Chapter Text
1.
When Will Byers went missing, Mike Wheeler felt real fear for the first time. That vague memory from his early childhood, of first learning how to steer a bike and not fall, that fear of hitting the ground. The imaginary monster that hid in the shadows, under his bed. None of that compared to the real, skin crawling feeling of being consumed by fear. The fear of loss, that ugly thing that hurts like a missing limb.
The idea that Will (Will, for God’s sake!) could be gone for good paralyzed him. Will wouldn’t be here for when they graduate middle school, for their presentations, for any of their groups campaigns. Will Byers, who was not the boy people passed by in the hallways, with all that shyness and quirked stride. He was Will to Mike, his close, personal friend, who probably knew him more than himself. His first ever friend. Mike felt seriously ill at the thought of not seeing him ever again.
That’s why he couldn’t deal with people’s lack of urgency. The monotone of his father, speaking of his friend like he was some unfortunate tragedy he saw on TV, and not the person who has shared meals sitting by their dinner table. The chief police, with that cigarette hanging irritatingly from his lips as he spoke. We’re doing all that’s possible. And Mike knew, he just knew that was bullshit. Cause he could be helping right now. He could be doing more, he could be out in the forest, screaming his name until his throat burned.
Mike was not stupid. He knew their group wasn’t exactly popular at school. He knew of the hatred some stupid boys had for him and his party. But it was worse for Will. So much worse. He knew the possibility of one of those bloodthirsty people he heard about in the news hunting down the ostracized youngest from the town’s omega family. It made his blood boil just to think about, but he knew it could be true.
That’s why when they found the scared, wet child in the woods, who spoke of demogorgons and evil scientists, Mike didn’t doubt. Not when Lucas kept calling them out for how crazy they were being, trusting that girl, or how they could be signing up for real, undeniable danger for this. But then again, what was all that compared to the terror of not having Will?
One night, after arguing with Lucas and Dustin and screwing everything up, Mike lay alone on his bed. His breath laboriously left his lungs. He felt so small in the quiet room. He thought of something that happened a while ago. Will’s dad (that alpha douche, Dustin says) had a bad fight with Will’s mom. Will’s older brother, Jonathan, had turned out to be an omega, which didn’t exactly please their father. He found it unbearable to think the omega he married could give him an omega child —an omega son, of all things— and decided to punish the whole family for it.
He was meaner than every bully Mike knew in school. He ripped Will’s shirts when he tossed him from side to side, slapping his face. He screamed things at Will that Mike wouldn’t dare to even think of. That day their mom had been the target. He didn’t know exactly what happened, just that Jonathan got in the way of his mother’s anger and his father’s fist. He ended up with a black eye that lasted weeks to fade. It had been the last straw. Mrs. Byers filed for divorce not much after.
That night Will came to his house. He had not announced it beforehand, or had his mom talk to his. He just showed up with a backpack hanging from his shoulders and eyes trembling with tears.
Mike saw his mother’s sad eyes as she talked with Will’s mom over the phone, the annoyed stare of his father. He tuned everything out.
He just hugged Will with all the strength he had in his tiny arms. When his mom made them shower, he saw the few purple and yellowish bruises on Will’s back that he so tried to hide. He watched as he dressed in those old hand-me-downs with faded colors and stitched patches that could be older than they both.
He didn’t know what feeling took over him that day. Maybe it was the same thing he felt now. The same desperation, the impotence that washed over him, as he faced something he could not fix. Of watching it being broken apart while he stayed there, useless. He couldn’t bear it.
Mike took Will by the wrist, dragging him to his messy room. He opened a few drawers, scavenging through the mess of clothes and knickknacks he hid there. He handed a pair of clean pajamas to Will.
“Here, wear these”
Will stared at him. “Why?”
“It’s better if you wear something fresh”
Will grabbed the hem of his shirt. “My mom just washed it”
Mike sighed. “Just wear them, okay? It’s better if you do”
“Why?”
“Because I said so”
Will sighed and headed to the bathroom. Good. Mike continued to dig through his drawer. When Will came back, there was a pile of semi folded clothes on Mike’s bed. “What’s all this?” Will asked.
Mike didn’t know why he felt so relaxed at the sight of Will wearing his pajamas. “These are for you. You can keep them”
Will seemed surprised. “Mike, I can’t take these, they’re yours”
“They’re too small for me now, but you could use them” he grinned. “It looks good on you”
Will grabbed a jacket from the pile. “Are you sure you don’t need them anymore?” Mike’s mom had bought that for him two weeks ago.
