Chapter Text
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. In the case of Michael Wheeler, however great his wealth was, the latter half of that fact becomes fiction. For the majority of his years, he desired anything but a wife. Comradery, wellbeing, and his sisters kept him perfectly content.
So, when he was dredged from the comfort of his city residence into the countryside village of Hawkinshire, finding even himself was the thing furthest from the center of his mind. He was simply there to support his friend’s endeavor for wife and, as he was finding out now, to indulge in frivolous evenings within the homes of strangers.
“Michael, you simply must attend with me!” Dustin insisted, flapping about his bedroom, fidgeting endlessly with his collar. “The Sinclair’s dance hall is humble, but I’ve heard that there has never been a more agreeable crowd. You may meet someone!”
With an unkindly exaggerated sigh, Michael’s eyes changed direction towards the fields outside of the Henderson country home. The sun was still shining but it too seemed tired and simply ready to go into the solace of evening.
“You know, I have grown rather worn out from parties,” Michael said, arms crossed. “They seem trivial after attending so many.”
The cotton and horsehair that filled Dustin’s mattress sank with his weight, sheets and duvet layers melting into the pressure point of his body, sighing along with him in frustration at Michael’s performative negativity.
“You’re ridiculous, do you know that? One evening, you can’t go seven moments without asking a lady for a dance. The next, you’re possessed by the spirit of an old hermit!”
Pupils hunting for his optic nerve, Michael, who had now been possessed by the spirit of an infant, decided to fuss a bit more.
“Heaven forbid a man have a personality!”
“I am led to believe you have more than one.”
“Oh, bug off,” Michael turned his sharp nose upward and kept quiet for a moment before giving in. “I’ll go.”
“Wonderful, now go change, you look like a disagreeable, proud peacock.”
Dustin’s hands found each other and embraced with a clean clap. Unfortunately, there was an argument still held captive inside of Michael and the guard of the argument’s cell was easily persuaded to release its contents.
“You know that I hate to address another man’s salary, but we are close enough for me to know that you make four or five thousand a year. Can you not simply find some woman on the streets? Why must you go out to parties like a strutting showgirl in order to find a wife?”
“Because, unlike you, I would prefer someone with a pleasantly healthy amount of light left in her eyes.”
Her eyes. Michael almost laughed, then remembered he had no reason besides the word her sounding amusing.
“What an odd preference.”
“It wouldn’t be odd to you if you could have the decency to figure out a preference. You say it gives you more options, I say it gives you less of a chance never to settle down.”
“And if I don’t want to settle down?”
“You are a specimen, Wheeler. If you’ve no reason to settle down, why not want to go to the ball to fool around as you so often insist on doing?”
Now, this was a question that, Michael would admit, vexed them both thoroughly. There wasn’t a particular reason that Michael had to not go, so he supposed it wouldn’t be the end of the world to attend another ball. After all, at its core, that was all it was.
Just another ball. Except for a single minute detail.
Details are important. Michael always believed that fact, as it is, as he knew, a fact. If he knew that the detail in question, mere miles away, was currently preparing for the very same event, he perhaps would have reconsidered giving in to his friend’s repeated invitations. He had heard rumors that this detail had lived in Hawkinshire still, but he knew that Dustin could easily find any village girl and sweep her off her feet, so he kept quiet. This detail had a name. A name that, beautiful as it was, plagued every one of Michael’s childhood memories.
William Byers was never supposed to be someone that a normal boy could love. Normal young gentlemen were supposed to stay away from people like him. However; Michael had no love for tradition. As he grew, that became clear in his actions. He was a man who had no desire for wife and the idea of settling was a great disturbance to his soul. Michael simply found joy in his lack of commitment.
Party after party made this clear, and as they arrived in the Sinclair’s crowded ballroom entryway, he was fully prepared for another evening of meaningless teases and banter with women he’ll never see again. He was slightly less prepared, however, for the attack of greetings from the many who had recognized him. He realized now, as Mrs. Sinclair kissed his cheeks, he really should have been ready for this.
