Archive of Our Own ^beta

february, 1987

The ball of a black pen is scratching against a surface, the ink sprawling and taking shape. Will watches the careful, thoughtful gliding hands of the girl before him. Her focus as she copies words down letter by letter. 

“Okay,” Holly suddenly says, sliding a small Post-It note towards Will and capping the pen. “Read these.”

Will lowers his notebook, the one with a half-finished drawing for Mike’s latest campaign idea— a wizard falling from a flaming ladder, wind caught in his cloak— and grabs the Post-It. He flips through the top pages. 

“Holiday,” he chooses, rather appropriately. It’s only early February, but little red and pink cut-out hearts are strung up in the windows. Even red Christmas lights were draped around the house for the occasion (Karen really goes all out), illuminating both Holly and Will’s chaotic array of papers and pens scattered across the mahogany. 

“Holiday,” Holly repeats, gaze on the ceiling. “H-O-L-I-D-A-Y. Easy peasy.”

Will smiles. “Ladder.”

“L-A-D-D-E-R.”

“Good,” Will is saying, searching for another word out of the order Holly had written, when Mike stomps his way into the dining room. 

He seems to try to make as much noise as possible as he flails his way in. He throws himself down into a dining chair and literally pouts, throwing his arms up on the table and revealing a Rubik’s Cube in his hands. He twists it beneath his fingers, silent. 

“Um, hello,” Holly says, her voice coming up on the edge of a scoff. “We’re studying here.”

“Keep studying,” Mike says, eyes never drifting up from the cube. He’s laser focused, Will notes, not unlike his sister was only moments earlier. “I won’t bother you.”

Will and Holly make eye contact from across the table, both their lips curving upward in an amused tilt. Will averts his eyes back down to the notes. “Harbor.”

“H-A-R-B… E-R?”

“O-R,” Mike corrects immediately. 

“So much for not bothering us,” Holly snaps quickly. 

Mike smiles, just barely, before it snaps back into his obvious annoyance. “Sorry.”

“Okay, Holly,” Will starts. “How do you spell… crybaby?”

“Hey!” Mike whines. 

“M-I-K-E,” Holly finishes with a self-satisfied grin in Mike’s direction, to which Will erupts into laughter. 

The sight of Mike’s obvious offense is enough to send both Will and Holly into near-hysteria, laughing as Mike scrambles to defend himself. 

“I’m not a crybaby, Nancy is just cheating! She totally does not play fair—”

“How do you cheat at Super Mario?” Will asks through a giggle. Mike does this every time he and Nancy play a video game together. 

“You don’t,” Holly answers for Mike. “Mike is just a sore loser.”

“Okay, no, I am not, I just— will you guys stop laughing?”

“You’re right,” Holly declares, wiping the grin from her face. “Some people are trying to study. The smart people, that is,” she clarifies, sliding her sticker-covered notebook over and beginning to copy “harbor” down a dozen times. 

Mike scoffs. “Please. I’m a genius,” he says, picking the Rubik’s Cube up again and sliding the correct blocks into place. At Will’s snicker, he pauses. “What? You don’t agree?”

Will shrugs. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to, your face did.” Mike pauses again before suddenly scrambling the Rubik’s Cube at random. “Here. Solve it.”

Will furrows his brows at him. “What will that prove?”

“Since you think you’re so much smarter than me, let’s see if you can solve it,” Mike challenges, something resembling a smirk on his face. “I’ll time you.”

Will rolls his eyes. “You’re an idiot.”

Mike leans forward even further, and his knee knocks into Will’s underneath the table. From this angle, with Mike and Will turned toward one another, Will can just see the sharp intake of breath Mike takes at the contact. Weird. But he recovers quickly. “Prove it.”

Will grins, taking the cube from Mike, careful not to let his fingers graze Mike’s warm palm. As Will forms the cross, Mike leans impossibly closer, delivering ridiculous taunt after taunt to try and throw Will off (“Are you sure you remember how? Holly could do this faster than you are. Steve Harrington probably could, too,”). His voice is anything but cruel, though. It’s the opposite. 

“Shut up,” Will laughs. Mike lets him continue to solve the cube in silence, but he can still see Mike’s grin from the corner of his eye. “Done. Time?”

“One minute, thirteen seconds,” Mike declares after consulting with his watch. 

“Did I match your time?”

“No,” Mike admits with a shake of his head, voice suddenly soft. “But I practice all the time. You did really well.” In a blink, he’s dropped all pretense of competitiveness, taking the cube back from Will, letting their fingers tangle for a split second before he pulls away. Then, soft smile growing, he says, “I’m still better.”

“Oh-kay!” Holly interrupts, exasperation tugging at her features, pen hovering above wide-ruled paper. “Please, Mike, I need to focus.”

Mike and Will both zip their mouths shut at once, meeting one another’s eyes and holding back their laughter. Will, suddenly a little overwhelmed, lets his eyes drift back down to the peach-colored Post-It notes in his hand. He detaches a cluster of written-on Post-Its and reveals a blank one. He grabs at the pen he’d been using to sketch. 

For the record, Rubik’s cubes aren’t even a good measure of intelligence :), he writes. He twists his lips to fight his smile as he detaches the Post-It and sticks it directly onto the back of Mike’s hand. He watches the boy pluck the paper off and read it, amusement pulling at his eyes. 

He looks up, reaching for the Post-Its and writing a message of his own. He cups his hand around it so that Will cannot see. When he’s finished, he mimics Will by placing it directly on the skin of his hand.

For the record, I still beat your time. :)

march, 1987

Will, despite his better judgment, flattens the Post-It between the unmarked pages of his sketchbook. It’s simply a memory, he tells himself, a momento. Everyone keeps those. 

But that logic, however reasonable, cannot explain why his eyes always tend to catch on that stupid little smiley-face, smile lopsided and eyes two different sizes. Logic cannot explain why his eyes catch on the curve of the letters, tracing the scrawl of Mike Wheeler’s messy handwriting. He stares at it so much that he eventually throws it away.

He’s in Mike’s basement, fighting the urge to fish it out of the trash when he hears footsteps on the staircase. Jonathan comes bounding down, wiping at his eyes and angling his body in that odd way he does. 

“Are you okay?” Will asks, startling him. Jonathan nearly trips on the bottom step, head whipping up to see Will sitting on the couch. 

“What are you doing here?” Jonathan asks. “Shouldn’t you be at school?” 

“It’s Saturday,” Will responds. “Shouldn’t you be at the station?”

Jonathan is shaking his head before Will has even finished asking the question. He starts pacing back and forth in front of him. “No, man. No.”

“Jonathan, what’s going on?” Will asks, concern snaking its way down his spine. 

Jonathan must catch it, because he stops and sighs deeply. “It’s no big deal, don’t worry. Just— I’m so sick of Harrington, man—”

Will rolls his eyes. “Here I thought something was actually wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Jonathan agrees, nodding, but his stress is still apparent. “Just out of it, a little,” he says, moving across the room and rifling through a random bag. When the light catches the gleam of a little bag full of a green substance, Will groans. 

“Right now? It’s ten A.M., Jonathan. Mrs. Wheeler is upstairs.”

“I’ll crack a window,” Jonathan murmurs. 

Will usually tries not to be so insensitive; it’s not in his nature. But after months of Jonathan’s constant complaints about Steve with zero resolution, Will has grown wary of the conversation. The two will likely be half-battling, half-begging for the attention of Nancy Wheeler until the day they die. 

Will is bolting up the stairs without a moment of consideration. He knows, without question, where he is going, but he still pauses at Mike’s closed bedroom door. Things may be better now than they were back in California, and far less tense, but Will sometimes still has to fight to suppress his stupid beating heart every time Mike even flashes across his mind. 

He taps his knuckle against the wood, and Mike’s voice comes filtering through. “Come in.”

Will pushes through the doorway to see Mike at his desk, rolling the wheels of his chair back and forth aimlessly. “Oh,” he says, eyes flickering over to Will. “Hey.”

“Hi,” Will responds, walking in and taking a seat on the end of Mike’s bed. That seemed casual, right? “What are you doing?”

Mike sighs, looking back at the wads of crumbled notebook paper accumulating around his desk. “Writing. Or, trying to.”

“For the campaign?”

Mike nods, nibbling at his lip. “I’m stuck at the rising action. I see what I want to happen so clearly, but when I try to write it, I just can’t. Feels kind of pointless, anyway.”

Will frowns. “Pointless?” 

“Yeah,” Mike shrugs. Not with everything going on— no one really cares, you know? Lucas is too worried about Max, and campaigns just remind Dustin of Hellfire. And I don’t blame them. I worry, too.”

“We all worry,” Will says softly. “Hard not to. But— you know I care.”

Mike flicks his gaze upward, brown eyes locking with Will’s. “You do?” He sounds almost wounded. Jesus Christ. 

“Of course I do.” Will hates himself for how he delights in the smile that lights up Mike’s face. “Here, one second,” he says decidedly, racing out of the room and leaving a confused Mike behind. 

