i'm tearing you asunder

by smoosnoom (moonsooms)

Summary:

“Did I do something wrong?” Mike questions, mouth twisted in a frown, eyes less wide than they were a few moments ago, sleepiness gone. His arms stay at his sides, although his fingers fiddle with his sleeves. “What did I do wrong?”

Will frowns back. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Mike doesn’t look like he believes him. Will doesn’t blame him. “Then why do you keep leaving?”

The world ends, and then some. Mike and Will find each other again, amidst the debris and distance.

Notes:

>if u would like to listen to the playlist
>>title from here
happy reading!

Will knows he’s a little bit of a fool. 

He knows from when he still finds himself hopeful, even after the hell he’s gone through for the past four years, and maybe long before that, as well. He can feel himself being an optimist sometimes, in moments like these, when the stakes seem so high and there’s so much disappointment to be delivered. 

And, despite it all, despite the total of three calls and not a single letter that he’s gotten, Will finds himself hopeful for Saturday. 

Which is stupid, really, because it’s not like Mike was any sort of friend in the past year. Lucas, Dustin, and even Max, who he had never been quite close to, had all done their best to send him letters from time to time, calls on weekends and random afternoons, brimming with updates and changes he had missed, both big and small. 

Lucas has joined their school’s basketball team. They’re part of a new D&D club now, and their Dungeon Master is cooler than he’d expect. Max takes the bus now. Dustin has been getting early driving lessons from Steve. Max and Lucas have broken up. Mike still doesn’t seem to care for Will. 

The last one is more of an inference than anything, a hint that Will has yet to get through his head, but it feels certain anyway. 

Nonetheless, it’s Saturday. 

It’s Saturday, and Will Byers is hopeful and holds onto a rolled-up painting in his hands and can’t seem to stop bouncing his knee. 

It’s Saturday, and El has been smiling nervously, yet happily, while people flood through the doorways, and she fiddles with her hands and peers through the crowd hopefully. 

It’s Saturday, and Mike Wheeler approaches in sandals and a bright yellow shirt. 

“Mike!” 

Will knows he’s a little bit of a fool. 

An idiot, really, and especially so when he can feel something in him chip away, something he had been building up all over again since he destroyed it in the rain last summer, and he tries his best to be grateful for the half-hearted half-hug he gets when he greets Mike in the airport on a fateful Saturday. 

He’s desperate like he’s always been, and the excitement in his stomach dims down and now he’s got the same, awkward, cramped-up feeling that takes over his skin, and now his body feels too tight to live in, as if he’s taking up much more space than normal. 

He takes the backseat as El says, “I just want today to be about me and you.”, and there’s that bitter creature again, crawling out from between his ribs, and he doesn’t know what he expected – for Mike Wheeler to suddenly show up in Lenora, California, and remedy the gaping space between them? 

That, by some miracle, Mike would look at Will and remember that, once upon a very long time ago, they had been friends, best friends, and give him a proper hug and maybe include Will in their conversations and maybe stop looking at him so blankly, and – and he wouldn’t even have to apologize, he wouldn’t even have to say sorry for making no effort to keep contact with Will, it’d be enough to try and be friends again. 

Perhaps the grand total of zero letters he had the honor of receiving should have been enough of a hint. Then again, Will has never been the brightest. Clearly. 

Will bites his tongue, and can’t help it when he crumples the painting under his hands.

If nothing else, William Byers can say that he’s dealt with some shit.

Even before being sucked into the Upside Down, he had to face the monster of a man that is Lonnie Byers, and then the bullying that conveniently seems to come from being just a little too quiet as a kid, just a little too nice, and his accompanying interest in staying far, far away from girls in any romantic sense. 

That is to mention that being bullied, in his grocery list of Problems with a capital P, was the least of his concerns, and especially when it barely comes close to the competition of: 

1. Being chased by a supernatural flower-faced monster, and then later being teleported to an alternate demon dimension seconds later. 
2. Being possessed by a shadow monster, and still having to deal with its effects after being, in some sense, exorcized.
3. Figuring out he’s harboring a crush on his best friend of ten years. 
4. Being replaced by said best friend with the same girl with supernatural powers who he can’t even begin to have negative feelings for because they’re essentially siblings at this point, and the fact she had saved both his life and the world on multiple occasions. 
5. Moving away from the small town he had grown up in and no longer being able to see his friends or the people he had become familiar with, which could almost be okay if not for the fact that he has yet to try and make friends in this new town and his best friend has called him exactly three times in the past year so far. 

Will knows life is unfair. 

He, of all people, knows. Of course, he knows. He is the epitome of the phrase. It sometimes feels like he had broken an endless amount of mirrors to account for the past fifteen years of his life. 

And yet, he had held out some hope for this spring break, because, alongside it all, Will Byers is a fool. Nothing ever goes as desired, however – not for someone like Will. He must’ve done something terrible in his previous life.

And, still, in blind faith, he holds hope anyway, even in Argyle’s godforsaken Surfer Boy Pizza delivery van, as if some camera crew would jump out in front of the moving vehicle and proclaim that yes, it was all a terrible prank, and of course, the Upside Down wasn’t back to haunt Will, even after he had picked up everything and moved to the opposite side of the country and hoped to whoever is out there that he would finally be left alone. 

Will doesn’t know why he hopes for anything. 

It shouldn’t surprise him when it’s not even an hour after his mother leaves for her business trip that El is arrested, followed by them planning an escape route away from the secret agents at their house, which is then promptly shot up by the government or something, which is also its own problem, and now Will, his brother, his brother’s stoner best friend, and Mike are all in a bright yellow pizza delivery fan, Lenora is miles away, and he’s pretty sure he’s gotten a second hand high from the amount of weed smoke he’s inhaled in the past five hours. 

He can’t find it in him to be surprised, anymore. 

“Alright, brochachos,” Argyle announces, pulling into a gas station, “I’m calling a potty break.” His stomach rumbles and he places a hand on his stomach. “And a snack break. Man, am I digging some peanut butter and chips.” 

The doors of the van are pulled up as Jonathan joins Argyle into the store, questioning, “Peanut butter and chips?” 

“Dude, you have got to trust me,” Will hears their voices trailing away, “it is absolutely schmackin’.” 

Will vaguely wants to bash his head in. For the sake of scarring any nearby pedestrians, he resists. 

He does, however, step outside the van and take several deep breaths, savoring the taste of fresh air after being stuck in the hotbox of a van they had been riding in for the past many hours. 

The sky is a pale canary yellow, almost the same he had mixed a few days ago for the flowers of a still-life he had been doing, attempting to soothe the anxiousness festering in his stomach as a result of Mike visiting later in the week. The sun is close to setting, and it’s nearly eight. Will wonders if they’re going to sleep in the van. 

The idea makes his stomach lurch. He would be fine sleeping in the van, really, but to sleep in any close proximity to Mike makes him want to run far, far away. 

He would say he doesn’t know why it makes him so nervous, why he feels the urge to be so careful and cautious around the other boy, but he’s never been able to effortlessly lie. 

He tries not to pay attention to Mike when the other boy walks away from the van, following Jonathan and Argyle into the gas station where they would, presumably, be out of view and out of mind. 

It doesn’t matter, either way. At the rate they’ve been progressing, they’d have to have another vicious fight before Mike attempted to possibly have another genuine conversation with him. 

Will doesn’t follow, and instead walks over to the side of the building, the shade and fresh air more appealing than any food offered in the store. 

The air hints at a chill breeze, and Will takes a seat on the ground, back against the brick wall and legs bent. He runs a hand through his hair, rests his arms on his brought-up knees, and looks up to the sky. It’s still yellow. 

There’s a knot of unease settling into his chest, one that’s been there since the night before picking up Mike from the airport. The two thirty-eight a.m. thought of what if it’s just like last summer?

(Last summer: being ignored by nearly everyone, being ignored by Mike, being awkward in his skin, being forced to watch his sister and his best friend kiss so much, all the time, wishing he was normal, rain, rain, so much rain, splinters, and nearly being eaten by a fleshy monster the size of a mall. 

An ordinary summer for any teenager, really.)

The feeling in him had grown, steadily, when Will had greeted Mike from his flight, excitement bleeding out his veins until he had been thoroughly pushed into the background while he watched the day slip away from his fingers, and one moment he’s skating alone and trying his best not to dissipate into thin air, and suddenly he had sabotaged the entire day because he had been rolling his eyes and moping and whatever else Mike had complained about. 

Well, what about us? 

Will wishes he didn’t care so much. 

Maybe then it wouldn’t have hurt as bad, to be yelled at by a teenager in vomit green socks and a bright yellow shirt. 

Will brings his knees closer to his chest, trying to unravel the knot in his chest while he breathes in, breathes out. He closes his eyes. He’s pretty sure there’s sand in his shoes from shoveling earlier.

“This seat taken?” 

Will can’t help it when he jumps, heart rate spiking, and he looks up. 

Mike looks down at him. 

His hair, an ink-spill of black and mess of somewhat-curly-but-not-really that it is, faintly blows in the subtle breeze. It brushes against his jaw, briefly, and he looks good in the blue he’s wearing. Will still can’t seem to get over the slight change of appearance, in the tallness, the longer hair, the sharper features, even if he hasn’t changed all too much. He’s so different from the softness of childhood. 

Will is still the same. Same haircut. Same style. Same foolishness.

“No,” he shakes his head, “it’s – it’s free.” 

The corner of Mike’s mouth quirks upward, and his long legs bend when he sits on the ground as well, a calculated space between them when his back is to the brick wall, too. 

He faces the sky, head tilted upward, his neck long and pale, light enough to mimic a canvas, one Will aches to paint on, and his eyes squint against the harsh sun and bright sky. His lips are turned into an absent frown. 

Will wonders if it’s just him who feels awkward. It would be better to ignore the stiffness, right? Fake it til you make it, or however it goes. 

"You, uh," Mike begins to say, with seemingly no care for awkwardness protocols, still not looking at him, "you okay?" 

"I'm fine," Will emptily replies, taking one last glance at Mike, before returning to the horizon. It's so, so far out, and it feels impossibly far, despite them having traced it all day. 

"Okay," Mike says. "Because, um, you seemed – you seemed a little down, I guess. Back in the van." 

"Sorry," Will answers, and he can feel his stomach turning inside out. How mortifying, to be caught so sorrowful. Even Mike – oblivious, clueless Mike, had noticed. He'd be more worried if he wasn't so tired. Exhausted. Almost annoyed. 

There's movement in his peripheral while he assumes Mike shakes his head. "No, dude, you've got nothing to be sorry for," he insists, "like, nothing. This whole situation sucks, obviously, with El gone and us –" 

Will blinks at the horizon. The horizon stares back. Unfortunately for everyone involved, Will was a little too tired to offer another emotional heart-to-heart that involved them going in the same circle, with Mike chasing his missing girlfriend, and Will chasing his best friend. 

Or, just friend. Acquaintance, really, if he thinks about it too much. Friend, if he wants to justify it all. Best friend, because Will is a terrible, terrible fool. 

Circles. It's no use. 

"Did you need something, Mike?" 

Mike halts, mid-sentence, and his mouth is still open when he freezes. "I – not – not really?" 

"Okay," Will mutters, leaning forward into his arms, chin against his knees. 

Mike fidgets next to him. "Will, are we – good?" 

“Why wouldn’t we be?” Will questions, and he himself can list three hundred different reasons why, but that’s the cruel, mean part of him that he’s been trying his best to squash down and burn for the past year, so he keeps his mouth shut and feels bad about the thought. 

Mike shrugs. “I mean, I don’t know, it just feels like you’re mad at me, I guess. I thought – since I apologized and stuff, that we could get back to normal, maybe.” He pauses. “Or as normal as we can get, I guess. I don’t know.” 

Get back to normal. Right. 

“Right.” 

He can feel Mike’s eyes on him, tracing over the side of his face while Will keeps his gaze firmly on the horizon, the canary yellow, the dusty tan that is the land that stretches so far out, and if he pretends hard enough, it’s almost like he’s painting with his mind, and there is no Mike Wheeler sitting and staring next to him. 

He’s been staring a lot since he arrived. Will tries not to think about it too much. For both of their sakes. 

“Will,” he begins again, voice soft like it used to be, so many Halloweens ago, “I –” 

“Will, come on!” Jonathan calls, and Will turns to where the van sits, Argyle sliding into the driver’s seat once again, and Jonathan with a plastic bag in one hand. “We’re going!” 

He stands up from the ground, brushing off dirt and dust and whatever Mike was going to say while he walks away, and, no matter how hard he tries, he can still feel Mike’s eyes on him. 

 

When he wakes up, the sky is dark. 

There are so many more stars than in Hawkins, the empty, uncivilized desert offering no pollution to barricade the stars from where Will sits, groggy and still half-asleep when Jonathan slowly shakes him conscious. 

“Hey,” he says, “we’re stopping by a motel for the night, then we’re setting off to reach Utah by tomorrow.”