The outside was a position in society that in his youth he was socially placed, and now, as he returned to that place where he was an outsider, that feeling returned like a ceaseless aching through every part of him. Searching for what had brought this emotion of detachment from this assembly, he attempted to nitpick the details that could have made him the outlier.
Everyone’s clothes were country garb to be sure, Michael observed, being accustomed to the flashy frills of the city crowd, but they sufficed as ball clothes nonetheless. But that was not the reason for his difference, as Dustin had him change into his own old country ballroom suit beforehand. Admittedly, it was tight, Michael was an angular boy and had been fed better now that he had found success in his life as a man. The tightness of the suit, however, was merely another root of his discomfort.
Why must I be left an observer in a crowd that is not supposed to be filled with strangers?
Before he was able to have a full homecoming existential crisis and go for a walk outside, he spotted from a side hall connected to the humble ballroom a familiar head of red hair next to the tall, dark-skinned man of the Sinclair household. Lucas’ large, brown eyes found Michael’s quickly and he pulled Maxine, his redheaded lady, with him.
“Wheeler! No longer a figure that could be lost in a mild breeze, I see.” Lucas teased, shaking Michael’s hand.
“Still with the nature of a fleck of dust, though, floating about the room the way you are. You seem unenthused by the crowd, Wheeler. Rather an insult to our judgement, if you must know.”
“Maxine…” Lucas tried his hardest to mask the awkwardity with his teeth, the ‘Sinclair signature smile’ as his mother always said, but there was no need. Michael knew how Maxine so enjoyed attempting to humiliate him, and it had become a comfort that came with their friendship.
“I have so missed the both of you,” Mike bowed slightly out of habit, knowing that neither of them would have bowed first having lived in the country for the majority of their lives. It was clear that the bow amused his friends, so to spare his mind from the memory of this moment, he decided to keep speaking to change it. “Especially you, Maxine, may your wits and fortune of insults never dwindle.”
“Let us all pay no attention to the owner of the home, I suppose.” Lucas grumbled, wrapping Maxine’s arm in his an inch closer. She laughed, but accepted the added affection.
“You assume my attention is not always yours. As per usual, you assume incorrectly.”
“I would never be so bold, and Mr. Wheeler here has never even heard of the word.”
Mike gasped through a wide smile. How dearly he missed this.. “Are you calling me a coward, Sinclair?”
“He would never be so bold.” Maxine mimicked Lucas. The three of them relished in the fact that they all still were able to speak without masks of those faces different from their own. They had all grown, but never truly apart.
“So, where do Dustin’s intentions lie this evening?” Lucas asked, vision jumping around the room in search of the missing member of the party.
“I believe that Mr. Henderson deserves the finest wife, which he shall surely find in our exclusive crowd,” Maxine commented, gesturing to a corner of the ballroom near the small orchestra where a handful of ladies stood speaking to Dustin. “It seems he’s found a very exclusive crowd.”
Lucas and Maxine’s eyes locked to Michael, waiting rather anxiously for his reaction to a specific young woman in the circle of ladies near their friend.
Ah. Jane.
Michael’s expression did not shift. It was difficult for him not to show emotion with his face, but his father had forced the idea of ‘being a rock’ into his young mind. A few select phrases frequently reminded him of what he had to be.
“You will never be a man if you find yourself with anything but the expression of a Greek statue.”
“A true man is solid.”
“Tears are the enemy of masculinity.”
The words that were spat from Theodore Wheeler’s cold lips were few, but when they were uttered, Michael always found himself shaken and rushing to his mother. She, despite being a woman, was his rock. More than Mr. Wheeler could understand or try to be himself. And if his mother was out, he would do what his father hated most of all and make his way down through the village into the comforting company of-
“William Byers!” Lucas exclaimed. Throat flying down into the depths of his stomach, or even hell, Michael slowly turned around.
