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serendipitous-magic · 5 years

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AU: The Mind Flayer Possesses Will *and* Mike

-The Mind Flayer was only after the boy. The Shadow Walker. The one that survived; the one that could be useful. Very useful. So when the Hatchling saw this human boy in the school bathroom, calling an alert through the Hive Mind, the Mind Flayer zeroed in on his location right away. Pursuing him through the hallways. Reaching out with immaterial tendrils of shadow and dust, following his erratic flight patiently until he made the fatal mistake of running outside, into the open. It was then that the boy did something unexpected. This human pup - barely more than a hatchling, really - stopped running. Turned around. And yelled. Go away! Go away! Go away, go away! Admirable, really. And stupid. The Mind Flayer closes in promptly, and that’s that.

-But then - another presence. A half-way familiar one. All humans look the same to him, but the Mind Flayer recognizes this boy as one of the ones who stood in the way of the Demogorgon, one year ago. And the one who has thwarted the Mind Flayer’s attempts to take the Shadow Walker boy twice before, no less. A leader, the Shadow’s analytical mind supplies, drawing on memories from the Hive. And there’s something else. A strong attachment, coming from the Shadow Walker boy. The Mind Flayer makes several calculations, scheming, weighing the options. This other boy has no real connection to the Upside Down... but that could be to his advantage. The others - the mother especially, the one that’s so annoyingly in the way all the time - they’ll be suspicious of the Shadow Walker boy. They’ll know something happened to him. All too quickly, they’ll wise up to the Mind Flayer’s presence and begin to fight back against his plans again. But, the other boy... No one would suspect him of having connections to the Upside Down, because he doesn’t. At least... not yet.

-Meanwhile, Mike is standing on the field, one hand clutching his radio and the other shaking Will’s shoulder. He’s staring into Will’s slack face, watching his fluttering eyelids, seeing only the whites of his eyes. “Will!” he’s calling, “Will! What’s wrong? Will!” And that’s when it happens.

-It’s a bit tougher for the Mind Flayer to take Mike. Will was already connected to the Upside Down; Mike is tougher to reach. But now the Mind Flayer has Will, who bridges the gap between the human dimension and the Upside Down. The Mind Flayer uses Will as a stepping stone to get to Mike.

-Mike doesn’t see it happen. It’s that fast. One second he’s shaking Will’s shoulder, calling to him, and for a fraction of a second he thinks he sees something, something like a flash of black, coming from Will - and then nothing.

-When the others run out onto the field, they’re a few minutes later than they were in canon (because this time they didn’t have Mike calling to them to tell them where to go). Joyce, Dustin, Lucas and Max run up behind Mike to see him with a hand on Will’s shoulder, but his face is turned away from them, so they don’t see that his eyes are half-closed like Will’s. The arrive just as Will (and Mike!) opens his eyes with a gasp - and they’re so focused on Will that no one really noticed that Mike was standing stock-still, too, and that Mike also gasped when Will did.

-When they wake up in the field, standing together with the rest of the Party surrounding them, panicked and shouting, they don’t feel anything yet - they’re both shuddering cold, and feel a little weird and slightly disconnected from the world, like after you’ve been reading a book all day, but that’s all so far. Mike thinks he remembers that flash of black, and he’s a little disoriented, confused - he doesn’t remember the Party running up behind him - but he ends up kind of brushing it off because he’s more worried about Will, and he figures he just ran too fast and blacked out for a second, or... something. It’s not a big deal. He barely remembers it an hour later.

-It takes until the next morning, when they wake up in their respective houses, that they can tell something’s definitely different. They’re going about their mornings, Mike getting ready for school (and Karen noticing he’s a little out of it but not knowing the real reason so not worrying that much), and Will with Joyce as she takes his temperature and runs a bath - and they can both very vaguely feel each other in the back of their minds, but they have no idea what it is yet.

-Through the morning, they keep getting little snippets of memories that aren’t theirs, and brushing it off as something they must have just forgotten and re-remembered. Like, Will sees a box of cereal and suddenly just knows, Mike knocked down a whole display of that cereal when he was five. It was an accident, but his mom scolded him until he cried anyway. And he has no idea how he suddenly just knows that - did Mike tell him at some point, maybe? And, at school, Mike opens up his planner and knows, Will has a paper due next Thursday that he hasn’t started yet. And they kind of just figure that the other must have told them at some point.

-Mike is in science class, learning about the body’s reaction to fear, and that’s when they first really connect - Mike starts picking up Will’s (the Mind Flayer’s) instinctive aversion to the heat of the water - they both get the Shadow’s wordless urge to get away from that, and Mike leaves class suddenly and without knowing the reason at the same time that Will drains the tub.

-It’s after Will says, “He likes it cold,” that their minds brush and they suddenly recognize what just happened.

-They reach out to each other for the first time once they’ve realized what’s happening, and they realize that they can communicate telepathically.

-Once they realize that it is, indeed, the other that they’re hearing/feeling in their head (as well as the Mind Flayer, but they probably don’t quite realize that yet), they’re both like, What the hell is happening to us? and they go to work at trying to figure it out, quickly connecting it to what happened the day before

-Will is scared Mike will “remember” all the secrets he’s been trying to hide, but it’s literally impossible to hide them - the very act of being afraid he’ll find out draws attention to those memories

-But Mike is curious, and observant, and Will can feel him go gently poking around in memories at random, testing out their mental bond - and Will follows his lead, flipping through Mike’s mind like records in a box, finding no resistance from his best friend - Mike seems almost eager to share his memories, opening his mind up to Will like a flower

-They see childhood memories, thoughts, past grudges, moments that stuck out to them, etc., but all in brief flashes, often without context

-Maybe Mike ends up running across Will’s memories of having a crush on him, and Will flips out and is like, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry -” but because Mike is literally in his head, he understands - and then Will starts getting Mike’s memories of his feelings towards Will, and just imagine the possibilities asacdscfdvsafcs

-They react to things that the other is seeing/feeling, confusing everyone - for example, Mike whacks his head on something and (halfway across town) Will randomly yells, “Ow!”

-They stick together even when the Shadow takes firm control of them, sticking with each other when they turn on everyone else - under the Mind Flayer’s influence, they try to hide that Mike is possessed too, using him to try to throw off the scientists, Hopper, etc.

-When the lab starts burning the tunnels, they both collapse in a seizure

-Optional dark!extra: the Mind Flayer makes Will kiss Mike to pass some of the Mind Flayer’s dark smoke/matter/gunk into his mouth, because Mike wasn’t as susceptible to the Mind Flayer as Will (he doesn’t have the same connection to the Upside Down) and needs intermittent “boosters” of the stuff to stay under control

-I just think this is a really cool AU with a lot of potential

#byeler #byler #mike wheeler #will byers #byeler au #byler au #st rewatch #season 2 rewatch #AU #mind flayer #season 2 au #bullet fic #kind of #fic ideas

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