It takes Will a second longer to figure out where he is, what’s in Utah, and why he’s smelling burnt pizza, before exhaustion takes over him again and he slips out of the van wordlessly. 

Mike and Argyle stand near each other at the entrance, lit up purplish-pink under the neon 24 Hour Service Available! sign glowing above them, and they follow when Jonathan pulls open the doors and makes a bee-line to the front desk. 

“Hi,” he greets, and the woman behind the desk stares at them through her thick, purple-rimmed glasses. 

“Hi,” she returns, smacking harshly on bubblegum. 

Jonathan doesn’t waver. “Two rooms, please.” 

It turns out to be quite a short exchange, as she slides over two silver keys, with the numbers 22 and 23 labeled onto them, and, while they walk away from the lady, Jonathan slips 23 into the hand Will isn’t clutching his backpack strap with and directs him and Mike to one room, while Argyle and Jonathan slip into the room next to them. 

They take three steps into the room before there is a very obvious problem. 

There is, unfortunately, only one bed. 

Will stares, head spinning, and Mike says, “Is it okay if I shower first?” 

“Go ahead,” Will mumbles and ignores the thudding force in his chest as he sits onto the sheets, tiredness hitting him, no matter the alarmed feeling at the idea of sharing a bed with Mike Wheeler of all people. 

Mike had been unnaturally calm about it. Maybe he thinks one of them would be taking the floor.

It’s silent while Mike fumbles around to find his necessities, and Will, all the while, sits on the sheets, staring at the door while he tries very, very hard not to panic and do something rash. Like run out of the room. 

It’s not a big deal. 

It’s not. 

He doesn’t know why it feels like a big deal. 

It’s just Mike. 

It’s Mike. 

God. 

This is stupid. 

Sometime later, he can hear the shower begin to run. 

He leans against the headboard, letting out a deep breath as he tries to calm himself. He’ll just take the floor, and Mike will take the bed, and they’ll share a silent night until they have to wake up tomorrow and head to Salt Lake City to meet Suzie. 

It’s not a big deal. It’s fine. 

The next thirty minutes pass in a blur, after Mike finally exits the bathroom and Will jumps in, sighing at the feel of all the grime and dirt that has definitely accumulated on his body wash away with the warm water. 

He spends more time than necessary scrubbing at himself, and taking his merry time changing into a spare clean shirt he had absent-mindedly packed, and the same pair of pants, and he takes the time to fiddle with his hair, although he, in the end, swipes it back and lets it stay pushed away from his face. He pokes at his forehead, and tries not to think about it too much when he finally leaves. 

When he walks back into the room, Mike is already in bed. Will will, obviously, be taking the floor. He internally sighs.

He trudges over to the switch, turning the light off, and the lamp had been off as well, and suddenly it is much darker than he anticipated. He’s never really liked the dark. 

For the sake of his dignity, however, he pushes past it and walks over to the side of the bed, picking up the pillow and crouching down to the floor. 

“What’re you doing?” 

Will stops in the motion of placing the pillow onto the floor, freezing when Mike rolls over to look at him, barely visible over the edge of the bed, dark in the lightless room. 

“Um,” he says intelligently. 

“Are you about to sleep on the floor?” Mike asks, a little uselessly, as Will thinks his intentions were quite clear when he sits on the floor, pillow next to him, and a spare jacket as a makeshift blanket. 

“Um,” he repeats. “Yeah?”

“Will,” Mike says, presses, really, soft and yet firm anyway, “come on.” 

Will furrows his eyebrows. “What?” 

“Don’t – don’t be stupid. Come on,” he pats the space next to him, frowning, lines formed at the sides of his mouth. “It’s not comfortable down there.” 

Will chews on his cheek. “I don’t –” 

“Please,” Mike says, once, twice, “please. Just – come on.” His voice is too gentle to be speaking to Will. 

He pats the bed again, and Will can feel his resolve crumbling, weak like it always is when it’s Mike. 

“Okay,” he mumbles. “Okay.” 

The bed is, unfortunately, much more comfortable than the carpeted floor, and Mike rolls away when Will attempts to get settled in with as little movement as possible.

It’s as if every movement is ten times louder, more obvious as he shuffles in the sheets, and he silently breathes out when he lays down. His right hand lightly presses against his stomach. His left sits between the both of them. The blank ceiling faces him, and he closes his eyes. 

He opens them again. He kind of wants to roll over to the side, but he doesn’t want to move again. The room is dark, almost shaded a blueish-gray from where the moonlight shines through the window, similar to the same color he used to paint the ocean, once, on the time he and his family had all gone to the beach, a few weeks after moving to Lenora. 

Mike, next to him, seems to have passed out. 

He turns to his other side, and suddenly faces Will. 

Maybe not. 

“Will,” he whispers, and Will, with his eyes wide open, can’t even begin to pretend to be asleep.

He doesn’t turn to look at Mike. “Yeah?” 

“I missed you,” Mike says, hushed but so, so loud in the silent room. “When you moved away, I mean. Now, too, I guess. I still miss you, kind of, which is dumb, since you’re right here, but I don’t know.” There is a beat of silence, before, “I’m sorry I never called.” 

I feel like I lost you or something.

“It’s okay,” Will tells him, voice almost gone, and his mouth feels so much drier than it did a few moments before. 

“You keep saying that.” Mike’s words are quiet in the night. “I’m sorry I never wrote, either, but I did write some letters. I just never sent any since – I don’t know, none of them ever sounded right.” He seems to consider his words as he continues, “With El, it was easy, I guess, to just write down whatever and send it her way, since it – I don’t know, it was easier, because it didn’t – it didn’t matter as much.” 

Will’s mouth is so, so dry. 

“It sounds wrong, but I don’t know how else to say it. With her, it just felt like I could write whatever, but with you – I don’t know. I wanted whatever I told you to be perfect, I guess. Not that talking to you is hard or anything, that’s not what I mean, just – yeah. I don’t know.” 

Will keeps staring at the ceiling, and can’t find it in him to say a single thing. 

He should reassure Mike, he knows, but it’s suddenly so much more difficult when his throat feels like sandpaper, and he can tell Mike is staring at him, and he tries to swallow down the lump in his throat without seeming obvious. 

He wonders if he’s dreaming. 

“I meant it when I said it felt like I lost you,” Mike continues. He’s never been great with vulnerability via words, despite having always been talkative, Will knows, and whenever he gets started, there is no stopping him. “Even before you moved away. That’s stupid, but – I don’t know. I still miss you. Is that weird?” 

“I miss you, too,” Will croaks out before he can stop himself. 

There is no response when the words float into the air, and Will forces his eyes to remain on the ceiling in front of him instead of turning to look at Mike, gauge in his reaction while he tries not to jump out of the window and run far, far away. 

Will swallows, and there is a warm hand that slips into his own, blanketed by the cover over both of them. 

Mike squeezes his hand, for just a moment, and it feels like they’re kids again, sleeping over in Mike’s basement, and one of them has woken up the other after a terrible nightmare. It’s so strangely reminiscent of people they no longer are, and it twists Will’s heart terribly. 

After a second, Will squeezes back. 

 

The morning sun rises, and absolutely nothing changes. 

Granted, Will’s insides feel similar to the terribly cooked scrambled eggs that the motel offered during breakfast, and it’s as though his bloodstream has been enchanted with electricity every time he remembers Mike to be anywhere in near proximity, but everything else is exactly the same. 

Mike spends an awful lot of time complaining about missing El. He still keeps looking at Will. 

Jonathan steadily taps along to a silent beat while he forces himself to stay awake during driving. He doesn’t make a move to turn any music on. 

Argyle offers hazy commentary that Will disregards quite easily. He opens a window to smoke out of every few hours. 

Will stares out of the window, and traces over the faint mountains in the distance. He keeps count of how many abnormally large rocks they pass. (Forty-three, forty-four, forty-five –)

Everything, on a surface level, is exactly the same. Will doesn’t know why he had hoped for any difference. 

I still miss you. Is that weird?

God, Will’s an idiot. 

He turns away to look at the constant horizon, and he wonders if it would be strange to bring out his sketchbook, if only to distract himself from the steady stream of boredom flowing through him. Exhaustion, still, lays heavy on his bones, and he lets his head fall back. 

The sun beats down through the windows of the van, and Will’s legs and right arm are sufficiently warmer than the rest of his body, and he’s pretty sure they’ve made absolutely no progress out of this ongoing desert, and Will is so, so close to asking Jonathan to simply drive over him at high speed to finally get his suffering out of the way when there is suddenly a helicopter in the distance. 

And, underneath it, if he squints very, very carefully, is El, with a raised hand and a lack of hair, and it’s the first time Will has ever seen her without it. She raises another hand. 

His heart pangs painfully at the sight. 

They watch as El brings down her arms, and the helicopter explodes. 

“Eleven!” 

 

The reunion is short, and he feels like he fades in the background, for a moment, when Mike and El run towards each other. He holds El close when she notices him, almost afraid of her thinning out into the air. 

He can barely breathe when they seperate, and Will takes a proper good look at her, her shaved head, the slight blood trailing down to her lips, the tiredness that haunts her frame like blurred charcoal. She has a collar on, and it horrifies him. It’s a side to her he’s never seen. Never wanted to see. 

He grips at it for a moment, as if his weak hands could do any sort of damage to it, but it wouldn’t hurt to try to get it off his sister, because she’s not some sort of machine, some sort of thing to be collared and owned. It doesn’t budge under his shaky fingers. 

“You – are you okay?” He asks, out of breath, and his hands hold her at her shoulders, as though she’d disappear right in front of him. 

“I’m okay,” she nods, offering an exhausted smile. It’s a small comfort. 

 

The rest comes faster than he realizes. 

(The rest: dumping buckets of salt into a freezer, pineapple on pizza, Jonathan suddenly hugging him like he’s about to lose him, flickering lights, El being gone for much longer than Will likes to recall, and shouting, so much shouting, I feel like my life –)

Will didn’t imagine El saving the world in the middle of a pizzeria, but he supposes there was not much class in these sorts of things. 

The most he can offer is a very tight hug when she breaks out of battle. 

She returns it weakly. 

The end of the world arrives in a whirlwind. 

Will’s mind is jumbled up in a mess he doesn’t try to unravel, and being back in Hawkins has him jittery and itching to leave as soon as possible. Unfortunately for him, it doesn’t seem to be a viable option until they’ve saved the world again. 

The sky is broken into two, split into the Upside Down and the normal world, and it makes his nerves act up, and Will has never been a fan of his True Sight, no matter how much of an advantage it gave them, and he especially doesn’t like it now. 

When there is a slump in action that comes, one that allows them all to settle for a moment and recuperate, he finds himself at Hopper’s cabin, escaping for some fresh air. 

All spring break, he had been – jittery. A little anxious, maybe exhausted, at other times. 

Now, suddenly, after the – everything, there is an ugly twist in his stomach when he has a chance alone with his thoughts. 

Will can faintly recognize it to be bitterness. 

He thinks that maybe he’s been bitter for a long time. 

It’s not as if it isn’t justified; even if he made it out alive, some part of Will Byers had died in the Upside Down, and now the rest of the world keeps spinning while he’s left alone, mourning something that’s been gone for a very, very long time.

He’s bitter everyone moved on. He’s bitter that no one else was mourning. He’s bitter he was left behind. He’s bitter that it had to be him, out of everyone.

The world keeps spinning, and Will Byers is bitter. 

He shouldn’t be bitter. Not anymore, at least. It’s been three years. 

Perhaps it’s because of the fact that he is, undeniably, officially linked to the Upside Down and bad news, or that he’s so much quieter and uninteresting to be around now, or the thought that maybe all their work to find Will had been in vain, especially when he’s like this now, or perhaps it could be because –

I feel like my life started the day we found you in the woods.

Will doesn’t know why he cares so much.

He knows Mike hadn’t meant it like that – obviously he hadn’t, El had been moments away from imminent doom, and Mike had poured out his vulnerabilities for the world to see to save her, and if one of those secrets happen to be that, on the day that Will’s life had twisted into a terrible knot, Mike had found the catalyst to his life, then so be it.

It’s not a big deal. Mike hadn’t meant it like that. Will doubts he even remembers it, remembers saying it, remembers his intent for such a claim, except to save his girlfriend, the one he loves, from death. Will, in his shoes, would have said the same. Done much worse. Gone much farther.

It’s only the – idea that, on the day Will had gone missing, that Mike’s life had started.

It was a miracle, then, really, for Will Byers to have gone missing.

He twists the cloth of his shirt tighter in his fist, veins suddenly surging lava through his body, and he clears his throat, looking around the woods as if there were someone watching him, as if everyone else isn’t inside Hopper’s cabin, rejoicing at being together, even in the most terrible circumstances. 

He sits alone amid trees, back to the rough bark of an over-looming tree, and the sun bashfully peaks through the leaves where he stares up. The air outside is cooler than inside, and Hawkins’ springs have never been the warmest. Will tries not to think too much about being cold. 

“You are missing dinner.” 

