Chapter Text
Will pulls his knees to his chest, wrapping his arms around them. There’s no visible view of anything from up here on the roof of The Squawk, but it doesn’t bother him. There’s nothing to do, nothing happening, and he is alone. With not a monster, a murderous villain, an overbearing mother, an irritatingly protective brother, any over-cautious friends, or a superpower in sight, he can finally breathe. Alone. This will do.
For the first time in over twenty-four hours, he can let himself be consumed by the silence of a sleeping Hawkins. It’s a definite curse living in a small town ninety-nine-percent of the time, but you do get the odd occasion where it’s a blessing, like at midnight, when the town is asleep and there’s not a sound for miles.
There’s a gentle chill in the air, nibbling at his nose, but he welcomes it. Something about the coldness is settling, calm—a phenomenon he’s not had the time to feel for too long now. It’s not just last night, where he found and lost himself all at once, but that he hasn’t felt a moment of peace since the start: the day of the demogorgon; the day everything changed; the day Will ‘the Wise’ Byers became nothing but ‘Zombie Boy.’
Taking the usual route, his mind wanders, wondering how different things could have been. How maybe, if he’d left a few minutes earlier, he may not have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or if he had just cycled a little faster, maybe he would never have crossed paths with the one thing that would ruin his childhood, his life. Or how years of this could have all been prevented if he just didn’t make it past that first nigh-
A sudden brush to the top of his arm startles him. He doesn’t move an inch, besides his eyes snapping open and wide.
He’d be shaking, uncontrollable tremors, if he wasn’t frozen.
The thing about being awake at this time in a town like Hawkins, is that you shouldn’t be. But something is definitely touching his arm right now, which means that he’s either a paranoid mess (possible), or he is in the grasp of someone, or something else awake. In this town, that could be anything from your mother to the grim reaper.
The sensation stops. There’s no movement coming from behind or beside him. Somehow that’s worse than the alternative, and it’s opening up a window for a million racing thoughts that charge in like a hurricane. Because perhaps, he imagined it. Or maybe, something or someone is playing with his mind. Or possibly, there’s something really behind him, and he is about to die. Or even, this could all be an unkind dream, and he’s really on the couch in the basement of The Squawk with his mother and Mike only a few feet away, safe.
Regardless, he’s going to have to look. Some sort of horror swallows him: dread, terror, or predetermined regret, maybe?
It takes him a moment to bite back the ache of emotions that he could quite literally choke on, before he can move. This is likely the dumbest decision he could make, and he’s awfully aware of it. It doesn’t stop him, though. With a deep breath, he turns.
He turns and it surprises him when he starts to make out the shape of something familiar, something he’d recognise even without much light.
“Shit, Mike.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“It’s okay,” he exhales, relieved. “Why are you awake?”
“Just am,” Mike says followed by a light sigh. “Then, I thought I’d check on you and realised you were gone. I knew I’d find you up here.”
“You were right.”
He watches as Mike moves beside him, dropping down to his level. He crosses his legs underneath him, as he always has done since they were kids, and turns to face Will.
“Are you okay?”
There it is. The voice. The soft - delicate even - voice that’s reserved for Will, and Will only. The voice that Will has taken apart by tone, volume level, and tempo in his mind, a million times over the years. The voice that soothes him like music. The voice that makes him fall in love with his best friend that little bit more every single time it calls out to him. The heavenly voice of doom.
“Will?”
“Sorry, yeah. I just needed to get out of that room. Twenty-four hours of my mom asking to talk about everything is beyond suffocating.”
About everything. His own words eat him alive.
Everything.
Everything, meaning the moment he became the one thing he fears the most. Everything, meaning the moment he took control of the hive mind. Everything, meaning the moment he lost and gained too much control all at once. Everything, meaning the moment he realised he didn’t know his own strength. Everything that scared the shit out of him. Everything that he did not want to talk or think about.
“Yeah, I’ve noticed that she’s persistent.”
“That’s an understatement.” Only persistent? He’d laugh, if he didn’t find it so un-funny. “Honestly, I’d rather spend a night in the Upside Down than talk about it.”
“Okay, then we won’t talk about it.”
He can’t help but look, just look, at this boy. The one full of patience, and charisma, and charm, who checks on him and knows exactly where to find him when he’s not asleep on the couch he’s been glued to all day, and says all of the right things to make the day suck that little bit less, and who doesn’t pressure him to talk like everyone else, and whose presence is like valium. He looks at this boy and wonders how the hell he got lucky enough to know someone like him, but unlucky enough that Mike will never truly know just how much it means to him.
