Chapter Text
Will’s bike runs over another dip in the road and he tries not to wince, almost feeling the painting’s canvas bend in the backpack strapped to his shoulders. He attempts to re-adjust the painting inside of the bag with one hand, his wrist bending painfully under the bottom of the backpack.
After a few seconds, he gives up, pulling his hand back to the handle of his bike.
“Couldn’t we have gone to Castle Byers, or something?” Mike asks, his breath slightly uneven as he pedals his shitty, almost-too-small Schwinn retro cruiser on the road beside Will.
“No,” Will laughs breathlessly, equally as worn out as Mike, though they haven’t gone too far. He looks to his best friend, “I want to show you something at the quarry. It wouldn’t have the same effect at Castle Byers.”
The bumps and dips in the road don’t bother Will as he thinks about what he’s actually going to do when they get to the quarry.
The painting, one he’s worked on for months, is going to be Will’s second attempt. His second attempt at confessing how he feels about Mike. He can’t lie to Mike a second time—he couldn’t say how he felt in Lenora, but he can this time. And if Mike doesn’t like him back, Will knows that he at least won’t tell anyone, even if he hates Will forever.
He hopes it doesn’t come to that, though.
Mike didn’t respond to him, having moved his focus back to the clean black asphalt of the street ahead of them instead, the corners of his lips tilted upwards.
Quiet surrounds them as they continue to ride to the quarry. His and Mike’s breath show up as little clouds of fog on the wind, getting left behind when the two of them start to pedal faster in an attempt to their destination sooner. The December air hits his face, dry and cold mixing together and making his eyes tear up and water. He ignores it, and his gaze flicks back towards Mike, whose eyes are fixed on the road ahead of them.
Mike’s hair’s shorter than last year, and messier, too. He got his bangs cut short, and more layers chopped into his hair. The wind moves through his hair as if it’s a hand, ruffling his hair and making it seem like he’s just woken up.
The weather has forced the whole of Hawkins to layer more warm clothes than usual, and Mike’s taken to wearing the grey jacket he always wears during crawls, minus the not-so-casual military camouflage vest, when he’s cold. The jacket’s sleeves are kind of oversized, and Will enjoys it when they slip over Mike’s hands every once in a while.
They’re doing it now—slipping over his knuckles as he grips his bike’s handles.
Mike’s bike skids to a stop, falling onto the rock and gravel covered floor of the quarry after he awkwardly clambers off of it. Will follows suit, abandoning his own bike before they start to make their way towards the cliff’s edge. The sun, steadily lowering closer to the ground, is shining, tired and dim, but still above Will and Mike.
By the time he would have actually shown the painting to Mike, the sun will have dipped below the edge of the cliff, and it’ll start to become colder and darker.
Once they get to the flat rock face near the ending of the cliff, Will pulls the rolled-up canvas out of his bag, observing as Mike looks at the cliff. Though his body is turned away from the cliff, his eyes are glued to the abrupt end of the ground they’re standing on, and he seems lost in thought.
“Mike?” Will taps Mike’s elbow, his hand accidentally lingering on Mike’s arm for a moment too long before he pulls back, deciding to hold the painting with both hands instead.
“Mhm,” Mike hums, pulling his eyes away from the cliff and focusing his gaze on Will. His face contorts in discomfort for less than a second—eyebrows scrunching together, a small frown covering his lips, a look in his eyes that makes Will feel uneasy, and a crease forming between his eyebrows—before his expression then becomes blank, smoothing over as he looks at Will questioningly.
“You okay?” He’s probably the reason Mike’s so uncomfortable. He steps backwards, away from the raven-haired boy, his throat tightening.
“Yeah—fine,” he shakes his head slightly, as if he’s calming himself down and further boxing in his emotions, “So can I see the painting?”
He nods, and Mike’s face breaks out into a small smile as he steps towards Will to close the gap between them. Mike almost leans completely on his shoulder as he tries to get a good look at the canvas unraveling in Will’s hands.
Will unravels the painting fully.
He holds his breath, bracing himself for the other’s reaction.
“Holy shit, Will,” Mike reaches out to grab the painting and look more closely at it, his hands landing on top of Will’s in the process. He pulls back quickly, letting Mike hold the painting—trying not to mess up his final attempt at not fucking up their current friendship.
“This is incredible,” Mike’s eyes light up as he smiles, a small pink tinge appearing on his cheeks.
Will finally leans back into Mike’s space, figuring that Mike wouldn’t mind too much, and beginning to describe what is happening in the piece.
