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The swing's joints screech and moan, rusted away, groaning under the pressure of the sky, the weak autumn sun and the fact that it's September.
It's moaning in pain, he decides, beging to be put out of it's misery in steel and chipping green paint. The cold early autumn wind a whistling and whirling mess, rattling the chains of the empty swing next to his.
But something about getting up, shuffling off somewhere else and abandoning this poor sad swing feels rather like a betrayal, so he sits very still and very alone, in his itchy yellow scarf and hand me down coat, little hands clasped in his lap, trembling in the cold.
He hides behind his fringe, mousey brown hair tickling the bridge of his nose, gently tucking himself away from the joyous chaos of a school yard closing his eyes and trying very hard to not exist.
They can't possibly make him do sums if he's faded out of existence.
Maybe if he concentrates hard enough he could re-materialize as an old receipt or candy wrapper in the pocket of his Mom's worn corduroy jacket where he'd be warm and safe and not surrounded by shout-y children in bright colours.
He closes his eyes, scrunches up his nose and focuses every bit of energy in his small, shivering self on simply being not here, this, however, is almost immediately interrupted by a meek voice peeping up beside him,
“Hi”
His eyes snap open as he is reminded quite abruptly that he is not, in fact, a small crumpled up piece of paper, but a small crumpled up boy on a creaky swing,
There's a boy now, staring at him, all eyes and fluffy hair getting blown around in the wind, shinny blue jacket like the ones you'd see in a back to school catalogue,
“What are you doing? are you sleeping?” The boy says tilting his head to one side, not seeming to be at all bothered by the fact that Will hasn't said a word. “That makes sense, I didn't sleep much either! Mom says I've got too much energy but…” He continues on still convinced that Will was trying to take a nap on an old swingset and unaware of him still quietly staring up at him.
His name is Mike, he wants to be friends, and his voice sounds like how orange gummies taste, so Will says yes, the boy smiles and he decides he's alright with existing for a little while longer
A year later he decides he's going to marry him, because that's what you do when you like someone and want to spend the rest of your life with them, according to his Mom at least.
So he runs up to her after school, small sneakers crunching down on gravel as he launches himself into her arms and tells her all about it, how he's his best friend ever and they'll get married in flower crowns under the fir tree behind the school, and there'll be peanut butter sandwiches and apple juice and all sorts of lovely things!
She goes very still all of a sudden, arms still wrapped around him, he glances up at her and wonders why she looks so sad when this is clearly the best thing to happen in the history of the universe as he is steered pointedly towards the car,
She shuts her door and just sits there for a moment wrists resting on the steering wheel, long fingers flexing slowly, staring off into the distance.
He watches her wedding band glinting in the sun, the children trailing out of the school gates and the now empty swing finally at rest.
“Mom?”
She turns to look at him,
“Yes darling?”
“Why'd you look sad?”
She sighs and starts up the car, pulling out of the school parking lot and down the road, keys swinging and jangling against the dashboard as they round a corner, she tells him she's not sad, that she just wants him to be safe.
That he'll understand when he's older.
And he does, years later he'll understand, he'll feel his brothers eyes on him in that same car as they pull out of a different drive way for the last time, and despite orange gummies and kindergarten weddings he will wish he didn't.
°°°
The phone rings, and when Mike's heart lurches up his throat, he tastes more blood than maple syrup.
A school desk placed firmly next to his, morning light filtering in through the shutters and casting shadows across the seat, the utter wrong-ness of it all exemplified by how empty it sits.
They try to reassure him with their awkward pats on the back and their “I’m sure he's fine!", “they'll find him soon.” and “He probably just got lost”s making him want to scream at them that Will doesn't get lost, he's got the best memory in the party, theres a reason why he's their navigator for god's sake!
Will's bike, Mirkwood wrapped up in shiny yellow police tape like the world's worst tinsel, Joyce Byers supposedly raving about Christmas lights, Mike doesn't say ‘i told you so’ because Will isn't there to roll his eyes at him.
So they trudge through the cold rain coming down in awful cutting sheets, boots squelching and slipping in the mud, forcing them to keep moving lest they'd sink down into it, through Dustin's complaints and Lucas' grimace, through the sharp beams of light, Mike swears to God, if the old bastard even exists, that he will find Will Byers or die trying.
He hates it, He hates how much she looks like him with her wide, staring eyes, boyish frame and the way she holds herself as if to make herself smaller.
Hates how her eyes are too brown, nose too pointy, shirt too yellow because how dare she? that's Will's colour, but if she could help them find him…
Eleven, El, it's a good nickname, sweet, normal, convenient.
He tries not to think about how similar it sounds, how the shape of it sits on his tongue like an old memory, about all the awful things that could have happened to Will, or how there's far too many white vans parked down his street.
°°°
“Would you kiss me if i was a girl?” In the warm, stuffy safety of a basement blanket fort, a hesitant voice speaks up from the pile of blankets besides his own,
Dark, too dark to see much more than an outline, too dark to feel anything but hot puffs of breath on his cheek.
