Chapter Text
Will is eight years old when he first meets the love of his life. He’s sitting alone on a wooden swing in the palace gardens, just far enough from the ballroom to hear the fading remnants of loud voices and raucous laughter. Despite it being the night of the Snow Ball, there was a rather disappointing lack of snow; still, a wintry chill remains and sinks its way under his skin.
Will shivers and thinks wistfully of the warm ballroom, where enchanted snowflakes drifted from the ceiling and faded into soft sparks at the slightest contact. He is just debating returning to find his brother when he hears a voice behind him.
“Hi.” Will cranes his head around to see a boy roughly his age. The boy has thick raven curls that frame his face and a friendly smile that Will finds himself automatically returning, albeit more shyly. His tiny fists are bunched nervously in the bottom of his coat, and Will subconsciously notes that it looks of a much nicer material than his.
Emboldened by Will’s smile, the boy steps forward. “Would you like to be friends?”
Nobody had ever asked Will this before and it takes him by surprise, but he supposes it’s an easy question. The garden he’s hiding in is tucked into a far corner of the palace and surrounded by high walls on three sides; he doubts anyone would have come here unless they didn’t want to be found.
“Okay.”
The two boys stare at each other in silence, and Will doesn’t really know what he’s supposed to do. After a second, he scoots over to one end of the wooden swing and pats the open space.
“Want to swing with me?”
There’s less than half of the seat left, but the boy walks around to plop down next to Will anyway. They sit snug against each other, and Will swears he can feel his warmth through the sleeves of his coat.
“My name is Mike, by the way.”
“Oh! I’m Will.”
Mike shifts to face his body towards Will as much as the swing allows.
“So, what are you doing outside?”
Will shrugs. “It was really loud, I guess.”
A half-truth. It was indeed extremely loud inside, but not any more boisterous than the celebrations his family frequented down in the city common. His true anxieties lay in the hundreds of strange faces that had stared down at him, of the older children who took one glance at him and turned away with a sneer. He doesn’t understand what he did to garner those reactions and fled from the stifling pressure in the room before the hour had even ended.
Mike smiles sympathetically. “It is always like that. And everyone there is very boring.”
Will giggles, Mike’s nonchalant attitude somehow making him more at ease.
“What do you think is fun, then?”
Mike sends him a delighted smile.
“Stories! But the good stories, with knights and dragons.”
“I like those too! -- but mostly drawing them.”
“No way. That’s so cool! You have to show me,” Mike insists, grabbing onto Will’s arm and shaking him so enthusiastically Will’s whole body sways.
The rising energy between them reverberates like a firework, each made more excited by the other, and the conversation between them flows rapidly. It’s everything Will has never been able to talk with the other children about, and all too soon, Will hears the familiar sound of his mother calling his name.
“I have to go,” Will says hesitantly, disappointment plain in his voice. It’s only now that he realizes how his cheeks are numb from laughter instead of cold, the chill from before completely melted away.
Mike looks equally as disappointed, and it makes something in Will’s chest flutter. They both hop off the swing, but before Will can wrangle a reluctant good-bye from the pit of his stomach, Mike calls his attention again.
“You don’t live around here, do you?”
“In the castle?” Will asks, confused.
“No, I mean in the manors—next to the castle. Like where everyone here lives.”
Will’s heart sinks. Of course. He’d known that Mike was different right when they met, and it was obvious that the other boy had noticed as well. How could he not, with Will’s cheap coat and the way he had sat alone in the empty garden? Mike was like those fancy, straight-backed people in the ballroom, at place with its glistening tile floors and intricately painted ceiling, and Will…wasn’t.
Will lowers his head and stares at his feet, which are starting to blur. He knew they were different, but why did it have to be bad?
Mike takes one glance at Will’s watering eyes and immediately begins to panic. He grabs Will’s hands and pulls them to his chest.
“Not-not that it’s a bad thing that you don’t! I said before, didn’t I? All those people inside are boring, and I have fun around you. Nobody’s ever talked with me about this stuff before. You’re my friend, Will, really”.
Will looks up with a sniffle.
“I would love to see your art,” Mike continues, earnest with every fiber of his body, “and I’ll find you at the next Snow Ball. Okay? You have to come, so we can see each other again.”
