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Mike doesn’t know what he’s doing until he’s already doing it, already biking in the cool night air with tears drying on his cheeks. He stops, and looks around. Mirkwood road, and it’s dark. He looks up at the sky. It’s dark. How did I get here? He scratches his head in confusion, almost as if he were still waking up, but he isn’t. He’s been up and he’s running. Well, biking, but… he knows what this is.
He sets his bike down on the side of the road, and heads into the woods, stuffing his hands in his pockets, he didn’t change before going to bed that night. He shivers and looks around the woods. He hasn’t run to Will’s old house in months. He’s been handling the nightmares better, or at least he thought he was. He really thought he was getting over all of this.
But here he is. He’s walking through the forest where Will left the first time, in the night, in the dark, no flashlight. But it’s a full moon; he has a general idea of where he’s stepping. He looks around the woods, and sighs, lying back against a tree trunk. It’s damp, like the leaves that have been squelching beneath his boots. He’s glad that in the haze he had the sense to put shoes on.
He rubs his eyes, and blinks rapidly. The adrenaline boost of coming to your senses in the middle of the night on a bike most of the way across town trying desperately to get to your best friend, the most important person in the world, but he left you , he left you behind, and he’s gone to California, that adrenaline boost only lasts so long.
Will is gone, Mike realizes, for about the millionth time. He slides down the tree trunk, closing his eyes, and lets his jeans get soaked with rainwater. He realizes it every now and then. The reality that the only person who ever mattered to him is gone, gone to fucking California. And he can’t get to him anymore.
Eventually that harsh reality becomes too much, and floats back up to fall on him like a crushing weight again later. Will is gone. Mike is alone. The phone line is busy. California is so far away, Mike can’t bike there every time he has a nightmare, so he ends up here.
It’s not like Mike went to Will with nightmares before, not once. He went to his parents, then to Nancy. For a while, right after Will came back, he would lie in El’s fort with the regional science fair photo. She found him, he’s home. She found him, he’s home.
Then she took him away. Mike can’t blame her for a whole bunch of reasons, not least of which being that she’s his girlfriend, and she should be so important to him- she is so important to him.
After El came back, Mike just lived with the nightmares. He was doing the good boyfriend thing, he was spending all his time with El. He didn’t have time for- for himself, really.
Now he finds himself here, after the particularly bad ones. Mike sighs, running his hands through his hair, and stands back up. He keeps walking, gazing up at the sky. Then he trips over something, and falls face first on the ground.
“Ow!” Mike exclaims, even though nobody hears him. He rubs his nose, sitting up. His knees and elbows are soaked. He grunts, turning to see what tripped him. Instead of finding a stick, he finds a board, and he immediately recognizes it. He runs his fingers along the carving. CASTLE BYERS . A strangled sob escapes Mike’s throat, one he didn’t realize he was keeping in.
He sets the sign down, and feels the fallen sticks. Knocked over in that storm.
It’s not my fault you don’t like girls.
Multiple things were destroyed in that storm. Mike sobs again, and slams his fists into the rubble. Again, and again, just hitting the broken sticks. He screams, and more tears spill out of his eyes. He hits the dirt, and stops. He must look mad, in the middle of the night shrieking like an animal.
As he breathes heavily, he is aware of some plastic underneath his fingertips. He grabs it, snatches it up. He squints, but he can’t see what the paper is, the one folded inside. The light is blocked by the trees.
He clutches the bag in his hand as he moves back to his bike. Will is gone, but he has this. It’s safe, it’s protected by the plastic, safe from rain, safe from Mike. He makes it to the road, and sits by his bike, where the headlight is. He pulls the paper out, and unfolds it. Mike and Will’s Pirate Treasure Map! Mike stares at the map, drawn entirely by Will, and he remembers.
Mike jumped off his bike and started running down the driveway. “Will! Will, do you want to come play?” He called, before slowing down from his run. “Will?” The sound of yelling was muffled, but he heard it. Mike stood still and stared at the window, stared at the shadows moving behind the closed curtains. He looked over at the bushes by the porch and realized he should hide, but he felt trapped. He couldn’t run, his legs were glued to the ground.
