We were just gonna sit in my basement all day and play games for the rest of our lives?"

"Yeah," He sniffles. "I guess I did." Will bites back what he really wants to say. "I really did." He gets on his bike and just starts to pedal. He wants to get home as fast as possible. He leaves Mike standing there and starts to bike towards his house, getting poured down on as he did. Mike calls out his name a couple of times but he ignores it.

As soon as Will gets to his house, he drops his bike and starts to bolt to his real home. Castle Byers.

Mike and Lucas get to Will's house not long after Will reaches his haven. Mike wanted to confront him alone, but Lucas insisted on following him. Mike bangs on Will's door. "Will!"

"Will, I'm sorry man, alright?" It felt almost wrong to call Will 'man' like they were just buds because deep down, deep in his gut, Mike knew they were more, They had always been more. "I was being a total asshole. Please, can you just come outside and we'll talk?"

He bangs on the door again after getting no answer. "Will!" He was desperate to make things up with Will, entirely forgetting about Eleven and his fight. His only priority was Will.

Lucas banged on his window. "Hey Will? Come on man, we're sorry."

Mike vaguely thought what did Lucas have to be sorry for. Mike was the one being a dick. He had taken advantage of the fact he knew his friends wouldn't ditch him and only spent time with El.

Mike's head was flying a mile a minute when he realized. "Castle Byers!" He started to run to the forest, knowing Lucas was close behind.

"Where?"

Will was sitting in Castle Byers, trying to take his mind off Mike with a comic book. It didn't work. It never did. He could never get his mind off Mike.

He scoffed as he threw down the comic book. His chest felt heavy like it was too full to breathe. He stood and looked around the fort. He thought back to the night he was taken. "Something's coming." Mike had said. How right he was, he hadn't known.

There was a crayon drawing of Will the Wise. Will scoffed at it. then his eyes landed on the picture of the party- the original party. On Halloween, they'd dressed up as Ghostbusters. He'd had another episode that night and Mike had helped him calm down. Back when he'd cared.

"I'm gonna get you home, okay?" Mike said, holding a shivering Will at the shoulder and helping him stand.

"Woah, take it easy," Dustin said.

"I got him," Mike said fiercely, not letting Dustin touch Will.

"Mike," Dustin tried to reason, but he didn't get to.

"Keep trick-or-treating. I'm bored anyways." Mike ordered, pulling a still shaken-up Will with him up the stairs.

"It's like… like I'm stuck." Will had explained.

"Like, like, stuck in the Upside Down?"

"No. You know how when a View-Masten when it gets, like.."

"Caught between two slides?"

Back when Mike could finish his sentences. Back when he'd cared.

"Yeah, yeah. Like that. Like one side's our world and the other… The other slide is the Upside Down. And... And there was this noise, coming from everywhere. And then I saw something."

"The Demogorgon?"

"No. It was like this huge shadow in the sky. Only, it was alive. And it was coming for me."

"Is this all real? Or is it, like the doctors say, all in your head?"

"I don't know. Just… Just please don't tell the others. Okay? They won't understand."

"Eleven would."

Even then, Eleven was always on Mike's mind. It hadn't bothered Will then. Back when Mike could finish his sentences. Back when he'd cared.

"She would?"

"Yeah. She always did… Sometimes I feel like I still see her. Like, she' still around, but she never is." Mike sniffed. "I don't know. Sometimes I feel like I'm going crazy."

Will nodded. "Me too."

Mike looked at Will. "Hey, if we're both going crazy, then we'll go crazy together, right?"

Will smiled. "Yeah. Crazy together."

Back when Mike was there for him. Back when Mike could finish his sentences. Back when he'd cared.

He started to breathe heavily as he let himself relish the memory before he went back through today. Will had been planning the campaign for a while, and they had been supposed to play at Dustin's welcome back party. So when he gut frustrated, he tried to cover up his real hurt with the game.

"Stupid." He whispered to the smiling four in the photo, as if they could hear him. He felt water running down his face and couldn't tell if it was remnants from the rain or tears. "So stupid."