“Okay,” Will whispers, and Mike beams.
In the distance, Will hears another voice call his name-- his perpetually anxious mother must have asked Jonathan to join the search. Unwilling to worry his family any further, Will finally pulls away. He immediately misses the warmth between their hands, but he only turns around to send Mike one last wave before running off in the direction of his family. See you soon, Mike.
---
After that, Will spends every day counting down to the next Snow Ball. Sometimes when he lays awake on a night where the sky is particularly clear, he can see the royal castle atop its hill, miles away, through his open window. His own home has wooden floorboards that creak on the third stair, and occasionally he can hear the rapid-pitter patter of wild cats running across the roof of his attic bedroom. Now back in his monotonous daily life, it feels as though his night in the royal garden was simply an elaborate dream constructed by some mischievous fairy. However, when he thinks about the gentle hold of Mike’s hands, of his bright eyes and easy smiles and the warmth in his own chest, he’s positive that no magic could have ever created such a feeling.
And so he carries on with his days, holding that memory close. His mother had recently married a royal guard named Hopper, and while he was of no noble birth and earned less than those who received their positions through status instead of merit, it still afforded them a comfortable house—akin to a large, glorified cottage-- and expansive land near the edge of the city. The unused farmland behind their house was mostly overgrown grasses that led into the woods, but Will enjoyed exploring with Jonathan. With just the three of them and Hopper living in the castle, it tended to be relatively quiet.
Most importantly, Hopper’s earnings allowed them to finally pay in coin the only schoolteacher in the city, Master Clarke. He taught a small gathering of children in his home three times a week, and the majority of them paid in dried meats, wool, and baskets of whatever excess had come from their harvest that season. It was out of pure luck that Joyce had chanced upon him in the city-- anyone well-educated enough to teach usually worked and lived solely within the manors of the nobility.
Today is a morning off from his studies, but Will still rises alongside the sun. His bare feet are cold even against the thin fur rug on his floor, and remnants of the previous night’s darkness still haven’t fully faded from the sky. Half-asleep and performing the rote movements of routine, he dresses himself in comfortable linen clothing before padding down the stairs with his satchel of art supplies slung across one shoulder.
As usual, his mother is already awake and the empty plate on the table indicates that Jonathan has just left. After eating together, Will and his mother ride their old horse into the city, where Joyce sells wares at a trading shop and Will sits obediently in the back room drawing. Will spends all morning sketching out the outline of a vicious orc, and then the valiant wizard –who looks suspiciously like himself-- that defeats it.
The small kingdom of Hawkins is peaceful and relatively prosperous, but it is also separated from neighboring territories by thick forests and wide lakes. Everything Will knows of magic is from travelling storytellers and old books his mother reads to him before bed; the only mages in the kingdom live within the castle walls, so his likelihood of apprenticing under one is roughly the same as if there weren’t any at all.
Still, he can’t help but dream that one day he’ll be able to wield magic and conquer evil with his own party of adventurous friends. They would travel together, exploring bustling cities where magic folk and humans mingled, enchanted forests where beautiful faeries danced under the glow of the moon. By the time his mother comes to collect him for lunch, he’s added to his drawing his best attempt of Mike as a knight, all in shining silver armor and a matching sword.
----
Will is nine years old when he sees Mike again for the second time. He’s holding onto his mother with one hand and a roughed-up sketchbook in the other as he looks around the ballroom, equally intimidated as he is eager to find Mike. He hears the boy before he sees him.
“Will!”
A small body pushes its way through long legs and voluminous skirts, and suddenly a red-faced Mike pops out right in front of him. Will immediately pounces forward to hug him, causing the two to stumble backwards. Mike is just as warm as Will remembers.
“You’re here,” Will says when they pull apart. You’re real.
“Of course,” Mike retorts, as sure as if it were a truth cemented into the very laws of nature. “I said I would be, and friends don’t lie.”
His eyes drift down to the sketchbook Will has clutched against his chest, and his face splits into an excited grin. Uncaring of the disapproving glares from the adults around them, Mike grabs Will by the hand and pulls him toward the same garden they had met a year ago. The cold air immediately surrounds them as they step outside the ballroom doors, and a thin layer of snow crunches under their feet.
