Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When the bell rings on the last day of school, it brings with it a sense of liberation and excitement, but also a weird sense of nostalgia.

Mike already misses his early schooldays at the start of the year. He misses the shared groans and the sound of dragging feet to classrooms, sunkissed faces and summer freckles. He misses the smell of new books in old libraries, the noise of a packed cafeteria filled with kids telling summer stories. He misses the tired looks in his teachers’ eyes when they walked in on a classroom full of hyper young adults, all already yearning for the next break.

School meant eating lunch with his friends every day. It meant doing group projects and betting on who would get the highest grades in Science. It meant doing homework at Will’s place, all six of them spread on the living room floor with snacks being passed between them. It meant Joyce cooking enough dinner for all of them just in case they wanted to stay. School meant having excuses to not be home a lot - after school activities, homework at Will’s, group projects at Dustin’s, sleepovers to cram for a test at Lucas’s. The less Mike had to hear his father’s emotionless, monotone voice the better.

But summer… Summer means the Byers family going on a roadtrip together. It means Max going on holiday with Lucas and his family. It means Jane spending the summer in Florida with Hopper and his parents and Dustin going to drama camp. Summer means Mike being all alone, with no friends and no excuse to stay away from home as much as he can.

That’s why, as soon as he figured out nobody would be around for the better part of summer break, Mike immediately signed up for a summer camp far away enough from Hawkins that he wouldn’t come across anyone he knew from school but not too far that his parents wouldn't allow him to go. It wasn’t the ideal solution, but it sure as hell was better than spending the entire summer alone.

Will comes around his place to help him pack. Mike could easily do it by himself, but he enjoys having Will to himself every once in a while. They’re constantly hanging out with the others and though Mike loves them all a ton, he still wants to hang out with Will alone too sometimes. He seems to get Mike like none of the others do - always has. In many ways, Mike feels like he and Will are kindred spirits.

There’s soft music playing in Mike’s room as they pack in comfortable silence. Will is really into soft rock, so Mike purchased several tapes of artists he thought Will might enjoy and plays them on the rare occasion Will hangs out at Mike’s alone. The music always puts a smile on Will’s face, and that’s honestly enough reason for Mike to spend his allowance on more mixtapes for him.

“I didn’t know you listened to The Magic Lanterns ,” Will says, breaking the silence. Anyone else would have startled Mike, but Will’s voice is almost as soft as the song currently playing.

“What?” Mike asks, confused.

Will nods to Mike’s tape player. “The song. It’s by The Magic Lanterns .”

“Oh.” Mike can feel a blush set high on his cheeks almost immediately. This feels a lot like being caught in the middle of a lie. “I don’t. Not really. I bought it because I thought you might like it.”

He looks at Will and expects an awkward fake smile or a frown, but instead, Will bites his lip and showcases a blush of his own.

“I do. Like it, I mean. Thank you, Mike.”

The atmosphere in Mike’s room seems to change to something more… intimate. Private. Both boys have stopped rummaging through Mike’s drawers to find appropriate clothes and are just looking at each other now. Despite Will finally having gotten his growth spurt when they were fourteen, he’s still shorter than Mike. If Mike were to move forward until he was touching Will, his lips would perfectly line up to Will’s forehead. Will would have to stand on his toes to kiss Mike on the lips.

Mike bans the thought out of his mind and forces himself to start taking out clothes again. It’s easier to talk when he isn’t gazing in Will’s green eyes.

“You can keep it if you want,” he says, voice trembling ever so slightly from all the secrets he’s locked behind his lips for so long. “Take it with you on your roadtrip.” He looks back to Will, who’s still standing there looking at Mike. “It’ll make you think of me on your epic adventure.” Mike’s tone is teasing, but his body still tenses with fear that Will will pick up on the underlying meaning of his words. Think about me. Miss me like I will miss you.

Fortunately for him, Will visibly relaxes and smiles.

“How epic of an adventure can a roadtrip with my mom be?” He says. “She probably won’t even let me drive.”

“Well, in her defense, you’re a really shitty driver,” Mike grins.

Will throws a shirt in Mike’s face.

“Shut up, Wheeler.”

“What, am I lying? You ran over Mrs. McGorry’s mailbox the first day you got your license.”

Will makes a face at the memory. Mike’s heart leaps in his throat at the sight of Will scrunching up his nose like that, but he ignores it.

“She made me pay for the damage.”

“And the emotional distress,” Mike adds.

“I smelled like hamburgers the entire summer because I had to find a job to pay her back,” Will says.

“So in conclusion, maybe you should leave the driving to Jonathan and your mom. I’d like to have a whole Will back at the end of the summer, not one that’s missing a limb or has brain damage.” Mike taps on Will’s forehead and Will slaps his hand away, but he can’t contain the chuckle escaping him. Then he sighs.

“I’m really gonna miss you, Mike.” His voice is back to being soft and gentle.

“I’m gonna miss you too. But I’m not dying or anything, you can send me letters or postcards. Call, maybe. I mean, if you find the time on your epic roadtrip to call a loser at summer camp.”

Wil nudges him in the ribs.

“Of course I will. And you better not find a new best friend at camp, or I’ll come over there myself and kick your ass.”

Mike wiggles his eyebrows. “Is that a promise or a threat?”

Will full on hits him this time. “You’re the worst, you know that?”

Mike laughs and throws his arm around Will’s shoulders. “Yeah, but you still like me, so I must be doing something right.”

Will rolls his eyes and steps out of Mike’s grip, but he doesn’t deny it. Which Mike takes as a win.

***

The entire gang gathers at Mike’s house the next Monday to wave him off. Mike gives all of them the address and number of camp New Horizons so they can write or call and quickly says goodbye, not wanting to drag it out any longer than necessary. He works through the line, starting with Jane and ending with Will. Once he’s at the end, Will holds up a paper bag.

“What’s this?” Mike asks as he takes it from him.

“It’s one of my sweaters,” Will explains. “You know, the one that’s too big on me and I stopped wearing because it made me look even shorter than I am?”

“You’re not short,” Mike replies automatically. He doesn’t want Will to feel self conscious about anything ever and he’s dying to tell him how cute and attractive he actually is, but of course he can’t do that.

Will rolls his eyes. “Not the point. The point is that I want you to have it, so that you will have something of mine to think about me too. You know, like the mixtape.”

Mike vaguely hears Jane snort from where she’s standing, and his shoulders tense. She’s the only one who explicitly knows about Mike’s feelings for Will - though the others can probably guess by this point since it’s becoming harder and harder to keep his interactions with Will purely platonic - and Will giving Mike his sweater to wear doesn’t really scream Big Ol’ Heterosexual . Mike is sure she’ll insist on talking to him about the gesture when he comes home from camp, but for now he’s glad he doesn’t have to face her knowing eyes yet.

“Michael, we have to go now if you want to sign in on time,” his mom says from behind them. Mike is grateful for the excuse to leave.

“Thanks,” Mike tells Will, offering him an intimate smile. Will returns it almost immediately and Mike suddenly wants to stay and confess everything and pull him into the privacy of his bedroom and kiss him senseless, but then his father honks and ruins the moment.

Mike groans and turns around, stomping to the car.

“I’m coming, jeez,” he says. He slides into the backseat and waves to his friends one more time before his dad drives off the driveway and onto the road.

He watches his friends until they’re little dots in the distance, and then turns around in his seat with a sigh.

Hopefully he made the right decision with this.

Chapter Text

Summer means three things to Richie and three things only: hanging out with his friends, mischief and staying away from home as much as possible.

Mrs. Denbrough started setting an extra plate at the dinner table a year ago, when Richie was getting worryingly thin. She’d asked him about it one night, voice thick with motherly worry (a kind of worry he had never heard from his own mother) and Richie’s plan to straight up lie to her face vanished when he saw the concern in her eyes. So he had confessed, cheeks hot and tears stinging in his eyes, that his mother had stopped cooking for him. He occasionally made himself something, but he mostly lived off cereal and potato chips. Mrs. Denbrough didn’t ask him to stay for dinner that night - no, she demanded it.

After that night, Richie avoided his house as much as possible. He mostly still slept there, but if any of the losers offered to let him stay with them for a night, he never declined.

Summer always makes it easier to avoid his mother. The losers often dig up old tents and sleeping bags and spend entire days at the Barrens, setting up camp at the edge of the woods. Most of them don't really want to be around their parents during the summer either, so they all work together to come up with as many things to do so they don't have to be home a lot.

It’s honestly Richie’s favorite time of the year. Nobody is busy with stupid school work or extracurriculars, they can all just be lazy all day and not feel guilty about it and Beverly always shares her weed with the others. Summer is untouchable. Richie feels invincible during those months that never really seem to last long enough.

Unfortunately, Maggie Tozier finds a way to ruin it like she ruins everything remotely fun in Richie’s life.

“You’re going to summer camp,” she announces on the second night of summer break, when Richie is forced to eat at home because the others are busy. He’d already found it suspicious to see that his mother had cooked for him but was ready to give her the benefit of the doubt. Of course she didn't want to better herself as a mother. Of course not.

“No, I’m not,” Richie says.

“Yes, you are. You’re leaving this Monday.”

“Again, no, I’m not.”

Maggie puts down her knife and fork and wipes her mouth with her napkin. All of her moves are cold and calculated. His mother never gets angry - she just gets icy .

“I signed you up last April. I already paid for it, so you’re going.”

Richie puts down his fork too, trying to mimic the coldness in his mother’s movements. But Richie could never be that cold, that emotionless. His hands are shaking.

“Why?” He asks.

Maggie shrugs. As if this was a decision on whether to buy the three layered toilet paper or not.

“They ought to teach you some damn manners over there. Teach you respect and discipline.”

Richie narrows his eyes. “Are you sending me to summer camp or enlisting me for the army?”

Maggie smiles. Her lips are thin and pale, and Richie is filled with disgust at the thought that he might start looking like her in the following years.

“You’re not old enough to get into the army,” she says. “But I went to summer camp every summer when I was a kid and it taught me to be a good person, to be polite and to respect my elderly.”

Richie snorts. A good person? She stopped feeding her only child because she didn’t feel like it anymore.

“Whatever,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest in defiance. “You can't force me.”

“I knew you were gonna say that,” his mother says, a hint of pride shining through her voice. Proud that she knows her child well enough to know he wouldn't go down without a fight. Mother of the year right there. “I didn't want to do this, Richard, but if you don't go to summer camp, I’m taking away your meds.”

“Wh - ” Richie isn’t sure if he heard correctly. Surely she wouldn’t. She can't. “ What ?”

Maggie leans backwards, as if to create some distance between them.

“I’m taking away your anxiety medication if you refuse to go to camp New Horizons,” she says coolly. She doesn't raise her voice. She doesn't get angry. She’s just completely indifferent. As if having his meds taken away wouldn't literally ruin Richie’s life.

“You can't do that! I need those meds!”

“And I need you to go to that camp and learn how to be a decent fucking human being,” Maggie says. “Because I don't know what else to do with you anymore, Richard. You constantly get in trouble in school, you disappear for entire days, and those friends - ”

“What about my friends?” Richie snaps. Maggie can sit here the entire night insulting Richie all she wants, but he draws the line at his friends.

“They’re weird! It’s like you're involved in a little cult. And I’m sure at least half of them are queer.”

Richie barks a humorless laugh. If only she knew that her own goddamn son was one of those scary, dirty queers . If only she knew not half but all of the losers club were queer. She would have a heart attack. Richie briefly considers telling her just for that, but that would make him an orphan and he would be placed in foster care, where he wouldn’t have a third of the freedom he has now.

“Anyway,” Maggie continues, “I think it’ll do you good to make some new friends. Maybe you can be pen pals!”

“Oh golly gosh, wouldn't that just be marvellous!” Richie cheers, sarcasm dripping from each vowel.

“See, that tone is exactly what I mean. You have behavior issues, Richard!”

“Yeah, and whose fault is that?” Richie yells, pushing himself off the table to stand. “You don't even fucking cook for me anymore! You wouldn't care if I ended up dead in a ditch, so why are you doing this to me? Just stay out of my fucking life and make us both happy!”

He storms out of the kitchen and out of his house, his heart racing and head spinning.

“You’re going to that camp!” His mother yells after him, but Richie has already mounted his bike and taken off.

***

“Fucking summer camp ,” Beverly says a couple of hours later, when all the losers are gathered in Bill’s basement. She passes her joint to Richie, who takes a long drag to relax his muscles.

“I know, right? I don't know what’s gotten into her to start ‘caring’ about me.”

“Are you gonna go?” Stan asks. He’s sitting next to Richie, their thighs touching. He always finds a way to touch Richie when he’s upset.

“I don't really have a choice, do I?” Richie shakes his head. “If she takes away my meds, it’s over for me. That’s it. I might as well be dead.”

“That bad?” Mike asks.

“You weren't there when I wasn't on anxiety meds yet. I had panic attacks almost every day. I woke up in the middle of the night with my heart racing so fast I thought I was gonna die. If I have to go through that again, I’m genuinely gonna kill myself.”

Bill gives him a stern look. Richie was in a dark place a couple of years ago, thinking a lot about death and dying and how to make that happen, and Bill had pulled him through it. He’s been watching him like a hawk ever since in case Richie ever relapses, so he doesn't take suicide jokes lightly.

“Sorry,” Richie mutters.

“Maybe it won't be that bad,” Ben says gently. “I used to go to summer camp. It was always a lot of fun.”

Richie shrugs. “Maybe. It’s just not how I pictured my summer to go.”

“You’ll be back in August, won't you?” Eddie asks.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“That's only a month. You can handle a month,” Bill says.

Richie hufs. “It’s almost as if you guys want me gone.”

“It’s not that,” Stan says, gently knocking his shoulder against Richie’s. “It’s just better to do what your mom wants and make sure she doesn't take away your meds. Don't take any needless risks.”

Richie smiles at him.

“Aw, Stanley. You care about me.”

“Don't make me regret it,” Stan says.

“And besides, it’s not like you wouldn't hear from us for an entire month,” Beverly continues. “We’ll write and call until you get sick of us, and then when you get back you won't be allowed to go anywhere without us. We’ll all be conjoined by the hips.”

Richie raises his joint at that.

“That’s a slightly creepy but also nice thing to look forward to,” he says.

“So you’re gonna go?” Bill asks.

“I’m gonna go,” Richie replies.

Chapter Text

Camp New Horizons lies deeply in the woods, at the edge of a big lake. Richie fears for his life as Maggie speeds over the narrow roads leading there, taking sharp turns at a speed way too fast to be safe. His mother is a horrible driver and usually either goes everywhere in Derry by foot or bribes Richie into driving her, but she was scared he’d just drive them in the opposite direction of New Horizons if she let him drive here. So she got behind the wheel herself, and though Richie jokes about death sometimes, he doesn't actually want to die.

Richie clings onto his seatbelt the entire ride, occasionally yelling at his mother to slow down. They eventually make it to the camp in one piece, and when they do, Richie immediately jumps out of the car.

“Have fun!” Maggie says cheerfully as Richie takes his bag out of the backseat. He flips her off and slams the door shut.

She waits for him to actually walk into the camp and be greeted by a camp counselor before taking off. Richie watches her go and secretly wishes she gets into an accident. Not a fatal one, just something that’ll injure her for a while. Make her as miserable as Richie.

“Sign ups are that way,” the camp counselor who greeted him points. Richie looks him up and down. He looks like he’s only a couple years older than Richie, maybe nineteen, and he’s kind of cute. Maybe he could have some fun with him while he’s here.

Richie almost laughs to himself. He can pretend to sleep around with everyone all he wants, but he knows damn well he can't be with somebody unless he's known them for literal years. His therapist says it has something to do with abandonment issues. Richie just likes to believe he's picky.

He briefly touches the thinly braided leather bracelet around his left wrist. Bill had made it for him when they were twelve and had given it with his cheeks bright red, assuring him that he didn't have to wear it if he didn't want to and that it was just a stupid thing he wanted to give him. Richie had, of course, taken it and has worn it ever since. 

“Hey, kid, did you hear me?” The counselor snaps him out of his thought. “Sign ups are at cabin 1.”

Richie looks at his name tag. Jay.

“Yeah, yeah, I heard you, Jay. Don't sweat it,” Richie says with a dismissive hand gesture. He swings his bag over his shoulder and walks over to cabin 1, where a table is set on the grass. There are only a handful of kids around since it's pretty early in the morning, and Richie sighs. Not only did Maggie want him to go to summer camp, she also insisted she’d drive him first thing in the morning.

Richie doesn't have to wait his turn at the sign up table. He’s greeted by a cheery blonde wearing a blindingly pink hat.

“Good morning!” She greets. Richie swallows his groan and puts on a fake smile.

“Morning,” he says.

The blonde opens her register and clicks her pen.

“I’m Becca,” the girl says. “One of the counselors at camp New Horizons. Name, please?”

“Richie Tozier.”

Becca lets her pen hover over the names in the register until she eventually finds Richie’s name. She marks his name and gives him a key.

“You’re in cabin 4. Your cabin buddies will be arriving shortly, so you get first pick on which bed you want!”

“Yay,” Richie deadpans, taking the key from her. Becca’s smile doesn't falter and Richie almost feels bad for being in a bad mood, but moping around is the only thing he really has left to do.

He saunters to his cabin and throws his bag on a random bed once he gets there. He doesn't really care where he sleeps, much like he doesn't really care about anything here. His mom can force him to be here, but she can't force him to do anything else.

Richie sits down at the lonely desk pushed against the far wall of the cabin and takes a piece of paper from the pile the counselors put there. He uncaps his pen and starts writing his first letter to his friends.

Hey, assholes, he starts, trying to write as neatly as he can. Camp New Horizons is disappointing so far. I looked at the horizon when I got here and it looks exactly the same as the one in Derry. How dare they lie to me like this? What kind of false advertisement!

Anyway, I haven't seen a lot of people yet. Maggie dropped me off at the crack of day because she couldn't get rid off me soon enough. I didn't even get my morning nut yet.

There’s a lake here. It’s bigger than the one at the quarry, but it somehow looks smaller. Maybe because you guys aren't here to play chicken with or for me to flash my dick at. I haven't seen any cute girls yet, but I’ll keep you updated, Beverly.

And yes, Bill, I brought my meds and already took my first dose this morning. And yeah, Stan, I brought enough clean underwear. Sometimes I feel like you two are my parents, which would actually be preferable. Maybe you can consider adopting me when I get back.

Ben, you would love it here. There’s lots of nature and flowers and shit like that. I’m pretty sure the counselors will wake us up in the morning to all go greet the sun or whatever. Hopefully I can score some weed from one of the stoners that are bound to be here to survive this place.

Mike, I wish you were here, dude. You’d find a way to cheer me up and stay positive about everything. You’d probably find a stray dog and hide it in our cabin, which would be amazing. Not to be gay or anything but send me a polaroid of your smile I can put above my bed so I won't kill myself xoxoxoxoxo (sorry, Bill).

And Eds, every time I eat spaghetti here I’ll lovingly think about you :) xxxxxxx (I’m sending you a separate letter, my love. Don’t be upset.)

So far my first observations of New Horizons. If my letters get more depressed as the summer continues, please plan a rescue mission.

Smell ya laters, you dicks!!! Love ya!

Richie signs the letter with his name and then starts writing Eddie the separate letter he promised him. He wasn't originally planning on writing him his own letter, but he doesn't want the other losers to read his private thoughts to Eddie. Some things he can only share with certain people; his depression with Bill, the realization that he was queer with Beverly and other stuff with Eddie.

He’s more honest in his letter to Eddie. He tells him how much he hates it that his own mother would force him to go to summer camp when she knows the only thing that really makes him happy are his friends. He tells him how anxious he is to meet new people and to spend an entire month with them. People tend to dislike Richie when they first meet him, and it always takes them at least a couple of months to warm up to him. He’s scared that he’ll have nobody to talk to here, even if he doesn’t really want to talk to anyone anyway.

He tells Eddie how much he misses all of them already.

You’d hate it here , he writes with a smile, thinking about how Eddie would stomp through the woods trying to avoid any plants touching him. But you being here would make this a lot more bearable for me. We could be in a bad mood together.

Richie thinks about what else he could write, but the words stop coming. So he signs the letter as Trashmouth , puts a lot of kisses at the bottom and puts both letters in their own envelope, writing Bill’s and Eddie’s addresses on them.

Once he’s done that, he kicks off his shoes and crawls into bed. If he’s gonna have to wait for his ‘cabin buddies’ to arrive, he might as well get some more sleep.

Chapter Text

Karen and Theodore Wheeler are people of few words.

Well, mostly Ted is. Mike remembers a time when his mother would still try to talk to him, still asked him questions on family roadtrips and still asked him about his childhood even after he had told her the same story six times already. She tried to ask him about his day during dinner and sighed loud enough for him to have an opening to ask her about hers, but Ted usually gave her a fingernail when she asked for his hand. He hummed or grunted, offered short sentences at best.

Mike watched the light in his mother’s eyes flicker and die as the years went on and Ted became more and more disinterested in anything that happened at home. Her word well eventually ran dry, and now most rides, dinners and family nights happen in silence.

The drive to New Horizons isn’t any different. Silence has been a constant in the Wheeler household for years, but it still makes Mike squirm. Silence means thinking. Silence means Mike’s own voice getting the opportunity to plague his mind and poison his thoughts.

It’s easy to convince himself his friends will forget about him while he’s away. They probably won't even miss him - if anything, they’re probably glad he’s gone.

Mike has always been… a lot . His mother used to tell him his emotions were always overflowing, like he was bursting at the seams. He could never really hide what he was feeling, and he was always feeling too much all the time.

It got easier to hide most of his emotions as he got older. He didn't break down crying for no reason anymore, his tantrums got rare and even his sudden bursts of extreme and destructive euphoria lessened. He still had a lot of emotions; he just found a way to control the way other people perceived them.

But his head is never quiet. Mike imagines all his emotions as different colors, and the inside of his skull is constantly painted in all the colors you can possibly imagine. Some colors mix together and make completely new emotions, and others turn into ugly, brown-grey things that make Mike feel like he would be better off not feeling anything anymore. Those brown-grey emotions are usually the most prominent ones when he’s alone. They’re the color of his own voice telling him he’s not good enough and that everyone around him would be better off without him. That his friends are glad to get rid off the kid who feels so much sometimes he can't even function anymore.

Mike digs his nails into the palms of his hands. He needs to pull himself out of this before he spirals. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, trying to link a color to each of his friends to distract his mind.

Jane would be yellow. She wore yellow the first day he met her when they were twelve, right after she had ran away from her last foster home. She had immediately stood out in bleak Hawkins, drained of all color during the harsh winter months. Yellow is a happy emotion. Mike feels yellow when he’s with all of his friends and they’re all crying with laughter over something Dustin said. He feels yellow on warm days, when his skin is buzzing and his eyelids are heavy from the sun.

Lucas would be green. Green is a comforting color, a safe color. It’s the color of the woods Lucas and Mike used to play in as kids, when Mike would feel like he could take on the world with a stick as his weapon and Lucas by his side.

Dustin is purple. Mike always feels purple when he’s in a good mood, when everything makes him laugh. Purple is the color of Dustin’s jokes, of the fading bruises he and Dustin would have from falling out of trees because they were laughing so hard.

Max is red. Not just for the obvious reason but also because of her bloody knees and palms from falling off her skateboard. Red like the colors of her cheeks when Lucas does something unsuspected and sweet for her. Red is passion, loud and raw. Red is on the verge of dangerous but not quite there yet. Red is powerful. Red is unapologetic.

And Will… Will is indigo. Mike feels indigo when he feels safe and content. Indigo is being sleepy and wrapped up in warm blankets in a welcoming home. Indigo is the stars in the sky. It’s is the stars in Will’s eyes.

His brown-grey emotions subside as he thinks about the color of his friends. Finally, his mind starts turning white and peaceful. The emotions lose some of their blinding brightness until Mike has them under control again, and he lets out a relieved breath as he regains control over his mind.

Karen looks over her shoulder when she hears Mike sigh.

“Everything alright, honey?” She asks. Her voice is loud in the quiet car.

“Yeah,” Mike smiles, his hands relaxing in his lap as he thinks about happiness and comfort and safety and bravery. “Yeah, everything is fine.”

***

There are a lot of people at New Horizons when they arrive. Mike’s mind explodes into color again, anticipation mixing with anxiety and excitement and dread and nervousness. He keeps his friends in mind, borrows strength from their colors, and says goodbye to his parents.

Though Mike’s bond with his parents (but mostly his father) was never strong, he still feels kind of sad as he watches them leave. He panics for a brief moment, old abandonment issues resurfacing as he watches the car drive away, but he manages to push the black, all consuming panic down and turns around to face the camp instead of the road.

There are kids running around like ants all over the place. Some are chasing each other, others are dragging their bags behind them as they look for their cabin. Mike’s grip on his own bag tightens. He takes a deep breath, waiting for his mind to turn white again, and then goes looking for Registration.

It’s easy to find. There’s a redhead sitting at the table, hair almost as bright as Max’s. She smiles when she sees Mike.

“Hi, there! Are you here to sign in for summer camp?”

“I am,” Mike nods. He’s suddenly painfully aware that there are very few kids his own age here. Maybe he didn't really think this through.

“Okay, cool! I’m Mabel, one of the counselors at camp New Horizons. Can you give me your name?”

“Michael Wheeler,” Mike says, flinching at his full name. He never liked that name, mostly because of the way his father would say it when he was disappointed in him. Full of disdain and something close to regret. As if he regretted not wearing a condom the night Mike was conceived.

Mabel marks Mike’s name in the register and hands him a key.

“You’re in cabin 32,” she says, pointing to a hill to their right. “The boys you’ll be sharing with are already all settled and we’re starting the first activities at 2pm, so you better hurry!”

Mike nods again and takes the key from her with a soft thank you. He walks up the hill until he finds cabin 32, anxiety settling on his chest when he hears voices coming from inside. Mike has always been a kind of loner and the only reason he really has friends now is because he was brave enough in kindergarten to befriend Will. They were always less shy when they were together and it was easier for the both of them to make friends, but when separated they were both just shy geeks.

Mike wishes Will was here. He wishes he would’ve ditched his mom and brother and had come here with Mike so that he wouldn't feel so awkward and alone.

But then again, if Will hadn’t gone on his roadtrip, then Mike wouldn't even be here. He would be back in Hawkins, spending every day at Will’s house trying to make food without burning down the kitchen and playing video games and just chilling.

Mike smiles at the thought. Will would probably want to start a big project he would bribe Mike into helping with. They would take all the paint out of the shed and lay rolls of wallpaper on the grass outside, painting a universe they came up with. Will would paint the details, the stuff you had to be good at to do, but Mike would be perfectly content painting the night sky with big, careless strokes and hearing Will giggle at how bad he was at painting.

He stores that image away for when his mind turns grey-brown again and promises himself to make that project happen when he gets back to Hawkins. That prospect gives him enough strength to open the door and greet whoever is on the other side.

There are three boys in the cabin when Mike walks in. One of them is strumming a guitar while the other two are unpacking their bags. They all look up when they hear Mike enter.

“Holy shit, you’re tall!” One of the boys unpacking their bags exclaims. His blond hair is long and held together in a messy ponytail. He looks about fifteen.

“Uh,” Mike says, not really knowing how to answer that. The blond guy abandons his bag and walks up to Mike to greet him.

“I’m Cameron,” he says, shaking Mike’s hand.

“Mike.”

“Nice to meet you, dude. That other guy over there is Jayden.” He points at the other kid unpacking. His skin is dark like Lucas’s and he sports a big afro.

“And I’m Chris,” the guy with the guitar waves. His hair is light brown and his eyes bright green. He reminds Mike a bit of Will.

“Cool. Nice to meet you all,” Mike smiles. “I guess all the good bunks are already taken?”

Chapter Text

The great thing about camp New Horizons is that none of the activities are obligatory.

Richie hasn’t done any of the things the counselors planned for them. He hasn’t participated in capture the flag, he hasn't gone swimming with the other kids, he hasn't shown up for arts and crafts and he certainly hasn't come sit around the bonfire at night to sing songs together. The only thing he’s done so far is sneak off into the woods for the entire day and smoke pot with the other older kids who were forced to come here.

They mostly chill on the cliff at the lake, overlooking the other campers and sometimes making fun of them but never jumping off. Jumping off would mean being seen by the counselors, and being seen by the counselors would mean having to explain why their eyes are so red and why they can’t stop giggling, and that would mean being sent home for drug use and having to face his mother, who would without a doubt take away his meds as a punishment for disobeying her.

Richie has considered it a couple of times; misbehaving so badly the counselors see no other solution than to send him home.

He knows his mother wouldn't change her mind about the meds - would probably even enjoy watching Richie turn back into the anxious mess he once was - but maybe it wouldn't be that bad this time around. Maybe his friends could help him deal with the panic attacks like they helped him deal with his depression. And maybe getting high all the time wouldn't give his brain the chance to make him anxious. Maybe he could make it work.

But then he remembers the paralyzing fear, the nightmares that would shake him to his core every night. The panic attacks so violent Richie often thought he was going to die. His anxiety meds literally saved his life when he finally got diagnosed. Not being able to take them each day, to feel the comforting weight of the smooth pill in the palm of his hand, would send him over the edge he’s been flirting with for almost his entire adolescence.

So he tries to stay low profile. He doesn't participate, but he also doesn't get in trouble. The counselors obviously don't like how passive Richie is about everything, but they can't exactly send him home for it.

The clique he hangs out with on the cliff is tougher than he’s used to. He likes to think he’s a rebel, maybe even an outcast, but he’s a goody-two shoes compared to these guys. They were all sent here by a judge as some kind of alternative punishment; it was summer camp or juvi. They’re all supposed to actively participate and earn credits, but the camp counselors are too intimidated by them to say anything about their lack of interest.

Their leader is a short girl named Kali. She has dark skin and even darker hair, and despite the obvious differences, Richie sees a bit of Beverly in her. They both have everyone's undivided attention when they speak, both speak in the same, mesmerising way. Their smiles are equally mysterious, equally dangerous.

Richie thinks Kali and Bev would either be best friends or slit each other’s throats within the the first few minutes of meeting each other.

The others aren't that easy to compare to the losers. Richie tends to do that; compare new people to his friends. It’s easier for him to figure out what role he’s supposed to play when he knows the dynamics of a group he’s new to, and comparing them to his friends is the easiest way to do that.

He guesses Mick could be like Stan. They’re both the most rational ones in the group, though Mick’s rationality limits itself to telling the others doing cocaine is probably not a good idea.

Funshine is the closest to Bill. He has the same kind of quiet leadership over him; though Kali is their obvious leader, the others still glance at Funshine for his approval before agreeing with her.

Axel and Dottie are nothing like Richie’s seen before. For starters, Axel is a huge prick. He’s constantly making offensive jokes about women, queers and other minorities and Richie suspects he only listens to Kali because she managed to sneak a knife into camp. The dude is completely off the rails. Nothing ties him to a life out of the shadows anymore, so he just went all in. His entire being screams decay, drug addiction and a certain early death.

Dottie is equally messed up, but more in the manic doll way. Her laugh is always too sharp, always on the edge of insanity. Her eyes are always shooting from left to right as if she keeps seeing things nobody else can see. Sometimes she’ll just randomly giggle to herself or mutter something under her breath. The others don't seem to find it weird, but it kind of freaks Richie out.

Even though Kali’s gang is way more messed up and dangerous than the people Richie usually hangs out with, they get along just fine. They all think Richie is pretty funny, especially when they’re high, and Richie can't be picky when it comes to people liking him. It’s pretty rare for him to make friends so easily, even if they’re screwed up in the head, so he’ll take what he can get.

It’s been a week at New Horizons when Axel walks up to their usual spot on the cliff and holds up three bottles of vodka. Richie’s stomach clenches.

“Guess what, fuckers!” Axel proclaims proudly as he plants the bottles on the ground. “I managed to break into Mr. Brown’s personal booze cabinet and found these beauties.”

“Sick!” Dottie says, taking a bottle to inspect it.

“Isn't he gonna find out his vodka is gone?” Mick asks.

Axel shrugs.

“Yeah, but the evidence will be gone by then and he’ll have no proof we took it.”

Mick’s eyes dart to Funshine, who shrugs ever so slightly. Mick shrugs too and opens a bottle.

They pass the bottle around their little group. Richie’s hands get so clammy he almost drops it once Kali hands it to him, and he quickly hands it to Mick.

“Come on, Tozier,” Axel says. “Take a sip!”

“Pass,” Richie says.

“Come on, pretty boy,” Dottie insists. She flutters her eyelashes at him and offers him the bottle again.

“No, seriously. I’m good.”

“Aw, don't be a pussy!” Axel yells. “You're gonna ruin the entire mood if you don't drink.”

Richie’s heart is starting to race and his vision is turning blurry around the edges. He recognises the early signs of a panic attack.

“I said no,” he snaps, harsher than he intended. Axel holds up his hands in surrender, but Dottie isn't ready to give up just yet.

She rises from her spot around their little bonfire and walks over to Richie, hips swaying. She takes another sip before promptly straddling Richie’s lap and moving her hand up his arm to his shoulder.

“Just a little sip, baby,” she purrs. She holds up the bottle and puts it against Richie’s lips, and the strong scent of alcohol snaps him out of his panic induced daze.

“Get off me!” He says, pushing Dottie off his lap as he stands.

“You’re being such a little bitch,” Axel groans.

“Fuck you,” Richie bites. He flips him off and turns away from the group, grabbing his jacket before walking away. Dottie calls after him, giggling something incoherent, but Richie is too flustered to try to make sense out of it.

He’s too upset to go back to his cabin just yet, so he decides to make a stop in the kitchen first to get something to eat. Maybe the smell of peanut butter and jam will chase away the pungent smell of alcohol.

Richie hates alcohol. He has seen what it can do to people, has been on the receiving end of alcohol induced violence, so he swore to himself never to touch a single drop of it. He usually doesn't mind seeing his friends drink as long as they don't get completely wasted, but being peer pressured into drinking makes him so anxious he could throw up.

He tries to shake off the panic settling on his shoulders and chest as he makes his way to the cafeteria cabin. It’s closed between 9pm and 7am, but Richie is pretty good at picking locks if he focuses enough.

He’s thinking about the quickest way to pick the cafeteria’s lock when he realizes the door is already open. He frowns to himself, figuring Jay must’ve forgotten to lock up earlier, and walks in.

The first thing Richie notices is that there’s a boy sitting at one of the tables. The boy looks up when he hears Richie enter, and Richie’s breath catches in his throat.

“Holy fucking shit,” he breathes as he meets the boy’s eyes and sees himself staring right back at him.

Chapter Text

The day already starts off shitty.

Jay wakes Mike up at 6am that morning to bring him to the main cabin, where someone is waiting to talk to him on the phone. Jay tells him he doesn’t know who called on their short walk there, which already pisses Mike off. He doesn't like surprises, especially not so early in the morning.

Mike’s bad mood lifts briefly when he hears Will’s excited voice on the other end of the line. He greets him cheerfully, voice hoarse with laughter and exhaustion. It immediately puts a smile on Mike’s face.

“New York, huh?” Mike smiles into the phone. He turns away from Jay to try to get some privacy; even over the phone, his conversations with Will feel too intimate to share with anyone else.

“Yeah, it’s great! Jonathan took some sick pictures and we bought mom a beautiful dress and everything is so big, Mike! And there’s art, like, everywhere ! It’s so amazing. You would love it here.”

“I’m sure I would.” Mike would love it anywhere as long as Will was by his side. “But why are you calling so early? Aren't you supposed to sleep in when you’re on holiday?”

Will chuckles sheepishly. Mike can imagine the blush creeping up his neck and cheeks.

“Yeah, but I couldn't sleep.” He’s quiet for a moment and Mike thinks that’s it, already thinking about what to ask Will next, when Will adds, “I kept thinking about you. How great it would be if you were here.”

Mike’s own cheeks flush at the words. He turns away from Jay’s watching eyes even more and pulls his knees to his chest, resting his chin on top of them as he tries to find his voice. A deep aching settles in his chest, hollowing his heart until there’s a big void that only Will’s presence could fill. He’s overwhelmed with how much he suddenly misses his best friend.

“I keep thinking about you too,” Mike says softly. He looks over his shoulder to see if Jay is listening, but he’s leaning against the doorframe inspecting his nails for dirt. “Camp would be so much better if you were here too.”

“That bad?” Will asks.

“It’s not bad . The boys in my cabin are cool and there are some fun activities to do, but, you know. I miss you.” Then, when he gets scared he’s being too vulnerable, he quickly adds, “all of you.”

Will laughs softly. Mike’s stomach clenches.

“ Yeah, I miss all of you too . We’re meeting up with Hopper and Jane in Florida, though. So that's something to look forward to.”

“Why are you meeting up with them?”

“Mom says it’s the nice thing to do, but I think she just wants to spend some time with Hopper. I don’t mind. I’ll get to hang out with Jane for a while before being put in a small car with Mom and Jonathan again.”

Mike chuckles. Will is trying really hard to sound annoyed, but Mike knows him well enough to know he’s enjoying every last second of this roadtrip.

“Well, say hi to Jane from me.”

“ I will. We’ll call you when we meet up so she can say hi back.”

“That would be nice, yeah.”

“ Okay, well, I gotta go now! I have to call Dustin at drama camp too.”

“At least wait until it’s 8am over there, asshole,” Mike tuts.

“ Sleeping in is for the weak! ” Will counters. The passion in his voice makes Mike laugh.

“Okay, fine. Say hi from me to him too!”

“ Yeah, yeah, you know I will. Bye, Mike.”

Mike presses the phone harder against his ear, almost to keep Will as close as he can before having to let go.

“Bye, Will.”

The click on the other end of the line indicating that Will hung up brings back Mike’s bad mood. Hearing Will’s voice made him miss him even more than he already did, and the missing turns his mood absolutely foul.

“So, was that your girlfriend or something?” Jay asks when Mike puts the phone down and stands.

“None of your business,” Mike snaps. Jay holds up his hands in surrender.

“Woah, dude, damn. I was just curious, that’s all. You sounded pretty smitten over the phone.”

Mike eyes him up and down, not sure what to tell him. Surely he had said Will’s name out loud at least once during their short conversation. Surely Jay must’ve realized he was talking to a boy.

Mike’s hands get clammy just from thinking about the possibility of Jay knowing he’d sounded that smitten over a boy . Maybe the question is a test to see how Mike will react. Maybe he’s setting out a trap for him to fall into.

But Mike isn’t stupid. He’s been hiding his feelings for Will for the past five years, so he’s grown quite accustomed to lying.

“No, not my girlfriend. Just… a girl.” The lie almost hurts leaving his lips. The words leave a nasty aftertaste, but Mike swallows it down and pushes past Jay to get out of the cabin. His already bad mood combined with the fear and shame that come with loving a boy is enough to completely ruin Mike’s day.

“Breakfast is in two hours!” Jay calls after him. Mike gives him a thumbs up, but he already knows he won’t show up to the cafeteria later. His stomach ties itself into knots and his mind explodes into more colors with each step he takes, and by the time he has reached his cabin, he has fully spiraled into a bad episode.

He doesn’t show up for breakfast, lunch or dinner that day.

***

Mike finally manages to free himself from his own mind around midnight, when Cameron, Jayden and Chris are all sound asleep. He sits up in bed, realizing he’s absolutely starving, and quickly gets dressed before walking out.

You’re not supposed to be out of your cabin after curfew, but Mike isn’t really intimidated by the counselors. He’s almost as old and taller than all of them, so their threats about punishment for those who get caught out of their cabin at night mostly sound empty in his ears. He doesn’t even really sneak around as he makes his way to the cafeteria, only makes sure he doesn’t make any unnecessary noise. Though he isn’t afraid of the consequences if he gets caught, he’d rather manage to break into the kitchen and get a snack before that happens.

Max taught him how to pick locks when they were thirteen. Nancy had taken some of Mike’s money (which was, to be fair, technically her money she was just stealing back but Mike needed that money so he had to steal back the stolen money that he stole) and Max had shown him how to pick a lock with a bobby pin. She didn’t even wear bobby pins, she just always carried one just in case. Mike didn’t know what the hell Max could get up to that would require lockpicking, but he started carrying a bobby pin around too.

The thing comes in quite handy now. He breaks in with ease, beelining to the kitchen to make himself a sandwich. He makes himself a PBJ, his go-to comfort food, and finds himself a nice spot in the cafeteria to eat it in peace.

He get a full two minutes of wonderful, undisturbed silence before someone opens the door and steps inside. Mike’s head snaps up, having heard the person too late to run and not be caught, but he immediately sees it’s not one of the counselors. In fact, the boy that stepped foot in the cafeteria looks like… he looks like…

“Holy fucking shit ,” the boy says when their eyes meet, and Mike himself can feel his jaw drop. If he didn’t know any better he would say he and the boy were… identical .

“What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck,” the boy mutters as he walks over to where Mike is sitting and promptly sits down across from him. Up close, Mike sees some differences between the two of them; for example, the other boy is wearing glasses whereas Mike has perfect eyesight. Their fashion sense is something else that appears to be completely different; the other boy is wearing an ugly green hawaiian shirt underneath an oversized, ripped denim jacket, while Mike has opted for Will’s sweater he gave him the day he left for camp. The other boy’s hair also isn’t as curly as Mike’s and his freckles are more prominent, but other than that it’s like looking into a mirror.

“I must be high,” the boy says, reaching for Mike’s sandwich. Mike pulls back his plate and glares at him.

“You’re not high,” he assures him.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I’m not high and I can see you too.”

The other boy sucks in his bottom lip in thought and lets his eyes drift over the cafeteria.

“Then we must be high on gas or something. This - ” He pokes Mike’s cheek “ - is just too freaky.”

Mike slaps his hand away and sits back a little to try and create some distance between the two of them.

“I’m sure there’s a logical explanation for this,” he says, mind going a hundred miles a second trying to actually come up with a logical explanation for this.

“Oh yeah, like what?” The other boy asks. He reaches out for Mike’s sandwich again and manages to snatch it away this time. He takes a thoughtful bite and snaps his fingers.

“Maybe we’re each other’s doppelgänger,” he says. “Oh, or you’re me from a different dimension! Are you here to warn me about one of my bad choices? Because I’m just warning you you’re gonna have to be really specific. I make a lot of bad choices.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mike groans. Jesus Christ, his clone is a fucking idiot. Just his luck. “Studies have shown that there are at least seven people in the world who look exactly like you. This must be what this is.”