“Oh, I-” breaks Will out of his trance, the one where he loses all focus, lost in gratitude. “I can go if you want to be alone.”
“No!” It comes out in an almost yell, an unintentional volume. He takes a second to collect himself.
“Please stay.”
“Okay.”
Almost in sync, the pair look out to the landscape in front of them. Nothing in particular is visible in the darkness, but Will’s grateful to avert his eyes whilst he processes the idea that he is no longer alone because his best friend, the guy he has been in love with since the age of thirteen, has come to check on him. He could quite literally implode.
It’s the simple things that Mike does that drive Will crazy—checking on him; encouraging him and inspiring him by reminding him of his strength; holding his hand when he’s scared; making him smile when he needs a pick-me-up; sitting silently with him, alone together. Sometimes, he swears Mike is the most oblivious, selfless person around. He takes care of Will, without even realising it.
But then again, he doesn’t realise a lot of things, apparently.
Like how this unrequited crush is eating Will alive.
Abruptly, Mike shifts.
“What are you doing?” Will asks, as the sudden moment makes him jump.
Flat on his back, the curly-haired boy now lies on the concrete flooring of the rooftop, his eyes focused straight above him. A surge of both utter confusion and amusement rushes through Will, and all he can do is chuckle. “Mike, what?”
“Come, look.”
The first thing he notices as he hits the cold surface, is the faint (no thanks to the exposure of the great outdoors), but nonetheless, familiar scent of his best friend. With a shallow breath, fruity shampoo, worn-down cologne and Mike replaces the oxygen in the once-fresh air. It’s only then that he realises just how close the two of them are, their shoulders bumping, elbows bumping, knuckles bumping. It sends an electric chill down his spine, which seems to have punctured his lungs because there is no way he’s breathing in any sort of rhythm right now. Nevertheless, it exhilarates him, like he’s only now truly alive. Who needs lousy oxygen?
“See?” Mike’s voice is soft, attentive, hypnotic—Will’s eyes flick upwards, complying instantly.
He stares curiously at the sky above him, thinking to himself of just how massive it is, how it goes on for miles. It also reminds him of how microscopic he is compared to it.
“Mike, what exactly am I supposed to be seeing?”
“The sky.”
Will wonders if maybe he’s thinking it too, about how little everything feels compared to the sky; how irrelevant it all is against it—a voice, a scent, a boy. How unnoticeable it all is. How stupid it all is, especially when there are bigger things to focus on.
Instantly, he feels it in his gut: shame, guilt, doom. There are bigger, more important things in this world, Will, his mind makes note repeatedly. That’s what he’s telling you.
Backwards: the only direction Will Byers knows. Twenty-four hours ago, he’d convinced himself to accept his feelings, himself. He’d convinced himself and consequently saved the lives of three people he loves, with a new strength, a new power he never knew he had. If you asked him last night, he would have said it was the biggest accomplishment of his life, and the thing he is most grateful for. Yet, right now, shame suffocates him—not for saving his mom, and Mike and Lucas of course, he wouldn’t dream of it—but for believing he was okay with it all: the feelings, his whole self. How could he be so stupid?
The sky. There are bigger, more important things in this world. That’s what he’s telling you.
A little roughly, Will pulls at the sleeves of his sweater, hiding his hands.
“The sky?”
“Yeah, the sky,” the voice next to him responds. “Everything’s been such a mess lately, these past few years even, and I guess I’ve just realised that this is the first moment out of all of that time, where I’ve gotten a moment to sit and appreciate something. We haven’t really had anything left to admire, but look.”
It takes him by surprise, like he’s been stunned. That was not what he expected Mike to say, not at all. As always, he had jumped to a conclusion with no relevance whatsoever, shot himself down from the top for no apparent reason, all because of something as simple as the sky. And somehow he’s gone from feeling stupid, to even stupider.
His mind (like every day since all of this bullshit started) is all over the place, and god, he wishes it would just settle.
The other boy speaks again, filling Will’s silent contribution to the discussion. “Stars.”
“Stars?” Will mirrors, pulling himself out of his head, back into the now.
“And the moon, can’t forget the moon.”
