Chapter Text
Will hadn’t been snooping. He would never have intentionally poked through someone’s stuff – he already feels guilty enough as it is for the space that he’s taking up in the Wheeler’s house, for his shoes by their door and his clothes in their basement cabinet and the plates he leaves in their sink anytime he eats their food.
He doesn’t have any concept of what it is that he’s found at first, when he opens the box in the back of Mike’s closet.
He had been looking for one of Mike’s hoodies, the soft blue one that he really loves. A moment earlier, he and Mike had been working on their English homework together, sprawled out side by side on his bed. It’s warmer than the basement, but the winter chill is still deep in Will’s bones and he’d been shivering. He tried to hide it, but Mike had noticed – of course he had, he always does somehow – and had told him to grab one of his sweaters from his closet to wear.
Will had shaken his head quickly, rushed out a reassurance that he was totally fine, but Mike had just frowned and nudged Will’s shoulder with his own. “It’s fine. I have lots, okay, I don’t care if you borrow a sweater, yeah? I can tell you’re cold, c’mon.”
Will had bitten back a sigh, knowing that it was a horrible idea but wanting it terribly all the same. He loves wearing Mike’s clothes – hates himself for loving it, but loves it all the same – and desperately wanted to take the rare opportunity to wrap himself in Mike, the safe warm smell of him that he could already almost taste on his tongue just thinking about putting on something of his. “Okay, then,” he had conceded quietly, careful. He’d been mindful not to meet Mike’s eyes as he slid off the bed and pulled open his closet to look for the particularly hoodie that he already had had in mind.
It was just then, as Will had been looking into the closet, that Mrs. Wheeler had called up the stairs for Mike, wanting his help with something in the kitchen.
Mike heaved a sigh. “I’ll be right back.”
The bedroom door had creaked shut behind him, and Will had been left alone to go through Mike’s closet. In retrospect, maybe he should have just grabbed the nice thick-knit beige sweater that was right there in front of him – he likes that one too, and it would have been easier – but he’d gotten himself set on finding the blue one by then and didn’t want to give up so easily.
He hadn’t seen it, though, so he’d ended up digging around all the way in the back of the closet, behind the hanging shirts and pants and jackets.
That was when he’d found the box.
He had felt, right away, that it wasn’t meant for clothes. The hoodie he was looking for wouldn’t be in there. It was unassuming, an old, scuffed cardboard, but it felt weighty. Something sunk heavy in Will’s chest just looking at it. He eased the box open, not meaning to snoop, just – it was almost instinct, he couldn’t stop his hands from moving.
And yeah, at first, he has no idea what it is that he’s looking at.
The box is full to the brim with sheets of paper crammed full of Mike’s immediately recognizable elegant, defined scrawl.
Will blinks. He hesitates, finally, suddenly aware that he’s dug up a box that Mike’s most certainly hidden, that it would be wrong to read what he’d written on these pages, no matter how badly he constantly yearns for any insight he could possibly glean into Mike’s head.
Will bites his lip and brings his hands back down to the flaps of the box, meaning to close it again. He wants, so terribly, to look more closely. But he’s never been the kind of person to infringe on someone’s privacy, least of all Mike’s – just wanting to alone is enough to make his stomach twist with guilt.
So he’s going to put the box back and go on trying not to think about it like all of the many, many other things surrounding Mike that he’s trying not to think about, really he is.
Except then he sees his name.
Dear Will, written in clear script right at the top of the first sheet of paper. He freezes, then finds his hands moving over to the stack of papers – the letters, he realizes now – and lifts the first one out of the box. Beneath it, another, dear Will. He swallows. His heart is racing suddenly, loud and hot in his ears. There’s a tight, staticky panic buzzing through his chest and right down to the tips of his fingers. Surely not.
Surely not.
He has to know, he can’t not. In furtive, jerky movements, Will reaches out and leafs through the pages, just to confirm his suspicions – dear Will, dear Will, dear Will. There have to be at least three, maybe four dozen letters in the box, all addressed to him. They’re not dated, so he can’t be sure, but Mike doesn’t have much reason to write to him now so they must be from when he’d lived in California. When El had received letter after letter and Will had never gotten a single response to the few that he’d tried to send before he’d given up hope entirely.
Why would Mike have written so many letters to him, only to not send them?