Will freezes at the voice, before turning to where El stands, fingers curling into her sleeve while she holds a paper plate of food in the other, covered by another paper plate.

He shrugs. “I just wanted to be alone for a while.” 

She doesn’t stop until she’s only a few inches away from him, crossing her legs as she sits onto the ground, no care for staining her light-pink jeans. “You will be hungry.” 

“Not really,” he replies, watching when El places the plate in front of him. “Thanks, though.” 

Her face, an easy reflection of her inner turmoil, is pinched in concern, eyebrows knitted close and frown lines evident. Despite everything that’s happened, she still finds it in herself to care for him. “Why do you want to be alone?” 

“I don’t know.” He fidgets with his hands, looking at a tree across from him. It always feels like El could look right through him, into his mind and the skittish messages sent between his neurons, or however his brain works. He had skimmed through biology. 

“Will,” she begins, motherly despite her young age, “it is not good to hold your emotions in.” 

It’s almost a direct replica of what their mother had told them, a few weeks after she had caught El at an especially bad moment, tear-streaked and red-faced while she had been overwhelmed with high school. Now, El recalls the same advice, even with the incredibly different context. 

It still applies, he supposes, so it doesn’t really matter. 

“I don’t know,” he says again. “I’m just feeling insecure, I guess. It’s stupid.” 

“Insecure,” El rolls over her tongue, mind flitting to remember what it means, before she tilts her head. “Why?” 

Will leans back against the tree, a steady foundation for his tilting world. “It doesn’t really matter. It’s dumb.” 

“I said the same thing when I stained my dress,” she points out. “I cried, too. And you helped me.” 

Will winces at the memory – more at the hypocrisy, really, when he had reassured El that it wasn’t dumb, especially when it had been a pretty nice dress she had gotten, in her favorite color, yellow with embroidered sequins. He and Jonathan had spent an unruly amount of time scrubbing out the stain, until it had faded away and was practically unnoticeable.

“Let me help you,” she says, reaching over for his hand, and that’s all it takes for him to break. 

“It’s just,” he tugs at the strands of grass under him, “I was just – thinking about stuff. Just – sometimes it feels like I should’ve stayed missing.” 

His voice wavers at the end, and El holds onto his hand a little tighter. 

I feel like my life –

“Like, when I came back, it was okay, at first. And then I got possessed by the Mind Flayer, and then, when I finally wasn’t in immediate danger, it’s like everyone moved on while I just started getting back to normal.” He rips a strand of grass out of the ground. “And that was fine, too, but then we moved away and it’s like I don’t even matter anymore. Not to Mike, at least.” 

I feel like my life started the day –

“Which is dumb because it’s only really Mike, but he used to be my best friend, and ever since he got here he’s just been complaining or telling me about how he feels like he lost me or something,” he continues, a fiery warmth in his chest, “which is even dumber because, if you think about it, it’s really his fault. Maybe I never reached out, but I wasn’t the one who ignored him the entirety of the summer before!”

I feel like my life started the day we found you in the woods.

“That’s not even – to mention how he kept acting as if he was the only one worried about you, like I’m not your brother. Then he goes on to say how his life started the day I went missing, and the worst part of it all is that, despite everything, I still want to be his friend!” He chokes on the word, a half-truth caught in his throat, and he rolls his eyes. “As if I even matter to him, at this point. To anyone.”

There is a silence that follows, heavy and still while it settles over the both of them, and Will can’t bring himself to look anywhere but up, up at the high sun and the dark leaves and the pale sky and anywhere else besides El. 

Mortification begins to swallow him whole, submerging his entire body in the feeling, and he still has his hand in El’s. 

“Will,” she says quietly. 

“I’m sorry,” he blurts out. “It’s not like I blame you, or anything. You’re his girlfriend, obviously you matter more to him. I didn’t mean –” 

“Will,” El interrupts, and when he looks at her, her eyes are soft and kind, as they usually are whenever she pokes hard enough for Will to ramble on about his problems. “I’m glad you told me.” 

He can feel something in him shatter. 

“You are?” He asks, voice a little broken. 

“Yes,” she nods, “I am. You say you feel like you don’t matter, but you matter a lot to me.” She emphasizes it with a tight squeeze of her hand on his, and her words are steady. “I have had other brothers and sisters, and you – you are nothing like them. You are so, so much better. I do not think I would be as happy without you.” 

Will blinks owlishly, and he can feel the tears start to shine on his eyes. 

His throat is clogged and weirdly scratchy at the same time when he chokes out, “You – you matter a lot to me, too.” Because she has to know, even if it feels like Will’s heart was being squeezed into nothing. 

She gives him a sweet smile, clutching his hand a little harder, reassuring. “And although Mike is a mouth breather sometimes,” El continues, no acknowledgement when Will scoffs at the name, “he cares about you. Not more than I do,” she adds, and Will can’t help but smile, “but he cares.” 

Will swipes away a stray tear, and clears his throat. “Yeah?” 

“And,” she says, “I am not his girlfriend. Anymore.” At Will’s blank stare, she clarifies, “We broke up yesterday.” 

Will opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. “Are you okay?” 

She nods. “I am. I still need to figure out who I am – not with Papa, not with Hopper, not with Mike, not with anyone.” The words sound familiar on her tongue, and she leans close, as if sharing a secret. “Just me.” 

His chest unravels, if just a bit, and there is a streak of pride that runs through him. Despite the terribleness that runs rampant in this chunk of the world, El finds it in her to dig a path for herself, full of the authenticity and sincerity that Will has always ached to have. 

El no longer has the long locks of brown hair that she had adored so much, or the same hesitance and slump in her shoulders that had chased her figure a week ago. She sits taller now. He wipes his eyes and joins her. 

He grins. 

“Just you,” Will agrees. 

He’s forgotten how small Hawkins is, in the grand scheme of things. 

Lenora had been different, had felt much bigger, with its roads that constantly led outwards and into bigger, brighter places, not too far away and not too out of sight. Lenora had been big, closer to even bigger things. 

Hawkins is small. Woods stretch from the edges and beyond, and any promise of nearby cities are covered over by trees and forestry. 

It makes him feel contained. Smaller. He hates it. 

It feels even smaller when half the population has packed their bags and left, and yet the rest of them still reside here, helping where they can and planning how to take down One to the best of their ability. 

Will thinks they should be financially compensated for the amount of world saving they’ve done by this point. 

He hands out another blanket as another woman approaches, who then asks if they have any spare pillows. Lucky for her, they have about thirty-seven, and several more on the way, and Will passes her two of them. 

She walks away, and he gets to folding more blankets. 

It’s nice, volunteering at Hawkins High, which has, for the time being, been converted into a donation center and shelter for anyone who currently does not have it. 

Will, in lack of a proper home, as his old one had been sold a while ago, and Hopper’s cabin didn’t quite have enough room for all of them, has currently been spending most of his time either revisiting old places he had frequented, visiting Max, helping out with folding things, passing things out, or making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. 

It’s good. It keeps his head clear, and most of the other Party members are busy, doing whatever they are, and his mind is too caught up in trying to exist in the hellscape that is Hawkins, Indiana, that he can’t quite let himself linger on – 

“Will!”

Mike has also been volunteering at Hawkins High. 

Will pauses his folding to look at him, where he stands, holding two separate plates with sandwiches, and two water bottles in his right arm, something else shoved into his other. 

He raises an eyebrow. “Yeah?” 

Mike gestures vaguely. “Hey, man. You’ve been working for, like, six hours straight.” When Will blankly stares at him, he adds, “And you didn’t eat during lunch break.”

Will wants to ask why he noticed, why he cares, and it sends his nerves in a spiral, but his stomach, no matter how stubborn he’d usually like to be, pangs with hunger, and a sandwich sounds nice, right about now. 

The people around them are settled in, and it’s in a slow pace at this time of day, in a little bit of a slump when it’s high noon and everyone is calling relatives or packing away. Some take naps. It’s clear why Mike has the time to walk over here and chat. 

When Will doesn’t reply, nor outwardly protest, Mike raises a plate. “Wanna eat outside together?”

Will chews on his cheek, before nodding, and they head out. 

 

The weather is relatively pleasant when they sit together on the tables offered outside, a lavish meal of sandwiches, potato chips, and water laid out before them. It’s nice enough, though, and Will can’t find anything to complain about while he scarfs down the rest of his sandwich. He shouldn’t find it so terribly thoughtful when his is absent of cheese, while a slice pokes out from Mike’s own sandwich. 

“So,” Mike begins when Will takes a big swig of water, “how’ve you been holding up?” 

Will takes his time to answer, swallowing another gulp of water before screwing the lid onto the bottle, placing it on the table, and he’s silent until he’s forced to reply, “Fine.” 

“Okay,” he says, seemingly nodding to himself, “that – that’s good. Um, how about Jonathan and them?” 

Will is more than sure that, if he wanted, Mike could’ve found out about all these answers by asking Nancy. “They’re fine.” 

Mike nods again, half of his sandwich still in front of him. A breeze picks up, and blows a strand of his hair across his cheek. “Good, good.”

Will can feel his patience wearing thin. “What did you want, Mike?” 

He isn’t sure what he was expecting as an answer, but Mike says, “Do you want to come over to my place on Saturday?” 

Will stares. “What?” 

“If you’re not busy or anything,” Mike hurriedly adds, “I was hoping we could watch a movie or something, like – like old times.” There’s a pause. “You don’t have to or anything, I was just –” 

If Will was smarter, he would have thought up a believable lie and explained why he was busy on Saturday. If Will was braver, he’d simply walk away. If Will wasn’t all that he was, he’d refuse, no need for high hopes. 

Unfortunately, Will has always been too soft, too quick to accomodate for Mike, and it’s no different, even after a year spent apart. 

“Sure,” Will shrugs, as though his heart isn’t moments away from beating out his chest. 

“Okay,” Mike nods, letting out a relieved sigh, as if Will would have ever said no. Will wishes he had that sort of self preservation. “Okay. Cool.” 

Will doesn’t let himself spend any time pondering on the implications of Mike Wheeler asking him to spend Saturday with him, and especially when Will is half sure the rest of the Party is going to be there as well. He’d have to force his hopes down, but he doesn’t quite have any. There isn’t anything to hope for, not really. 

It’s just going to be a normal, easy Saturday, spent with the rest of the Party, and Will is going to have to shrink into his body and feel vaguely uncomfortable around people he’s known through hell and back, and it’ll be just like last summer. 

I feel like my life started the day –

Will from two weeks ago would have hoped to high heaven. Will from two minutes ago almost wishes he had said no. 

He spends Thursday attending errands, where he is tasked to retrieve groceries, cleaning supplies, required furniture, and other necessities, while Hopper and his mother clean out the cupboards and El helps. Jonathan and Argyle accompany him. 

Friday is scrubbing the bathroom, and they move in a pull-out couch. Will spends most of it at the help center, with The Cure on repeat in his headphones. He’s not exactly in the mood to talk. 

Saturday arrives all too quickly. The morning is a blur. 

He rings the doorbell a few minutes later than predicted, and it’s approximately six seconds later that the door swings open, revealing a flushed Mike, hair windswept and dressed in a shirt that’s a dark blue, a shade he can’t quite name, a black shirt peeking out from underneath, with rolled up sleeves. It looks, unfortunately, good on him. Will directs his eyes to stop staring. 

“Hey,” Mike greets, breathless for some reason, almost like he hadn’t really expected Will to show up. He’s holding a bowl of popcorn. 

“Hi,” Will says, feeling so incredibly awkward. God. Maybe he should have said no. 

The Wheeler household is almost exactly as he remembers it to be, if not for a few more trinkets and a little less messy. There is an absence of Ted in his La-Z Boy, and Karen Wheeler doesn’t make an appearance to greet Will and comment on how much taller you’ve gotten, oh, you’re growing up so fast!

There is no chatter trailing up from the basement, unusual to all the nights the Party has spent together, whether that be with only Lucas and Dustin, or the entirety of all six of them. Will resists from asking where the rest of them are, and instead silently follows Mike down the stairs. 

“My parents and Holly are at my grandparents to help pack,” Mike begins, leading him to the sofa and placing the bowl on the table, which is tidier than Will has ever seen it, “and Nancy is somewhere. In her room, or out of the house. I don’t really know.”

It is suddenly apparent that it would only be the two of them. 

“Okay,” Will responds, in lack of anything else to say, and he can’t properly find himself to relax when he sits down. He had been prepared to be pushed in the back, maybe slip away an hour earlier than the rest and walk home. His shoulders had been tense before he had arrived. 

He rolls them back and clears his throat. He can adapt. It’ll just be the two of them, which is fine. Completely adjustable. 

He hopes the night isn’t too awkward. 

Mike pulls out a few VHS tapes from a yellow bag, oblivious to Will’s inner turmoil. 

“So,” he says brightly, “we’ve got a few choices.”

 

Mike is asleep on him. 

The entire night has been spent a little antsy, Will freezing up at any given movement from Mike, who does not seem to notice in even the slightest as he munches away on popcorn. Will’s own stomach is up in knots and tangles, and his nerves won’t let himself relax. 