“Don’t you want to stay inside?” Will asks, breath fogging up as he runs.
Mike glances back at him. “But it’s loud in there, isn’t it?”
Will smiles at the back of Mike’s curly head, cheeks warm with giddiness.
“We can go back inside if it’s cold, though.”
“No, not at all!”
When they arrive at the garden, Will is out of breath but much too excited to rest. He immediately sits down and opens the sketchbook on his lap, and Mike follows him onto the swing.
“Will, these are incredible!” Mike reaches over to flip through the pages; some are filled with doodles, others left half blank, and a few are covered in detailed drawings brought to life with full color. Will feels warm with satisfaction at the praise, and is equal parts excited as he is nervous when Mike pauses at the drawing of the two of them defeating a ferocious green orc.
“Is that me?” Mike glances at him, eyes wide, and Will gives him a shy little nod.
He points at the wizard, clad in flowing purple robes and surrounded by blue light. “And that’s me. It’s silly, but…” no more than anything else I dream about every day.
“Do you want to learn magic?”
The question startles Will-- nobody had ever casually asked him if he wanted to learn magic before, as if it was a perfectly reasonable goal and something possible at all. However, Mike’s eyes shine with curiosity and Will lets himself feel hopeful.
“I think it’d be cool! I mean, who doesn’t want to make fire out of nothing or move things with your mind? I know that I’ll never be a mage or a wizard, or anything, but I still—it’s fun to draw.” Will internally winces at the way his voice comes out almost defensive; it isn’t like Mike had made fun of him. Yet.
When he turns to glance at Mike, the other boy is already looking straight at him.
“You know, sometimes I like to write stories about myself as a knight too,” Mike says, and the pink tinge on his cheeks belies the casualness of his tone.
“I’d rescue a princess and know how to ride a horse and use a sword.”
“That sounds awesome.”
Mike smiles, and his whole face lights up. “Yeah?”
“Yeah!”
The two boys spend the next three hours huddled together on the swings, flipping through Will’s sketchbook under the moonlight. And when Mike waves good-bye at the end of the night, he has the drawing of their two-member party held tightly in one hand.
----
Will is ten years old, and he is once again at the Snow Ball with his sketchbook in hand. He’d sneaked away from his mother and Hopper just minutes ago, and only feels a little guilty for it. His mother can only see Hopper once a year, and she insists on him and Jonathan spending more time with their stepfather throughout the night, but Will can also only see a special person once a year.
He’s making his way through the ballroom searching for Mike when someone roughly knocks into his shoulder, nearly pushing him over. He glances over his shoulder to see two older boys snickering at him before they disappear into the crowd.
Will stands rooted in place, frozen with embarrassment and unsure how to react, when a familiar hand grabs onto his arm. It’s Mike, who takes once look at Will’s wide eyes before his delight morphs into concern.
“What’s wrong?”
Will is tempted to placate on instinct, to insist that it was nothing. And it is nothing, really. But something about seeing Mike again after a year loosens his tongue, and the distinct memory of Mike saying “friends don’t like” rings in his head.
“Just—some boys ran into me, and they laughed. It was mean.”
Mike is immediately angry on his behalf. “They’re just stupid bullies. Don’t worry about it, Will.”
“Yeah. Thanks, Mike.”
Mike smiles reassuringly, eyes gentle once again, and his hand moves from Will’s arms to his hands. As per tradition, the two slip into the garden and pore over Will’s sketchbook on the wooden swing. Mike tells him about the stories he wrote when he wasn’t in his classes; he gestures enthusiastically while talking about brave paladins and evil trolls, and Will itches to draw it all out.
When they prepare to part at the end of the night, Mike is once again holding onto several extracted pages of Will’s sketchbook.
“When I see you next time, you can tell me more of your stories and I’ll draw them out for you,” Will says, and Mike’s face, already flush from the cold, seems to glow a brighter pink.
“What if we didn’t have to wait until next time?”
Will makes a questioning noise.
“Would you like to write? Send letters, I mean. I could give you my address? I’ll tell you about my stories, and you can tell me about your art.”
Will, of course, agrees.