The other boy takes another bite of Mike’s sandwich, chewing for at least a full minute before saying something again.

“I think we should look into studies about doppelgängers.”

“Dude, doppelgängers don’t exist.”

“How can you say that when we’re literally identical?”

“Not completely,” Mike points out, gesturing at the boy’s glasses.

“Okay, so I have bad eyesight. No solid proof.”

Mike rolls his eyes.

“Whatever,” he sighs. “I’m Mike. What’s your name?”

The other boy grins and offers Mike his hand to shake. It’s sticky with jam.

“Richie Tozier.”

He doesn’t know why, maybe it’s because of his cocky attitude or the fact that he stole his sandwich, but Mike instantly dislikes Richie Tozier.

Chapter Text

He doesn’t know why, maybe it’s because of his snarky remarks or the fact that he let him steal his sandwich, but Richie instantly likes Mike Wheeler.

He isn’t stupid, though. Richie knows damn well Mike doesn’t like him - has had enough people dislike him to know the signs. Mike obviously doesn’t want to be around him and looks like he’d be happy avoiding Richie for the remaining weeks at camp, but once Richie has decided he wants to befriend someone, he’ll move heaven and earth to achieve just that. He once messed with the seating chart in Maths so that he would be seated next to Stan for the entire school year, and by the end of November the two of them had become inseparable (though Stan still denies that to this day). People take a while to warm up to Richie and his loud personality, but once they do, they usually become his friend.

Plus, how many chances in life do you get to befriend your very own doppelgänger?

Richie calls Ben right after he meets Mike Wheeler. He has to break into the main cabin to get to a phone, but he really can’t wait till the next day to talk to his own personal conspiracy theorist. Ben could write books about the fake moon landing or secret lizard people, and he certainly isn’t unfamiliar with doppelgängers.

“ What happened? Are you okay? Did you get into trouble? Oh my god, Richie, which authority figure did you punch this time?” Ben asks as soon as he picks up the phone. Richie sighs loudly, but can’t help but smile at the concern in his friend’s voice.

“Nothing happened, jeez,” he says. “Can’t I be calling you to have a little chat, my dearest Benjamin?”

“ It’s 2am, Richard .”

“I was missing you! Sue me!”

“ Richie…” Ben says, voice low. Though Ben is actually the youngest out of all the losers, he always mothers everyone. He’s always making sure they all get enough sleep, helps them with their assignments and homework, sets up study afternoons with healthy snacks. It’s fucked up that Richie’s friends look after him more than his own mother, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t grateful.

“Okay, fine. Something happened, and I need to talk to you about it,” Richie confesses. Ben hums, indicating that Richie may continue, but suddenly a lump forms in Richie’s throat. Suddenly he isn’t so sure he should tell Ben about meeting Mike Wheeler. He suddenly feels like this should be kept a secret until he gets a chance to get to know Mike a bit more.

“ Rich? Are you still there ?” Ben’s voice comes from the other side of the line. Richie shakes his head and speaks, “Yeah, sorry. Uh, actually, I just wanted to hear your voice. Nothing happened. I’m just kinda lonely, I guess. I miss you guys a lot.”

“Oh,” Ben says, and even in that little word Richie can hear the softness and love Ben has for every loser. “ We miss you too, Richie. It’s real quiet. And Mike is constantly in a bad mood.”

“Really?” Richie asks, trying to keep the smugness out of his voice but failing.

Ben laughs at his tone. “ Really. To be honest, Mike being in a bad mood just means he doesn't say goodmorning when he sees you, but I think he misses you the most. Bill is a close second, though. It’s pissing Stan off.”

Richie snorts. Stan isn’t the jealous type, but Richie does always manage to piss him off by being too clingy with Bill. Stan never says anything about it because Richie and Bill have been friends longer than Stan and Bill have been dating, but Richie can still tell he doesn’t like it when Richie starts being physical with Bill. Good to know even now, far away from Derry, Stan still manages to be pissed off at him.

“Tell him I'm coming for his man when I'm back," he says, though he isn't completely joking. He's thought about dating Bill a couple of times. It never seemed like the right time, especially because Stan didn't appear to appreciate the whole 'open relationship' thing, but he's come around in the last year. He still gets jealous when Richie gives Bill more attention, but he also doesn't mind it as long as Richie gives him attention too.

“Oh, you know I will,” Ben laughs. "He won't like it, though."

"That's the point," Richie smiles. Then, after a heartbeat, “I should let you go back to sleep."

“ I don’t have anywhere to be tomorrow ,” Ben says. Richie can almost hear his beautiful, encouraging smile over the phone and he falls a little bit more in love with him right then and there. He really can't wait to get back and take Ben on the best date of his life. It'll be hard to beat Mike and his perfect dates, but it's worth the shot.

“Okay, well, if you insist,” Richie says. He makes himself comfortable behind the desk, pulling up his knees to his chest, and starts telling Ben about camp New Horizons. He tells him about Kali’s gang, about Axel trying to peer-pressure him into drinking. Ben sucks in an angry breath when Richie tells him, but Richie quickly calms him down. Then he continues telling him about the lame camp counselors and about all the activities he hasn’t gone to yet. Ben scolds him for that, like the parental figure he is, and Richie finds himself promising he’ll try to participate. He tells Ben about the beautiful nature, about the lake that reminds him of the one back in Derry, about how quiet it gets here at night. He tells him about everything, except Mike Wheeler.

Mike Wheeler is a secret Richie wants to keep a little longer.

***

Now that Richie knows about Mike’s existence, it’s easy to find him at camp. He can’t believe they hadn’t run into each other sooner, but then he remembers he barely set foot in camp on the first day before deciding he wouldn’t spend a second too long with all the happy little campers here. If he hadn’t run off with Kali’s gang and hidden in the woods for a big part of camp, he might’ve met Mike sooner and he would’ve gotten more time to befriend him, but now he’ll have to do with the two and a half weeks they have left at New Horizons.

He finds Mike the next day during breakfast. It’s the first time Richie actually comes to breakfast instead of sleeping till noon and stealing something from the kitchen, and a lot of heads turn as he walks to Mike’s table. He realizes this must be the first time for a lot of campers seeing Richie and Mike in the same place together. Hell, the majority might’ve not even known there were two boys so identical at camp, given that Richie hasn’t shown his face to a lot of people yet.

The three boys at Mike’s table all have different reactions to Richie’s appearance. The blond guy chokes on his eggs and slams his fists on the table in an attempt to draw attention to himself, the black kid gapes at Richie for approximately three seconds before gaping at Mike for another three, then slaps the blond kid between his shoulder blades until he coughs up a piece of egg, and the boy with the green eyes looks like he’s having a bad trip. Richie feels like it’s all a bit of an overreaction, briefly forgetting his own reaction when he saw Mike last night. He puts down his plate and jerks his chin to the spot across from Mike.

“This seat taken?” He asks.

Mike looks him up and down, brown eyes scanning his face and body. Richie knows he’s looking for the differences, the reminder that they’re actually two separate people. Richie knows Mike is a bit taller and has fewer freckles, but that’s all he knows about him.

“I guess not,” Mike says eventually, sounding like he’d much rather tell Richie to fuck off. Richie sits down before Mike can actually say that and introduces himself to the three boys at their table. They all still look like they’ve seen a ghost, but Richie tries to ignore their stares as he eats his breakfast.

“So… what are you doing today?” Richie asks, trying to spark up a conversation.

Mike looks at him over his pancakes, frown tugging at his eyebrows. Richie wonders if he looks like that too when he frowns and then instantly realizes he does. Looking at Mike is like carrying a mirror around everywhere and having to stare at your own face the whole time. Richie can tell this is gonna get annoying real soon, but for now he tries to ignore it.

“I signed up for Art later today,” Mike replies. He doesn’t look like he’ll ask Richie what his plans are, so Richie just tells him.

“Cool. I think I’m gonna check out the music class. Is it any good?”

“Don’t know,” Mike says. He lets his eyes drift from Richie to a point over his shoulder, trying to shut him out of the conversation by not engaging in eye contact. Richie balls his hands into fists. Isn’t Mike at least a little bit curious about him? Doesn’t he at least want to know why they look so identical? It’s one thing if Mike (wrongly) doesn’t believe in doppelgängers, but does he not have any other theories regarding their similarities? Richie can’t imagine not being curious about the person that looks just like you when you meet them.

“Music is pretty cool,” the boy with the green eyes replies instead. He looks a lot friendlier than Mike does, and in any other scenario Richie would’ve jumped with joy at the sight of a friendly face, but the green-eyed boy isn’t the one who looks just like him. Besides, Richie was always drawn to people who seemed emotionally unavailable - yet another one of Richie’s weird quirks caused by emotional neglect.

“Yeah,” the black kid jumps in. “It’s given by this old dude with a beard and thick glasses. He looks like any average librarian, but he’s pretty hardcore. He even has a sleeve of tattoos running up his left arm.”

“Woah, dude, sick!” The blond guy chimes in. “Maybe I should come too. I suck at playing instruments but seeing an old dude with a bunch of tattoos is literally on my bucket list.”

“Damn, you have a boring bucket list,” Mr. Green Eyes grins. Blondie flips him off and the three of them start bickering, so Richie turns his attention back to Mike.

“You know we need to talk,” he starts.

“We really don’t,” Mike says, meeting Richie’s eyes with something almost close to hatred in his gaze. Damn, Richie knows he isn’t easy to like, but not a lot of people actively hate him. Especially not without knowing him.

“So you genuinely don’t think any of this is weird?” Richie gestures between the two of them. “Half of camp almost had a fucking aneurysm when I walked in. Your buddy over there literally choked on his eggs.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t weird. There’s just nothing to talk about. Like I said; there are seven people in this world who look exactly like you. They just usually don’t meet each other.”

“Well, I think that’s bullshit.”

“I don’t care what you think,” Mike scoffs.

“You’re really mean, has anyone ever told you that?” Richie snaps.

Mike blinks at him, seemingly processing what Richie just said. He takes another bite of his pancake, chews it thoughtfully and then says, “Sorry. I’m… I have trouble controlling my emotions. I didn’t mean to be a jerk.”

Richie shrugs. “It’s fine.” It’s not like he isn’t used to people using him as their emotional punching bag anyway.

Mike nods and looks away, but more out of embarrassment than out of anger now. Richie takes it as a good sign; if Mike is embarrassed about his behavior towards him, then maybe he’ll eventually be open to some sort of friendship. This battle isn’t lost yet.

“So,” Richie tries carefully, “you wanna hang out later? You know, so we can talk.”

Mike bites his lip. Richie is taken aback by the gesture since he knows he does that too whenever he’s nervous, but he pushes away the sudden weird feeling in his guts and patiently waits for a reply.

“I don’t know, Richie. I don’t really think that’s a good idea.”

“Why not? Come on, what’s the worst that can happen?” Richie grins at Mike from across the table. “Scared you’ll get sick of looking at your own ugly face?”

Mike rolls his eyes. “We’re literally identical looking. You can’t call me ugly without calling yourself ugly.”

Richie shrugs cheerfully. “Never said I was handsome.”

That gets a small chuckle out of Mike. He sighs deeply, runs a hand through his curls and rolls up the sleeves of his red sweater - the same one he was wearing last night.

“Fine,” he eventually say. “Meet me at noon by the lake. We can talk there.”

“Sweet!” Richie says, almost pumping his fist in the air in victory. He gets up from the table, nods goodbye to the (still bickering) trio next to him and makes his way out of the cafeteria. All the way back to his cabin, he can’t stop grinning.

Chapter Text

Mike doesn’t want to admit it, but meeting Richie Tozier scares him. Studies do suggest there are at least seven people on earth who look like you, but none of those studies say those people are identical to you. Not like siblings. Not like twins.

Once the thought has made a home in Mike’s mind, he can’t stop thinking about it anymore. It plagues his thoughts for the entire night, allowing very little sleep as Mike tosses and turns and tries to do the maths, tries to see the logic in this.

It’s a well known fact that Theodore Wheeler is a piece of shit who cares about very little but himself. Mike has never known a time where his father was a pleasure to be around; he has the talent of sucking all the life and joy out of you just by being in the same room as you. The man has the charisma of a wet rag and the warmth of a broken light bulb.

Mike had seen him drain his mother of her happiness, had seen Nancy wither under his bored gaze like a flower without sunlight. He had hated Ted for his indifference, for his carelessness, for the distance he put between himself and his children. But he never had to hate him for cheating.

He isn’t so sure about that anymore now. Would Mike really put it past Ted to cheat on Karen? He had ruined her in every other way, so why not finish it off like that? Why not bite himself into a new woman to suck the life out of her like the parasite he is?

But considering this thought, accepting the fact that Ted would be capable of cheating on Karen and knock another woman up, also means Mike has to consider that he could be the result of adultery. That he could be some random woman’s son, with Richie as his brother, and that his mother isn’t actually his mother. That he was raised on lies.

The other possibility, of course, is that Ted and Karen had twins after Nancy and decided to give one of them up for adoption, though that seems very unlikely. Karen Wheeler loves children, and they certainly have the resources to feed and care for twins. She would never voluntarily give up one of her children.

Which brings Mike to a third option: Ted forced her to give up Richie. But Mike can’t imagine him being that cruel, that heartless. And what would be his motive? But then again, what would be his motive to leave Richie and their biological mother and bring Mike back home with him to be raised as Karen’s son? It doesn’t make sense. None of it makes any sense.

All the different possibilities keep him up all night, and by the time dawn rolls around, Mike doesn’t see any preferable outcome except the doppergänger one. Maybe, with a bit of luck, Richie was sent here from a parallel universe to kill him. That would honestly be preferable right about now.

Mike really doesn’t want to see Richie again. Seeing him means having to think about the reason why they look so identical, and that means having to think about all the equally fucked up explanations he came up with last night. He wished they could just exist parallel with each other, their paths never crossing again after their brief meeting in the cafeteria last night, but Richie seems to want something else entirely.

He finds him the next morning during breakfast. Mike groans internally when he sees him approaching, wearing a different but equally ugly shirt and his messy hair uncombed. Richie’s eyes scan the room until he finds Mike’s table and then he marches over there, determination in his eyes. Mike wishes he could disappear as more and more people notice the identical boys and stare at them while Richie walks over.

Richie immediately acts like he owns the table when he puts down his plate and sits across from Mike, trying to engage him in a conversation he doesn’t want to be a part of. He hopes that, if he just keeps his answers to a minimum, Richie will eventually give up and leave him alone. They can go back to just coincidentally looking a lot alike, Mike can force the memory and all its implications out of his head and he can pretend nothing ever happened. It’s not the ideal situation, but it’s better than having to deal with things he doesn’t want to even think about.

But then Richie tells Mike he’s being mean, and he’s immediately taken back to the fall of ‘84, when Max had moved to Hawkins. Mike hadn’t liked her at first, didn’t like how Dustin and Lucas drooled over her. But after a few weeks, she has finally snapped and had called Mike a ‘mean, tactless asshole’. The others, even Will, had agreed, and that really made Mike think about his behavior.

His therapist taught him to reflect on his words and actions from an outsider’s perspective. Would he like to hear those words when they were spoken to him? When he realizes he wouldn’t like the way he’s treating Richie, his own personal motives for it don’t even matter anymore.

Richie shrugs his apology for his behavior away. It reminds Mike of the way Will would shrug away Lonnie’s apologies for the way he used to treat him - like he was used to it by now. Like it was easier to just shrug than it was to accept the apology because he knew it would happen again anyway.

Mike feels bad for treating him like he did. After all, it wouldn’t be his fault if Ted ended up being a cheater and they were a result of his shenanigans. So, when Richie asks to hang out so they can talk, he ends up agreeing.

***

“So, where are you from?” Richie tries that afternoon. They’re at the lake, far enough towards the woods that they won’t be bothered by curious campers. Mike is sitting on a log, but Richie seems to be incapable of sitting still for more than ten seconds. He’s balancing on another log, arms spread wide as he puts one foot before the other trying to get to the other side.

“Hawkins, Indiana,” Mike says. He’d been cracking his skull during the hours between breakfast and now about what he could tell Richie and what not. Maybe Richie’s mom had spoken of a man in Hawkins, maybe Richie would make a connection Mike isn’t ready to make. But not telling Richie at least where he’s from would be suspicious and would probably even fuel Richie’s doppelgänger theory.

“Never heard of it,” Richie says, and Mike is almost relieved to hear that.

“It’s a small town,” Mike explains.

“Ah,” Richie says, jumping off the log to pick up a pebble and fling it into the lake. “I’m from a small town too. Nothing ever happens there.”

Mike nods. Nothing happens in Hawkins either. The biggest recent scandal was Jane showing up in town after she had run away from her latest foster family, and that was four years ago.

“So why did you come to New Horizons?” Richie continues. He seems to be determined to get to know Mike as best as he can.

“I don’t know, boredom, I guess,” Mike shrugs. He rips a blade of grass into tiny little pieces and scatters them over the ground. “My friends were all busy so I’d have to spend the majority of summer alone.”

“Don’t like being alone?”

Mike shrugs again.

“Yeah, me neither,” Richie sighs. He finally sits down next to Mike and stares at the lake. It’s weird seeing Richie’s face in profile, considering it’s identical to Mike’s and Mike has never seen his face in profile before. Is his nose really that sharp? and does he have the same dark bags under his eyes? Damn, his are probably worse considering the fact he barely slept. Richie was right: it’s already getting annoying having to look at his own face all the time.

“I was forced by my mother,” Richie continues. The word mother sounds like a cuss instead of a regular term. “She said I had to be taught respect and apparently summer camp is the best thing for that.”

“What, she didn’t enlist you into the army?”

Richie shoves him lightly. “That’s what I said! I’m too young, apparently. It’s nice knowing she’s waiting with that till I turn eighteen.”

“You don’t sound like you like her.”

Richie scoffs.

“That’s putting it lightly. She’s like, the most horrible person in the world.”

Mike thinks about his father.

“I beg to differ,” he says.

“Aw, look at us bonding over shitty people in our lives. Who is it, also your mom?”

“My dad,” Mike says. He doesn’t even know why he says it - normally it’s none of other people’s business what happens behind closed doors in the Wheeler household. His friends all know Mike doesn’t have the healthiest relationship with his dad, but that’s only because they’ve known him for their entire lives. Jane and Max didn’t find out the Wheeler household was far from perfect till they were accidentally caught in the middle of a fight between Ted and Karen when they were all hanging out in the basement one night. And yet, with Richie it doesn’t feel like Mike is exposing himself too much. He almost finds it comforting that they both hate one of the key figures in their lives. It makes him dislike Richie a little less and sympathize with him a little more.

“My dad isn’t even in the picture.”

Mike’s heart leaps into his throat. This is it, the perfect opportunity to try to get any information Richie might possibly have about his biological father without raising too much suspicion. He tries to sound casual as he asks, “What happened to him?”

“The usual shit, I guess. He knocked up my mom, decided he didn’t want to stick around to raise a kid, packed up all his stuff and vanished. He sent some money the first months of my life and a birthday card when I turned one, but that’s it.”

“And you never tried to track him down?”

Richie scoffs. “Why would I? He obviously never cared about me and never wanted me in the first place. I have better things to do than looking for a man who doesn’t want me in his life.”

“So you know nothing about him?”

“Not even his fucking name. My mom refused to tell me when I was younger and eventually I just stopped asking.”

Mike exhales. He doesn’t know whether not knowing anything about Richie’s father is a good or a bad thing. It could very easily be a total stranger who just passed genes and mixed them with Richie’s mother and made him look weirdly like Mike. It’s unlikely, but not impossible. But it could still very easily be Theodore Wheeler. Not caring about his children does sound a lot like him.

Mike’s mind starts to drift off, starts to drift to a more dangerous place where he and Richie are the result of adultery and Mike’s connection to Karen Wheeler, the parent he actually cares about, is solely based on lies and cover-ups, but Richie pokes him in the ribs before he can spiral into another episode. Mike looks at Richie, who squints at him.

“But, uh, why are you so curious about my life?” He wonders, eyebrows raised. “Are you trying to find my weak spot so it’ll be easier for you to kill me and take my place in this dimension?”

Mike groans and covers his face with his hands.

“I’m not your doppelgänger, Richie!”

“That’s exactly the kind of shit my doppelgänger would say!” Richie points. Mike can’t tell if he’s being serious or if he’s just messing with him, but it’s annoying either way.

“I will fight you,” Mike warns.

Richie grins. “I knew it! You’re trying to weaken me before your final blow. I’m onto you, Michael.” He jumps up from the log, almost buzzing with energy, and extends his hand to Mike.

“Come on then! Fight me to the death, doppelgänger!”

Mike slaps his hand away and smiles despite himself.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” he says. Richie’s grin turns even wider.

“The mood got way too dark way too fast,” he explains. “I had to do something , didn’t I?”

“So you admit the doppelgänger theory is dumb and laughable?”

Richie sputters in disbelief, putting a hand over his heart. “It’s a solid theory!”

“No theory is solid if you have no proof to back it up.”

“You don’t have any proof that we aren’t doppelgängers,” Richie says with a cocky grin, as if this is an argument to be won instead of a myth to be debunked.

“Actually, I can prove we aren’t doppelgängers,” Mike says.

“Oh, yeah? How?”

And before he even realizes what he’s saying, before he can even stop his mouth from forming the words, Mike hands them both the perfect way to figure out once and for all if they’re twins.

“We can look into our files. Doppelgängers aren’t real people, but since doppelgängers don’t exist, we’re both real people. Therefore, we will have real and traceable information in our files.”

Richie raises his eyebrows again.

“I can get us into Mr. Brown’s office. He keeps all the files there.”

Mike’s brain is trying desperately to get out of this, but he has already unintentionally planted the idea in Richie’s head. If he doesn’t go with him, Richie will still go by himself. Mike curses his unhealthy need to constantly prove others wrong. If he could just let ignorant comments slide every once in a while, he wouldn’t be getting himself into situations where he has to break into someone’s office to cancel out the option of him having a secret twin from a mother he doesn’t know and a father he doesn’t want to know. This is great. Just wonderful. Mike was fully ready to live the rest of his life in utter and blissful denial about the explanation for his and Richie’s identical looks, but his own stupid brain had to sabotage that plan. Sometimes Mike really wishes he could kick his own ass.

Either way, he can’t get out of it now. He might as well face the music. And hey, maybe they don’t find any proof that they’re related. Maybe they do just look a lot alike. Maybe that’s it.

Maybe Mike’s entire life isn’t built on lies after all.

***

They sneak into Mr. Brown’s office that same night, both agreeing that they have to find out the truth. Mike can’t imagine having to spend another night wide awake, thinking of all possible explanations for this. He’d rather get this over with.

Richie picks the lock. He’s even better at it than Mike and quietly tells him there are a lot of abandoned, locked up houses in Derry his friends and him would often break into for shits and giggles, and that’s why he’s so good at it. Mike honestly wouldn’t have cared if Richie’s lock picking skills came from having broken into people’s houses to steal jewelry; he just wants to get his hands on their files and rule out all the possibilities floating through his mind.

It takes Richie a bit longer to pick the lock to the file cabinet. Mike notices that his hands are shaking and he wonders if Richie is thinking the same thing, if the doppelgänger theory was just a set up from the start to trick Mike into looking into their files. He wouldn’t give Richie those trickery abilities, but then again, he barely even knows the guy.

Finally, after picking the lock for two minutes, they hear a satisfying click. Richie opens the cabinet proudly, but Mike has no time to pat him on the back. He searches for his file first and then also fishes out Richie’s, opening both at the same time to skim through them in one effort.

He lets his eyes drift over the usual shit like the names of his parents and other irrelevant information. Upon closer inspection of Richie’s file he discovers that they share a birthday, but even that doesn’t have to mean anything. It could still be a coincidence. Mike’s life could still end up being the exact same as it was before he met Richie when he walks out of here.

But then Richie gasps, and Mike’s eyes dart to where Richie is staring at, and there it stands, black on white. Undeniable proof. A knife twists itself into Mike’s back and punctures his lungs, causing him to gasp for air.

There, at the top of the page, it reads: Richard Andrew Tozier (né: Wheeler) .

Chapter Text

Richie had spent his entire life thinking he only had his mother. It was a sad thought to have, especially because Maggie Tozier didn’t give two shits about him. So, really, he didn’t even have her. In reality, it had always been just Richie. He would think about his dad from time to time when he was younger, despite being angry at him for leaving him alone with his mother and completely disappearing out of his life. Richie couldn’t help but imagine him. Did he have the same dark eyes, the same black hair? Did he need glasses too, was his eyesight just as bad as Richie’s? And did he really leave, or did his mother just force him out?

As Richie grew older, he stopped imagining his father. He realized that his dad didn’t care about him, had never cared about him, and he accepted the fact that he would go his entire life without knowing who his father was.

It never occurred to him that his father might have another family. For all Richie cared, he was in prison or dead, not living a perfectly average life in a perfectly average suburb with a perfectly average wife and kids. If he didn’t care enough about Richie to stick around, certainly he didn’t care enough to have any more children.

Yet here it stands; undeniable proof. Him and Mike sharing their appearance, birthday and last name cannot be seen as a crazy coincidence. Not even Richie is that blind.

Upon closer inspection of Mike’s file, Richie sees that he has two sisters: Nancy and Holly. Richie’s stomach turns at the thought of growing up all alone when he could’ve had siblings, when he could’ve had a twin. His childhood would’ve been so much less lonely. He wouldn’t have to rely on the losers to keep him company, he wouldn’t have to feel like a burden. Having siblings would mean never being alone and never feeling like a burden, because siblings always have each other, no matter what.

“Richie…” Mike says softly, probably noticing the twisted hurt on Richie’s face. He reaches out to him, trying to comfort him with touch, but Richie jerks away. Searing hot jealousy suddenly blinds him. Mike grew up in a loving home, with two parents who took care of him and two sisters he could love, all while Richie got stuck with his mother in a shitty little town, desperate for the love of a father he told himself he hated. It’s not fair . Why does Mike get to live the life Richie could’ve lived? Why couldn’t his father have taken Richie with him instead to be raised in a warm home? Why did Mike get everything, and Richie nothing?

“Stay away from me,” Richie says through gritted teeth, violently slamming his file shut.

“Richie, we should talk…”

“Oh, now you wanna talk? There’s nothing left to say. I don’t have anything left to say. I’m done.”

Mike tries to keep him there, even grabs his wrist and pleads for him to stay, but Richie breaks free from his grip and turns on his heels. He storms out of Mr. Brown’s office, not even bothering to be quiet, and starts running as soon as he steps outside. He doesn’t know where he’s going, but he doesn’t care. All he wants is to put as much distance between him and Mike as possible, as if he’ll be able to break their twin connection if he just runs far away enough.

***

Richie is woken up by the sound of water trickling down on him. He opens one eye, realizing his glasses are so askew he can barely even see, then opens the other and sits up. It takes him a while to adjust his glasses, register where the fuck he is and then also realize the sound he’s hearing isn’t water trickling down on him, but Axel taking a fucking piss on him.

“What the fuck?” Richie shrieks, jumping to his feet and pushing Axel away. Axel laughs maniacally as Richie looks at the wet spot on his shirt.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, dickhole?” He yells. He would’ve punched Axel in the face if it weren’t for the fact that Axel probably carries some sort of weapon and isn’t afraid to use it.

“I was looking for a place to piss and I saw you lying there, it was too tempting!” Axel laughs, holding his hands up in surrender. Richie flips him off and walks past him, stomping over tree roots and slapping away low hanging branches. He doesn’t even know how he ended up falling asleep in the middle of the woods, but he’d very much like to return to his cabin to take a shower and pack his stuff. He has decided he’s not staying here any longer. He doesn’t care what consequences await him at home; everything is better than having to stay here another minute, being forced to look at his twin and constantly be reminded of the life he was deprived of.

Axel catches up to him and slaps him on the shoulder. As if they’re friends. As if Richie doesn’t absolutely despise him.

“Dude, what kind of shit where you on that got you passed out in the woods like that?” He asks. “And do you have any left?”

“I wasn’t on drugs, fuckface.”

“Too bad,” Axel shrugs. “I could really use something right about now, ya know? Kali hid our weed supply because we were being ‘too obvious’ or whatever.”

“I don’t care, Axel.”

“Damn, what crawled up your ass and died?”

“None of your fucking business.”

Axel grabs his arm and pulls him to a stop. Richie tries to jerk himself out of Axel’s grip, but he only squeezes his arm harder.

“You really gotta learn how to talk to people, Richard. You’re making a very bad impression.”

“Let me go,” Richie snarls. He really isn’t in the mood for Axel’s macho demeanor. He just wants to be left alone for once in his life. The last person he wants to be around after finding out he has a secret twin and two secret half sisters is Mr. Mohawk McDildo.

“Say please,” Axel purrs.

Richie spits in his face.

Axel is so taken aback by the action that he momentarily lets go of Richie’s arm, but he recovers too fast for Richie to make a run for it. Axel’s hand shoots up and wraps itself around Richie’s throat as he pushes him against the nearest tree, slamming Richie’s back into it.

“I really wish you hadn’t just done that,” Axel says.

“And I really wish you would’ve brushed your teeth before breathing in my face, but I guess we can’t all be winners.”

Axel screws his hand tighter around Richie’s throat. Richie tries his best not to gasp for air, even when his eyes sting with effort and pain. If there’s one thing he’s learned from being the subject of violence is that it’s best not to show any sign of weakness. Well, maybe that’s not the best thing you can do when someone is violent towards you, but that’s what Richie took from his experience as a punching bag. That logic might explain why he still gets beat up a lot, though.

“You have a death wish, Tozier?”

Richie shrugs. He wouldn’t say he wishes to die, per se, but the thought of dying had stopped scaring him a long time ago. He thinks about what Bill would say if he were here, something about how his weird comradery with death is unhealthy and should be discussed with Richie’s therapist. The thought makes him smile, which Axel of course takes the wrong way. Richie wonders if provoking Axel into hurting him is some kind of twisted coping mechanism. He gets his answer when Axel punches him in the stomach and Richie feels himself smile ; apparently pain is his way of dealing with things just like humor is. Huh. He should call his therapist with this update.

The whole Mike fiasco is pushed further into the back of his mind with every hit, and by the time Richie is on the ground, he barely even remembers what got him so upset in the first place. Sure, he also can’t feel his lips and there’s an annoying throbbing around his ribs, but he’ll gladly take that over any kind of emotional pain.

“You’re fucked up, Tozier,” Axel says, towering over him. Richie notices the blood on his knuckles. Follows a drop of it with his eyes as it makes its way from Axel’s knuckle to his finger to the ground. “You’re really fucked up if you keep smiling after a beating like that.”

“I have every reason to smile! I just found out I have a fucking twin!” Richie tries to say, but it comes out so slurred together Axel can’t possibly understand it.

Axel shakes his head in disbelief. Richie is kind of offended that the craziest one out of the bunch dares to act as if Richie is more fucked up than he is. He tries telling him that, but again the words don’t seem to come out the way Richie wants them to. Axel looks down at him, something close to pity in his eyes, and then turns around to walk away.

“Hey, no, don’t leave!” Richie yells after him. “We were having so much fun!”

Richie tries so desperately for Axel to come back to beat him up some more that his mind comes out of its dazed state and remembers the reason for his breakdown. All the hurt and the betrayal and loneliness come flooding back immediately, and Richie’s lulled screams turn into strangled cries. His wicked laugh turns into a twisted sob. His chest tightens with sorrow, his heart feels like someone is tearing it into little pieces. Richie realizes the impact of the events that took place last night. He realizes what this means, how alone he’s been all these years. How horribly lonely he was. How unfair it is.

He curls up into a little ball, his ribs protesting in pain, and sobs.

He just sobs.

Chapter Text

No longer having Kali’s gang to fall back on really makes Richie realize how isolated he is here.

He becomes quite friendly with the nurses, Mrs. Bergstein and Mrs. Oliver. It’s sad to say they’re actually his only friends at camp New Horizons now, and they only hang out with him because they have to take care of him. Richie has to stay in bed for three days after he’s found by a camper taking a morning walk. He’s already apologized profusely to the poor boy who had to find him all bloodied and bruised and must be traumatized by it, but the camper had shrugged it off. Richie had kind of hoped their encounter would result in a friendship, with the camper coming to visit Richie in the infirmary, but nobody comes to see him in the three days he isn’t allowed out of bed. He guesses it’s what he deserves; he never made an effort to get to know campers that weren’t youth criminals, and now he has to spend his days with only the nurses as company.

Mr. Brown tried several times to make Richie tell who beat him up like that, but Richie isn’t a snitch. He’d want nothing more for Axel to be sent right to juvi for misbehaving at camp, but he doesn’t want to achieve that by telling on him. So he lies through his teeth, telling Mr. Brown that he never saw his attacker and that they probably did it because Richie wronged them somehow - he’s very good at that. Mr. Brown doesn’t seem to really believe him, but he eventually lets it slide.

Being alone in the infirmary also gives Richie a lot of time to think. He usually avoids being alone for that exact reason, since he usually can’t stand his own mind when he doesn’t have any distractions, but right now his thoughts are the only company he has and he’ll just have to take what he can get. He writes some letters to his friends but never sends them, not sure if telling them about Mike through written correspondence is the most efficient way. They’ll probably think it’s some weird prank he’s trying to pull. Calling them about it isn’t an option either, because they still won’t believe him. Richie curses himself for his endless need to prank his friends. He’s like the boy who cried wolf; now that the wolf is actually here, nobody will believe him.

The best thing he can do right now is just getting through his remaining weeks at New Horizons. He decided that he wouldn’t be going home early after all, realizing that the consequences he would face wouldn’t be worth it. He needs his anxiety meds now more than ever, and if he goes home now he’ll have to deal with the knowledge of having a twin without any pill-shaped help.

Mrs. Oliver brings him a pile of letters on the third day of his bedrest. She tells him that they usually don’t give patients their mail while they are in the infirmary, but his letters were piling up in the main cabin so she snooped them away and snuck them in here anyway. Richie almost invites her to Christmas dinner right then and there.

There’s a letter from every loser in the pile, and three from Bill alone. Richie smiles as he traces his neat writing, so completely different from his own. He had to write for Bill when they were younger and Bill had broken his wrist during baseball practice, and after two days he was so pissed off at Richie’s horrible, smudged writing that he snapped Richie’s pen in half and begged Stan to take over writing-duty. Richie’s constant doodling in the margins of Bill's notebook probably had something to do with it too. Not everyone appreciates detailed penises on their Maths homework. But those afternoons together, perched together at Bill's desk at home to go over their homework, were some of Richie’s fondest memories.

Richie keeps Bill's letters for last. He goes through the other letters one by one, reading about what all the losers are up to in Derry. Beverly writes about roller derby and goes into great detail about all the bruises and injuries she has seen and endured. Ben has written Richie a poem about stupid jokes and long nights spent around a bonfire, referring to a summer a couple of years ago where he and Ben would have heart-to-hearts in the middle of the night at the Barrens, when everyone had already gone to sleep. Despite being a trashmouth, his friends tended to trust Richie with all of their problems and secrets. And Richie locked all those secrets away, cherished the meaning behind them - the trust they conveyed - and never told another living soul about them.

Mike’s letter is short and makes Richie laugh. He simply wrote ‘ you’re the gayest idiot I know, and I’ve seen Stan walk into a pole because he was too busy admiring Bill’ and included a polaroid of his blinding smile, just like Richie asked him to. He gently puts the polaroid on his nightstand, instantly feeling better just by looking at Mike’s smile, and continues reading through his letters.

Stan’s letter is the longest - at least three pages. He starts by saying he knows Richie will probably get too distracted to read through the whole thing and that it’s okay if that happens, which only makes Richie want to focus on the letter harder to prove Stan wrong. Stan was never good at expressing his feelings, not on paper and not face to face, so the letter is mostly just a summary of what’s been going on with the losers. Stan mentions some rare birds he saw, brags about winning a Monopoly marathon which ended with Eddie screaming obscenities so loudly Mr. Denbrough came down to the basement to threaten to wash out his mouth with soap and talks about a movie they went to see in the theatre. He even mentions that he was brave enough to hold Bill’s hand, which makes Richie’s heart soar with pride. Stan adds that, of course, they were sitting all the way in the back and he only dared to hold Bill’s hand during the movie, not before or after, but that Bill’s grin was worth the anxiety.

Next up is Eddie's letter. It's about nothing in particular and the entire vibe surrounding it feels suspiciously like anger, but Richie knows that’s just Eddie’s way of showing he cares about him. One time Richie almost got hit by a car and Eddie yelled at him the entire walk home and also rung his house in the middle of the night to yell at him some more for ‘keeping him up and thinking about what would’ve happened if Richie actually did get hit by that car’.

Richie counts the amount of ‘I miss you, fucking idiot’s and is pleased when he counts the phrase a whole fifteen times in his one letter. The boy really is a master of words.

Bill's letters are harder to stomach. Richie doesn't like picking favorites when it comes to his friends, but if someone was holding him at gunpoint and forcing him to pick someone, it would be Bill. They'd been friends for their entire lives, having grown up in the same street and having gone to the same school their entire lives. Richie has shared everything with Bill, and Bill has shared everything with Richie. Out of all the losers, he still misses Bill the most.

Bill talks about the same things as the others in his letters. He doesn't have anything new to add because they spend all their free time together anyway, but he does complain about the Monopoly marathon and what kind of animal Stan turned into when he won.

It was kind of hot, he adds, which makes Richie giggle. He can imagine it was.

Bill also included a drawing with his letters. He drew all the losers together in the lake at the quarry, with Beverly, Ben, Mike and Richie playing chicken while Bill and Stan throw a ball over Eddie’s head. Richie can tell Bill put a lot of work in it and he puts it right next to Mike’s picture on his nightstand. He already knows he’ll sleep a whole lot better with those two things by his side.

Richie feels better and worse once he’s gone through all the letters. Better because it’s nice to know that his friends think about him and miss him, worse because reading about the things they’ve been up to back home only makes him miss them more. Especially now, with the whole Wheeler deal, he yearns for their attention and affection.

Mrs. Oliver brings him dinner before Richie can spiral into an episode and asks him about the letters.

“They were great,” Richie smiles, eternally grateful. “Thank you for bringing them to me.”

“No problem, honey,” Mrs. Oliver says, wiping Richie’s hair out of his eyes as she helps him to sit up straight. “I mean, I could’ve waited till tomorrow to give them to you, but you looked so miserable I figured you could use some news from home. I hope you only received good news?”

“I did. They were letters from my friends, and they just wanted to update me on what’s going on at home.”

Mrs. Oliver nods.

“That’s very nice of them to do. Now, eat your dinner and get some rest. You’re out of here tomorrow.”

Richie nods and thanks her again. Mrs. Oliver smiles brightly, makes sure the pillow behind Richie’s back is fluffed up enough and disappears out of the room again.

Richie sighs once she’s gone and starts eating.

***

His first meal outside of the infirmary is absolutely nerve wracking. Richie doesn’t have Kali’s gang to fall back on and barely dares to look into their direction anymore since his beating, so he’s forced to eat every single meal in the cafeteria. Of course word got out about his beating and people stare at him like he’s some kind of circus freak as he walks by. People actually leave their table when Richie sits with them, like he’s stuck in some horrible high school movie. As if people are afraid they’re gonna be targeted too if they come too close to him.

They whisper too. Richie has had to deal with a lot of whispers in his life, a lot of pointing fingers and disapproving glances, but he never had to deal with them alone. He always had his friends to back him up, to hide behind, but now he’s all alone and vulnerable. He tries to draw as little attention to himself as possible as he eats, shrinking into himself to make himself smaller. It’s not something he would usually do, but now he kind of feels like he doesn’t have a choice.

“I heard he got beat up because he’s a fag,” someone whispers way too loudly. Richie flinches at the slur, but can’t say that’s such a wild assumption to make. He’s gotten beaten up several times in the past for acting queer. Of course nobody outside of the losers knows he actually is queer, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t get shit for the assumption alone.

Richie feels absolutely horrible sitting through every meal like that. All alone, the subject of all the gossip at camp, stared at and pointed to. This is worse than just having to spend the entire camp alone; now he’s alone and targeted.

Mike Wheeler doesn’t make it any easier. Their similarities are also still a hot topic of discussion among the other campers and they constantly try to catch Richie and Mike together to really gawk at them, but Richie doesn’t want anything to do with Mike after what happened in Mr. Brown’s office. Rationally, Richie knows Mike isn’t the one to blame. But he has to blame someone for his shitty homelife, and Mike is simply the easiest target.

Richie avoids him entirely. He tries to just ignore his very existence, to not let Mike bother him, but as the days pass and Richie continues to be completely isolated and miserable, it gets harder to contain all the anger and hurt he’s holding inside. Suddenly, Mike Wheeler represents everything wrong in Richie’s life. His abusive and neglectful mother, the terrible house he’s forced to live in, the loneliness, the anxiety, the depression. Mike embodies all the shit life threw at Richie, and that in combination with the effect of alienation from his peers equals a very aggressive and irrational anger.

So when he spots Mike across the cafeteria one day, surrounded by friends and laughing about something, Richie has had it. Yet again, he gets the short end of the stick. Mike got their father, a good life, siblings. Mike got it easy. Mike probably never knew what it felt like to be scared for his life when his mother drank, his hands had probably never shaken so violently trying to lock his door to keep his mother out that his eyes filled with frustrated tears. And even now, at a camp miles away from their homes, Richie got beat up and isolated while Mike is surrounded by friends. It’s not fair. It’s infuriating .

Richie is across the room before he even realizes it. He pushes past the people surrounding Mike, takes one good look at his fucking twin and punches him straight in the jaw, so hard that Mike falls to the ground in pain.

The entire cafeteria immediately bursts into uproar. The other campers jump to their feet and push and pull to get to the scene, craning their necks to try to see what’s gonna happen next.

“Fight, fight, fight, fight!” Someone starts cheering, and soon the other campers join in the chant. Richie barely registers it. He just looks at Mike, still lying on the floor, and kicks him. And then he kicks him again. And then he flings himself at him, punching him in the face again and pinning him down and screaming . He sounds insane even to his own ears, but he can’t bring himself to stop. So he keeps going until he’s being pulled off Mike, and even then he struggles against the person holding him to try to get to Mike again.

“Everyone outside!” Someone yells. Probably a counselor. The campers don’t move.

“If this cafeteria isn’t empty when I count to three, everyone will be woken up at 3am tonight to clean the fucking toilets with their toothbrushes!” The same counselor threatens. That does the trick, and the campers all storm outside until it’s just Richie, Mike and three counselors left. Jay helps Mike up, inspecting his wounds.