He’s been mentally yelling at himself all night, a little irritated at himself for agreeing to come over, a little irritated that he can’t act normal for once in his life, a little irritated at Mike for no present reason, a little irritated at One for not coming after him in this very moment. 

As it is, he’s stuck sitting next to Mike until it’s an acceptable time to finally go home. 

They’re only a few minutes into their second movie of the night, The Goonies, and Will has been trying his very hardest to pay attention to the kids on the screen, ignoring the lightning rod of a boy next to him as much as he possibly could, but that’s a task more difficult than assumed, and it’s only when Will feels a weight against his left shoulder that he lets himself look over to Mike. 

His black hair splays over the couch cushions, and his head tilts toward Will’s shoulders, jaw brushing against the fabric of Will’s t-shirt, and their arms are properly pressed together. His mouth is slightly ajar, eyes closed shut. 

Will blinks. “Mike?” 

No answer. 

He hesitantly nudges at his side. “Mike?”

Shockingly, there is still no response.

Will presses his lips together, glancing between the movie and Mike, and suppresses a groan as he gets up. 

It’s only a little past eleven, reasonably late enough to leave, and it’s all he has to justify it with when he makes to leave. Will’s stomach is full of popcorn and sugary sweets, and his eyes flicker to Mike every few moments, as if the other boy would suddenly shoot awake and accuse Will of some horrendous crime. 

Will spends a few quiet minutes cleaning after the both of them, grimacing at the sight of several unpopped kernels on the floor, and he doesn’t know how they had managed to make a mess when both of them had stayed a steady foot away from each other, too aware of each other to proper relax. Or perhaps that was only Will. 

The past hours had been just barely short of torture for Will, too conscious of every movement that he makes, that Mike makes, and he couldn’t recall the last movie’s plot if his life depended on it. 

It’s not Mike’s fault. Not really. Will shouldn’t have agreed to come, knowing his own problems that arise whenever the other boy is around. Will would almost say he was a masochist if he didn’t know his own weakness to Mike Wheeler. 

He loudly crunches a candy wrapper under his hand, and winces at the sound. He glances over to Mike, who, thankfully, doesn’t stir. 

He’s still contently asleep, ebony hair shining a midnight blue in the low light of the television. His skin is drawn sharp underneath the light, cheekbones gaunt, and his jaw is a little more pronounced than it had been a few years ago. 

Mike’s grown lankier, Will notes, as if he hadn’t already been long and spindly before Will had left. He has an arm thrown over his own stomach, the other still where it had been pressed between them. Will swallows at the faint feel of it. Despite everything, there are butterfly wings brushing against his ribcage. 

He wishes he could’ve relaxed, in the last few hours he had been here. He wishes he had said no to coming. He wishes Mike wasn’t so on and off sometimes. He wishes he were normal. He wishes he didn’t make a big deal over such little things. He wishes he weren’t like this. 

Will bites his cheek, and brushes his hair out of his face. 

He continues cleaning. 

Soon, the tapes are tidily placed back on the coffee table, rewinded, and a full bag of trash placed on the floor. Will attempts to rid of the buttery feeling in his mouth when he leans down to pause the movie. The clock ticks to eleven-thirteen when he steps onto the stairs. It creaks under his weight, like it always has. 

“Will?” 

He freezes. 

Will looks over to the couch, where Mike sits up now, running a hand through his hair while he blinks a few times. His eyes are a little too wide open, and he squints to look at Will. 

“What’re you doing?” The words sound sticky in his mouth, and Mike swipes at his lips. 

Will gestures to the stairs. “Leaving.” 

He hurries up while Mike seems to be getting a grasp on when and where he is, emitting a small, panicked Wait! while he hurries to follow Will up the stairs and into the kitchen. Will spares him no attention when he sees himself to the door. 

“Are you – are you not going to stay for – for dinner, maybe?” Mike asks, as if it wasn’t already so late in the night, and Will shrugs as he unlocks the door. 

“It’s fine.” He swings open the door. “My mom will be worried if I don’t get home soon, anyway.” He’s not sure if she thinks he’s staying over or not. It doesn’t really matter, either way. 

“It’s really late, Will,” Mike tries, “couldn’t you just call and – and let her know you’re staying over?” Will pauses as he steps out, looking over at Mike, who appears mildly at a loss. There is a beat, before Mike repeats uselessly, “It’s late.” 

The thought of staying over is tempting, really, and especially at Mike’s sudden, strange urgency to keep Will lingering as long as possible, something that had not seen the light of day in so long. The street is silent, obvious of their chatter, and Will has no ride home. He had walked here, anyway, from Hawkins High to Mike’s house. It had only been a fifteen minute walk, good for clearing his head and preparing himself. 

Now, however, he regrets not asking Jonathan to pick him up, or something of the like. The idea of spending any more time with Mike is almost nauseating, making his stomach twist uncomfortably, if only out of nervousness. He isn’t sure what Mike would admit tonight, if he stayed over. 

It’s almost tempting. 

I feel like my life started the day we found you in the woods.

Will takes another step out, into the silent street. 

And what about us? 

We’re friends. We’re friends.

“Sorry,” Will says, an empty apology for something he isn’t really sorry for, and he turns away before he can gauge Mike's expression. 

The sky is sparse with stars, dark, a color Will has only ever used for shadows and painting in a mess of not-quite-curly hair, on canvases he rips in the middle and throws out, frame broken and fabric torn. 

The shade makes his heart hurt, and he looks away. 

The night air is cool on his skin, but he burns hot anyway, as he usually does when he’s around Mike. It’s a familiar feeling; one of fondness, of attraction, of mortification. He curls his fingers into his palm, and begins to walk. 

“What did I do wrong?” 

It’s a second before the words settle in, and it stops Will in his tracks. 

He turns around, eyebrows furrowed. “What?” 

“Did I do something wrong?” Mike questions, mouth twisted in a frown, eyes less wide than they were a few moments ago, sleepiness gone. His arms stay at his sides, although his fingers fiddle with his sleeves. “What did I do wrong?” 

Will frowns back. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” 

Mike doesn’t look like he believes him. Will doesn’t blame him. “Then why do you keep leaving?” 

Will stares at him. 

It feels unfair. 

“What do you mean, keep leaving?” Will spits out, disbelieving, and Mike gestures between them. 

“You’re – you’re leaving, again!” He exclaims, accusatory and harsh. “It’s like, one second, we’re fine and it’s like everything is back to how it used to be, and then it’s like you hate me or something, and you keep leaving me and I don’t – I don’t know what I’m doing wrong!”

He sounds much angrier than he should. It makes Will feel guilty, which morphs into bitterness, anger, once again, when he finds it hard to believe he’s at fault for anything. What did he do this time? 

“My bad if I’m not so quick to spend all my time with you when you ignored me for an entire year,” Will forces out over the stone that seems to have made room in his throat. He hates arguing, hates loud voices, hates how they always seem to end up in the same spots every single time. “I wasn’t even sure if you’d still want me around after you wake up, seeing as how on and off you are! You’ve barely spoken to me since we’ve been back, and now you want to watch movies together?” 

His arms move around without his own willingness, his body out of control in times like these. It’s not Mike’s fault entirely. Will knows he’s been busy. They’ve all been busy. He knows he’s accusing, a little too loud and prosecuting in times like these, but he doesn’t have the strength to fix it. The loose foundation of their friendship is already rotting, anyway. 

Sometimes, after they’ve yelled enough and hurt enough and taken a moment to breathe, when Will moves back and stares at the both of them, Will swears that all his problems have always been his own fault. And maybe that’s a little terrifying. 

“It’s – I already said sorry!” Mike raises a hand to his hair, clearly frustrated, and Will tightens his jaw. “And it’s – it’s been hard, okay? It’s like I don’t know who I am anymore with you. It’s hard to be around you.” 

There is a beat while Mike drops his gaze, some sort of regret and apologetic look plastered on his face, and it’s a face that Will has seen too many times in the past year. 

Will ignores the growing knot in his chest when he looks away, and it aches, as if it's doubling in size and pressing against all his other organs, threatening to burst through his ribcage and squish into his lungs. 

He ignores it all, and lets defeat crawl into his bones. 

“Well, sorry if being around me is so difficult for you,” Will mutters, turning away again, and it feels final this time, an overarching theme that has finally come to end. “Let go already, if it’s so hard to hold on.” 

The night air is still, the moon is nowhere to be seen, and Will starts walking down the Wheeler’s driveway. 

It’s like this every time. Maybe this would be the last time. 

He knows better than to hope, though.

“Please don’t leave again.” 

Will freezes. 

Mike’s voice is quiet. 

It’s too quiet, quieter than it had been all night, close enough to breaking, and Will feels his resolve break away. 

He turns around again, like he always will. Mike has his arms at his sides now, shoulders deflated, and he looks tired.

“I’m sorry, okay?” Mike says into the street, and he sounds in pain, voice shaking and hands still fidgeting, like as though the words coming out of his mouth are invoking some terrible torture on him. “I – I know I’ve been an asshole, but it’s –” 

He cuts off as he groans, running a hand across his face, and rubs his fingers into his cheek. He sighs when he looks back up from the cement to face Will, who, no matter how much he knows he should probably walk away, stays where he’s standing. Like always. 

“It’s hard to be around you,” he finally continues after a moment, Adam’s apple bobbing. “It’s not – I don’t know. I don’t know. Everything has just been different, now.” 

It’s all things he’s heard already, things he’s been able to piece together, with the lack of calls or letters or even a conversation that didn’t feel like it’s tearing Will into shreds, and it’s all vague and skirts around the point and Will is tired of hearing it all. 

“Mike,” Will sighs, bringing up a hand to swipe away his hair from his face. “Can we just –” 

“I feel like I keep losing you,” Mike confesses suddenly, loud in the quiet night. “And I know that you’re here, that – that things are only different because of me, but it’s like every time I get you back, you keep leaving.” 

He spits the word like a curse, and Will frowns, opening his mouth to disagree, but Mike cuts him to the chase. 

“Like, I got you back, for just a little, before the Mind Flayer,” Mike begins, “and then you got – possessed or whatever, and that’s not your fault, but I lost you again right after I got you back. And then I – I lost you again, after that one fight we had, and then you left again when you moved to California.

“And it’s not – I know none of it is your fault, okay? But I guess I – I guess it was just easier to push you away, after that, because then I wouldn’t have to lose you again.” 

He looks older, in the moonlight. Less like the Mike Wheeler that had held Will’s hand during Halloween, less like the Mike Wheeler that had fought with him in the rain, less like the Mike Wheeler that had hugged him tight before Will had moved away. 

“Mike,” Will starts, and Mike shakes his head. 

“But then it got difficult,” he says, and his voice wears out and he sucks in a breath, “because you were right next to me again and it was so hard to just ignore you, because you were right there, and I couldn’t stop thinking about you, about – about how far away you felt, even when you were right there, and it’s like I keep losing you even though you’re right there.”

His voice breaks, and suddenly Mike is as young as Will feels and the moonlight doesn’t really matter because Mike raises a shaky hand to rub away a stray tear, and Will’s body moves before he can doubt himself.  

Will doesn’t think about it, doesn’t let himself second-guess as he wraps his arms around Mike, who, even when he’s taller, seems so small against Will, arms hanging limp against his sides. They barely reach up to hover absently at Will’s waist. 

Mike shakes under Will’s arms, and tucks his face between the slope of Will’s neck and shoulder, letting himself be held when Will presses him closer, as if it would steady the both of them, would let their history together ground them just this once. 

Mike has never been a very open crier, and Will can count on one hand the amount of times Mike has let Will comfort him, let himself be shown as a silent crier, no noise while tears track down steadily down his face. He’s never liked crying while Will was around, much less anyone else in the Party. 

Runaway tears stain Will’s shirt, but Will has never cared for such trivial things, and especially when Will tries his best to soothe the trembling that seems to rack through Mike, ocean waves crashing against him while Will holds his arms around him. The dark blankets them, and they allow themselves to be shameless. There is no moon to watch them. 

“I’m sorry,” Mike forces out, voice muffled, the words squished against Will’s skin. “I’m sorry, please don’t go.” 

“I won’t,” Will can barely breathe out, and Mike can only slump further into his arms. “I won’t.” Mike lets out a shudder, and he is so warm against Will. “I’m not leaving.” 

Not again, he thinks, and fate has always wormed out of his hands, a slippery thing that has twisted and turned and stung in return, but for this, he thinks, not again. 

 

“I’m sorry,” are the first words that tumble out of Mike’s mouth when they stumble into his room, the bed messy and untidied. 

It’s the first time Will has been in Mike’s room since moving away, and maybe even before that, when they had been slowly drifting away. 

It’s much more different in his memories, where the cluttered bookshelf has a few more figurines and stacks of books and paper. His bed is against a different wall, sheets changed, and there are, surprisingly, street signs hung up on the walls, with a one-way arrow stuck next to Mike’s closet, and a guitar leaning against its stand beside the lit lamp. Will would question it if he hadn’t already heard of Mike’s new hobbies from El. 