---
Mike and Will exchange letters, writing as well as any ten year olds can. To Will’s pleasant surprise, the majority of their letters are about their personal lives. Before, hidden between the private walls of the castle garden, each night ended in the blink of an eye and nothing about it seemed real when Will awoke in his own home just hours after. There just never seemed to be enough time.
Now, Will has a rapidly increasing stack of letters to teach him who Mike Wheeler is, and every piece he learns about the other boy adds to the growing affections buried in his heart. Will learns about Mike’s prim and proper--but terribly insufferable--older sister Nancy, who’s in line to inherit the Wheeler lordship, and his baby sister Holly. He learns about the classes that Mike enjoys and the private tutors he finds annoying, and how the noble boys his age have all moved into the castle to begin their knight training (Ironically, despite his various stories, Mike has no particular interest in actually training to become a knight). He is apparently extremely delighted that he now has to see less of them at gatherings, and, as usual, spends the majority of his time at home writing. He always signs off his letters with “Love, Mike” in clumsy, fancy cursive.
In return, Will writes about his lessons with Master Clarke, about the various books and trinkets that pass through the hands at his mother’s trading shop, and his and Jonathan’s explorations in the woods behind their house. He occasionally attaches a piece of art to his letters, and Mike responds with enthusiastic appreciation each time.
The same well-mannered servant arrives at his door nearly every week with Mike’s letter in hand, and Will has developed the bad habit of finding excuses to stay at home when he next expects his letter, waiting for the approaching sound of clipping hooves. He sends his own letters through the neighborly milk carter down the road, who leaves before sunrise each day to deliver fresh milk to the manors by the castle.
Will now counts down the days between the arrival of Mike’s letters, and it feels as if Mike isn’t so far away after all.
---
Will is eleven years old and walking through the castle ballroom, plate of food in hand. It’s a steaming slice of golden pie with roasted fowl of some sort inside, carefully sized to leave Will just slightly unsatisfied. (Take too big a portion and the others would make their scorn evident, but touch nothing at all and they would whisper passing remarks of ungratefulness all the same. It seems as if there are several rules that apply only to Will and his family, and he understands none of them).
He thinks he’s just spotted a familiar lick of curly black hair when two boys step in front of him. Will blinks and tries to step around them, but they move to deliberately block his way.
…okay?
“Um…can I help you.”
The taller boy, with straight sandy hair and a truly obnoxious amount of lacy ruffles bursting through his coat sleeves, sneers down at him. Will instinctively takes a step back, more uncomfortable than cowed.
“What could someone like you possibly do to help us?”
He waves a dramatic sleeve at the pie going cold in Will’s hands, nearly batting him with a face full of lace. Will’s not quite sure what prompted all this and desperately wishes he were with Mike instead.
“Who do you think provides all this, only for ungrateful commoners like you to take more than you need?” the other boy continues, and it’s the first time Will feels a small spark of annoyance.
He thinks of the country village he was born in and the common people he grew up among before his mother married Hopper. He thinks of the young boys trekking several miles a day to lead their cattle to streams and the adults weeding crops under the scorching afternoon sun, and he thinks “certainly not people like you”.
However, out loud, he says nothing at all and simply stares back blankly. The other boy seems to take his awkwardness as defiance, and his face twists in anger.
“You’ll never be as good as us,” he spits. He stalks forward with each word, and the mild uneasiness Will previously felt swiftly morphs into an icy fear that renders his body frozen. “You were born different, and people like you will always be freaks.”
Will tries to take just one step backwards, away, please, but his feet are heavy as if shackled with stone and he doesn’t have time to move before the other boy shoves him to the ground. The delicate porcelain plate in his hands strikes the floor and immediately splits into a thousand tiny fragments; the piercing ring of shattering glass is obvious even above the din of noise around him, and under the shocked numbness of his mind, he can tell that everyone around them has gone silent.
He knows what he must look like: the stupid commoner boy who can’t speak right or dress well, laying beneath everyone’s feet surrounded by broken glass and spilt food. The whole confrontation had happened so quickly, and suddenly everything is too much; the lights are too bright, the whispers too loud, the feeling of the tile floor underneath his fingers too cold. From his place on the ground, everyone seems to be staring down at him and they’re too close and he can’t breathe—
“Will!”
Someone crouches in front of him and grabs his shoulders, and Will can’t see anything through the blur of tears in his eyes but he’d recognize that voice anywhere.