“You okay, kiddo?” He asks. Mike nods, despite looking pretty terrible to Richie.

“Are you calm?” The counselor holding Richie asks. Richie takes a deep breath and hums. The counselor releases Richie and moves to stand with Dawn and Jay. Only now does Richie recognize him as Leonard.

“Now, can someone explain what just happened?” Jay asks. He says it as if he wants both of them to answer, but his eyes are on Richie. Richie just shrugs, unable to find his voice. Now that the adrenaline has worn off, he just kind of wants to fall to the floor and cry. Looking at Mike makes him feel sick to his stomach; he can’t believe he did that to him.

“Mike?” Dawn tries.

“He just came at me!” Mike replies, pressing his hand against his nose.

“Is that true, Richie?” Leonard asks. Richie looks away and shrugs again.

“Well, if you’re not gonna reply, we have to send you to Mr. Brown’s office to explain yourself there. He’ll decide what happens next,” Dawn says, looking between Richie and Mike.

“W- I have to go too?” Mike says. “But I didn’t do anything!”

“We don’t know that until we’ve heard both parts to the story,” Dawn explains. “Unfortunately, neither of us was here at the moment of the fight, so we didn’t see anything. So that means both of you will have to go to Mr. Brown’s office so he can hear what happened.”

“This is absolute bullshit. I didn’t fucking do anything!”

“Language!” Jay snaps. “Look, Wheeler. Just fucking go to Mr. Brown’s office. If you didn’t do anything, you’ll be out before you can scratch your balls.” He throws him a towel. “Here, for your nose. Dawn will take you to Mr. Brown’s office.”

Mike mumbles something as he presses the towel to his nose, but follows Dawn out nevertheless. He doesn’t look at Richie as he does so, which is probably for the best. Richie follows after him, hands stuffed deep in his pockets. He’s afraid that the smallest thing will set him off again, and he doesn’t want to hurt Mike any more than he did. He can’t help but think about his mother, about how hard her hand could sting and how big his bruises were whenever she took her anger out on him, and Richie thinks about only one thing on their way to Mr. Brown’s office.

Is he turning into his mother?

Chapter Text

Mike’s jaw throbs as they wait outside of Mr. Brown’s office until they get called in. He gently moves it to make sure it’s not broken and flinches when a hot pain spreads over his face. He presses the bag of frozen peas Dawn gave him harder against his cheek and silently curses Richie. This is all his fault. Mike shouldn’t even be sitting here. He should be in the infirmary, getting painkillers for his jaw and nose, not waiting to be punished for something he didn’t even do.

They should kick Richie out of camp. Mike scolds himself for even thinking that, considering the fact that he’ll be sent home to a mother he can’t stand with a secret too heavy for his shoulders to carry alone, but Mike was never the best at showing sympathy for those who hurt him. It’s not his fault that they’re twins - hell, he doesn’t want them to be. He’d much rather erase the last couple of days from his memory, but instead he’s forced to think about all the possibilities this situation implies, about the fact that his mother may very well not be his biological mother. He knows it can’t be easy for Richie either, finding out his father has a whole new life far away from him and his mother. Mike can guess how Richie got all those bruises; despite the story about the beating going around camp, he figures Richie must’ve provoked someone into hurting him to briefly forget that other pain, the one that comes with betrayal. But still, that doesn’t excuse violence towards others. Mike isn’t the solution to Richie’s emotional constipation, and he sure as hell won’t wave this off like it isn’t a big deal. Richie may be his brother, but that doesn’t mean Mike has to like him.

“Mr. Wheeler, Mr. Tozier,” Mr. Brown says, stepping out of his office. “I heard you two made quite a scene in the cafeteria. Let’s discuss what happened exactly.” He steps away from the doorway and gestures for the boys to get inside, so they both stand and walk into the office. Richie plops down onto a chair, seemingly unbothered, and Mike wants to punch him. How isn’t he even moved by any of this? Is it normal for him to just beat people up when he’s upset about something? Then again, Mike knows nothing about this kid. And he did hang out with Kali’s gang before they ghosted him. He might as well be a youth delinquent for all Mike knows.

“So, who wants to start talking?” Mr. Brown says once he’s settled in his chair. He puts his elbows on his desk, leaning forward in anticipation, and looks from Mike to Richie and back.

Mike wants nothing more than to explain exactly what went down and make sure Mr. Brown knows he isn’t the one to blame, but upon closer inspection of Richie, Mike notices he isn’t unbothered at all. In fact, behind his big glasses, Richie looks… he looks almost scared. And as Mike takes an even closer look, he also notices how much Richie’s hands are shaking. He tries hiding it by balling them into fists, but the shaking doesn’t stop.

Mike’s mind rapidly goes through all the possible outcomes to this. He could rat Richie out, which will most likely get Richie kicked out of camp. Mike would have peace here, but he wouldn’t be able to live with himself knowing he just sent his twin back to his mother. Richie hadn’t gone in depth about how terrible she was, but with his own dad sitting at home, Mike can sort of imagine. He can’t do that to him, no matter how much he wants him gone.

Mike could also take the blame. Say he provoked Richie. He even considers telling Mr. Brown he called him names, the same slurs people back home hurl at Will, but even just thinking about that makes Mike sick to his stomach. He would never use any of those slurs, can barely even stand thinking them. Mr. Brown would see right through his lie.

So Mike goes for his third option: absolute silence. It’s a risk because Richie can still speak up and put the blame on Mike anyway, but right now it seems like the best thing to do. So he just stares at a spot right behind Mr. Brown’s shoulder, his fingernails digging into the palms of his hands, and presses his lips together.

“Richie?” Mr. Brown tries. Richie looks up to him, then glances over to Mike. They briefly make eye contact before Mike looks away, still angry at him, but he hopes Richie gets it. This isn’t a peace offering exactly, but it’s an extended hand. It’s up to Richie if he’ll take it.

The couple of moments in which Mike isn’t sure if Richie will speak or not seem to last forever. His heart is beating in his throat and Mike is doubting his decision to basically give full control of the situation to Richie, but Richie seems to have taken his extended hand and stays quiet too.

Minutes tick by like that, with Mr. Brown waiting for either of them to say anything, and when he finally realizes they’re not going to speak, he leans back into his chair and sighs.

“Fine then,” he says. “If that’s how you wanna do it. Since there was obviously some sort of fight between the two of you and neither of you want to tell me exactly what happened, I think you two need some time to work things out. For the remaining weeks of camp, you two will stay in the isolation cabin together. It’s a cabin up a hill away from the rest of camp, where you’ll have plenty of opportunities to talk about your problems with each other. You will still participate in camp activities and meals, but you’ll sleep in the isolation cabin. Hopefully you’ll be on good terms again once camp is over. Now, Dawn and Jay will help you get your stuff and lead you to the cabin. Any questions?”

Oh, great. Mike’s move of solidarity backfired immensely, but it’s too late to backtrack now. So he just shrugs, deciding silence is the best way to go. Richie doesn’t say anything either.

“Great!” Mr. Brown says as he gestures to the door. “You are dismissed.”

***

Mike drops his vow of silence on their walk to the isolation cabin. He has hoisted his bag over his shoulder and walks next to Jay, putting as much distance between himself and Richie as possible.

“This doesn’t seem like the most productive solution to a bad situation,” he says. “Isn’t it kind of a bad idea to put two people who can’t stand each other in a cabin together, with no adult supervision whatsoever?”

Jay shrugs. “You’re seventeen, buddy. That’s only a rock throw away from being a legal adult. You two are the adult supervision.”

“See, I don’t feel like that’s how punishment is supposed to work.”

“What, you want me to bend you over my knee and spank you or something?”

“I’d personally prefer that,” Richie butts in, pushing past Dawn to walk on the other side of Jay. “At least that sounds fun.”

Jay snickers, which throws Mike out of the loop. If he didn’t know any better he’d think Richie was sort of flirting with Jay, and that certainly wouldn’t fly with any sensible man back in Hawkins. Even though they’re far away from Hawkins now, he didn’t think anyone at summer camp would be so progressive as to not take offense to someone of the same gender flirting with them.

“Dude, I already told you I don’t swing for your team,” Jay says. There’s no sign of disgust or judgment in his voice.

“I don’t have a team!” Richie exclaims, spreading his arms. “That’s the best part. I’d fuck anyone.”

“And I respect that!” Jay assures him. “But, other than the fact that I’m twenty and you’re seventeen and thus a minor, I’m just not into dudes, my dude. My apologies.”

Richie shrugs. “Apology accepted. It’s a shame, though.”

“You know, I get that a lot back in San Diego. Can’t please everyone, I guess.”

“Hey, you do you,” Richie says, patting Jay on the shoulder. “Heterosexuality is boring, but it’ll do.”

Jay laughs and nods in agreement, a sense of ease and acceptance radiating off him, but Mike is absolutely horrified at the scene that just took place. How in the world can anyone be so open about their sexuality? Richie just casually flirted with a dude , and he didn’t even get hit for it. And judging by the way Jay reacted to it, this wasn’t the first time Richie made a move on him. Mike has so many questions, almost explodes with curiosity, but his pride prevents him from even acknowledging Richie’s existence. So he just turns his head away from them and keeps walking, silently wondering how Richie ever managed to accept himself and his sexuality like that.

The four of them walk for a couple more minutes before finally reaching the isolation cabin.

“Here it is, your new residence,” Jay says, gesturing to the cabin. It looks like all the other cabins at camp but somehow looks out of place so alone in the woods. “Please don’t make too much trouble up here. It takes a while for us to run to your aid in case of an emergency.”

“That doesn’t really sound safe,” Mike notes.

“Yeah, what if we kill each other?” Richie agrees. Jay shrugs.

“Wouldn’t be our responsibility.”

“What if he kills me ?” Mike asks, pointing at Richie. Richie flips him off.

“Then Richie’s mother will pay for the funeral costs,” Dawn says cheerfully. “Don’t worry, boys. Just behave and you’ll be fine. It’s not like you’re forced to spend all your waking moments with each other. Just get settled, freshen up and come back down for dinner. This isn’t the worst measurement that could’ve been taken, you know. You should be grateful Mr. Brown didn’t kick both of you out.”

“I know, I know,” Richie mutters, looking away. Mike wonders how bad the situation at home would be for him if he got kicked out. He did mention something about his mother wanting him to be disciplined at camp, and being kicked out doesn’t really show a lot of discipline. Mike is glad he didn’t tell on him when he got the chance.

“Well then. We’ll leave you two to it. Be nice!” Dawn says, explicitly pointing at each of them.

“We will try our best,” Richie promises halfheartedly. That seems enough for the counselors, as they say goodbye and turn back around to descend the hill and walk back to camp.

“Pretty lazy conflict solving they do here at New Horizons, don’t you think?” Richie says once they enter the cabin. “Just put ‘em in a cabin together and pray they don’t kill each other!”

Mike steps inside too. The cabin smells a bit musty and there’s dust collecting on all shelves and the beds. They’ll have to clean everything before going to bed tonight.

“Whatever,” He mutters at Richie’s attempt to start a conversation. “Just stay on your side of the cabin and I’ll stay on mine.”

“Side? What side?”

Mike glares at Richie and draws a line in the dust on the floor.

“Your side,” he points. “And my side.”

“What if I want your side?”

“Fine!” Mike groans, stepping over the line. “That can be your side. Just stay on whatever side you prefer and leave me alone.”

Richie looks at the line on the floor, then up to Mike and sighs. He sits down on one of the beds, ignoring the cloud of dust that flies up as he does so, and covers his face with his hands.

“I’m really sorry about what I did,” he says, voice muffled. “I didn’t… I didn’t mean to. I swear I didn’t. I just - I don’t know.” Richie drags his hands over his face and eventually lets them fall in his lap. “I got overwhelmed. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you, and I’m so so sorry, Mike.”

Mike sits down on his own bed, mimicking Richie’s position.

“You’re not the only one who has to process what this means, Richie. Did you ever stop to think how I must feel? You just found out your father has another family, which is horrible. But now I need to find out if my mother, the woman who raised me and loved me and took care of me for seventeen years, is my mother after all. Maybe your mother gave birth to twins all those years ago. Maybe mine did. I don’t know what’s the truth, but you’re not the only one struggling with this.”

Richie nods.

“You’re right. I didn’t even think about that. I really am terribly sorry for what I did. I don’t know how I can make it up to you.”

Mike exhales deeply, leaning back on his bed.

“I don’t know either,” he says truthfully. “But helping me clean this shithole we’ll have to spend some nice brotherly quality time in would be a good start.”

That gets a chuckle out of Richie.

“Of course,” he says.

Chapter Text

 The first couple of days of their arrangement go by in awkward silence. Mike can tell Richie doesn’t like silence either by the way he squirms and tries to fill the quiet cabin with music, humming, scribbling on paper or just about anything that will chase away the thick silence surrounding them. They’re too far away from camp to hear the lively chatter of the other campers, the typical camp noises like people splashing in the lake and music coming from the music cabin. But despite Mike’s own hatred for silence, despite what silence tends to do to his mind, he just can’t bring himself to talk to Richie. It’s as if they’d been paired up to do a school project together and were forced to spend their free time together to ‘get to know each other’, but they have nothing in common to talk about. And even if they did have something to talk about, Mike isn’t so sure he’d want to anyway.

Jay screams them out of bed on the fourth night of their situation. He storms into their cabin, bangs the door against the wall and puts a megaphone to his lips.

“Alright, fuckers!” He screams. “Down by the main cabin in five minutes! We’re doing a capture-the-flag-athon tonight. Go find Dawn to find out your team.”

And with that, he’s gone again. He hollers as he jolts down the hill, pumping his fists in the air with excitement. Mike rolls his eyes at Jay’s disappearing figure and gets out of bed to get dressed.

“Don’t tell me you’re actually going,” Richie grumbles, cracking open one eye to look at Mike.

“Of course I am. Didn’t you hear Jay?”

“Oh, I heard him alright. Doesn’t mean I’m going.”

“Why not?”

“Because, Michael…” Richie yawns and turns on his other side, briefly lifting his arm to rub his eyes. “It’s the middle of the night and I’m tired. So fuck capture the flag.”

Mike sighs as he puts on his sweater.

“You know, Richard, maybe you wouldn’t be such a lonely fuck here if you put some effort in not trying to be an indifferent asshole all the time. The act doesn’t suit you.”

He regrets saying that as soon as the words leave his mouth. Mike could punch himself in the face for being such a dick sometimes, but Richie snickers and sits up in bed.

“Well, damn. That’s the first genuinely honest thing you’ve said to me since they dumped us here. Hell, I’m pretty sure that’s the first full sentence you’ve spoken to me since they dumped us here. You think this is an act?” Richie gestures to himself as he says that.

Mike shrugs. “I guess, yeah. I think you pretend not to care about anything to protect yourself.”

“And what am I protecting myself from, according to you?”

“Dunno. That’s up to you to figure out. If you want me to play your therapist, you’ll have to pay me.”

Richie stares at him, his dark eyes reflecting the moonlight shining into the cabin. Then a slow grin spreads across his face.

“Okay,” he says, throwing back his sheets. He gets out of bed and goes looking for his clothes.

“Okay?”

Richie nods. “Okay,” he says again. He puts an unfinished joint between his lips and lights it before putting on his pants and that god awful hawaiian shirt Mike wishes he’d burned when Richie was sleeping. “I’ll go play capture the flag with you.”

“Need to prove me wrong?” Mike guesses.

Richie raises his eyebrows and offers the joint to Mike. Mike declines.

“I don’t need to prove anything to you, Hawkins boy. But I like your blunt honesty. Reminds me of my friend Stan. So, just this once, I’ll do as you say.”

Mike smiles. He doesn’t know why he’s so pleased with Richie agreeing to participate in a silly camp activity, but he still feels accomplished somehow.

“And you remind me of my friend Max,” he says.

“And why is that?” Richie asks.

Mike’s smile turns into a grin.

“She can be a complete dick too sometimes,” he says cheerfully.

“Sweet, I already like her,” Richie replies. He throws an arm around Mike’s shoulders and for a brief moment, Mike lets go of his grudge against him and almost feels like… well, he almost feels like they’re brothers.

Twins, even.

***

Mike and Richie don’t get sorted into the same team at first. Mike guesses the counselors are trying to have them be separated from each other as much as possible outside of the isolation cabin to avoid any more fighting or to allow them some space away from each other. Either way, their plans are foiled when Dawn puts Richie in Axel’s team and he immediately turns as white as a sheet.

Mike reacts on pure instinct. He can’t even think about it before he speaks up.

“Uh, actually, I want Richie on my team,” he says. Richie looks at him like he just started speaking in a foreign language, but Mike ignores him. “Yeah, uh, you see, I’m a bit nightblind and Richie has… more powerful vision with - uh, well, with his thick glasses. So that evens out the odds, doesn’t it? One blind boy plus one boy with better-than-perfect night vision equals one normal boy, right?”

Dawn looks just as confused as Richie but allows the switch. Richie only sighs in relief when he’s far away enough from Axel that he won’t hear it. Though he doesn’t thank Mike, Mike knows he’s grateful by the way he brushes his arm against his.

“Alright, guys!” Dawn continues. “It’s team blue vs. team red tonight. Make sure to keep your bandanas on at all times so people know which team you are from! The terrain is divided into two camps; team blue, your base is the old well south of the lake. Team red, yours is the burned down tree stump up in the woods. The fire pit marks the border; as soon as you cross that, you’re in enemy territory. When someone of the opposite team tags you, you’ll have to report back to your respective camp leader. I will be the leader of team blue, Jay will be the leader of team red. We can’t leave camp, the other players can. The game will last the entire night, meaning that if a flag is captured we will switch teams and start again. Clear?”

“Crystal!” Everyone yells back. Dawn nods and orders team red to follow Jay into the woods to their base. Team blue follows her to the old well.

“Thanks for getting me on your team,” Richie says as they follow Jay into the woods. Neither of them really knows any of the other campers in their team, so Mike is kind of glad to at least have Richie with him. It helps with the anxiety.

“No problem,” he says. “That Axel guy looks… off.”

“Oh, he is,” Richie assures him. “I heard he killed his dog when he was seven.”

“That’s fucked up.”

“That’s Axel.”

They walk the rest of the route in silence while the other campers chat around them. None of them seem to be paying attention to them, but Mike knows better than that. He notices the stares when the others think he’s not looking. To be honest, he’d be staring too if he saw two identical looking boys who supposedly aren’t related. You’d almost think they were each other’s clones, or like Richie thought, döppelgangers.

“Alright, my pals!” Jay announces once they’ve reached the tree. “Here’s what’s up. I’ve won the capture-the-flag-athon every year I’ve counseled here, and I’m not about to lose tonight. So, we’ll split up in offenders and defenders; the offenders are going out to find the blue flag while the defenders stay here to tag any enemy and send them back to mommy, got it?”

“Got it,” team red says in usion. Jay grins.

“Oggy, oggy, oggy?” He says.

“Oi, oi, oi!” The others chant.

Richie and Mike are part of the offenders team. Mike doesn’t mind; he’d always been good at this part of capture the flag. He could easily blend in with his surroundings, sneak around and past everyone. It was better than having to be in the middle of the fight, looking out for the other team and getting to them before they got to their flag. That part always put too much pressure on him.

Richie seems less pleased with his position. He groans as he drags himself behind Mike, and Mike shushes him.

“We aren’t even at the border yet,” Richie reacts.

“I don’t care, this is a strategic game. You have to be quiet.”

“You’re absolutely no fun, Michael. I can’t believe we’re related.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“Harsh.”

Mike looks over his shoulder to Richie to make sure he can see him rolling his eyes at him. Richie rolls his eyes too, way too excessively to be taken seriously, and it gets a light chuckle out of Mike he tries to disguise as a cough.

“So, you play a lot of strategic games back home?” Richie asks. At least he’s lowered his voice. Mike figures he can’t make him completely shut his mouth until they reach the fire pit, so he might as well humor him.

“My friends and I used to play a lot of Dungeons & Dragons when we were younger. We kind of grew out of it, but the strategy stuck.”

“Oh god, you’re a real proper nerd. I bet Ben would like you.”

“Who’s Ben?”

Richie sighs loudly. “Only the love of my life. Well, no. Maybe one of the loves of my life, ya know? I guess I don't really have a love of my life. Except maybe Mike Hanlon. He's like the perfect guy."

Mike stops dead in his tracks. The mention of a boy's name as Richie's potential love of his life has him shaken up. He stops walking and lets Richie catch up with him so they’re now walking side by side.

“So, you’re gay then?” He asks. He wishes he could say the question sounded even remotely casual, but it’s far from. His voice is strangled and he almost chokes on the word gay , so used to it being used against him that it leaves a dirty aftertaste.

“No, not gay. You heard what I said to Jay, didn’t you? I like everyone. Like, I love everyone. I have a crush on all my friends, even the one who’s a lesbian. That’s a bit fucked up, but I can’t help myself.”

Mike looks at Richie like he just fell down from space with his spaceship. In a way, queer kids are alien to him. No, Mike corrects himself. Other queer kids are alien to him. He’d always figured he was alone. Is queerness really genetic, then? If it is, Mike’s plan of marrying a nice enough girl and pretending that his feelings for boys never existed are out of the window. He can’t put his kids through what he’s going through.

“You always so open about your… preferences ?” Mike asks, desperate for Richie to fill the uncomfortable silence before his mind takes him places he doesn’t want to go.

“You mean my sexuality ? No. I mean, I am to Jay. But only because I got good vibes from him. And because I tried to hit on him because I thought he might be into boys.”

“But he isn’t?”

“He says he isn’t. I don’t quite believe him, but that’s a journey he has to take by himself.”

“So why did you tell me?” Does Richie know Mike loves boys? Is it written all over his face, like people say having had sex is written on your face? Can the entire camp tell he wants to kiss boys, or one boy in particular? He notices how his chest is heaving all of the sudden, and Richie puts a warm hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, are you okay?” He asks worriedly. “You look like you’re gonna barf.”

“I’m… I’m fine,” Mike says. His stomach twists and he does feel like he’s gonna barf, but he pushes the feeling down and forces himself to calm down. “Just… why did you tell me, Richie?”

Richie looks at him, eyebrows frowned with confusion, and shrugs.

“Because you’re my brother. I thought it was best to be open about it to give you a chance to drop me before we get all close and brotherly.”

“Oh,” Mike says. He feels kind of ridiculous for reacting the way he did, but he can’t shake the heavy weight pressing down on his chest just yet. “Well, I’m not gonna drop you.”

Richie beams.

“Okay, cool! Anyway, as I was saying. Ben, my friend, he’d love you. He’s a D&D nerd too and none of my friends ever want to play it with him. He’d be delighted with you. Plus, he’s cute. You’d totally hit it off together.”

Mike tries to play it cool. He doesn’t know, he tells himself, he can’t possibly know .

“You think everyone is into boys?”

“The world would be a better place if that was the case,” Richie smiles.

Mike tries to imagine that. A world where he could kiss boys and nobody would care.

A world where he could kiss Will.

He shakes the thought as soon as it emerges. He can’t be thinking about that now; he needs to focus on the game. He needs to not be so obviously gay. Richie might not know, but he could suspect. And even that is dangerous. Even suspicion can get you hurt.

“We should stop talking now,” Mike says. He points at the fire pit a few feet in front of them. They’re still hidden away behind the trees, but they’re too close to enemy territory to be careless.

Richie puts up a thumbs up in agreement. They quickly cross the camp site and dash back into the woods on the other side of the fire pit. Once they’re safely hidden behind the trees again, Richie sits down.

“Now what?” He whispers.

“We try to get to their camp by the well, get the flag, and make a run for it. We’re safe once we cross the border. You do know how this works, right?”

“Never played it,” Richie admits.

“Really? Not even when you were younger?”

“Indifferent, remember?”

“Dawn explained the rules earlier.”

“I was high.”

Mike shakes his head.

“You’re unbelievable. Whatever, it’s not that hard anyway. You a fast runner?”

“Growing up in Derry with Henry Bowers as your local bully kind of forces you to be.”

“I asked about your running, not your sob story.”

Richie laughs.

“Jesus, Mike, you’re ruthless! I’m really starting to like you.”

Mike grins at him. “I’m starting to like you too. Maybe I’ll like you even more if you win us this game.”

“Got it, boss. Find the flag, snatch the flag, run to Jay. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.”

They bump their fists together before they make a run for it again. Mike wishes Richie could be a bit more quiet, but he hasn’t spotted any enemies so far. They dash around like that until they’re close enough to the well to see some blue bandanas around a fire they built. Dawn is sitting on the edge of the well, swinging her legs as she looks up at the stars. It doesn’t matter that she isn’t paying attention; she can’t play anyway. She’s just there to send her teammates back out on the field.

“There’s the flag,” Mike whispers, pointing at the blue flag planted in the dirt a few feet away from the well. “If we go around, we might be able to grab it and run into the woods to shake them off.”

“Cool,” Richie says.

They both make a move to go through the woods around the well, but then Mike feels someone grab him by the hips from behind. Before he can even call out, someone gags him with a piece of cloth and puts a hood over his head.

Chapter Text

Richie is in front of Mike when it happens. One moment they’re sneaking around the woods trying to get to the flag, and the next someone throws themselves at Richie and knocks him on the ground.

“You’re only supposed to tag me, Marcus!” Richie huffs once he recognizes the kid. The air was knocked out of his lungs when he hit the ground, and Marcus’s weight on top of him doesn’t allow him to catch his breath.

Marcus ignores him as he pins Richie to the ground. Richie struggles against him, confused as to what’s happening, but then he notices the three other campers holding Mike down. Someone has put a paper bag over his head with the word Fag written across it, and they’re trying to hold him down so they can tie him up.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Richie shouts.

“Can’t you tell?” Marcus grins. There’s sweat pearling on his forehead. “We’re playing capture the fag. Looks like we’re gonna win this game!”

“What are you talking about? That’s not what we’re doing, you fucking dickhead!”

“We all decided it was. Much more fun, isn’t it?”

Mike screams under the paper bag. His voice sounds muffled, almost like they gagged him. The three other campers, three boys Richie has seen around but doesn’t know by name, managed to tie his hands behind his back. Mike lies there on the ground, helpless and bound, and Richie is forced to watch as the boys kick at him and beat him up. One of them pulls out a pocket knife and Richie’s heart drops to his stomach. He tries desperately to get away from Marcus, to get to Mike, but he’s just too heavy.

“Leave him alone!” Richie screams. “Mike! Mike!”

“Shut up, fairy!” Marcus hisses, grabbing Richie by the throat. “Or we’ll cut you too. Mark you, yeah? To show everyone we captured you.”

Mike squirms and kicks and cries out as the boy rips open his sweater with his knife. He drags the blade over Mike’s skin, not hard enough to draw blood but still hard enough to hurt. The other boy takes out a sharpie and writes his name on Mike’s chest.

“There, claimed,” he states proudly.

“You wanna get that in blood, Brian?” Marcus suggests.

“Oh, right,” Brian nods. “Otherwise we won’t get our prize!”

Richie can’t stand it anymore. He can’t just lie here and let them torture Mike like that. So he does the only thing he’s good at: he fights back.

He takes a deep breath, briefly closes his eyes, and then surges forward with all the strength in his body. He knocks his head against Marcus’s, and the boy falls back with the force of it. The blow makes Richie dizzy and he’s pretty sure he broke his glasses, but he doesn’t have time to recover. He jumps to his feet and lunges forward, tackling one of the boys still going at Mike. He manages to get him to the ground before the two others get to him and is smart enough to pat down his pockets to feel for a knife.

“Don’t touch me, you freak!” The boy screams. Richie ignores him and dodges his hands as his fingers wrap around the pocket knife. He takes it out of the pocket and puts it against the boy’s throat in one swift move.

“Shut the fuck up,” he says. The boy immediately goes limp underneath him.

“You wouldn’t dare,” one of the other boys says. Richie looks over his shoulder to them, raises an eyebrow and promptly jams the knife into the boy’s hand.

“Fucking shit!” Brian yelps as his friend screams in pain. The three boys rush to his help, allowing Richie enough time to get to Mike and untie him before the boys focus their attention back on them. He pulls the paper bag off his head, pretending like he doesn’t notice Mike is crying, and takes the gag out of his mouth.

“We need to go,” he tells him. Mike sniffs and nods.

“We’ll get you!” Brian shouts at them.

“I sleep with a knife under my pillow!” Richie threatens. He takes Mike’s hand and guides him away from the three, dragging him with him as he runs back to their camp as fast as he can.

Richie doesn’t stop running once they’ve crossed the border. If those campers made capture the flag into capture the fag, then surely others must’ve participated too. Maybe even their own teammates. He can’t take the risk, so he avoids their base and beelines for their cabin, far away from all the commotion. Mike allows Richie to drag him with him. He doesn’t speak at all as they run back home.

Richie can tell the cabin has been broken into before they even step foot into it. The door is swung open wide and some of their clothes are lying in the dirt, trampled on and kicked into the bushes. Richie curses the campers who did this but figures he can come collect his clothes later, when Mike is safe inside and calmed down.

The inside of the cabin looks like a battlefield. Their drawers are on the floor, their beds have been flipped and most of their stuff has been destroyed. Richie ignores the mess and leaves Mike in the doorway while he finds him a place to sit down. He manages to save a single non-broken chair from the wreck and urges Mike to take a seat while he gets him a glass of water.

“Are you okay?” Richie asks him when he hands him the glass. Mike’s hands are shaking.

“How did they… how did they kn- how did…” He starts, but his sentence trails off into silence. Richie tries to put a hand on Mike’s shoulder, but Mike flinches away from the touch.

“It’s okay, Mike. We’re safe here, okay? I’ll lock the door. Barricade it even, if you want. They can’t get to us.”

Mike shakes his head. His eyes had been wandering ever since they escaped those kids, as if he couldn’t allow himself to focus on anything, but now they finally meet Richie’s.

“They knew , Richie. How did they know?”

Richie doesn’t really know what Mike means by that. He figures he’s just in shock and doesn’t know what he’s saying, so he just leaves him be as he makes his way around the cabin to take in the damage and lock the door. At least they didn’t take his weed stash.

Richie takes out a joint he rolled earlier and lights it as he walks around. Upon closer inspection, they didn’t seem to have destroyed most of their clothes. They just kind of threw them around to make a mess and, judging by the puddle of unidentified liquid on the floor, they might’ve pissed on some of their clothes too, but other than that they seem to mostly be okay.

Richie rummages through the mess, joint dangling from his lips, and stumbles upon a crumbled picture underneath a torn up book. He takes a closer look at it and his stomach drops when he realizes what he’s seeing. What this means.

He walks back to Mike, who’s still sitting in the chair Richie left him in, and hands him the picture. He also offers him the joint, already anticipating Mike declining, but when Mike sees the picture, he takes the joint and takes a drag.

“That’s Will,” Mike says, pointing to the boy next to him in the picture. They’re perched together on a couch, both unaware of the photo being taken of them. The boy, Will, is looking at something out of frame, but Mike is looking right at him. And the look on his face, the unfiltered love in his eyes, feels so intimate Richie almost feels like intruding by looking at it.

“You love him,” Richie says. It’s not a question; Richie doesn’t need to know the answer. He already does.

Mike is quiet for a long time. He just sits there, looking at the picture and slowly finishing the joint. Richie waits for Mike’s muscles to relax, for his hands to stop shaking.

“I’m in love with him,” he eventually says. His voice is soft and vulnerable. “That’s the first time I’ve ever said that out loud,” Then he runs a hand through his hair in frustration. “I should’ve never brought this picture with me. I should’ve burned it when Jane gave it to me. It just… it sells me out, doesn’t it?” He looks up to Richie. Richie doesn’t know what to say, so he says nothing.

“Yeah,” Mike says, taking the silence for what it means. “She took it of us one afternoon, without us noticing. That’s the day she found out about me. She gave me that picture and I just knew anyone seeing it would realize what Will means to me. I should’ve burned it, but I liked it too much. And now that picture is probably why Marcus and his gang came after me. They must’ve found it snooping around here.”

“You did nothing wrong, Mike,” Richie tries to assure him, even though he knows damn well how hard it is to comfort someone about this kind of stuff when they’re not out. “It’s just a picture. It could mean anything.”

“But it only means one thing. And now the whole camp will know.” Mike bites his lip and presses the palms of his hands against his eyes to try to hold back the tears. “I’m so fucking dead.”

Richie is at a loss for words. He can’t possibly begin to comfort Mike about this, because he knows he’s fucked too. That picture shows Mike’s feelings for a boy just as clearly as wearing an “ I’m a fucking faggot ” rainbow shirt. And people saw that picture. People with bad intentions.

Here’s the thing about Richie though: he’s ride or die for people. He loves hard and fast and unconditionally and would put his life on the line for the people he loves. And though he wouldn’t say he loves Mike, he is his brother. His blood. They share something Richie doesn’t have with anyone else in his life, and that automatically makes him ride or die for him too.

So what he suggests next may be extreme, but it feels right to Richie.

“I’ll pretend to be you,” he says. He doesn’t even consider what that means for him, the target he’s putting on his back. Because it doesn’t matter. Mike is his brother, and he needs to protect him.

“What?” Mike asks, brows furrowed.

“Yeah! I’ll wear your clothes and some contacts and act like you. Nobody will suspect anything.”

“Why… why would you do that? That would make you a target.”

Richie shrugs.

“I’m used to it. I can handle it.”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t handle it. But why would you do that for me? We don’t even know each other.”

“You’re my brother, Mike. It doesn’t matter if we’ve known each other for a week or our whole lifetime, that doesn’t change anything.”

Mike shakes his head, eyes filling with tears again. He looks away from Richie and takes a deep breath before exhaling shakily.

“I can’t ask that of you, Richie.”

“You’re not asking, I’m telling,” Richie grins. He slaps Mike on his shoulder and winks at him when Mike looks at him again. “Honestly, it’s fine. Camp is over in a week and a half anyway. I’ve been harassed for months back home.”

Mike smiles weakly.

“I didn’t ask for your sob story,” he jokes.

Richie snorts. Then he takes off his glasses, vision blurring immediately, and spreads his arms.

“See, isn’t it just like looking in the mirror?” He asks.

“Minus the blind squinting, yeah,” Mike admits. Then he sighs.

“Are you sure about this, Rich?” He asks.

“I’ve never been more sure about anything in my life,” Richie says, and he means it. How bad can it be, anyway? Some light beating up, some harsh words? An ambush at worst, but he just needs to be careful. And, like he said before, he sleeps with a knife under his pillow.

“Then I’ll have to pretend to be you too,” Mike notes.

“Naturally. It’s okay, I’ll teach you how to be as cool and carelessly attractive as me. And I’m sure you can find some fake glasses in the dress up suitcase they keep in the drama cabin. I can steal them for you if you want.”

Mike chuckles.

“You’ll pretend to be me, you’ll steal for me… what else, die for me?”

“Of course not, Michael!” Richie says with feigned shock. “We barely even know each other. At least buy me dinner first.”

That actually makes Mike laugh.

“You’re such an idiot, Richard,” he says, almost sounding like his old self again.

“I sure am. But I’m also your brother, so that makes you at least half the idiot I am.”

“That’s not how being related works.”

Richie rolls his eyes at him like Mike tends to do at Richie and then extends his hand.

“Anyway, if we’re gonna be pretending to be each other for the remaining days at camp, we’ll have to work together. So, friends?”

Mike takes his hand and shakes it firmly.

“Friends,” he says.

Chapter Text

Becoming Richie Tozier takes a lot more effort than Mike had anticipated.

First of all, they have to get the glasses. This requires breaking into the drama cabin, which is, to be fair, not that hard considering the fact nobody ever locks it because there’s really nothing valuable to steal. And nobody expects campers to come in to steal some fake glasses.

Then come the clothes. Richie puts all the clothes Marcus and his minions didn’t destroy on Mike’s bed with a proud hand gesture, but Mike honestly wants to die. Every single clothing item is horribly ugly and at least a size too big, which is impressive since Richie himself is a pretty tall guy.

“I think you and Will would like each other,” Mike mutters, picking a pastel purple shirt from the pile of clothes. It has a stain on the shoulder Mike doesn’t dare to identify, and he puts it back before he catches any diseases or fleas.

“Why do you think that?” Richie says, rummaging through Mike’s clothes. He looks bored with whatever he’s finding.

“Because he has a… unique sense of fashion too. He likes bright colors that don’t necessarily match and jeans that are just a bit too short. And long white socks. Sometimes he tucks his pants in the socks, which is ridiculous but somehow works for him.”

“Huh,” Richie huffs. “That’s not a bad idea. I should try that some time.”

“Please don’t,” Mike says. Richie grins at him as reply and focuses back on his - well, Mike’s - pile of clothes.

Mike eventually picks out some outfits he thinks won’t look too horrible. He refuses to go anywhere near Richie’s hawaiian shirts, which automatically eliminates half of his wardrobe, and instead settles for a pair of black bermuda shorts, a graphic tee referencing some comic Mike doesn’t recognize, two plain grey shirts and an acid washed denim jacket. He also steals a yellow hoodie for when it gets cold.

Richie’s new wardrobe is less vibrant than Mike’s. It mostly consists of striped shirts and worn jeans with unintentional holes in the knees. Even though the two of them look identical and Richie is wearing Mike’s clothes, it still feels like he looks more fashionable in them. Like he purposely went for a careless look, like he put thought into it.

Richie also claimed two hoodies, a black one and a grey one. He tried to take Will’s sweater, but Mike was quick to snatch it away and hide it under his pillow.

“Cool,” Richie grins once he takes a good look at himself in the mirror. He runs his fingers through his hair in an attempt to make it curlier, but to no avail.

Mike glances at himself too. He’s glad he didn’t try to pull off Richie’s more ugly clothes and stuck to the basics, considering they’re not too far from what he would normally wear. He nods at himself, pushing the fake glasses up his nose. This could actually work. As long as nobody notices that Richie seems to be missing a few freckles, they could actually pull this off. Richie even put in his spare contacts he took with him in case his glasses broke. Mike thinks even their own friends wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.

Now that they nailed the clothes, the last thing they need to do is learn how to act like each other. Richie turns out to be a theatre kid, to the surprise of absolutely no one considering his flair for the dramatic, so he easily picks up on all Mike’s mannerisms and mimics them perfectly. Mike didn’t even realize he has the tendency to repeat himself until Richie starts doing it.

Mimicking Richie is a whole different story. No matter what Mike does, it never seems right to Richie. He keeps telling him how to stand, what to do with his hands, how to talk. Mike gets more worked up the longer they try to nail his impression of Richie, and by the time dinner rolls around he just wants to give up on the whole plan altogether.

“This is ridiculous,” he snaps, throwing his glasses on his bed. “We shouldn’t do this. I should just face whatever I have coming for me. I mean, it can’t be too bad, right? They can’t kill me or anything. This whole idea was stupid and dumb and I can’t put you through whatever Marcus is planning for me.”

“Hey,” Richie says, taking Mike by the shoulders. “Calm down, Mike. Why are you suddenly flaking on me? I thought we agreed we were doing this?”

“It’s dumb! I can’t pretend to be you, it’s way too hard. Everyone will see through my act immediately.”

“No, they won’t!” Richie assures him. “Nobody at camp knows me well enough to notice slight changes to the way I walk or talk. The essence of my being is very easy to grasp, by the way.”

“Right,” Mike says, not believing it for a second. If it were, then why did they just spend an hour trying to perfect his imitation of Richie?

“I’m serious! Look, you know that thing people do where they think something, then find a more socially acceptable way of phrasing it and only then say their thoughts out loud?”

“Your brain-to-mouth-filter?” Mike guesses.

Richie snaps his fingers.

“Exactly, yeah! I don’t really have that filter. I usually just say whatever comes to mind, and it often gets me in trouble, but I can’t help it. Just forget your filter, spew out whatever bullshit you’re thinking, and ta-da! You’ve successfully transformed into Richie Tozier.”

Mike squints at him.

“It’s that easy?” He asks.

“As easy as jerking off. Go on, try it. Say the first thing that comes to mind.”

“Well,” Mike starts, rummaging through his brain looking for a thought he can voice. “I think your clothes are really ugly. Like, they’re not even fashionable or whatever. They’re straight up horrible.”

“Oh, snap,” Richie says, but Mike is on a roll now.

“Like you picked them out in the dark,” he continues.

“Okay,” Richie says.

“In the closet of a forty-five year old, sad, divorced man.”

“That’s the look I’m usually going for.”

“Who bought them in a thrift store in a sketchy part of town for two dollars.”

“Okay, okay, I think that’s enough,” Richie says, biting his lip to try to suppress his grin. “You nailed the no-filter thing. Totally sounded like me.”

Mike smiles and relaxes his muscles.

“I still don’t think this is a good idea,” he says.

“I know,” Richie nods. “But really, I don’t mind. Like I said, I’m used to it. I’ll be fine.”

“Fine. But I owe you.”

Richie grins.

“Hell yeah, you do,” he says.

***

Nothing really happens for the first few days. Richie, dressed as Mike, gets a few nasty looks and Mike overhears some people whisper behind their backs, but that’s it. Mike thinks it’s safe to switch back to being himself, but Richie tells him Marcus and his gang are probably waiting for the right time to strike.

“They’re like snakes, and we’re the prey,” he says, using his hands to mimic a mouth. “They wait for the right moment, when the mice aren’t paying attention, and then they make a move.” The hand-mouth slams shut.

Mike is starting to think Richie might be wrong, but then the snakes make a move on the third day after the ambush.

It’s not a direct attack. They don’t want to physically hurt Mike, at least not yet. They want to break his spirit first.

It’s written all over camp when Richie and Mike get down for breakfast. Plastered on every door, written on every window.

Mike Wheeler is a faggot.

It’s not the worst thing they could’ve written, and it’s not the first time Mike’s been accused of being a fag, but it’s just so completely and utterly embarrassing to see those words literally everywhere he looks. People all around him are reading them out loud, pointing at them, nudging each other when Mike and Richie walk past. Mike’s stomach turns and he wants nothing more than to turn around and run back to the safety of his cabin, but Richie takes his hand before he can.

“It’s okay,” he whispers. “You’re not Mike. I am. Those words can’t harm you.”

But they can, and they do. Mike has to bite his lip to fight back the tears and digs his nails into the palms of his hands to ground himself. His mind explodes in bright, blinding colors and his breathing quickens and suddenly he’s back in Hawkins, running from Troy and his friends. They’re hurling slurs at him, accusing him of things he didn’t do but wants to do, and he feels so gross, so wrong. How could he ever have thought he might one day be okay with who he was? Who he is isn’t okay and it never will be. No matter how hard he wants it to be, no matter how proud Richie is to be. It’s not .

