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His house is ruined. Thick air fills Mike’s lungs when he steps inside his home. The living room looks as fine as it can be after the demogorgon's attack. Then Mike sees the kitchen. Dried, rust- brown blood on the floor. Its strong smell makes him nauseous. Mike tries to stop himself from imagining his mom’s torn body on the floor. He fails miserably.
Breathe. In. Out. Mike swallows, squeezing his eyes shut, and tries to calm down. He doesn’t throw up, which, in his opinion, is something. He spends the moment just existing in his home, learning to stand, walk, and face what happened here without breaking down in the first minute.
He heads for the stairs to the second floor. The wood creaks under his feet. It didn't before. A chill emanates from the web of cracks in the wall. Several steps are broken, and Mike has to skip over them. The hallway looks less scary than the kitchen: no visible blood, no sickening smell. The door to Holly's room is open, the bathroom door is smashed, and the door to Mike's room is torn off its hinges. If he listens closely, he can hear Holly's ghostly scream. Holly isn't here; she’s in Upside Down, fighting for her life. But walls remember. They scream at Mike, in a terrified voice that sounds a lot like his sister. His mom.
He heads to Holly's room first. Mike sees a damaged bookcase, cracked in the middle. Was it a demo or Holly’s little body? There are traces of blood on one of the shelves, and Mike prays it's not his sister's. Her comics are scattered across the floor, some with torn pages. Mike picks one up, and he can almost see Holly lying on her bed reading. Then she would go down to Will in the basement and chatter to him about the heroine: how cool she is and how she saves everyone. Together, they'd draw Holly as the heroine, and she'd rush to show their moms. Joyce and Karen would praise her. Mike wishes she'd show him her drawings more often.
Mike walks over to Holly's desk. Pens, pencils, notebooks, and several tangled beaded bracelets lie on the surface. Mike puts the comics on the table. His eyes feel too wet. Mike starts picking up the scattered items from the floor and carefully placing them on the table. It calms him down somehow. One day (very, very soon), Holly will come back, and the house will be repaired, and their mom will keep everything neat and tidy. Just like before.
After cleaning up the mess on the table, Mike picks up the blue beaded bracelet and puts it on. It is too small for him and squeezes his wrist, but Mike doesn't care. He misses his sister. Guilt weighs heavily on his shoulders. He couldn't save her. The bracelet is a reminder of Holly. The whole room is one big reminder of Holly. Where is she? How is she?
Mike scans the room. He wishes he could go back in time and take Holly with him. Where is it safe now? Vecna would find her anywhere; nowhere in Hawkins offers security. Now she’s all alone, terrified, cold, and hungry. Does she think about their home and their family the same way Mike does? Does she remember the time when Will went missing? Mike’s head hurts. He leaves before he starts punching the walls.
Walking down the hallway, Mike turns back to his room. It's chaotic here too, identical to the rest of the house. But his room feels almost untouched. Mike's mess from that day is just as he left it. Unfinished homework on the table, pencils and pens scattered around, just like Holly's. Mike is sure that if he opens the drawer, he will see his notes for D&D. If he looks under the bed, he will see a stack of letters for Will. His room is stuck in time, holding the life Mike had two days ago.
Everything is the same, except for the wood from the destroyed closet on the floor. Mike would be glad to get changed. He reaches for the sweater and jeans on the floor, shaking off the dust, dirt and wood chips, careful not to get a splinter.
He takes off his dirty clothes, throws them on a chair by the table, and quickly changes. He needs a shower. A hot shower. At least nine hours of sleep wouldn't hurt either. Mike sighs. He won't be getting any of that anytime soon. He walks over to the chair and begins to neatly fold his dirty clothes. It doesn't make sense, he knows. What's the point of folding clothes in a half-destroyed house? Mike didn't even fold his clothes before!
From where he stands in the room, Mike can see the same pile of letters peeking out from under his bed. Maybe he should give them to Will. Finally put an end to that argument in California: show Will that he wrote, that he cared. Even though they're friends now, best friends, Mike sometimes feels something strange, a squeezing under his ribs, like he felt in Lenora.
Maybe he shouldn't give them to Will. There was a reason Mike hadn't sent them in the first place. He had sent hundreds of letters to El, and not a single one to Will. El is his girlfriend. Will is his friend, his best friend. Mike repeated this thought over and over, trying to prove himself something. It didn't work. What was the point of all this? He kept reassuring himself of something he didn't know. He refused to know if Mike was even a little bit honest with himself.