He ripped the picture in half, splitting Mike and Will from last year apart. He repeated the phrase again and again as he ripped memories apart. It became his mantra and before he knew he couldn't tell what he meant. He, Mike, or the memories he wished would stop flashing through his head.

He found a bat, and before he realized what had happened, he was outside his safe place, sobbing and tearing it down. He was screaming at himself to stop, but couldn't. So much pent up emotion made him feel powerless. Out of control.

When it was entirely collapsed, he finally seized control. He fell to the floor and sobbed in the rain, feeling like such an idiot cliche. He heard footsteps behind him and shot up.

Standing in front of him, was Mike and Lucas. "What happened to Castle Byers?" Mike said after a couple of seconds of silence.

"I got rid of it. It was childish anyway. Isn't that what you wanted, Mike? For me to grow up?" he was suddenly very glad it was raining so Mike wouldn't see him crying.

"Will, I'm sorry. I didn't mean any of that. I was being stupid. I… I didn't mean to spend the whole summer with Eleven. I just… I got wrapped up in the whole thing, you know. I know I was being an asshole and you definitely shouldn't forgive me but… please forgive me."

Will kept his eyes planted on the ground because he knew to look into Mike's eyes, his soft brown eyes that had once harbored so much feeling for Will that they had given him hope, would shatter him.

"Will, please say something," Mike begged. He could hear the desperation in his own voice and he detested it.

Will shook his head.

"Will," Mike pleaded in a whisper, barely audible over the loud storms.

Will thought back to the first time Mike said his name like that. It had made him feel light inside like he was floating. It has the same effect now, it always has been Will knew he shouldn't feel like this. It hurt him that Mike thought he could just talk and Will would be okay again.

It hurt him even more that Mike was right.

"What do you want me to say, Mike? I'm sorry for telling you that I disagree? Well, you know what." Will looked up into Mike's eyes to see them brimming with tears. Will almost gave in, but he was too far in now. "I'll give you this- you were wrong about one thing."

Will stood up and started to walk past them. Mike grabbed his arm. "Will, man, seriously. Please don't walk away again. I feel like I'm always chasing you."

Will stopped. "Fine. You want to know what you were wrong about?" There was an undertone of pent up anger leeching into Will's voice, as he tried to keep his cool.

"Desperately." Mike felt broken inside. This hurt more than Will going missing because now he was choosing to stay away from Mike.

"It is your fault I don't like girls. It's your fault. You with her perfect hair, and eyes, and jawline, and- and freckles, and nose, and everything! Half the time I sit down to draw to get outside of my head and by reflex I find myself drawing you. Because I have every part of you memorized because I can't ever ever ever get you out of my head, no matter how hard I try. And it sucks because you're ditching us for El because she's a badass girl that has superpowers and what I can I do? Pine over my best friend and draw the slopes on his face right."

Mike looked at Will, astounded. Is he saying what I think he's saying?

"I'm in love with you, Mike Wheeler. And there's nothing I can do about it because God knows I've tried, but that's the truth." Mike stared at Will. Both of them had entirely forgotten Lucas was there.

"Will…" Mike wanted to say something, because as Will said all of these things Mike felt that part of his gut– the one that told him to befriend Will in the first place, and the part that ached when Will was gone –took over. Suddenly, Mike was very aware that he was also in love with William Byers.

"Don't," Will mumbled as he started to leave. Then Mike grabbed his hand again, but instead of freezing, he brought Will close to him.

Without thinking about it, Mike brought Will in and wrapped his arms around the shorter boy's neck. He drew Will's face up with a finer. "I love you too."

Suddenly, their lips were together and they were moving in sync. Mike's hands fell to Will's shoulders as Will wrapped his arms around Mike's back. Mike buried a hand in Will's hair, and they moved impossibly closer. After a few minutes of this, they broke apart, both smiling and both crying. Then Will's head moved slowly to the side, keeping his forehead connected to Mike's. He moved his hand to the back of his neck.

"He's back."