It’s a painting that depicts the Party—the original Party: Will, Mike, Lucas, and Dustin—on top of a rocky, mountainous, area. Mike the Brave is observing the land surrounding the Party, while the others are scattered around the scene.
Will points to Mike the Brave, explaining how he’s placed in the center of the painting and looking out at the sunset, standing near the end of a cliff, sword in one hand, and shield in the other, its heart embellishment bright against the muted greys and yellows surrounding it. He continues to point out different aspects of the painting—finally pausing at a decent-enough spot to gently hold Mike’s forearm and turn both of their bodies towards the rock’s end, then point in front of them. Out past the cliff’s edge.
“It’s a painting of the quarry. The Party staying at the quarry, I mean,” Will specifies, gazing at his best friend, taking in his reaction as he looks up at the sunset, then back down to the painting.
Gathering small details that Will spent hours trying to capture and tucking them into his memory like they’re something he needs to cherish.
“Is this why you’ve barely been hanging out with me? And Lucas, Dustin, Max, and El..?” Mike asks, a tinge of reluctance in his tone. He abandons his careful exploration of the painting to look at Will, “I’ve barely seen you—you barely go to the arcade, or Hopper’s cabin when we visit El, and, we haven’t had any D&D campaigns in months,” he shrugs, flushing even further, “I dunno, I just—I’ve been worried about you. I’ve missed hanging out with you.”
“Oh,” Will looks at the ground, trying to hide his smile, “Yeah—I’ve just been busy with this.”
“I’m surprised El would ask you to make a second painting for me,” Mike frowns slightly, the corners of his mouth barely tilting downward, like he’s trying to find the final piece to a puzzle, “We did break up before she asked you to start painting this, right?”
Shit.
“Y-Yeah, I started it a bit after school started again—in August.” Will twines his fingers together, twisting them as he waits for Mike to say something, goosebumps rising on the back of his neck—not from the Mind Flayer, just the cold. He has to remind himself every so often. He’s not in the Upside Down anymore—he’s safe in Hawkins. In the Rightside Up. “I just thought—I thought it might be a good idea for a painting—the Party. Here. And I wanted it to look accurate to real life, so I just started coming here and…” he trails off, shrugging his shoulders in a mediocre attempt at conveying what he’s trying to say without words.
God, what is he doing? This was supposed to be his second attempt—his second chance to confess. And he’s fucked it up. Again. He’s lied to Mike again.
“Huh,” Mike doesn’t say anything else allowing him to continue to talk about the painting—Mike the Brave standing in the forefront, leading the Party as the heart, Will the Wise standing beside him, the hand not holding his staff resting limply by his side (close enough for the cleric to touch the paladin’s hand, but Will wouldn’t tell Mike that), and the rest of the Party standing off to the side, allowing the two of them to be the center of attention.
The cleric is standing farther away from the cliff than the paladin is, the two character’s side profiles showing stoic, relaxed expressions.
It’s much more awkward now that Mike thinks the painting was commissioned, and Will’s recounting of the painting’s backstory is definitely not any less uncomfortable.
“It… It looks good. Like, really good. I love it,” the flush on Mike’s face has almost disappeared completely, leaving his face imperceptibly pink.
He rubs the back of his neck, as if trying to make the goosebumps leave his skin, “I mean, it’s not… that good. I messed up both of our faces.” Will voice trails off, and he laughs awkwardly, looking at everything but his best friend.
“What? Will, this is amazing,” Mike grabs his hand, transferring his grip on the painting to only his left hand, “I think my face looks fine, anyway.”
He looks away from the bright blue and yellow watercolor sunset in front of them and looks towards Mike, gazing at him earnestly as he holds his hand. Mike’s hand is soft and dry—his calluses soft and almost non-existent, and skin dry and cracked from the cold. He glances down at their intertwined hands, then back up at Mike’s face.
“You’re such an amazing artist,” he blushes, watching as Mike stumbles over his words, almost as if he’s trying to get them out fast enough, “And—and not just with painting, either. Like, you made Mike the Brave, and Holly the Heroic figures by hand. Not to mention the mini squawk van. You’re incredible.”
“I mean… I just did what you asked me to do,” he stops trying to ignore Mike’s belief that El asked him to paint both pieces, deciding to give into the painting commission lie, “And with El—I just drew what she asked me to. The Party; you leading our adventures as the heart.”
“That was like three times!” Mike exclaims, almost desperately trying to prove his point, “You can do so much without people coming to you for help!”
Will bites his lip, not saying anything as he casts his gaze towards the rocky, brown dust covered earth.