“You said that already,” Will points out, following when Mike takes a seat on his bed and pats the space next to him. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands when he sits. 

“Yeah, well,” Mike shrugs, “I feel like I can’t say it enough.” 

Will can’t quite find a proper reply to that, and lets a silence settle upon them, bubbling and a little exhausted, a step in their dynamic that they’ve never really practiced to perfection.

Mike’s eyes are still shiny with wetness, a little pink around the edges, cheeks and the slope of his nose just the slightest color of pink. No one is a pretty crier, not really, but Mike looks beautiful anyway. 

Will looks down at his lap, where his hands sit, unsure, and he stretches a hand before curling it into a fist, and letting it rest on his thigh. It’s awkward, and he fights the urge to move it again. 

He’s in the motion of placing it back into his lap when Mike’s hand suddenly reaches over to grab it. 

Will stills in motion, and looks up. 

Mike seems to have shocked himself, too, when he stares at their hands for a moment too long, and the pink on his face almost seems to darken, just a bit, almost a trick of the light, and Will wonders if he’s imagining it. 

“I keep forgetting what I was going to say to you,” Mike says, breaking the silence, and Will raises an eyebrow. “I had a whole, like, speech prepared for when you came over, and I was going to, like, ease into it and then properly apologize and explain myself to you, but then,” he gestures vaguely, “you know.” 

Will shakes his head. “You really don’t have to say anything.” He stares at the carpet in front of him. “I mean, I owe you an apology too, especially with how I acted a few minutes ago.” 

“No,” Mike shakes his head, eyebrows furrowed, “no, you don’t owe me anything. I mean, you didn’t say anything that I didn’t deserve to hear, and especially when you’ve been so – nice to me, even after how I treated you.” There is silence when neither of them continue, and Mike chews on his lower lip before adding, “I’m still sorry.” 

Will raises a shoulder in a shrug. “I forgive you.” 

“You shouldn’t,” he replies quickly. “I was a terrible friend. Honestly, I’m still a terrible friend.” His hand, just barely, tightens around Will’s. “I’ve barely apologized.” 

“You’ve already apologized, like, four times tonight, Mike,” Will points out, focusing very hard on anything else besides their linked hands, and Mike shakes his head. “Besides, I already forgave you.” 

“You shouldn’t,” he insists, persistent despite it all, “you really shouldn’t. Not until I make it up to you, at least.” 

Will shakes his head. “Mike, it really –”

“Please,” Mike says, soft all over again, and it makes Will’s heart skip in a way it shouldn’t. “Let me make it up to you.”

There’s that cruel part of him, the part of him that Will recoils from and ignores and shoves to the very back of his mind. The part of him that wants Mike to keep apologizing, rebuild their entire relationship with raw hands, beg for forgiveness with teary eyes. 

Mike tempts that part of him. Will knows better than to feed it, but Mike looks unsatiated, too guilty. 

Will presses his lips together, shoulders dropping, and relents. 

“Okay.” 

When Will finds himself drawing in his sketchbook just two days later, warm overhead light and back against his propped up pillows, he grimaces at the page. 

This is not the first time he’s drawn Mike without thinking. 

It isn’t the first, nor the second, or even the third, and especially when Will had ended up doodling him from time to time during his stay in Lenora, a little afraid of forgetting how to draw Mike after so long without contact. Then again, would it have been so terrible to forget? 

But he doesn’t think he could ever forget. Not completely. 

It’s some other nature that has Will’s pencil curve out the sharp shape of Mike’s jaw, like it’s done more times than he wants to admit. The graphite is a little light on the page, as if Will is almost afraid of what he’s drawing, as if he could possibly blame it on being an accident, as if someone was going to come in any minute and yell at him for being a freak for drawing Mike Wheeler in his spare time. 

Just a few days later after their fight, Will is still smitten. Jesus. 

This terrible thing he carries around with him, he knows its name. He knows the tell-tale beat of his heart, has gotten over the fear of acknowledging it, has watched enough romance movies and heard his friends gush about crushes to know this feeling, has had it so long he barely remembers a time without it. 

Will also knows the consequences of it. He hates knowing who he is. 

There is some guilt that carries alongside the acceptance that he is not normal; that he is maybe the worst brother in the world for having a crush on his sister’s used-to-be-boyfriend-but-not-as-of-two-weeks-ago, and even more so for having a crush on a – a boy. 

The news says it’s unnatural, but loving Mike seems too easy to be so. Will knows people like him don’t get happy endings. Not yet, at least. Maybe never. 

He stares at the sketched-out side profile of Mike Wheeler. 

He stares until he can’t anymore, and turns the page. Considers burning it when he has the chance. 

There is a knock at the door. 

“Come in,” Will replies, pencil still in hand as the door opens, and Jonathan’s head pops in. 

“Hey,” he smiles softly, eyes resting on Will, knees brought up as a make-shift desk, pencil held knowingly towards the page. The slight smear of graphite on the side of Will’s hand. “Dinner’s ready. Mom made lasagna.” Will raises his eyebrows, and he laughs lightly. “It didn’t look that bad, actually! Hopper helped.” 

“Don’t give me hope,” Will quips back, smiling. “I’ll be there in a minute.” 

Jonathan nods, and closes the door. 

Will looks back down at the blank sheet. Envisions the familiar dip of a cupid’s bow, the high rise of cheekbones. Bony fingers. The unnatural nature of Will Byers. 

He puts his pencil down, and heads to slightly-singed lasagna. 

Will hadn’t known what to expect when Mike had insisted on making it up to him, and, frankly, he is still a little lost on the idea, but it would be inaccurate to say that Will hasn’t been seeing some sort of difference in Mike. 

There is a difference. A very big difference. 

(The difference: almost everything.)

It’s as if everything that had been lost in their friendship has suddenly come back full force and heightened, and if this was what their relationship had been like two years ago, then thirteen-year-old Will Byers was much stronger than he gave himself credit for. 

With the inch given of being permitted to make it up to Will, Mike has taken upon himself to take an entire mile, as though their fight had suddenly brought out some sort of epiphany in his brain, because here he was, inviting himself over and staring and grabbing at Will constantly. 

He speeds over on his bike like nothing has changed at all, yet everything has suddenly changed, because now he throws a loud greeting into El’s room and rushes into Will’s, poking at the other boy until Will folds and gives him attention for the rest of the night. 

It’s so similar to them from so many years ago, and it makes Will’s heart ache and flourish at the same time, a flower growing from its dying corpse. A grim reminder, but a welcome change. 

Mike will toss himself onto Will’s bed, onto Will as well, if he also happened to be there, and it’s nice, it’s so nice to revert to something they have not touched in so long.

He tries to ignore the fire in him every time Mike demands Will’s attention, like it means something to him, like it’s something he wants. It’s an intoxicating feeling, being wanted, in any degree. 

Mike’s eyes follow Will wherever he goes, and it had been the same in California, he thinks, except this time Mike refuses to look away when Will catches him, eyes looking up from Will’s hands scrubbing at a plate to meet his gaze, and they’ll stare in silence for a second or two before someone inevitably breaks the moment. 

“Did you need something?” Will will ask, kindly, very obviously disregarding the staring, and Mike will act as if nothing is out of the ordinary. 

“No,” he’ll answer, “do you need help cleaning up?” 

Mike’s staring has always felt heavy, and it’s because it’s intense; then again, Mike is intense, all or nothing in everything he does, and even in this, apparently. Will would question him, if not for the fear of somehow scaring Mike off. 

It would be suffocating, if not for the fact that – well, Will likes it.

He likes the redness of it, the warm weight of looking up and finding Mike to be already looking back, likes how it’s almost overwhelming, likes the intensity of everything that Mike has to offer, even after an entire year of not speaking, and the words I feel like I lost you float back to him and he supposes it all makes sense. 

Maybe it also makes sense when he begins holding onto Will, again. 

It’s a trait between them that had faded away after they’d grown up, and suddenly it wasn’t very manly to hold a friend’s hand and it was definitely not manly to hold onto him randomly, on the arm or waist or neck or running a casual hand through Will’s hair. It sets him ablaze. 

It had also nearly sent him into cardiac arrest, on the slow Thursday it had happened, when they’d been sitting together in Hopper’s cabin, mostly everyone out except for El, who had occupied the floor, working on a puzzle that they’d found in one of the dusty boxes. 

“I didn’t know you were a fan of baseball,” Mike had commented, collapsing in the space next to Will on the couch, long legs bunched up when he scoots to lean forward the same way Will is, who is barely interested and keeping a subconscious eye on El. Mike throws an arm around Will’s shoulders, which Will would have never thought twice about three years ago.

Unfortunately for Will in the now, he was thinking about it. He was thinking about it very much. 

“I have no idea what’s going on,” Will plainly lets him know, refusing to show any indicator of his heightening heart pace. “This is the only thing that wasn’t, like, an infomercial. Or that one show Mom loves.” 

El looks up from the puzzle, nodding. “She likes the hairy man with the mustache.” 

Mike raises his eyebrows, and turns to look at Will, who shrugs cluelessly. “Alright, then,” he replies slowly, his smile unwavering. “I was just going to ask if you guys wanted to order pizza.” 

“Sure,” Will nods, and they both look down to El. 

“With pineapple,” she replies, and Will grins. 

“No way,” Mike refuses, shaking his head, “no way. Fruit on pizza is an abomination. Absolutely not.” He gets up from where he had sat, a hand still resting at the back of Will’s neck, fingers barely in his hair, and Will refrains from leaning into it. 

“Try before you deny,” Will quotes, and Mike sends him a betrayed look. 

“How could you do this to me,” he shakes his head, and his hand slowly drags from Will’s next to his hair, fingers running through the strands and brushing, briefly, against his scalp, and Will can barely hold back a shiver. “I’m asking for pepperoni and olives,” he declares, walking away, “and no pineapple.” 

El lets out a small giggle, and Will can still feel the ghost of Mike’s hand on his neck.

The change in behavior is sudden, and yet it’s as though everyone else seems entirely oblivious to it, as if it had always been like this, with Mike’s fingers wrapped around Will’s elbow when he wants his attention or shoulders pressed together when they’re sitting next to each other. 

Maybe it had always been like this, years ago, before there had been a gaping hole between the two of them. 

Now, Will couldn’t recall when Mike had willingly reached out and touched him that wasn’t in the heat of the moment. 

Will isn’t sure if everyone else’s indifference to it makes it better or worse. No one bats an eye, and it almost makes Will feel like he’s going insane. 

At the same time, Jonathan keeps sending him looks, and Will almost wants to hitch a ride to Wisconsin, or some place far, far away. 

Mike himself acts as though nothing has changed, and Will doesn’t know what to make of it all. 

Not that – the change isn’t nice, but it’s so much. Almost too much for someone like Will. 

(Someone like Will: in love with Mike Wheeler.)

God. 

He needs to get a hold of himself.

 

“So,” Mike begins, “I was thinking.” 

They’re reading in Will’s room – or, rather, Will was reading in his room, alone until about fifteen minutes ago, until Mike had showed up with no notice and paid no care for Will’s own priorities when he demanded attention and quality time together. 

More accurately, Will was attempting to read, and had given up a few seconds after Mike had showed up, when his eyes kept drifting off the page and onto the other boy, a needle to North, and Mike was going through Will’s things, after his mother had flown off to California to grab some of their belongings. 

“Surprising,” Will answers, and is met with a frog plushie to the face. “Hey!” 

“Well, now I don’t even want to tell you anymore,” Mike groused, but there’s a smile that pokes at his lips, and Will raises an eyebrow, and that’s all it takes for him to break. “Okay, okay, whatever.” There is a pause as Mike’s fingers drum against the top of Will’s dresser, and he slowly reveals, “I was just going to say that we should hang out tomorrow.” 

Will gives him a look. “We’ve been hanging out for the past week, Mike.” 

It’s mostly true. They’ve also been spending a lot of more time than usual the week before as well, mostly at Mike’s provoking, and, outside of volunteering at the help center, visiting and offering Max updates now and then, and checking up on the rest of their friends, most of Will’s time has been spent with Mike. 

It almost makes him think too much of last summer, when he’d be lucky just to get Mike for a whole afternoon, much less an afternoon alone. It’s a stark contrast to now, when Mike invites himself over and brings a shovel to dig a space into Will’s heart. As if the entire thing didn’t already belong to him. 

It’s after a full moment of silence that he realizes his words sounded like a refusal, something of annoyance, and when he looks up, Mike’s frame is hunched closer and he’s very carefully not looking at Will. 

He sits up, quick and panicked. “Not – not like that, I just meant, I assumed we would. Hang out tomorrow, I mean.” He leans on his elbow, full body turned to Mike. “I was hoping we’d hang out tomorrow, regardless.”

“Oh.” Mike’s no longer closing in on himself, and his shoulders drop. Will wants to pat them, pat his arms, let his hands rest at his wrists, tug him close. “Alright, well, I wanted to do something different, tomorrow.” 