He comes back a minute later with his backpack in tow. He unzips the bag and reveals his sketchbook, nearly filled to the brim with drawings, then flips to the page that he’s been working on. “It’s not finished,” he warns, handing it over to Mike, “but I took note of the details you mentioned and, you know, took some liberties.” All Mike had mentioned to him was a wizard, fire, and falling— Will had taken that and turned it into something far more detailed. It’s something they used to always do. Mike would give him the vaguest of details and Will would draw his prediction. It’s like they made a game of it. 

“This is amazing, Will,” Mike is saying, eyes glued to the page in awe. His fingers graze the orange and red swirl of flames. “How do you even remember this? I mentioned it last month.”

Will cannot tell him that he has every word Mike’s ever said locked tight inside a vault in his head, so he tells another truth instead. “I started working on it when you mentioned it. It’s taken me a while, since I've been kind of distracted.”

“Is it the crawls?” Mike asks, pausing his excessive analysis of Will’s drawing. He’s referring to the system they’d all recently developed to search for Vecna, sneaking Hopper in and out of the Upside Down and tracking him all the while. 

“A little,” Will admits. “I just— can’t imagine anyone willingly entering that place.”

Mike nods, considering. “I get that. Hopper is insane, though, so it checks out.”

Will laughs. “Don’t let El hear you say that,” he says, even though El is currently nowhere near the Wheeler house. 

Mike rolls his eyes, though there is no malice. His grin makes that much clear. “She knows how I feel about that man,” he laughs. Then, quieter: “Wouldn’t matter anyway.”

“Hm?” Will tilts his head. He almost hadn’t heard him at all  

Mike hesitates, grabs a closed pen and taps it against the corner of Will’s sketchbook. “El and I broke up. Last month.” 

Will freezes. Tries to speak and stumbles. “Wh— when? Are you okay?”

Mike looks upwards, calculating. “January?”

“January?” Will repeats. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Mike shrugs. “I don’t know. I think at first I thought we might get back together.”

“And now?”

Mike shakes his head. “No. No chance. I was upset, obviously, but it was the right thing to do. It was… long overdue. After everything during spring break. It’s better this way.”

Will waits, but for what he’s not sure. Maybe for Mike to give a reason why, or a display of an emotion other than slightly sheepish. He watches the boy staring at his drawing (did he ever actually look away?), running that pen across the edge of the pages. 

“Don’t say anything, okay?” Mike says, finally looking at Will once again. “I don’t want to distract anyone. There’s too much going on.”

Will could tell him that he doesn’t need to hide anything, not out of shame or embarrassment or anything like it. The Party would understand, they wouldn’t say a word if they knew Mike was hurt. But he knows Mike knows all this already. So he nods. “I won’t say a word.”

Mike smiles at him, just a bit. “Thanks.” He stares down at the drawing again for a few moments. At once, he rolls his chair forward, his knee clanging into Will’s so hard he nearly flinches. He hands the sketchbook back to him. “Here. Keep drawing. I think this gave me an idea.” 

And then his touch is gone, just as fast and fleeting as it came. Will takes a beat to watch as Mike begins scrambling for a blank sheet of paper. He just barely notices the bullet points he jots down, but with his messy scrawl, Will cannot read it from over his shoulder. He smiles, settling himself on Mike’s bed and putting pencil to paper. 

may, 1987

On the final day of tenth grade, Rockin’ Robin comes through with a crawl message. 

The four of them are at the lunch table, radio shoved to the side on the off chance that a staticky code would come through. 

Mike and Will are sitting side by side, close enough for Will to feel the heat between their not-quite-touching shoulders. Lucas and Dustin sit across from them, Dustin tapping his ringed fingers against the table. 

“We’ll probably have more time to campaign over the summer,” Lucas is saying half-heartedly, fork swirling aimlessly around his untouched peas. 

Will nods. He tries to make up for Lucas’ lack of enthusiasm. He ends up overcompensating. “Totally. I’ll be able to speed up the progress on the Bard,” Will says in reference to his most recent commissioned drawing (lying about commissioned paintings had definitely come back to bite him), one of Dustin’s newer characters. One with long, wiry hair and a magical lute that releases ear-splitting thunderous sounds after playing a certain progression of chords. 

“Cool, thanks,” Dustin responds absently. 

Will shares a look with Mike and Lucas, the three of them hyperaware of Dustin’s distance in recent months. It’s as if losing Eddie was painful right away, but it took time for it to really take shape— to take Dustin and mold him into something different, something that only resembles who he once was. 

Will is stuck on what to say next, contemplating how he can ease even a fraction of what Dustin is feeling, when 1-2-3 Kind of Love comes crackling through the speakers with Robin’s voice filtered over warning listeners about a test. Mike is leaping out of his seat and barreling toward the radio, then pausing, saying, “Will— my notebook— can you grab it?”

Will bends down and wraps his fingers around Mike’s backpack, which has slid beneath the table. He hurries to pull Mike’s sticker-clad notebook out, flipping to an open page when— huh. Will falters at the sight of a peach-colored Post-It note stuck in between the pages. Will immediately recognizes his own handwriting and his teasing message about Rubik’s cubes. Mike had kept it, the exact same way Will had done it, hidden from sight. 

“Will!” Lucas says. “Come on!”

Will flinches, hurrying to turn the page so he can recount Robin’s message. 

“Alright, friends, we’re going to be taking it back a few years with Wild Cherry today…”

Will deciphers the code, scribbles it down hastily, his friends standing over his shoulders. But all the while, he thinks of that ridiculous note, and the little heart Mike had drawn on the page next to it. 

“We are totally, totally screwed!” 

Steve Harrington is pacing around The Squawk later that night, his carefully styled hair coming loose around his forehead. He places his hands on his hips as the group looks up from where they’re preparing for the crawl, stuffing flashlights and knives and Walkie Talkies into bags. 

“What’s wrong?” Nancy spins around, ceasing her elongated study of the grid, likely triple-checking the path they’ll be monitoring. 

Steve is frantic when he says, “Henderson screwed with the satellite thingy— it’s gone totally ballistic.”

It’s then that Dustin comes barreling in, just catching the tail-end of Steve throwing him under the bus. “I did not screw with it,” he says, glaring in Steve’s direction. “But it has gone ballistic. Nothing but static.”

The group of them share some panicked looks, Robin asking, “How do you fix it?”

Dustin is shaking his head. “The alignment is off.” Then, to Will, “Will you help me?”

Will is nodding before Dustin has even finished speaking. “Yeah, I’ll just need someone to hold it steady,” Will says, thinking that Steve would be the one to climb atop the van with them, when instead:

“I will,” Mike declares. He takes off towards the exit before anyone can shoot it down. He glanced back over his shoulder at Will. “How long ‘til the crawl?”

Will frowns. Mike could easily check the watch on his wrist. “About thirty minutes,” he says, trying not to let his confusion show. “You and Lucas will need to leave in fifteen.”

“We better hurry then,” Mike says as they reach the top of the staircase. 

Will glances at Dustin, trying to catch his eye and find a sense of community in his evergreen confusion when it comes to Michael Wheeler, but he, too, is focused on the task. Maybe Will should be, too, instead of questioning why Mike, who is a very logical person, makes the most illogical decisions. 

Soon Mike and Dustin are clambering atop the van, guided solely by moonlight. Will jogs to catch up, hoisting himself onto the hood, prepared to repeat the motion when something stops him. Mike has jutted his pale hand out for Will to grab. He hesitates for only a moment before gripping it and letting Mike haul him to the top. 

The entire time Dustin and Will work on realigning the antenna, Mike is right by his side. His hands are right next to the bolts Will screws and unscrews, his arms are touching Will’s as he levels the mast. Will is decidedly distracted the entire time, hands trembling ever so slightly when he fine-tunes the polarization. 

When they’ve finished, Dustin sits inside the van as he checks the connection. Will and Mike wait on top in case there are any more adjustments to be made. He can faintly hear Dustin’s frustrated mumbling about the skew and the elevation before he starts spinning the wheel in hopes of watching numbers rise. Mike and Will are nearly knocked off the roof of the van when the satellite suddenly swings in their direction. 

“Jesus!” Mike yelps, grasping Will’s arm to yank him out of the satellite’s path. 

Will, already undoubtedly overwhelmed, laughs nervously as Mike steadies him. When Mike’s hand does not falter on Will’s forearm, his already-frantic heartbeat quickens tenfold. What is going on?

“What’s up with Steve?” Mike is saying quietly, voice low so Dustin will not hear, as if he isn’t actively sending Will into cardiac arrest. It takes him a moment to process Mike’s question. “He’s been acting weird. Weirder than usual.”

Will shrugs. “Everyone is acting weird lately.” Hell of an understatement, he thinks, eyeing Mike’s hand. 

“It has something to do with Dustin, right?”

“And Jonathan. And Nancy.”

“Nancy?” Mike repeats. “What about Nancy?”

Will rolls his eyes. “Jonathan says he’s into her again.”

Mike mimics Will’s eyeroll and groans. “This is ridiculous. I thought he was into Robin.”