Mike’s still holding his hand, and he’s started to lightly rub his thumb over his knuckles in soothing circles. Mike holds his hand tighter, almost trying to prove that Will’s wrong.
Will stays silent as they watch the sun fall under their feet, disappearing below the cliff and sinking into the water resting in the quarry.
They don’t try to talk about anything else, the two of them watching as the sky changes colors and darkens, their hands still clasped together—their skin still touching.
Neither of them mention the hand-holding as they get onto their bikes and start to ride home.
They don’t talk at all.
Mike had given him the painting before they left so that he could tuck it back into his backpack as they biked home. After he had rolled the painting up again and placed it into his bag, Mike pulled his bike upright, waiting for Will to push off of the dirt and gravel and start their trek back to the Wheeler-Byers house.
It’s colder as they ride back to the house, the nighttime chill that winter brings amplified by the wind hitting their faces. Will squints against the cold bite of the air, blinking quickly to try to get his hair out of his eyes.
He let his hair grow out since coming back from Lenora, and now his bangs—if he could even call them that—fall into his eyes when he’s biking anywhere. It’s annoying having to constantly move hair out of his eyes, but definitely not as annoying as having a bowl cut that is somehow always perfectly bowl-shaped.
Okay, he’s over-exaggerating. The bowl cut wasn’t that bad.
When they get back to the Wheeler-Byers household, Will and Mike drop their bikes in the driveway, immediately abandoning them on the ground before walking to the white door of the large house.
Mike stops before they get to the door, turning towards Will and almost causing him to crash into the taller boy, “Can I—uh… have the painting? Before we get inside?”
“Oh... yeah, lemme just—,” he doesn’t finish his sentence, instead, he pulls his arm out of one of the backpack straps, twisting the bag around to the front of his body, “Here.” He hands Mike the painting, deliberately brushing their hands together.
Mike’s eyes flick towards their fingers, still touching, before looking away with an unreadable look on his face. Will pulls his hand back, busying himself with adjusting his backpack.
He shouldn’t have done that.
Mike uses his house key to unlock the front door, going into the house and up to his room before Will can say anything to him. He walks inside after Mike, closing and locking the door behind him and going down to the Wheeler’s basement; where both him and Jonathan have been staying since coming back from California and further merging into the lives of the Wheelers.
It’s colder in the basement than it is upstairs, especially since the room is heated using only a shitty, probably on-the-verge-of-breaking radiator that rattles the walls and basement ceiling each time it’s on. They don’t have many blankets, either; most of them were given to other members of the Wheeler-Byers house when he, Mom, and Jonathan started living there.
Jonathan’s already in the basement, laying on the messy, quilt-covered couch that they both deemed as his bed when they had first moved in, wearing an old short-sleeved shirt and jeans (that probably aren’t great for staying warm, seeing the sheer amount of blankets on top of and beside him), and listening to music on the old walkman Mom got for him not too long ago—one that was found in a box under Mom’s bed when they were moving to Lenora. She didn’t want to give it away, and couldn’t afford a new one—especially since they had moved into a newer house in California— so she had given it to Jonathan.
He’s probably listening to The Clash right now.
He usually is.
Jonathan looks up from his spot on the couch when the old wood of the second-to-last step creaks under Will’s weight. Jonathan turns onto his stomach as he steps into the room, turning his walkman off and watching him, a scrutinizing expression on his face. Like he’s trying to read Will’s feelings.
Will knows that he’s bad at schooling his expressions and keeping his feelings off of his face. When Lonnie was still living with them, he would always get told to stop acting so sensitive, like showing emotion made him ‘less manly’.
“Fucking hell! Stop crying, would you? You’re too old to be crying over fucking crayons.” Lonnie would say, the sharp, alcoholic scent of beer lingering on his breath as he yelled.
Will still remembers the way he would run to Jonathan’s room, four years old and crying over a broken crayon after being called a slur by a man who thought of himself as a father. The way his brother would open the door and let him go into his room, carefully taping the broken crayon together as he quietly played The Clash on the small stereo he had bought at a thrift store. A stereo he had spent months saving money for.
Will tries to make his expression as neutral as he can, not letting Jonathan fully read the mix of guilt and disappointed happiness on his face.
It probably doesn’t work; Jonathan had seen him working on the beginning stages of Mike’s painting in the basement. The amount of attention he had put into each aspect of the Party members’ clothing; especially Mike the Braves’.
He stopped going to the quarry once the background was finished, instead staying in their shared room and setting up a small space for his painting in the corner near the radiator so that he could do his best to ignore the chill of the basement when he was working.