His life wasn't a D&D campaign, after all. Real Mike isn't Mike the Brave. If he were brave, he would have broken up with El long ago. Their relationship has been dead and unreal for a long time. It lasts only because El doesn't have time, and Mike doesn't have the courage.
The relationship with El is safe. It's a shield for the not-so-brave Mike. The thought of El makes Mike stop every time he looks at Will for too long. Mike knows what to call this strange feeling. He would rather die than say it out loud.
Mike isn't like that.
He isn't like that.
Even if he is, Mike has a choice. That's what people on the radio say, people in Hawkins say, Mike, himself says. Staying in a relationship with El is a choice. Looking at Will is a choice. Looking away from him is also a choice.
Mike can look at Will if he goes back to his girlfriend afterwards. He can kiss her if he wants to look at Will again. At least that's how it used to work. Now Mike can't kiss El. Every time he closes his eyes and feels her lips on his, he sees Will instead of the red darkness under his eyelids. He wants to feel the warmth of his lips against his.
Desire is not a choice. Desire is just desire. Desire is just a thought that, like a parasite, takes over his brain. Kissing Will is a choice. Mike doesn't make it. He chooses not to kiss his girlfriend, so he won't want to kiss Will.
El is in the Upside Down, saving his sister. Mike can't help but be grateful to her. Maybe he'll kiss her when she comes back. El is in the Upside Down, and Mike has already made some bad choices. She'll come back, she'll definitely come back with Holly and the rest. Then everything will fall into place. Mike will get back on the right track. Mike will start kissing her again. He'll hold on to her until she pushes him away.
Mike's gaze rises from the letters under the bed to the posters above it. Half of them are missing from the walls, torn and lying on the floor. His (rightfully stolen) “one way” road sign has been turned upside down, now pointing to the bed instead of the closet. The closet is completely destroyed. What happened here? His entire room is almost intact, except for the closet, which is destroyed. What was so valuable in Mike's closet that the demogorgon destroyed only it?
Mike's clothes were hardly of any value to Vecna. Perhaps it was just a coincidence. For some reason, Mike remembers Lucas's words about how he no longer believes in them. Mike's most valuable belonging was kept in that closet. Not that it was important to the demogorgon or Vecna, but it was important to Mike.
Mike rushes to the remains of the destroyed closet. Raking through the wood and carefully gathering the glass, he searches for a familiar painting. There it is. The painting. Mike reaches for it, but pulls his hand back when he feels a sharp pain in his finger. Blood slowly begins to ooze from a small cut. Mike curses under his breath, brings his finger to his mouth, trying to ease the pain and stop the bleeding.
After a few minutes, Mike blissfully forgets about his finger. He has bigger problems. The painting is unfolded on the table. Mike looks at it, and the torn canvas looks back at him. A small tear in the canvas, if Mike stops being dramatic. The tear starts at the bottom and doesn't even reach the middle of the painting. It goes through the shield, tears the heart on the shield in half, and stops a millimetre from Mike's head. The heart on the shield must be somehow connected to Mike's real heart. That's the only reason he can find to explain the nagging pain under his ribs.
One random day, Mike realised that the painting wasn't from El. As if it wasn't so stupidly obvious from the beginning. El knows nothing about D&D, and Mike didn't try to teach her. Mike didn't try to do many things he should've done if he were a good boyfriend.
Being El's boyfriend is a choice. Being a good boyfriend is something you either know how to do or you don't. Mike doesn't know how. El doesn't know about Mike the Brave, because Mike has never been brave with her.
Mike doesn't look away from the damaged heart. It's as torn apart as Mike's whole life is right now. He needs to take the painting to Will. He can't glue Mike's life back together, but he could glue the painting back together. Will's hands are much more careful, more gentle and softer with things than his.
Will has a softness in him. It shows in the look in his eyes, the tilt of his head, and the tone of his voice. His softness has been with him since early childhood, and it remained when he stopped being a skinny teenager. It disappeared for a second when Will killed those demogorgons, but as soon as he returned, the softness returned with him. Mike lacks this softness.
“Are you hurt? You have blood on your face,” was the first thing Will said to Mike, his voice weak from screaming and pain. Making the right choice gets harder with each passing day, but at that moment, it was the hardest thing to do.