Will shakes his head. “Dustin says they’re just friends. I don’t get it. I mean, Steve has definitely made a move, right? Like, Robin is really pretty, so why wouldn’t he?”

Will barely notices how Mike stills. He removes his hand from Will’s arm. “Yeah. Right.”

Will frowns. “You don’t think so?” He looks at Mike, takes note of his crinkled brows and his pouted lips. His eyes are cast downward, glued to his lap.

He shrugs a shoulder, opens his mouth to respond—

“All right!” Dustin’s voice comes through at an ear-splitting pitch, causing both Mike and Will to jolt back in surprise. “I think we’re good! Son of a bitch is working!”

Mike is pushing himself off the van in an instant, murmuring, “Wish me luck,” to Will without meeting his eyes. 

“Good luck,” Will says to a retreating Mike, so softly he’s sure Mike does not hear it. 

july, 1987

Will stands frozen in the refrigerator light. 

His mind is elsewhere, still lingering on images of the dreams that woke him. Twisting black vines, floating spores, a trembling boy hidden behind what he’d once thought to be an impenetrable fortress. The memories tend to do that— come back in waves. Mere flashes of what he endured, but he knows that most of what occurred back then has been lost. He’s unsure if he prefers it that way. The not knowing couldn’t possibly be worse, could it? Couldn’t be worse than whatever events made him wind up in that church, his mother crying over him and Hopper delivering rib-cracking blows to his chest. 

Will sighs. He closes the refrigerator, instead electing to wander towards the Wheelers’ overly stocked pantry. Momentarily overwhelmed by the options, Will makes a decision, shoving his hand absentmindedly into a half-empty cereal box. 

He’s leaning against the kitchen island, his thousand-yard stare aimed out the window when a quiet voice says, “Hey.”

Will jolts and spins on his heel. He meets Mike’s gaze with wide eyes, mouth still full, hand lodged in a box of Cocoa Puffs. “Hey,” he says, voice muffled. 

Mike looks amused, his brown eyes warm even in the darkness of the kitchen, but he simply asks, “Can’t sleep?”

Will shakes his head. 

“Me neither,” Mike says, stepping closer. His voice isn’t a whisper, exactly, but the words he speaks are so gentle that Will has to lean forward to hear him better. “I thought I heard someone down here. I thought it might be you.” 

Will swallows. “I’m sorry.” In truth, he’d woken hours ago, just after one o’clock. He’d spent an hour tossing and turning, and then another hour doodling, embarrassingly, clerics and paladins in his notebook. He’d only decided to make the trek upstairs when his stomach began to rumble so loudly he thought it might wake Jonathan. 

Mike shrugs. “Don’t be.” He takes the Cocoa Puffs box from Will, grabbing a handful of his own. He pauses, eyes wandering aimlessly across the kitchen tile. Then, he looks up at Will again, a feigned casualness. “Wanna hang out?” 

They end up in Mike’s bedroom, lying around reading X-Men comics, countless issues piled in the space between them. Will watches the minutes pass by on Mike’s digital clock. 3:24. He still feels wide awake, even when Mike yawns from his place on the bed. 

“You can sleep, if you want,” Will offers, eyeing him over the top of the comic gripped between his fingers. The two of them mimic each other on Mike’s bed, Will’s head resting near the headboard while Mike lounges at the very end. 

Mike shakes his head quickly. “Don’t want to.”

“You’re yawning,” Will points out. 

“Because you’re being boring,” Mike says. Will notes the small growing smirk that Mike tries to hide. 

“Whatever!” Will whispers back, mock-offended. “I’m trying to stay quiet. There’s only five other people up here.”

Mike responds with a playful roll of his eyes. “Sure.”

Will returns the eye roll, though it’s not entirely forced. It’s natural to feel exasperated by Mike Wheeler, no matter how much it endears him all the same. Unable to focus on the comic suddenly, he scans Mike’s room, over Star Wars posters and Will’s own drawings. His heartbeat may or may not flutter a bit at that. 

His eyes snag on an acoustic guitar positioned in the corner of Mike’s room. Huh. He’s seen it before, of course, but it never crossed his mind that Mike might actually play it. The thought of Mike positioned over a guitar, hair loose in his eyes, the focused placement of his fingers, is bound to send Will’s pulse into a frenzy. But, well. Maybe indulgence isn’t always so bad. 

“Hey, Mike?”

Mike hums. “Yeah?” 

Will swings his legs off the bed and onto the floor, grabbing the guitar by the neck and presenting it to Mike. “Do you ever play this?” Surely, after living here for over a year, he would have heard Mike playing before. 

Mike actually blushes. “Oh— God, no, not really.”

Will tilts his head, walking forward and placing the guitar gently on the bed in front of Mike. “Not really?”

“It was totally stupid,” Mike says, avoiding Will’s gaze. “A few weeks after meeting Eddie, I begged my mom to buy it for me. Like, I was super annoying about it.”

“No,” Will offers sarcastically.

“Shut up,” Mike scoffs. “No, I got it for Christmas that year, and, holy shit, I sucked. I kept getting so frustrated that I kind of gave up, I guess.”

“You don’t know anything?” Will presses, disbelieving. He’s certain there is something Mike must have mastered— he always tends to do so. 

“Just a few chords,” Mike answers. 

Mike goes to speak again, but stops abruptly when Will picks up the guitar as if he’s going to play it. Of course, Will has no idea how to play, or even where he should be resting his hands, but he’s seen plenty of band members hold it this way. Surely, he hasn’t gotten that much wrong. 

Mike clears his throat. “Here, let me show you.” 

Will sits on the edge of bed and Mike crawls over to do the same, their shoulders pressing together when Mike situates. Will shakes his head slightly, wrapping his fingers around the neck of the guitar and awaiting Mike’s instructions. 

The air in his lungs leaves him, though, when Mike’s pale fingers wrap around Will’s own. He molds Will’s fingers one at a time, placing them into position. His low voice is mumbling, “First fret, fifth string from the top. Second fret, third and fourth. There. A Minor.”

Though the placement isn’t necessarily difficult, Will’s fingers feel awkward as they hold the position. He had thought maybe it wouldn’t phase him, as he often twists his fingers and wrist until they cramp when he’s drawing or painting, but this is foreign to him. The angle of his wrist isn’t quite right. He feels his sweaty fingers begin to slip off the chords. 

“Aren’t you going to play it?” Mike asks, voice right in Will’s ear. He can feel his breath on the side of his neck. When did he get so close? 

“It’s three in the morning,” he answers. Maybe now isn’t the best time for guitar lessons. 

“You can do it quietly,” Mike tells him. He grabs Will’s right hand, reaching across the span of both their torsos. He takes Will’s thumb and slowly drags it down the chords in the space above the soundhole. Will winces at the sound, as the drag of their fingers was far too slow to resemble anything close to correct. And yet, Mike says, “See?” as if Will had just done something amazing, as if he’d composed a sound so lovely that Mike could not wait to hear it again.

He continues to show Will the few chords he knows, the pitifully slow strumming entirely negating their whispers. After his attempt at playing the D chord goes horribly wrong, Will tilts his head back in mock-frustration. 

“It’s fine,” Mike whispers, but something in his voice has changed. It sounds almost strained. “Try it again.” Again, he takes Will’s thumb and drags it down the chords.

Will angles his head to the left ever so slightly, only to find that Mike is so close to him that there are hardly more than a few inches in the space between their lips. Will freezes, unsure whether to jerk his head away or to wait until Mike does it himself. Mike was only so close so he could use Will’s fingers as his own personal guitar pick, not so he could linger in Will’s personal space and send Will into a spiral. No, of course he hadn’t. 

But… Mike has still not let go. There must be an explanation. There must be a reason he still holds Will’s thumb between his long fingers. There must be a cause for Mike’s face to be only inches from Will’s, their shared breaths mixing into something heavy, something tense and unfamiliar. Will won’t look up, won’t even move, but he can see the exaggerated rise and fall of Mike’s chest. He can see the way Mike’s lips move slightly with each exhale of breath. 

Will clears his throat, turns his head forward again. “My, uh, my wrist is hurting,” he says on the breath of a laugh, which is entirely true, but also something he was entirely willing to ignore. He flexes his wrist as Mike leans back, away from Will. Will knows it’s his fault, but disappointment settles all the same. 

“Here,” Mike says, taking the guitar and leaning it back against the wall. He sits back down next to Will, the two of them staring directly forward at Mike’s deep blue walls. Silence stretches between them. Will feels uneasy within it, and he begins scrambling for a way to destroy it.

“You know,” Will starts, unsure where the thought came from, “you never really talk about Eddie.”

He can feel Mike looking at him again. He shrugs. “We weren’t that close— not like he and Dustin were.”

Will turns to look in Mike’s eye. “That doesn’t mean you can’t miss him.”

“I know,” Mike says softly. “I know. It just doesn’t feel like… I don’t know, maybe I feel disconnected from it. I mean, I was gone when everything went down that spring break. I missed all of it. I just— feel like I should’ve been here. Otherwise…” he trails off. 