Will blinks. “Okay. Like what?” 

Mike grins at him, warm and ivory and Will wants to reach out and touch. 

“It’s a surprise.” 

It’s barely past two when Mike Wheeler shows up at his front door, bike haphazardly strewn at the steps while he knocks once, twice, thrice on the door. 

His mother doesn’t blink from across the kitchen table, having already anticipated this, and Jonathan sends him one of those looks again and Will thoroughly ignores it to hurry to the door. 

He swings open the door to find Mike with a raised fist, ready to knock again. 

His cheeks are pink. It looks nice.

“Hi,” Will greets belatedly.

“Hey,” Mike breathes out, clearly having been in some sort of rush, hair in a little bit of a whirlwind. “I forgot to call and say I was on my way but –” 

“It’s okay,” Will soothes, an easy smile when he says so. “Are we going now, or?” 

Mike nods. “Are you ready to go?” 

His eyes, momentarily, rake over Will, heavy like it always is, and Will almost feels the need to twist his body away, cover himself up with his arms, even if what he’s wearing is pretty casual, although he had taken particular care in his appearance today, spending just a little more time at the mirror. 

It had, strangely, felt special, the way Mike had insisted on their plans for the day being a surprise, barely opening his mouth when Will poked and prodded and asked why is it different? 

“Yeah,” Will replies, and, after a quick shout of goodbye, he shuts the door behind him and steps after Mike. 

“We’re going to have to share my bike,” Mike tells him after a second, like they haven’t shared before.

Will shakes his head, and watches as Mike gets onto his bike, feet steady on the ground as he holds the bike upright. “Okay.” 

His hands are hesitant while they rest on the sides of the seat, and even more fleeting and nervous when they briefly brush against Mike’s sides. They settle, after a moment, when Mike takes both of Will’s arms and wraps them around his middle. Electricity makes its course around Will’s bloodstream. 

Mike is warm. Very warm. And he vaguely smells like shampoo. 

Will tries not to feel creepy about noticing it. 

“So, where are we going?” Will asks one last time, as smooth as he can be. 

“It’s a surprise,” Mike insists, just like he did yesterday, and Will sighs into Mike’s shoulder as they begin to ride off. 

 

The surprise turns out to be –

“The Palace?” Will questions as they begin to halt in front, slowing to a stop in front of the arcade, and he hops off the bike, Mike following. 

“Yeah!” Mike answers, grinning. “It’s, like, one of the few places that didn’t pack up and leave immediately after the – everything,” he hurriedly concludes, remembering them being in public. “Besides, I thought maybe you could use a break away from one of our houses, and I had a few quarters to waste.” 

At the words, he pulls out a handful, and Will stares at him. 

He looks eager, yet a little fidgety, foot digging into the dirt with the toe of his shoe, as though there was even the slimmest of chances that Will would turn away and refuse from him, and Will feels the irrevocable urge to reach out and shake him, make him know everything Will has never said, can’t even say to the bathroom mirror. 

“Yeah,” Will says instead, insides melting, “yeah, okay.”

He finds out, that day, that arcades have a tendency to be relatively empty when half the town has moved out, and the other half is trying their best to live out a normal life after their town has merged with an alternate dimension.

The end of the world is a great solution for crowds, as the arcade is almost entirely unoccupied, save for a handful of kids that mill about the place. As it is, Mike and Will have practically free reign to any game, unlike the past, in which they’d have to impatiently wait for whatever stranger to hurry up their round so the Party could have a go. 

Now, however, they play their third round of Zombie Blaster in a row, and there’s no one else to bug them about giving someone else their turn. 

It feels childish, amidst the world ending and their friends suffering and the world ending and yet, Will thinks, for once, that maybe he deserves this selfishness. 

All of his friends are grieving. He’s pretty sure he’s grieving, too. His stomach twists every time he thinks about the future. The past who-knows-how-many nights have been spent in nightmares and rushing into El’s room to make sure she was still there, still alive and breathing and real. 

He thinks of hospital rooms. Of broken legs and fluorescent lights and fairy tales and missing posters and gasping awake and El, El, are you awake? and leaving the lights on and the past three years of his life. 

“Come on,” Mike says, sliding his hand into Will’s, “I’ve still got, like, ten tokens left!” 

He’ll allow this indulgence, Will decides, and lets himself get tugged along by Mike. Just this once. 

 

The over-two-hours they spend there wash away many memories Will had of the place, of haunting autumns and days when he’d trail off and disappear off the face of the earth. 

Will’s insides feel loud, pent up and alive and he’s inexplicably happy, suddenly, enough so that he lets himself get a little loud, in the bubble they occupy in the arcade, no care for any other people in the place. 

When they leave, hopping back onto the bike, Mike’s hand squeezing his in victory sticks to him like a stubborn ghost. 

“Ice cream?” Mike questions, peering away from the menu, and Will ponders on it. 

“I don’t know if I’d finish anything by myself,” he admits, and watches as Mike orders a singular banana split.

It’s after they’ve received their food, taking it to-go in large bags that Will squeezes between their bodies, while Mike speeds the both of them to an unknown destination, that it hits Will suddenly that this is what Mike meant by making it up to him.

Maybe the past two weeks had been some sort of build up, a slow rise to a climax of the perfect day spent together. Maybe Mike had planned this all strategically, to get Will comfortable enough to grant him forgiveness, and then Mike could move on to better things. Maybe this was the finale, and they’d stop spending so much time together, after this. 

Or maybe, Will tries, wind cutting against his face, he’s just an idiot. 

“Mike,” he speaks, quiet, but loud enough to be heard over the sudden jolt of a break that the bike takes. 

“Yeah?” Mike answers, feigning clueless, but his smile gives it away, the fall of the cliff behind him. 

Will had no real memories of the quarry, except for the handful of times the Party would find themselves bored and spend a day or two here during the summer. The cliff’s edge had always seemed intimidating, too steep and endless to be properly relaxed around. 

The fall doesn’t seem so high now. Not after everything. 

They carry their food close to the edge, near the rocks that look over the lake, and Will feels the tips of his fingers tingle when he picks up a fry. It’s quiet, not much chatter between them, but surely the biking had worn Mike out, by the look of his flushed cheeks and working jaw, chewing his food with intent. 

Will eats more than half his burger, and takes a few sips of his drink, and looks on over the lake below, with its waters still the midnight blue that it is, even now. It’s incomparable, almost close to a night sky, but lacking the purple-ish tint that comes with dusk. 

It’s while they both make their way through a shared banana split sundae, each with their own spoons, that Mike begins, “So how’d I do?” 

It takes Will to piece together what he’s asking, until it clicks, of course, that he’s asking how he did with the day, how high it had scaled on Will’s forgiveness scale. It makes his chest ache strangely. A finale. 

“Solid eight,” Will nods. 

Mike gapes. “Solid eight – why not – where did – eight?” 

Will nods around a spoonful of ice cream. “Could’ve been a ten, but you were being too nice.” 

Mike seems to freeze. “I was being too nice?” At Will’s continuous nodding, he stumbles over himself. “What do you mean I was being – I was perfectly normal!” 

“If you were being normal,” Will points out, just to be difficult, “I would’ve given you a ten.” 

Mike blinks at him. “This is ridiculous.” 

Will shrugs at him. “Well, I’d say you’re forgiven. You’ve officially made it up to me.” 

Mike’s eyebrows furrow together, confusion plastered on his face, and it evidently takes him a second to respond, “What do you mean?” 

Will gestures easily. “Well, this was for making it up to me, and stuff, right? Like – like you mentioned?” 

Mike’s lips twist downward, and he shakes his head. “I meant the surprise. Us hanging out like this, with,” he waves a hand in the air, “the arcade and everything, that was the surprise, since we don’t usually get to do that sort of stuff with just the two of us. I was asking how I did with the surprise.” 

“Oh,” Will says brilliantly, and some sort of flood has stopped rushing into his stomach, now. 

“I think I’ll spend forever trying to make it all up to you, Will,” Mike replies, fiddling with his fork. “I was just – I just wanted today to be a nice surprise.” 

“It is,” Will tells him, urgent to let him know how nice it had all been. Too nice for someone like him. It makes his insides feel like they’re about to burst. “It was nice. Perfect. Ten out of ten.”

“Okay,” Mike says, but he doesn’t completely relax. 

Will, for once, ignores all precautions he ever takes when it comes to Mike Wheeler, and reaches out to link their hands together, fingers brushing against the stone. 

“It was perfect, Mike,” he insists, firm and steady, and Will doesn’t let his stare waver when he says so. “Just hanging out with you would’ve been perfect.” Will drops his gaze when he adds, after a second, feeling a little too revealed, “This is the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me."

Mike looks proper pink now, blood blush on his cheeks when he lets himself smile. "Yeah?" 

Will can feel his heart in his throat when Mike's hand turns to wrap around Will's, tightening between his fingers, palm against palm.

"Yeah," Will nods, and neither of them let go.

 

It’s a little after dinner, and El knocks on Will’s door. 

She politely waits for Will to call out a come in!, and only then does she open the door, stepping in to spot him on his bed, pencil scratching at the sketchbook in front of him. She wears one of Hopper’s shirts, a little too big on her, yet it suits her anyway. The door shuts behind her. 

“Hey,” Will greets, setting his pencil down, a small smile when he gestures for El to sit. 

She takes a seat in front of him, crossing her legs underneath her. Her hair is in an awkward stage of growing out, but she can run her hands through it, and in a month or two, she’ll be able to start putting clips in again. Maybe by the end of summer, it’ll be long enough for Will to braid, like he had done just a few weeks ago. 

“Hi,” she returns, and her face doesn’t give anything away when she adds, “we need to talk.” 

Will blinks, crossing his own legs under him. He scoots to face her fully. “Um. Okay. What is it?” 

El gets straight to the point. Blunt, like she always is. 

“You and Mike are friends again.” 

Will doesn’t know why his lungs feel a little smaller, the skin around his hands just a little tighter, and his body feels small again. “I – yeah? I – I guess so.” 

“I am glad,” she nods, and Will forces himself to calm down. She didn’t mean anything by it, and why would she? El has never cared for the rumors around Will, not before Lenora, and certainly not after. 

Will’s paranoia gets to him, anyway. Doubt has always been a dangerous thing, and the fear that one day, all his friends and family will take a look at him and – realize, is a nightmare that keeps him up at night, keeps him avoiding mirrors from time to time and keeps his hands to himself. 

El wouldn’t care. She, of all people, knows how it’s like to be an alien, of sorts. Ostracized. Almost wrong. A – mistake. 

But El is no mistake. She’s a miracle dressed in plaid and curls. He knows this.

“Okay,” Will finally says, when there is a long, long pause and neither of them make any move to talk, “was there –” 

“Do you like him?” 

Sometimes, however, there is a difference between knowing and believing. 

“Why do – who – why wouldn’t I?” Will clumsily avoids, and he’s too aware of himself, suddenly, the way he sits, the way he’s talking, and he wonders if he’d done something to clue him in, had accidentally conformed to one of the many stereotypes of people like him. “He’s my friend.” 

“He is my friend, too,” El agrees, but she’s always been determined. “But I do not like like him.”

There’s no avoiding it now, and Will’s chest caves in on itself, and he’s never been an effortless liar, and there’s no real point to it when he stutters, “I – I don’t – I –” 

He’s panicking, he vaguely registers, and it’s much harder to breathe, now, shallow and quick when he focuses on the scrunching of his blanket under his fingers, the way his hands are sweating, suddenly, and it’s so hot in here, he hadn’t noticed before, and his mouth is dry and he leans away from El, shoulders hunched and –

“I’m sorry,” he chokes out, and, God, he’s definitely crying, and El can tell, face contorting with worry while Will raises his palms to scrub away the warm tears marching down his cheeks. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” 

He can’t help but repeat it, make sure El knows; even if Will had been in love with Mike long before either of them had known of El, it simply wasn’t fair to her, still being in love with him when they’d been dating, and he’s sorry for it. He’s sorry for being in love with Mike, sorry for being in love with her ex-boyfriend, sorry for being into – into other – 

“Will?” El places a careful hand on his knee. “Will, why are you sorry?” 

“I’m sorry,” he mindlessly repeats, heaving in a breath, “I’m – I didn’t mean to, I swear, I just –” 

“You don’t have to be sorry, Will,” she gently interrupts, leaning close to meet his eyes under his ducked head. “Me and Mike broke up, remember? It is okay if you like him.” 

It is a band-aid to a bullet wound, but Will forces air into his weak lungs, too conscious of his own clamminess, the cold that had suddenly raked over him, the sterile fear of being known, and he makes himself calm down as he places his hands onto his thighs. The cotton is soft against his palms. He takes a deep breath. The air tastes like nothing.

“Did you hear me, Will?” El tries again, voice gentle. He doesn’t deserve gentle. “It is okay.” 