“A hundred percent”
Then Will thanked him, flashed one of his shy smiles and Mike felt immediate relief. Relief, yes, that’s the word to describe it. Relief, as Will dozed off in the sleeping bag next to his bed, the troubled expression from before gone from his face.
Relief, as the police pulled out his body from the quarry and it turned out it wasn’t actually him. Relief, as he felt he could be of use in rescuing his friend. Relief, as he saw him laying in the hospital bed, smiling and breathing. Alive.
2.
The uneasiness did not go away after everything that happened when Will got abducted by those demos. He was different.
It did not help that every kid started presenting about halfway through the year, marking a change in their behavior. It made Mike’s memories slightly cloudy, reorganizing his sense of what was normal and what was not. But deep down he knew. Will was acting strange.
Mike had turned out to be an alpha. No matter how much he'd studied the subject in painfully embarrassing classes last year, it seemed all knowledge he had about it evaporated his brain the moment it happened to him.
He didn’t get the appeal, honestly. At his age they only get things called ghost heats or ruts, which only served the purpose of making his skin tingle, leaving him dehydrated with headaches and absolutely infuriated at nothing apparent. He could sense things better now, though. The notes of his mom’s pleasant scent, the nuances of Nancy’s when she had periods of stress. It was honestly a bit overwhelming at times and it made him want to lock himself up in his room for days. But even there, he could feel the smell coming from his wrists and every other part of his body.
The day after his presentation, his mother approached him slowly, speaking to him in a soft tone. She taught him how to scent. Mike’s cheeks were in a permanent flush. It felt weird to be rubbing yourself up in another person just so you can trade scents or whatever. But he couldn’t deny that it felt good. He didn’t know what kind of sorcery there was in it that made it so addictive.
“Scent sharing should be for friends and family only,” his mother advised. “Don’t do it with strangers” as if Mike would ever do that. “Be careful with omegas. They’re sensitive”
Mike knew that. He learned, to be exact.
Will presented last in their group. He was an omega, to no one’s surprise. He disappeared for a week when he presented. When he came back, he smelled like a whole new person and his eyes were red and slightly swollen. He’d been crying. Mike’s heartbeat faltered at that sight. He didn’t know what to do.
The fact that he and Lucas were both alphas had a few positive tilts to it. The beta kids thought twice before thinking of pestering them, and mostly only did when the alpha douches backed them up. Once Mike learned to bare his canines, things got slightly better.
But those assholes liked prey. And the perfect prey, for them, was Will Byers.
When Mike presented as an alpha, his parents congratulated him. His dad’s bored face even mustered a smile for him. But when Will came back, Mike had heard the principal saying condolences to him.
He was baffled. How was that an acceptable thing to do? How could people change their minds like that, re-evaluating someone you knew just because now they had a different smell and status in their documents? That was the song the world played, and everyone seemed to be dancing along. Even Will, who now held his head down, because apparently for someone like him to talk back to an alpha was inappropriate.
But Mike didn’t care. He didn’t care who was an alpha or omega or beta or anything. They were people first. Before Will was an omega he had been his friend.
That’s why he couldn’t stand seeing this.
That mouthbreather, Troy, provoking Will while he opened his locker.
“Came back from fairyland, Zombie Boy? Gonna open your legs for the Lake Ness monster?” he snickered, poking Will’s shoulder.
Mike pushed him harshly. “Get away from him!”
Troy held his shoulder. “Are you the loser’s bodyguard now, you skunk?”
“We’re a pack, you idiot! Leave him alone”
Will grabbed his sleeve. “Mike, let it go”
“Yeah, and you better take him back to wherever he came from! No one wants a Zombie around”
Mike was about to jump on him, but Will held him back. “Let’s go, Mike, let’s go”
They left the lockers, walking to the exit.
“These guys are such idiots” he said. Will shrugged. Mike glanced at him. He seemed to close in on himself, shoulders compressed, head down. Mike stopped abruptly.
Will turned around. “What is it?”
“Hey, Will. Can I… can I do something?”
“Like what?”
“It’s something my mom talked about. It’s…” he looked around, seeing that there were a few people lingering nearby. “Let’s go somewhere else” he took Will by the wrist, guiding him to the side of the building.
“Mike, wait!”
Once he made sure they were alone, Mike turned back to him.
“What is it?” Will asked.
Mike sucked in a breath. “Can I scent you?”