“It wasn’t your fault,” Will tells him. “I was gone, too.”

Mike nods. “I know,” he says again. “But you didn’t know Eddie. It’s not like you owed him anything. I think you would have liked him, though.”

Will is always kind of taken aback by Mike’s perpetual desire to be a hero. There’s always someone he feels he has to save. First El, and then Will, and now every single Hawkins citizen, apparently. Gently, Will says, “If you weren’t in California, though, we probably never would have found El. She needed you there.”

Mike huffs in response. “Yeah, well, not really.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It— doesn’t matter. My point is, it’s… it’s not that I don’t miss Eddie, or Max, either, but I don’t know how to. It doesn’t feel earned.”

Will considers that statement before he nods. He pushes himself back, turning his body completely toward Mike and crossing his legs beneath him on the bed. Mike turns toward him, too. “I get that. I kind of felt that way when my dad left.”

“You missed him?” Mike frowns. 

Will nods. “At first. I was young, you know? My dad being there was all I’d ever known. I’m glad he’s gone now, though. Obviously. But for a long time I didn’t know if I was allowed to miss him, or to talk about it. Not when I knew how my mom and Jonathan had been hurt by him.”

“Right, exactly. It feels like— like my feelings are small in comparison. Like there’s someone who has something bigger with them, so it’s almost not worth talking about.”

“Yeah,” Will is nodding along. It isn’t lost on him how they’ve landed upon a consensus despite referring to two completely different things. Mike loved Eddie— looked up to and admired him in a way he likely hadn’t done with anyone before. And Mike and Max, despite their constant bickering, had developed some sort of friendship with one another. The kind of friendship that inevitably comes with the things they’ve all faced together, a shared understanding that you both have seen some of the darkest parts of one another’s lives. 

With Will’s dad, though, it felt more like Will’s failure to cultivate love on either end. Will wanted his dad to love him, but the hands Lonnie would lay on the three of them had done more than just leave bruises— it had turned the love he’d once had for his father into something marred, something rotten. Even so, when he had left, Will had felt like he’d fallen short as a son. Maybe if he had been different, Lonnie wouldn’t have said all of those things. Maybe Jonathan wouldn’t have felt the need to defend him. Maybe Joyce wouldn’t have needed to distract Lonnie from the boys by endlessly picking fights, by beckoning Lonnie into screaming matches that stretched long into the night. 

And maybe part of Will had loved his father, for a time. Maybe there is a different type of grief— one that arises when someone chooses to leave you. When they decide that there is not enough of you that they are willing to stay for. 

And maybe Will has held that in for far too long, that complicated mess of emotions for a man who never even came to visit him when he came back from the dead. Maybe he and Mike are alike in that way— maybe they will keep their feelings close to their chest because it feels wrong to do otherwise. 

“You can always talk about it to me, you know?” Will offers. He means it. “I don’t think it’s too small. Whatever you feel.”

Mike looks at him, really looks at him, as if he can see right through him. Like he’s looking directly at the core of Will’s soul, sees everything that’s written into the fabric of Will Byers. 

“I don’t think you’re too small.”

Will blinks. “What?”

Mike starts to fidget, grabbing and twisting at his own fingers. “You don’t really— talk much.”

Will’s frown deepens. “I talk to you all the time.”

“I mean…” Mike hesitates. “About it. The Upside Down, or the Mind Flayer, or— or any of it.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I don’t want you to say anything,” Mike rushes. “Well, no, I do, but— I don’t want you to tell me what you think I want to hear. I want to know what you feel.”

“About the Upside Down?”

Mike shakes his head. “About— anything. You— you keep so much inside, Will. I want us to be able to talk about anything, like when we were younger. I want to be that person for you again.”

Mike’s admission comes as a physical blow. Will knows that he keeps a lot inside. That’s what he’s been conditioned to do. The things that have grown inside him for four years are too dark to ever see the light of day. 

Part of him itches to come clean, though he’s not sure for what. He can’t exactly explain that there is something within he feels is rotting him from the inside out. He’s not sure how to describe the repulsion that swells inside him each time he thinks about the things that happened to him. He doesn’t know how to say that he hasn’t felt like his body is his own since he was twelve years old, not after it’s been taken, poked, prodded, possessed. Not after he choked up a slug, not after he became a vessel without any control over his body save for the tapping of two fingertips. Not after he was invaded. 

The part that wins, though, is the one who wants to keep that shame hidden. The one who wants to keep some sort of semblance of Will Byers, at least to an outsider. At least to Mike. 

“I’m actually pretty tired,” Will evades. He hears it, the way his voice goes flat, monotone. “I think I’m going to bed.”

Mike doesn’t argue, just looks at him with those furrowed brows and worried eyes. He nods, watching Will slowly rise from the bed. Will’s hand is wrapped around the doorknob when Mike says, “Wait.”

Will pauses, but does not turn around. 

“Stay,” Mike says softly. 

Will looks at Mike over his shoulder. 

“I mean,” he starts, flustered. Will can see the red of his cheeks even in the dark of his room. “Sleep here tonight. With me.”

Will is sure that his cheeks are identical to Mike’s, burning bright with the implication. But Mike is still staring at him, almost expectantly, so Will nods. He only nods, because he doesn’t trust himself to speak after the emotional back-and-forth of their entire exchange. He crawls into the left side of the bed, and Mike quickly scrambles to do the same on the right. 

He leaves enough space between them that they would not have to touch. Will expects to fall asleep uneasily, with that cold foot of space between them. But after a while, Mike’s cool hand reaches out to grasp Will’s underneath the covers. 

He still sleeps uneasily. But it has more to do with his racing heart. 

september, 1987

Will tends to spend a lot of time thinking of things he shouldn’t. 

He thinks of interdimensional monsters in his Algebra II class. He plans out paintings when he should be sleeping. He ponders over the life expectancy of a telekinetic villain at lunch. 

He thinks of Mike Wheeler. Always. 

He thinks of his stupidly cute haircut, his stupidly long eyelashes, his stupidly bright grin. He thinks of his long limbs and the good several inches of height he has over Will. He thinks of the way Mike has begun carrying D&D figurines around with him, something nearly anyone else would find nerdy (it is), but Will can only find incredibly endearing. 

Most of all, he thinks of the way Mike has been, as of the past few weeks, all over him. In a sense. 

Junior year at Hawkins High is, by all measures, not much different than sophomore year. There is no significant change that Will can pinpoint— they eat breakfast together, bike to school together, go to class together— all things they did back in May. So Will cannot fathom why, suddenly, Mike is attached to him at the hip. Will can barely get away long enough to catch his breath. 

Mike has been walking Will to all his classes. Even the classes Mike doesn’t take. He’s inviting Will up to his room every night or he’s following him down to the basement. He’s constantly talking his ear off about D&D, or crawls, or their friends. Will will turn to see him staring at him from across the classroom, or look up to see Mike smiling at him across the lunch table. 

It’s almost smothering. He cannot get enough. 

He’s a mess of red cheeks and stumbled-over words. He seems to have a permanent ticking time bomb planted inside his head, and the repetitive ticks sound a lot like Mike Mike Mike Mike Mike Mike Mike. He’s itching for it to blow. It doesn’t help that Mike is always there, always in his space and making Will fall harder and harder with every passing day. He hates how easily Mike does it, too, how easily he can make Will feel unconditionally, unequivocally insane. 

It’s not a new feeling. Not with his extensive experience with kidnapping and possession (not-so-secret social outcast being the absolute cherry on top). And, of course, nothing about loving Mike Wheeler will ever be as painful as those formative pieces of his life. But, in his more dramatic moments, he thinks it may have come close. He’s grown used to the pain accustomed with unrequited love. He’s made a home for himself in it, nestled into the comfortability of knowing nothing will ever come of it. 

But. Well. 

Day by day, the foundation of that home feels far shakier. It feels far too fragile, too susceptible to the storm that is Mike Wheeler and his overly touchy hands and absurdly warm eyes. 

Maybe it’s too optimistic of a thought (most likely). Maybe he’s insane for considering it. He certainly likes to remind himself that he is every time the possibility crosses his mind. 

It’s crossing his mind now. Mike is flitting back and forth in his mind like a pendulum. It’s starting to—

“Will? Are you listening?”

Like he said, always thinking of things he shouldn’t. 

“Yes,” he tells Lucas, though he definitely was not. 

Lucas’ headband is wrapped tight around his forehead. He’s sporting his ridiculous camouflaged outfit, backpack packed and ready on his shoulders. “Please,” Lucas is saying, his hands held out in emphasis, “just do not let Mike near the Walkie Talkie.”

“Hey!” Mike groans. 

They’re gathered around their usual table at the Squawk, everyone nearly ready to begin the crawl. Well. Almost everyone. 

“This is ridiculous,” Mike says, again, voice low in Will’s ear. “I’m totally capable of climbing some stairs tonight.”

“You barely made it down the stairs here,” Will mumbles, eyes locked on the map projected on the wall in front of them. His eyes run over the path Hopper is expected to follow. 

