Chapter Text
Will
Someone is shaking him, not roughly — desperately.
“Will. Will — hey, hey, look at me.”
The words reach him before the world does. Sound is the first thing that comes back, and it’s wrong. Too loud and too far away at the same time, like everything is echoing through water. There’s a high ringing layered over it all, sharp enough that it feels like it should hurt.
It doesn’t.
Will is aware of that before he’s aware of anything else. His body is doing something he didn’t tell it to do. There’s a tightness in his muscles, a strange, jerking pull that snaps through him without warning. His back arches. His fingers curl. He can’t stop it. It’s like his nerves are firing in the wrong order.
It’s not painful, that’s strange too. It feels like watching his body move from far away.
Joyce gasps. “Oh god — Will, sweetheart —”
Will tries to turn his head toward the sound, but the command gets lost somewhere between his brain and his neck. He blinks instead. The world smears and stutters. Color exists, but not shape. Light, but not edges.
“What happened..?” he tries, the words come out thin.
He hears Mike make a sound that might be relief.
“You’re okay. It’s over, we killed him.” He says.
Over.
That word lands somewhere in Will’s chest and doesn’t quite stick. His body jerks again, harder this time, like a wave passing through him. It leaves him hollow afterward, all the tension draining out at once.
Then it stops. He is very, very tired.
Will stares up at the dim, yellow sky as it flashes angrily above him. It looks wrong, too flat, too pale — like a bad copy of itself.
“My ears,” he says, because that is the most wrong thing. “They’re ringing.”
“You had an episode,” Jonathan murmurs. “When we killed him, it —” He chokes. “It changed something. The hive mind… it didn’t let go.”
Will frowns faintly.
He can hear them — Jonathan, his Mom, the others — hovering close with worry written across their faces. But it all feels muted, like someone’s turned the volume down inside his head..
“I can’t see right,” he says next. “Everything’s blurry.”
“That’s okay,” Joyce says. “You had a seizure baby. You’re just — disoriented.”
Will doesn’t remember having a seizure. He remembers the black, the vines, the screaming. He remembers the feeling of something tearing loose inside him, like a wire snapping — then, nothing.
“Okay,” he says, because it looks like everyone needs him to agree.
Joyce’s hand lands in his hair, stroking it back from his face with trembling fingers. He doesn’t really feel it. He knows it’s happening because he can see it.
He blinks.
Then he hears Mike. “It’s okay— it’s gunna be okay. We’ve got you, we’re gunna get you out of here.” His voice is shaky as his eyes scan Wills face.
“Can you try to sit up?” Lucas asks gently. “We’ll help you.”
Will nods, sluggish, his body obeys in pieces.
Soon he is aware, distantly, that there are arms around him. That he’s being lifted. Moved. But it’s like watching it happen to someone else.
“Oh,” Will says, surprised, when his body changes position without him really feeling it happen.
“Did I hurt you?” Some asks immediately, he slowly realizes it’s Dustin.
“No,” Will says. “I just… didn’t feel you grab me at first.”
Everyone goes still.
Then someone laughs, a nervous, half-relived laugh, just to break the deafening silence. The group shares a few tight smiles.
“That’s fine— that’s good.” Mike says. “You’re still just a little out of it.”
Will nods, that makes sense, he’s is very out of it.
The others talk around him. He hears his name. He hears questions. He hears worry. The words feel slow, like they’re traveling a long distance before they reach his ears.
“Is it really over?” he asks Mike, who’s helping to hold up his head and shoulders.
“Yes,” Mike says. “It’s over.”
Good.
That feels like it should mean something.
His eyelids droop, his body feels heavy and he’s drained. Numbness seeps through his limbs, warm and distant, until keeping his eyes open feels like too much effort. He lets go and drifts into sleep while the others murmur and move around him.
Later when he wakes up, he is in his bed. The transition is blurry. One moment he’s lying limp in the abyss, the next he’s staring at the familiar cracks in his ceiling.
The ringing in his ears is softer now, his eyes work better. The world is still… dull. Like it’s layered in a fog only he can feel.
Mike is sitting beside him. Will watches him without meaning to. The way his shoulders are too tense. The way he keeps swallowing. The way his hands are clasped together like he’s afraid of them.
Mike reaches out and touches Will’s hand, Will watches the movement happen.
But he doesn’t feel it.
That’s new, he blinks.
Mike pulls back like he’s been shocked.
Will studies his own fingers, they look normal, but they don’t feel normal — they don’t really feel at all. He waits, nothing happens. His chest tightens, faintly. Not panic. Just… something like a question.
Mike presses his fingers into his own palm, hard enough that his skin goes pale.
Will notices that, that seems important.
There’s a beat of silence, “Did you touch me?” Will asks.
Mike looks at him. “Yeah. I touched your hand.”
“Oh.”
That’s… not good. But it’s not bad either — it’s just strange.
“Can you do it again?” Will asks, before he can think about why he wants that.
Mike hesitates, then he reaches out again. This time he presses a little harder, Not enough to hurt — just enough. There it is, a spark. A pinpoint of sensation, sharp and clear against the fog. It’s small, but it’s real, Will’s breath catches.
“Oh,” he says softly.
Mike brightens instantly. “Did you feel it?”
“Yes,” Will says. “That one.”