Richie squeezes Mike’s hand when he notices Mike’s mind is drifting elsewhere.

“Mike, it’s fine,” he tells him. “They’re just words. They don’t mean anything if you don’t let them.”

Mike nods, but Richie’s words barely register. He tries to remind himself that he got the opportunity to give away his identity for a while. He can be a completely different person, someone who isn’t bothered by words and doesn’t give them the power to control him. Richie doesn’t care about the slurs. He doesn’t care about the accusations or the threats; he’s proud and unapologetic.

Maybe Mike can borrow some strength from him like he tends to do with his friends.

They walk through camp together, shoulder to shoulder. Most people pretend to ignore them as they walk by, probably too scared of conflict to say something. They all heard the stories about Richie. Most of them were rumors made up by Richie himself to get himself some street credit here, but they believe them nevertheless. And when Mike realizes people are intimidated by Richie, he also realizes they’re currently intimidated by him . They can’t hurt him when he’s Richie, because they’re scared of Richie.

Maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

Richie seems to be unbothered by all the staring and whispering as they make their way to the cafeteria to get their breakfast. He even asks someone if they want his autograph, which isn’t a Mike thing to do but was well deserved.

Mike watches as the counselors rip off the flyers and wipe off the words from the windows during breakfast. They run around like crazy trying to get rid of the evidence, which Mike appreciates. At least they have his back.

Some kid is brave enough to approach their table and ask about the flyers, a wicked grin on their face. Mike expects Richie to tell them to fuck off, but Richie bites his lip and leans back in his chair. He looks at Mike expectedly and Mike looks back, not really knowing what Richie is expecting from him, but then he realizes he’s Richie now. And he needs to act the part.

“Didn’t your parents teach you not to believe everything you read?” Mike wonders, looking up to the kids in defiance. He takes the flyer from them and tears it in half. “Or can’t you read at all and did you come here to ask me for an English lesson? Because I can spell it out for you.” Mike crumbles the two halves of the flyers into balls.

“Fuck -” he says, throwing one ball in the face of the camper - “off.” He ends, throwing the second ball too.

The camper stutters something, but Mike interrupts them before they can finish their sentence.

“Are you deaf? I said fuck off. Or do you want me to beat it into you?” He even goes as far as to raise his fist in an empty threat, but the kid gets the message and leaves them alone.

“Holy shit, Michael,” Richie whispers when the kid is out of earshot, grinning widely. “That was fucking amazing! I mean, I’d like to believe I tend to humor people instead of threatening them with physical violence, but it worked just as well. See, isn’t it great to be someone else for a bit?”

Mike smiles back.

“Yeah, it’s pretty nice,” he admits. He’d always fantasised about being someone else, about being someone braver and bolder and better . In those fantasies he never imagined being someone like Richie, but it works nevertheless.

***

To Mike’s complete and utter surprise, Richie gets through the next week with only some mild scratches and bruises. He got ambushed in the restroom once and split his lip on the sink when one of the ambushers tripped him, but Mike came in before they could do any more damage. It seems like the campers are intimidated by them when they’re together, almost like their identical appearances scare them. So they spend most of their days together, refusing to split up when the counsellors try to put them in separate teams and sitting together every single meal. They might as well be conjoined by the hips.

And since they’re together basically all the time, they talk a lot too. Mike gets to know Richie like he knows only very few people in his life. He learns about his fears and dreams and hopes and friends. God , Richie talks about his friends a lot . He talks about them so much Mike feels like he personally knows them. Like he was there when Mike Hanlon dared Bill to drink warm hotdog water or when they all stayed up for 3 days straight because Beverly said they couldn’t.

And Mike talks too, of course. He wouldn’t give it to him, but Richie is a great listener. He’s genuinely interested in everything Mike has to say, even the boring science stuff that interests Mike so much. He talks about his home life, how horrible his father - their father - makes him feel, how grateful he was to be away from him for a while. And he talks about his friends too, just as lovingly as Richie does. Richie is interested in each of their stories, all of their quirks and flaws and personalities. Mike enjoys talking about his friends, enjoys remembering them and showing Richie the letters and pictures they sent him, but he finds himself getting flustered when Richie asks about Will. Mike knows that Richie knows what Will means to him and he still feels like he needs to hide it. Like he has to hide his smile when talking about the stars in Will’s eyes, like he has to feel ashamed. He has to remind himself to feel ashamed. But it’s just so easy to let himself go with Richie. He doesn’t feel ashamed of himself when he’s with Richie because Richie doesn’t act like he needs to be.

It almost feels like a matter of life or death to talk to one another. They’re both so desperate to share their lives with each other, seventeen lost years of it, that they often stay awake long after sunset to talk and share and discuss. There’s not a single detail about Mike’s homelife Richie doesn’t know about, and there isn’t a single detail about Richie’s that Mike doesn’t know about.

And even with that knowledge, even knowing how horribly indifferent Ted Wheeler is when it comes to his children, Richie still utters the following words one night, when there are only two days of camp left.

“I want to meet our father.”

Chapter Text

Richie thought he had put his father behind him. He genuinely thought he didn’t care about him and his life anymore. Until coming to New Horizons, Richie had thought his father was probably dead or in prison or a drug addict, whichever would ease his mind the most. As long as he could pretend his father was a lowlife nobody, it was easier for him not to miss him. But now, knowing he’s alive and has a house and a job, it’s like it turned on a faucet in Richie’s mind he can’t turn off. And if he doesn’t do anything soon, his head will overflow.

He thought about it for a while. Even made a list with the pros and cons about meeting his father. Stan and his love for order would be proud of him. And after scratching and replacing and pondering over it for days, Richie had come to the conclusion that the only way to get full closure on this was to meet his father.

Mike doesn’t take the news well. He turns white as a sheet, immediately sitting up in bed. Betrayal is plastered on his face like a mask. Richie hates that he upset Mike, but he needs this.

“Why? Why would you ever want to meet him?” Mike asks. His voice is shaking. Richie can’t imagine how horrible his relationship is with his father for Mike to react so emotionally to Richie wanting to meet him.

“Because he’s my father, Mike,” Richie tries to explain. He knew he’d have to come with a solid explanation for his sudden desire to meet the man Mike despises the most. Despite knowing Mike for only a couple of weeks, Richie already knows how black-and-white his emotions can get. Mike either loves you or hates you, and saying the wrong thing at the wrong time could tilt the scales completely. “I need to see him. I need answers to questions I’ve had my entire life about him.”

“And how are you planning to ask these questions? You can’t really walk up to him when he comes to pick me up and introduce yourself as his son, can you?”

Richie thinks about that for a second. He already knew he couldn’t exactly tag along with Mike on the last day of camp and tell his mother to wait in the car while he goes to meet his father. The end of summer camp isn’t the time or place for that kind of reveal. But he could meet his father without tagging along with Mike.

“What if we switch?” Richie asks. Mike frowns.

“What do you mean?”

Richie gestures between them. “You know. Just stretch the switch to our home lives. Pretend to be each other for just a bit longer.”

“I’m sorry, but did you hit your head in the shower or something? You want to pretend to be me in Hawkins? And want me to pretend to be you in Derry? Are you insane?”

“Just think about it!” Richie exclaims. Honestly, it had been an impulsive thought at first, but the more he thinks about it the more sense it makes. “Look, we don’t know what the deal is with us. We don’t know who our biological mother is - yours or mine. All we know is that Ted Wheeler is definitely our father. We don’t know if they made some sort of deal. We don’t know if my mom knows about you - maybe your parents had us and put me up for adoption.”

“They would never do that to you,” Mike interrupts. Even when he’s upset with him, Mike still tries to comfort Richie. Very brotherly behavior, if Richie may so himself.

“Maybe so, but we still don’t have any answers. Maybe our dad had us with my mom and then broke up with her. Knowing my mother, she probably would’ve told him to take at least one baby with him because she wasn’t about to take care of two of his children. Which would mean Ted came home to your mom with a baby that wasn’t hers. Maybe he made up a story, or maybe he told the truth but left out my existence. The point is, going up to them together could ruin everything. Maybe my mother will move across the country with me and I will never see any of my friends again, or maybe she’ll demand that your parents take me in. I wouldn’t put it past her to get rid of me that way.”

Mike nods. He seems to agree.

“It’s too dangerous to expose ourselves like that,” he summarizes. “We don’t know what actions they’ll take to either keep us apart or keep us together.”

“And both options could potentially cause us to lose our friends,” Richie finishes. He knows they don’t have a lot in common, but the undying love for their friends is something they can both agree on.

Mike chews his bottom lip as he thinks. Richie mindlessly mimics the action.

“How are you planning on switching back after you got all your answers?” Mike eventually asks.

“You have your license, right?”

“Yeah.”

“We could meet somewhere after a certain amount of time - say, two weeks. You can borrow my mom’s car - she barely uses it anyway. Are your folks cool with you borrowing their car?”

“My sister and I have a car together.”

Richie briefly forgot Mike - no, wait, they - have two sisters. Another reason to take Mike’s place for some time; to meet his sisters.

“Okay, cool. We could meet in New York and switch back without anyone noticing. Like the lamest magic trick ever.”

Mike is quiet for a long time, so long Richie is starting to think he passed out with his eyes open. He’s about to say something to fill the silence when Mike finally speaks again.

“I get why you want to meet our dad. I’m not happy with it and I personally wouldn’t recommend it, but I get why you want to meet him. I can’t take that from you, and I also understand being seen together by our parents could have consequences we’re not willing to live with. So, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, your plan kind of makes sense.”

Richie grins widely. “Hell yeah it does! So you’re in?”

“Only for two weeks,” Mike clarifies. “No longer. After two weeks we switch back, no matter what.”

“Absolutely,” Richie nods. He wouldn’t want to spend more time apart from his friends anyway.

“Okay,” Mike says. He throws back his covers and gets out of bed, shuffling to his desk in the half-darkness. Richie watches as he rummages around and eventually finds a pen and some paper.

“If we’re gonna do this, we have to do it right. Our parents may be idiots who don’t care about us, but our friends aren’t. This act worked at camp because nobody knows us here, but some of my friends have known me since kindergarten. They’ll see right through you if you come to Hawkins unprepared.”

Richie groans as Mike sits down next to him.

“Are you giving me homework?” He asks.

“Of course I am. How else are you supposed to be me? Do you know anything about the people I spend most of my time with?”

“Uh…” Richie says. “I know Lucas is your best friend.” Then he grins. “And Will is your booooooyfriend.”

A violent blush immediately spreads over Mike’s face. He’s too embarrassed to even look at Richie.

“Shut up, asshole. He isn’t. You can’t speak so openly about being queer in Hawkins, Richie. Not even to my friends. Things are different in Indiana.”

“Oh, I never speak about being queer in public in Derry either,” Richie assures him. Another thing they have in common; they both live in ridiculously conservative towns where it’s dangerous to be who they are. People in Derry act like being different is the same as personally coming into their homes and slitting their throats while they’re sleeping. The less attention you draw to yourself, the better. Of course staying low profile is a real challenge for Richie and his constant need for attention, but he knows when to shut up and make himself as small as possible.

“Good. So moving to Hawkins won’t be too much of a change for you, then. Anyway -” Mike writes a name down on the piece of paper and shows Richie. Lucas Sinclair.

“We’ll start with Lucas. He’s been my best friend since elementary school. He always wears a camouflage bandana - don’t ask. It’s a fashion statement, I think.”

“Respect,” Richie says. He can always appreciate fashion statements.

Mike goes through all his friends, one by one. Richie listens closely, trying to picture them by the description Mike gives him and the grainy pictures he shows him. Max has hair as red as Beverly’s, but hers is way longer. Jane Hopper spent the biggest part of her life in foster care but was adopted by the town’s sheriff when she was twelve. Richie makes a mental note to behave around her; he wouldn’t want to get in trouble with law enforcement when he’s technically committing identity theft. Dustin Henderson is the Ben Hanscom of Mike’s friends; always hungry for knowledge, always with his nose in books. He’s really smart and observant, so Richie has to be extra careful around him too.

Despite how much Mike loves Lucas, he says they don’t always see eye to eye with each other. Their personalities clash a lot and Dustin often has to play mediator between the two.

“Oh, and he’s dating Max. I know you like to flirt with everyone, but leave Max alone. And absolutely do not flirt with Lucas. Our friendship isn’t like that. Got it?”

“Keep it in my pants. Got it,” Richie says.

“And you already know what Will looks like.”

“Yes, the cute guy with the nice fashion sense. I can’t wait to meet him.”

“You better tone down all -” Mike gestures to Richie “- this around him. You might scare him off.”

“I wouldn’t dare!” Richie gasps. He isn’t about to ruin Mike’s chances with Will. But he is going to try to see if Will has feelings for Mike too. Maybe he could play matchmaker while he’s in Hawkins.

“Okay,” Mike says when he has written down all the most important information below each of his friends’ names. He hands Richie the other piece of paper he grabbed and the pen. “Your turn.”

Richie beams. Talking about his friends is his favorite thing to do. He draws little cartoon characters resembling each of the losers and writes short bullet points with the most vital information next to them. He makes sure to mention Bill is allergic to peanuts and Richie always double checks if whatever he’s eating certainly doesn’t have any peanuts in it.

“Beverly and I often blow in her car. Not a lot, only a joint or two, but it’s kind of tradition. Stan sometimes joins, if he’s in a good mood. Don’t worry, that doesn’t happen often. Oh, also, Bill and Stan are dating and I like to make Stan jealous by being affectionate with Bill.”

Mike swallows thickly. “Define ‘affectionate’.”

“Like, I don’t know. Hugging, sometimes a kiss on the cheek. I once kissed Bill on the lips and Stan didn’t speak to me for three days. Then I kissed him on the lips and we were cool again.”

“You have a very weird definition of friendship,” Mike notes. Richie shrugs with a nostalgic smile. He’s happy with his relationship with his friends. It’s unconventional and he knows most people find them and their endless affection weird, but Richie loves it. He has a very loose definition of platonic relationships and has made out with all of his friends at least once, even with Beverly. They don’t really have defined romantic relationships between them, except Stan and Bill. And even they are open to the others joining them; Stan’s ‘jealousy’ whenever Richie flirts with Bill is mostly a joke and is easily solved when Richie gives him the same amount of affection. Mike Hanlon briefly dated both of them until he started dating Ben, and Eddie dabbles in all relationships a bit. Actually, now that he thinks about it, he and Eddie are the only ones who haven’t gotten it on together besides Beverly, who doesn’t count because she’s gay and only made out with Richie once, after which she broke down sobbing and told him she thought she might be gay. Huh.

“Anyway, make sure to always make fun of Eddie and his overalls. He has about fifty of them and they’re actually really cute but it’s kind of my thing to ridicule them and it would be weird not to all of the sudden. He’d definitely suspect something’s up.”

“Make fun of the overalls, got it.”

“Yeah. And oh, joke about being gay with Mike H. He isn’t actually gay, he identifies as pan just like Bill, but we constantly make gay jokes.”

“Like what, exactly? Nothing offensive, right?”

Oh, shoot, this is going to be way harder than Richie expected. Mike isn’t used to the innocent type of gay jokes, where gay folks just point at stuff and declare it as gay or where any kind of basic affection is gay or where anything relatable is gay. He’s probably only used to the ‘faggot’ jokes, to straight people making fun of people like Mike and Richie for their own entertainment.

“No, never something offensive. Just fun stuff. We have this running gag where I tell him his smile makes me really gay for him, so he’s constantly giving me pictures of himself which I hide in books in my room. It’s sweet because Mike is actually really self conscious and my compliments give him a confidence boost.”

Mike smiles. “That’s actually really sweet. Did you two ever date?”

“Not yet!” Richie says. He still has high hopes that that might change in the future.

Richie continues telling Mike everything there is to know about his friends. He usually gets up really early on Saturdays to go bird watching with Stan, and he always makes him eggs and bacon before they go. Ben is his History tutor despite Richie being really good at History; he just told Ben he wasn’t to get an excuse to hang out with him more. Richie usually eats dinner at Bill’s place and sleeps there a lot too. Mike listens and nods, asking questions and writing down the answers next to the cartoon figures. He’s really taking this seriously. He asks questions Richie hadn’t even thought of, like if the losers like to go to parties. They sometimes go to house parties, but Richie never drinks. He’s sure to tell Mike that; he would be able to explain a lot of weird Mike-pretending-to-be-Richie behavior to his friends, but drinking wouldn’t be one of them.

They talk about all possible details about their switch until the sun starts to rise. They write page after page after page, Richie’s scribbling standing out to Mike’s neat handwriting like a sore thumb. By the time it’s time for breakfast, Richie’s entire bed is covered in pages of their masterplan.

“Okay, I think this might actually work,” Mike concludes. “I can’t believe we’re doing this, but it might actually work.”

“Agreed,” Richie nods. “As long as we keep our head cool, we can pull this off. And we can always call each other if we have any more questions or concerns.”

“And we’ll switch back after two weeks.”

“Two weeks,” Richie repeats. He takes his water bottle from his bedside table and raises it to Mike in a toast.

“To our masterplan,” he says. Mike rolls his eyes at him before reaching for his own water to tap it to Richie’s.

“To our masterplan.”

Chapter Text

Mike almost chickens out of their plan five times before the final day of summer camp rolls around. He keeps spiraling into the worst scenarios, some more ridiculous than others. He goes through all the things that could possibly go wrong over and over, almost driving himself insane with all the risks he comes up with. He tries discussing them with Richie, but he’s so annoyingly confident in the success of their plan that he doesn’t even want to hear it.

Mike can’t really blame him. Though he’s still pissed off at him for insisting on meeting their father, Mike also kind of understands. If he had grown up without his father and now got the chance to meet him and touch him and talk to him, Mike would’ve probably reacted the same way as Richie.

Richie tries to hide it, but he’s nervous as they pack their bags. He keeps reaching for his glasses on his nose before realizing he isn’t wearing them, and he keeps looking for the friendship bracelet around his wrist that isn’t there anymore. It’s on Mike’s wrist now, a bit too big and slightly damaged from taking it off Richie’s wrist.

Mike watches as Richie tosses Mike’s clothes in his own bag. His heart aches when Richie also throws Will’s sweater in there. He wishes he could take it to Derry with him so he wouldn’t be so alone, but he figured that Will would find it suspicious if ‘Mike’ didn’t bring the sweater home with him.

“Okay, all packed,” Richie finally proclaims. Mike rises from his bed and walks to his brother, raising his hands to fix Richie’s hair. Richie looks at Mike.

“I wish your hair wasn’t so curly,” he says. “I’ll have to explain to your friends why my hair isn’t curly.”

Mike smiles. “Just say it’s from the water here. You’ll be fine.”

Richie nods.

“You too,” he says. “Just remember to be an ashole and my friends won’t suspect a thing.”

“You’re not an asshole, Rich.” Yeah, sure, Richie can be annoying and he certainly tries to act like an asshole, but Mike knows better now.

“You’re gonna make me cry, Michael,” Richie says, wiping a non-existent tear away. Then he spreads his arms. “Now, let me hug you before we say goodbye.”

Mike steps into Richie’s embrace. Richie presses him to his chest and slaps his back, and Mike smiles against Richie’s shoulder. He’s really gonna miss this idiot.

“Okay,” Richie says once he pulls back from the embrace. “Time to go. Who first?”

They agreed that they couldn’t come down at the same time, just in case their parents saw them together and they’d make the connection before they could set their plan in motion.

“You go first,” Mike says. “I need to do one last thing.”

“Got it,” Richie says. He throws his bag over his shoulder, salutes Mike and walks out of the door. Mike watches Richie as he makes his way down the hill, keeping his eyes on his back until he can’t see him anymore. It takes approximately five minutes to walk from their cabin to the exit of camp, so Mike sits back down on his bed and takes out a book he brought with him but never had the time to read. He flips to a page somewhere in the middle of it, where he hid his picture of Will, and takes it out.

“Don’t be mad at me when I come back,” he says. He’s already assuming Richie will somehow fuck up and expose them, and he can imagine how angry Will will be if that happens. You wouldn’t give it to him because of his big, doe eyes and short posture, but Will can get really angry if need be. He once didn’t talk to Dustin for three full days because he had made fun of Jonathan. He never yells when he’s angry - his anger isn’t explosive like Mike’s is. He’s quite the opposite, actually. When Will gets angry, he gets really quiet. He doesn’t even acknowledge your existence anymore. He easily forgives and never holds grudges, but in many ways, his anger is way scarier than Mike’s.

Mike sits there for some time, holding the picture in his hands. He still remembers the day it was taken of them; they were all gathered in Mike’s basement on the first day of summer break, trying to make plans for the following months. Dustin had made an absolutely absurd proposition, so ridiculous Mike doesn’t even remember what it was, but at the time everyone had burst out laughing. Will’s laugh is one of Mike’s favorite things about him, especially when Will is laughing so hard his nose scrunches up and he has to gasp for air. While everyone was busy laughing at whatever Dustin said, Mike was preoccupied with looking at Will.

Mike sighs and puts the picture away. It’s the only thing of his life he’ll take to Derry and it’s a risk - a small one, but it could still expose him and Richie if the losers find it - but he can’t bring himself to give Richie the picture. He’ll just make sure to hide it.

He sits there for a couple more minutes, running through their plan once more. He goes through all the losers again, saying their names out loud and counting the most important things about them on his fingers. Bill Denbrough is allergic to peanuts and used to have a stutter, that’s why Richie calls him b-b-Bill. Stanley Uris has claustrophobia and can’t get into elevators. Richie always takes the stairs with him. Beverly Marsh lives with her aunt after her dad was arrested for child abuse. She doesn’t talk about him. She wears a key around her neck as a symbol for the perfect home she’ll live in somewhere in the future. Ben Hanscom is afraid of dogs and can’t walk past Mr. Miller’s house because he owns a big pitbull. He also likes poetry. Eddie Kaspbrak has asthma, though he pretends he doesn’t. Richie always reminds him to use his inhaler. Mike Hanlon is the best driver and the only one with his own car. He’s a vegetarian. And most importantly: he’ll have to pretend to be in love with all of them. Being affectionate not only with boys, but boys he doesn’t even know, is going to be a real challenge, but he’ll cross that bridge when he gets there.

Mike nods to himself. He can do this. It’s only for two weeks, and then he can go back home and spend the remaining days of summer break with his own friends, and then they can go back to school where they’ll be together all the time and Mike will go to Will’s house every day after school and he won’t have to be around his father. Only two weeks. Piece of cake.

He finally takes his bag when he’s been sitting there for ten minutes and gets out of the cabin. He locks the door behind him and descends the hill, popping into the main cabin to hand over the key and say goodbye to the counselors. Most of them have already left, eager to return to their own home where they don’t have to look after reckless kids, but Jay is still there. He smiles warmly at Mike and wishes him the best of luck and a safe trip home. Mike forgets Jay thinks he’s Richie for a millisecond and almost blows his cover by saying he should drop by in Hawkins sometime, but he can stop himself at the last minute and bites his tongue. He leaves the main cabin without another word, afraid he’ll out himself as Mike if he speaks, but does give Jay a last wave to say goodbye.

And then the moment of truth has arrived. Mike scans the crowd gathered at the exit of camp for his parents, but they appear to have already gone. Richie must’ve convinced them to leave right away, which is probably a good thing. They can’t risk having their parents see them together.

Mike continues scanning the crowd until he spots a woman matching Richie’s description of his mother. She’s tall and skinny, just like Richie is, and her hair is bleach blond. She’s wearing sunglasses too big for her face and poorly-fitted jeans. She’s leaning against her car, inspecting her nails for dirt.

He takes one final, deep breath and approaches her. The woman only acknowledges him when he’s standing right before her, and then she gives him the weakest attempt of a smile Mike has ever seen.

“You look like you gained some weight,” she says.

“Yeah, that’s what happens when people feed you,” Mike replies. His voice is a bit shaky, not used to being snarky to strangers, but Richie told him his mom stopped cooking for him a while ago. He figures now is as good as time as any to start being Richie for real.

“Ah, so they failed at making you into a respectable young man. It was to be expected, but I’m still disappointed.”

Mike walks around the car to dump his back in the trunk.

“Sorry to burst your bubble,” he says over the hood of the car before opening the door to the passenger’s seat. Maggie sighs audibly and gets into the car too.

She doesn’t say anything on the long ride back to Derry. She doesn’t ask how it was, what he did or if he made any friends. She simply doesn’t care.

Mike doesn’t mind. For the first time in a long time, the silence brings him comfort. It allows him to go over every single detail again, making sure he absolutely doesn’t forget anything.

By the time they arrive back in Derry, Mike is ready for battle.

Chapter Text

The car ride home is suffocating.

Richie had gone over every single detail with Mike, had gone through the names of all Mike’s friends, memorised Mike’s address, learned the very basics of D&D, knew where Mike’s bedroom was and where he hid his secret stash of candy he only ever shared with Will. He was prepared for everything, anything that could possibly be thrown his way.

Everything except meeting his father.

Richie imagined meeting his father for years. He had entire conversations with him in his head, where he yelled at him for leaving him and hysterically punched him on the chest until he collapsed against him and his father would hold him and kiss him on the top of his head and apologise until Richie believed him. As the years went on and Richie got older, he stopped imagining these meetings because he told himself he didn’t care anymore. He even told Mike when they first met each other: Richie didn’t want to put time in finding someone who obviously didn’t want to be found. But deep down, in the very core of Richie’s being, there was still that little boy who sat in front of the window every day hoping his dad would return.

And now he’s sitting in the back of the car his father is driving, staring at the back of his head.

Ted Wheeler’s hair is thinning. Richie can’t stop looking at it as they make their way back to Hawkins. It’s the only thing keeping him grounded, since he can’t really distract himself with conversation. Karen Wheeler asked him a few questions about camp when they got in the car, but after that the conversation quickly fell flat.

Richie almost breaks character three times on the long drive back home. He almost confesses to everything, almost confronts Ted that he’s his forgotten son, the one he left behind or gave up or whatever it is that he did to Richie to get rid of him. The how is still a big question mark Richie and Mike can’t seem to find an answer to, and so is the why, but that it happened is without question. Ted Wheeler looked at Richie and Mike when they were newborn infants and somehow decided that Mike was worth taking home while Richie wasn’t.

And it hurts. It hurts so much, knowing that his own father didn’t want him - still probably doesn’t want him. So he almost spits it out - hey asshole, I’m your other son - imagining Ted being so shocked he swerves off the road and crashes the car and gets injured just enough for Richie to feel satisfied. But that won’t give him the answers he’s looking for - not immediately, anyway. And maybe Karen is his biological mother, and she’s already way nicer to him than Maggie has ever been. He doesn’t want to risk injuring her too. Especially because she’s the only parent Mike loves, and he can’t take that from him.

So he bites his tongue and stays quiet. He’ll get his answers, even if he has to look at Ted’s face every day for the next two weeks. Even if he has to search every inch of their house, even if he has to flip through every book and look through every drawer. He’ll find out exactly what happened seventeen years ago; if Karen Wheeler or Maggie Tozier is their biological mother, if Richie was put up for adoption or if Ted had an affair with Maggie and disappeared with one of their sons after she gave birth to them and if Karen is in the know about Ted’s adultery or if he gave it a twist that kept her oblivious to his cheating.

Richie is gonna find answers to all of those questions, even if it’s the last thing he does.

*

Richie eventually dozes off and wakes up when Ted parks the car in front of their house. Richie rubs his eyes, chasing away the sleepiness, and stretches his arms before getting out of the car. He stretches his stiff legs too, cracks his knuckles and walks to the trunk to get his bag.

Richie jumps and hits his head when he gets grabbed from behind. He instantly turns back into the kid who used to be jumped in the hallways at school and tries to throw off his attacker, but then his attacker laughs and just presses themselves closer to Richie.

“Mike!” They exclaim joyfully. “I missed you so much. I have so much to tell you, I’m so glad you’re finally back!”

The attacker finally lets go and allows Richie to turn around. Richie instantly recognises him as the boy from the picture and smiles.

“Hey, Will,” he says. Will’s smile falters a bit and his eyebrows knit together slightly.

“Your voice is different,” he says.

Oh, shit.

“Really?” Richie asks innocently, trying to hide his anxiety. “I have a bit of a cold, maybe that’s why.”

Will looks at him long enough for it to almost be awkward, and then he breaks out his smile again. Richie’s muscles relax.

“Typical Mike Wheeler to catch a cold on summer camp. Come on, let’s go. The others are at my place.”

“O-okay,” Richie stammers. He dodged this bullet, but who’s to say the others won’t notice something off about him too? He can’t say he has a cold for the next two weeks. But he can’t avoid Mike’s friends either. That would look way too suspicious.

Richie hands his bag to Karen, who smiles kindly at him, and follows Will to his car. Mike told him Will’s car used to be Jonathan’s, but he gave it to Will when he went off to college. It’s Will’s most precious possession.

The inside of Will’s car smells like paint. It’s such a weird smell to be in a car that Richie is thrown off guard by it, forgetting for a moment what a car is supposed to smell like. He cranes his neck to look in the backseat, half expecting to find paint cans spilled all over the leather, but finds several paintings instead.

“Hey, what’s this?” Richie asks, crawling half out of his seat to reach for the paintings. Will takes off at the exact same moment, causing Richie to fall forward and hit his nose against the headrest of his seat.

“Ah, fuck!” He curses, cupping his nose with his hands. Will stops abruptly, almost causing Richie to fall backwards against the dashboard before Will stops him from falling.

“Jesus, Mike. You know you have to wear your seatbelt when I’m driving. Well, you always have to wear your seatbelt, but especially with me.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Richie waves him off. He wipes his nose and looks at his hand. Luckily there’s no blood.

“I’m sorry,” Will says bashfully. “Still a shitty driver.”

“It’s okay,” Richie says. He sits back and puts on his seatbelt. “I was just curious about those paintings. Did you paint those?”

“Yeah,” Will smiles. “I had some time on my hands during our stops on our roadtrip so I painted a bit. I made you one too, actually.”

“Really?”

“Of course! I always make you stuff.”

That’s true. Mike told Richie about the binder of drawings he got from Will. He hides it under his bed because he thinks they could be incriminating if his parents ever found them.

“Right,” Richie says. “I can’t wait to see what you painted me.”

He doesn’t miss the pink blush spreading over Will’s cheeks, and suddenly he totally understands why Mike is so smitten for him. Hell, he can see himself being smitten for him. If they had more time together and Will actually knew who Richie was, he could totally fall in love with him.

The two boys chat as if they’ve known each other for their entire lives as Will attempts to drive them to his house. Of course, to Will they have known each other for their entire lives. It’s just that Richie feels so comfortable with him so quickly that it’s almost as if he’s known him for years. Will is so easy to talk to, has so much energy and such captivating stories, that Richie doesn’t even have to pretend to like him. The more Will talks about his roadtrip with his mom and brother, the more Richie starts to adore him. By the time they’ve made it to the Byers household, Richie’s current favorite thing in Hawkins is the sound of Will’s voice.

Will guides him inside, barely able to hide his grin. Richie wonders why until Will walks into his living room and Richie is startled by Mike’s friends, all shouting his name. There’s a banner hanging on the wall, saying Welcome back, Mike! His friends are standing in front of it, the same bright smile on all their faces.

Lucas is the first one to greet him. He walks up to him and gives him a firm hug, slapping him on the back. Richie falls forward a bit, not expecting the strength. Mike told him Lucas was tall, but he didn’t tell him he was built like a fucking house. He’s taller than Richie is and looks about twice as strong, but his face is kind and his smile is soft.

“Welcome back, Mike. We missed you, man.”

“Missed you guys too,” Richie lies.

Dustin hugs him next. His hug is warm and radiates kindness, and his smile is absolutely gorgeous. He has big, untamed curls partly hidden away underneath a hat and he smells like soap and bubblegum.

Jane is next in line. Her hug is short but sincere. She frowns at him and tells him he should’ve written more letters to them. Richie scratches the back of his neck awkwardly and stutters an excuse, that he was too busy during the day and too tired to really write anything at night. She doesn’t seem to buy it - something Mike warned him about. Jane seems to be able to see right through you. Richie reminds himself once again to be careful around her.

Max approaches him last. She has a bit of a sunburn on her nose and her flaming hair is tied up into a high ponytail. She’s wearing shorts that exposed her bruised knees. Something tells Richie those are always bruised, no matter the circumstances.

Max doesn’t hug him. Instead, she hits him on the arm and then smiles, which is a weird way to say you missed someone. Richie figures Eddie would probably greet him like that too, though, so it’s okay.

“So, uh,” Richie says when everyone has welcomed him back, desperately trying to remain in character, “what did I miss?”

*

The afternoon goes by in an exhausting blur. His friends all tell stories of their own holiday; Lucas and Max show a whole bunch of pictures they took on holiday and reminisce about their late night adventures in Rome, when Lucas’s family was all sound asleep and they snuck out of their hotel to get lost in narrow alleys and drink red wine in tiny bars. Max blushes at the thought of it, and Richie can almost imagine them both at a little, wobbly table at a restaurant overlooking the Colosseum. They make a cute couple.

Jane tells them about Hopper’s family and how kindly they invited her into their house and hearts. She met cousins and nieces and nephews and really felt like they were her own family. She even shows a necklace she got from Hopper’s mother, which is apparently a family heirloom.

Dustin reenacts a little play he did at drama camp, and everyone laughs at how funny he is. Mike told Richie Dustin is the funniest person he’d ever meet and Richie didn’t believe him, but he’s pretty damn hilarious.

Will tells the stories he told Richie in the car again, but this time with different details. He tells them about the naked lady they saw strolling the streets in Chicago, nightlife in San Diego, art in New York. The three legged dog Will took care of for three days during their stop in Texas, the shady tattoo parlor in Colorado where Jonathan got a tattoo and the awesome jacket he bought in North Dakota. He tells everything with the same livelihood, the same joy and wonder as he did in the car, and his eyes are big and bright and full of stars. He wishes he could take a picture of him to send to Mike. And he also wishes, however briefly it may be, that he was in Derry and could look at the stars in Bill’s eyes or listen to Ben’s voice or nestle against Mike Hanlon’s chest. He misses his friends terribly, and for one moment he wants nothing more than to be with them in Bill’s basement and pass along a joint and love them all.

But he’s here, and he’s on a mission, so that also means he has to get along with Mike’s friends. And it’s not like he doesn’t like them. In fact, he could see himself befriending all of them, especially Max. They’re just not the losers.

Will drives him back home when the sun starts to set. He’d asked him if he wanted to sleep over, but Richie really just wants to be alone for a while. Today was exhausting, both mentally as physically, and he just wants to be himself without having to worry that someone will see through his act.

“Hey, is everything okay?” Will asks on their way back to Mike’s house. Richie looks up from the road.

“Yeah, why?” He asks.

Will shrugs.

“I don’t know, you seem kind of quiet today. Are you having a bad day?”

Richie smiles.

“No, not a bad day. Just an exhausting day. I’ll be fine tomorrow.”

Will nods. “Okay. I’ll come pick you up around eleven? We can go into town to all have lunch together and then go to the lake, if you want to.”

“That sounds perfect,” Richie assures him.

Will nods again, that same bright smile dancing on his lips.

They say goodbye on Mike’s driveway. Richie isn’t sure how they usually say goodbye, so he reaches forward to hug Will. Will hugs him back, but looks a bit confused when Richie pulls back and gets out of the car. Maybe Mike and Will don’t normally hug. Maybe that makes sense: Mike is so afraid of being outed that he’d probably avoid anything that could be seen as ‘suspicious behavior’.

“See you tomorrow,” Richie quickly says before Will can comment on it. He waves him off as Will drives away and then hurries inside, finding the house empty. Richie walks to the kitchen to get a snack and finds a note saying his parents went to town, Holly is at a sleepover and that Nancy went to a house party. Great, so nobody in his family really seems to care that he has just returned from four weeks of summer camp. Doesn’t sound too different from his own family in Derry.

Richie drags himself upstairs after his snack, sudden exhaustion tugging at his limbs. He barely makes it to Mike’s room before collapsing onto the bed. He has just enough energy left to kick off his shoes and wiggle out of his jeans. He throws his pants across the room and gets under the covers, his last thought before passing out going to Mike and his first day in Derry. He wonders how it went, if the losers noticed something off about him or if he did something that Richie wouldn’t do. He makes a mental note to call him tomorrow night to ask how it’s going and then closes his eyes with a deep sigh.

He can already tell the next two weeks are going to be absolutely exhausting.

Chapter Text

It doesn’t take long for the losers to find him once Mike has made his entrance in Derry. He has barely unpacked his bag when the doorbell rings. He can hear Maggie groan all the way from the hallway.

“Hi, Mrs. Tozier,” a female voice says sweetly. “Can Richie come outside and play?”

“Beverly Marsh,” Maggie says, almost as if the name is a curse. “Haven’t seen you around all summer.”

“Didn’t really have a reason to drop by with Richie gone,” Beverly replies easily. “Unless you want to hang out, of course. Maybe we could do each other’s nails!”

Maggie groans again before calling for Richie. Mike throws the remaining stuff in his bag on his bed and rushes downstairs, anxiety settling high in his chest at the prospect of having to meet one of Richie’s friends.

Beverly’s face lights up when she sees Mike. Mike knew Bev was pretty from the description Richie gave of her, but he’s almost speechless looking at her now. Her red hair is cut uneven and short, sticking out like a lion’s manes, and her freckles spread over her nose and cheekbones. Her eyes are bright and mischievous, as if she’s always ready to ask you to go shoplifting with her. She’s wearing a plain black shirt underneath denim dungarees and partly untied army boots on her feet. Her knees are bruised just like Max’s always are.

Mike takes this all in in the millisecond it takes Beverly to fling herself into Mike’s arms. She’s short enough to wrap her arms and legs around Mike’s body, like a weird ginger koala bear.

“I missed you so much, you dumb idiot!” She exclaims. Mike laughs softly.

“Missed you too,” he lies.

“Come on, let’s go!” Beverly says once her feet hit the ground again. She tugs at Mike’s arm, urging him to follow her outside. Mike lets her guide him and quickly spots an old pick-up truck once he steps on the porch. A boy who Mike can only assume is Eddie Kaspbrak is hanging out the passenger side window, scowling at him. Mike would almost feel threatened if it weren’t for Richie’s warning that Eddie would probably be mad at him for being gone for so long. Also, Eddie is like 5’5. He couldn’t look threatening even if he tried.

The rest of the losers are sitting in the trunk of the car. Bill Denbrough, easily recognisable with his flannel, exclaims a war cry when he sees Mike emerge from the Tozier house. Mike halfheartedly returns it, knowing that this has been Richie’s and Bill’s weird greeting since they were in middle school.

“You somehow got even uglier,” Stan says once Mike gets into the back of the truck too. Mike knows it’s Stan because of his curls and sharp wit.

“Stanley!” Ben tuts. He hits him on the arm before turning to Mike.

“Glad to have you back, Rich,” he says sincerely.

“Glad to be back,” Mike says. When nobody raises their eyebrows in suspicion or calls his bluff, the knot in his stomach loosens just enough for Mike to take in some air.

Mike Hanlon turns around in the driver’s seat and pokes his head through the small window separating the trunk from the inside of the truck.

“Tozier!” He beams, and Mike starts sweating. Fuck, Richie wasn’t lying when he said Mike H. was close to angelic. If he gets all handsy with him like Richie said all losers do in private, Mike doesn’t know if he’ll survive.

“Hi, Mike,” Mike says, only slightly weirded out by sharing a name with someone so gorgeous.

Bev slams the hood of the truck.

“We can all catch up when we’re ar Bill’s,” she says. “Right now, I just want to get away from Maggie’s blazing glare before she calls me a dyke and throws a brick at me. No offense, Richie.”

“None taken,” Mike says, his throat closing up at the slur Beverly so casually throws around. He’d almost forgotten that the losers are all queer. Or, well, maybe he hadn’t forgotten - how could he? Maybe he’d just pushed it to the back of his mind, hoping it would never come up. Because no matter how hard Mike used to pray for more people like him, the thought of being surrounded by so many vulnerable people terrifies him. Being around them makes him a target by association.

***

Mike doesn’t think his friends are goody two shoes. Sure, they used to prefer playing D&D over causing trouble in town like other kids their age and sure, they’re all still a bit nerdy in their own ways, but they’re also teenagers with the impulse control of a half baked potato. So they started sneaking out of the house to go to house parties last year, carefully nursed their first beers after Max blackmailed Billy into buying them a six pack, and they shared their first joint between the six of them when Will out of all people pulled it out of his pocket. Will, who felt more drawn to the angsty art crowd at school every passing year, who’d go to art exhibitions every second Friday of each month with his art friends Mike absolutely did not irrationally despise, whose fashion sense got more questionable with every new art friend he made. And who could apparently snap his fingers and hold out his hand and be given weed at any given moment of the day.

Mike hadn’t really liked getting high. It loosened him up too much, blurred the boundaries he so carefully put out for himself. He got too touchy, too talkative. Too himself.

They didn’t get high together after that first joint. Lucas, Max and Will would occasionally still share one, but the weed made Jane paranoid and gave Dustin a headache. Mike made up an excuse too, that it made his stomach feel funny, but he just didn’t want to risk exposing himself in an intoxicated state of mind.

The losers don’t seem unfamiliar with drugs, though. They pass several joints around at the same time once they’re in Bill’s basement, asking Mike so many questions it makes him a bit dizzy.

“So did you sit around a bonfire and sing Kumbaya?”

“Did you make macaroni necklaces?”

“Were there any cute girls?”

“Or guys?”

Mike almost bursts into a coughing fit at that question. Damn, the losers certainly are direct. He wonders briefly if this is how it should normally be with friends; openly talking about who you’re attracted to, whether or not those people are guys or girls. Of course Mike can talk openly about lots of stuff to his friends, like his problems at home, but they were never the type of friends that would ask each other about crushes. And though Mike never felt like his friends would have a problem with anyone of them being queer, the subject was also never discussed.

“Uh, not… not really,” Mike stutters, praying that it’s the kind of answer Richie would give. Judging from the several eyebrow raises in the group, it’s not.

“Really? The great Richie ‘why is everyone so attractive’ Tozier, not finding a single hot person during the entirety of summer camp?” Bill says.

Mike shrugs as casually as he can.

“You guys are way hotter than anyone at that lame camp.”

“Aww, such flattery,” Stan says flatly, but he’s smiling.