Sure enough, it was exactly who Lucas had greeted yet not the same image that so frequently occupied Michael’s mind. Once again, with no mercy from heaven above, his muscle memory required that he bow. While his greetings with the others from Hawkinshire had been overall pleasant, this was one he had wholly hoped to avoid.
“Michael!” William greeted, no ill judgment, but there was clearly hesitation. Michael tried to display a manner of comfort, as if he wanted to speak with William. The mask of comfort was one he donned often, yet this was the first time he felt required to wear it in front of William. After all, he was once his most trusted source of comfort. Michael felt like a child again, while the man before him had physically grown a dozen times more mature-and handsome-since their last encounter.
“Speaking of exclusive crowds!” Lucas wrapped his arms around William. Michael felt something twist in his chest, but he unwrapped it with all the will that remained in his body when it came to his attention that Maxine had caught the second of his mildly perturbed expression before waltzing over to request a song to the orchestra. “Byers, my good man, how are you?”
“Not far from perfect, Lucas.” William’s eyes begged Michael’s to meet his as he found himself angled around Lucas to a point where the possibility of eye contact was very high. With the mask of comfort still fully equipped, the hazel temptations before him were ineffective. Disappointed, William ended the embrace and allowed Lucas to be reconnected to Maxine’s side.
“Excellent! I will leave you two to catch up now, as I’m sure there is much of that to be done. Besides, a good husband should never be found more than five metres from his wife!” he said with a proud grin as his shoes landed on every same tile that Maxine’s had moments ago, while leaving behind a sickening silence.
There was no way for Lucas to know that Michael and William were not, at present, on very positive terms. After calling off an engagement with William’s sister, who currently spoke with Dustin, Jane, Michael decided it would be best to leave Hawkinshire. It seemed the obvious choice. He didn’t wish to anger anyone further, so he ran. Michael found himself doing that quite often. Running. He knew it was all his fault. The engagement, the apologies to Jane and her parents, and what made him feel the deepest pit of guilt of all, the pitiless words he used the last time he spoke with William.
The marriage was never in the cards. Marriage at all was not a matter that Michael cared to discuss, yet in high society, which he was begrudgingly a part of now, it appeared all too much what was spoken of around card tables and across store counters. The circumstances under which he met Jane were rather unique. She was, quite literally, a wild girl whom he had stumbled across while searching for William, who had been taken.
Michael had always been drawn to difference, and so for the majority of his youth, he was intensely dedicated to her. The way she did not speak like others, eat like others, or dress like others gave Michael enough of that sense of being special that he needed to feel interesting.
Without her, he felt like he could pass from the earth and he would be a mere flicker in the fire of the universe. He was of the belief that she made him a man worth anything. It was only when Michael matured that he realized that this was a very flawed way to see another person and that it was not the foundation of a healthy marriage. And, thus, the wedding was called off.
It was not as simple as Michael explained it to his family and friends, though. There was more to the story than his own selfishness and the need to feel like he was more than a stroke of paint in a large painting called eternity. No, it was because even in times where life was full of flowers and what he thought to be love, there was always something that Michael knew was inside of him. Jane was a saint. But Michael was a sinner who worshipped someone else.
And as he now stood before his idol god, he had no words of prayer to offer. The chorus of the Munson orchestra filled the room, blasting to a point where Michael’s mask began to crack. William’s eyes, symphonies of his sins, and a crowd who flowed around him like a river encircling a boulder. Laughing quietly at the thought, he realized that he was finally a rock like his father always had so wished him to be.
Unfortunately, instead of a strong, solid, masculine rock, he was much closer to a stupid, silent, pathetic rock. This rock business, Michael concluded, had been a tad overstated.
“You do not appear as perfect as you claimed.” Michael commented a bit more coldly than intended.
“I said that I was near perfection. I’ll have you know, I am a happy man.”