Which meant that Jonathan saw him each time he painted.
“What’d you do with Mike?” Jonathan pushes himself into a sitting position, watching as he sits down on the air mattress they had blown up for Will to sleep on when they had first moved into the Wheeler’s basement.
“Nothing, really.” He pulls his shoes off, then the coat that he wore to the quarry, setting both of them beside his bed and sitting criss-cross-applesauce on the air mattress. “We went to the quarry. I wanted to show him something.”
Jonathan nods, his leg bouncing up and down as he leans forward, “Did you show him the painting you did? You’ve been working on that for a while.”
He was right. Jonathan is much more observant than he’s made out to be.
Will nods.
“Did he like it?” He asks, a questioning look on his face. The heater rattles against the wall, the steady sound of its humming filling the room while Jonathan waits for an answer.
“...I guess,” he mumbles, shrugging as his second almost-confession replays in his head, similar to some sort of broken film reel—replaying over and over. Mike accidentally touching his hands as he tries to hold the painting. Mike observing each detail as Will describes where the Party is and what they’re doing. Mike thinking the painting was another commission from El. Mike holding his hand, looking at him like he’s someone special.
Mike had asked if they could go to Castle Byers instead—a place that he had helped Will rebuild after ‘a storm’ had destroyed it. It wasn’t a storm, though; it was him. Will had taken a stupid fucking bat and destroyed the one place he felt safe because he was angry at Mike—at himself, really. And then Mike had helped him rebuild the same place he had destroyed, spending hours each day for almost a week in the heat of the summer to help replicate what Will lost.
Does he even deserve someone like Mike? Someone who would praise him over such simple things, who would comfort him when he’s unsure, who would spend hours helping him restore something that he had demolished himself?
No, not really.
Goosebumps rise on his arms. Will feels cold, though he’s wearing a hoodie and the heater is still loudly running, providing a decent amount of heat to the small space. He tries his best to ignore it, burrowing further into his old, yet still soft hoodie.
Jonathan seems like he’s about to ask if he needs a blanket—even starting to pull one off of the edge of the couch—but he stops, silently observing Will.
All of the blankets remain beside Jonathan, and neither of them continue the conversation.
Will closes his eyes, letting the days’ events repeat in his head.
He can hear Jonathan turn his walkman back on and lay back down on the couch cushions, the clicking of the walkman’s buttons and squeaking of the couch springs louder than usual.
He doesn’t try to reach for the blanket beside him, even though he knows it would be better than remembering what it was like in the Upside Down. The skin-numbing, seemingly bone-deep cold that he couldn’t escape or get rid of for a week isn’t the same as the slight, constant chill in the basement. His body knows that, but his brain doesn’t—hasn’t adjusted to the cold in the Rightside Up as well as it should have.
Besides, the blanket is one that Mike had given him during the first actually cold day of winter, when everyone in the Party had to wear multiple layers just to stay warm on their bike to school—a blanket that Mike doesn’t use anymore.
A blanket that still smells like him.
Mike hadn’t meant to run away from Will. He really didn’t. But it was too much—the way that Will’s eyes had lingered on his face as Mike had spoken about how incredible he is, the way Will’s hands had lingered on his own when he was giving him the painting. He was the one who had messed up; he shouldn’t have left Will outside, wondering what he had done wrong.
Lost in thought as he speed walks to his room, he doesn’t notice Nancy walking towards him, and they bump into each other.
“Mike! Watch where you’re going,” she grumbles, moving past him without letting him say a word in response. She’s in a mood today.
He’s pretty sure that was Jonathan’s cardigan she was wearing—Mike’s almost certain that she does not own an oversized cardigan with clashing colors and funky shapes, but he could be wrong. She could’ve just changed styles since breakfast—or have a secret compartment in her closet for her secret ‘real style’.
That’s definitely not the case, though.
She definitely just stole the cardigan from Jonathan because she was cold.
Sometimes he wishes that he could ‘borrow’ one of Will’s jackets or hoodies, even if he knows that it’s wrong.
Boys shouldn’t wear other boys’ clothes. Dad had told him that, expressionless and angry when he had come home after 1st grade wearing one of Will’s vests because he was cold and had forgotten to bring a coat. Will had insisted he take his vest, even though Will hates the cold.
And anyway, Will’s like, multiple inches shorter than him, and much broader. His clothes would fit really weirdly and Mike would look like a noodle in anything that Will owns.