“Damn Tozier, keep it in your pants. You know I love you, but I’m a lesbian,” Bev teases.

“Oh so he can’t call you hot because you just happen to like girls?” Eddie asks.

“Do you think I’m hot, Edward?” Bev asks.

“I don’t know, Beverly. I’m gay and obviously can’t tell if women are attractive or not.”

Bill rolls his eyes. “Sure you can’t, mister Who Allowed Madonna To Be So Hot.”

“She’s an icon!” Eddy defends himself. He looks at Mike expectedly, as if he’s anticipating him to jump to his defense. Mike tries to think about anything to say about Madonna, but he was never a fan of her. Not like Max or Jane are.

“Yeah,” he eventually says, feeling as if the moment to say something had already passed. “Madonna is objectively hot. Everyone thinks so.”

“See! Thank you, Richard,” Eddie grins. Mike throws him a finger gun and a wink, both feeling extremely fake when he does it. Eddie’s grin falters ever so slightly, and the anxiety immediately flares up again. But then Mike blinks and Eddie looks like he’s already forgotten why his grin faltered in the first place.

“Anyway,” Bill continues, “judging the hotness of Madonna aside, we’re all just really glad to have you back, man. Not that I don’t like all these losers, but things were getting boring without you.”

“Yeah,” Ben agrees. “It’s been way too long since I last heard a ‘your mom’ joke thrown around at passing strangers that mildly annoy you.”

“I tried taking your place but failed miserably,” Mike H. sighs, to which Bill raises his bottle of beer sadly.

“A moment of silence for our brave Micycle, who tried to execute a ‘your mom’ joke and got a shoe to the head in return.”

The other losers raise their bottles and/or joints in unison. Mike is glad to know Richie isn’t the only one with a flair for the dramatic.

The rest of the afternoon continues just like that; someone will say something, to which someone else will offer a snarky remark, after which the losers will collectively laugh at the person and move on to the next subject. As the sun sets lower in the Derry sky and Mike starts taking more drags of the joints still being passed around, he starts loosening up more and more. By the end of the evening, when Beverly is lying head-down-feet-up in one of the recliners and Bill has taken place in the lap of a very flustered Stan, Mike feels like he’s cracking out jokes Richie would be proud of. He never really considered himself the funny friend - Dustin and Max made up for that part of their friend group - but he enjoys the laughter that erupts every time he says something funny. Richie was right - turning off your brain-to-mouth-filter really helps.

Mike hasn’t been high for quite some time. Drugs tend to loosen him up too much for his own liking, bringing out too much of the Mike he’s desperately trying to hide, but here in Derry he can be someone else entirely. He can be someone who loves affection, loves touching others and being touched. Mike doesn’t realize how truly touch starved he really is until Mike H. wraps his arms around him and pulls him to the floor to cuddle with him. His entire body flushes and his heart starts beating really fast, but he doesn’t feel like this touch is forbidden. He doesn’t feel like all the eyes of the world are on him, judging him for touching another boy and liking it. He just feels… content. That’s the best way to describe it.

Despite only having known the losers for one single afternoon, their banter and the feeling of Mike H.’s warm hands rubbing his back are enough to make his eyes droop with sudden exhaustion.

Well, this is how Richie said he liked spending his nights; curled up with his friends on the carpet of Bill’s basement floor, falling asleep with their conversation in the background and at least one of them touching him one way or another.

So if that’s what Richie would do, well then of course Mike should do it too.

And so he does.

Chapter Text

Summers in Derry were always spent the same way. Mostly, Richie and the other losers would waste away their precious summer days at the quarry or their clubhouse. He remembers the day Ben showed it to them - the underground wooden bunker tucked deeply in the woods, away from prying eyes of parents and peers. He had shown them around with a deep red blush on his cheeks, almost as if he was embarrassed about it. But the losers had instantly loved it. They stole pieces of furniture from home or the junkyard to put in it, brought pictures and paintings to hang, even brought a radio to listen to music. Stan gave everyone shower caps while they were decorating so that spiders couldn't fall into their hair.

Some of Richie's fondest memories happened in that clubhouse. Like how they would return there after a day of swimming, padding through the woods on their bare feet with their clothes and shoes clutched in their arms. Bev's hair turned into fire in the light of the setting sun, and Bill's eyes melted into at least five different shades of green. The hairs on Eddie's arms would stand up straight because of the chilly evening breeze, his body shivering slightly. Mike would put his arm around his shoulders to warm him until they got to their clubhouse, where Ben was often already waiting for them with some liquor he stole from his parents. They would warm their insides with alcohol while basking in the last daylight shining through the open trap door. Richie didn't drink, had never touched a drop, but watching his friends as they loosened up and their eyes started to droop with exhaustion and alcohol made him warm too. He liked how Stan’s shoulders relaxed, even for just a bit, when Bill handed him a bottle and gave him one of his precious Bill smiles. He liked how Beverly would rest her head on his shoulder, the touch purely innocent and platonic. And he liked how Eddie did the same, though his touch never felt as innocent.

Summers in Hawkins are different. Though Mike's friends still hang out every day, they don't do it at one place. Mike's basement is often the place to crash after a long day, but other than that they roam every corner of Hawkins. One day they chill at Will's, then they go to the mall, sometimes they'll be at the pool. Max's stepbrother makes it difficult to enjoy, though. He reminds Richie of Henry Bowers, and his fists itch when Billy sneers at Lucas or Max.

Their favorite hangout place seems to be the arcade. They meet there on the rare occasion that it rains, but even if it doesn’t, they’ll waste days away there. Lucas and Max are extremely competitive and play video games until one of them either drops dead, starves or admits they’re a loser, all the while Jane and Will look slightly bored until they find a different game to play. Dustin entertains himself by passing all arcade games and checking if someone happened to leave a token. He comes to show Richie with a proud grin on his face whenever he finds one.

Summer here is different, but it’s… nice. And yeah, Richie misses his friends terribly and wonders what they’re doing now, but Mike’s friends are pretty cool too. And Will, with his soft spokenness, his big green eyes and caring nature, reminds him of Bill. Which makes Richie gravitate towards the Byers kid more than he gravitates towards the others.

“Let’s go in the photo booth,” Will says suddenly, when they’re both watching a game Lucas is playing. Richie looks at him.

“Sure,” he says. “Let me go get the others.”

“No!” Will says quickly, hand shooting forward as if to touch Richie’s arm. He changes his mind right before his fingertips can graze Richie’s skin and lets his hand drop back to his side.

“No,” he says again, more calmly. “Just the two of us. Please? We can take picture with the others later.”
Richie shrugs. “Okay.”

Will beams at him and god damn, Richie understands why Mike has fallen so hard for him. He follows Will to the photo booth at the end of the arcade hall and squeezes into it next to him. Their bare thighs touch when he sits down on the stool next to Will.

They make a few silly pictures, sticking out their tongue and making ugly faces. Richie hooks his finger into Will’s nose at one point, which makes Will snort with laughter.

“Ew!” Richie yells, pretending to wipe some snot on Will’s shirt. “Disgusting!”

Will laughs harder, giving Richie a half-hearted shove.

“That’s what you get when you put your finger in my nose,” he says.

“Oh, so you wanna blame the victim?” Richie replies, hand on his chest in feigned shock. “I wouldn’t think you’d do that, William.”

Will’s smile turns into a slight frown.

“You never call me William,” he says.

Richie’s heart skips a beat. He can’t afford to be caught now, he hasn’t even been in Hawkins for a week!

“Uh…” He mumbles, searching his brain for a lie. “There was this kid… at camp! And he was called William and hated to be called Will, so I got used to calling him William. Sorry, my bad.”

Will squints. "That William kid better not have been better than me," he says.

Richie chuckles, relieved that the lie seems to work.

"Of course not. That's basically impossible."

Will's expression softens. Well, maybe softens isn't the right word since Will seems to be incapable of a hard expression, but the muscles in his face do shift to be something more… Intimate. Vulnerable. Richie's hands get clammy.

Suddenly the atmosphere shifts in the photo booth. Like there's less air somehow. Richie swallows thickly, recognizing the signs as tension. He experiences it all the time with the losers whenever he finds himself alone with one of them, but in that case he usually just acts on it. The amount of times he has kissed the tension away between him and Bill or him and Mike H. can't be counted on two hands. But he can't exactly kiss Will to chase away the sudden tension between them. It wouldn't be fair to Mike or Will, and it wouldn't be safe in such a public place.

But the tension between them just grows, just like the silence. Richie squirms under it, not enjoying when it gets quiet for too long, but right before he jumps to his feet to escape the awkwardness, Will starts to talk.

"I thought about you a lot while I was away," he starts.

"Yeah?" Richie asks breathlessly. His heart is hammering in his chest. This is not the conversation he wants to be having right now.

"Yeah," Will says softly. "I missed you so much, Mike. Way more than I missed the others. And that made me think, you know? About what that means. Why I missed you more."

Richie tries to steer the direction away from where it's inevitably heading. "It's probably because we're used to hanging out all the time," he says.

"No," Will shakes his head, "no, that's not it. Not all of it, at least. I'm used to hanging out with Lucas and Dustin too. And I missed them too! Just… I
I missed you more. A lot more. And I think it's because… because I'm -" but before Will can finish that sentence, they're interrupted by Dustin peeking his head into the photo booth.

"Here you guys are!" He smiles brightly. "Didn't mean to interrupt your smooching, but we're all starving. Wanna go to the mall and grab some pizza!"

"Yes!" Richie exclaims, immediately jumping to his feet. Then, so that he doesn't hurt Will's feelings, he turns back to him and says, "we'll talk later, okay?"

Will smiles at him. The softness in his eyes has been replaced by something close to… close to sadness. It breaks Richie's heart just a little bit.

"Okay," he says.

Chapter Text

Michael Theodore Wheeler hates a lot of things. 

For starters, he hates that his middle name is Theodore. It's like a shadow following him his entire life, constantly reminding him of his father. It isn't bad enough that he has to have his last name. No, Theodore Wheeler decided that Mike should also carry his first name so that he would never forgot where he came from. 

He also hates snow and big dogs and especially clowns, ever since one of them scared him so much when he was younger he couldn't stop crying for a whole hour. 

He hates carrots and Christmas and the bullies at school who stopped targeting all of his friends except Will. 

But out of all the things he hates, he hates pretending to be Richie Tozier the most. 

It's not that he hates the losers or Derry. Both are quite similar to what he's used to at home; the losers are all just as nerdy as his own friends and Derry is basically the same small, old town as Hawkins. The thing he hates about pretending to be Richie, the thing he absolutely despises , is Maggie fucking Tozier. 

Mike had never met a person that made him feel almost grateful to be Ted's son. He thought it was impossible to meet someone even worse than his own father, but Maggie is really trying her best to take the first place in the Worst Parent In The World Competition. She's constantly on Mike's case, asking where he's going and where he's been and who he's hanging out with. It better not be those fucking losers , she'd spit every day, like an alarm clock. Richard, you know I don't want you to be around them. 

It makes Mike's blood boil. He knows why she doesn't want her son to hang out with the losers, he's heard what people are whispering in Derry. Henry Bowers is right at the front of it all, making sure new rumors get spread whenever it gets too quiet around the losers. 

But most people don't have any solid, incriminating proof. It's similar to his life in Hawkins, where Troye also had nothing more than rumors to make Will a target. Mike makes sure he doesn't do anything that would allow Troye to make up rumors about him too, though that doesn't make them hurt any less.  

He hates the tone Maggie uses when she talks about the losers. Because it doesn't matter that they're quirky or weird or don't have any friends besides each other. It doesn't matter that Maggie knows and hates all their parents. It doesn't matter that the losers have never made an effort to be nice to her whenever they came around to see Richie. The only thing Maggie Tozier cares about are those rumors. 

The only thing Maggie Tozier cares about is that the losers are all exactly like Mike. And it absolutely disgusts her. 

So Mike hates her, and he hates the way she thinks, and he hates that he still kind of agrees with her. 

***

Mike doesn't particularly like being alone, but sometimes he has to spend time by himself to simply be Mike Wheeler instead of Richie Tozier. No matter how much he enjoys being around the losers, being Richie is simply exhausting. The guy is clearly loved by everyone, which means everyone also asks a lot of his attention. 

That's why Mike finds himself wandering around Derry alone on a particularly hot afternoon, sweat dripping down the back of his shirt and his hair damp. He's been in Derry for a week now, getting used to Richie's rhythm as the days blend into each other. He spends most of his time away from home, just like Richie would do, and sleeps over at Bill's a lot. Which means he hasn't had the time yet to snoop around for some answers to the question about his conception. 

According to his rushed and short conversations with Richie on the phone, he hasn't had much luck either. He has tried snooping around but someone is always home when he tries to. Richie is waiting for the perfect opportunity to look around but so far it hasn't presented itself yet. They even discussed staying away longer than the agreed upon two weeks but quickly came back from that plan since neither of them wanted to spend even more time away from their friends. 

Mike isn't paying much attention as he walks across a bridge near the Barrens, where he'll be meeting the losers later this afternoon. He's planning on reading a bit in the shade before they arrive, maybe go for a swim to cool off, but his mind keeps wandering back to his friends and especially Will. Richie told him about the photobooth incident over the phone, about the tension he felt with Will and where he thought the conversation was going. Mike hadn't believed him, couldn't imagine Will trying to tell him something so intimate in such a public place, where they could so easily be caught, but he catches himself thinking about the implications of it nevertheless. 

That's why, when Henry Bowers and his gang show up at the bridge, Mike doesn't even notice them at first. 

Someone throws a rock at his head. It misses Mike by an inch, whooshing past his ear and smashing against the ground a few feet away. Mike doesn't know who threw it but judging by their faces when he turns around to face them it must've been the tall dude with his stupid fucking sling. He grins at Mike, an ugly smile with yellow teeth. Mike shivers despite the heat. 

"Tozier!" Henry purrs. He reminds Mike a bit of Billy, with that same mullet and those same piercing eyes. "We haven't seen you in ages! Where you been?"

Mike quickly assesses the situation. He's alone, with no other witnesses around, against Henry and his two guard dogs. Should he run? Should he stand his ground? Fight back? Call for help? What would Richie do? Does it even matter what he would do? Richie would probably never be alone to begin with. 

"Well?" Henry asks, cocking a brow. He's playing with a pocket knife, trying to make it look innocent but failing. 

"I, uh, I was away at camp," Mike says at last. 

Henry chuckles coldly. 

"Conversion camp, I presume?" 

Mike swallows thickly. He wants to run, his feet aching to start moving, but he holds his ground and says the first thing that comes to mind, true Richie-like: "I'm surprised you know what the word presume means and can use it in the correct context! Good for you, Henry."

Henry growls and takes another step towards Mike, slowly closing the small distance between them. Mike gets ready to run, is already scanning his surroundings to find the best way out, but then he hears a weirdly familiar scream and watches as one of Henry's guard dogs gets hit over the head with a baseball bat so hard he falls over. 

Henry turns around and sees, just like Mike, Eddie Kaspbrak standing over the unconscious boy with a bat in his hands and a scowl on his face. 

"Get away from him, Bowers!" He yells with his typical, high-pitched Eddie yell that has become so familiar to Mike in the last week. The other guard dog, the one with the sling, makes a move to take the bat from Eddie but is hit by a rock flying against his head. He looks around in confusion, but then the other losers emerge from underneath the bridge with makeshift weapons. Mike H. is carrying as many rocks as he can manage while Bev is holding a piece of wood she found somewhere. Stan is holding a shard of glass and Bill is standing next to Mike, throwing a rock from hand to hand. Ben is standing a bit to the side, not prone to violence, but he's scowling just like Eddie is. 

"What the fuck, Kaspbrak?" Henry curses, looking between him and his fallen guard dog. 

"And I'll do it again!" Eddie threatens, pointing his bat at the sling dude. The dude takes a step back, looks at Bowers and shrugs his shoulders, almost as if to say ' what do you want me to do about it?'. Then, to the absolute amusement of Mike, the guy just straight up turns around and leaves. 

"You're dead meat, Kaspbrak," Henry says, lunging at him. Mike is already running before he tells his legs to start moving, running after Henry with a sudden burst of confidence. Henry is tall but Mike realizes he's taller, which he uses to his advantage as he tackles Henry before he can reach Eddie.

The two of them fall to the ground and Mike wraps his arms around Henry's skinny body, Henry struggling against him. He tries to get to his knife but Eddie gets to him before he can, slamming his foot on his wrist.

Henry cries out and lets go of his knife and Ben, suddenly besides them, picks up the knife and holds it up, though it looks out of place in his hands. 

Mike strains against Henry's struggling arms and legs and almost loses his grip, but then the others appear beside him and help him hold Henry down. 

Mike H. and Stan hold down Henry's legs while Bill and Eddie hold his arms. Bev stands over them and slams her piece of wood against Henry's back, one, two, three times. Henry screams and goes limp under their grip. 

Mike finally lets go and stands up, his arms shaking. He has never won a fight before, Hell, he never actually participated in one. He and his friends usually ran and hid. 

"Holy shit," he mutters. Henry is still conscious but can't get up. 

"That's what you get when you fuck with us!" Beverly says. She kicks Henry one last time, who moans and curls into a ball. Then she turns to Mike. 

"Are you okay, Richie?" She asks, her voice suddenly soft. Mike blushes at her caring eyes.

"Yeah, nothing happened. You guys got here just in time, though."

Mike H. taps the side of his head. 

"Psychic connection," he winks. "I sensed my boy Richie was in trouble."

Stan rolls his eyes at Mike H.

"Let's get out of here before dear Henry regains his strength."

"Or before Patrick returns," Bill adds. Mike makes a mental note about the name and links it to the guy with the sling. 

The other losers agree and walk back to the edge of the bridge where they emerged moments before. Eddie throws his arm around Mike's shoulder, having to walk on his tiptoes as he does so, and Mike's heart flutters. Eddie isn't Will, none of them are, but the touch still feels incredible.

They descend the hill and follow the river to the Barrens, all still talking about Henry on the bridge. Mike realizes that this is what they were forced to become years ago, when all the targeting and bullying and threatening became too much. They sought weapons to protect themselves and each other, they drew battle lines where once their own blood had spilled and they made an oath, a promise, to never be a target again. 

Their confidence rubs off on Mike as they wade through the river to cool down. Something awakes in him, deep inside his core, and he makes a promise to himself that this is who he'll be once he returns to Hawkins. No longer a target but someone who fights back, someone who throws rocks at Troye and steals Nancy's baseball bat to swing at Billy. Someone who's just a bit more like Richie. 

Because that's who he is here. He's Richie, who ran full speed at Henry and held him down, who's friends with the most fierce people he's ever met, who stares at threats and smiles. 

Because here he's part of the losers club, and nobody fucks with them and walks away unscathed. 

Chapter Text

Will Byers is nothing like Richie had expected.

Of course Mike had spoken about him, his eyes soft and his smile shy as he told Richie how amazing Will was. He told him about his drawings, about his jokes, about the late nights they would spend together in Will’s twin sized bed, staring up at the glow-in-the-dark stars they put on his ceiling when they were ten. Will was always the one to bring extra sandwiches to lunch because he knew Lucas forgot how hungry he would get and never brought enough for himself. He always gave his friends self made gifts for Christmas, always made sure everyone was comfortable when they were hanging around his house, volunteered to drive everyone around despite his terrible driving. He was selfless and caring and gentle.

But Richie also gets to know Will as someone mischievous, someone whose eyes light up when Max mentions doing something questionably legal, someone who’s always up to the challenge. Will is bright and lively and silly. He wears white All-Stars with high, mismatched socks, dungarees that came undone on one side and are always covered in paint splatters. He paints his nails pastel purple, bright yellow, soft pink. Billy makes jokes about it when they hang around the pool, trying to embarrass Will, but Will just smiles and takes it as a compliment.

Will Byers isn’t just a good person, he’s also brave. And to Richie, that makes him absolutely incredible.

Richie has to try his hardest not to fall for Will’s bright eyes and even brighter smile. He tries to calm down his heartbeat when Will’s fingers graze his skin, despite his own fingers itching to grab Will by his overalls and pull him into a hug or a kiss or anything at all. He realizes very quickly that Mike’s friends react differently to touch, as if it’s more foreign to them. Richie himself is used to draping his arms around Bill’s shoulders, resting his head in Beverly’s lap, putting his hand on Eddie’s thigh. Touching comes to him as naturally as breathing, but he feels Dustin tense underneath his touch when Richie tries to rest his hand on his leg, sees Lucas’s frown when he presses his bare arm against Max’s when they sit on the couch together. Only Will, whose hands seem to be hungry for physical contact as well, doesn’t mind it when Richie touches him. He doesn’t stiffen like Dustin, doesn’t frown like Lucas or pull back with an awkward smile like Max. So Richie feels himself ease up when he’s with Will. Despite still having to pretend to be Mike, he can be himself too, even if it’s only a little.

That’s why he finds himself on the road to Will’s house almost every day. Nancy mostly uses the car to go to work or visit Jonathan at college so Richie had taken Mike’s old bike to make the daily trip. The bike is a bit small and almost looks comical when Richie tries to ride it but it does the job just fine.

It’s a gloomy summer day, a bit over a week after Mike and Richie switched, when he’s riding to Will’s house. The heat is heavy today, trapped underneath a blanket of clouds, and Richie’s back is clammy. By the time he arrives at Will’s house his shirt is drenched.

Richie notices Max’s car in the driveway as he makes his way inside. He frowns to himself, not having expected anyone else to be here yet. He came earlier on purpose to spend some more time with Will alone. Richie can’t help the pang of disappointment shooting through his chest knowing that he’ll have to share Will with Max now, but the feeling quickly evaporates when he sees what Max and Will are doing.

Will is laying on his back, his right arm resting on Max’s lap, who’s sitting on a small stool next to the couch. She’s poking a needle in the skin of his bicep repeatedly, creating a homemade tattoo.

Richie doesn’t know how to react. Mike never told him that Max does stick and poke tattoos and he doesn’t know how to react to the needle. He personally doesn’t have a problem with them, hell, he once pierced Beverly’s nose with a thumb tack, but he can’t remember if Mike does.

He decides to take the risk. Maybe Mike got rid of his fear of needles at camp, who knows. So he knocks on the doorframe leading to the living room to alert Max of his presence and steps inside.

“Hey Mike!” Will says cheerily, apparently unfazed by the needle puncturing his skin. Max looks up too, a grin on her face.

“Hey Wheeler,” she greets. 

“Sup guys,” Richie says. He gently sits down next to Will, who immediately drapes his legs over Richie’s lap. Richie puts the palms of his hands on Will’s shins.

“So, you’re getting a tattoo?” He asks.

“Yup,” Will beams, looking at his arm. Max has temporarily stopped tattooing and is now waiting for Will to focus again, so Will lifts his arm and shows it to Richie. Max isn’t working with a stencil so it’s hard to tell what the end result will be but so far it looks like a frog.

Richie doesn’t question the choice. He knows Bill got a stick and poke at a houseparty once and it was a penis with eyes so he really has seen worse. He smiles approvingly at Will.

“Okay, give it back,” Max says, motioning at Will’s arm. She continues once he has put it back on her lap. Will barely even flinches.

 “Since when do you do stick and pokes?” Richie wonders. He hopes it’s not an important detail about Max Mike forgot to mention, but she shrugs without looking up. “I picked it up this summer. Haven’t practiced on anyone besides myself and Will volunteered.”

“Very brave of you,” Richie says. Will chuckles.

“Oh, Max showed me her tattoos before I agreed,” he assures him. “They looked decent and it’s just my arm so no harm done. Besides, it’s kinda fun.”

“Does it hurt?” Despite having seen his friends get tattoos and piercings, he never actually got one himself.

“Not really. You want one too?”

Max’s head shoots up. “Yeah! I could use the practice.”

Richie hesitates. How would Mike explain not having a tattoo anymore when he returns to Hawkins? He got away with the change of voice but a tattoo? Not even Richie could give Mike a good excuse for that one.

But on the other hand… it does look tempting. And maybe, if he gets it somewhere where nobody would see it, like his upper thigh…

“Sure,” he finds himself saying before his mind has caught up with him. What’s the worst that could happen anyway?

***

Max packs up her stuff a few hours later. Will’s tattoo did in fact end up being a frog and Richie asked for a tiny skeleton on his upper thigh. He felt almost shy when he stripped out of his pants and sat back down in only his underwear and shirt. He caught Will looking away a bit too casually to be on purpose, a faint blush on his cheeks, and smiled to himself. Oh, how delighted Mike would be if he told him how Will had reacted to seeing him half naked.

Getting the tattoo stung a little but it was comparable to getting scratched by a cat. It took Max a bit over an hour to get the tiny skeleton on Richie’s thigh and she wiped it down with wet wipes once she was done.

“Don’t go out in the sun with your tattoos,” she says as she puts away the last of her stuff. “And wear enough sunscreen if you do.”

Will nods, looking down at his frog with a big smile.

“You got it, Max. Thank you so much.”

“No problem,” Max grins. “Glad to be able to practice. Anyway, I gotta go now, date night with Lucas. See you guys tomorrow!”

The three of them say goodbye and Richie and Will watch Max’s car until it disappears. Richie looks down on his watch, wondering when Dustin and Jane will show up for movie night.

“Oh, Dustin and Jane cancelled,” Will says when he notices Richie looking at his watch. “They were working on something together but will meet us tomorrow.”

“Oh, okay,” Richie says. “Do you want me to go home too?”

Will raises his eyebrows.

“Uh, no. Does it matter that the others aren’t coming? We could still hang out together.”

Richie smiles, happy with Will’s answer.

“Of course,” he says.

Will makes them dinner. Richie tried to help but kept accidentally dropping slippery tomatoes so Will exiled him from the kitchen, muttering something about how Mike hadn’t been that bad at cooking before camp. Richie pretends he doesn’t hear that and hurries to the dining room to set the table. Joyce is going out for dinner with Hopper tonight, so it’ll be just the two of them for dinner too.

Will makes them spaghetti with homemade tomato sauce. He steals a bit of red wine from his mother’s liquor cabinet and pours them two glasses.

“Oh, no thanks,” Richie says automatically. He pushes the glass away from him.

“But you love red wine,” Will says with a slight frown. 

Richie tries not to get anxious. It’s just wine and Will is nice enough, he won’t force him to drink it. 

“Not in the mood for alcohol tonight, sorry.”

Will shrugs.

“That’s okay, I’ll drink for the two of us.”

Richie smiles at him, thankful that he didn’t push it further. Will takes a sip and nods approvingly.

They sit and talk until it gets dark outside. Richie helps Will do the dishes, dancing around him to the sound of the soft music playing through Joyce’s old record player. Will waltzes with the spaghetti pot before handing it to Richie to dry it and twirls around Richie with the ladle held up as a microphone. Richie doesn’t know the song he’s singing, but he’s content just watching Will perform for him. He and Eddy are usually the ones back home to do the dishes when they’re all together to eat, and they’d put on music and do silly dances as they did so. Eddy put his hands on Richie’s hips one time and pulled them against his to sway to the music together and Richie wishes he could do the same to Will but restrains himself.

They curl up on the couch once they’re done and Will puts on a movie. Will dozes off halfway through, his head falling onto Richie’s shoulder as he does.

Richie sits up straight for a bit longer, but then, as his eyes start to get heavy, he allows himself to rest his cheek on Will’s head.

Before he knows it, he’s sound asleep too.

Chapter Text

The losers have a few… interesting traditions between the seven of them. Richie told Mike about a few of them, like camping out at the Barrens during the Summer Solstice and the jump off the cliff at the start and end of summer and doing a secret Santa in July because everyone celebrates Christmas with extended family away from Derry. Mike has honestly never met a group of people who genuinely cared about and loved those traditions as much as the losers do. Of course the Wheelers have some traditions of their own, but those limit themselves to baking cookies to hang in the Christmas tree and singing carols for the neighbors - something that Mike and Nancy quit a few years ago anyway. Nobody in his family really cares about traditions, nor do his friends really. But the losers seem to have built an entire list of them.

One of those traditions is ‘saving up’ every birthday throughout the year and celebrating them all together in the second week of August. They don’t have a lot of money between them so they don’t buy each other gifts, but they do put all the money they have together to buy pizza’s and score some alcohol by bribing a homeless person to buy it for them. Beverly also brings soda and snacks and Bill buys some weed to pass around.

Ben and Mike H. spend the entire searingly hot afternoon decorating their old clubhouse. Mike sits with them and helps where he can, but he mostly observes. He thinks that’s the most Richie-like.

The clubhouse smells damp and moldy, tucked away in the ground near the barrens, but Mike likes it nonetheless. It’s decorated with a bunch of weird stuff, like a dirty inflatable sex doll Beverly dragged in a few days ago. She wouldn’t say where she got it, no matter how angry Stan got. There’s also the lamp that looks like it came out of the 1800s, a few posters of naked women and one of a naked man, a portrait of Napoleon with a moustache drawn on his face, two bowling balls and a set of pink bowling pins, a sombrero, a broken mirror and a gas mask Bill sometimes puts on right before Eddie descends to scare him. They’re all random trinkets, but down here they just seem to work together somehow.

Stan and Bill come down to the clubhouse around 6, huffing and puffing as they drag a slightly moldy couch with them. Mike helps Bill support the couch while Ben and Stan let it descend from above. He’s acutely aware of Bill’s bare arm pressing against his, of the heat he’s radiating. Bill notices it too and nodges him with a grin. Mike feels himself flush. He instinctively takes a step away from Bill to hide his feelings, causing them to lose grip on the couch.

“Watch out!” Bill exclaims, pushing Mike aside right before the couch falls down the entrance hole. They land on the ground not much further, Bill on top of him. Bill’s face is right there, only inches away from Mike’s. He can feel his cheeks heat up again and just hopes Bill can’t see it in the dim light of the clubhouse. If he does, Bill doesn’t comment on it. He just winks and gives Mike a quick kiss on the nose before standing up and pulling him up with him.

“Um, if you two are done flirting, can someone explain to me why there’s a couch with its own ecosystem down here?” Eddy asks, nostrils flaring and eyes alarmingly big as he looks from the couch to Bill and back.

“Oh, we found it on someone’s lawn,” Bill explains with an innocent grin.

“You found it on someone’s lawn?” Eddie repeats.

“Yeah, there was a sign that said it was free.”

“Wh - free - a sign?” Eddie glares at Stan. “You allowed this?”

“Hey,” Stan says, raising his hands in defense, “you try saying no to Bill’s smile. If you want to hold me accountable for my actions around him, that’s on you.”

Eddie rolls his eyes in the way that only Eddie can - like they’re moments away from rolling so far back they fall out of his ears.

“You useless queer,” he says, exasperated. Mike startles back at the word, not used to it being used in such a casual setting just yet. But Stan doesn’t seem to mind, if anything, he agrees.

“Look, Bill just wanted to add something to the decor, that’s all. Will I be sitting on this mold infested couch that has probably seen every STD known to man? No. Did I mind dragging it from town all the way through the woods? Yes, very much so. But it’s here now, so get used to it.”

Eddie rolls his eyes at Stan again and then points to Bill, who’s standing innocently near the couch.

“If this was the 17th century I would have accused you of witchcraft and thrown you in the river myself, you sorcerer. But for now, I respect your game.”

Bill throws Eddie a kiss. Eddie pretends to catch it and throws it on the ground, stomping on it as if he’s putting out a cigarette. Then he goes back to whatever it was that he was doing before he got interrupted by the couch debacle.

“He’s such a drama queen,” Bill mutters once Eddie is out of ear shot. “He’d do great at Broadway.”

Mike chortles at the thought. He likes Eddie, he really does. Despite his slightly more… hostile exterior, Eddie reminds him of a more short-tempered version of Will. Eddie is a bit harder to read, a bit more on the nose and way easier to get mad, but down to his core he’s just as caring and kind as Will is. Over the course of the week and a half Mike has been here, he has grown a particularly soft spot for Eddie specifically. It’s nowhere near the soft spot he has for Will, but it’s still nice.

***

Mike’s limbs feel heavy and light as a feather at the same time. He feels giddy, heart racing in a good way. The anxiousness that he’s used to feeling when he’s high isn’t there; he just feels content. Happy, relaxed.

Eddie passes him the joint they’ve been sharing for the past ten minutes. Mike takes a drag, lets the smoke fill his lungs before he exhales again. He hands it back to Eddie, who’s observing the others dancing to some high speed pop song.

“I don’t know how to dance,” he suddenly whispers, as if he’s confessing to murder. Mike giggles and turns his head to look at him. They’re both sitting on the couch (yes, the moldy couch), their heads leaning against the back for support. Eddie had gone in with the intention of sitting on a towel the entire night, but he started caring less and less about all the possible bacteria as the night dragged on and the joints kept coming. Mike thinks the weed might make Eddie less anxious too, and he feels weirdly close to him because of that.

“What do you mean, you don’t know how to dance? Everyone knows how to dance. You just like -” Mike makes a vague hand gesture, “ - move your body.”

Eddie scoffs. 

“I feel like a pot of noodles whenever I seriously try to dance. I don’t have any coördination skills.”

Mike laughs at the visual. He nudges Eddie with his elbow, then lets his arm rest where it landed against Eddie’s skin.

“Don’t be so dramatic,” he says, remembering this afternoon.

“I’m not being dramatic!” Eddie defends himself. “Wait, I’ll prove it.” He puts away the tiny stub left of the joint, jumps to his feet and pulls Mike up. He doesn’t let go off his hand once they’re standing but instead drags him to a corner of the clubhouse, a bit away from the others.

“What are we doing?” Mike asks.

“Dancing! To prove how much I suck at it.”

“Well, normal people usually don’t try to prove how much they suck at something.”

Eddie smiles. “We both know I’m not normal.”

Mike smiles back. “You said it, not me.”

Eddie gives him the finger, but there’s no heat to it. Then he looks around at the other losers dancing together, trying to match their rhythm and failing miserably at it. He looks like a dad chaperoning at a middle school dance, fannypack et al. 

Mike can’t help the laugh escaping his lips, despite trying really hard to keep it down. He bursts out laughing at the sight of Eddie pumping his hands in the air while taking awkward side steps, absolutely not on beat. Eddie grins smugly, daring Mike to make fun of him. It makes him… attractive. The way he carries his horrible dancing with pride.

And Mike is just so relaxed. All his anxiety, his shame, his guilt, washed away like sand on the shoreline. His intrusive thoughts, the worry, the paranoia. All those things, here, in the safety of the damp clubhouse, just don’t matter. Here, he feels brave. Brave enough to reach out, place his hands on Eddie’s hips and move him closer to his own. He tries swaying them to the correct rhythm, to no avail.

“Man, you are absolutely tone deaf,” Mike chuckles.

“Shut it, Tozier,” Eddie says. The reminder of the name, Tozier, makes Mike even braver. Nobody knows him here. Nobody will care if he moves closer, or if he lets his hand wander from Eddie’s hips to his waist. Eddie smiles approvingly, putting his own hands on Mike’s shoulders.

“See, that’s much better. You’re a way better dancer when your hands aren’t flailing like you’re drowning and trying to call for help.”

“And you look way better up close than you do normally,” Eddie replies, inching his face daringly close. Mike can see the little golden flecks in his brown eyes, as well as a challenge to make the next move.

So he does.

He kisses Eddie gingerly, tenderly. His lips form questions Eddie knows the answer to, his hands search where Eddie’s find. His fingers trace Eddie’s collarbones, then his neck, then his jaw. Eddie’s are promptly on his shoulders, grabbing at the material of his shirt and pulling him closer.

When they part, Mike feels the weight of the world lift off his shoulders. Like he’d been holding his breath for his entire life and is now finally coming up for air.

Chapter Text

Richie feels like he's dying. 

Not dying dying, more like emotionally dying. Mentally dying maybe. He feels like his brain is slowly withering away until it's the size of a shriveled up walnut (and yes, Eddie would say that's just the general state of Richie's brain). And it's all Ted Wheeler's fault. 

Theodore Wheeler is genuinely the most boring man Richie has ever met. He thought it would be exciting to finally meet his father, to see how he lived and what he did. Despite Mike's warnings about him, Richie had hoped that he would see a different Ted once he got to Hawkins. 

But the man simply does nothing. 

He goes to work at 8:13am and comes home at 4:27pm to the dot. Then he kicks off his shoes, pads to the kitchen on his socks like a child would do, makes himself a boring snack like oatmeal and then settles his wide ass on the couch, where he remains until it's time for dinner. He eats dinner while reading the paper, not engaging in conversation at all, and then makes his way back to the living room to go sit in his recliner and doze off to whatever movie they're playing that evening. 

Everyone in the Wheeler household seems to be used to it. Conversation between Nancy and Karen falters when Ted joins dinner, they eat in silence and then Holly helps Karen clear the table and do the dishes. Nancy disappears to her room, where she listens to music or does whatever. Holly follows soon after.

It's like this every night. Richie tried to connect to his sisters but they looked at him weirdly whenever he tried to hang out. Nancy never has time during the day because of her job and Holly has a lot of friends over downstairs, so Richie almost feels banished to the basement where he spends most evenings with Mike’s friends. 

You'd think it'd be easier for Richie to snoop around because everyone is always so caught up in their own stuff that they wouldn't notice him, but somehow he has almost been caught at least three times. He also doesn't really know where to look and what he's looking for; birth certificates? His mother's phone number? Adoption papers? Surely they would hide such incriminating files, not have them lying around in the house. Surely Ted either got rid of the evidence all together or hid them somewhere where nobody could ever find them. 

He tries to find anything in the short amount of time a day he spends at the Wheeler household but Mike's friends are constantly calling him to come hang out. Richie doesn't mind, actually really enjoys their company, but he also feels like he's losing precious time. 

According to Mike's late night phone calls, he hasn't had much luck either back home in Derry. Richie isn't surprised, seeing as his mother doesn't believe in leaving a paper trail . Besides, if there was any evidence at her house, Richie would've found it by now. 

The end of their switch is steadily approaching, only a few days left, and Richie has found nothing. He’s seriously questioning himself for even wanting to come here in the first place, his father disappointing him yet again, but Richie is determined to at least get to know the guy a bit. Maybe he’ll ask some dubious questions about his conception that’ll have Ted furrow his brow, make him give anything away.

So, when Karen Wheeler leaves after dinner that night to go to book club, Nancy is staying over at the Byers's and Holly has left for a sleepover, Richie sits himself down on the couch next to Ted and clasps his hands together in anticipation.

He lets his father watch his show in peace for a while. Richie watches him from the corners of his eyes, feeling exposed without his glasses. He always felt like they were some kind of barrier between him and the world and he feels naked without them. He can usually push the feeling away when he’s with the party, but with Ted he suddenly feels vulnerable. Suddenly he feels like that six year old boy that sat on the windowsill staring outside fantasizing about a father that would never come.

And, God, he’s so angry. So angry that he spent half of his childhood wishing for his father to return and half of his childhood resenting him for leaving him alone with his mother. He’s angry that Ted Wheeler turns out to be the human equivalent of a math problem and he’s angry that his sisters aren’t what he expected of them. Somehow, somewhere deep inside of him, Richie had hoped that life in Hawkins would be better. He had hoped that Ted might’ve recognized him, apologized to him and invited him to come live with his new family. 

Of course Richie would decline, not wanting to miss his friends in Derry, but it would’ve been nice to at least be cared about enough to be invited.

"Why are you staring?" Ted asks, and Richie snaps his thoughts back to the living room.

"I’m not staring," he says automatically. Ted looks at him, his expression unreadable, and to his absolute disgust Richie realizes he kind of looks like him. Not the eyes, Richie could never imagine having the same cold gaze in them, but the nose, the chin. The hair. Even his fucking eyebrows Richie recognizes as his own.

"Why are you here?"  He blurts, wanting to say anything at all to chase away his inner thoughts.

"Excuse me?" Ted asks.

"You heard me," Richie continues, not caring if this is Mike-like to do or not. "Why are you even here? You don’t care. You don’t care about me or Nancy or Holly. You certainly don’t care about Karen. So why are you here? What’s the point?"

"Since when do you call your mother Karen?" Ted asks, completely ignoring Richie’s question.

"Does it really matter?" Richie snaps. He rises to his feet, now towering over Ted, and something in Ted’s gaze shifts. 

"Mike…" He starts, but Richie doesn’t want to hear that name. For once, just once, he wishes Ted could just acknowledge his existence. Just say his name. He knows Ted knows it, he must’ve signed his birth certificate. Richie was born under the last name Wheeler, it said so in his file, so surely Ted must’ve known about his first name. Had he ever thought about him again? Had he ever said his name when nobody could hear, just to hear how it sounded?

Richie wants to scream at him. He wants to cry and yell and pound his fists against Ted’s chest until his ribs collapse and puncture his lungs. But instead he takes a deep breath, digs his fingernails in his palms and blinks the tears away.

"You suck at being a father. It’s your fault that I need therapy to begin with and it’s your fault that your daughters barely spend any time with you. You’re a pathetic excuse for a man, an even more pathetic excuse for a husband and a dad, and literally nobody will be sad when you die." The words come out calmer than Richie feels. He watches Ted closely, reading his face, trying to find any emotion. Ted blinks slowly, like a frog, and says: "Go to your room." 

"Or what?" Richie chuckles dryly. 

"Or you’re grounded, Mike!" 

Richie raises his eyebrows daringly. Suddenly, he wants to challenge Ted to tell the truth. He's sick of digging for information where it can't be found, sick of looking at the face of the father he yearned for for so long, sick of the quietness in the Wheeler household. Where his mother would sneer and curse, the Wheeler household would cover itself in a blanket of silence. As if the inhabitants had nothing in common with each other besides their last name. Richie is sure that they wouldn't choose to be together if they weren't a family, and he also knows it's on Ted for making them feel this way. 

Self destruction is something Richie has known his whole life. It was there when he was sure he'd fail a test anyway so decided to not even study for it, it was there when he pissed the bullies off enough to get violent. And it's here now, sabotaging the plans he had so beautifully crafted with Mike. It doesn't matter anymore. He doesn't care about getting to know Ted anymore or spending time with his sisters. He only wants to know the truth. 

The words are out of his mouth before he even realizes it. Before he can stop it. 

"My name is Richie." 

Theodore Wheeler pales so quickly Richie almost thinks he straight up killed him. But then his father rises to his feet, meeting Richie's gaze. They're the same height when they stand up straight. 

"Richie?" Ted repeats, eyes unreadable. Richie regrets his words immediately. Did he fuck everything up again? The whole point of switching was that their parents would never find out, and yet he had to go and mess that up for both of them. 