There was something in the way William replied with the same tone as him that made Michael yearn to go back in time five minutes and start over. In another universe, perhaps, they too would have wrapped their arms around each other and exchanged greetings like old friends were supposed to.
But there was no embrace. No friendly greetings. And at the moment, no words. Nothing to fill three years of Michael’s restless mind wandering to William in the twilight hours and certainly nothing to prove that they were anything more than strangers attending the same ball.
It was comical, really. The way that Michael had spent so many nights thinking about this very moment where he would see William again. The way he would take him in his arms. The way he would tenderly speak to him and apologize for any heartbreak that he caused his sister and any disgrace he may have given his family.
“William, I understand how much damage I have caused. I beg for your forgiveness. I have been so deeply stupid. I only want to be your friend again. I pray to regain my status as your Michael. I want to be your Michael again.”
Now Michael was too proud to pray aloud, so he strayed from his god. William just stood and observed the sinner as he drifted off. It was so clearly aimless as the sheep that William once held a favorite as a shepherd wandered through the flock and became just another lost lamb.
And as one sinner made his way further from his light, another arrived at the threshold of a saint. A waterfall of lilac enrobed Jane and the color served to highlight the vibrant beauty that had captured Dustin’s eyes. The thing about this beauty in particular was the manner in which it was clearly hers. Due to the first years of her life as a runaway girl being spent in the wild, she was able to remain herself in a blended society. For so long, a beauty that had been perceived by others was not quite her own, and now that she had become a woman, it was clear that she was at the reins of her life now.
Dustin had always thought Jane to be pretty and endearing, however it was rare that he was given the attainable opportunity to speak with her for fear of frustrating Michael. At the moment, though, there was an opening in Jane’s circle of strangers for Dustin to fill, a place he was more than willing to take in spite of his nerves. Such anxieties sprouted from the fact that as children, they were often found in the same place but never side by side. He looked back at all their friendly gatherings and realized just how well he knew her despite how rare they communicated.
“Jane?” Dustin hesitated for a moment when his weight shifted forth on his feet. The control he had over his legs was perfectly fine, it was his heart that began to waltz up his throat and manage to get lodged in his windpipe. He simply couldn’t believe how beautiful she had grown in her time spent distant from Michael. At this rate, there was nothing Dustin could do but speak without appearing a fool. “Do you remember me?”
Being used to men approaching her conversations, up until now, Jane had managed to keep focus upon her own friends. But when Dustin inquired regarding her memory of him, she simply had to acknowledge the gentleman before her. Her eyes and mouth expanded as round as carriage wheels.
“Dustin?” she said, less of a genuine question and more so a shocked expression of joy. As little as she enjoyed having any regard for the opposite sex after the engagement to Michael, she could admit that there was a bit of light in her that dissolved the day that her friend left Hawkinshire. “You have grown. More teeth?”
“No, I think that would be rather disturbing if I’d decided to grow more. Goodness, that would be odd but in a sense whimsical. Imagine that for a moment, what would one possibly eat with a whole extra set? Where would they even rest inside the-“ Dustin started to raise his finger toward his instinctively widened mouth before noticing Jane’s now former partners of speech stepping away. While he was focused on their negative reactions, he had neglected to lay view on the pure intrigue in Jane’s eyes. The manner in which she genuinely perceived him and this hypothetical situation that the others had deemed too graphic for a ball.
“It could go in the throat,” Jane suggested. He finally felt the bravery to meet her curious, doe-like eyes. They held so much light. “I suppose it does not matter how many teeth you have. You are still a friend.”
“Of course,” despite his original intentions for the evening, there was a happiness and comfort in the word friend. Dustin was glad that they had so quickly grown from strangers to friends once more. As a thought entered his mind, he glanced over Jane’s shoulder, seeing that Michael was occupied with William. He smiled at both the fact that they were on speaking terms, despite neither of them appearing gay at all, and that Michael’s attentions were directed elsewhere. “Would you care to dance?”
“I never learned.”