More shouting, words Mike couldn’t quite identify. Something shattered, and there was a high pitched scream. Then the front door flew open, and Mike felt slightly better when he saw Will run out the door. Will glanced around desperately when he reached the base of the steps, and then he saw Mike. Mike waved nervously, and suddenly Will’s arms were around him.
They stood there for a while. Mike wasn’t quite sure what to do, so he stayed there, holding him. There was nothing he could say, he realized. He didn’t understand- still doesn’t understand even now sitting on this road a million years from that moment, but- Will was shaking slightly. Mike held him tighter.
Another sound of a plate smashing from the house, and Will flinched. Mike broke away from him just slightly. “Let’s get out of here,” he whispered softly. Will nodded, wiping his eyes. Mike grabbed his hand. He didn’t know what else he could do but pull Will away from there. They wandered into the woods, into safety.
“Happy spring break,” Mike said eventually, attempting to be cheerful as they headed towards the lake. “And happy early birthday. Thursday, right?”
“Yeah,” Will murmured. “Thursday. I’ll be eight.”
“That’s awesome,” Mike told him. Will hummed, but still wasn’t smiling. Mike turned over to face him, and squeezed his hand. “Are you okay?”
Will shrugged, and Mike looked around nervously. Uncomfortable. They were right by the lake shore, long before anything went wrong there. Mike needed to cheer up his friend, not save his life. And he did it.
“Arrrrr you okay?” Mike asked, curving his left index finger into a hook. Will giggled, and put a hand over his eye.
“I don’t know, me matey. We still haven’t found the treasurrrre.”
“We’d better get searrrrrrrrching then.” Mike always said the right thing back then.
They spent the rest of the day digging holes in the sand and laughing. Lucas was on vacation, and he had the good shovel, but they made do with their hands. When they didn’t find anything, it was probably a good thing. Mike’s dad taught him a bunch more dumb pirate jokes that night, and the next day he impressed Will the next day as they kept digging.
Then Mike and his mom made cookies the next day for Will’s birthday. Everyone was going to be back in town for the party on Saturday, but Mike wanted something for the day, too. But they got distracted by Holly. The cookie burnt through, and Mike cried like a baby.
If it had been his dad, Mike would’ve been lectured. But his mom just knelt down and whispered, “He’ll still like it if it’s from you, hun. We’ll wrap it up, take it anyway.” She wiped Mike’s eyes, and covered it in tinfoil. Mike put it in his backpack and biked to Will’s anyway.
“I have an actual present for the party Saturday,” he said sheepishly. It was a Han Solo figurine that would be dramatically overshadowed by a box of crayons from Mrs. Byers. “But… I don’t know. It’s kind of burnt.”
Which was a massive understatement. It was inedible, so they buried it. Will drew a treasure map on some notebook paper, and they rolled it up in a plastic bag to protect it from rain and buried it in the woods. The next year, that’s where Will and Jonathan built Castle Byers, apparently. And now it’s here, in Mike’s hands.
He puts the quickly back in the bag, and buries his head in his hands. He’s going to see Will so soon, but… it feels like forever away. And he doesn’t know how to say the right thing anymore, anyway. He’ll just mess it up. He wishes he was still holding Will’s hand now, wandering to escape in the forest. That was before everything went wrong in so many ways.
After a while, Mike resigns to the short walk back to the road. He pushes his bike up, puts the map in his jacket, and heads back home. When he can’t sleep, he looks at his calendar. He already circled the day he gets to Lenora, in only 2 days. March 22. After a moment, it clicks. Will’s birthday. How could he ever miss this? Mike doesn’t fall asleep for another 3 hours. He writes a happy birthday letter, finds an envelope, and falls asleep before he can seal it.