Will glowed with a golden light, and Mike wasn't sure if it was real or just in his eyes. The only glow he had ever seen from El was the flash of electricity when she used her powers. But Will glowed with gold. And Mike had a choice. Gold was beyond his means.
Joyce drove him and Will to the house. They went inside first, casting anxious glances at him, while Mike remained outside with a bitter taste in his mouth. It took him ten minutes to open the front door. Another ten to cross the doorstep.
Mike carefully picks up the painting and goes to the basement. He doesn't know where Will is, but he has a feeling he's there. Mike is right. The basement door opens with a terrible creak. Will is sitting on the sofa with a notebook on his lap and a pencil in his hand. There are some paints on the table next to the sofa. No brushes.
“What are you doing?” Mike asks, as if the movement of the pencil on the paper in Will’s hand doesn’t speak for itself.
“Drawing,” Will says, a small smile tugging at his lips. His hair falls over his face, and he brushes it back with the back of his hand. Mike notices paint on Will’s finger: blue paint on his thumb, yellow like golden light on his index and middle fingers. Will is painting with his hands, not brushes. Mike reminds himself that he needs to make the right choice.
“I brought the painting—the one from the van, remember? It’s ripped, here at the bottom.” Mike offers it to Will, but as Will reaches out, Mike pulls it back.
“Your hands, Will. They’re covered in paint. You’ll get it dirty,” Mike’s gaze falls on the painting. For a second, he wonders if his words sounded too rude. When he looks up, Will is looking at him with the same softness. Mike exhales a tension he didn’t even realise he was holding.
“Okay,” Will laughs. He begins to put the paint cans away. “Put them on the table.“ Will looks at the painting, and Mike observes him.
“Mike, what do you want me to do with it? Tape it up?” Will slowly reaches out, stopping millimetres from the canvas so as not to touch the painting with his dirty fingers.
“That's why I came, because I don't know what to do with it!” Mike explains. Then he adds more quietly, “So… Can you do something?”
“I don’t think El will mind if the painting gets a little torn up after the demogorgon attack,” Will jokes.
“What does El have to do with it?” Mike asks in genuine surprise.
“It’s her gift,” Will shrugs innocently.
“Oh, cut the shit,” Mike snorts. “El won’t name my character in D&D, and you want me to believe the painting is from her?”
Mike notices Will's Adam's apple move as he nervously swallows. Will opens his mouth to respond, but Mike interrupts him:
“I'm glad it's from you. It makes the painting more special.”
“Isn't it special from El?”
Mike needs El to come back and lead him down the right path. But she's not here, she's in the Upside Down, and Mike is alone with his thoughts. Alone with Will.
“No, it’s not,” Mike says, looking Will in the eye. It feels like the first truly right choice in his life. Will smiles at him. Don’t talk about El anymore. Don’t mention her name.
“Want to see what I’m drawing?” Will leans over and points to the space on the couch next to him.
Mike silently sits down. Will turns his notebook so he can see. On the sheet of paper is a pencil drawing of Mike's face. The expression on his face when Will saved him from the demogorgon. His mouth half open in surprise, his eyes wide, his eyebrows raised.
Almost the entire portrait is a pencil sketch. Will only add yellow paint to the lightest areas and blue to the darkest. The dot of yellow in the iris of the drawn Mike is a reflection of the golden glow from the real Will. Will, who killed three demogorgons and still looked at Mike with softness, remembered the lines of his face.
Mike can't take his eyes off the drawing. If that's how he looks in Will's eyes, in the eyes of others, he's doomed.
“You draw me too handsome,” Mike jokes, with a hidden note of nervousness in his voice.
“That’s how you look to me,” Will whispers. His gaze shifts from the notebook to Mike’s face.
Mike is doomed, no matter his choice. He is doomed in the eyes of others if he chooses Will. He is doomed in his own eyes if he does not choose Will. At that moment, Mike realises that there are no right or wrong choices. There is no point in kissing El if he ends up going back to Will. Nothing Mike does makes any sense. He is doomed either way.
He looks back at Will. Their eyes meet, and the air disappears from Mike's lungs.
Mike sees Will's lips move. Mike hears Will say his name. To his ears, the sound is muffled, as if coming from underwater. Mike closes the distance between them. Mike kisses Will.