Relief pours off Mike in a way Will can almost feel, even if he doesn’t quite understand it.
“See?” Mike says. “You’re fine.”
Will nods.
He closes his eyes again and he lets himself drift.
He doesn’t tell Mike that most things still feel far away. He doesn’t tell him that the world feels dimmer. He doesn’t have words for that yet. So he keeps it to himself.
Mike
Mike doesn’t sleep.
He sits in the chair beside Will’s bed and counts Will’s breaths instead.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
They’re slow. Even. Too slow sometimes. Mike leans forward every time the space between them feels a little too long. Will’s chest rises again, Mike exhales, he didn’t realize he’d been holding his breath.
The room is dark except for the thin line of light slipping in from the hallway. It catches on the edges of Will’s face — the curve of his cheek, the soft shadow under his eyes, the faint part in his lips.
He looks peaceful, Mike hates that, it feels wrong. Peaceful implies rest, it implies recovery, it implies that everything that was broken has stopped breaking.
Mike doesn’t believe that — not after what he saw, not after what he felt when Will went limp in his arms. His hands still remembers the way Will’s body jerked, the way it went stiff and loose and stiff again, the way his name sounded when Joyce said it so desperately, the way everything around them faded as Will’s body went pale and blue.
Mike swallows, he looks at Will again. Will looks small in the bed — too small, smaller than he should be.
Mike’s brain keeps replaying the moment in the Abyss — the way Will’s eyes wouldn’t focus, the way his voice sounded like it hurt to open his mouth, the way he said “I didn’t feel you grab me at first” like that was a normal thing to say.
Like that wasn’t terrifying.
Mike rubs his hands over his face, he should tell someone. Joyce, Jonathan — anyone who knows more than him. But every time he thinks about opening his mouth, he hears Will’s voice instead.
“Can you do it again?”
Not desperate, not scared. Just… quiet, hesitant, curious. Like he’d found something and didn’t understand it yet.
Mike squeezes his eyes shut, pressing his fingers into his eyes until little white dots scatter across his vision.
The door creaks softly, Mike looks up immediately — it’s Jonathan.
He pauses in the doorway, watching them with the same tired, hollowed-out expression Mike sees in the mirror whenever he passes one.
“Has he woken up?” Jonathan whispers.
Mike shakes his head.
Jonathan nods, like he expected that.
He steps closer, careful with his weight, like the floor might creak too loudly. They stand on either side of the bed for a moment, not speaking.
Then Jonathan murmurs, “You can go sleep. I can sit with him for a while.”
Mike shakes his head again.
“I’m fine.”
Jonathan studies him and Mike doesn’t look away. After a moment, Jonathan sighs and nods once.
“Okay.”
He lingers for a second, then leaves.
Mike stays, the house settles around them again. The distant hum of the fridge. The faint sound of pipes in the walls. The quiet of everyone else trying to sleep in other rooms.
Mike watches Will breathe.
He doesn’t know how long he sits there before Will stirs. It’s small at first — a shift of his head, a soft sound in his throat.
Mike is on his feet instantly.
“Will?” he whispers.
Will’s eyes flutter open, they’re clearer now. Not all the way right, but better, they find Mike’s face.
“Oh,” Will murmurs. “Hey.”
Mike’s chest tightens painfully.
“Hey,” he says back, too soft.
“How long was I asleep?”
Mike shrugs. “A while.”
Will hums faintly, like he’s processing that, then he looks at Mike’s hands — they’re clenched at his sides.
Mike realizes and forces them to relax, Will’s gaze follows the movement.
Something thoughtful passes over his face, Mike doesn’t like that look.
“Everything okay?” Mike asks quickly.
Will hesitates, it’s small, barely noticeable. but Mike sees it.
“I think so,” Will says. “It’s just… still kind of quiet.”
Mike nods, he doesn’t ask what that means, he’s afraid of the answer.
Instead, he reaches for Will’s hand — slowly, gently. He waits for Will to pull away, he doesn’t. Mike’s fingers close around his, nothing dramatic happens.
Will doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t smile. He just looks down at their hands. Then his brow furrows, Mike’s stomach drops.
“Do you feel that?” Mike asks.
Will blinks.
“…No.”
The word hits harder than Mike expects it to, he swallows, a pit forming in his stomach. He presses a little firmer, still not enough to hurt — just enough.
Will inhales sharply.
“There,” he says.
Relief floods through Mike so fast it makes him dizzy.
“There?” Mike asks.
Will nods. “That one.”
Mike forces a smile.
“Good.”
He keeps his hand there.
Will relaxes, his eyes drift shut again and within minutes, he’s asleep.
Mike doesn’t move. He can’t, because now he knows, now he understands — at least a little bit.
Will doesn’t feel the world the same way he used to.
And Mike — Mike might be the only thing that still reaches him. The thought settles into Mike’s chest like a weight.
Like a responsibility, like a promise he never meant to make.
He stays there until his legs ache, until dawn bleeds into the sky, until his fingers go numb. He doesn’t let go, because if he does — what if Will fades again? What if he disappears into that numbness he keeps talking about?
Mike doesn’t know what’s happening to Will. He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t know how to fix it. But he knows one thing with terrifying clarity: He will do whatever it takes to keep Will here.
Even if it costs him something. Even if it costs him everything.