The next morning, he wakes to a call from his mom that there’s a new letter from Jane. He skims it. No mention of Will. Love, El is written extra big, and Mike knows why. “From, from, from, from,” on his end. Maybe he just doesn’t like writing it.
He sighs, and sits down at his desk. Before he can grab a paper for his response, he sees the letter from last night. Unable to remember what he wrote, or why he stayed up so late to write it, he picks it up.
It’s not a bad letter. Heartfelt, maybe a bit too much so, but good. But then he gets to the end. He drops the paper. It isn’t dramatic, it just floats down onto his desk. He stares at it. Love, Mike.
He never writes that. He tries to, but it never feels right. He can’t stomach it. Fuck, a couple weeks ago he bought El a valentine that said ‘I like you’ in exchange for a hand-made pop up card that said ‘love’ seventeen times. (He counted).
“I can’t give him this,” Mike whispers, out loud, to nobody, rubbing his temples. He grabs a pencil, and erases it. From, Mike. But even though it looks fitting under letters to El, it… it just doesn’t fit. It’s too formal, too stuffy, too weird.
He erases that, too. He runs into Holly’s room, and asks if she has any stickers. She gives him a pad of heart stickers, and he grabs the green one. Feels like a normal color. It covers the erase marks. Mike folds the letter up, puts it with the treasure map, and seals the envelope. He puts it in his bag that already packed.
Two days later, he's already forgotten about it. He doesn't mean to, but Lucas tells him to focus on El and their relationship, and Dustin agrees that he hasn't been doing long distance the best.
So Mike reads El’s next letter quickly (she sent two in a row, he guesses. He forgot to reply to the last one). It mentions Will liking a girl, which he tries not to think about. It mentions flowers, so he picks some for her. He knows her favorite color is purple, but he ends up with a lot of yellow ones. He tries not to overthink it.
“Mike?” his mom says, as he leaves the car to head into the airport. “Don't make it weird, yeah? Just be normal. Make things work.”
Mike nods, swallowing. He can do that. He decides quickly that his Star Wars shirt isn't normal enough, and when he gets off the flight he immediately buys a new outfit, shoving the old one in his bag.
Normal boyfriend, normal boyfriend, normal boyfriend. The plan is only slightly sidetracked by Will, who looks different now and has a painting for a girl, like El said. Which is fine. Totally fine. Mike feels very normal about it.
And everything goes super well and Mike is super normal and nothing goes wrong at all. Except the opposite of that, actually. Everything is terrible, Mike’s barely been there a day and he's fucked all of it up. So much for a good spring break. Plus, besides upsetting Will and failing his boyfriend duties to El, and all of that, there's also the apocalypse. All that, too.
The next year, during spring break, Mike promises himself things will be different. He's doing better, right? He and El broke up, which was a long time coming. But, things are still off. Still weird. And then Will’s birthday comes around again. Somehow, despite every threat, everything wrong with everything everywhere, Mike wakes up in the middle of the night with that on his mind.So, he digs out the old suitcase which was still packed and in his closet, and finds it again.
This time, he puts it in his pocket. He doesn’t forget it’s there, for better or worse.
Less than a week before Will’s birthday, the group makes plans to see a drive-in movie. Will and Mike end up driving together.
“Hey, Will?” Mike asks, glancing over at him in the passenger seat.
“Yeah?”
“Can… Can we talk?”
“Uh, sure, Mike.” It sounds forced, but Mike can't see him. He chuckles nervously, and gets the sense he already ruined this. Why is he doing this in the car? At a stop sign he awkwardly pulls the letter out of his back pocket, and holds it in his hand against the steering wheel, careful not to crumple it.
“Look,” he says. “I know I’m, like, four days early. Which, I guess means that this is three hundred sixty-one days late, but…” he offers it to Will, who takes it. “Here it is. I was going to give it to you that day in the airport, but… I don’t know, really. I- yeah. Happy Birthday.”
“Happy… birthday?” Will repeats.
“March 22, yeah?” Mike asks, suddenly panicking that he messed that up, too.