After entering his dark room, Mike closes the door, pulls off his shoes and throws them onto the ground, turns on a light, and strides to his desk, unsurprisingly, it’s still incredibly messy and covered with various sheets of scrap paper covered with poems and creative writing alongside notebooks filled with unused D&D campaign ideas he developed during sleepless nights when Will was in Cali.
He pushes the papers aside, making barely enough space to be able to lay Will’s painting out on the desk. The edges of the canvas curl inwards, and Mike tries to find small objects to place on top of the corners of the painting so that it lays flat while covering as little of the painting as possible.
Mike sits in the chair in front of his desk, once again taking in the details that Will had talked about when the two of them were at the quarry.
The cleric and the paladin are standing next to each other while the rest of the Party is off to the side, and it’s almost as if the scene Will painted was… romantic.
Will the Wise and Mike the Brave are watching the setting sun, standing beside each other, their hands almost touching—the paladin’s holding a shield and a sword, not allowing him to hold the cleric’s hand.
Will’s looking at him with an almost longing expression on his face.
No—not Will. Will the Wise.
And not him either.
It’s Mike the Brave in the painting—the leader, the heart of the Party. He’s not brave—not as brave as the heart should be, at least.
He continues to look way too closely at the painting, almost as if he’s trying to decipher some hidden meaning that Will didn’t tell him about. Mike can feel his heart rate increase—his face getting warmer just as it had at the quarry when he and Will had held hands.
Mike’s mind starts to drift as he stares at the four characters—the Party’s bard, ranger, cleric, and paladin starting to animate themselves in his head.
He absentmindedly picks up the D&D notebooks that he had previously placed over the canvas and puts them down, somewhere off to the side, turning the canvas over so that he can look at the back.
Sometimes Will puts little drawings and doodles on the back of his paintings; Mike always searches for them.
One time, Will had doodled Max—the Party’s zoomer, (which isn’t even a D&D class, Mike had pointed out a second time, when Max was re-telling the story of their argument in the Hawkins Middle School gym to the whole Party), on the blank corner on the back of one of the paintings he made.
Will had drawn her fiery orange curly hair almost flying behind her as she skateboarded, her arms out as if she was surfing, and Max had laughed when she saw it, telling him that most people don’t hold their arms out to their sides like that.
She still liked the drawing, though. Will had told the Party—the full Party, including El and Max—that he hadn’t wanted to finish the painting just yet, which is why he started to doodle on the back of the canvas.
Mike smiles at the memory, eyes moving over the back of the painting. Will hadn’t drawn anything in the large blank space on the canvas, much to Mike’s disappointment, but he did write something. Something that Mike almost doesn’t notice, having turned the painting back over before realizing there was something on the back.
He flips the canvas over and scans the white space for what Will had written.
He finally finds it, but instead of actually reading the message, Mike studies his best friend’s handwriting.
He likes Will’s handwriting. It’s smooth, easy to take in—like Will had paid extra attention to those handwriting notebooks in elementary school, but only because he enjoyed tracing the dotted lines. Like he somehow found a way to make handwriting warm and inviting.
Mike eventually reads what Will had written, focusing on the words instead of the shape of each individual letter.
To Mike, Love Will.
He reads the four words again. Will wouldn’t write that… he wouldn’t.
Unless… it’s in an ‘I love you as a friend’ way?
But they don’t say that to each other—no one in the Party says that to each other—except for Lucas and Max, before Max went into a coma the last time they had tried to fight and kill Vecna.
His stomach churns, a lump forming in his throat and making it hard to breathe. He must be misinterpreting it. He’s just overreacting. El had asked Will to paint this—she had commissioned it. Will must’ve just… accidently written his name instead of El’s.
But then why would El ask him to write that? She was the one who broke up with him.
He swallows, pushing the chair away from the desk and standing up, starting to pace the cramped length of his room.
Pacing helps him think—helps him organize his emotions and thoughts much more easily than when he’s sitting down. He’s started to do it absentmindedly, even when he’s talking or planning with the Party.
Mike knows that Max would hate how much he paces during crawl preparation—let alone the actual crawl, even when he’s cramped together with Lucas, he still manages to stress-pace.
Halfway through his 10th round of pacing around the room, he can hear his mom yell from downstairs, telling the whole household that it’s time for dinner.
He still hasn’t come to an actually feasible idea of why Will would have written that.
Mike moves back towards his desk, flipping the painting back over just in case someone were to come into his room during dinner, putting the D&D notebooks back on top of the canvas to make it known that the hypothetical person coming into his room definitely does not need to look at the back.
After dinner, Mike decides he'll try to figure out what Will actually meant.
Because Will couldn’t be in love with him.