Now he sees it. Every speck of the galaxy’s diamonds twinkle around them and the moon. They may as well be up in space considering how clear, ethereal, the view before their eyes is. Moonlight shimmers down, making the two of them glow, as though the sky is admiring them in the same way they’re admiring its beauty. It almost doesn’t look real, like this is just something the two of them were joint-visualising, because how could something be both magical and real, all at once?
Captivated, Will recites his friend’s words again, too spellbound to concoct anything of his own. “And the moon.”
“If only the sky was always this clear, maybe it would cancel out some of the bad shit.”
“How so?”
Mike’s eyebrows furrow, like he’s puzzling together an answer. From where they’re positioned, parallel, and due to the rationed lighting, Will can only make out parts of his expression, but he watches nonetheless as his eyes squint slightly, his lips pout to the side (as Mike bites the inside of his cheek, he can only assume), and breathes short and quick one time through his nose. It’s a face of pure concentration, and he’s mesmerised by it. He’s drawn to how each freckle stays in place, but connect as his face screws up; he’s fascinated by the way his eyelashes interlock as they flutter together; and he is completely obsessed with the shadows dancing around his cheeks, that make him wish they were shadows of rosy blush. Analysing every inch of him, he takes a mental photograph—perhaps he could paint this from memory alone.
His phantom paintbrush slips from inside his mind as Mike’s eyes widen once more, and his head turns to connect their eyes.
“Like, at least we’d have something beautiful to look forward to every night,” he starts, not breaking eye contact. “It would give us some time to focus on something other than the end of the world, you know?”
We.
Us.
The idea alone flourishes into pure desire, a need. Him, Mike, alone under the stars every single night? Yeah, he would die for it.
Will smiles, a grin with an idea hidden behind it. Maybe they can’t have this every night, but there is one way to make a moment last.
“Maybe I’ll paint it for you—it’ll last forever that way.”
Mike lights up in an instant. His eyes glisten in a way that makes them look like onyx jewels, and he can not look away from them. The sight makes Will flutter internally, like flickering stars. It warms him.
But the flutters become a full on pulsation as he feels his best friend’s hand reach for his own.
“Would you? Would you?!”
His heart is beating its way out of his chest, yelling, ‘We could pin it to the basement ceiling and pretend it’s the real thing. We could admire it whenever we feel like it. We could have the stars, the moon.’
He’s doing it again, getting wrapped up in his homemade bubble of lust, and it’s quite literally going to kill him if he does not reel it in, but he doesn’t care. How long has it been since they’ve had a moment like this? And why hasn’t Mike’s hand moved?
“If it gives you something in life other than death and destruction, of course. Besides, if it really does cancel out the bad shit, then it can be like your secret weapon to remain sane,” he responds, lifting his thumb to lock their hands a little better. Fuck it. If this kills him, it kills him.
“Are you saying I should pull out the painting every time we see a demogorgon, because it’ll make them all just drop to the floor, cancelled out by the beauty of the stars?”
“And the moon.”
“Oh yes, the moon,” Mike says with a nostalgic chuckle. Electric sparks up his spine at the low tone of it. It ignites him.
“Sure. And if that doesn’t work, I could always embrace my inner Vecna and destroy them anyway.”
“I thought you didn’t want to talk about that?”
“Neither did I.’ He finds his words are true, as he admits it to the boy beside him. He did not want to talk about any of this with anyone, as a matter of fact, he’s been ignoring and avoiding everyone for that exact reason: to not talk about it. It’s all they ever do, talk about it. Every conversation from the last few years, with anyone from the party, Robin, or even his family, it’s always about the disasters of the Upside Down, or Vecna, or him going missing, or his sister with superpowers. And now, all everyone wants to talk about is the way his eyes became sucked into his head, his hands reached up and out, three demogorgon in three different locations dropped dead at the flick of his limbs, and the way his nose bled in victory.
He had not wanted to talk about it.
But now with Mike, he needs to.
“It was incredible, by the way.”
“I’m not sure if that’s the word I’d use, but thank you.”
Redirecting his eyes up ahead at the view, Will lets out an anxious sigh, louder than he anticipated. He lets the blinking stars and the touch of his crush’s unmoved, soft skin distract him. He thinks about the way Mike’s thumb is dancing in gentle circles up his own, and how the stars talk silently with the moon. If he focuses on them enough, maybe they’ll saturate the conflict within him with their beauty.