Will nods. “I didn’t think you remembered.”
Mike opens his mouth to say ‘how could I forget’ but… “I did.”
Will opens the letter, and reads over the letter. When he’s done, he unfolds the map. Mike glances over at him as he laughs, softly. “I forgot about this, where did you find this?”
“I was walking in the woods, found Castle Byers. Or, what’s left of it after that storm. And I… found this.”
Will looks away, out the window. Mike watches him in moments, keeping his eyes mostly on the road.
“Will?” he asks, after a while. “Are you okay?”
“I just… I forgot about that.”
“About Castle Byers? If you need help fixing it, I can help. I mean, Jonathan probably knows what he’s doing more, and maybe Nancy, too, but-”
“No, no, it’s fine.” Will cuts him off. “I just forgot what happened.”
“The… the storm?”
Will looks back at him, and his eyes are rimmed with red. Mike pulls over immediately, and turns to face him.
After a while, Will says, “I destroyed it, Mike. Jonathan and I spent hours building it, but I just… smashed it.”
“Why?” Mike isn't angry, just sorry.
“Because we weren’t kids anymore.” Will smiles sadly, and a pit opens in Mike’s gut that threatens to swallow him whole.
“Maybe not, but… I want to play games in my basement with you forever.”
Will stares at him. He looks caught off guard, his lips slightly parted. Shit, Mike wants to lean over and kiss him. Not because anyone told him to, but… Oh.
Will turns away. “We should get to the movie.”
Mike nods quickly, and pulls back onto the road. It starts to rain lightly as they get closer, and the sound of the windshield wipers is grounding, in a way. Mike turns into a neighborhood he doesn't recognize, still following Dustin’s directions drilled into his brain.
“Careful,” Will says. “Jon got pulled over for speeding here, once.” Mike nods without looking at him, and slows down accordingly.
They drive to an old jazz song on the radio, and Mike is completely spiraling. This is everything; this is important; surely he is wrong. Even if Will… felt the same, Mike would be queer forever. He can’t do that, can he? Hasn’t he been trying to act normal this entire time to avoid that? To prove that he-
The Wednesday of their pirate adventure spring break 1979. Mike had all his new pirate jokes, and ran up to the door and knocked. But Mr. Byers answered.
“What do you want?” he sneered.
Mike straightened nervously, trying not to tremble slightly from a combination of fear and anger. “Can… can Will come play?” he asks, voice small.
Mr. Byers groaned, and turned around to shout into the house, “Oi, fag. Your fag friend wants to come play.”
And Will looked so sad as he walked over to join Mike, as the door slammed and they walked into the woods, into what felt like an escape. Mike’s jokes softened the ice, and they didn’t talk about it. Maybe they should’ve.
Mike is spiraling. Voices are echoing in his head, voices of people who care about him. But they…
Micheal, this is what happens.
If it were up to me, you wouldn’t even be on the team.
Seriously, Mike? You look at her all like…
Do you like Eleven?
Promise?
This is it. Seal the deal, ask her to the Snowball.
The secret to being a good boyfriend.
Sometimes I think you’re completely clueless.
Just listen to my advice.
Try to be normal. It’ll all work out, you two are meant to be together.
It’s unnatural, the way you two behave.
El commissioned it.
You can’t even write it, Mike.
Don’t stop. Okay, you’re the heart. Remember that.
I love you-
Mike must be losing his mind. Sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy.
Me, too.
Mike pulls over again. They're going to be late for this movie, but his vision is smeared with tears. The parade of voices, the confusion, it isn’t gone. But it settles. Will slows, and turns around.
“Mike? Are you okay?”
Mike turns and looks at him, wiping his eyes with his sweater sleeves. “I love you. And I'm so fucking sorry about it.”
Will blinks, and Mike clamps a hand over his own mouth. Oh. Shit.
“What?”
I'm in it now. “I- I love you, Will. In a… in a not friend way.”