Will tries to blink back any more tears, grimacing at the feel of smeared tear tracks on his cheeks, and he sniffs. His teeth chatter, just a little. “Why aren’t you mad at me?” 

She blinks owlishly, eyes wide and sweet. “I am supposed to be mad?” 

“Yes!” He insists, oxygen back in his lungs. “You’re not – you’re supposed to be mad that I – I like him!” 

“We are no longer dating,” El points out. 

Will feels a little lightheaded. “But you’re supposed to be mad that I – I like – I like,” he gestures ambiguously, and there is a long pause, with El growing more confused, until he spits out, like a mouthful of poison, “boys.” 

She stares at him. “But I like boys also?” 

He raises a hand to his hair, almost frustrated. “But I’m,” he waves a hand to himself, “not supposed to.” 

El tilts her head, eyebrows furrowed, and her eyes skirt from his face to his hair to his arms and stomach and shoulders, as if there was some sort of hint she wasn’t picking up. “Why?” 

“It’s wrong,” Will emphasizes, the words acidic, hurtful on his tongue. 

He doesn’t know why he’s so insistent on making his sister hate him. Maybe to inform her, to let her know of how wrong he is, instead of letting her keep loving him unknowingly until, inevitably, someone tells her for him, and she’ll turn to him, betrayed, and throw him out of her life and he’ll be alone all over again. 

El seems entirely unaffected. “Why?” 

“Because,” Will continues, “it’s – it’s not normal.” 

She frowns at this. “I am not normal.”

“No,” Will interjects almost immediately, “no, you’re special. You’re – you’re Eleven, and you’re my sister. You’re amazing.” 

“But I am not normal,” El tells him. “And that is okay.” She puts her hands on his shoulders, and smiles kindly at him. “You are okay.” 

She says it with so much sincerity that Will almost, for a second, believes her.

He can’t help it when a few more tears slip out. 

The sight of Mike in Will’s bed is a little startling. 

Invigorating, almost, and if Will had any less self-restraint, he’d let his mind wander off to the countless other scenarios that ended up with Mike’s hair plastered against Will’s pillow that did not include Dustin, Lucas, and El all playing a very vicious game of Monopoly on his floor. 

It had ended in less than four hours, with Dustin looking entirely too smug when he had left just a few hours ago, alongside Lucas, who had looked close to strangling the other boy, having been the first one out, and it was halfway through when Mike had caught El slipping a few extra dollars into her hand. 

With Lucas and Dustin gone home, and El joining their mother to watch some sort of television show, it was only Mike and Will, with Mike tossing a Rubic’s cube into the air and catching it before it hits him in the face. 

Will stands near the doorway. “Mom wants to know if you’ll be staying for dinner.” 

Mike startles, turning away just as the cube comes falling down onto his chin, and Will can barely hold back a laugh when Mike makes a noise of alarm. “Shit, you scared me.” 

Will offers no sympathy when he simply grins. “Smooth.” 

“Shut up,” Mike bites back with no real venom. 

Will shrugs. “So, can you?” 

Mike shakes his head, remorseful. “Nah, I’ve got to go home soon. Mom wants me back to help clean out the basement, in case we have any spare supplies left to donate.” 

Will nods, and trails off to let her know. 

When he returns, Mike is still on his bed, and Will pauses at the doorway once more, suddenly feeling a little nervous. Mike takes up nearly the entire bed, long legs stretched out over the covers, colored warm from the overhead light, and eyes still focused on the cube he keeps throwing to catch. 

He’s always been effortlessly attractive. Maybe that is why Will had been doomed from the beginning, when he had voluntarily placed himself close to someone so easily perfect. Will is drawn to him like a moth to a light. 

Mike notices him after the third catch, looking up to see Will hovering near the entryway. His lips tilt into a smile, and waves him over. “Come here.” 

Will walks over in four strides, weirdly nervous, and he forces his hands to stay still at his sides. His thigh bumps against the edge of the bed, and he shuffles back. “Um.” 

Mike lifts a hand to curl around Will’s wrist, pulling him close with a soft oof from Will, who nearly lands on Mike’s leg as he sits on the bed. Mike pulls his legs close against the wall, and his hand lets go of his wrist. 

His fingertips drag against Will’s skin, before slotting their fingers together. His hands are warm. Will’s are warmer, like usual. From nerves, probably. Will is trying very hard not to think about it too much. 

It’s moments like these when Will, almost, for a second, lets himself hope. 

He knows better than to hope, and yet, Mike makes him hopeful, anyway. 

Will looks up from their hands to find Mike staring at him, mouth set slightly upturned, eyes on Will’s face. Will hopes to whoever is out there that he isn’t blushing. 

He’d be stupid to swear he sees Mike’s gaze drop, if only for a moment, from his eyes, to somewhere lower. Mike bites at his lower lip, a habit over the years. 

Will has always been a fool, after all. 

“Mike,” he dares say, and it comes out a whisper. 

Mike looks up to meet his eyes. Will hates hoping. “Yeah?” 

He opens his mouth to say something, anything, yet his mouth feels as dry as a California summer. He’s thinking too much about this, he knows. He’d jerk his hand out of Mike’s if the other boy hadn’t tightened his hold on it. 

He doesn’t know what to think of this. Will wishes he would stop thinking so much. God, it’d help to have a silent mind sometimes. He absently wonders what Mike is thinking, still staring at him with so much intensity. 

“Will,” Mike starts, and the stare he has on him is almost unbearable, “I’ve been –” 

“Mike, honey?” 

His mother’s voice calls out for him, and they both jump, startled out of the strange trance they’d been put in, and Mike rushes to sit up straight as Will’s mother approaches the doorway. 

“Your mom’s on the phone, she wants to talk to you,” she explains, spatula in one hand, a yellow phone in the other, the chord tugged so far, it’s straightened out of its curliness. 

“Oh,” Mike says, and hurries to get out of bed. 

Will stays sitting where he is, dumbfounded. He wonders if he’s lost his mind. He pinches himself, and finds himself to be very, very awake. He then gets up and opens the window, just to have something to do. 

It’s a moment later that he walks Mike out to the door, both of them stepping onto the front porch. The porch light is bright, and a few moths bump against the bulb. Crickets chirp nearby, and they’re still looking at each other. Will is beginning to think Mike has a staring problem. 

He wonders if he’s standing too close, but then again, Mike has had absolutely no problem with shoving any possible space between them out of the way, throwing his arms around Will and nudging their shoulders together, thighs pressed against each other all night. 

If Will’s thoughts didn’t go into a pink-hued frenzy every time they made any sort of contact, he would be overthinking much more than he already was. He can only find himself to be grateful that Mike hasn’t said anything too unordinary. 

It’s silent, again. A different silent. Will doesn’t know what to do with it. 

“Um,” he begins smartly, “goodnight. Get home safe.” 

Mike nods dutifully, but makes no move to walk away, and they both stand under the porch light as Will waits for something that he doesn’t know. 

The crickets keep chirping. 

“Well,” Will continues, and Mike pulls him into a tight hug. “Oh.”

The word is muffled into Mike’s shoulder, cloth against Will’s mouth as he’s hugged, and it only takes him a second to raise his arms and return it, enveloping Mike around the middle, and it’s always like each hug will be the last with them. 

The crickets keep chirping, and Will brings Mike closer. 

He’s warm, in the cool night. Mike is always warm, something Will has grown to appreciate over the years, for several different reasons. 

Mike is a little like the sun. Warm. Constant. Bright. 

It’s a moment later that they break away, but only at Mike’s move, and Will does not get to take a step back when Mike’s hand finds itself on his forearm, keeping him close. 

“Will,” Mike says, and it always sounds so soft in his mouth, “you know you’ll always be my best friend, right?” 

Will doesn’t know what to quite make of such a thing, one uttered like a last minute confession, but then again, Mike has always been one for the theatrics. 

Will smiles, and hopes his pinkening face isn’t too apparent in the night. “You’ll always be my best friend, too, Mike.” 

The other boy seems to nod to himself, letting go of Will’s arm as he steps away. “Okay. Good.” The air is thick with something Will can’t put a name to, and Mike hurries down the porch steps. 

The crickets keep chirping, and Will watches Mike bike away. 

Will has only worked with oil pastels a few times. 

They’re messy on his hands, a blur of brown, gray, green fingers, smearing whatever they touch, and it’s not a sensation he’s fond of, not as controllable as paint, not as precise as graphite, much messier than charcoal, but it’s a Friday, and everyone else is busy and he has the cabin to himself for the first time. 

And so he had pulled out the packet of cheap oil pastels he had gotten his hands on, from a store that had announced fifty-percent off on everything, for the fact that they were closing down, unrolled a large poster page he’d found while they were cleaning out the cabin, and gets to work. 

Will is thankful his mother had found the time to take a trip back to California and grab their things, with his backpack full of art supplies sitting against the leg of his bed, a few markers on the floor, scattered in a haste to get out the pastels as quickly as possible. It makes things more breathable. A leeway. An escape. 

He doesn’t particularly think when he gets to work; his mind is always a terrible mess of thoughts, spiraling over themselves and twisting and turning and it's not something even he knows how to navigate, but he picks up a brown oil pastel, and it's as though everything else is quieted.

Will isn’t completely sure what he’s drawing, at first, and the page before him slowly comes to shape to be a faint memory of a bunch of trees, crowding over each other, knots of different shades of green, and it’s only after he’s finished fixing the arch of an oak tree that he realizes it’s a patch of the woods from behind the old Byers’ home. 

It’s a bittersweet image, and he lets himself get lost in it as he scribbles tangles of emerald green onto the page. The brown smears under the movement, and he can’t find it in him to be a perfectionist about it. Art forces him to lose his own precision, from time to time. 

He uses his thumb to drag down a streak of green across the large page, and there is a knock on the door. 

Will moves to open the door, but a second glance to his green-pigmented hands has him hesitating, and he instead says, “Come in.” 

The door swings open, and Mike Wheeler slides into view. 

“Hey,” he greets, warm, and Will tries his best to force away the jelly-like feel in his legs. 

“Hey,” he echoes, and offers a smile. “What’s up?” 

Mike looks, just barely, a little nervous. His eyes move from Will to the floor to the wall to the canvas to Will’s hands to Will’s arms and chest and face and somewhere else on his face and the canvas again. 

“I, uh,” he tells the floor, twisting his mouth, before looking up to Will again. “Can we – can we talk, real quick?” 

“Sure,” Will agrees almost immediately. “Is something wrong?” 

There’s a million ideas running through his head about whatever could’ve gone wrong, and he’s already gone through half of them when Mike quickly shakes his head. “No! No, no, nothing like that, I promise. It’s not – nothing is wrong.” 

“Okay,” Will slowly accepts.

He’s still a little reluctant to believe it as he watches Mike take a seat on his bed, sheets creasing under his weight. Will takes a seat next to him, pastel-stained hands carefully folded in his lap, and Mike pats his thighs like he does when he’s nervous and there’s too much energy in him to sit still. 

He’s coiled in, a spring ready to jump, and yet he holds himself squeezed tightly together, hunched shoulders and legs close together and he doesn’t let himself slouch. He chews on his lower lip. Will wants to tug it out from under his teeth. 

Mike can’t seem to stop looking around, letting his gaze settle on something for a few seconds, before bouncing to something else. He doesn’t look at Will. 

“So,” Will prompts, when Mike doesn’t say anything, “what is it?” 

“Right, sorry,” Mike mutters, eyebrows furrowed, and he stares at the floor, Adam’s apple bobbing, and Will looks away. “It’s just hard to say, I guess. It’s something that I’ve been thinking about, and I’m just – sorry, give me a second.” He sucks in a breath through his mouth, frame tight around the edges. 

Will’s eyebrows pinch together. If he weren’t so aware of his messiness, he’d almost place a hand on Mike’s shoulder, just to offer some level of physical comfort. “Are – are you okay?” 

Mike nods, quick. “I’m fine.” He does not sound fine. “I’m fine. Just nervous.” 

Will frowns. “Mike, if it’s making you this stressed out, I’m sure whatever it is can wait until you’re –” 

“It can’t wait,” Mike interrupts. “I can’t, Will, it’s driving me crazy, I feel like if I keep going on like this, I’m going to explode, or – or do something I regret.” His hands curl into fists, before uncurling, grasping at his jeans, and Will can’t help the concern that spikes up further at the motion. 

They sit in silence for another moment. Mike seems to be getting progressively worse. 

“Hey,” Will finally breaks, not thinking twice about it when he reaches over to place a careful stained hand over Mike’s, just light enough not to smudge, “whatever it is, it can’t be that bad, alright?” Mike stares at their hands, and Will almost wonders if that was a bad move. “I’m here for you.” 

Mike bites his lip, and it blooms fresh red. It’s strawberries, spring flowers, acrylic paint, Mike’s stares. Will doesn’t think about pressing it away with his own thumb. He doesn’t. 

“A team, right?” Will tries, encouragement painted over his words. “Whatever it is, we’ll get through it together. You know you’ll always be my best –” 

Mike surges forward, and the word friend gets stuck between their lips. 