Richie wants to run out of the door, but instead he holds his head up high.

"Richard, actually. Richard Tozier. Although I recently found out my birth name is Wheeler." 

Richie had expected Ted to scream or hit him or run and never return, but he does none of those things. Instead, Ted grabs Richie by the arm urgently. 

"Richie, what the hell are you doing here? How did you find me? Where's Mike?" 

Richie raises his chin in defiance. "We met at that dumb summer camp. Discovered the truth. Decided to switch for a bit." 

"But why?" Ted asks desperately. It's the most emotion Richie has seen from him. 

"Because!" Richie exclaims. He slaps Ted's hand, which had still been wrapped around his arm, away and takes a step back to create some distance between them. "Because I wanted to meet my father. Mike warned me not to, he told me what a horrible emotionally unavailable man you truly are, but I didn't listen. I still wanted to meet you, get to know you, see if we were anything alike. But you disgust me. I just can't take it anymore. I want the truth, Ted. And I want it now. What happened seventeen years ago that caused Mike and I to get separated?"

Ted drags his hands over his white cheeks and falls back down into his decliner. He begins to sweat, beads of it forming on his forehead. 

"What I did was a mistake," he starts, more to himself than to Richie. "I was a fool. I had to go to Augusta for a business trip and decided to stay in Derry because it was cheaper." He chuckles wearily.  All because I didn't want to spend a few more bucks on a more decent hotel." Ted looks at Richie, who is still standing in front of him. He looks pathetic like this. Eyes red from unspilled tears, cheeks white and forehead sweaty. Richie almost feels sorry for him. Almost. 

"She was sitting at the bar of the hotel that night. Bought me a drink. One thing led to another and…" Ted trails off. "One night. That's all it was." 

Richie feels his stomach turn at the thought of Ted Wheeler and Maggie Tozier, together. He swallows thickly and sits back down on the couch, hands firmly clasped to keep them from shaking. 

"Okay, so you knocked up Maggie Tozier and she gave birth to twins. Then how did Mike end up here and I with her?" 

Ted shrugs, opens and closes his mouth as if searching for an answer. When it doesn't come, he just stays silent. 

"Oh, what? Was it the most logical choice? Just split them up, take one of them back home to your unsuspecting wife? Did you tell Karen you cheated on her or did you make up a story to explain the baby?" Richie pushes. He's desperate for answers now. His body is tense with the anticipation of it. 

Ted balls his hands to fists by his sides. Richie wonders for a moment if he could take the older man in a fight. Ted may be spineless, but he looks pretty strong. 

"Maggie called me a few months after you were born," he continues, "I didn't even know about you and Mike when she called. Didn't want to believe it, I guess. One night, one mistake -" he almost spits the word and it takes Richie everything not to flinch "- wasn't about to ruin my life. But she threatened to tell Karen if I didn't come see her, so I went. Once I saw the both of you, I couldn't deny how much you looked like me. Maggie, she was… struggling. She was erratic when I was with her. You and Mike were inconsolable, you were crying so hard. She was begging you to please just stop crying…" Ted's gaze turns inwards.

"I finally managed to calm you down, but Mike just kept on screaming. Maggie was holding him. His crying went on for at least an hour after you had stopped. I think Maggie couldn't take it anymore. Eventually she raised her hand and slapped him on the mouth. She was screaming at him to shut up, grabbed his little arm so hard I could almost see the bruise forming. I told her to put him down and when she didn't listen I screamed at her. That seemed to snap her out of it. She gave Mike to me and fell onto the couch, sobbing. She threatened to give Mike up for adoption. Mike specifically. She said she needed my child support for you but that she couldn't handle Mike anymore, that he was purposely making her life more difficult. I think Maggie never… bonded with him like a mother is supposed to. And I knew she'd give him away as soon as I left Derry, and I couldn't let one of my children be taken by an adoption agency. So I offered to take Mike with me. I offered to take both of you, in fact. But Maggie wanted to keep you. So I left you with her and took Mike to Hawkins. I told Karen the truth. She forgave me, eventually." Ted smiles to himself. "She's always been a great mother. She accepted Mike as her own almost immediately." 

Richie is quiet when Ted finishes his retelling of their past. His mind reels from all the questions he wants to ask but he can't form the words to ask them. He wonders why Ted never came to visit, why he didn't even call. Why they didn't allow him and Mike to spend holidays together. He wants to ask Ted these questions, wants to have some closure, but he's suddenly exhausted. He just wants to go to sleep. 

So he gets up and sighs, looking at Ted still sitting in his chair. 

"I'm not here to stir any shit I'm not a part of. I just wanted to see the life I missed out on. Honestly, it isn't much better than the one I have in Derry. Mike is returning in five days. I'll be out of your life again then." 

He starts towards the stairs, ready to leave this entire conversation behind, when Ted calls after him. 

"Richie," he calls out. Richie turns around, naive hope flaring in the pit of his stomach. He stupidly expects something, anything from Ted. An apology, maybe. But the hope dies down as soon as Ted continues: "Please don't tell Karen any of this. I wouldn't want her to worry about Mike." 

Richie grimaces. He feels sick. He feels rejected . Again. Like old wounds reopened by a rusty knife. He doesn't respond as he turns around and runs up the stairs. He barely makes it to the upstairs bathroom before throwing up into the toilet. 

Chapter Text

Mike's dreams that night are filled with shame and worry and panic, coloring the edges of his mind in a desperate, searing white. He dreams of fingers turning into claws and lips turning into fangs and boys turning into monsters, tearing into him and eating him up until all that's left of him are his desperate cries bouncing off the walls. 

He wakes with a start so violent it makes him dizzy, sitting up straight and gasping for air. His shirt is drenched in sweat. 

Mike drags his hands over his face with a groan and takes a deep breath in a fruitless attempt to calm his nerves.

He wishes he was back at home. He wishes he'd never agreed to this stupid plan, that he had never stepped foot in Derry, that he had never met the losers. His life seems so complicated all of the sudden. Before Richie, it was easier for Mike to ignore his feelings. He could just push these thoughts away, drown them out with his usual anxiety, ignore them and move on with his life. If he tried hard enough he was sure that someday, these feelings would pass. He would be able to put Will Byers out of his mind for good, find himself a girl his mother would love, who would giggle with Nancy and Holly about wedding dresses and would smile at Mike at the altar and be gentle with his aching heart. Mike would be content, maybe even happy. He would move away from Hawkins but come back every year over the summer to see his friends, and Will would be nothing more than that. A friend . 

But something changed irrevocably after meeting Richie Tozier. Things were set in motion that couldn't be undone, no matter how hard Mike tried. Because being with the losers, with people like him , had allowed Mike to wonder. About living a life true to himself. About giving into the feelings that have been plaguing him since he can remember. 

And then he kissed Eddie, and it had been so different from the few kisses he'd shared with girls, so much better. And Mike had allowed himself to wonder, however briefly, what Will would feel like under his touch if he kissed him. 

This is when the fear had come back, sitting high on his chest. Because Mike can't imagine a world where he could kiss Will Byers and come out of that unscathed. Where Will would kiss him back, would lean into his touch. And even if he did, even if Mike allows himself to think maybe Will would come alive under his fingertips, Mike can't imagine them ever being together like that. He's been on the receiving end of violence, has pulled Will inside classrooms to hide from relentless bullies, has witnessed the force of slurs thrown at him and others with such unfiltered hate it scared him. The world isn't like the clubhouse. The losers might be able to kiss and touch freely underneath the comforting blanket of dirt, but even they wouldn't dare to do such things in broad daylight. 

Mike might've felt brave kissing Eddie when he was safely around the others, but he would never be able to be that brave with Will. Not in Hawkins. And that's what's making this all so complicated. Because he knows he could never love freely, but he's also suddenly so desperate to do so anyway. 

***

Mike gets even more aware of how much the losers tend to touch him after the kiss. He'd noticed before, not being used to such casual touching, but they seem to have dialed it up a notch now. Beverly casually drapes herself over his lap when they're in the clubhouse, Mike H tangles his fingers in Mike's hair when they're sunbathing, Bill throws an arm around his shoulders when they're watching a movie. 

Eddie doesn't kiss him again, but he does wiggle his eyebrows at him suggestively when he catches Mike watching him, and somehow that's even worse. 

Mike is leaving Derry in four days. He hasn't heard from Richie in a few days, which isn't exactly concerning him but isn't putting him at ease either. He hasn't even gotten the chance to tell him about the kiss yet. He's able to push his panic about it away when he's with the others and manages to keep up appearances just fine, allowing to be touched and touching in return, but his shame eats at him through the long, lonely nights. 

They're in the clubhouse, all sitting on the floor playing a dumb game (Stan is sitting close to him, their bare thighs touching - Mike is acutely aware of how warm he is) when Beverly clambers down the stairs, a mischievous grin spread across her face. Her eyes glint in the half darkness of the bunker. 

"Oh no, what did you do now?" Bill asks when he sees the expression on her face. 

"Nothing!" Beverly says innocently. "I just have a surprise for you guys." 

"Aw, Bev, our birthday party just passed. Better luck next year," Eddie dismisses. Beverly flips him off, then procures a set of keys from her back pocket. 

"I got my aunt's car for the weekend. Which means we can finally make that trip to Portland we've been planning. Which means…"

Mike H gasps excitedly as realization dawns on him. 

 "We can finally go to Underground!" 

"No way!" Bill grins. "Finally an opportunity to take out the fake IDs once more." 

Okay, Mike isn't a saint. He giggled just as much as the others when Dustin printed their fake IDs, but that was mostly to buy beer for the occasional houseparty. The party had never taken a trip to use their IDs. He can't imagine why he might need it, but he's also smart enough not to ask about it. 

Luckily, Richie and Mike swapped wallets and Richie's fake ID sits between a battered library card and a picture of the losers. Mike almost sighs with relief when he finds it, not knowing how he'd explain losing something as precious as an illegal fake identification, especially if the losers use it regularly. 

"When are we leaving?" Ben asks. Beverly shrugs in return. 

"I was thinking we could go down there tonight, if you're up for it. Maybe find somewhere cheap to sleep so we can make a trip out of it." 

"Perfect!" Bill beams. He gets up and slaps the dirt from his pants. "Whatever shall I wear?" 

***

Mike still isn't entirely sure what Underground is by the time they arrive in Portland. It's already past midnight, but the streets are packed and buzzing with excitement. 

He had briefly panicked when they were getting ready, not sure what Richie would wear on a night out. The boys all chose to wear jeans, Bill and Stan light wash and the others dark, while Bev hoisted herself in a tight black dress and a denim jacket at least three sizes too big for her. Mike had frantically searched Richie’s closet, eventually settling on a dark shirt paired with a graphic jacket that barely bordered the right side of ugly. Nobody said anything about his wardrobe choices as they packed into Bev's van, so he figures he made the right choice. 

They get out of the van once Bev has parked and take out their IDs as they approach the bouncer. Mike is nervous, suddenly convinced that the bouncer will not only see through his fake ID but his act as Richie as well, but he barely even glances at his identification before letting him inside. Mike follows the others, allowing them to pull him with them, and before he knows it he's in a packed nightclub. 

Stan makes a beeline to the bar and orders them all shots and a soda for Mike. Mike wishes, however briefly, that he could take a shot as well to calm his ever present nerves. 

The club is overwhelming. It's packed with sweaty bodies, pressed up against each other and moving to the music, and it's so loud. In any normal circumstances Mike would hate it, but the music seems to be pulsating with energy and the lights are mesmerizing and he notices people kissing, men kissing, and Mike stares at them and feels a warm tugging of want in his gut.

He looks around the club some more. He’s never been in a nightclub, has never really cared for parties in general, but he’s intrigued by the people here. They’re… different. Different to what he’s used to. Their outfits are more daring, more expressive. Men are wearing leather, their bare chests glistening with sweat. Some of them are wearing heavy amounts of makeup, are wearing skirts. The women are rugged around the edges, dark eyeshadow smeared over their eyes and hair standing up wildly or shaven off completely. Mike looks as Beverly leans into a woman she seems to know, how she snakes an arm around her waist and pulls her against her. The woman tilts her head, captures Bev’s lips with her own.

Mike looks away.

He still remembers the nightmares about gripping claws and monsters he had after he kissed Eddie, remembers the waves of shame crashing over him when he was alone in his bed. But he also remembers how thrilling it had been. To kiss a boy. To finally touch someone like he’d imagined countless times before. And everyone is kissing everyone here. It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. Mike’s fears suddenly seem stupid, irrational. There’s just so many people here. And they’re all like Mike. They’re all longing for something they shouldn’t long for, but instead of pushing their needs down and pretending they’re someone they’re not, they’re here. Kissing, touching. Dancing. Having fun.

Mike wonders how it can be so wrong to want to touch someone like him if there are so many people here sharing in the sentiment. How could he be a deviant if he’s not the only one? His head is spinning with the realization of it. He’d felt so utterly alone in Hawkins. It’s hard to feel alone here, where bodies are pressing in on him from all sides.

Mike H is standing behind Mike on the dancefloor, presses closer, moves his hands up Mike’s hips. Mike lets him. He allows himself to be swayed to the music, tilts his head so Mike H can press a kiss to his neck. Stan dances towards them with a sly smile, one that sends a shiver down Mike’s spine. Stan grins at him when they come eye to eye, pulls Mike towards him by his belt, presses their hips together. Tilts his head towards Mike.

Suddenly they’re kissing, and the panic that he felt after his kiss with Eddie doesn’t return. They part, Stan smiling, and then he feels Mike H’s hands leave his hips as he presses past Mike towards Stan, who pulls Mike H further onto the dancefloor. Mike is alone for only a second before Eddie joins him.

“I could use another dance lesson,” Eddie says innocently into Mike’s ear. Mike flushes, waits for the shame to claw at his throat, but when the sensation doesn’t come he nods and pulls Eddie towards him, guides his hips to the music, presses Eddie against him so he can at least attempt to dance to the beat. It’s almost filthy, the way their hips connect, the way Eddie’s hand dips past the small of his back to the backpocket of his jeans, how Eddie presses him harder against him.

Mike’s body reacts against his will. Eddie hums approvingly - Mike can feel the vibration of it in his chest - but suddenly Mike is no longer at the packed club but back in Will’s room in Hawkins, two years ago, when Mike had fallen asleep in Will’s twin bed, had crowded Will against the wall, had woken up hard, pressed against Will’s back. Will hadn’t moved, was still breathing deeply as Mike had jerked his hips back, but Mike was still too ashamed to sleep over again.

Mike jerks away from Eddie, the vision of Will’s sleeping frame still on his retina. He suddenly feels a new wave of guilt. Not because of what he’s doing, but because of who he’s doing it with . He almost feels… he almost feels like he’s cheating . The shame of it finally wraps around his throat, like a sword finally dropping, and Mike gasps for breath he doesn’t have. Eddie takes a step back immediately, looks at him worriedly.

“Are you okay?” He asks. Mike can’t hear him over the music, can only tell what he’s saying because he can see the words form on Eddie’s lips. But Mike is still gasping, hands flying to his throat, clawing at his skin as if trying to claw at something suffocating him. Eddie grabs his wrist, pulls his hand away from his throat, and guides him through the crowd. The others notice Mike’s sudden stupor, follow them away from the dancefloor without sharing a word between them. 

Eddie leads Mike and the others outside, pushing open the heavy doors into the chilly night air. Mike is grateful that the summer heat didn’t stick to the city pavement, gulps the fresh air greedily.

“What’s wrong?” Bill asks once Mike feels like he can breathe again. “Are you having a panic attack?”

Mike shakes his head, places his hands on his knees to catch his breath. He doesn’t want to explain. Doesn’t want to tell them that there’s a boy at home who doesn’t even know how Mike feels about him, probably doesn’t even feel the same way, and yet Mike can’t kiss any of them anymore without it suddenly feeling like cheating.

“Richie,” Bev says softly. She places a hand on Mike’s sweaty back. Mike trembles under her touch. He’s suddenly so tired . And he wants to go home so badly it hurts.

He sinks onto the pavement with a loud sigh, the others following. Bev and Bill sit on opposing sides of him, Stan next to Bill. Mike H, Ben and Eddie are standing in front of him.

And… shit. What does it matter? There’s only a few days left of their switch anyway. 

“I’m not… Richie,” Mike starts, but then he doesn’t know how to continue, so he falters.

Bev scoffs.

“Okay, you high? Someone gave you something and you having a bad trip or something?”

“No,” Mike says, shaking his head. “No, I’m sober. Sorry, this is really hard to explain, please don’t hate me.” He takes a shuddering breath before continuing, “My name is Mike Wheeler. I’m from Hawkins, Indiana. I met Richie at summer camp. He’s… we’re… brothers. Twins. Didn’t know until this summer though.”

The losers are quiet. Mike looks at them and they all stare back at him, all in different stages of disbelief.

“Richie, this isn’t even a funny prank,” Ben complains. “Remember what we talked about? Pranks are only funny when they also make other people laugh, not just yourself.”

“I’m not laughing,” Mike snaps, then, more kindly, “I swear I’m telling the truth. Richie and I met at camp. Freaked out because we looked so much alike. Found out we’re twins. Richie’s birth name is Wheeler, like my father. It was his idea to switch, so he could find out more about him.”

Nobody says anything after that. Mike looks at them, but none of the losers meet his eyes.

“Well, shit,” Stan says finally.

“Yeah, shit,” Mike agrees.

Chapter Text

Richie takes one look at Eddie Munson and knows he’s gay.

Well, not gay per se . Maybe he’s more like Richie; not caring all that much about labels. But definitely Achillean (a term Stan taught him, to describe men liking men. Stan had felt really smart about it, almost boastful to know the term). He’s snuck into enough gay clubs to understand the dress code some men abide by, how some of them stuff bandanas into the back pockets of their jeans a bit too casually not to mean anything. When you’re looking for kindred spirits where it’s dangerous to seek you start learning how to talk without speaking. 

Richie is surprised Mike didn’t mention him when they were going over his friends, especially because it’s so clear to him that Eddie likes men. He shows it in the way he carries himself, how he glances at Steve Harrington too long. He even daringly flirts, asking Steve if he likes what he sees when he catches him watching when Eddie wipes his bottom lip with his thumb. But maybe Richie can just tell because he’s so used to the signs. Maybe it’s more difficult for Mike to spot.

And yet he can’t help but think that the others know, about Eddie. And that they don’t even seem to care. They’re in Eddie’s trailer, which is even shittier than Richie’s house back in Derry, and are playing D&D. Richie had passed earlier, saying he didn’t really feel like playing. It had earned him a frown from Will but he wouldn’t be able to explain how he suddenly forgot how to play over the summer, so luckily he dropped it. Eddie is older than they are by a couple of years and Richie wonders what he’s doing hanging around a bunch of underage kids, but then he remembers Mike mentioning Steve, how he was the first of the older kids to start being a part of their group by basically adopting Dustin as his brother. Steve and Robin come in a package deal, though Mike was sure to mention they are not dating and both get very upset when someone dares to suggest otherwise. So Richie just figures Steve and Robin dragged Eddie along at some point. 

The others all seem to love Eddie, relaxing into his old couch as they play and laughing at his jokes, his expressive gestures. Richie watches from his spot in the tiny kitchenette, leaning over the counter and pretending to sip on a beer Lucas handed him earlier. Notices how Eddie’s knee knocks against Steve a couple of times too many to be accidental. Sees how Eddie’s fingers linger on Steve’s when he passes him the cigarette they’re sharing. It’s so obvious that Richie has to look away, and he wonders how the others aren’t seeing this.

It’s not like Eddie tries to hide it either. He doesn’t downright imply it, but he’s careful to use gender neutral pronouns when talking about someone he hooked up with and makes an offhand comment about Madonna not being his type that could be interpreted either way. The others don’t seem to notice, or if they do, they don’t seem to care. Eddie is unapologetically himself, and Richie wonders if this group of people would be safe for Mike to be himself with. Maybe not like the losers, not to that extent, but maybe they wouldn’t care about it with Mike either. Maybe Mike could be himself too and the others would love him despite it. For it, maybe.

Richie’s heart suddenly aches for his brother. He wonders how he’s doing back in Derry. He hasn’t gotten the chance to call since his confrontation with Ted. Richie knows the full story now and is dying to share it with Mike, but whenever he rings the house it’s always Maggie who picks up. Richie always throws the phone back on the receiver a bit too violently. 

He figures Mike is spending all his time with the losers and wonders if they aren’t too… loser-y around him. Not too touchy, like they usually are. Or maybe that’s just what Mike needs to defrost, to relax a bit in his own skin. Richie can picture it perfectly, the way Bill will pull him down by his hips to sit next to him during movie night, how Stan will lay his head in Mike’s lap. Touching him, so casually that they don’t think about it at all. Richie smiles at the thought, misses his friends fiercely for just a moment, and is then pulled back to Eddie’s trailer by Will’s shoulder knocking against his own.

“What’s gotten you so reminiscent?” Will asks when Richie meets his gaze.

Richie smiles slowly at him, the stuffy heat of the trailer making him a bit woozy.

“Nothing important,” he assures him. Will looks at him, darts his eyes to Richie’s smile for just a second, then matches with one of his own.

“This is nice,” Will says eventually, his shoulder now permanently against Richie’s. They’re both wearing T-shirts and Will’s skin feels nice and cool against Richie’s. “It’s been a while since we all got to hang out together.”

“I guess everyone’s just busy all the time now,” Richie replies. He can imagine it. How it is for people who aren’t as codependent as the losers are. Dustin off to camp, Lucas and Max traveling, Jane going to visit family. Summers don’t last forever.

“Do you think this is the last summer like this?” Will asks. Richie glances over at him but Will is looking at the others, still sitting around Eddie’s tiny coffee table. Richie can almost hear it creak with the weight of all the snacks and drinks on top of it. The game seems to be finished, or maybe they’re just taking a break, because Eddie isn’t narrating and is instead laughing with Dustin over something Steve said. “We’re all graduating next summer and then we’re all off to college. Maybe this is the last summer we have together.”

Will sounds sad. His eyes are a bit glassy, like his gaze has shifted inwards. Richie searches for a thing to say to comfort him, and when the words don’t come he snatches his keys off the counter instead.

“Come on,” he says, a plan forming vaguely in the back of his mind. He nudges Will out of his introspective gaze and twirls his keys around his fingers, just once.

“Where are we going?” Will asks, but Richie just reaches down to grab him by the wrist and pulls him to the door.

“We’re heading out,” he shouts at the others.

“Oh, little date night?” Steve says teasingly. His eyes twinkle. Will freezes briefly under Richie’s touch, but Richie is quick to reply, “no, just gonna blow him in my car.”

Eddie’s eyebrows shoot up and Dustin snorts loudly at the undoubtedly non-Mike response. 

“Kidding,” Richie says eventually, but only because he has an act to uphold. “I forgot we were supposed to meet Nancy and Jonathan for pizza and movie night.” 

“Okay, be safe,” Eddie calls after them. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” Richie just catches how Steve slaps him across the chest and how Eddie glares at him in response before the door falls shut behind them.

“We’re not meeting Nancy and Jonathan for pizza,” Will says once they’re completely outside.

“No, we’re not,” Richie grins. Suddenly, cheering Will up seems like the most important thing in the world and the vague idea is forming more and more in his head. “But I have a surprise.”

Will looks at him quizzically but doesn’t ask any questions as he follows Richie to Mike’s car. Richie allows Will to mess with the radio and he settles on soft pop music for the ride back to Will’s.

“Wait, we’re going back to mine?” Will asks when he recognizes the road Richie is taking.

Richie nods but doesn’t say anything. Will looks at him again and Richie only feels his eyes burn a little. He wonders if Mike ever feels Will’s eyes on his face. If his cheeks flush like Richie’s do now. Damn it. He isn’t immune to pretty boys, not even far from home.

***

The Byers residence is dark when Richie pulls up in front of it. Joyce is at Hopper’s and Jonathan and Nancy are probably off somewhere making out in Will’s car, which Jonathan reclaimed for the brief period of time he’s back in Hawkins. Will shudders dramatically as he says it, mentioning something about having to drive that car again once Jonathan leaves for college again and that he’ll probably force Jonathan to clean it inside and out before he does. Richie smiles at his innocence. Wonders if Will has ever kissed someone. Wonders if Mike would know the answer to that question. If those things are ever mentioned between them. 

He follows Will inside the house and pushes past him towards the basement. Richie has spent enough time here this summer to know where Will keeps his painting stuff.

Will doesn’t ask questions as they descend the stairs. Richie looks around, then gathers a few large, empty canvases and a few unopened paint cans. He instructs Will to carry the cans outside, to the front yard, and Richie follows him back up the stairs with the canvases in his arms and a handful of brushes between his teeth.

“Okay, now can I ask what the hell we’re doing?” Will finally asks once they’ve dropped all the stuff on the grass outside. The sun is starting to set, basking Hawkins in a golden glow.

“I think we should paint something,” Richie finally says, gesturing at all the stuff they just dragged upstairs. “Together. So you’ll remember. You know, when we go off to college next year.”

Will’s expression softens, the tug between his eyebrows smoothing over.  

“Okay,” Will says, his lips curling into an intimate smile. “What do you want to paint?”

***

They end up painting nonsensical stuff, with bright colors and weird shapes. Richie tries to rebrand it as a made-up galaxy, which makes Will snort with laughter. Richie pretends to be offended that Will’s laughing at his artistic interpretation and smears some paint on his cheek, holding the brush as if it’s a fencing sword. Will copies his stance and lunges forward to smear his brush over Richie’s nose. Richie dodges the attack, slaps Will’s hand away, brings his own hand up and swirls his brush over Will’s neck. Will laughs, loud in the quiet night air, and grabs Richie’s wrist to hold his brush away from him.

“Okay, truce, truce!” Will stammers as Richie tries to get him with his other hand. Will squirms in his arms, turns around. His back is briefly pressed flush to Richie’s chest and Richie’s heart falters only slightly. He finally releases Will and stands up straight, hoping that it’s dark enough to hide his pink cheeks, his red ears.

Will is panting from laughing so hard, his chest heaving. They’re standing close together. Will has to look up slightly to meet Richie’s gaze and Richie can see faint freckles spread across Will’s cheeks, accompanied by paint splatters. If Richie didn’t know any better he’d say Will carries the Milky Way on his cheekbones.

Silence settles between them once Will catches his breath, and Richie can suddenly hear his blood pumping. Will isn’t moving, doesn’t look like he wants to create any distance between them. If Richie breathes in too deeply he could touch Will’s chest with his own.

“You’ve changed since you came back,” Will says softly. It’s not an accusation. There’s no suspicion behind the words.

Richie’s heart starts hammering anyway.

“Oh?” He manages to say. “Changed how?”

“I don’t know,” Will says, and his eyes are big and vulnerable. “You’re just different. You carry yourself differently. More… relaxed. And you…” He hesitates, chews his lip. Richie can’t help but stare at his mouth, his own mouth suddenly dry. “You never used to… touch me. And now you do. All the time.” Will looks away. 

Fuck. Shit. Stupid Richie and his constant need to touch and be touched. Of course that would give him away. Mike would never touch someone so openly. He’d never press his arm against Will’s and leave it there , to linger. Of course Will would notice the sudden change.

Richie racks his brain trying to come up with a good excuse, but Will speaks again before he can.

“I like it,” he says, and it almost sounds too much like a confession. Like something dangerous is spilling from between Will’s ribs, where his honesty sits. Richie wants to reach out and put the honesty back into his chest, wants to press his hand to his skin as if to stop a wound from bleeding. 

Richie is never at a loss for words, but now he can’t find anything to say. He knows he’s not the person Will is confessing to. Isn’t the person Will wants to confess to. But he doesn’t know how to stop him without hurting him, or without having to come clean. Will's words hang heavy between them, the implication of them almost louder than the words themselves.

Will doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t even look at Richie. The confession sits between them like something electric, something alive. Richie’s skin prickles with it, with the static of it, the hairs on his arms standing up straight.

Richie opens his mouth to say something, not knowing what words will come before his lips form around the syllables, but he’s interrupted by headlights flashing over them. They both startle from the sudden light and Will takes a step backwards and Richie finally feels like he can breathe again, like the moment between them has passed. 

Jonathan honks at them from the car, waving cheerily. Will mutters something under his breath that Richie can’t hear and gathers the canvases, carries them back inside. 

He doesn’t check if Richie’s following.

Chapter Text

Richie’s head is reeling. Only three days left of their switch and Richie still hasn’t been able to reach Mike. On top of that, he feels like he screwed things up with Will without there even being a thing between them. They hadn’t spoken about what Will had said in his front yard. Richie had helped clean up the mess and had driven home without saying much more. That was yesterday, and he hasn’t worked up the courage yet to speak to Will. Does he bring it up? Or was Will’s confession something they can only talk about in the darkness, where they can’t see each other’s faces and the secrets dancing across them?

Richie spends an uncharacteristic Friday at the Wheeler residence, alone. Ted and Karen are away with friends for the weekend and won’t be back until Sunday, Nancy is with Jonathan and Holly at a sleepover. He usually hangs out with the others, be it at his place or somewhere else, but he has no plans today. So he busies himself with stupid shit now that he has no reason to snoop anymore, cooks himself a mediocre lunch, jerks off in the shower, watches dumb cartoons. Is bored out of his mind by the time the sun sets and the house is still empty.

Richie is about ready to start climbing the walls when the doorbell rings. He moves to open the door and is surprised to see Dustin and Lucas, identical mischievous grins on their faces.

Richie narrows his eyes at them. 

“‘S up,” he says carefully.

“You’re home alone tonight, right?” Lucas asks, glancing over Richie’s shoulder into the house. Richie nods.

“Sweet!” Dustin grins. He pulls two bottles of vodka from behind his back. Lucas pulls two six packs of beer from behind his. 

“I’ll get the drinks, you get the music,” Dustin instructs as he pushes past Richie into the house. Richie doesn’t know if his instruction was aimed at him or Lucas, so he follows Dustin into the kitchen.

“Pardon me?”

Dustin looks up from the fridge, where he’s trying to fit the vodka. Lucas saunters in behind them and puts the beers on the counter, slides them over to Dustin so he can put them in the fridge as well.

“We’re having a houseparty!” Dustin exclaims, holding out his arms. Richie’s stomach flips expectantly. He loves a good houseparty. Hadn’t pegged Mike’s friends as party-goers, though.

“Okay,” Richie grins widely, because why the hell not. He calls Eddie Munson on the landline, who picks up after Richie calls twice.

“What?” He barks down the line. Richie doesn’t flinch and asks if Eddie can supply them with some weed. Eddie agrees, invites himself to the party, says he’ll bring Steve and Robin. Richie wonders if he should alert Nancy so she can come over too, but he doesn’t know if she’ll just tell their parents so he doesn’t.

Dustin and Lucas busy themselves with calling people up to invite them while Richie picks out some cassettes to play during the night. The Wheeler household seriously lacks in good music, but he eventually finds enough okay cassettes that’ll carry them through the night.

People start trickling in around ten. They bring their own booze and soon the kitchen looks like a bar, different bottles of liquor sitting on the counter. Richie’s limps only freeze briefly at the sight. 

Max, El and Will arrive around 10:30, right before Eddie, followed by Steve and Robin. Eddie finds him first, presses a baggie of joints to Richie’s chest. Richie wants to pay but Eddie waves him off, saying they can figure that out later. Max grins and raises her eyebrows when she spots Richie with the weed. Will is behind her, looking anywhere but at Richie.

Richie suddenly feels awkward, almost embarrassed. He doesn’t know how to act around Will after yesterday. He needs something to relax. Luckily, Max is already digging a lighter out of her shorts and leads the way to the backyard, Lucas following when he spots her.

Richie and Will stay behind for a heartbeat, their eyes purposely not meeting each other. Then, after a second, they both follow Max out.

“Eddie always has the good weed,” Max is saying when Richie and Will join them on the terrace. 

“Yeah, he never wants to say where he gets it from,” Lucas says as he lights a joint. He takes a long drag and passes it to Max next.

“We’ll have to figure it out eventually,” Max says once she’s taken a drag. “If he ever decides to move away from Hawkins we’ll be stuck with that shit Will sometimes brings.”

“Hey!” Will says, offended. He yanks the joint from between Max’s fingers and takes a hit himself. Richie watches as he inhales, can almost see the smoke curling down his throat, around his lungs, before Will exhales. “If you don’t like my weed, you can just find your own supplier.”

Max raises her hands in mock surrender. “My deepest apologies.”

“Yeah, you better apologize,” Lucas laughs, throwing an arm around Will’s shoulders. “At least Will has a supplier.”

“Oh, you mean the guy he flirts with to get it for free.” Max cocks a bow, looks Lucas up and down. “Maybe you should try flirting with some guy to get better weed,” she challenges.

Lucas glares at her. 

“Maybe you should,” he says.

“Are you pimping me out?” Max asks.

“Depends on how much I’d get paid,” Lucas grins, and Max punches him hard on the arm.

“Asshole,” she says, but she’s laughing now. She takes the joint back from Will and offers it to Richie instead.

Richie is quiet as he observes the three of them. Mike had mentioned that Max, Lucas and Will were usually the ones to go out to smoke. He hadn’t mentioned the kind of banter between them though. How casually Max had mentioned that Will flirts with guys to get free weed. How it didn’t even startle Lucas, the way Max joked about it. Does Mike know what they’re like when he can’t hear? Does he know how easy it can be when he isn’t so worried all the time?

“Hey, stop hogging that joint,” Will says, snapping Richie back to the present. Richie shakes his head and takes a quick drag, hands it back to Lucas.

They share the joint between the four of them, taking alternating drags. Will’s fingers graze against Richie’s as he passes him the joint and Richie startles, surprised at his own reaction. He doesn’t know why he suddenly feels so weird around Will. Will clearly notices the way Richie flinches away from his touch, because he clears his throat and makes an excuse to go back inside without finishing the joint.

“What’s up with him?” Lucas asks. Richie shrugs.

“He’s probably just in one of his moods,” Max says. “He’s always like that when Mike’s being weird.”

It takes Richie a long second before he realizes Max is talking about him.

“I’m not being weird!” He says defensively, though he doesn’t believe it himself.

“Oh, please,” Max huffs. “You’re never not weird. But sometimes you just get so…” She makes a vague gesture into his direction.

“So what?” Richie asks.

“Max…” Lucas says, warningly. Max flicks her eyes at Lucas for just a moment before looking back at Richie.

“You always act so weird when he touches you,” she says, clearly ignoring Lucas’s warning. “Jerking back like you’ve been burned. It makes him feel weird. Dirty or something.”

“Oh,” Richie says dumbly, because he doesn’t know what else to say. In his defense, this is the first time since he’s been here that he’s reacted like that to Will’s touch. But he can imagine Mike, scared and anxious and ashamed of his attraction towards Will, jerking away from any innocent touch.

Max doesn’t push the subject any further and they finish the joint in silence. Lucas and Max stay behind when Richie turns on his heels and goes back inside. The joint has made his heart a little bit lighter, his head a little more quiet. He feels a nice buzz as he makes his rounds through the house, occasionally stopping to chat with someone. Almost everyone seems surprised when Richie starts up a conversation and Richie wonders, not for the first time, what kind of recluse Mike usually is if people are surprised when he talks to them. That boy really needs to learn how to relax.

He finds Eddie in the kitchen, where he’s pouring two drinks.

“Wheeler!” He exclaims too loudly for the proximity they’re in. Then, quieter, “how’s it going? Great party, though I kinda feel ancient around the people here.”

“Well, you weren’t technically invited, so,” Richie says easily. Eddie grabs at his heart in feign shock.

“I know when I’m not wanted somewhere,” he says, but he’s smiling. He offers one of the drinks to Richie, which he declines.

“So where’s Byers?” Eddie asks casually, nursing his drink as he leans against the counter. He looks so effortlessly casual. Richie wishes he could be like that too, but he’s constantly so aware of himself.

“Around,” he says, leaning against the counter as well so they’re shoulder to shoulder.

“You’re usually conjoined at the hip,” Eddie says, and glances in Richie’s direction. Richie can see him from the corner of his eyes but doesn’t meet his gaze.

“I think I did something to upset him,” he eventually says. Careful, he reminds himself. Just because he thinks Eddie would understand doesn’t mean he actually would. It wouldn’t be the first time Richie makes a wrong assumption about someone.

Eddie is quiet, waits for Richie to continue. Richie busies his hands by pouring some soda in a cup, then leans back against the counter.

“I like your bandana,” he says instead of elaborating further, carefully testing the waters. 

If Eddie is surprised by the change of subject, he doesn’t show it.

“Thanks,” he says. Then, after a heartbeat, “you, uh. Know what it means?” It’s an innocent question. Or, well, it could have an innocent answer. It could just be a fashion statement. Eddie could just make something up if Richie asked to explain. He’s clearly testing the waters as well, trying to judge how safe Richie is. 

“Yeah,” Richie says. This time, he does meet Eddie’s eyes. Eddie nods, like he understands, and that’s all confirmation Richie needs to decide to trust Eddie.

“He said something to me yesterday, something… personal. And I think I didn’t react to it like he’d hoped.”

“What, you reject him or something?” Eddie asks gently, voice soft. Careful not to carry above the music coming from the living room.

“Not exactly,” Richie says. He sees no point in dancing around it anymore, not when Eddie so blatantly asks about it. “It’s just… complicated. I don’t know. I don’t know how to be around him without upsetting him.”

“Can’t you just talk to him about it?”

Richie shrugs. He can’t exactly be honest with Will without hurting his feelings or blowing his cover.

“It’s not… easy, being like this. Being honest about it,” he finally says, tasting the words as they leave his lips. He doesn’t need to think about this when he’s with the losers. This aspect of his life. But it’s different here. Hawkins somehow seems more suffocating than Derry, pressing down on his chest. Every touch or non-touch means something here. Add to that the identity layer, the fact that he’s supposed to be someone else here, and it all just boils down to everything is complicated and it sucks.

“I know,” Eddie says, gently knocking their shoulders together. “It gets easier, eventually.”

“I know,” Richie sighs, because it does. He knows it will. It’s easier to be like this in big cities, where he can blend into the crowd. Where there are others like him, like them . But still. It’s not even like he’s in love with Will. Sure, he likes him. Wouldn’t mind kissing him, touching him. But the love, that part is reserved for Mike. And he’s pretty sure Will feels the same, or feels at least something for Mike. But navigating these feelings, this vulnerable thing that fluttered between him and Will yesterday… it’s just complicated.

Richie doesn’t know what to say next, so he doesn’t say anything at all. Eddie doesn’t either, and they stand in silence until Richie’s drained his cup of soda.

“Thanks for the talk,” he says eventually. Eddie nods, raises his cup to him in some sort of toast. Richie gives him a nod as well and leaves the kitchen, not sure where to go next but just wandering the house, picking up empty cups and cigarette buds as he goes.

He eventually finds El sitting on a couch in the living room, glaring at a couple next to her going to town on each other’s faces. Richie snickers at the sight, realizes he’s kind of been avoiding her, scolds himself for it. He knows Mike and El are close. She must be upset about his sudden distance. Great, another one of Mike’s friends he managed to upset.

He decides to try to do some damage control and shoos the couple on the couch away. They leave, but not without glaring at him. Richie flips them off before he can think better of it, then sinks down next to El.

“Thanks,” she says, looking at the couple as they go. “She would’ve started blowing him soon if you hadn’t interfered.”

Richie laughs at the sudden brazenness, not expecting it from El. But, to be honest, he hasn’t spent enough time with her to really know what she’s like.

“Feels like you’ve been avoiding me,” El says, as if reading Richie’s mind. 

“Sorry,” he says almost immediately, because there’s no point in coming up with an excuse. “Really, I’m sorry. I’ve just been… weird. I guess.”

El smiles, nudges him with her elbow.

“You’re always weird,” she says, and Richie tries to ignore that this is the second time this night that someone’s called him weird.

They sit in silence for a bit, watching the people around them. Dustin is chatting up some girl, tries to be smooth by leaning against the chimney and is definitely not smooth when he almost slips and tumbles to the floor. Max and Lucas are dancing, Max occasionally dragging him down for a kiss. Will is nowhere to be seen.

“Have you seen Will around?” Richie asks after a while.

“He was upset,” El says instead of answering the question. “What did you do this time?”

“This time?” Richie echoes. He can’t have upset Will that many times in the last two weeks. He thought they were good up until yesterday.

“Don’t be an idiot, Mike,” El says accusingly. “You upset him a lot.”

“Do I?”

El narrows her eyes at him.

“Do you seriously not know?” She asks, then shakes her head when Richie shrugs helplessly. 

“You’re sending him mixed signals, Mike.” Then she drops her voice to a whisper so nobody else can hear. “You’re so fucking blind sometimes, Michael. Do I really need to give you a picture of Will looking at you like you look at him so you’ll finally understand?”

Oh.

Jesus, Bill had mentioned unreliable narrators to Richie once, but he hadn’t thought Mike to be one. How could he have been so wrong about so many things? At least half of his friends seem to know about Will, even tease about it. Eddie is clearly not hiding anything if you ask the right questions. It’s clear to everyone around them that Will likes Mike, gets upset with him when Mike does his typical Mike stuff. El basically just told him that Will likes him like Mike likes Will. Yet Richie had braced himself for the worst when he came here. No wonder Mike is always so miserable; he’s making himself like that.

“I’m an idiot,” Richie finally says, but he wishes he could just come clean and tell El that Mike’s the idiot, that he’s just filling his shoes for a bit.

“You are,” El agrees, then jerks her head to the stairs. “I saw him go upstairs.”

Richie jumps to his feet, thanking El as he does. Then, because he feels like he should do something , he bends down and presses a kiss to the top of her head.

“Gross,” she complains, pushing him away. Richie lets himself be pushed and then steps away from her touch completely, making his way to the stairs.

He makes his way upstairs and looks into the first few rooms - the bathroom, Nancy’s room, his parents’ room - before resolutely walking to Mike’s room. As expected, he finds Will lying on his bed, staring up at the ceiling and his arms underneath his head.

He looks up slightly when he hears Richie enter, then turns his gaze upwards again.

“Why did you never put the glow-in-the-dark stars up here?” He says in a way of a greeting.

“Uh,” Richie says, stumbling for a lie. “It was a nice excuse to have the sleepovers at your place,” he finally settles on.

Will snorts humorlessly.

Richie moves to the bed, kicks off his shoes. He gestures for Will to move over, then lies down next to him.