“Will,” the softest voice in the universe whispers. “You don’t like that you’ve unlocked your abilities?”
It’s a question, a fair one at that, but it reeks of accusation. It’s not like Mike’s wrong, but the way that it bites at him makes him shiver. It’s never been a secret that his best friend knows him better than he knows himself—he was right about Will being a sorcerer; he was right about his strength—it’s like a superpower of his own: Mike is the Will Whisperer. The thought makes him shiver again.
The feeling isn’t an uncomfortable one, but a powerful one, and he doesn’t know where it sits. Is he completely transparent? Is his friend just extremely observant?
“I don’t know. It’s complicated.”
Nothing verbal is provided by the boy with the curly hair, but his expression is loud—vulnerable and patient and careful. ‘Talk to me.’
Cycling between the boy next to him and the sky above, Will doesn’t know where to set his eyes. Already sick of trying to explain, despite not having started, he exhales roughly, which enticises a little stabbing feeling in his chest.
Unlocking the door to the whirlwind of his mind is going to be draining, to say the least, and he doesn’t know if he has it in him. But Mike makes him feel like he wants to try. Besides, he knows he’s safely wrapped in the hand of that boy; nothing can hurt him when he’s around, not even himself. Mike knows that his mind exhausts him, and that’s why he gives him all of the time in the world to finally talk to him about last night. Maybe that’s why it’s so easy to push aside his feelings and open up to him, excusing how scary it may be. Mike’s his best friend: fact. He is also Mike’s. They have that bond, whatever it may mean. He can talk to him, and he will always listen. He knows that like he knows how to walk, or speak, or breathe.
“It’s… interesting… to know that there’s a part of myself capable of protecting the people I love, or whatever.”
“Saving our asses, or whatever,” the dark eyed boy mocks, rolling those eyes of his. He grins. It makes Will laugh, a real laugh, for the first time since, well, he can’t remember.
Fingers tap the hand Mike clutches in his, encouraging him to continue. He does.
“I’m ashamed to be like him.”
“What?”
Aware his best friend is now facing him, he feels his eyes running up and down, all over him. He cannot look his way, and remains fixed on the stars above him.
“Will, you’re nothing like him.”
“I literally channeled my inner Vecna connection to do that, but okay, Mike.”
Saltiness drips into the corner of his mouth, the bitterness catching him by surprise—he hadn’t even realised he was crying.
Shooting himself upwards, he sits where he had formerly been lying, and wipes his face with his spare sleeve.
“Will, hey.”
His whole body melts at the sound of his name spoken so sweetly, something he doesn’t deserve. It makes the tears fall again.
“You’re nothing like him. Come back down here, let me show you.”
He wipes his face once more before letting himself be pulled back to Mike. They’re closer this time, his head basically resting just below the chest of the taller boy, whose arm is now around Will’s shoulder, their interlocked hands resting on Will’s own stomach. The touch is reassuring, safe. He tries not to think about the rhetorical implications.
“What you did not only saved our asses, or whatever, but you found a part of yourself that you had hidden away for so long.” He speaks slowly, enunciating every letter. “You became that version of yourself so gracefully, like you’d known how to all along, like it was natural. There was no hesitation, just strength. It was so… beautiful to witness.”
Letting Mike’s words fall around them like stardust, the two remain zoomed in on the picturesque sky. Something clicks in him— this feels like one of those rare, magical things that they have left, this moment feels like something to be appreciated. The stars are a secret weapon.
“What I’m saying is that, if anything, you’re like the stars—you cancel out the bullshit. You’re not like him. You’re like the stars.”
Will’s mind wanders, thinking about Mike's concept of the stars and the moon being something to admire, something beautiful in a world of horror. He thinks back to the pair of them, tangled up in a blanket of safety, and care, and love, whatever kind that may be. He thinks of this night, this moment. Looking between the moon, and then the stars surrounding it, and back at the moon again, he lets go of everything he’s felt tonight. All he wants to feel is the heartbeat by his ear, and the arm around him. That is enough.
“So… would that make you the moon?”
“If it makes you believe what I’m saying.”
Like a painting of their own, they remain still. It’s them, the stars, and the moon.
“I am seriously desperate for this painting, now that you’ve teased the idea.”
“I’m seriously desperate to paint it.”
Glittery skies, magic and warmth—these are the three things that are making Will fall more and more in love with this boy and this night. He’s okay with it.