Will paused. “W-What?”
“Scent you. You know what it is, right?”
Will’s cheeks flushed slightly. “Y-Yeah, I do. But why do you wanna do it?”
“It’s just something you do between friends, right? To show you’re from the same pack. If we smell alike those guys will leave you alone”
Will seemed to find that reasonable. “Yeah, that’s ok” he started pulling his sleeves up to bare his wrists, but Mike quickly pulled him into a hug. Will let out a squished sound.
Mike rubbed his cheeks on the side of Will’s head, but it still didn’t feel right. He gently pulled at the collar of his jacket. “Is this alright?” he asked.
Will hesitated for a moment. “Yeah” he whispered.
Mike tugged the collar down along with his shirt, and bent down so he could press their necks together. A shiver went through him the moment he did so, and he heard Will’s breath hitch. It was electrifying. He brought his wrist to meet the scent gland at the back of Will’s neck. Will whined, throwing his body weight on Mike.
Mike felt like his ears were buzzing, his heartbeat thumping against his chest as he smelled their scents mingling with each other. Will held Mike’s sides harder and he noticed, then, that Will was also rubbing his cheek against his neck.
When he got back home, his mother was grocery shopping with Holly and Nancy was nowhere to be found. His father eyed him from behind the newspaper.
“Come here, Michael” he said. Mike walked up to him. Father eyed him up and down. “Have you been scenting someone?”
His red cheeks would give him away if his scent wasn’t such a strong indicator. “Only my friends,” he said.
Ted hummed, shaking his head. His gaze flirted with the newspaper. “I know it must be all new to you, son, but you must be careful”
Mike scrunched his brows. “What do you mean?”
“You’re an alpha. Alphas should be leaders, strong, desirable” Mike didn’t feel like any of that. “Omegas… they can be tricky, even at such a young age” he paused. “Don’t get too close to them. They’re sly like foxes” Mike thought his dad sounded absolutely stupid at that moment. But he was used to ignoring his remarks.
“Once you’re the right age you’ll find yourself a… respectable partner” Ted sighed. “People are too subversive nowadays, you know? Trying to defy nature. Things are the way they are for a reason, and it should stay this way. Can you understand that, Michael?”
Mike gulped. “Yeah”
“Good” his father said, going back to his reading. Mike walked away, confused.
It was not for a while later that he learned that neck scenting was done mostly between mates.
3.
Mike hated being fourteen. He hated feeling like a loser, he hated his imbalanced voice, shaken by hormones (he hated those too). Mike hated his scent. He hated Hopper, who looked at him like he was an asshole he wanted to break into two like a stick. He hated teenage drama, though he admits being an active participant in it more times than he’d like to. He hated being himself.
And, most of all, he hated that Will apparently hated that too.
Mike took his father’s advice. Subconsciously, he believes, since he would never admit to following something said by him, who Mike considered such a futile man. An ignorant alpha.
Regardless, he tried to stay away from trouble. He wanted to do what seemed right, what should be the correct thing. Things had not felt right in a while.
Lucas had started courting that girl, Max, who Mike had an initial aversion to. Something about her —he doesn’t know what— gave him the ick. She was extremely rude sometimes, with those confronting eyes. He knows he was too. But Lucas seemed to love her for that.
He’d turned into a gentleman, then a soldier, a loverman. He was all those things for her. A protector, a partner, a troublemaker, a trouble solver, a friend. An alpha.
Lucas was far from subtle in his courting advances. He didn’t scare away when Max bared her teeth at his attempts of showing protectiveness or when she stepped on the daisies he picked for her, saying she did not want to hear from him again. He just… was. And something about that always had her crawling back to him.
Mike wanted it. He wanted the experience, he wanted to grow up, to leave his old stupid self behind and buried. He wanted. So when Eleven appeared back in Hawkins after all that time, and one day made a move to kiss him, he let her. That was the right thing. It was only natural of him to not say no.
It helped that Eleven had no subgender whatsoever. Technically, she had one, of course, but any visible traces of it had been medically erased and compressed. She emitted no scent, and the possibility of her presenting was very unlikely soon. It would take at least a few years for her body to go back full circle, the doctor had said.
She didn’t mind Mike’s scent, as she couldn’t feel most of it. She didn’t mind his outbursts, his weird behaviors or his uncertainty, because in a way everything was still new to her and strangeness did her no harm but sparked curiosity.