They lie next to each other silently. It’s dangerous, them being alone in a bedroom together. Any unsuspecting person looking for the toilet or horny couple looking for a quiet place could walk in on them. It would be so easy for them to assume, to make up a story about what they saw. But Richie can’t find it in himself to really care. He just cares about making this right for Mike, and for Will. He can’t stand having upset him and he certainly doesn’t want to explain to Mike why Will isn’t speaking to him once he returns.

“I’m sorry I was weird yesterday,” he finally says, when it doesn’t seem like Will is going to say anything.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Will says stiffly. Richie flinches at the hardness in his voice. He hasn’t known Will for long, but he’s known him long enough to know he isn’t usually harsh. It doesn’t seem to be in his nature. In another world, one where Richie doesn’t feel so miserable about it, it would almost be impressive how fast Richie could bring out the harsh side of someone so gentle.

Richie doesn’t know what else to do, so he does the thing that always comforts him and what put him in this position in the first place. He touches him. Barely there at first; just shifting his elbow against Will’s side. Then, when Will doesn’t react, he knocks their knees together. Will finally responds by knocking his knee against Richie’s.

Will relaxes a little bit next to him, lets one of his arms drop by his side. Richie sees it as an entrance, as an olive branch, and jumps at the opportunity to slide the back of his hand against Will’s. He feels Will’s fingers twitch, can see his Adam's apple bop from the corner of his eyes. His hand relaxes, falls open next to Richie’s thigh. Richie hesitates but thinks pulling back now will only upset Will again, so he closes the space between them and lets his hand fall in Will’s open palm.

Will’s fingers wrap around his almost instinctively, trapping Richie’s fingers between his own. And just like that, they’re holding hands.

Will sighs deeply, shakily.

“Mike…” he starts. Richie’s heart starts racing. He’s really worked himself into a corner here. Either he’s gonna have to come clean about his true identity or he’s going to have to reject him again when Will makes a move. And it almost feels inevitable now, that Will will do something or say something he can’t come back from.

Richie swallows thickly. He wishes he was back home, tucked safely in the bunker by the barrens, surrounded by his friends. He wishes he could kiss Mike H, wrap his arms around Eddie’s waist. And somewhere in the back of his mind, just barely enough to acknowledge, he also wishes he could kiss Will. Just to know what it would be like.

Richie waits for Will to continue. Can feel how nervous he is, can almost hear the flutter of Will’s heart if he tries hard enough. But Will can’t seem to find the words. He just squeezes Richie’s hand and Richie squeezes back and that has to be enough for now.

He has some serious talking to do with Mike when they meet.

They lie like that for however long, quiet and holding hands. Eventually, after a while, Will pushes himself up on one elbow and looks at Richie, lets his eyes roam over his face. Richie is suddenly shy, suddenly self conscious. 

Will opens his mouth to say something, closes it again. Leans in, then stops himself at the last minute. Richie knows the struggle well. That first step to intimacy, working himself up about stupid stuff like how he’ll have to tilt his head to kiss without being uncomfortable or how he’s supposed to use his tongue. He knows Will is about to kiss him, and he knows he should stop him, but he also knows that will break Will’s heart.

Will moves again, slowly, and Richie’s eyes flutter shut in anticipation. He can almost feel the brush of Will’s lips, can definitely feel his breath on his cheeks, when the doorbell rings.

Richie stiffens out of reflex. The doorbell ringing at a houseparty isn’t a good sign. People who are invited just come in; the door is cracked open anyway. But someone ringing the doorbell often means someone called the cops.

Richie sits up straight, realizing he’s responsible for this houseparty, and glances at Will apologetically. He wants to say something, explain why he has to go check that out, when someone calls from downstairs.

“Mike! Get down here now !” Someone yells, and Richie feels like he knows that voice but can’t immediately place it.

Will isn’t hurt when Richie excuses himself but follows him downstairs, where a crowd is gathering at the front door. Richie frowns. People wouldn’t gather around the door if it was the cops. He pushes past the people in front of him, towards the front, and feels like he just got struck with lightning when he sees who’s standing on the doorstep.

Michael fucking Wheeler, surrounded by the other losers.

Chapter Text

Mike has had many awkward drives in his life, but nothing can top the drive from Portland to Hawkins.

It’s a fucking long drive as well, stretching for close to fifteen hours. Beverly had commanded everyone back into her van as soon as they realized Mike wasn’t kidding, muttering about how they should be thankful she had offered her shot to Hazel (the woman she was kissing) instead of drinking it herself. Nobody said a word as they packed into the van, nobody even looked at Mike. They didn’t even go back around to Derry so Mike could have the chance to pack his stuff. Beverly just drove straight through the night. Bill took over once the sun rose.

They stop for breakfast in a sketchy roadside diner and they’re all so painfully quiet during it. The losers are never quiet, are always bickering or laughing or arguing about something stupid. But they barely share a glance over their stale pancakes and cold coffee. 

Eddie is the first to break the silence, a bit after they’ve left the diner.

“So you’re telling me… I made out with a stranger,” he says, sounding as if he spent the past three hours mulling that over in his head.

Stan looks at him from the rearview mirror, rolling his eyes. 

“Michael over there stole someone’s identity and that’s what you’re worried about?”

“You don’t know where his tongue has been!” Eddie shrieks, voice high.

“Okay, first of all,” Mike says, because he feels like he needs to defend himself, “I didn’t steal anything. Richie offered his identity himself. As I told you, it was his idea to begin with.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Stan says, making a dismissive hand gesture before placing his hand back on the steering wheel.

“Secondly,” Mike continues, “I’m not carrying any diseases, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Eddie’s always worried about that,” Ben says helpfully.

“Oh please, it’s not like he hasn’t made out with strangers before,” Mike H says.

Eddie makes an offended noise at the back of his throat.

“I think we’re steering away from the topic at hand here. A stranger infiltrated our group and pretended to be our friend and took advantage of us. ”

Mike’s stomach drops at the words. It had never been his intention to… take advantage of them. Did he really do that? Oh God, he did, didn’t he? He let himself be touched and kissed and felt brave because he could be someone else here, but to the losers he was still Richie. And now he’s not; now he’s just Mike. A stranger to them. His chest tightens at the sudden realization of how awful that must be for them. How awful of an idea this all had been. He suddenly feels like the worst person on earth, like a predator .

The van all of the sudden feels like it’s shrinking until Mike feels like he can’t breathe. His senses seem to dull until he can only hear his own heart pound, until he’s blinded by white light spilling from his mind.

“Pull over,” he manages to stutter.

“Oh, making demands now?” Beverly wonders. “Very brave.”

“I’m serious, please pull over!” Mike begs, bile quickly rising in his throat. Stan throws him another glance in the rearview mirror, must see how pale Mike has gotten because he curses and swerves until the van is stopped on the side of the road. Mike tugs at the door until it swings open, scrambles outside and falls to his knees on the damp grass, retching.

“Oh, gross,” Eddie says behind him. Someone says something else, but Mike is too busy throwing up pancakes and coffee to hear. He retches until his stomach is contracting painfully, until there’s nothing left to come up anymore, and then wipes his mouth with his hand.

Mike is breathing hard, he’s aware of that. He tries to calm himself down but that word, predator , is bouncing around his skull and there’s no room to think about anything else.

“Here,” someone says, so close to him that it startles him. Mike looks up to the voice and sees Ben standing over him, offering him a bottle of water.

“Thanks,” Mike says hoarsely, hands trembling as he takes the bottle. He takes a few tentative sips, waiting to see if he can keep it down.

“Feeling better?” Ben asks once it seems like the water will stay down.

“You don’t have to be nice to me,” Mike says. “Eddie’s right. I’m a predator.”

“Eddie’s an idiot,” Ben says, and Eddie swears at him from the van. “He’s seriously blowing this way out of proportion and is probably just embarrassed because he kissed you and couldn’t tell that you weren’t Richie.” He sits down next to Mike, carefully avoiding the puddle of puke in front of them. “Look, I’m not saying what you did was smart . But hell, if I found my twin at a faraway camp and we realized we were separated at birth I would probably come up with a similar plan.”

Mike glances at him. Ben smiles kindly at him.

“I really am sorry,” Mike says eventually, because he’s too tired to say anything else.

“I know. We all just… need some time to process. It’ll be better once we see Richie and he can confirm your dumb plan.”

Mike nods. Yeah, Richie will be able to spin everything just right so that the losers will no longer be mad at him. He heaves himself up with a sigh, takes another sip of water and follows Ben back to the van.

“Sorry about that,” he mutters once he’s back inside.

“Just don’t throw up in the car,” Eddie says. The others are silent.

***

“So,” Beverly says a few hours later, when the silence has stretched thin between them, “you got a boyfriend back in Hawkins?”

“Beverly!” Bill hisses. “You can’t just ask people that. Have some tact .”

“What? It’s not like we don’t know what team Mike swings for. He never made a move on me .”

“Yeah, because it’s clear you’re a raging dyke,” Stan says.

“And it’s clear that Mike is a raging fag,” Beverly smiles.

Mike’s blood still freezes in his veins at the slurs, so casually used between them, and he groans miserably.

“You’re not gonna throw up again, right?” Eddie asks. He’s been asking that question intermittently for the past two hours, occasionally slicing the silence with it when Mike shifts or makes a sound.

“Stop asking him that whenever the poor man makes a sound,” Mike H says, and then, to Mike, “Well? Do you have someone back in Hawkins?”

He doesn’t know what to reply to that. It’s not like he has someone. But he also doesn’t want to lie anymore.

“There’s one guy,” he says reluctantly, still not used to confessing it out loud. “But it’s not like he feels the same way. And even if he did, it’s not like we could do anything about it.”

“Why not?” Stan asks curiously. Ben had taken over driving duty an hour ago, so now Stan is sitting next to him in the van.

Mike makes a sound, something between a groan and a whimper. Eddie opens his mouth but Bev slaps a hand over it before he can ask about throwing up again.

“Well, because we live in Hawkins. Which is like Derry. It’s not exactly… accepted .”

“Yeah, but that hasn’t exactly stopped us from screwing around,” Bill says.

“It’s different for you guys. You have each other. You know about each other. Back in Hawkins… I’m just - I’m alone .”

“You don’t know that,” Mike H says. “You don’t seriously think you’re the only gay person in the entirety of Hawkins, right?”

Well, no. Or, at least he doesn’t think so anymore. Surely there must be others, if people like him could fill an entire club in Portland. Surely there must be people in Hawkins too. Surely Indiana has clubs just like Underground . It’s something Mike hadn’t thought about before the losers.

“It’s not like I could just hang up a flyer to ask people about it,” he mutters instead.

“Do any of your friends know? Maybe that could help.”

Mike thinks about his friends, the people he’s known his entire life. Would they look differently at him if he told them? Would they hate him for it? He doesn’t want to risk it either way. So he shakes his head, doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes. He feels so lonely again, so utterly alone.

“Oh, Mike,” Bev says softly. Any trace of hostility is gone from her voice. “That must be lonely.”

“It is,” he says, because, well. No point in lying anymore.

Nobody knows what to say to that, so silence settles on the van once more.

***

Mike’s legs hurt and his head feels weird and his hands start trembling as soon as they pass the Welcome to Hawkins sign on the side of the road. He’s relieved to be back home, happy that the pretending can finally stop, but his anxiety is also sitting high on his chest again. 

He gives directions to his house to Eddie, who took the wheel for the last leg of their journey. They’d stopped for dinner and a pee break earlier tonight, but besides that they’ve been driving practically non-stop.

There are people on his front lawn when they round the corner to his house. Mike frowns to himself. That’s weird.

“Oh, sick, seems like there’s a party,” Bev grins, pressing her face to the window. “Maybe we could crash it.”

“We’re already crashing it by delivering Mikey-boy,” Stan points out.

“Maybe we should… wait. For the party to end,” Mike tries weakly. He isn’t exactly looking forward to all the attention he’s bound to get if he steps inside his house now.

“Not a chance, I’ve been in this stupid van long enough,” Stan says. “I need some air and a drink. We’re going.”

Eddie parks the van down the street and they walk Mike back to his house together. Heads turn when they walk past people, confusion clearly written all over their faces. Mike figures Richie must be inside hosting the party.

Stan rings the doorbell upon arriving, even though the door is ajar. Bev frowns at him and Stan shrugs.

“What? It’s polite!”

Mike tries not to show how anxious he is as they wait for someone to answer the door. He still feels unprepared to see his friends again, despite all the time he had during the long drive here. What is he going to say? How is he going to explain?

Lucas is the one to open the door. He does so with a friendly smile, the one he always puts on whenever he tries to charm some adult into letting them off the hook, but the smile quickly falters once he sees Mike.

“Wh - I…” He looks at Mike, then cranes his neck to look inside, then looks at Mike again. “I swear you were just inside. And what the hell are you wearing?” Mike looks down at Richie’s jacket. Right. Questionable fashion choice.

“And who are these people?” Lucas continues. Bill waves kindly at him.

“I - uh,” Mike says dumbly. “Have a lot of explaining to do.”

“I think there’s someone here who belongs to us,” Beverly explains. Then, when Lucas just stares at her, she adds, “you might want to call ‘Mike’ over here.”

“But…” Lucas says, looking back at Mike. “Mike’s right here.”

“Oh, I know,” Beverly says. “But our Mike isn’t. So just…” She gestures for Lucas to call Richie down, but when he just stares at her some more she sighs and yells into the house herself.

They wait in awkward silence and Mike can hear someone bolt down the stairs as a crowd gathers in front of the door. He ignores their stares.

Richie emerges from the crowd seconds later, and just like that, Mike is reunited with his mirror image.

“What the fuck,” Richie says.

***

Mike has never seen someone clear out a party as fast as Richie. He starts yanking drinks away, pushes people outside, swears at and threatens some of them. Despite the attention they’re once again drawing to themselves simply because they look alike, the house is empty within minutes. 

People whisper as they pass the losers and Mike, still standing outside. They openly stare at Mike and then back at Richie, who’s still shooing people away. He finally manages to get the last people out (who happen to be Steve, Robin and Eddie, who all look like they’re on a bad trip) and then the house is empty besides Richie and his friends.

The losers finally step inside, Eddie whistling between his teeth at the sight of the enormity of the Wheeler house. Mike notices his friends staring at them, staring between Richie and Mike, but he can’t bring himself to explain just yet.

“So,” Richie says, breaking the awkward silence, “I guess we have some explaining to do.”

“I’ll need a drink for this,” Max says. 

“Me too,” Dustin agrees.

“Aha, something I can get behind,” Stan says, and he follows Max to the kitchen to gather some beer and a bottle of wine. Richie leads them all to the living room, where everyone takes a seat. It’s almost comical, the way they’re all moving as if they’re scared they’ll rip the time-space continuum if they move too quickly. 

Nobody says anything until everyone is seated, and even then Mike finds it hard to start. Luckily, Richie seems to be quicker on his feet.

“This must be very weird to see,” he starts, pointing between Mike and him. “But you’re not tripping. We, uh… I guess my friends figured it out before you did.”

“Your friends?” Will asks, glancing at the losers. “Mike, we don’t know these people.”

Richie points at Will. “Right,” he says. “Mike doesn’t know these people. But I’m not… Mike. My name is Richie. I’m Mike’s brother.”

“Mike’s… Mike’s brother? ” Dustin repeats, feverishly looking between Mike and Richie. “I mean, okay, sure. You two look alike. But brothers? Doppelgangers I could understand.”

“Oh, doppelgangers sounds more believable than brothers?” Mike says, at the same time Richie says, “See!” sounding vindicated. Then, when he catches Mike glaring at him, he clears his throat and continues, “I also thought about the doppelganger theory, which Mike vehemently did not believe in. Which just shows his absolute lack of imagination, a clear difference between us. Anyway, we met at summer camp and figured some shit out while we were there. Like, that my birth name is actually Wheeler. We’re twins, separated at birth by our parents.”

The others are quiet for just a brief moment. Of course, Mike had already explained all of this to the losers back in Portland, so they’re just nursing their drinks waiting for the party to catch up.

Max is the one to break the silence now.

“Wait, so Karen en Ted had twins and gave one of you up? Why?”

“Well, that’s actually what we wanted to find out,” Mike says softly. This part of their deal is something Mike hadn’t really allowed himself to think about too much until now. “We knew that Ted is our birth dad, and Richie wanted to meet him. But we don’t know who our birth mother is; Karen or Maggie - Richie’s mom. That’s what we wanted to figure out as well.”

Richie briefly glances at him and Mike can’t quite read the expression dancing across his face. 

“Okay, and whose idiotic plan was it to switch places and not even tell us?” El asks. Richie smiles sheepishly at her.

“Mine, actually,” he says.

El glares at him, and it only makes Mike laugh a little bit.

“And do you also have a reason for not telling us about it, or was it just because you’re an idiot?”

Beverly snorts somewhere to Mike’s right.

“Damn girl, get his ass,” Eddie deadpans.

“Okay, I feel like you guys should be defending me a bit more here after not having seen me for a couple of weeks,” Richie points out to his friends. Eddie shrugs.

“I mean, she’s right. You two are both idiots for doing this without filling us in on the plan.”

“In our defense,” Mike says, jumping to Richie’s rescue, “we thought we could get away with it for two weeks and switch back without anyone noticing. It seemed like less of a hassle to do it like that than to have to explain everything and risk not being believed.”

“Well, that doesn’t make it any less idiotic,” Lucas says. “So we’ve basically been hanging out with a stranger the last couple of weeks?”

“And yet I feel like I’ve come to know you guys so well,” Richie says, batting his eyelashes at Lucas. Lucas makes a face at him.

Mike notices Will is the only one who hasn’t said a word since they all gathered in the living room. He’s sitting stiffly next to El, hands balled into fits on his lap. Mike wishes he could speak to him privately, explain everything, but he can’t exactly do that right now. Not when there are a bunch of people still reeling from this discovery.

“Okay, so, I guess we should take our dumb idiot back to Derry now that we’ve delivered your dumb idiot back on his doorstep,” Beverly says.

“Yeah, but not tonight,” Mike replies. “You guys have driven across enough state borders for today.”

“Yeah,” Richie agrees. “Ted and Karen won’t be back until Sunday, so you can crash in here tonight. And then we can drive back home tomorrow.”

The losers share a look between them, and then Mike H shrugs.

“I’m pretty tired from the long drive. A little rest does sound nice.”

“Fine,” Stan says. “But I’m claiming the couch.”

Richie and Mike leave the others to go find enough pillows and blankets to supply the losers. Mike’s friends don’t look like they’re willing to leave just yet, probably still reeling with a bunch of questions, so Mike gathers enough blankets for them as well.

“Don’t think you’re off the hook that easily, mister,” Dustin says as Mike offers him a sleeping bag. “You have a lot of explaining to do tomorrow.”

“I know,” Mike says, heat rising on his cheeks. He hands Will a blanket and pillow next, who’s still avoiding his eyes. Will takes the stuff from him without saying a word and turns back around to find a spot on the floor to settle on. Mike looks at his back, opens his mouth to say something and then closes it again.

Richie is suddenly by his side and gently nudges him in the ribs. 

“We need to talk,” he says.

They leave the others to figure out their sleeping arrangement (Mike can briefly hear Eddie arguing with Max about the other couch, before Bill tells Eddie to shut the fuck up) and make the way up the stairs to Mike’s bedroom.

Mike is glad to be back in his own room after all the weeks away from home. He kicks off his shoes with a sigh and wriggles out of his pants before collapsing onto his bed. Richie raises his eyebrows at him.

“What?” Mike says, cheek pressed into his pillow.

“Nothing,” Richie says defensively. “You just weren’t so ready to get undressed in front of me back in the cabin.”

“Oh please, it’s just pants. Besides, your friends really have a thing with casual nudity and all of that. Nothing fazes me anymore after that.”

“Ah, Eddie show his dick again?” Richie nods understandingly.

“That guy really has no shame.”

Richie grins at him.

“Oh, how I’ve missed those idiots. So, everything was okay then? Nothing too weird?”

“Oh no, it was weird,” Mike assures him. Richie chuckles and sits beside him on the bed. “They’re all just so… touchy. And they’re constantly arguing, and then they’re also constantly flirting with each other. You guys have a very weird dynamic.”

“Hey, I warned you about that.”

“Yeah, but still. It was weird. And then it was also…” Mike searches for the right word. “Nice. Freeing, maybe.”

Richie hums, nods his head.

“Oh, and full disclosure. I kissed Eddie. And Stan. And Mike H was very handsy with me.”

“You little whore!” Richie hisses as he slaps Mike on his shoulder. “So innocent and ashamed before you left and now you’re back and you’ve practically had half my friends.”

Mike rolls his eyes at him.

“I didn’t have anyone. We just kissed.”

“The Michael Wheeler I knew at camp would never be so casual about kissing other guys. You’ve changed. It looks good on you.”

Mike feels his cheek turn red again and ducks his head so Richie can’t see.

“Shut up, it’s not like that. I guess your friends just made me realize… I won’t burst into flames if I kiss a guy. And the world was still spinning after I kissed Eddie, and nothing dragged me down to hell, and nobody killed me on the spot. And it was nice .”

“Oh, I bet,” Richie grins. “Eddie’s a great kisser. So is Stan.” Then, after a heartbeat, he adds, “also full disclosure, I almost kissed Will today.”

Mike’s stomach bottoms out so fast it makes him lightheaded. He surges upwards, onto his knees, and grabs Richie by his shirt.

“ What? ” He hisses.

“Easy,” Richie says, gently prying Mike’s fingers off his shirt. “I didn’t make the first move. I didn’t even flirt or anything. Will was the one who made the move, actually.”

Mike’s heart is beating so hard he feels like it’s gonna beat straight through his chest. His ears are ringing.

“What do you mean, make a move?” He questions. He needs Richie to explain exactly what happened, because Richie’s definition of making a move is very different from how Mike would describe it. Maybe Will just looked at Richie a moment too long. Maybe Richie classifies stuff like that as ‘making a move’. 

“It was right before you rang the doorbell, here on your bed. I think I did something to upset him last night so I came up here to apologize and we were just looking at the ceiling together, and then we were holding hands and then Will got really close to my face and I really think he was about to kiss me. He would’ve kissed me if you guys hadn’t rang the doorbell.”

“And you would’ve let him ?” Mike doesn’t know what piece of information is fighting to be at the forefront of his mind to be upset about; the fact that Will had wanted to kiss him, or the fact that Richie would’ve kissed him back had there not been an interruption.

“I don’t know! Maybe! Would you rather have had me reject him? Which, by the way, would be you rejecting him, in his eyes. Which is something I know you would never do.”

“Wh - okay, but, wait…” Mike splutters, struggling to fit this into his view of Will. “Are you sure he wanted to kiss you?”

“Trust me, I know when someone wants to kiss me. He was all like…” Richie gets his face real close to Mike’s, so close he can feel Richie’s breath on his cheeks. “And then he was like…” Richie roams his eyes over Mike’s face, lingering on his lips.

“Okay, okay, got it,” Mike says quickly, pushing Richie away. “Your breath is rank, by the way.” Then, pushing his hands into his hair, “oh God, Will made a move on you - on me - and now he knows that he wasn’t making a move on me at all, but on you . Richie, you have to tell me everything that went down between you since you arrived here. Please.”

So Richie does. He tells him about the touching, the falling asleep on the couch together, the painting they did yesterday, what Max and El said, about everything said and done between them tonight.

“I need to go speak to him,” Mike finally says, once Richie is done.

“Agreed,” Richie says. “But not tonight. I think you should also hear what I found out about our parents.”

Chapter Text

Richie tells Mike exactly what he found out from Ted, and he has never seen someone so sad before. Mike bites back tears as Richie tells them that they’re both Maggie’s kids, that Karen adopted Mike when he was just a baby. He doesn’t say anything as Richie explains it all, just stares harshly at his feet. Then, when Richie is done, he starts sobbing.

Richie holds him through the worst of it, pressing him firmly against his chest. Sure, Richie had been upset about the revelation as well, but he’s had seventeen years to find peace with the fact that his father left him. His world view remained the same once Ted confirmed his abandonment. But Mike… Mike is only now hearing that the only mother he’s ever known isn’t even his biological mother. And not only that, but his birth mother got rid of him because she couldn’t handle him. Richie is familiar with rejection, and he knows that Mike is as well, but not rejection of this kind. Not when they were just babies , when they were just innocent creatures, and Maggie decided she didn’t want Mike.

Richie doesn’t know what to say to comfort Mike, so he doesn’t say anything. He just lets him cry it out and then, when it seems like Mike has no more tears left to cry, he tucks him into his bed.

“Try to get some sleep, okay?” He says gently. “I’ll be right down the hall if you need me.”

“Nancy doesn’t like it when someone else sleeps in her bed,” Mike says weakly.

“I’m sure she’ll understand this exception,” Richie replies. “Just call me if you need anything, alright?”

Mike nods, then turns around to face the wall. He takes a shuddering breath but doesn’t say anything else, so Richie gets up and leaves the room.

He can hear whispers coming from downstairs. Sleep doesn’t appear to be on the table tonight, so Richie walks to the living room and catches the losers and the party all still being up, talking to each other.

“Do we have the honor to be speaking to Mike or Richie?” Lucas asks once he’s noticed him. Richie looks down onto himself, at the dark shirt and blue jeans he’s still wearing. He hasn’t even gotten his glasses back yet. 

“Richie,” he says eventually. Beverly beckons him over to her and Richie allows himself to be dragged down to the floor, where Bev gives him a long hug.

“Good to see you again, idiot,” she says into his hair.

“It’s not like you really had the chance to miss me with such a great replacement.”

“Still, it’s been too long since we last saw you. The real you.”

“Isn’t Mike joining us again? We haven’t seen him in ages either,” Dustin says. 

“Um, Mike’s not… doing so well right now,” Richie says. He wonders if he should tell his friends the truth and then figures that that’s the least he can give them after he and Mike spent the last two weeks lying to their faces. “I sort of… found out that we’re both biologically my mom’s sons. Karen adopted Mike. He’s not taking the news very well.”

“Shit,” Max says.

“Jesus Christ,” Dustin adds.

“Yeah, that sums it up pretty well,” Richie agrees.

“Should he be alone right now?” Lucas asks. “Is he, like… good? I mean - to be alone?”

Richie shrugs.

“I think he needs to be alone, to process it. But I also think you guys maybe shouldn’t be too harsh on him tomorrow, about our whole ruse.”

Lucas nods. Richie looks over at Will, who hasn’t said a word since Mike and the losers entered the Wheeler house. He’s chewing his lip and purposely looking away from Richie.

“And I think he could really use his best friend tomorrow,” he adds, aiming it at Will. Will shoots his head up at that, meets Richie’s gaze and blushes. Then nods, as if to say message received.

“Actually,” Bev says, “we were just talking and we think we should stay a bit longer instead of leaving first thing tomorrow morning. Just to make sure you’re both okay about… everything. In case you need some closure from Ted before you leave.”

“Theodore made it very clear he doesn’t wish for me to interfere in his family business,” Richie scoffs. “He would prefer me disappearing into the night so he can pretend his long lost son never set foot inside his house.”

Eddie raises his eyebrows at him.

“And since when does Richie Tozier care about what others would prefer ?” 

Maybe Eddie hadn’t meant it as a challenge, but Richie is taking it as such anyway.

“Yeah,” he says, sly grin spreading across his face, “you are absolutely right.”

***

Richie tosses and turns in Nancy’s bed but only manages a few hours of sleep before some noise in the kitchen wakes him up.

He grumbles as he sits up straight, rubs the sleep out of his eyes and puts on his glasses, which he had hidden in Mike’s room and retrieved when he went to check on him last night. Then he gets up to go check if the losers aren’t accidentally (or purposefully) burning the house down.

“What the hell is that clanging?” He asks once he steps foot in the kitchen. Eddie turns to look at him, eyes big and innocent.

“Oh, just a bunch of clanging,” he says sweetly. Richie glares at him and then realizes he missed glaring at him and then glares some more before Max appears from behind the kitchen island, a smear of flour across her cheek.

“We were trying to make some waffles,” she explains. “To cheer you guys up. But good God, your friends are fucking loud.”

Stan, who is sitting on the kitchen counter stirring some batter, points the whisk at Max. “Don’t segregate us. We’re all Richie’s and Mike’s friends here.”

“Okay, Stanley. Stop before you start singing Kumbaya,” Dustin says. He’s attempting to put the batter into the waffle iron but is just making more of a mess.

Eddie laughs at that, to which Stan flicks some of the batter into his face, to which Eddie gasps, affronted, and pounces at Stan like some kind of fucking feral animal, trying to grab the whisk to hit him over the head with it. Richie suddenly sees his friends like an outsider must see them, like Mike’s friends must see them, and understands what Mike meant with the weird dynamic . He sighs, exasperated, and pulls Eddie and Stan away from each other.

“Don’t make me spray you with a water bottle,” he threatens.

“Aw, Rich, don’t threaten us with a good time. Eddie could use the shower,” Stan says.

“Oh, I’ll find a way to drown you in that bottle, don’t try me, Stan,” Eddie replies.

“Alright, alright, enough. Please stop embarrassing me in front of my new friends.”

Eddie looks from Richie to Dustin and Max and back and then drops the whisk, muttering something close to an apology. Stan fixes the collar of his shirt, where Richie had grabbed him, and apologizes as well.

“Good boys. Now, get the fuck out of this kitchen before you burn it down. You too, Dustin. It’s gonna be a cereal and toast kinda day.”

“Alright, bossy,” Dustin says, but he thankfully leaves the waffle iron alone.

Richie takes out the boxes of cereal and milk from the fridge and puts them all on the big dining room table the Wheelers never seem to use. The others start trickling in once they hear the movement and settle around the big table, dragging chairs from the kitchen when they realize there aren’t enough in the dining room. It’s a tight fit, but they manage.

Surprisingly, his and Mike’s friends seem to mingle quite well. Beverly talks to Max and El about roller derby, Dustin enthralls Ben and Stan with a very complicated explanation of D&D, Lucas and Mike H talk about basketball and Will shows Bill some of his sketches, asks him for help on drawing a certain angle he can’t really get right. Only Eddie doesn’t seem to engage in the mingling and instead nudges Richie’s shoulder.

“You holding up okay?” He asks.

“Aw, Eds. Are you concerned about me?”

Eddie huffs.

“Never mind. I hope you’re terrible , actually.”

Richie nudges him back.

“I’m fine,” he says. Then, so soft that only Eddie can hear, “you owe me a kiss, though.”

Eddie’s ears turn pink.

“So Mike kissed and told?”

“Of course he did, I’m his brother. But you, like, helped him. Figure some things out.”

Eddie looks mortified at that.

“Oh God, was I his first kiss?”

Richie snorts.

“Maybe not his first first, but I think you were his first guy kiss. So, good job, Eds. You opened up a whole new world for him. Doesn’t mean you still don’t owe me that kiss, by the way.”

“Okay, okay. Message received. You’ll get your kiss once we’re back home.”

Richie beams at that and knocks their shoulders together once more, and Eddie allows the touch for a full three seconds before pulling back. 

“So, what did I help him figure out? That he likes dudes?”

“No, he already knew that. You just helped him realize that that’s okay. ”

“Hmm,” Eddie says. “He did mention that there was a guy back in Hawkins who he likes. You know who it is?”

Richie nods and jerks his head at Will, who’s still too concentrated on his conversation with Bill to notice.

“Ah,” Eddie says. “Figures. He’s cute.”

“Easy there, don’t make me jealous.”

“You’re always jealous, no matter what I try,” Eddie counters.

“That’s just because I love you so much,” Richie says sweetly. Eddie sticks a finger in his mouth and pretends to barf, but he can’t hide the fond smile no matter how hard he tries.

They sit in silence after that, eating their cereal while watching the others. It’s… lively around the table. Richie hadn’t expected their friends to get along so well, but he’s also not really that surprised. Mike’s friends are cool (and not nearly as close-minded as Mike thinks them to be) so of course they get along with the losers. And he’s sure the losers appreciate their quick wit, their brazenness.

The conversation around the table suddenly falters, and Richie looks up from his cereal to see Mike standing in the doorway. He looks small and fragile, dark bags under his puffy eyes.

“Mike,” El says softly, patting the empty chair next to her to urge him to sit.

“You want any cereal?” Lucas asks, already offering two different boxes for Mike to choose from.

“Or I could make some toast,” Dustin says. “I wanted to make waffles, but Richie banned me from doing that.”

Mike narrows his eyes at Lucas and Dustin and then at Richie.

“You told them, didn’t you?” He deduces.

“I kind of had to, Mike. So they wouldn’t be too harsh on you about the whole lying-about-our-identity thing.”

“Which we’re totally already over, by the way,” Max says, clearly lying.

“Yup, absolutely not still mad that you lied to us instead of keeping us in the loop,” El agrees.

“All water under the bridge,” Bill says.

“Alright, alright,” Mike says. “I know we were idiots and we should’ve at least told you what we were doing. I’m sorry. But Richie and his friends will get out of your hair and everything will go back to normal and we can all forget this ever happened.”

El and Max exchange a look.

“I’m not sure that’s true, Mike,” Max says softly. “Don’t you… want to talk about it? How are you holding up?”

“Oh, you mean the fact that I recently found out I was adopted and that my birth mom gave me up because I cried too much as a baby? Yeah, I’m just absolutely fucking dandy , Max. Thanks for asking.”

Richie flinches at Mike’s tone. He recognizes that venom all too well from camp, when Mike would lash out at Richie whenever he felt pushed into a corner. The others shift uncomfortably in their seats.

Mike holds his venomous gaze for approximately two more seconds before he visibly deflates, spine folding into itself and shoulders hunching. He sighs deeply, miserably, and pushes his hands through his unruly curls. His hair sticks up awkwardly when he pulls his hands back, and Richie reaches out reflexively to smooth the hair back down to his scalp.

“I’m sorry,” Mike says weakly. “I don’t - I’m… I don’t know why I get… sorry, Max. I’m always so fucking… so mean when I’m upset. I don’t try to be. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Max says, and this time she sounds like she means it. Richie remembers something he said back at camp, about Mike being really mean, and how it seemed to have startled Mike. How he’d told Richie he has trouble controlling his emotions sometimes. Richie understands; his emotions can get out of his control as well. And he figures it’s better to feel anger than nothing at all, which seems to be the most popular feeling in the Wheeler household. Just quiet resignation. 

“I just…” Mike starts again, searching for the right words, “I’m pretty miserable, guys.” He glances at his friends scattered around the table, too fast to meet any of their eyes. “It’s all just… a bit much.”

Richie barks a humorless laugh. “Understatement of the year, sweet brother o’ mine. It’s totally normal for you to be upset. Really, Mike, we get it.”

Mike’s cheeks turn pink.

“I know,” he says, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. He glances around again, at the twelve people looking back at him, and ducks his head further down to hide his face. Richie knows Mike doesn’t do well with a lot of attention on him, not used to talking about his feelings. He’s itching to make him feel better, to take the heat off him, when Mike suddenly takes a shuddering breath and pushes away from his seat, walking across the table to Will (who still hasn’t said a word).

“Let’s go for a drive,” he tells Will. Will doesn’t meet his eye but gets up nevertheless, following Mike towards the front door. Mike glances back into the dining room, speaking to no one in particular when he says, “We’ll be back later. I need… I need to talk to him.”

The others nod understandingly. The party knows Will is Mike’s best friend, and right now he really seems to need a good one-on-one with him.

They’re all quiet for a moment once the front door clicks shut behind them, and then Stan drums his fingers on the table.

“So,” he says once the others are looking at him, “does Hawkins have any must-sees while we’re here?”

Chapter Text

Nobody speaks at first. Mike, still very much miserable, white-knuckles the steering wheel of his car as they drive aimlessly through Hawkins. He doesn’t know where he wants to go, so they just drive around the neighborhood for a while. Will looks at him - Mike can feel his gaze on the side of his face - but doesn’t speak until Mike has passed his house for the third time.

“Let’s go to the quarry,” Will finally says, gently touching Mike’s wrist. Mike nods woodenly, not trusting his voice to speak just yet, and drives them over the dusty road leading to the quarry.

The place is empty when they get there, like it always is. The quarry isn’t really a popular hangout spot. It offers no shade in the searing summer sun and people prefer to spend their days in and around Lover’s Lake. Mike parks the car close to the cliff overlooking the quarry and gets out. He hears Will doing the same but doesn’t dare look at him as he clampers on the hood of his car, resting his back against the windshield.

Will joins him but sits far enough away so that they aren’t touching. Mike remembers what Richie told him last night, about how Will had liked that ‘Mike’ touched him more since returning from camp, and his cheeks flush with embarrassment as he recalls the many times he’d recoiled from Will’s touch before. He hadn’t thought Will noticed.

“So,” Mike starts, uneasily. He doesn’t know how to continue, where to even begin . There’s so much he needs to talk to Will about, so many secrets boiling in the cavity of his chest.

“So,” Will says. And then, when it appears like Mike isn’t gonna say anything else, Will continues, “Just so we’re clear, I’m still angry at you about your whole ruse.” Mike flinches at the words but Will nudges him with his elbow, smiles at him when Mike meets his gaze. “But it’s no fun being mad at you when you’re so sad. So consider me not-mad until you feel a bit better. Do you want to talk about what Richie told you last night?”

Mike absolutely does not want to talk about it. He had felt like his heart was being ripped out of his throat last night, when Richie was recalling the conversation he’d had with their father. The realization that Karen, the only parent he actually cares for, isn’t even his biological mother, that Nancy and Holly aren’t even his full sisters, had taken his breath away. And the worst thing is that Mike knows who his birth mother is, and he can’t stand the fact that he shares DNA with a woman like Maggie Tozier.

But Will is sitting patiently next to him, his hand lingering near Mike’s knee, and his voice is gentle and kind like it always is, and Mike just missed him so much. So no, he doesn’t want to talk about it, but he does so anyway.

He tells Will everything. How he met Richie at camp, how they initially came up with the switch because Mike was being targeted, how they decided to continue the ruse so Richie would have a chance to meet their father. He tells him about Maggie Tozier, about the losers, careful not to tell him everything about them, and about when Mike finally couldn’t take it anymore and told them the truth (not mentioning that they’d been at a gay club when he did). And then he voices his devastation about being related to Maggie and not to Karen, and then he’s crying again.

Will is hesitant at first, but then, when Mike’s entire frame shudders with a particularly violent sob, he crosses the small distance between them and pulls Mike against his chest. He wraps his arms around Mike’s trembling shoulders and places his hand on the back of Mike’s head, gently pushing it into the crook of his neck. 

“Fuck,” Mike says around his tears, “fuck, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” Will says softly. “It’s okay. You can cry.”

Mike lets the sadness wash over him again. It’s like a dam broke in his mind and he’s desperately trying to mend it but failing miserably. All the pent up sorrow is finding its way outside.

He doesn’t know how long they sit like that, their backs pressed uncomfortably against the windshield of his car, but when the sadness finally subsides enough to breathe, his legs are sore from sitting. He gently unfolds himself from Will’s arms and wipes at his eyes. Will is looking at him with those big green eyes and Mike finds himself disarmed by them. 

“I just… I can’t stand the idea of being Maggie’s son,” he says, and his voice is hoarse from crying. “The thought of it makes me like, physically sick, Will. Because if I’m Ted’s and Maggie’s son, and they’re both horrible, then…” He can barely stand to finish that thought. “Then… What does that say about me? What if I’ll turn out just as horrible as them?”

“You won’t,” Will assures him.

“But how can you be so sure? What if I don’t have any good DNA? What if I’m… I don’t know, rotten ? Spoiled?”

“Do you think Richie is rotten?”

Mike doesn’t even need to think about that.

“No, of course not.”

“Well, do you think I’m a bad person?”

“What? No! You’re literally the best person I’ve ever met.”

“And yet we both know what kind of shitbag my father is. Our parents don’t define us, Mike. We get to decide what kind of person we become.” Will puts a reassuring hand on Mike’s leg. In another time, in what feels like a lifetime ago, Mike would’ve flinched away from the touch. Now he just looks at Will’s hand, at his long fingers, and itches to scoop it up, to press a kiss against his knuckles. “Seriously, Karen is still very much your mother. She might not have been there for your birth, but she was there for everything else.”

And, yeah. Mike can’t really argue with that. His mom had been there through all his illnesses, through all his scraped knees and sore throats and belly aches. She’d been there when Mike came home crying in kindergarten because he didn’t have any friends, she was there when he had anxiety induced nightmares and used to scream himself awake. She’d rubbed his back and held back his too-long hair when he was fifteen and had his first hangover, hunched over the toilet.

“You’re right,” he says finally, and he does feel a little better at the thought. “Thank you, Will. Seriously. You always know what to say to cheer me up.”

Will flashes a smile at him and squeezes his leg. Then, with a slight cockiness to his voice, “So, best person you’ve ever met, huh?”

Mike surprises them both with a laugh.

“I mean, I did meet Eddie Kaspbrak in Derry and I must say he’s seriously competing with you.”

Will scoffs.

“Please, that dude? He was very adamant on saying how much he didn’t like you last night.”

Mike waves him away. He knows Eddie is just upset about unknowingly kissing Mike instead of Richie.

“He’s just melodramatic. We had the best time in Derry.”

Will raises his eyebrows at him.

“Are you trying to make me jealous?”

“That depends,” Mike says without thinking. “Is it working?”

Will opens his mouth to reply but falters, slowly closing it again. Mike doesn’t miss the way his eyes dart to his mouth and back up, a light blush creeping onto his otherwise pale cheeks. Mike’s mouth is suddenly dry. The air between them seems to thicken and slow, like they’re underwater.

“Okay, so,” Will says finally, the blush spreading to his ears and down his neck, “you know how you just betrayed my trust by fucking off to Derry and sending your twin back to Hawkins, and I told you I wouldn’t be mad about that until you felt better about your whole heritage thing?”

“Uhu,” Mike nods. He can’t seem to tear his gaze away from Will’s face. His fingers are aching to hook around the collar of his shirt and pull it down, to see the blush spread to his collarbones and chest.

“I have to tell you something, and I need you to not hate me for it.”

“I could never hate you,” Mike says gently. His voice is hoarse again, but for different reasons this time.

Will takes a breath, eyes still scanning Mike’s face. To his lips, back up his eyes, down to his cheek. Mike doesn’t miss the way Will swallows, how he darts his tongue out to wet his lips. God, Mike is so tense with the effort it takes not to reach out and grab Will’s face and kiss him senseless. If he’d still been in Derry, or if he’d been Richie, he would’ve done it without thinking twice about it. But he’s in Hawkins, and he’s Mike, so of course he doesn’t.