The kiss is slow and uncertain at first, but Mike has never felt anything better. A stunning warmth in his stomach, slowly spreading from his lower body to his head. His heart pounding in his chest, and the flush on his cheeks and the tips of his ears.
Will cups his face in his hands. Mike can feel the wetness of paint on Will's fingers. After all the conversations he's overheard about hell, Mike finds himself in heaven. He doesn't care about the hell that awaits him after death if he gets to live in heaven right now. Every time Mike kissed El and tried to erase Will's image from his mind, it could never compare to what Mike feels now.
Nothing compares to Will.
Mike can't remember who pulled away first. Mike can't remember anything except Will's eyes and his red, kiss-swollen lips. Will's palms burn against Mike's face. One hand begins to move down his face, pulling a line of paint behind it. Will watches his movements closely, his eyes focused only on Mike. Mike feels Will's thumb on his lower lip. He runs his tongue over it, catching the taste of salty skin. Will holds his breath.
Mike doesn't move. He lets Will trace his face with his fingers, feeling the contrast between warm skin and cold paint. Will runs his fingers along his cheekbones, across his nose, down to the hollows of his cheeks. He leaves strokes of paint: blue for shadow and yellow for light. Just like in the drawing in the notebook lying forgotten behind Will. Everything would be much easier if Mike were nothing more than a drawing in Will’s notebook.
Mike glances out of the corner of his eye at the broken heart in the painting. His own heart is breaking, too. His eyes are too heavy and wet. Mike kisses Will again to drown out the unbearable pain inside.
Mike kisses Will harder, and Will kisses him deeper. Will's fingers tangle in Mike's hair, then pull just a little. Mike loses his mind. He tries to grab onto anything that can ground him. That something turns out to be Will's forearm: the feel of tense muscle under his shirt, the warmth of his skin.
It's too much. Too much to handle and enough to finally break him. The first tear rolls from his eye. Will stops at that very moment.
“What... Why are you... Mike, what happened?” Will asks with concern and that same damn softness in his voice. That’s the last straw for Mike. He throws himself into Will’s arms.
“I miss Holly. And I miss Mom. And I miss you,” Mike mumbles, unable to speak clearly.
“We’ll find her. Your mom will get better. Everything will be fine,” Will strokes his back, rubbing soothing circles with his hand. “And I'm right here.”
Mike tries to calm himself, but every attempt is futile. Everything Mike has hidden deep inside himself pours out like an overflowing glass. Every hidden thought, every forgotten desire. It spreads like a wildfire, burning under Mike's skin.
“We’ll figure something out with the painting, okay? We’ll fix it together,” Will continues to reassure him. “I didn’t know it was so important to you.”
“You’re important to me,” Mike replies immediately. Will presses a kiss to the top of his head.
Will doesn't let Mike slip out of his arms until the last tear dries in his eyes. Will stays with him, stroking his hair and whispering comforting words. Mike sits up straight on the sofa after he finally calms down.
“You're important to...”
“I know,” Mike interrupts. “You already said that. In the van.”
Will smiles at him. He doesn’t need to say anything, because Mike is grateful for everything Will does for him every day. Will saved his life, damn it! The same smile as Will’s spreads across Mike’s face.
“Your face. Um, the paint on your face. You had colorful tears,” Will says. A wet laugh escapes Mike's lips. Mike's heart skips a beat. He knows what this feeling is. How to call it. He doesn't know how to say it yet. He will find out one day. He just knows Will feels it too.
Will moves back to lie down on the sofa. Mike follows him, trying to fit in next to him. In the end, he's half lying on top of Will.
When this is all over, Mike will find the courage he needs. He'll sit down with El, and they'll end their ghost relationship. He'll listen to the upside-down “one way” sign and give the letters to Will. He will tell them both the truth: why he does not love El and why every letter to Will is signed with the most careful “love, Mike”. When it's all over, Mike will kiss Will again.
“You can sleep if you want,” Will says, his voice quiet and soft.
“But your mom... She's waiting for us.”
“She’ll let us sleep for a few hours, okay?” Will reassures him. “Sleep.”
Mike is tired. He is so damn tired. He closes his eyes, and a few minutes later, he can no longer feel Will’s heartbeat under his ear.
In his dream, Mike sees Holly, who has drawn Holly the Heroic, running to show him her drawing. He smells the dinner his mother has cooked. Nancy calls him to eat, and before going downstairs, Mike glances at the painting hanging proudly on the wall in his room.