Before Will can contemplate the question much, he reaches the bottom of the stack and his breath catches and sticks fast in his throat. Under the letters is a tiny figurine that Will immediately recognizes – it’s his original Will the Wise miniature from their old campaigns. He’d donated it along with all of his other D&D things when he’d left for California, as far as he remembers. Mike must have gotten it back somehow, dug it out or something, and then – and then he’d kept it for himself, hidden it away with all of these letters he’d written for Will and never sent.
“What?” Will hears himself whisper out loud. His voice cracks and breaks around the thick lump that has grown in his throat. He reaches out to touch the figurine, his hand shaking. Before he can pick it up, though, he hears the thunder of Mike’s footsteps back on the staircase.
A shot of adrenaline pieces through the pounding of his heart and buzzing in his ears and Will finally snaps out of it and back into action, suddenly terrifyingly aware of only having seconds to hide what he’d done before Mike is bursting through the door.
He lets the letters fall back down into their stack over Will the Wise and fumbles the box shut, rushing to shove it away into its previous resting place in the back of the closet. The clothes fall into place, hiding it, and Mike is up the stairs now, his footfalls echoing down the hall.
Will pauses and then looks down at the letter still in his left hand, the first one he’d taken out, which he had apparently forgotten to put away with the others. Shit. He stands and shoves it down the front of his T-shirt, then yanks the beige sweater off its hanger and scrambles into it.
His head has just popped out through the top of the sweater when Mike practically launches himself back into the bedroom, the door banging loudly against the wall.
“Gentle, Mike, you’re going to put a dent in your wall!” Mrs. Wheeler yells up from the kitchen.
Mike grins at Will, a little crooked and endlessly endearing, then spins around and slams the door shut behind him with another echoing bang.
“Oops,” he says insincerely, and then he’s stepping in close to Will, who nearly stumbles. “Your hair’s sticking up all over the place,” Mike tells him, tone much softer now. Fond, Will might think, if he let himself.
“Right, sorry.” He reaches up to smooth it down. His heart’s still racing and he knows he must be blushing too, with how hot his face feels. It seems too much to hope that there’s any way Mike hasn’t noticed. Under his shirt, the letter that he’d stolen is burning like a brand against the skin of his stomach.
He’s already overwhelmed and barely managing to maintain his hard-wrought façade of normalcy, even before Mike reaches over and tangles his fingers into Will’s fringe.
Will’s body promptly decides to forget how to breathe. “You missed, here,” Mike’s muttering, almost to himself, “there you go.” He slides his long, slender fingers through Will’s hair, smoothing it gently down over his ears. His fingertips brush along his scalp, the faint scrape of his nails sending a feeling like sparks scattering down from Will’s head to his face, neck, into his chest, heating his already burning skin even further.
He shivers from the sensation, and Mike hesitates, hands still in his hair, looking at him. “Still cold?”
Will almost laughs out loud. Any concept of being cold is long, long gone. He doesn’t think he’s ever been so warm in his life. “I guess kinda,” he lies, reveling in how normal he’s managed to make his voice sound. He’s got lots of practice, of course, but this is definitely up there with the most undone he’s felt by his longing for Mike, especially with the shock and confusion around the hidden letters on top of everything else. It’s a miracle, frankly, that he doesn’t break down then and there.
Mike looks at him for a moment longer before suddenly seeming to notice where his hands are – for a split-second, he looks surprised, as if he hadn’t even realized what he’d been doing. He abruptly releases Will’s head and flops dramatically back down onto his bed. Several pens roll off onto the floor as Mike sprawls out and Will takes a minute to collect them up again, gratefully snatching the reprieve to collect himself.
He’s lived with the Wheelers for nearly a year now, and he’s still not anywhere near used to the casual touches that Mike has slowly but steadily returned to giving him since he’d returned from California. It’s not quite like how it was before, but it’s better than it was. That horrible tension of Mike’s visit to Lenora had mostly faded, especially since Mike and El had broken up for good in the fall. After that, Mike had seemed to open up a bit more to Will again – or maybe it was Will himself who felt less terrible around Mike, with at least one guilt eased.
Still, the long months without communication between them followed by the awful awkwardness of their reunion sometimes seem to weigh heavy between them, unaddressed but not forgotten. Certainly not by Will, anyway, who can’t quite fully scrub himself of the ache of it, the cavernous pain of that day in the van, staring fixed out the window at nothing and trying desperately to silence his sobs, hurting, hurting, hurting.