Dustin was taken aback by the statement. She surely had been asked many times before, had she always turned them down with this same answer? Was it true or was it a falsehood designed to keep him from attempting to change their friendship status? No, she would not lie. If there was one thing Dustin knew about Jane is that she hated lies. Now did not seem like an appropriate moment to acknowledge Michael and ask if he had ever taught her to dance, so the next better path to take was their own. With no lack of nerves, he not only extended his hand but extended a friendly offer.
“How well can you trust an old friend?”
“With my life.” Jane spoke with all her confidence. She accepted his hand and proposal to dance at the near-precise moment when a new song began to fill the hall. As they both would come to realize, despite their individual lack of footwork skill, they matched each others’ wits and oddness. Difference was what brought them together.
“Do you know who first taught me to dance?” Dustin asked, stumbling for a moment over Jane’s dress. She hid a laugh before shaking her head, her brown curls rolling like cold waves with the motion. “Mrs. Nancy Byers.”
At this, the laugh within her refused to stay silent. After such a long time of having been devoid of true laughter, the mere image of a grown young woman trying to guide a much younger version of the coily-haired boy in front of her was more than amusing enough to be the cause for it.
“My sister Nancy Byers? Or perhaps another?”
“Your very own sister, there can be no other,” Dustin’s joy grew with hers. Making an old friend laugh was such an odd feeling, one similar to finding an old favorite trinket from childhood and taking a moment to admire and fiddle with it. “While on the matter of your family, how go the Hoppers and Byers?”
“Living rather than merely surviving for once, I believe.”
“Very happy to hear it! Your family of all kind individuals deserves such a feeling as peace.”
“I mean no offense, but with your arrival-amongst others-such peace can hardly last.”
“What might that mean?”
“My brother…Michael…” she murmured. “Squabbles.”
With a subtly pained expression, Jane’s attention had wandered to her brother who paced alone near the orchestra underneath a detailed painting of Mr. and Mrs. Sinclair. Very often she had noticed his draw to the group of individuals who formed the musical group.
The Munson orchestra was like unto many others, meaning it consisted of those who were not quite socially elevated. To the wealthy homes that had always been so, the orchestra refused to attend. If they were asked, of course. They had yet to be. Either way, they much preferred to service those who had once been like themselves. It was a way of celebrating the successes of those who represented difference.
Edward Munson, the violinist and band’s namesake was a mysterious character who those who were unfamiliar with saw as a worshipper of the devil. His performances were passionate but a touch aggressive for a general audience. Fortunately, anyone who was in attendance of a Sinclair ball was definitely not part of such an unreasonable general audience. More specifically, Michael, who lurked opposite of William, not without staring frustratedly and only discontinuing his gaze when it was returned.
They were not aware of the fact that they both had come to this place in the ballroom to observe the musicians and to avoid any further interaction. Whether that be with each other or with any of the other Hawkinshire residents who glided in pairs across the floor. It was occasionally within Michael’s mind the thought that if perhaps he or William were a woman, they could be dancing together just like the others. Instead, he was held back by his own stubbornness and the statue of discontentment that he had shaped with his own poor decisions.
As loud as the current concerto shook, the music failed to capture his mind. Michael was occupied with forming a list of anomalies in his line of sight to distract himself from William.
The near-silence of so many expensive, solid shoes compared to the music.
Jane and his traveling companion as dance partners.
William whispering to the flutist, Miss Buckley.
When he noted the last oddity, he was upset with himself for acknowledging William once again. But he was also curious as to what they might have been discussing. In his view, it seemed like whisperings between a handsome couple. However, they were not by any means handsome because, as Michael wanted to shout, William should be sharing whispers with him. This flutist could never have such an extensive knowledge of William that he did and it made him wish to walk up to her and snap her flute in half. After remembering the terms that he was currently on with William, though, he regained his senses. He did not own this stranger.
He began to reflect; why had he grown this odd sense of jealousy? And why had he so quickly regained the desire to pray again?