Perhaps, if it weren't too early to think, or too late to do anything but, Will might have remembered all the newspaper cutouts referencing him, all the pastors and their pity, all the slammed doors and torn backpack straps, he might have choked down his breath and tried to convince himself he's asleep.
“Yes,” A beat, “I’d kiss you even if you weren't a girl.”
There is no truth serum like 3:00 am post-sleepover delirium.
He hears Mike’s breath hitch in his throat, feels it in the way it wafts across his face, and try as he might to regret, his heart continues thumping on as it did before.
“You can't say that.”
“I know.” He says, and thinks of lemons and how yellow is only red when dripping into a wound.
A trembling hand reaching out towards him, only making its presence known when it pokes him rather abruptly in the eye, flinching back and seeing flashes of colours beneath his eyelids, Will finds it in his own, holding it carefully, how a scientist might balance a question between a pointer and a thumb,
And Mike, ever the top of Mr. Clarke's class, answers it, “I- I would kiss you too.”
“You don't mean that, you just said it ‘cause I did.” An easy way out, as reassuring as a hand patting a knee under a dinner table.
“Hey! that's not true!”
“Shhh! your Mom's gonna wake up!”
“Don’t change the subject! I did mean it!”
“Oh yeah?
Will decides he hates him a bit in that moment, for lemons, crayons snapped in half leaving rough, jagged edges, and how Mike would pretend this never happened, and Will would pretend not to notice how he'd sleep with his back turned to him from then on.
“Yeah!’’
“Then prove it!”
Prove it
…
You started this mess, You end it.
Thin fabric sticking to his skin, suffocated under layers of cloth and night, burning alive under a cold palm pressed against his own, the overwhelming presence of something he'd be a fool to name, a boy gazing at him so intensely he finds it hard to believe he actually exists…
… And a mouth, soft and tangible in the way water is wet and always has been, despite what the scientists might say, pressed against his own.
A kiss barely a peck and another,
and it doesn't taste of flowers, or heart-shaped lollipops, or cheap chocolate on the 15th of February, but of spearmint toothpaste, basement air and Michael Wheeler.
Will thinks about how hot, cold, and sour are all the same when swallowed, and how Mike had kissed him to prove a point, but to who he wasn't sure, and why it felt like more like a comma than a full stop.
Through soft muffled giggles as they attempt to regain some sanity, he pretends to like the colour yellow, fall asleep, and not notice when Mike's foot brushes up against his own
°°°
The night before the Byers packed their lives away into cardboard boxes, hoisted themselves into cars and a moving van, wheels crunching down the driveway for the last time, Mike Wheeler had stood out on that very same patch of asphalt, starting up through the dark at the house that had grown to be more of a home than his own.
It rained, a slow, soggy, half hearted drizzle, as if the sky itself had come down with a nasty cold, sneezing down it's despair.
He skidded and slipped and fell several times as he rounded around the side, not bothering to let himself stay upright, not today, not after what he'd done.
Perhaps if he broke his ankle Will would stay a bit longer, maybe he'd wrap an arm around his shoulders and help him up to the hospital, maybe he'd even draw on the cast like he did when they small, scrawny humans with their wide hopeful eyes and matching bowlcuts.
He tried once, only a few days after his ninth birthday he'd dug up his mom's first aid kit out of the pantry and haphazardly wrapped the bandages around his wrist and palm looping them around and around until the result appeared convincing enough. Will had dutifully held his hand in his lap and drowned out the sterile white in swirling flowers and colourful patterns, a sun and moon on either side.
Mike had hung his head admitting to having faked it only moments later, not being able to bear lying to him, how ironic, it seemed that nowadays it's all he ever does.
From that day on he'd find he'd always end up home littered with small doodles, coloured ink seeping into his veins ... until he didn't.
He was never quite sure when he stopped, sometime after his return from the upside down, sometime before everything had gone to shit.
But despite his best efforts his ankle remained entirely unharmed, if only a little sore, even when he dropped unceremoniously into the Byer's untamed grassy backyard, skinning his knee and flopping onto his back, mud soaking through his flimsy jacket and shorts.
Sending a thanks to the rain, for with all the water streaming down his face and through his hair, it was impossible to differentiate from his tears,
He didn't even startle when another body layed itself down next to his, only opened his eyes and turned slowly to find Will already starting at him, his face mere centimetres away from Mike's, not looking in the least surprised to find him there.
Reaching out and tugging him closer until his head rested comfortably over his collarbone, nuzzling into his neck, Will's arms snaking around him, holding him close enough to hear his heartbeat and the sobs escaping him despite his best efforts.
Years later, Mike will decide that they died there, in eachother's arms, in that damp, overgrown backyard, that in the morning Jonathan, or Joyce, or El would find them there; their bodies turned stiff in death, impossible to pry from one and other, and think it beautiful instead of sad.
Perhaps the coroner would try and separate them only to find that they'd merged somewhere in the middle, having no choice but to bury them together.
But alas, as he woke, only now realising he'd fallen asleep, still in that yard, though the rain had finally let up, the slightest shine of pink on the horizon, he was alone, the only indication that Will had ever been there at all was his silhouette where the mud and greenery had been distributed, and a trail of footprints leading back towards the house.