“I’ve been looking for you. Are you hurt?” Mike glances at Will as if checking him over, and Will shakes his head mutely.
“Okay, come on, let’s get out of here then,” Mike coaxes, and he stands to pull Will’s limp body up. Will lets Mike lead him away, head drooping, and tries to focus only on the comfort of Mike’s arm around his shoulder.
“Wheeler? What are you doing, hanging around someone like him?”
Mike ignores the taunt and continues walking Will toward the entrance.
Will hears the boy behind them step forward and he squeezes his eyes shut, heartbeat pounding; he wishes he could shrink himself until he was small enough to bury himself in the safe circle of Mike’s arms.
However, Mike only gives his shoulder a reassuring squeeze before turning his head to level the other boy with a glare.
“Follow us and I’ll tell Lady Walsh about how you attacked the son of the Head Royal Guard in front of everyone,” he threatened, tone vicious with anger, and doesn’t wait for a reply before pulling Will away. They leave the ballroom, and nobody stops them.
The walk to their familiar hidden garden is quiet, and when they arrive Mike gently arranges Will onto the swings. He squeezes himself on alongside Will; the fit is a little tighter than before, but the proximity is comforting. The two sit in silence, and Will knows that it’s Mike waiting until he’s ready to talk.
Eventually, his tears dry and his heartbeat calms, and he opens his mouth to speak.
“That plate must have been super expensive.”
Mike lets out a startled laugh, and then looks a little guilty. “Will, who cares about the plate!”
“Did you know the boy back there?” Will blurts out the question before he can stop himself and the modicum of humor between them vanishes instantly.
Mike scowls, turning up his nose at the mere thought of the other boy.
“That was one of the boys I wrote about in my letter—Troy. His father is the Viscount of Merrillville, and he can never shut up about it. I guess we all know each other, a little bit. I hate him.”
We—that “we” wasn’t Will-and-Mike, that was Mike and the other nobility he grew up with, the same ones that had watched Troy push him down and done nothing. Somehow, Will had let himself forget that Mike existed separate from their friendship and yes, of course he knew that Mike lived in a world different from his. But it was always the two of them, together, and it was like nothing outside of that mattered.
Unable to bear Will’s downcast silence, Mike lets out an angry huff and grabs Will’s hands.
“Will, people like Troy say awful things to make themselves feel better. Nothing he said matters—"
“But what if he was right?” Will’s words come out as a whisper, but it cuts off Mike’s sentence all the same. He attempts to retort but Will plows on, the rawness of his emotions earlier having left his anxieties unstoppered.
“What if I really am different, and I’ll never be as good as them, as good as you?”
“That’s not true!” Mike argued fiercely.
“Mike, but what if he was right?” Will hates the desperate vulnerability in his voice, and he doesn’t really even know what he’s asking for. What he wants Mike to say, what the other boy could say.
The thing is, Will is old enough now to understand what it means to be different, whether that difference between the nobility and the common people or the rich and the poor, the weak and the powerful, or the boys who looked at girls and the ones who only looked at other boys. It was the reason why he never suggested that he wanted to visit Mike, and instead kept their distance carefully regulated by ink on paper.
He knows that despite their friendship now, he doesn’t truly belong next to Mike for reasons that were truly determined the second he was born.
However, when Mike answers, he speaks with just as much surety as before.
“Well, then if you’re different and a freak then I am too! I think knight training is stupid, and dressing up is stupid, and talking with everyone as if you like them when you don’t is so, so stupid—”
Will finally laughs and Mike looks at him with a pleased smile.
“We like the same things, don’t we? Why does it matter if we’re different from other people—”
“—when they’re so boring anyway,” Will finishes, and his smile is soft but genuine.
Will knows that Mike’s words don’t close the predetermined divide between them, not really; they won’t change how others look at him, or what they assume his worth to be. But maybe Will doesn’t mind so much if he’s different if it means being able to love Mike Wheeler like nobody else.
---
Will knows that after that night, something in the way he looks at Mike changes. He knows it’s selfish and that what they have right now will never last, but just for now—he’ll allow himself this, just for now.
---
Will is twelve years old when he has his first vision, and everything changes.