Thinking of it, that same hurt that he still constantly feels aching deep in his chest however much time has passed, Will wants suddenly to ask Mike about the letters. Did he have any idea how much Will would have given for even one of them? Why would he have written so many letters if he never bothered to send a single one? He can’t ask, though, because whether he had meant to or not, he had snooped, and he shouldn’t have. Mike would probably be furious, understandably.
Pens collected, Will gingerly lowers himself back onto the bed, the letter against his stomach shifting under his shirt and Mike’s sweater as he lays down, keeping a careful distance between their bodies.
“Here,” Mike says, leaning over to drape one of his blankets over Will’s shoulders. His wrist grazes Will’s arm. “You can’t tell me you’re still cold with that too.”
Oh, right. Will had nearly forgotten their previous conversation. “No, that’s nice. I’m okay now.”
Mike leans in again to nudge him lightly with his shoulder. “Good. Hey, you alright?”
His voice is gentle, soft. Will’s heart still hasn’t settled, and he’s genuinely a little scared that Mike might hear it racing with how close he’s lying on the bed. The edge of the sheet of paper is catching against the curve at the base of his ribs, and both guilt and a burning, frantic curiosity are tangling up in his gut now. He glances down at his half finished essay and bites his lip. “Uh, actually, I’m a bit tired. I think I might go to bed now.”
Mike frowns – Will doesn’t look over at him, but he can sense it anyway, can clearly picture the way that Mike’s lower lip is jutted out into a slight inadvertent pout. “Of course, yeah,” he says anyway. “We can finish this tomorrow evening maybe, if you won’t be busy?”
“What else would I even being doing?” Will asks, amused despite himself. “You know I’ll be here.”
Mike nudges him again, and now Will looks over – just in time to see the frown curve back up into a smile. “Great! Okay! Well then, I’ll see you at breakfast. Go get some sleep.”
Will stands carefully, keeping his arms folded over his stomach just to be safe. Mike watches him, expression unreadable. For about the nine millionth time, Will wishes he could read his mind. Except now he knows that he wrote him letters. He’d written to him and never sent them, never mentioned it, had hidden it from him.
“Good night,” Will says quickly, averting his eyes again before his looking can slip into the far more dangerous category of staring. He slips out the door and into the hallway before Mike gets a chance to reply.
He passes Mrs. Wheeler on her way up to bed as he makes his way down the stairs, and she gives him a smile that’s pleasant but slightly strained around the edges. He curls his shoulders in, trying to make himself smaller, and hurries back to the basement. Jonathan’s not there – he must have already slipped up to Nancy’s room at some point earlier in the evening.
Will certainly isn’t complaining. He’s never wanted the space to himself as badly as he does right now. He couldn’t possibly wait another second.
He pulls the letter out from under his shirt and starts reading.
Dear Will,
I’ve tried to write to you so many times by now. I have half a notebook full of stupid letters that I haven’t sent. I don’t know why it’s so hard.
I do miss you a lot. More than Hawkins isn’t the same without you. Lucas is on the basketball team now. I guess you probably knew that already, I’m sure he’s written to you and mentioned it.
Has anyone told you about Eddie Munson? He’s a senior, like a full adult, and he still loves D&D – I don’t know, it’s nice to see that it’s not just kids playing. We joined his D&D club at school. It’s called Hellfire, which a lot of people don’t like but I think is pretty neat. Eddie seemed kind of scary at first but he’s actually really cool, and he always looks. I think you would like him. It kind of sucks to play without you though. Everything kind of sucks without you.
I wish you would come back.
I wish you would come back.
That’s so dumb, I’m sorry.
How’s Lenora? Do you like it? It must be nicer than it is here. The weather at least, if nothing else – it’s really cold in Hawkins, but I bet it’s nicer over there. So do you have any new friends? Or a girlfriend?
Well anyway, I think you’ll get this letter by Christmas if I send it now, so Merry Christmas! I’m sorry I couldn’t get it done sooner, I swear I have tried to write a bunch of times. I know I haven’t said it enough especially recently but you mean so much to me and it’s been really weird here without you.
I hope this is a letter I can actually send this time. It’ll be the last until the new year, but I’ll try to write more often now, okay? I’m sorry again.
The thing is It’s just that I can’t stop I really miss you and I think that maybe I like you a little too much, like in a way that isn’t normal or and I hope that you’re doing well!
Love, From,
Mike