Somedays, Mike thought she was an omega. She was quiet when he spoke, held his hand tenderly and made him eat bites of her favorite Eggo pancakes. On other occasions, though, Mike thought she might’ve been an alpha. When she walked up to him with anger clouded eyes, snarled at him and demanded his deference. He could trace her behavior back to Hopper, but as an alpha himself he knew what it was. She was asserting dominance. That’s when Mike realized the spell was over, and his time of cotton candy dreams came to an end.
In the end, he couldn’t hide it well, no matter how hard he tried. Eleven had debunked the code. She saw right through what he was: an utterly pathetic mess. He didn’t even know what he was doing anymore.
It didn’t seem real until Will screamed it on his face. You’re destroying everything! God, he really was, wasn’t he? Mike was so angry all the time, so full of hatred. When did he stop caring about their campaigns just to chat about girlfriends? When did these things take over the place he cherished the most in his life? When did it all stop being sweet? That’s just the way things go.
Mike should have never screamed at him. He should’ve never placed this burden on Will, said to him the things he thinks of himself. When he felt Will’s scent sour the next few days, when he went looking for him in Castle Byers and found it had been torn apart. It had Mike spiralling, sweating bullets through his hands.
He knew. He knew when he had to watch Will leave, taking a piece of himself with him that Mike knew he’d never get back. He knew when he helped him pack his things, watching him discard objects that had so much of them in it. He knew when he’d hugged Will for the last time, smelling the soft scent coming from his neck and doing nothing about it. Mike just stood there, breathing him in, fighting the urge to rub his own scent gland against his.
He knew it was over for him because he couldn’t stop staring at Will’s face. At the beauty mark next to his mouth, his beautiful mouth, his warm green eyes and the moles on his neck. At the way his legs moved with his jeans, the scent trail he left in the air when he ran.
He’d never felt these things for El. He’d never so much looked at her twice before he shut his mind off with a kiss. Something must’ve been wrong with him. Maybe he was an anomaly.
He upset Will, but couldn’t help but apologize immediately after. He ignored him, but glared at anyone who tried to touch him. He loved him, but acted like he did not. It only took him so long to realize that before he lost him.
The Byers left with reduced properties. Mike knew anything extra would be inconvenient, but he couldn’t help himself. He assembled a few things he owned and threw it all in a gift bag. A plushie, a few pictures, his favorite D&D dice, a crayon kit he secretly stole from Holly and a sweater buried deep in his closet, forgotten in the summer.
He slept in it for the night, trying his best not to stink it with sweat, then rubbed and rubbed it against his scent glands. His neck was red when he considered it good enough. Anyone who’d get at least an arm’s length from it would know it was his.
And now he’d give it to Will.
Mike thought it was best to gift it the day they’d leave, to avoid the embarrassment if Will rejected the gift, and to make the scent last longer. He held the bag behind his body while Will folded some of his clothes into a sack. Will glanced at him.
“What’s that?” he asked.
Mike swallowed. “It’s nothing, uhm…” he handed him the bag.“Just something for you to take to California. So you won’t forget Hawkins”
Will peeped inside the bag with interest. He took the crayon kit out. He smiled like a kid opening an early Christmas present. Mike couldn’t help but grin. Will then grabbed Mike’s sweater, bringing it close to his face. He took a long sniff at it and his eyes widened almost comically. Mike’s heartbeat faltered. Oh shit.
“You can give it back if you don’t want it” Mike said, extending an arm to grab the sweater back.
Will hugged it against his chest. “No! No, I…” he avoided Mike’s gaze. “I want it, thank you. I just…” his cheeks flushed a beautiful shade of pink. “I thought you liked this sweater”
“I do”
“Then why are you giving it to me?”
It was Mike’s turn to get flushed. “I just thought you could miss Hawkins, you know, so you can have that as a reminder, I guess” Mike shrugged. “Just try to… not forget about us”
Will’s expression turned very serious and tender. “You know I could never do that” he said, stepping closer. “You guys are important to me. You’re important”
Mike’s breath hitched. He pulled Will into an embrace before he could stop himself. The lump in his throat made it hard to breathe, making him gasp as he tried to stop the tears flooding his eyes.
“I’ll call you,” Mike said. He sunk his nails into Will’s shirt. “Everyday”
“And I’ll write” Will sniffled. His hair was so soft, Mike noticed. His skin was so smooth. How badly Mike wanted to scent it. “Don’t change your mail. And don’t become a stranger”
“I won’t” he whispered.
Mike hated making promises he couldn’t keep.