Mike scoffs. “Untrue. I did fine.”

He most definitely did not do fine. In fact, he’d followed Will down, his hand flinging to Will’s shoulder for stability when the trek down proved harder than he’d anticipated. He’d sucked air between his teeth with every step. He’d rolled his ankle only hours before, not enough for any lasting damage, but enough to slow him down significantly. 

“You did not do fine,” El chimes in, steadily packing a bag for Hopper. Will had no idea she’d even been listening, she was so focused on the task. 

Mike narrows his eyes. “Why is everyone teaming up on me?”

Will catches El’s eye for a split second, a shared smile growing between the two of them. To Mike, Will says, “You should really stop letting Lucas tackle you like that.”

“It was a hug.” When El stalks away, leaving the two of them alone at the table, Mike asks, “What, are you jealous?”

Surprise has Will cutting his eyes to Mike in an instant, but his gaze is warm. Teasing. Not accusing. He takes a quick breath before mumbling, “Idiot,” and lightly shoving Mike aside (“Hey! I’m injured,”), walking past to deliver Mike’s backpack to Jonathan. 

Jonathan volunteered to be Mike’s stand-in for the crawl tonight, leaving Mike at the station with the rest of them, hence his endless string of complaints. He walks to where Jonathan, Nancy, and Robin are cornered together, Nancy reminding him of Hopper’s projected path. He’s also dressed in a comical, but necessary, ensemble. He’s even got Mike’s green beanie tugged over his head. 

Will holds the bag out by the strap wordlessly. Jonathan takes it from him. “Thanks.”

Will nods at the bag. “You’ve got the walkie, flashlight, knife, duck tape, matches, a—”

“I got it,” Jonathan interrupts, smiling at him. He glances to Nancy and Robin, ensuring they’re distracted before he says, “You don’t have to be nervous. I know what I’m doing.”

“I know,” Will says, not even beginning to question how Jonathan could tell he was anxious. He always seems to clock how Will is feeling, regardless of how well he hides it. “Just, be careful,” he reminds him. 

Jonathan nods, gripping his shoulder and squeezing it reassuringly. 

It’s not that he thinks Jonathan is any less capable than Mike or Lucas. In fact, he believes quite the opposite, unsure why Jonathan hadn’t volunteered for this role in the first place. It’s just that Will doesn’t always feel confident when they deviate from their routine— the time Nancy ended up driving the WSQK van, they had lost their connection to Hopper for eight whole minutes. Will just happens to prefer it when they stick to the plan. 

“He’ll be fine,” Mike tells him when Will walks back over to him, leaning over the metal table with his chin in his hands. “Still can’t believe you guys aren’t letting me go, though.”

“Now you get to sit and be useless with me.”

“You’re so not useless,” Mike argues, despite the fact he’s been complaining about not being able to go for hours. “Every one of us is important for the plan.”

Will smiles. “Fine. You can be mostly useless with me, then.”

Mike frowns. “No, I mean it. You’re totally necessary. You installed the antenna with Dustin! We wouldn’t be able to do it without you.”

Will flushes a bit. Mike isn’t wrong, but it doesn’t necessarily negate that useless feeling he tends to get while he sits and listens to his friends and mom and Hopper communicate back and forth. He decided to let Mike have it, to not argue with him any further. 

They end up sitting atop the table together during the crawl, as Mike got tired of standing but wasn’t about to ask Joyce to give up her chair. She, El, Nancy, and Robin are all crowded around the radio, leaning in close. Mike and Will are halfway across the room, but it’s currently so quiet that they can hear just fine. 

“All right, here we go,” Jonathan’s voice filters through the speaker after some time. Will can hear the smacking of Lucas’ gum in the spaces between words. “5… 4… 3… 2… Oh, shit.”

The call goes quiet. 

“Jonathan?” Joyce says, eyes wide as she grips the mic. “Jonathan? Lucas?”

“What just happened?” Steve’s voice cuts through abruptly. 

“We lost them,” Nancy responds, having cut in and grabbed the controls from Joyce. “Robin, what do I do?”

Will watches with wide eyes as Robin scrambles to assist Nancy. He pushes himself from the table and makes his way over to the girls. He reaches out and grabs Joyce’s shoulder, an attempt at reassurance. He wishes there was something he could say, or do, to help, but his throat feels like it’s closing up. 

He watches his mom, who does not look up at him, her eyes instead glued to the radio. He looks to El instead, hopelessly, where she sits on the other side of Joyce. She, too, has grabbed Joyce’s hand, offering a comfort that perhaps words cannot. 

“Jonathan? Lucas?” Nancy is repeating into the mic, over and over. 

The only response is a disgruntled Hopper grumbling, “What the hell is going on?”

“I’m sure they’re fine,” Mike speaks up, voice far closer than it should be. They all look in his direction, caught off guard. He must have hobbled his way over. “Connections get lost, sometimes. It’s normal.”

“He said ‘oh, shit’, Mike,” Nancy answers drily. “Someone— someone may have seen them.”

“Okay, well, we still shouldn’t panic,” Mike argues. “Keep the line silent, in case they need to hide.”

They do as he says, all their eyes glued to the radio, waiting for anything to come through. Did Will pack the wrong walkie? Maybe he should have double checked the batteries—

The feel of a hand creeping into his makes him pause. He glances down to see Mike’s hand intertwining with his, fingers twisting and squeezing Will’s palm. Will quickly glances around at the girls, but they’re all far too focused to see Mike or Will, still semi-positioned behind them. He looks back at Mike, briefly, smiling faintly before the crackling of the radio startles him. 

“Mom? Nancy?” Jonathan’s voice cuts in, the sound of his voice akin to short circuiting. “Guys?”

“Jonathan!” Nancy exclaims. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

“Had to duck down— guards— fumbled the—” his voice comes and goes just enough for Will to put the pieces together. “Fine now— but behind— Hop went in—”

Will feels Mike’s hand slowly slip out of Will’s as they all put the pieces together, sending a message that has Steve and Dustin scrambling to reconnect with Hopper. The room erupts into chaos— too-late instructions being shouted and Robin’s overly stressed “Shit shit shit shit shit.”

Will finally feels like he can take a breath. He looks to Mike again, who is already looking back at him, expression unreadable. Will smiles, hoping Mike can read his unspoken thank you. 

Later, when the crawl has finished, Mike and Will have made their way to the front of the station. They’re awaiting their friends’ return, sitting side by side on the small porch by the door. Mike’s leg is extended outward, his swollen ankle deliberately kept at a distance. Will’s legs are folded beneath him, elbows resting on his knees. 

The rest of them are still inside, documenting another successful crawl, leaving Mike and Will alone in the late September chill. Will, still used to the heat of summer, shudders in the night. 

“Are you cold?” Mike asks immediately. 

“A little,” Will admits. “But—”

In an instant, Mike is peeling his jacket off, clumsily slinging his arms and pulling them out of their sleeves. He wordlessly takes his jacket and wraps it around Will’s shoulders. 

Will blinks, stunned. Mike is staring back at the ground like he had been, like it was nothing, like he expects nothing from the action. Still, Will mutters a “Thank you,” pulling the jacket tighter around his shoulders. 

“You know,” Mike starts, considering, “I love Nancy to death. But— I don’t think I’ve ever seen any siblings that love each other like you and Jonathan do.”

Will looks over at him. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Mike shrugs. “I know you still fight like siblings, or whatever, but still. It’s really cool.”

Will smiles to himself a bit. He’s right— they do fight like siblings. Sometimes Jonathan annoys the shit out of him, when he makes him late for school, or he smokes in the Wheelers’ basement, or he whines about Nancy just a little too much. But for all those things, he also loves him. Even the worst parts, just like Jonathan does for him. Loves the parts of him that most would think are wrong. 

He briefly thinks back to the months spent in Lenora— Will and El laying across Jonathan’s floor as he plays them mixtape after mixtape, heads bobbing to the rhythm. Those days were some of his favorite moments, the days where he would think maybe moving wasn’t such a bad thing. When the three of them could exist as they were supposed to. Brothers, and a brand new sister. 

“I think that’s just Jonathan,” Will eventually says. “He’s always been super protective. I think he was overly nice to make up for— all the rest.”

Mike nods, knowing that the rest means Will’s dad. 

Will thinks back to earlier, when Mike’s hand had slid into his. He hesitates. “Um, thanks, by the way.”

Mike turns his head. “For what?”

“Earlier,” Will clarifies. “When we were all freaking out.”

“Oh,” Mike says with a small shrug. 

Will half expects him to keep talking, to brush it off even further, but Mike goes quiet instead. It’s been nice to watch him slip back into that role Will knows he craves— that sense of leadership that just comes naturally to him. It’s always been that way, with campaigns and the AV club. Those few years where Mike seemed to lose that were hard. Will was struggling with his place that summer. He didn’t feel like he fit anymore, not with the group and their girlfriends and their growing up, but maybe Mike didn’t really fit either. Not like he used to. 