“I, uh… I’m…” Will starts, but he doesn’t seem to find the right words to continue. “Last night… before I knew Richie wasn’t actually you, we… uh…” Will’s face has grown bright red by now and he’s nervously playing with the sleeve of his shirt. Mike realizes with a start that he’s about to confess to him. About what Richie told him. About the moment where Will had been close to kissing him. His hands are suddenly unbearably clammy. 

Will takes another shuddering breath and continues, “I… I almost kissed him. I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to kiss - I wanted to kiss you .” Will can’t look at Mike as he finishes. His eyes are glassy and his eyebrows are knitted into a tight frown as he looks at the quarry.

“Will…” Mike starts, but then doesn’t know what to say next. Will isn’t looking at him, shoulders hitched to his ears like they always are when he’s sad or nervous. Like he’s expecting anger. Like he’s expecting Mike to reject him.

And suddenly Mike feels brave. Because Will has been brave for as long as he’s known him, and he’s being brave right now, and Mike has always been a coward. But he’s done . He’s done being scared and ashamed, is done hiding his feelings, especially now that he knows Will feels the same. And what a thrilling realization that is, knowing that Will feels the same . 

So he reaches out to touch Will’s shoulder, tentatively at first but firmer when Will doesn’t shy away from the touch. He presses his fingers into his skin, gently tugging his shoulder down in an effort to make Will relax. And then, when Will allows his shoulder to be tugged down, he moves his hand to the crook of his neck, right above his collar. Mike splays his fingers over Will’s pulse point, his thumb gently resting against Will’s jaw.

“Will…” he says again, voice trembling only slightly. He guides Will’s face towards him until Will is looking at him, green eyes big and wet and shiny. Mike allows his gaze to glide over Will’s features, over his long eyelashes to the mole right next to his mouth to his lips. His thumb, which had still been resting on Will’s jaw, moves sideways slightly until it’s pressing into the soft flesh of his bottom lip. He can feel Will gasp softly. Mike drags his thumb slowly over Will’s lip, follows the curve of it, revels in the softness and dampness of it. Will’s lips are slightly parted and pink and kissable, and Mike’s stomach flips and flutters and leaps, and all the oxygen drains from his lungs, and his head feels like it’s floating.

Mike kisses him.

He closes the gap between their bodies with maybe a bit too much force, their chests colliding almost uncomfortably. But Mike doesn’t care. He cares about Will’s solid form against him, about his warm lips and his searching hands, desperately reaching up into Mike’s hair to press his face even closer.

Will tilts his head to deepen the kiss, parting Mike’s lips with his own, and darts his tongue swiftly across Mike’s bottom lip. Mike makes a sound at the back of his throat and Will shifts on the hood of the car, presses himself closer to Mike, lets go of Mike’s hair in order to grab into his shirt instead. Mike lets his hands drift to Will’s jaw, grazing his jawline with his fingers, feeling how Will deepens the kiss further.

He knows it’s cliché, but he swears he sees stars when he feels Will’s tongue sliding against his own. Mike can’t help the groan that escapes his mouth and he can feel Will smiling against him, can hear him hum in return.

They have to break to catch their breath eventually, but Will is reluctant to let go completely. He presses one, two, three more kisses against Mike’s compliant lips until he finally pulls back completely, cheeks rosy and lips glistening.

“Fuck,” Mike manages to say. Will’s shy smile turns into a proud grin. “Jesus Christ, Will. Where did you learn to kiss like that?”

Will laughs.

“Oh, you thought I spent all of my free time drawing stuff and writing D&D campaigns?”

“What, as opposed to going out and kissing what I presume to be strangers to practice your kissing skills?”

Will waves him away.

“I’ve dabbled in the occasional flirt.”

Mike shakes his head. He should be jealous, but he just wants to kiss Will some more.

“You continue to amaze me, Will Byers.”

“And you continue to surprise me, Michael Wheeler. I didn’t… I didn’t even know you liked… me. Or, I guess. Guys, in general.”

Mike bites his lip, enjoys the way Will stares at it.

“It’s not something I wanted on display. It scared me - it still scares me. But I’m… like… kinda crazy about you, Will. Have been for a very long time.”

Will ducks his head in a fruitless attempt to hide the blush still sitting high on his cheeks.

“Well, good,” he says, back to being shy, “feeling’s mutual.”

“Yeah?” Mike grins, the bravery of the kiss still singing in his veins. His grin only grows wider when Will nods. “Then prove it.”

And then they’re kissing again.

Chapter Text

Mike’s sullen mood kind of put a stop to the anger the party and the losers had still been nursing towards the twins, and their outing around Hawkins passes amiably. Dustin and Lucas lead the others around, showing off their little town like they’re touring a museum.

“This is where Max rejected Lucas, twice,” Dustin points as they pass the arcade.

“This is also where Max rejected Dustin, thrice,” Lucas adds airily.

“Oh, big word,” Dustin says. “Where’d you learn that?”

“Your mom taught me, actually,” Lucas says with an innocent smile. “I think she said something like ‘oh Lucas, you’ve made me cum thrice alr-” Max hits him over the head before he can finish that sentence.

“Damn, you can take a page from his book when it comes to ‘your mom’ jokes, Richie,” Stan says, pointing to Lucas. Lucas beams at him, as if Stan just gave him the biggest compliment. Richie waves them both off.

“Can’t we go for a swim or something?” Bev speaks up, picking up the pace so she can walk besides Richie. “It’s boiling .”

“Did you bring your swimsuit?” Richie asks. Bev offers him an innocent smile.

“No, but we’re all wearing the same underwear we were wearing yesterday. We could use the water.”

“Gross,” Eddie says. Then, because Beverly is right about the underwear, he says, “Okay, fair.”

“We could go to the lake,” Max says. “We could go back to Mike’s for the van and I could drive some of us there as well.”

El makes a face at her, muttering something about Max being a horrible driver, but Max elbows her and the others seem to be on board with the plan, so they circle back to the Wheeler residence to pick up the van and Max’s car and soon the losers are tailgating Max to the lake.

“So, did you behave while you were here?” Bill asks Richie, who decided to drive with them to the lake.

“Oh, Billiam,” Richie says, batting his eyelashes at him, “of course not.”

Mike raises his eyebrows disbelievingly at him and Richie deflates under his gaze.

“Okay, I did behave. I know, shocker. But I had to pretend to be my brother, and he’s like, crazy repressed about everything, so I couldn’t exactly go around being… you know, me.”

“He didn’t appear to be repressed when he was in Derry,” Ben remarks. He pillows his head on his folded arms as he leans on the middle seat of the van, where Richie is sitting.

“I mean, he was a bit weird,” Stan says. “We just thought something had happened at camp you didn’t want to talk about. He was… quieter than you are. A bit uncomfortable, maybe.”

“Uncomfortable, my ass,” Eddie scoffs. He’s sitting next to Ben in the back of the van and scoots to the edge of his seat to look at Richie. “He swooped in all sexily and danced with me and kissed me like he was starving.”

Richie wiggles his eyebrows at him.

“You think I’m sexy?”

“No, I think Mike is sexy,” Eddie corrects smugly.

“We’re identical,” Richie counters.

“And yet he’s just so much prettier than you are,” Eddie muses dreamily, pretending to swoon. Richie reaches out and slaps him on the shoulder.

“Shut up, no he isn’t!”

“Oh, but he’s got that forlorn look in his eyes that’s just so attractive,” Mike joins in.

“Not you too, Micycle!” 

Mike snickers and pulls Richie against him, kissing him on his head.

“Just kidding, Richie. We’re glad to have you back.” Then, after a moment of silence, he adds, “Mike told us, on our way here, that he’s… lonely. In Hawkins. Aren’t his friends, you know, supportive?”

Richie’s heart clenches at the words. He had objectively known Mike to be lonely, but he hadn’t thought Mike would ever confess to the sentiment so openly.

“I think Mike doesn’t see his friends clearly,” Richie admits, remembering the ease with which Max had teased Will during the party yesterday. “I think he’s so scared of their reactions and so far in the closet that he’s just assuming the worst about them. I don’t think they’d care if he told them.”

Bev shrugs, pulling her knee up to her chest in the passenger seat. 

“Maybe they wouldn’t. But maybe they would, and then he’d be even more alone.”

It’s a depressing thought, one Richie is glad he can’t relate to. But still, he spent enough time with the party to get to know them at least a little bit. Sure, they’re not so used to touch as the losers are, and sure, some things just aren’t talked about between them, but he can’t imagine them shunning Mike if they found out about him. Max and Lucas hadn’t even flinched when Will hadn’t denied flirting with guys to get weed. Why should it be any different with Mike?

“I’m just really glad to see you guys again,” he says finally, worrying the nail of his thumb with his teeth. “I missed you dipshits.”

“It’s good to have you back, Rich,” Stan smiles, catching his eyes in the rearview mirror.

“Even though Mike was sexier,” Eddie chimes in.

“Yeah,” Bill agrees, grinning, “even though Mike was sexier.”

***

Max leads them to a deserted part of the lake, further away from the more popular area. The water seems greener here, the riverbed more muddy. Most people prefer to go to the east side of Lovers Lake, where there’s a small beach and a pier, so to avoid the crowd they go to the north side.

The party is more reluctant to dress down to their underwear than the losers are, so instead they take off their shoes and socks and stick to the shallow part of the water. The losers, having lost all sense of prudishness years ago, take off their clothes and race into the water, screeching and cursing at the sudden coldness. Richie is surprised they didn’t fully go naked, but he guesses they’re a bit more reserved in a strange town hundreds of miles away from home.

Richie joins them after throwing the party an apologizing grin, jumping onto Bill’s back to try to push him underwater. A scuffle ensues, and soon the others are joining them and choosing sides between Richie and Bill and climbing onto shoulders to have a chicken fight, pushing and pulling and splashing water and laughing until they can’t breathe. It feels so familiar, so much like the summers they have back in Derry, that Richie is suddenly overcome with a sense of nostalgia so violent he has to gasp for breath. Summer is steadily crawling to its end and Richie feels like he barely enjoyed any of it. Soon they’ll be back in Derry High School, struggling through their final year before finally graduating. 

“Richard, get that sad look off your face before I feel bad for trying to drown you,” Eddie says, suddenly only inches away from him. Richie startles at the sudden proximity. Then, when Eddie gives him a questioning look, he smiles and reaches out to him instinctively. 

“Sorry, Eddie Spaghetti. Wandering mind and all,” he says, fingers curling around Eddie’s waist.

“Doesn’t there need to be anything up there for it to wander?” Eddie asks, tapping Richie’s temple affectionately.

“Hur hur, I see your sense of humor hasn’t improved without my influence.”

Eddie grins, neither confirming nor denying, and lets his hands rest on Richie’s bare shoulders. Richie can feel goosebumps spread over his skin where they’re touching and he shivers slightly, taking a step closer to Eddie to try to chase the touch. Eddie is looking up at him with those stupidly big, dark eyes, mischief glistening in the swirling dark chocolate, and oh. Richie really missed him. His fingers feel hot where they touch Eddie’s hips.

“So, about that kiss,” Richie mutters. Eddie glances at his lips, then back up into his eyes.

“What, with the audience over there?” Eddie says, jerking his thumb at the party still standing on the shoreline. Richie follows his gesture towards Mike’s friends, who all act like they weren’t watching them when they see Richie looking at them. Dustin is looking up into the sky, nudging Lucas as if to point out something remarkable. Lucas ooh’s and ah’s at whatever Dustin is pointing at. Max and El pretend to be deep in conversation.

Oh yeah, right. Richie momentarily forgot who they were with.

He takes a step back from Eddie, smiles sheepishly at him, and rejoins the others in their ongoing fight.

They stay in the water for another hour, and eventually the party decides they’re not prude enough to not get into the lake as the hot summer sun beats down on them. They strip down to their underwear and join the losers, who all cheer and whoop as they jump into the water. They organize another chicken fight, losers against party, and in the end it’s Max and Lucas who are crowned the winners.

They lie on the prickly, yellowing grass when they’re done trying to drown each other and sunbathe until their underwear is dry enough. Bev lazily braids El’s wet hair and Bill shares a joint with Lucas (the joint comes from Bev’s van, which implies that they smuggled drugs across state lines, but hey, Richie can’t really comment on poor decisions). Then, when their stomachs start growling, they put their clothes back on and pile back into their cars. Richie drives with Max, Bev, Ben and Dustin while the others take Bev’s van. Max stops at Benny’s and buys burgers and fries and some milkshakes before driving back to the Wheeler’s.

Will and Mike are sitting on the couch when they return. The others are spread across the living room floor but shoot up when they see the goodies Max brought.

They eat their burgers and fries on the floor, limbs lazy from swimming and the sun and noses slightly burned. Richie glances at his brother as they eat and notices a change in his demeanor. Something seems to have lifted off of him, like the world isn’t pressing down on him anymore. The smile on his face is easier, the knot between his eyebrows loosened.

“So,” Ben says when everyone is finished, looking between Richie and Mike. “What’s your plan now?”

“Plan? What do you mean?” Mike asks.

“You know,” Ben says, “It’s Saturday today. Your parents are coming home tomorrow. Are we staying another night so you can, I don’t know, confront your father with his poor life choices? Or should we be packing our stuff so we can leave today?”

Richie and Mike exchange a look. Richie gestures at him, as if to say it’s up to Mike, and then Mike shrugs.

“I think Teddy deserves to be confronted with his past,” he says, mischievous glint in his eyes. “Richard, why don’t you stay for dinner tomorrow night?”

“Why, gladly, Michael,” Richie grins.

Chapter Text

The losers and party make themselves disappear by Sunday late afternoon. Dustin suggests they go over to Steve’s house after calling him up and inviting himself over, while promising to explain in detail why Mike had had a mirror image of himself crash the party Friday.

Mike and Richie spend the afternoon cooking up an entire meal. They go full out; biscuits and gravy, mashed potatoes, roasted carrots, corn on the cob, a glazed ham. Holly and Nancy will be picked up from their respective activities by Ted and Karen on their way back home, so they’ll all file into the Wheeler home together. Mike can’t wait to see the shocked look on their faces when he and Richie present the dining table full of food, standing shoulder to shoulder with identical smiles on their faces. He wonders if Ted will hurl. Maybe Holly will faint. They’ll act all innocent, the both of them, welcoming their family back home and ushering them to take a seat, to fill their plates with all the food they’d been slaving over. It’s a bit dramatic, sure, but it was Richie’s idea and Mike can appreciate some drama now and then. He did draw the line at matching outfits though. Richie is still wearing Mike’s wardrobe since his own stuff is back in Derry, but Mike insisted that he at least wore a different color shirt than Mike.

They just finished setting the table when Mike hears a key in the front door. They both freeze momentarily and Mike can see the nervous twitch of Richie’s mouth, feels his own nervousness suddenly tugging at his gut, but he still moves to stand besides Richie next to the table and waits for their family to find them in the dining room.

“Mike, we’re home!” Karen yells through the house. Mike can hear her putting down her keys in the small ceramic bowl by the front door.

“I’m in the dining room!” Mike replies, voice only slightly wobbly. 

“The dining room? Is that why the house smells like Christmas?” Nancy asks, making her way to him. She’s the first one to get to the dining room and freezes on the spot when she sees Mike and Richie together.

“What the fuck,” she breathes, big blue eyes going from Mike to Richie and back. She opens her mouth to say something else but is interrupted by Karen and Ted behind her. Karen gasps at the sight of the twins, and Ted gets unimaginably pale. Mike feels a pang of satisfaction curl around his stomach at the sight.

“What in god’s name are you doing here?” Ted says through gritted teeth once he’s composed himself a bit, glaring at Richie.

“Oh, you know. We just wanted to have a nice family dinner,” Richie purrs, Cheshire grin on his face. “To clear the air once and for all.”

“ Family dinner?” Nancy echoes. “What the hell is going on here?”

“Yeah, Theodore,” Mike smiles. “What the hell is going on here? Maybe you should explain.”

Ted splutters, his pale cheeks quickly turning red and blotchy under the scorning gaze of his family. Karen looks about three seconds away from snapping his neck.

Ted looks between Mike and Richie almost feverishly, and Mike almost feels bad for him. But then he reminds himself of the years he spent not knowing about Richie’s existence, about his brother growing up in a similar town with a shitty parent to match Mike’s, about the loneliness Richie must’ve gone through being an only child while his brother and half sisters grew up in a big house with room to spare for an extra child, and his jaw sets stubbornly. When Ted still doesn’t make any advances to explain, Mike takes it upon himself to do so.

“Mom, Nance, Holly. May I introduce you to Richie? My twin.”

Karen turns white as a sheet and stumbles towards the nearest chair. Nancy’s hands shoot out to support her, and Holly pulls out a chair for her to sit in.

“ Twin?” Karen says when she’s sitting down. Her hands are trembling as she shoots a venomous glare towards Ted. Mike’s chest suddenly swells at the sight. He might not be Karen’s biological son, but he’s seen that same venomous stare in his eyes. “Theodore, you never mentioned a twin !”

Mike’s stomach bottoms out. Richie sucks in a breath that seems to get stuck in his throat, rattling down his windpipe. Nancy looks between her parents, thin eyebrows knotted into a frown. Holly stares mutely at Mike and Richie, eyes big and round. Their plan to discuss this over mashed potatoes, pretending to be one happy family, evaporates as Richie tenses next to Mike.

“You said you told her the truth,” Richie hisses. He steps around the table towards their father, and for a moment Mike thinks Richie is going to hit him. “You said she knew the whole story!”

“I… I…” Ted stutters. He takes a step back to put some distance between him and Richie, who suddenly looks almost dangerous. His dark eyes are blazing behind his glasses, hands trembling fists by his side. Richie is as tall as Ted is, but where Ted is soft and chubby, Richie is lean and strong. He could easily fight their father if it came to it. “I told her… I told her about Mike.”

“But not about me,” Richie says. His voice is eerily calm.

Ted hesitates for a moment, glancing around him as if looking for an escape. When he doesn’t find any, he sighs in resignation. 

“No, not about you,” he confirms softly, and then Richie flings himself at him.

Everything happens in a blur after that. Mike sees how Richie grabs into Ted’s shirt, how he pushes him against the nearest wall, swearing and cursing at him, and Karen is yelling, and Nancy pulls Holly to her chest and shields her from view, and Mike is across the table and next to Richie in two big strides.

“You fucking liar! ” Richie spits, pressing Ted firmer against the wall. Ted has his hands wrapped around Richie’s wrists, trying to pry them away from his shirt. “You said she knew everything! You asshole!”

“Richard,” Ted tries, “let go. You’re making a big mistake.”

Richie snarls, rapidly blinking back tears. Mike’s heart breaks for him so violently it takes his breath away. Not only had Ted abandoned one of his sons, never to be seen or heard from again, but he also hid his entire existence from his wife. At least he brought Mike back home. At least he told her about the affair and the child born from it. But he lied about Richie. He kept him from Karen. As if his existence was something to hide, to be ashamed of. As if he wanted nothing more than to forget about Richie.

“Richie,” Mike says softly. He places a hand on Richie’s shoulder and feels how his entire frame is trembling. Richie tears his gaze away from Ted to look at Mike instead, big brown eyes shiny with tears. “Rich, he’s not worth it. I promise.” Richie stares at him some more, hands still fisted into the fabric of Ted’s shirt, so Mike reaches out and tenderly peels away Richie’s fingers, taking his shaking hands into his own. Richie lets him guide him back to the table, away from their father. Once he’s at a safe distance, Mike turns back to Ted, who’s still pressed against the wall as if wishing he could disappear into it.

“You,” Mike growls. To his delight, Ted flinches away from his tone. “Sit the fuck down. Your cowardice is disgusting , but you’re not getting away with it this time. You’re gonna sit there and explain to your wife and daughters what you did seventeen years ago. The truth .”

He looks at Holly and Nancy, who are still standing in the doorframe. Holly is crying silently as she looks at their father. Nancy’s lips are pressed into a thin line, eyes ice cold.

“You might want to sit down for this,” Mike says gently to them. He didn’t intend for his sisters to be collateral damage in this whole ordeal, but he needs them to know the truth about Ted Wheeler. About his spineless actions and his lies and who he left behind in his mess. And, more importantly, he needs them to know about their half brother. He needs them to know that Richie exists and what their father did to make sure they would never find out about him. That’s the least he deserves. 

Nancy and Holly wordlessly take a seat next to Karen, who is still pale as a ghost. Nancy takes her mother’s hand in her own and then looks at Mike, nods almost invisibly. As if to say I’m ready.

Mike glares back at Ted, who’s sitting across the table, away from his family. He’s staring at the table cloth, not meeting any of their gazes. Richie is standing on the end of the table where the others are sitting but seems too restless to take a seat himself. Mike makes his way over to him, takes his hand and clears his throat.

“Well?” He demands Ted. “We’re all fucking waiting.”

Ted takes a deep breath, opens and closes his mouth in search of the right words. Richie is rigid next to Mike, like a rubber band pulled too tightly, like another tug will set him off again. Mike squeezes his hand. It’s still a bit weird touching Richie, seeing as Mike isn’t used to physical affection, but Richie has always been very clear about touch comforting him. Richie takes a stabilizing breath and squeezes back, some of the tension easing off his shoulders.

“Seventeen years ago, I had a… moment of weakness,” Ted finally says, voice thin. “I met a woman on a business trip and… well, she ended up getting pregnant. I didn’t find out about it until after her sons were born. I went back to visit. Richie and Mike were… difficult. Fussy. And she was tired and angry and alone. I offered to take both of them. But she wanted to keep Richie so I’d have to pay her child support. If I hadn’t taken Mike, she would’ve put him up for adoption anyway. So I took Mike back with me.” He dares a glance at Karen. She’s staring at him, eyes dark and cold. Her fingers are wrapped around a butter knife. Mike briefly wonders if he’s gonna have to pull his mother off Ted next. If she’d actually fling herself across the table and try to snap Ted’s neck or maybe even stab him with the dull knife. Mike takes pleasure in the image.

“I told your mother about my mistake,” Ted continues. “I had Mike with me when I returned, and I explained what had happened. I didn’t mention the second child. I… I didn’t think it was… relevant. I figured she didn’t have to know, because Richie stayed with his mother and would never know me.” He looks at Mike next, eyes pleading. “You were all that mattered, Mike. I needed you to be safe. I needed you with me, where your birth mother couldn’t hurt you anymore.”

Mike’s blood is like ice in his veins. Richie is stiff next to him again, shaking slightly. Mike was never one to believe in psychic connections, but he swears he can feel Richie’s hurt seep into his skin, like he’s photosynthesising Richie’s sunlight. Like he took a knife to his heart and carved out a place for part of Richie’s soul.

“And what about Richie?” He manages to say through clenched jaws. “How could you just leave him there, knowing what kind of mother Maggie was?”

“She never hurt him,” Ted counters. He splays his fingers across the table. “She was better with him. It was you who had bruises on your arms. She would’ve done something to you if I hadn’t taken you away, I’m sure of it.”

Mike remembers the coldness of Maggie Tozier. There was no love for Richie in her thin body, no care or interest. Maybe she hadn’t physically hurt him as an infant, but Richie was just as much bruised as Mike.

“Why did you never tell us?” Nancy says, voice barely above a whisper. She’s not looking at Ted, instead focussing on the cold potatoes sitting in the middle of the table. “Why didn’t you tell us we had a half brother? He could’ve… he could’ve visited. We could’ve spent the holidays together.”

A pang of want shoots through Mike’s body. He imagines it vividly, suddenly. Richie at the dinner table during Christmas, chasing away the ever lingering silence in the Wheeler household. Chatting about anything and everything, making jokes about stuff on TV, making Holly laugh by stuffing baby carrots into his nose. Wearing matching Christmas sweaters as children, arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders and grins toothy and identical as Karen took their picture. But then he imagines the flip side of it before Ted vocalizes it. The endless goodbyes. Richie being driven back to the airport afterwards, alone and small in the backseat of Ted’s car. Back to Derry, where he’s an only child in a loveless house. And Mike in the Wheeler house, with two sisters and a Richie sized hole in his heart. Always missing his brother. Never getting quite enough of him. Never having enough time with him.

“I thought it would make it harder,” Ted says, and Mike hates that he kind of agrees.

“Screw that,” Nancy says. She finally looks at Ted. “Screw ‘hard’. You took the easy way out, and look where it got you.” She pushes away from the table and stands, glancing at Mike and then at Richie. She worries at her bottom lip for a second, seemingly considering something, before she makes her way over to them and wraps Richie into a tight hug.

“I’m so sorry, Richie,” she whispers into his hair. Richie is briefly frozen on the spot, but then his arms come up and wrap around Nancy’s waist. Nancy squeezes him to her chest and then pulls back, cupping his cheeks in her hands. “I wish I could’ve known you as a child.” She looks at Mike, lips in a tentative smile. “Mike was a real pain in the ass,” she teases. “Always stealing my allowance to go play games at the arcade, always picking fights. Maybe you would’ve been easier to like.”

Richie snorts, wiping his wrist over his eyes to wipe away his tears.

“I wouldn’t count on it,” he says with a watery laugh. “I was a real shithead.”

“Most people will agree when I say you’re still a real shithead,” Mike says, his voice tender. Richie looks at him and smiles.

“Well, I can’t wait to get to know you more,” Nancy says firmly.

“Actually,” Mike says, and he feels his cheeks heat with sudden embarrassment, “you kind of already got to know him.”

Nancy frowns at him. Mike clears his throat and addresses the whole room as he says, “Richie and I met at camp a few weeks ago. We decided to switch places for a while because Richie wanted to meet Ted.” Mike glares back at Ted, who looks small and pathetic. “A real mistake if you ask me, but he wanted to get to know you.” Then he turns back to Nancy. “So for the last two weeks, when you thought you were sharing a house with me…”

“You were actually sharing one with me,” Richie finishes sheepishly.

Nancy looks between them for a moment and then, to Mike’s surprise, laughs.

“Of course I was,” she says, shaking her head. “That explains why your hair was suddenly different, and why you didn’t remember Robin’s birthday last week.”

“In my defense,” Richie says, holding up his hands, “Mike didn’t debrief me about everyone’s birthdays.”

“Oh, and you would’ve remembered if I did?” Mike counters. Richie shrugs.

“No, but at least now I can use you as an excuse.”

Mike nudges him in the ribs with his elbow and Richie yelps, pushing him away slightly. Nancy looks at Richie and Mike, at their identical smiles, and tears suddenly well in her eyes.

“You’re always welcome here, Richie. I don’t care what mom or dad say.” Then she flings her arms around both of them and presses them to her chest for a moment before stepping back and glaring at her father.

“I have nothing more to say to you,” she says coldly. Then she turns on her heels and marches out of the dining room and up the stairs, slamming her bedroom door. Holly flinches at the sound and scoots closer to Karen.

His mother had been watching everything unfold without saying a word. For the first time in forever, Mike can’t read the expression on her face. Karen and he had always been the same in that aspect; they couldn’t really hide their emotions that well. Their feelings were always plastered all across their faces, hidden in the crease of their brow or the tugging of their mouth. Karen always used to say a blind person could tell how they were feeling just by touching their face. It was always something Mike thought he’d inherited from her, but now he finds comfort in the notion that he got some of his mannerisms from his mother without even being her biological son. Like he somehow earned their similarities.

Slowly, Karen rises to her feet. She doesn’t look at Ted as she bridges the distance between her and Richie. Mike doesn’t know what to expect and when she raises her hand he briefly fears she’s going to slap Richie across the face, and Richie seems to think the same because he tenses and closes his eyes as if expecting the blow, but then Karen’s hand lands gingerly on his cheek. Richie blinks his eyes open, confusion reflecting in them, but then he melts into the touch.

“Oh, Richie,” she says softly. “Of course you’re always welcome here. I know I’m not your mother, but you have a family here. Your brother, and your half sisters.” She doesn’t mention their father. “I’m so sorry about all of this. If I’d known… if Ted had told me the truth… I would’ve fought tooth and nail to get you home, Richie. I wouldn’t have rested until you were with us too.”

Richie’s bottom lip trembles and Karen swiftly wipes away a lone tear sliding down his cheek. 

“Oh, you beautiful boy,” she whispers, and pulls him into a hug. Mike stands to the side, feeling a bit awkward as his mother hugs his brother, but then she reaches out and presses him against her too.

Mike revels in his mother’s touch, buries himself in the smell of her perfume. He can’t remember the last time he got hugged like this by her. Their touches had become scarce over the years, and Mike knows it’s just as much his fault as it is Karen’s. He had pulled away from her touches, ducked away from her kisses and hugs. And, like with keeping conversations going and trying to make family outings fun, Karen had stopped trying after a while.

After a heartbeat, Holly rises from her chair as well and comes over. She stands by Karen’s side and looks up at Mike and Richie. Mike smiles encouragingly at her and ruffles her hair.

“I’m sorry for yelling earlier, Hols,” he says. “And I’m sorry for keeping Richie a secret.”

Holly shrugs.

“It’s okay, I guess. But for the record, I think Richie is now my favorite brother.”

Richie laughs and Mike’s hand shoots to his chest as if clutching his heart.

“Rude!” He says.

Holly sticks out her tongue at him.

“Well, Richie didn’t comment on my missing front tooth once while he was pretending to be you!”

“Ah, okay. I guess that’s a pretty convincing reason,” Mike grins. 

The mood in the room briefly lifts during their short interaction, but quickly shifts back to the same thick tension as earlier when Karen turns her gaze towards her husband, sitting quietly on his chair at the other end of the table.

“Holly, go to your room for a bit,” Karen says gently. Holly must notice the shift in energy as well, because she doesn’t complain and makes her way up the stairs. Mike suddenly feels exhausted and wishes he could follow her, could curl into his bed and sleep so that this day can finally be over, but it’s clear his mother isn’t finished yet.

“I want your stuff out of the house by tomorrow,” she says coolly to Ted. He seems to shrink even further into himself, like his spine is collapsing in on itself.

“Karen…” he starts, but she raises a slender hand to stop him.

“Not a word out of you anymore, Ted. Out by tomorrow. And I think you should spend the night at your brother’s. I can’t even look at you right now.”

Ted sputters and begs to let him explain, to give him a chance to please make it up to her, but Karen doesn’t budge. They watch together as Ted gets up and goes upstairs to their room, where he packs his bags. Richie and Mike are quiet as they wait, not knowing what to say as the realization dawns on them that they dropped a nuclear bomb on Mike’s family. That this isn’t something they can come back from. Karen’s back is straight and her face unreadable the entire time, and only when Ted has left the house with a final pleading does she allow herself to loosen her spine.

A thunderous silence settles over the house when Ted has pulled the front door closed behind him. It’s a different silence than what Mike is used to; less oppressive and more… hopeful. Like a forest waking out of a winter slumber; tentative, uncertain, not quite knowing if the frost is gone and spring is finally arriving.

Karen calls the girls back downstairs, and the house seems to come alive under her fingertips. Dusk had settled as Mike tore apart his family, so Karen moves around the house to put on the lights. She even lights the candles on the dining room table. She puts on the radio as she does so, humming along to a song as she whisks the cold dishes into her arms and to the kitchen. Mike and Richie watch in silent amazement. Mike almost expects forest animals to come through the window and help his mother sweep the entire house like in Snow White.

Nancy and Holly gather in the dining room again and watch as Karen takes the food Mike and Richie cooked back to the kitchen to reheat it in the microwave. When the food is warm enough she brings it back to the dining room and replaces it on the table. Then she sits down and gestures for the others to do the same.

“Now,” she says, pillowing her chin on her intertwined fingers, “Richie, I want to know everything about you.”

It’s one of the weirdest family dinners in Mike’s life. Ted absent, Richie present, Holly laughing at his jokes and Nancy rolling her eyes at Mike, passing around the gravy and mashed potatoes, and talking. So much talking. Richie tells them about his life in Derry, about his mother and his friends. He tells Karen his favorite subject in school is English, that he wants to study film at college, but that he’s nervous about leaving his friends behind. Holly tells him about her friends at school, Nancy talks about college, and Mike is content just to listen. They’re clearly dancing around their father’s absence, obviously avoiding the elephant in the room, but Mike finds himself not caring at all. Richie is beside him, their shoulders knocking together whenever Richie reaches for some bread, and the carved out part in Mike’s heart with Richie written above it feels full and content.

Finally, after years of quiet family dinners and resigned distance, the Wheeler house feels alive and warm. Finally, it feels like home .

Chapter Text

Mike and Richie share Mike’s bed that night. Mike offered to take the couch downstairs, but Richie insisted that they’d share his bed. After tonight, he can’t stand the thought of not being with his brother. 

Mike upgraded from a twin bed to a double mattress when he turned sixteen, so though it’s still a tight fit they can at least sleep somewhat comfortably.

“Are you okay?” Mike whispers in the half dark of his rooms. The curtains are closed but light from a street lantern outside is seeping through, drenching everything in his room in a soft orange glow.

“Kind of,” Richie says. Standing before Ted and listening to him straight up admit that Richie’s life meant nothing to him was probably the hardest thing he’s ever done. He had felt like the ground was opening up and swallowing him whole as Ted recounted what he told Richie already a few nights earlier, only more truthful this time. Richie felt like he was standing on the edge of a cliff, like this would finally undo him completely, and was already imagining the losers having to take him back to Derry in pieces - Eddie carrying an arm, Bev a leg, Ben his head. But then Mike had talked him down, had taken him by the hand and hadn’t let go until Ted was gone. Richie had felt tethered to him.

“You did great, Richie. I know it must’ve been hard.”

Richie scoffs in order not to sob. 

“Since when are you so soft on me?” He says teasingly.

“Shut up,” Mike says, nudging him slightly. “I’m serious, Rich. Ted sucks. What he said was so nasty.”

“Yeah,” Richie agrees, voice soft. “But your mom was awesome.”

“Oh yeah, she was a total badass! And I think she really likes you.” Mike hesitates, letting his eyes wander over Richie’s face for a moment. They look like black holes in the barely lit room. “You should come back to visit. She’d really like that. I would really like that.”

“Aw, Michael, stop before I start to think you love me.”

Mike chuckles and pulls up his leg to knock his knee against Richie’s. Richie knocks back in response.

“I do love you, you idiot. You’re my brother. I can’t imagine my life without your annoying presence anymore.”

Richie’s throat suddenly constricts, tears prickling in his eyes. He didn’t used to get so emotional over dumb stuff like love confessions. And he knows Mike loves him. He’d felt it earlier tonight at the dinner table, when Mike was defending him against Ted ( and what about Richie? ). But Mike had never actually said it out loud .

“I love you too,” Richie manages to choke out. “I never had a brother growing up, but now I can’t imagine a life without you in it.”

“So corny,” Mike teases. Then, after a heartbeat or two, he says, “I kissed Will yesterday.”

Richie’s heart shoots up his throat.

“ What! ” He exclaims. Mike puts his hand on his mouth to shush him.

“Not so loud, Richard!” He pleads. Richie licks Mike’s hand and Mike drops it immediately, wiping it on Richie’s shirt with a disgusted groan.

“ Michael ,” Richie whisper-yells. “You can’t just drop that on me like you’re telling me about the weather! You kissed him? I need to know everything. Where? When? How? I bet he’s a good kisser. He is, isn’t he? He just gives off good kisser vibes.”

Richie feels Mike’s blush more than he sees it. Mike ducks his head to hide the dopey grin on his face, but Richie catches it anyway.

“He’s a great kisser,” Mike agrees.

“Knew it! I can always tell. Anyway, details , Mike. I need details!”

So Mike tells him about what he and Will were up to while the losers were getting acquainted with the party. He speaks about it so openly - about the kiss, about their conversation. Richie can’t imagine the Mike he met at camp a few weeks ago doing everything Mike did the last few days. Kissing Will, standing up to his father, telling Richie he loves him. All these things that Mike would never have done only a few weeks ago. Richie’s heart swells.

“I’m so proud of you,” he says once Mike is done talking. “You’ve come such a long way since we met. You have no idea how proud I am of you, Mike.”

Mike’s dark eyes glisten with tears.

“Thanks, Richie. It’s all because of you. You… changed me, I guess. Or helped me change myself.”

Richie shrugs.

“Well, I wish pretending to be you had given me some sort of revelation, but alas. I guess I was just perfect to begin with.”

“Alright, that’s enough compliments for tonight. They’re getting to your head already,” Mike says, eyes rolling. Richie chuckles.

They’re quiet for a moment, just staring up at the ceiling together. Just when Richie thinks Mike has fallen asleep, he speaks.

“Promise you’ll visit? And maybe we could… I don’t know, spend Thanksgiving together?”

Richie pictures it so vividly it almost feels like a vision. Sitting around the dinner table like he had tonight, surrounded by his family. Giving them their Christmas presents early because he’ll spend Christmas with the losers like he does every year. Forcing Mike to wear stupid matching Christmas sweaters. Going back to Derry with an envelope full of freshly developed pictures of his sisters and brother and the mother he wished he had.

Richie holds up his pinkie finger. Mike wraps his own around it.

“Promise,” Richie says.

***

If Mike’s mom is upset about having thirteen hungry teenagers over for breakfast, she doesn’t show it. She welcomes the party and the losers, seating them around the big dining room table, and goes out to buy eggs and milk and bacon to whip up a big breakfast before the losers hit the road again.

Mike and Will sit next to each other during breakfast. Now that Richie knows about them, it seems so obvious. The way their elbows are continuously touching, how Will smiles shyly at him when Mike passes him the butter. Mike smiles back just as shyly and averts his gaze, like it hurts to look directly at Will.

The losers pack back into the van after breakfast. Stan groans as he crawls back in, cursing under his breath. Bill strokes his back empathetically while simultaneously rolling his eyes at Richie.

Bev says goodbye to Max and El and writes her phone number on the back of El’s hand. She makes them promise to call her and immediately invites herself over to Richie’s next visit so she can see them again. 

Richie lingers around the party when his friends are all back in the van. He takes his time saying goodbye to them, hugging them close despite their slight awkwardness with hugs.

“Again, so sorry I lied to you guys,” he says to Lucas and Dustin. “I hope we can still be friends with me just being Richie.”

Lucas smiles warmly at him.

“Of course, Richie. You’re pretty cool as yourself too. Though I’m really curious…” He jerks his thumb to the van, where Eddie is pressing his face to the window and making faces at them. “You and Eddie. Are you like…” He doesn’t finish his question, instead intertwines his hands. Dustin makes an embarrassed sound at the back of his throat and grabs Lucas’s wrist, pulling his hands apart from each other.

“Lucas, you can’t just ask him that!” He squeals. Then, to Richie. “I’m so sorry about him, I swear his brain leaked out his ears years ago.”

Richie laughs.

“It’s fine,” he assures them. “I guess we are, you know…” He mimics Lucas’s intertwined hands gesture. “Kind of, at least. I don’t know, we don’t really do…” He thinks of the right word to say. Monogamy? That feels like a bit too much to drop on them. “Labels,” he finishes. 

“Cool,” Lucas grins and oh, Mike coming out to his friends is gonna be so much easier than Mike ever thought.

“Cool,” Richie nods. Then he moves down the line to hug Will.

“Sorry I almost let you kiss me,” he whispers so the others don’t hear. 

Will laughs.

“Don’t worry about it. Glad we didn’t.”

“Yeah, you and I would’ve never worked. You’re too good looking for me anyway.”

Will slaps him on the arm.

“Definitely not true.”

Now it’s Richie’s turn to laugh. He raps his knuckles against Will’s.

“At least we’ll always have our matching tattoos,” he reminisces.

“A frog and a skeleton aren’t exactly matching ,” Will counters.

“I’m sorry, does Mike have a tattoo Max gave him on your living room couch?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, as far as I’m concerned we’re matching. And speaking of Mike…” He glances at his brother by the front door, next to Nancy and Holly. “Take care of him, okay? We both know he can be an asshole sometimes, but he’s… you know.”

Will looks at him with those big, honest eyes. Richie doesn’t need to explain further for Will to understand. He’s fragile. He’s sensitive. Please be gentle with him.

“I will,” Will promises. Richie nods, hugs him once more and then moves down the line to Max and El.

“I’m actually gonna miss you, you big idiot,” Max sniffs. “Don’t tell Mike I’m gonna miss his doppelganger or he’ll think I actually care about him and his life.”

“I’ll take it to my grave,” Richie promises. Max smiles teary-eyed at him and steps away so Richie can hug El too.

“Bye, doofus,” she mutters as they hug. “Take care. Come visit.” Then she pulls back from the hug and averts her gaze, cheeks suddenly pink. “And uh… take Beverly with you when you come around. I… like her. She’s cool.”

Richie raises his eyebrows at her.

“You like her? What kind of like ?”

El’s nostrils flare in alarm. She looks around them as if to see if someone is listening, but Max moved more towards Lucas, who’s standing out of earshot.

“I just… I just like her, okay? Don’t make it weird.”

“Alright, alright, I won’t. And I’ll bring her when I come to visit so you can give her a little smooch at the quarry.” He wiggles his eyebrows suggestively and El turns even pinker, averting her gaze. Richie kisses her on her forehead. “Trust me,” he says, “your secret is safe with me.” Then he steps away from her and throws himself at Mike, who catches him with a small umf.

“I’m gonna miss you so much!” Richie exclaims into Mike’s hair as he presses his brother close. “Call me like every day to talk about all the boring stuff you did.”

“Of course,” Mike promises. “You’ll get bored of me so quickly.”

“Never, you know that.”

“Yeah, I know,” Mike smiles. He squeezes Richie’s shoulder before releasing him so he can say goodbye to Nancy and Holly too. Holly gives him a drawing she made of them all together (even Ted, and Richie bites his tongue so he doesn’t say anything bad about that) and Nancy offers him one of her mixtapes as a parting gift.

“See you soon,” she says.

“Promise,” Richie nods.

He says goodbye to Karen last, who wraps him in a comforting hug.

“Take care, Richie,” she says with teary eyes. “And remember you’ll always have a place here if you want.”

“I know, thank you, Karen. I’ll see you at Thanksgiving.”

Karen nods and kisses him on the cheek. Richie smiles one final time at her and then turns towards the van.

“Ready?” Ben asks from behind the wheel. Richie squeezes into the van next to Bill, who smiles encouragingly at him.

“Yeah,” Richie sighs. “I mean, even my mother is gonna get worried and call the police if I don’t show up in the next few days. It’s time to go home.”

Ben nods and starts the van. Richie looks out the window as he drives off the Wheeler driveway. The party and Mike and Karen and his sisters are all standing in front of the house, waving them off. 

Richie waves back until they’re just tiny dots in the distance.