Will doesn't run out of the car, which is definitely a good sign? Mike is glad he is sitting, because he doesn't feel steady. He is completely vulnerable to Will, right now. Exposed in every possible way. But there is nobody else he trusts, even in rejection.
“Mike, you… you don’t mean that.”
“No, I do.” Mike hadn’t expected the question, but he reacts. “No, I do mean it, Will. And I get it if- if you don’t feel the same, but-”
“Stop it. This isn’t funny.”
“It isn’t! And I’m sorry if I haven’t been obvious about it. You kind of make all our conversations about El.”
“I do? You do that!”
“What do you mean? I never wanted to talk about her, I wanted to talk to you.”
“You never-” Will stops, and pulls the letter out of the envelope now resting on his lap. “You… never… called. Wait.” He scans it, and then reads, “‘I’ve tried to call, but the line is always busy. Maybe you could try calling me? I’m around pretty much all the time.’”
He looks back up at Mike, briefly sad, but it turns to anger. “But you didn’t give me this. I didn’t know you were trying to call, which I made clear then. And I did not make our conversations about El.”
“Really?” Mike shoots back. He takes a deep breath, careful of his volume, and continues. “You gave me a painting that was clearly meant for the whole party, and tried to pass it off as her commission. That was about us . Maybe the four of us, but also us. Being a team. Or, I thought it was until you started lying.”
No, this is going wrong. He doesn’t want to fight, this isn’t what he wants/
“I wasn’t lying!”
“You were! El had no idea what I was on about when I tried to thank her for the painting.”
“I meant me!”
Mike stops breathing. There is silence save for the sound of the wind above them, muffled by the car. A storm is coming, but Mike doesn’t care. “What do you mean?”
Will takes a deep breath. “I said El, but… but I meant me. I was talking about myself. Y’know, ripping off the band-aid? Vicariously?”
If she did have to lose you- “Will, I’m not going anywhere.” Mike feels like he should be thanking the cosmic forces of the universe for (finally) putting the right words in his mouth. Or maybe he’s finally with the right person with the right idea.
“You’re not?” Will asks, his voice so small.
“I wouldn’t know how to leave if I wanted to. You’re the one who keeps going places, I just… I just wait for you to miss me.”
Will leans forward and hugs him. There is a moment where Mike isn’t quite sure what to do, they haven’t done this in so long. Mike releases tears he hadn’t noticed soaking into Will’s jacket shoulder, and Will is doing the same, but Mike doesn’t care. Will is here again.
“I always miss you,” he says, when they pull apart. He's gripping Mike’s elbows. “Always.”
“I… I miss you, too.”
“I know. I know you do, I see that now.”
“What do we do now?” Mike asks, after a while.
“Want to watch a movie with me?” Will replies, smiling.
Mike chuckles, and nods. They’re already nearly there, and they park in the back. Ghostbusters is just about to start. They move to the backseat when the volume of the movie is too high, and Will falls asleep on Mike’s shoulder part way through. Mike wraps both arms around him, holding him close. Keeping this moment for as long as he can have it.
So different from when he would run to the woods with nightmares, his biggest nightmare is disproved. Will is here. They're both completely broken and there is so much left to go wrong. But Mike wants to face it with him. Crazy together, finally.
“Are you going to leave again?” He whispers on the drive home.
Will reaches over and squeezes his knee. “I'm not going anywhere.”
And he doesn't. Despite everything that Mike has done, every mistake, Will stays. He kisses Mike on the cheek before they pull into his driveway. He keeps his promise, because Will always keeps his promises. Will is honest and wonderful, and Mike could die. But he doesn’t want to.
A vague attempt is made to keep the relationship secret from the group in the following days, but it doesn't work because prioritization is holding hands constantly, and now that he knows Will loves him, too, Mike is finding his feelings harder to conceal.
And after a couple of years, when Will does leave Hawkins, Mike goes with him. So they can start a new life, make a new party, whatever it is, hand in hand. Together, finally, until the end of the goddamn world.