But now that Mike Wheeler he once knew is back, and he’s maybe the most Mike Wheeler has ever been. The old Mike Wheeler had also grabbed his hand when he was petrified, sure. But never in front of anyone else. Never had he let their fingers intertwine and let their skin brush so delicately. Before had been to steady Will’s shaking hands, to calm his racing mind. Now— maybe it’s just as much for Mike, too.

Mike clears his throat. “I, uh, I could tell you were worried,” he says, perhaps unnecessarily. A blind man could see Will was worried. “I hate seeing you like that.”

Will frowns. “I’m sorry?” He says, voice tilting upwards in confusion. He knows he tends to worry a lot, knows he can overdo it with the prickling skin of his neck and his easily-raised pulse, but he hadn’t expected Mike to—

“No.” Mike looks suddenly panicked, shaking his head rapidly. “No, that’s not what I mean. I just— I hate that you feel so scared sometimes. I know how hard things can get, especially after everything you’ve been through— I’ll shut up.”

Despite everything, Will chuckles. “No, it’s okay. You’re right. It gets to me, but it gets to all of us, doesn’t it?”

“Sure,” Mike confirms, nodding slightly. “But… I don’t know. I think it’s worse for you, sometimes.”

It is. Will knows it is. They all do. Will clearly doesn’t hide things as well as he tries to. “I know,” he whispers, pulling his knees to his chest. He wraps his arms around them, staring down at the concrete beneath him. “I hate it. It’s— embarrassing.”

“Embarrassing? Why?” Mike's voice is alarmingly soft. It used to make Will feel like he was the most precious thing in the world to him. Now he feels like the most fragile. 

“It’s stupid. After all this time, I can’t let it go.”

Mike splutters. “Will— what are you— of course you can’t let it go. You’ve been through so much, more than any of us.”

Will would love to argue. El has been through more, he thinks, and she’s the strongest person he knows, despite her not wanting to be. Instead, he stays silent, resting his chin atop his knees. 

“I’m serious,” Mike continues. “You have nothing to be embarrassed about. You’re probably the bravest of all of us.”

Will scoffs, despite himself. The bravest of all of us. Has Mike been concussed? “I freeze every time I sense him,” Will argues. “I just stand there, Mike. I do nothing. I’m basically an alarm.”

“That’s complete bullshit!” Mike exclaims, like Will has offended him personally. “I can’t believe you think of yourself that way.”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“No. No,” Mike repeats. “Do you remember what you told me once? You told me you faced the Mind Flayer. That you turned around and basically told him to fuck off.”

“Yeah, but—”

Mike interrupts him. “You spent an entire week in the Upside Down at twelve years old, Will. You were completely alone, and you survived.”

Will pauses. He lowers his hands to the ground, fingers digging into solid concrete like it will steady him. 

“And you’re always here. You were here for all of us, even after you saw Billy become the Spy. You witnessed the exact thing that happened to you, and you stayed. And you were there to save El, too.”

Silently, Will watches Mike’s excessive emphasis, his flailing arms and the weight he puts behind each word. He watches Mike, their eyes locking when Mike turns back to look at him. 

Mike softens instantly, shoulders relaxing as he presses his lips together. Then, he says, “I don’t think you get it.” It’s hardly more than a whisper. 

He swallows. “What do I not get?”

“How important you are,” Mike says. “To all of us. To me.”

Will may have brushed it off as Mike just being nice, but there is a sincerity in his gaze that has Will hypnotized in an instant. He feels himself searching them, shamelessly, trying to put a name to that emotion. 

“You’re so hard on yourself, Will. You don’t— you don’t see what I see.” 

“What…” Will starts, getting lost in the deep brown eyes staring back at him. “What do you see?”

Mike’s eyebrows furrow, and he looks almost helpless. He looks down, briefly, before his eyes are back on Will’s. Will just barely catches the movement of Mike’s hand inching forward before it slides over Will’s. 

Will glances down, watching Mike’s fingers inch over his knuckles. Then the back of his hand, and then he’s grabbing his wrist and tugging it upwards. It hovers there, the space between them great enough that their hands rest a few inches off the ground. 

Will watches Mike’s throat as he swallows. His eyes, again, are glancing up and down, and it finally hits Will that he’s looking at his lips. He’s frantically glancing all over Will’s face, searching for a sign, anything. Will can’t imagine he looks anything other than really fucking confused. 

When Mike pulls Will’s wrist toward him, though, his lips parting, Will responds instinctually. His limp fingers are suddenly shocked to life, turning over and grabbing at Mike’s shaking hand. At Will’s response, Mike lifts his other hand, turning entirely toward him, reaching for his face. Will stills at the contact, only for a second before Mike is sliding his fingers into Will’s hair. 

Mike is leaning closer. He’s still watching Will closely, gauging his reaction. When an invisible force starts pulling him closer, he watches Mike’s eyes flutter closed. 

Will has never kissed anyone before (he’s not even entirely sure that’s what’s happening). But he can barely register that panic, that knowledge that he has no idea what he’s doing, not with his eyes falling shut and Mike’s hot breath on his mouth. Not when he’s about to kiss Mike Wheeler. 

The distant crunch of gravel sends Will flying backwards, flinching when he sees the van’s headlights swing into view. 

“Shit,” says Mike, as he quickly untangles their hands and his grip in Will’s hair. He jumps back several feet, as if Will’s touch had electrocuted him. 

They both stand up abruptly, watching as the headlights creep closer. The van was too far to see them properly, probably not even the outline of them. Will knows that, but it does nothing to cease the heartbeat that pounds inside his chest, the skin that burns where Mike had touched him. 

Neither of them even attempt to look at one another. They stand frozen, breathing heavily as they wait for the van to pull into the parking lot. Mike is darting towards the van the second it rolls to a stop. Will watches him go, limping unceremoniously towards an excited Dustin. 

Mike Wheeler had almost kissed him. 

What the hell?

“Byers!” Dustin shouts after some time. “Are you going to help, or are you planning to stand there all night?”

Will is shocked to life again, stumbling off the porch and stumbling his way over. As he unloads the van’s supplies, listening to Dustin recount the events of the evening, he tries to catch Mike’s eye. 

But Mike doesn’t look at him once. 

october, 1987

They don’t talk about it. 

They don’t bring it up, don’t acknowledge the night at all, even. Will may have started to think he dreamed the entire day, if not for the way Mike had continued to limp for days after, or the way Lucas and Dustin kept bringing up the almost-disastrous crawl. 

They don’t even speak for a few days. Mike doesn’t walk with him to class like he had just weeks prior. He focuses entirely on Holly on the bike ride to school. He makes up excuses about being tired instead of hanging out with Will. 

Lucas and Dustin have noticed something is off. They share a look whenever Will is painfully quiet, or whenever Mike speaks directly over Will like he isn’t there. They cling to Lucas and Dustin, ignoring one another, almost as if they’re in an unspoken competition of who between them can care the least. 

Will spends nearly all his time at the hospital with Lucas and Max, drawing renditions of Max’s completely impractical D&D character (who he loves drawing regardless) as Lucas reads chapter after chapter to her. Will always pauses to update Lucas on his progress, Lucas smiling at the red hair that flies behind her as she zooms across the page. They also take turns updating Max on nearly everything that occurs throughout their day (though Will’s update is, admittedly, insanely guarded). Will normally just talks about how deeply El misses her, how she goes on and on about how she wishes Will had seen that side of Max— the one that completely reshaped El, gave her the room to become something of her own. 

It’s nice talking to her. He isn’t sure if she can hear, or if she would even care to hear what Will had to say if she could, but he talks to her all the same. He wonders what Max would say if she could see them all now. If she could see the way Lucas has dedicated himself to her completely, how Dustin has changed after the death of Eddie, how Mike and El have finally broken up. He doesn’t know if she’ll be able to see anything at all. 

He knows Lucas is grateful when Will comes with him. He’d told him once that when it’s just him and Max, the silence can get too loud. He can stare at her too long, can note the way her sleeping body has changed after all this time, can notice the way her cheeks have hollowed and her skin has paled. 

One day, Will and Lucas stay long into the night. They’ve grown weary under the constant beeping of monitors, the eerie drone of machines, eyes drooping closed and shoulders slumping in their chairs. Will is fighting to keep his eyes open when he suddenly hears sniffling coming from the chair next to him. He looks over to Lucas to see tears streaming silently down his cheeks. 

“Lucas?” he says, reaching out. He can’t remember the last time he’s seen Lucas cry. 

Lucas wipes his sleeve across his face. “Sorry,” he whispered. “Just… long night.” 

Will nods. He knows there is nothing he could say that would ease this pain, one that Will could not possibly understand. Will may have lost his friends for a while, when he’d moved across the country, but at least he knew they were safe. The pain he felt in between phone calls was simply incomparable to this. 

“You know,” Will starts, eyes on the IV in Max’s arm. “Once, the summer before we moved, Max tried to teach me to skateboard.” 

Lucas looks up. “Really?” 