It takes a second for it to click together. 

Mike is kissing him. 

Mike is kissing him. 

Mike is kissing him, and Will’s breath catches halfway through his chest, lungs tight, and their lips are pressing together and his hand is hovering weirdly between them, and Mike is kissing him, and Will has never kissed someone before, he’s not sure what he’s meant to be doing, Mike knows better than he does, surely, and he vaguely wonders the difference between kissing a boy and a girl, and Mike is kissing him, and Will doesn’t remember closing his eyes, but he’s opening them anyway, and suddenly Mike is no longer kissing him. 

Will’s mouth falls open, yet nothing comes out. 

“Shit,” Mike says almost immediately, “shit, shit, shit. Sorry. I’m so sorry. Jesus, Will, I don’t know why I ever – I’m so sorry,” He’s fully pink in the face, now, a hand in his hair as he looks at Will. He’s leaned away, frantic and panicked. “God, Will. I’m so sorry, I don’t know why I ever thought you’d – I didn’t mean to, I had a whole speech planned and shit, and I –” 

“It’s okay,” Will says, voice faint. He’s trying to be reassuring, and he’s got an entire confession in his head that he’s never even toyed with the idea of ever admitting, but he’s got it somewhere and he should really calm Mike down, but it feels someone just replaced his brain with an empty soda can. 

“It’s not,” Mike insists, “it’s not, I just – I didn’t even ask! You – God, you probably don’t even see me like that, which, obviously, you don’t, I don’t know why I even hoped to – God. God, I should go.” 

The words barely register before Will wraps a hand around Mike’s wrist. 

“Don’t leave,” Will rushes to force out, “please.” 

Mike mercifully stays in his spot, and he’s blinking a lot, Will notices, shiny and wide open. He’s no calmer than he’d been a few seconds ago, looking close to jumping out of his skin, and he keeps looking at Will, before glancing away. 

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, like Will hasn’t heard him the first two hundred times, “I didn’t – I – I knew I’d do something stupid, I’m so sorry, Will. If – if you don’t want me around ever again, I’d – I’d get it.” His voice breaks off at the end, and Will shakes his head, because despite his slow recovery, he’d be damned before he lets Mike doubt their friendship like that. 

“Just,” Will slowly takes a deep breath. “Just give me a second.” 

“Okay,” Mike whispers. 

It’s just a lot. 

It’s a lot for Will, who has never entertained the idea of this, has never even said the words I have a crush on Mike Wheeler out loud, much less thought it without feeling the need to spontaneously combust on the spot. 

So for Mike – Mike Wheeler, his best friend of ten years, the boy he’s been chasing after for almost just as long, to kiss him, Will Byers, is a little jarring. Shocking. Surprising. Startling. Other synonyms he doesn’t have the brain power to think of. 

Mike Wheeler just kissed him. Mike Wheeler kissed him. Mike Wheeler kissed him. Mike Wheeler kissed him. Mike Wheeler – 

Mike Wheeler looks just about ready to die on the spot, actually, and it is then that Will realizes he has been carefully quiet the entire time. 

“Sorry,” Will says instinctively, ignoring the way Mike’s face contorts into confusion, fear, “I just don’t understand. Is – is this a joke?” 

Mike’s eyebrows furrow. “Why would I joke about something like this?” He asks, and he sounds hurt. 

“Sorry,” Will says again, and God knows how many sorry’s they’ve said in this singular conversation. His head is spinning. “I’m confused.” 

Mike blinks. “Why – why are you confused?” 

“Why did you kiss me?” Will asks, and some sort of dam breaks. “I don’t – is this some sort of cruel joke? What did I do to – why did you kiss me?” Will shakes his head, and his vision is blurring. God, it’s always at the worst times. He feels a warm tear slip down on his cheek. 

“Hey,” Mike whispers, and he’s so terrifyingly soft, and it hurts, it makes Will ache so much worse than he did before today. There’s movement, and Will suddenly feels a hand on his cheek, fingers swiping his tears away. Will can’t help it when his eyes well up further. “Hey, no, no, it’s okay. I’m sorry, it wasn’t a joke. I didn’t mean to make you cry, Will, I’m sorry, I won’t –”

“Stop,” Will chokes out, and he feels Mike freeze. “Stop saying sorry.” 

“Okay,” Mike breathes out, “okay. Sorry – I mean. Wait.” 

Will lets out a strangled, wet laugh, and Mike relaxes, knees pressed together and hands still on Will’s face. His hands are warm. He’s warm. Will’s heart threatens to beat out of his chest. 

“Mike –” 

“I’m in love with you,” Mike blurts. 

There is a very loud silence. 

Will is pretty sure his heart’s stopped. His throat feels very, very dry. 

“What?” He rasps out. 

“Sorry,” Mike says almost immediately after, and he moves away. “I didn’t – I can’t help it, I’m sorry. I thought I could, but I just – that day at the quarry, all I could think about was kissing you, which is – wrong, I know, but I can’t help it, Will, and I tried, I really, really tried, and I think I’ve been trying for a long time, now, and I think that’s why I’m so scared of losing you, you know? I think I’ve felt like this for a long time, and now that I’ve got a – a taste of what I could have with you, it’s just gotten worse, and now I – I couldn’t help it, Will, I really couldn’t.” 

Will can’t really tell if he’s dreaming or not. “Mike, it’s okay,” he begins, and Mike shakes his head, laughing humorlessly. 

“Even when I – I keep ruining our friendship, you’re still telling me it’s okay,” he grins, but his eyes are teary. “I don’t deserve it. I’m sorry, it’s just – you’re so easy to love, you know that?” 

“Oh,” Will whispers. 

Mike looks nothing short of terrified, a mess, shiny eyes and his hands clutch at his jeans. He’s beautiful. Will thinks he’d let Mike break his heart a thousand times over. 

He moves slowly, leaning close like the millions of times he’s thought about it, and he doesn’t move too quickly, lest this mirage break and he wakes up. Will, very carefully, places his hand over Mike’s. 

“I can’t help it, either,” Will says softly. 

Mike’s eyes widen, impossibly large, and he looks so much more hopeful than Will has ever let himself be, braver than Will has ever been capable of being. Will would be a monster to let this slip through his fingers. 

“Don’t,” he says hoarsely, shaky under Will’s palm. “Don’t say that if you don’t love – if you don’t mean it like I do.” Mike shakes his head. “Don’t do that to me.” 

“Mike,” Will tries, and raises a hand to his cheek. “Mike, I’ve never been able to help it. It’s always been you.” 

“Don’t lie to me,” Mike forces out, voice gone. “Please, Will.” 

It makes his heart hurt, ribcages curling in, and it’s ridiculous, really, the fact that Mike, of all people, doesn’t believe Will, when Will has spent more than half his life chasing after a dream that would never let him catch up. It makes him want to do something rash. Something impulsive. Something crazy. Something earth-shattering. 

Will, despite it all, is a fool. 

He leans in. 

The world falls away around them when they meet in the middle. 

(The middle: a shaky hand on Mike’s cheek, a wisp of breath, the smell of shampoo, Mike’s hand on his neck, the drag of fingertips, pressing closer, closer, so much closer, greediness, unsteadiness, Mike falling out underneath him, and God, Will is so greedy.) 

“Sorry,” Will apologizes when Mike’s back meets the mattress, and Will’s almost climbed on top of him, but both of their legs still off the bed in a seating position, and Will had lost some bit of dignity when their lips had met, losing some more control when Mike had let himself be pushed back, further, cheeks pink and eyes wide. 

There’s streaks of emerald green smeared onto Mike’s jaw, nearing the top of his neck, sliding close to his ears and on his cheeks and Will’s forgotten all about his art when he has a masterpiece right under him, long, lanky limbs on and off the bed, and it’s near dizzying, the sight. 

Will wants so much. Too much. He’s greedy like that.

Will leans away, shame settling in, and glances at his hands, no longer as stained, as if he’d shared half his crime onto the boy next to him. He wipes away at his pants. 

He’d let himself forget, for a second, who they were, how Mike, really, wasn’t like him – hadn’t fantasized about it, hadn’t lost sleep over it, avoided mirrors and eye contact and hadn’t hoped like a loveless fool at the prospect of – 

“Holy shit,” Mike says, breathless, and tugs him back into another kiss. 

It’d almost be feverish if it wasn’t Will’s first kiss; he’s clumsy with it, he’s sure, knocking teeth and poking and prodding at the seam of lips like he knows what he’s doing when this is the first time someone’s mouth has been on his, and there’s electric currents coursing through his body, and it feels like Mike’s hands are everywhere, anywhere.

He should feel guilty, sick, but in the moment, Will feels on top of the world. Maybe this was unnatural, but Mike’s lips on his feels something divine. 

He raises a knee to sit properly above Mike, slotting it in the slim space on the bed between Mike’s parted legs, and he pushes Mike deeper into the mattress. 

Mike holds on tight to Will, and it helps to ground him, yet it makes him lightheaded all the same, a strange paradox, but Will is an expert in chaos, so he takes it in stride and there’s a vague taste of blood from Mike’s nervous lip-biting and Will wonders if it hurts when he keeps pushing close, nearly towering over Mike on the bed, and Will lets himself be greedy when he licks into Mike’s mouth. 

He shakes at the feel of it, the suddenness, Mike’s own, knowledgeable mouth going pliant against Will’s inexperience, and Will had always envisioned his first kiss being gentle, weary, a little shy, but he has never been able to control how these things go. He’s always been too greedy, too much to be gentle.

It’s evident, as well, his mind hazy and a silhouette of control when he takes, keeps taking, and it’s ineffable, the way Mike only presses back, smooth, yet his trembling fingers give him away, where his hand cradles the space between Will’s neck and shoulder, fist coiled into Will’s shirt, pulling him close by the chest, just a space away from his heart. Will, a blind explorer, has almost entirely been going off educational guesses, and hopes to high heaven that he’s doing something right when he experimentally sucks at his tongue. 

Mike makes some sort of gutted groaning noise, one that has Will feeling pink from every inch of his body, and he blooms under Will’s hands. 

All restraint falls away, and Will quickly pulls back. 

Mike looks nothing short of rocked, eyes glazed over and lips red, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows around something. His chest heaves as he breathes in, and he’s got fingerprints and thin marks of green pigment on his pale skin, looking better than anything Will has ever been able to create. 

Will feels the inexplicable urge to apologize. 

“Mike,” he begins, voice much deeper than he had intended it to be, and Mike’s brown eyes, dark like they always are, settle onto him. Not for the first time, Will feels all too overwhelmed, almost self-conscious, and he wonders what he looks like. Not the best, assumedly. 

“If you say sorry,” Mike says, turning his head away from the ceiling and to Will, his expression knowing, “I’ll – I’ll – well, I don’t know what I’ll do, but it won’t be good.” 

Will huffs out a laugh despite himself, slowly leaning away from where he’d been close, arms close to giving up with how he’d been using them to loom over Mike. He barely moves away before Mike gently grabs Will by the elbow and pulls him to his chest. 

Will lands against Mike, arm under him and cheek against his chest, with a faint oof, and Will can’t apologize for it, even if it had been Mike to draw him on top of him, when Mike wraps an arm around his shoulder and keeps him close. 

“Just to be clear,” Will starts, where, even in the most obvious situations, he finds himself still skeptical, “this isn’t some – some terrible prank, right?” 

“No,” and he’d expected Mike to sound exasperated, but he sounds more fond than anything, gentle in the way he’s always been and Will has never deserved, “of course not. You mean too much to me for me to ever do something like that.” 

Will’s stomach feels a little like a butterfly garden. “Okay,” he replies, meek. 

He can hear the muffled thump-thump-thump of Mike’s heart, echoing through his chest, steady, quickening as he mentions, “You know you mean a lot to me, right?” Will’s own body feels close to imploding, and he doesn’t think he could survive if he woke up from this dream. He nods, but Mike carries on anyway. “I don’t – I don’t think I could handle losing you again.”

“You won’t,” Will says, certain, because he is. He’d survived a variation of Hell to come back to Mike. He’s sure he could do it again. He’d fight fate blindfolded to ensure it, no matter if he’d lose. 

Will has always been a fool for Mike Wheeler, anyway. 

Notes:

bhavna has made absolutely absolutely gorgeous art of this !!!! pls check it out and let them know how wonderful it is :) !!!

me when i make will's stained hands a metaphor for his queerness/crush on mike
im a big fan of the idea of mike being blue and will being yellow and them meeting in the middle to make green
this story kind of . got away from me i had only been writing it for over a week or so and it was only meant to be around 5k i really don't know what happened and i kind of lost it near the end i fear ,, not to mention its nearing 5 am when ive finished editing and i am really hoping i havent missed some terribly obvious mistake or something of the sort ,, please be kind to me
ive also . never written byler/anything stranger things related so i really hope i got the characters and all down alright :) maybe let me know how i did !!! im so nervous
as always, feel free to comment, kudos, and u can see me here or here !!
thank u so much for reading !

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of fix-its