They never spoke of it again.
°°°
Sitting on the hood of some beat up, broke down pickup truck, avoiding the glare of the sun reflecting off the aluminium beneath him and gazing up at Will Byers.
How hypocritical.
Johnathan and Argyle long having collapsed in the sand below them, only the slightest whiff of marijuana wafting up to remind them of their presence.
They're talking about something, possibly about El, possibly about how every decision he's ever taken he's grown to regret;
Mike can't be quite sure, a stray drop of sweat makes it's slow rolling way down Will's cheek and it makes something in his chest ache, as if someone had driven a stake through his heart many years ago, having mistaken him for a vampire, and it healed wrong. He wouldn't blame them, really.
He also comes to the realisation that he doesn't think he's ever wanted to be a drop of water so badly
Almost wanting to track down the vampire slayer, shove a jagged piece of wood in his hands and ask him to have another go at it, he decides not to pay any mind to how the vampire slayer looks quite unsettlingly like his father.
Will turns to him "Sometimes it's hard to open up like that, to tell people how you really feel," He pauses, the drop hovers by his jaw, "Especially, if they're someone you care about the most" It drips, it falls..."You never know, they might not like the truth." ...and Mike catches it on the tip of his finger, an admission in its own right.
He looks up at Will, hovering ever so slightly above him, and silently thanks whoever parked this piece of junk, the punctured tire causing it to tilt and the rocky, uneven California terrain for allowing him to experience this;
Will, with his tousled hair sticking up every which way, the utterly devastating, scorching sun conjuring up a halo around him, reflecting off his usually green eyes, now seeming to almost glow something golden, holding Mike's gaze like one would a precious ornament.
And there sitting next to a boy set ablaze but not burning, he remembers, so many years ago, before all the lies and words too bitter to bite back; Will telling him about Icarus and how he'd called him stupid "I mean who makes wings out of wax? its stupid, stupid!" and how Will didn't respond, only smiled at him as if he knew he'd say that.
They might not like the truth
"But what if they do?" Mike sucks in a quick breath "What if they... they feel the same way" Will doesn't respond but the look in his eyes reaches into Mike's very soul, searching, his shoulders tensed, quiet, skilled fingers gripping his knees, a string pulled tight, ready to snap.
"Would you? Would you tell them?"
"Maybe."
It comes as a whisper, so soft, Will's mouth barely moving, and if Mike wasn't already staring at it so intently, he might have missed it.
"Would you tell me?" Mike had always been far to stubborn for his own good.
"Maybe."
So had Will.
There is a slight smile playing about the corners of his mouth.
°°°
Once when he was much, much younger, the dark fluffy mess that sat atop his head hardly reaching his mum's elbow, she placed a piece of printer paper and a pair of those scissors with the rounded edges and gummy handles in his chubby palm and told him to cut along the dotted lines.
She held his hands in hers, sitting him down in her lap, perched on her thigh, gently guiding and scolding him ever so often
"Straight lines Mike, for god's sake." if he'd stray off the careful gray dashes,
"Just keep it straight."
So he did, and for a four year old with a mouthful of chocolate chip cookies and a heart full of love he did remarkably well.
He didn't even cry when the rubber slipped from his hand and the scissors swerved wildly, slashing across his thumb, he had, however, let Will plant a kiss on the bandaid the next day, and somehow, that felt much, much, worse.
Years later, El drew a bee on the inside of Mike's left wrist, tiny dotted lines looping around behind it marking out the path it took, the one he'd have to follow himself.
Only he wouldn't, for how dare he wreck such a beautiful innocent creature, even in blue ball-pen ink against pale skin.
So he let it be, and didn't even think about it when Will wrapped a warm, paint-smudged hand around his wrist, tugging him somewhere or another.
And for a fourteen year old with a mouthful of bitter smiles and a heart more meat than matter, he failed miserably.
°°°
Scars, bruises, small nicks and scratches, proof he exists, that he is hot flesh and thin skin, a human made of matter, and, if he were more optimistic, proof that he is alive.
He doesn't count them for numbers are squiggles on paper and he's sitting in a field watching the world end so what good would that do? he only traces over them, pressing down on the recently acquired, scraping across the old, not alone only because loneliness doesn't sit himself down beside you, doesn't shiver and absent-mindedly tear the petals off of purple flowers, doesn't give him concerned glances every few minutes and think he doesn't notice, doesn't say “Will?” so softly the flower forgives him.
He turns at the sound of his name being spoken and regrets it when he sees Mike, all spilled ink on stark white paper, hair blowing about, cheeks and nose flushed, worry in his eyes, watercolor waiting to dry.
“It’s cold. ” he says, brushing away stray strand dancing about his cheekbone, lips trembling slightly, and it is, but even now they know eachother too well to believe he's only making a casual remark about the weather.
“You can go back in if you'd like.”
A proposition, things change now… or they don't.
Mike doesn't reply, only shifts himself an inch closer.