It was one of the very few times he and Max had been alone together. They’d rode home together from Mike’s house one day after hours of sweating in the basement. With their houses on the opposite side of town, they’d spent most of the ride home in silence, Will pedaling slowly as Max skateboarded alongside him. When they reached the spot that Will would normally deviate home, Max had stopped him. “Do you want to hang out?” she asked, shrugging at him like it was nothing. Will had nodded, surprised that she’d offered. They hardly talked to one another in a group setting, and he was beyond nervous they would have nothing to say. But Max had just taken off on her skateboard, and so Will had followed her without a word. 

There was no one at Max’s house when they got there, but she did not invite him inside. She had gone in for a moment, coming back outside with two bright red popsicles in hand, handing one over to Will without a word and sitting next to him on the curb.

“You know,” Max said, peeling the wrapper off. “I used to be scared of you.”

Will glanced at her. “Of me?” 

Max nodded. “With the Zombie Boy stuff. Sorry— I know it’s shitty.” 

Something about Max’s bluntness alleviated the pain that normally would have come with that statement. “It’s fine,” he’d said, and was surprised to find it was true. But maybe only because she was brave enough to admit it to him. 

“It was before I knew the truth,” she clarified. “Back when all I’d heard were rumors. That you’d been taken, or something. Kidnapped.” 

Will nodded slowly, watching a drop of red splatter onto the concrete, popsicle melting in the summer heat. 

“Um, your dad—” Max said abruptly, then cringed. “They said your dad did it.” 

Will, unsure what to say in response, just licked his popsicle. 

“It—” Max closed her eyes. “I only bring it up because, well, my brother…”

Will looked at her then, her lips stained red from the popsicle. And Will saw that fear in her eyes, too, thinking back to when Mike had described how Max had protected them from Billy the year before, while Will was on his way to Hopper’s cabin to be basically cooked alive. Mike had said she hadn’t hesitated to stop him from hurting Steve or any of the rest of them, jamming a needle in his neck and swinging a baseball bat adorned with nails. He’d thought she’d sounded like the coolest person alive. 

“He…” Max tried again, looking at Will in a way that made his chest ache. 

He couldn’t exactly say that he’s jealous of the way Max could stand up to her brother in a way he never could stand up to his dad. So he nodded instead, meeting her eyes and hoping she would pick up on the message he desperately tried to convey. 

She had. She sighed in relief at Will’s display of understanding, smiling at him sadly. “We’re not so different from each other, Byers,” she said, nudging his knee. Then: “Hey, have you ever tried to skateboard?” 

Now, in Max’s hospital room, Will does not tell him everything. Only the parts that he knows Will make Lucas smile. “I fell on my ass, like, a hundred times. I was sore and had bruises for like a week after.” 

Will is relieved to see Lucas laugh. “She’s tried teaching me before, too,” he says, smiling down at her. “It always went pretty much the same way. She would laugh at me every time.”

“Same,” Will tells him, recalling the way Max had doubled over each time his feet would slip out from under him. But, each time, she helped him get back up.

Lucas looks over at him. He grabs his shoulder, squeezing it briefly before he drops it again. “Thanks for always coming with me, Will.” And, before Will can even smile at him, he asks, “What’s going on with you and Mike?” 

Will flinches. “What?” 

“Don’t play dumb,” Lucas responds automatically, his narrowed eyes still wet. “I’m not an idiot. I see that you guys are fighting, or whatever it is you two are doing.” 

“We’re not fighting,” Will grumbles, sinking lower in his seat. 

“Well, you sure as shit aren’t talking, either. It’s freaking Dustin and I out.” 

Will frowns, worrying at his bottom lip, wondering how much he can reveal. It would be nice to confide in someone. Maybe he just doesn’t have to say everything. 

“I think… there was a weird moment between us,” Will tries, then immediately stops when he considers how that can be interpreted as a moment moment. Which, it was a moment moment (he’s pretty sure), but he can’t exactly explain that to Lucas. “I mean, we kind of had a disagreement,” he tries again, already feeling a twinge of guilt for lying, “and I think we just don’t know how to handle it.” 

“Well, what was the disagreement? Maybe I can help.” 

“It’s… I can’t really say,” Will says. “It’s not that important, just— there’s something hanging over us, I guess. We just don’t know how to address it.”

“Okay,” Lucas says slowly. His brows are furrowed as he stares at the wall in front of him, thinking. “Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s Mike’s fault.” He smiles when Will laughs. “Just please address it. There’s already so much shit going on; I cannot deal with you guys being weird right now.” 

Will smiles wearily. Lucas may not know the extent of the situation, not at all, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong. It’s already been two weeks since the moment moment occurred, and Will is so tired of recounting the incident in his head over and over, wondering if he’s gone insane. 

“Fine. I’ll address it,” he relents. He can’t hold back his smile when Lucas grins at him. Lucas’ smile doesn’t fade as he reaches back for the book he’d been reading to Max, flipping it open to the dog-eared page he’d left off at. 

Will listens to Lucas’ exuberant storytelling until he is nearly asleep.

Tomorrow, he will address it. Tonight, he just lets himself listen. 

Will does not address it. 

Days pass without any real conversation with Mike. They’ll speak to one another on occasion, but it’s all clipped and short. Guarded. This morning, they’d eaten breakfast side by side, only speaking when Mike had asked Will to pass him the maple syrup.

At lunch, Will rushes to the table, sliding in his seat next to Lucas. Mike and Dustin sit on the opposite side, and Will notes the way Mike’s eyes cast downward when he approaches. 

Will shakes it off. He pulls out his sketchbook and says to Lucas, “I finished the drawing,” he says. 

Lucas’ eyes light up. “Let me see!”

Will proudly opens to the page where Max’s zoomer is mid-sprint, a large Balor lurking behind her, flaming tail the same color as Max’s fiery hair. The zoomer may be running away, but the subtle grin on her face implies that she is entirely in control. “It’s a little rough,” he warns.

“Holy shit,” Lucas exclaims. “This is so cool!” 

“Can I see?” Dustin asks, his hands already greedily reaching across the table to snatch it from Lucas’ hands. 

Lucas is in the midst of yanking it out of Dustin’s grasp when Mike loudly asks, “What drawing?” 

They all pause to look at Mike near-glaring at Will. The harshness in Mike’s voice startled all three of them, but Mike does not seem to mind their reaction. He just stares directly at Will, clearly awaiting an answer. 

“Of Max’s character,” Will says slowly. “I started it at the hospital earlier this week.” 

Mike continues staring, his dark eyebrows straight, a small crease in the space between them. “Oh,” he mumbles.

Will just barely catches the confused look Lucas and Dustin share before they continue their ridiculous argument over who gets to hold the drawing Will made specifically for Lucas. Throughout lunch, Will points out the smaller details of the drawing as Lucas and Dustin fuss over how good it turned out. The entire time, Will feels Mike’s dark gaze on him, and he cannot understand why he feels so uncomfortable beneath it. He also can’t understand why Mike is watching him like he’s done something wrong. 

As soon as the lunch bell rings, Will is on his feet. He stomps down the school hallway, frowning at Mike’s audacity to just stare at him, as if he—

A firm grasp on his wrist pulls him harshly, and before Will knows it he’s been tugged into a dark room. At first, he thinks this must be Andy or one of his friends screwing with him, but his eyes quickly adjust to the darkness. Mike’s deep brown eyes are glaring at Will through the shadows, lips pressed together tightly. 

“What are you doing?” Will asks, annoyance evident as he glances around the room. They’re in the room designated for Hawkins High AV Club, Will realizes. 

“I needed to talk to you,” Mike explains. 

“You couldn’t have talked to me at home?” Will is grateful Mike can’t see his face flush after the accidental use of the word home. 

Mike shakes his head. “No.”

Will waits for him to say something else. When he doesn’t, Will says, “Well, what is it?” 

Mike sighs, frustrated. “You’re avoiding me.” 

“I’m avoiding you?” Will repeats, disbelief marring the words on his tongue. 

“Yes. You are.” 

“You’re avoiding me, too.” 

“No, I’m not.” 

“Mike,” Will breathes reproachfully. 

“Whatever,” Mike says. “Fine. It doesn’t matter. Maybe I am.”

Mike goes quiet. Will, unsure what to say, waits. He listens as students shuffle around in the hallway until the sound fades, classroom doors swinging closed.

“I’m going to be late for class,” Will tries. 

“I just— let me say something first?” Mike’s voice sounds defeated. Will can just barely see the way he trembles through the shadows. 

Will hesitates before he nods. 

“Okay,” Mike breathes out, but does not continue. 

Will waits again. “What did you want to say?” 

“I don’t really know,” Mike admits. 

Exasperation rises. He sighs at Mike, moving to brush past him. “I have to get to class, Mike.”

“Wait.” Mike stops him by wrapping a hand around Will’s forearm. Will freezes, looking back over his shoulder at the boy. His breath is coming out shakily. “I’m sorry,’ he finally manages. 

“For what?” Will asks, though he’s sure he knows. 

Mike hesitates. “The other night. I didn’t mean to make things weird. I— I just wanted—” He stops. When Will turns fully around, Mike drops his hold on his arm. 

Will’s voice comes out small. “Wanted what?” 

Mike opens his mouth. Closes it. “I don’t know,” he says again. 

Will stares at him, words escaping him as he watches Mike’s mind move at a mile a minute. 

Mike tries again. “I hate,” he starts, “when you don’t talk to me.” 

“You haven’t been talking to me, either—” 

“I know.” Mike takes a step forward. “But, I mean, I hate it. It reminds me of California, all that time we spent not talking. It makes me feel sick. And I feel sick when I see how you and Lucas are—”

“Me and Lucas?” Will echoes, now extremely confused. 

“When you ignore me, or when I ignore you,” Mike continues, leaving Will’s confusion stuck in the same place it formed. “It— it drives me insane. It sucks.”

Will just shakes his head slightly, disbelieving. Speaking is a pipe dream. He watches the way Mike’s eyes illuminate in the barely-there light. He’s wringing his hands, flexing them and then closing them into fists, like he’s unsure how to hold himself. 

“I just,” he persists, “don’t want us to ignore each other anymore.” 

Will nods. “Okay,” he breathes, confounded. “Okay, then we won’t.” 

“Okay,” Mike repeats, barely a whisper. He sounds relieved, but Will catches how he cringes. Like this hadn’t gone quite the way he’d expected. 

Will doesn’t know what Mike had expected. He can’t imagine a single instance where this barely-a-conversation went smoothly. 

“Okay,” Will whispers again, just as the final warning bell rings. 

Mike flinches. He looks at Will once more, desperately, before he slips out of the AV room, leaving Will behind. 

That night, Will cannot sleep. He tosses and turns on his flimsy mattress before he finally yanks the blankets off completely. He stares at the staircase leading out of the basement, considers it, then turns around. He paces back and forth, a flickering candle the only source of light. 

Will has seen a lot in his lifetime. He’s only sixteen, and he’s faced an alternate dimension, a possession, a countless horde of monsters. This, he can survive. 

He’s not sure he’ll survive Mike Wheeler. 

Will thinks back to all the moments between them in the past months, all the instances that made him pause. The brush of knees, the doodled hearts, the hand-holds, the almost-whatevers they shared (calling it what he wants to, an almost-kiss, doesn’t feel quite right). They’re learning how to be friends again, Will knows that. He knows that’s what this all must be, why sometimes Mike will flush under his gaze or stumble over his words when Will is near. Knows that he only acts so strange because he still, after all this time, doesn’t know how to exist with Will anymore. 

Will pauses at the creaking sound of door hinges, followed by cautious steps at the top of the stairs. He looks up to see Mike appear on the steps. His hair is messy, like he, too, had just rolled out of bed. His sweater is tucked over his palms, his fingers curled into fists at his side. 

He looks up when he reaches the lower steps, shocked to see Will is already up and watching him. “Hey,” he says. He slows to a stop on the last step. 

Will smiles, nervous. “Hi.”

Mike glances around the room, searching. “Can’t sleep?”

Will shakes his head. He follows Mike’s gaze to the couch behind him. “Jonathan’s not here. He snuck up to Nancy’s room a few hours ago.”

Mike grimaces, his nose scrunching. “Gross.”

“Yeah,” Will agrees. 

Mike places his hand on the railing of the staircase. Looks at the ceiling. Shifts his weight from one foot to the other. 

“Did you… need something?” Will asks, watching the way Mike flinches a little when he speaks. 

Mike bites the inside of his cheek, his lips pursed. The shadow of his eyelashes stretch across his cheeks, darkening his eyes. 

“No.” 

Will feels his eyebrows raise. “No?”

Mike shakes his head. “I just— wanted to see you.”

“Oh,” Will responds dumbly. He can’t decide whether or not that statement is normal, whether Mike would wander downstairs at midnight simply because he wanted to see Dustin or Lucas. 

Will wonders if there’s something he should say, if there’s some response he can give that will— well, that will do what? 

“I’ve been,” Mike starts, then stops. He stares at his own hand on the railing, fingers tracing the wood. “I’ve been feeling kind of weird.”

“Are you sick?”

“No.” Mike shakes his head quickly. “No, no. Maybe weird isn’t the right word. I think I’m feeling— crazy?”

Will exhales. “Crazy?” 

Mike nods, eyes suddenly on the couch again. Will knows he’s thinking the same thing, of that conversation they shared three years ago.

“I guess I was wondering…” Mike takes a slow stride off the final step. He walks closer to Will. “If you’ve been feeling crazy, too.”

Will’s breath catches when Mike is suddenly there, hardly a foot of space between them. “I always do,” he responds honestly, though he certainly doesn’t explain that there’s a certain something or someone that’s amplifying it now. 

“Yeah,” Mike breathes. Then, again: “Yeah.”

Will looks up at him, sees the way the candlelight flickers in his eyes now that he’s so close. Mike is watching him , too, a resigned look on his face. Like he’s decided something already, as if there’s some matter he’s accepted. 

And then Mike is moving before him, lifting his hands upward and placing them on either side of Will’s face. Will stands frozen as Mike’s thumb swipes over his cheekbone. 

Mike sighs, “I’m sorry.”

And then he kisses him. 

Of all the time Will has spent dreaming of this moment, it had never gone like this. It hadn’t begun with the clumsy meeting of their mouths, with Will so stunned that his hands remained glued to his sides. It hadn’t been this prolonged stillness, Will almost unresponsive altogether, unsure where to place his hands or how to move his lips. And it hadn’t ended so quickly, Mike slowly drawing back in uncertainty, their lips catching in that backwards drag. 

Chests rise and fall rapidly. Wide eyes stare at each other in unadulterated terror, deep brown meeting hazel. When Mike starts to pull his hands away, Will grabs them without thinking, pinning them in place. Will wraps his hand around Mike’s wrists, sharp bone protruding through his sweater. He won’t let it end like this. Not before he does the things he’s wanted to for years. He has to at least try.

Will leans forward, raising on his toes to catch Mike’s lips with his own. Mike, shocked, takes a small step backward, but he does not let their lips detach for even a second. 

Will is not sure what he’s doing— not at all. He doesn’t know if the way he slots his lips against Mike’s is correct, doesn’t know if he should be dropping his hands to his waist and pulling their bodies together. Doesn’t know if he responds correctly to the slide of Mike’s tongue. 

But Mike’s hands are greedily gripping at his face, his fingertips pressing so hard that Will would not be shocked if he left bruises. It’s bordering on painful, the way Mike is pulling him impossibly closer as if he might slip away. 

When Will’s hand grazes up the length of Mike’s back, coming to tug at the hair at the nape of Mike’s neck, Mike gasps into his mouth, and— oh. 

The kiss turns impossibly desperate, and Mike is kissing him again and again and again until breath escapes him entirely. It feels like someone has lit a stick of dynamite in Will’s stomach, like electricity crackles in the space where warm skin meets skin. 

Will begins to feel lightheaded, and when he pulls away, Mike tries to chase his lips. But Will lowers himself off the tips of his toes, tilts his head downward to catch his breath. Mike is panting against his forehead, as if he, too, hadn’t remembered that physical demand of breathing. 

Mike’s hands slide to either side of Will’s neck, wrists resting on his shoulders. He seems to deflate a bit, and Will’s eyes flicker upward, only to be met with Mike’s disbelieving smile. He grins even wider when Will returns it, an incredulous breath escaping. 

Mike’s eyes seem to twinkle under the candlelight, shining as he curls his fingers into Will’s hair, tucking it behind his ear. “Goodnight, Will,” he says, untangling himself from him and turning, hurrying up the stairs without another word. 

The basement door opens and closes. “Goodnight,” Will whispers. 

november, 1987

Fluorescent hospital lights illuminate the two girls, featherlight touches and giggles against smiling lips. Hands grazing skin, kissing grins off one another. 

The can of Coca-Cola slips from Will’s fingertips, landing on the floor with a clang and a spray of soda in the doorway. He runs before Robin or Vickie can see him, rounding corner after corner before finally ducking into an empty bathroom stall. 

He stares at the solid gray of the door. Had they seen him? Did they recognize him? He tries to slow his rapid breaths, dizzy with the revelation that they had been kissing. Together. Two girls. 

Will has always felt smaller than his love. He has always hidden within himself, never let anyone see more than he allowed. He keeps all that darkness to himself, feels security in knowing the truth is locked away inside him. This thing has always made him feel small, made him less than the others, but— Robin is not small.

Robin takes up space. She speaks in large groups of people, she has friends, she broadcasts her radio across all of Hawkins, she talks endlessly. She lets herself be loud, lets herself be heard. Lets herself be seen. And she kisses girls. 

Will thinks to a few nights ago, the way Mike had touched him and kissed him in the basement. Thinks of how only this morning, he’d knocked their knees against one another underneath the dining table. Thinks of his steady, grounding grip on his shoulder when Will’s head had been spinning. Thinks of all the subtle touching, the long list of moment moments that have accumulated over the years. The musings of Mike Wheeler and all the amazing things he thinks about Will. 

About him. 

Holy shit.